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X-23's true strength discovered?

I've always been positive about X-23, but felt she was mid-high, tier-wise. Very little players think highly of her, and the only high-level player that thought highly of her was Yipes, who thought she was S-tier. I kinda laughed at that, and thought Yipes was exaggerating a tad, though it was great to hear that he thought she was very strong. But the more I play as X-23 and the more matches I play against my friends, I'm beginning to feel that X-23's only gonna get stronger.

I think from the beginning, I had the wrong idea about X-23. I focused on always getting the kills off one touch. X-23's damage's definitely no slouch either(she can TOD the whole cast depending on your team set-up), but I always had to sacrifice something in order to achieve that, whether it was an anti-air assist(X-23 needs one), full synergy and so on. The closest I came to achieving a complete team was with X-23/Dormammu/Akuma, but I didn't have an AAing assist and I dislike using Dormammu.

Plus, TODing with X-23 didn't make sense to me either, and this was niggling me at the back of my mind: why pick X-23 on point to TOD when you can pick someone like Zero or another top tier? She'll just be a poor man's version of what top-tier points can do, but for way more effort. What separates X-23 from the likes of Zero/Magneto/Vergil?


The answer had to be because of her unblockable Level 3, Silent Kill. At the time, I was thinking "well, if I rely on Silent Kill, I can't TOD people unless I put her in 2nd for XF2 loops" but I hated X-23 in that position. So that would mean I'd have to go for resets/not use meter. My line of thinking is, if you can kill someone in one hit, do it. Resets are only worthy if you can: 1), make your resets tight, 2) make your resets cover a variety of escape options, if not all options so they're not easily escaped, 3) if they get blocked, you must be left at an advantage. Even if you screw up, your opponent's gonna be screwed.

Traumatisch, a high-level Dutch X-23 player first told everyone that resets were important for X-23 so you could build the meter for Silent Kill. People think of air resets into grab when it comes to Marvel 3, or other (quite escapable) mix-ups. To me, that just doesn't cut it. I felt Traumatisch's resets weren't tight enough, and the risk vs reward ratio wasn't in his favuor enough to warrant the use of resets with X-23, so I disregarded them and focused on TODs.

But again, I couldn't help but get that niggling sensation, like I wasn't maximising X-23's potential and I was just focused on the TODs. Had a lengthy session with my friends, did some thinking, looked up a technique that allowed X-23 to track tech rolls anywhere. "Hmm, let's apply some assists to this" and came up with a potentially strong oki mix-up taking advantage of this(look up Chasing ground rolls with X-23 ver.2). Covers all forms of tech rolls, can't be mashed out of(can be reversaled though, but you fix this), if it gets blocked, it puts you at an advantage and there are several additional layers if it gets blocked, allowing you to create your own custom mix-ups and your opponent has to guess several outcomes, making it potentially extremely difficult to deal with. This was more in-line with what I felt a reset should be like.

Now because I didn't have to worry about damage, I could focus on giving X-23 the approriate assists to buff up her weaknesses, making her more complete. The mix-up still needs refining, but if I can improve on it, things will be looking up and X-23'll be even more fun to play from now on!