Alright everyone, a mega post about how I think I may have just broken Firebrand.
Everyone here knows that sometimes when I get a combo with Firebrand, I TAC to Dormammu, do his TAC combo, and then DHC Stalking Flare to Luminous Body for the unblockable setup. I have found very little that beats this setup, especially after I remembered that I can call Dark Hole right before I go into Demon Missile H for extra chip and lockdown to ensure the unblockable. Dark Hole basically just gives me time to mess with my positioning.
Unfortunately, TACs are not reliable, so I usually did Bennet's setup of Dark Fire -> Stalking Flare, and then I would XFC into 1D2C for over 1 million damage total, charge 2D1C, liberate it, cancel into Stalking Flare, and DHC into Luminous Body for a 200% kill on my opponent's team.
I want to say, frankly, that this setup is yesterday's technology.
Last night I was on SRK and saw this thread:
http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?threads/bon-voyage-frequent-flyer-miles-glitch.154937/
Unnoticed and unloved. Who, in a post-Vanilla would, could care about a "DHC glitch" setup for Firebrand (since that's what it is, but the OP doesn't seem to know that)? Certainly, we haven't seen anything from it.
But I had an idea: right now I feel like my team is lacking when Dormammu is dead, and it's just down to Firebrand/Morrigan. They're both pretty low damage characters, so I feel like I need to find some synergy between them. I'm sure it's there, and I thought this was a perfect opportunity. DHC glitch into Astral Vision, and maybe I'd have time to land Soul Drain - cool huh? I still haven't gotten it to work, but I haven't given up either, especially since the glitch puts my opponent into hard knockdown and I have Firebrand's OTG assist. There must be something there damn it!
I became frustrated for a while, but then had another thought: sometimes I want to DHC Firebrand out with Luminous Body, and I didn't have a great way to do that yet. So maybe I could use this to do Luminous Body -> Chaotic Flame? I tried it, and it worked. Cool!
Then another thought came to me: why Chaotic Flame? Why not...Stalking Flare?
So I gave it a shot, and it turns out that Stalking Flare is too slow to catch my opponent before he falls to the ground. And that's why this is so beautiful. See, I've never had a way to set this up before. Doing Firebrand's bnb into Luminous Body -> Stalking Flare doesn't give me enough time to raw tag Firebrand back in. But
this does. Firebrand recovers well before my opponent gets up and roll recovers thanks to the spinning knockdown, meaning I can set up his full unblockable this way.
Here's the full setup, starting with Firebrand:
c.LMHS, sj.MMHS, qcf.S, s.H, qcf.S, Luminous Body, Stalking Flare, raw tag Firebrand, call Dark Hole, dp.H (hold), j.S, c.LMHS, sj.MMH, d.H, qcb.L, c.HS, sj.MMHS, qcf.S, s.S, sj.MMHS
Two bars, and it does over 1 million damage. Firebrand builds ~2 bars of meter during all of this, and I also get 2 Dark Harmonizer calls due to the reset, making this generate heavy positive meter. I can end the whole thing into Dark Fire to kill anyone short of Thor, thanks to this.
You might have noticed that the beginning combo is a bit short, and this is because s.H into qcf.S drops if the combo has gone on too long. I'm certain there's a way to make the opening setup longer and stronger, but I'll figure that out later.
So, whether I touch someone with Firebrand or Dormammu, it's a dead character for 2 bars. BFFs? Only an alpha counter into something like Hard Drive can survive it, AFAIK, but nothing really stops that, so I can't complain.
