Your opponents won’t be gaining any meter after you see this tech!
I don’t see a video or a link to a video.
Spinal’s crouch MK is a hard knockdown in juggles, meaning he actually does have an advantaged way to set up a high skull–albeit one that is telegraphed due to only working with a single strength. Launcher > crouch MK xx high skull sets up a high/low mixup; if you do immediate slide, it hits low and the skull is auto blocked, and if you don’t slide the skull hits high and you can follow with a crouch MK or back HP low/overhead. In addition, vs most characters the immediate slide should be fairly safe, being unpunishable by 5 frame moves like jabs. However, vs larger characters the high skull will be blocked sooner, making it jab punishable. Still, this is a good setup and I think spinal players should be using more.
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To follow up on this, spinal’s crouch MK is also a hard knockdown when it blows out. This means that spinal has a uniquely good mixup after a wallsplat ender that goes over 100 KV.
Throw must be broken light, and does the most damage.
Crouch MK must be broken medium, and gives the best setup.
Crouch HP must be broken heavy, and gives him a skull.
Thus, spinal has real threats on all strengths after a wallsplat, better than most characters get.
Example of a setup using spinal’s HKD crouch MK:
Having a cancellable HKD option is very, very good. If you want to have optimal offense with spinal you have no excuse to not use it.
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You can do a similar setup after crouch HP blowout cancelled into low skull, BTW. If they quick rise they get the immediate corner-bouncing skull, and if they don’t quickrise you can just fire a second one and now they have to deal with BOTH, plus you have time to land a meaty. Since you’re in instinct, landing the crouch HP means you’ll always have the two skulls available to do this.
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omfg that looks so hard to block.
How about his new skulls though?
Just an example of what he can do:
Keep in mind though that even with the skull coverage, using summon outside of knockdowns is really risky. If they have a projectile invul move they can easily blow through the skulls and punish.
That being said, with the new meter build you have a lot of leeway in your instinct pressure. Getting three mid skulls out like that is okay, but doing mid-mid-low or mid-mid-high should also be safe. At that point I think you’re pretty much in a situation where you don’t have an excuse not to open them up and from there you have options–you just built AT LEAST a bar, so if you get a lockout shadow sword will make it hurt, but you can also do a short combo into launch > HKD xx summon and start the blender up all over again, this time with an additional skull due to the bonus skulls in instinct.
The scary part is that if your opponent already has a meter curse on them, they’re kind of helpless during all this. Normally they’d be building huge meter from the sequence, but if you get a curse on them before you pop instinct they’re in for a wild ride. If they don’t have shadow meter, vs most characters you’ll be able to safely summon with cover from your bouncing skulls.
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barbaric.