How High Level Marvel Works
A lot of people on these boards seem really ignorant about top level Marvel, so here’s a quick lesson. In high level Marvel, you essentially have four archtype of teams.
Rush That Shit Down (MSP, MST) - While any sort of team can technically “rush that shit down,” there’s only really a handful of teams that do it well. Usually these teams have Mags and Storms on them. With their amazing triangle jumps, washdashes, and air mobility, they can easily run fucking circles around the opponent. The third character on RTSD teams usually are pretty weak by themselves, but they more than make up for it with their amazing assist. Assists such as Tron-Y or Psylocke-A provide perfect setups for Mags and Storm to get in.
The weakness of these teams however, is that they bleed a lot. One Storm DHC into HSF, or two AHVB’s can easily make short work of Mags and Storm. These teams are like high performance sports cars, if you can’t handle their speed then bad things will happen.
Keep Away (Scrub, SSCable) - Almost the exact opposite of RTSD teams, these teams utilize characters with strong keep away abilities such as Cable and Blackheart to lock their opponent down. The assists of their choice are usually Capcom-B (probably the best keep away assist in the game, covers a lot of area and very strong), though sometimes Cyclops- B is used for a more to better set up for stuff like AHVB’s. Again, these assists are weak by themselves but they are essential to winning.
A fight between a good Scrub and MSP is a sight to behold. The Scrub player has to be on his toes, watching the angles of approach from Magneto and Storm, reacting to cross-ups and resets, being wary of that ever dangerous Psylocke assist that could come at any time. The MSP player on the other hand has to use Magnus/Storm’s speed to get through the hail of Cable beams, Sentinel drones, and Capcom assists to reach their target. But once they do get in it’s basically over for the Scrub player. If anyone wants a good example of RTSD vs Zoning, take a look at the evo2k9 mvc2 finals.
**DHC teams **(Santrax, MSS, Combofiend) - These teams don’t zone as well as team Scrub, or rush down as well as MSP. However, what they do so painfully well is utilize Mahvel’s DHC mechanic. They are called one touch kill teams because they literally only need one hit to kill you. Storm launch into lightning storm dhc to HSF…Iron Man infinite into Proton Cannon DHC to HSF…the list goes on and on.
“One hit is all it takes? Sounds pretty broken.”
Well it isn’t. As stated before, they aren’t as fast as RTSD teams so getting in on zoning teams are a lot more difficult. They also can’t zone as well as Keep Away teams so getting Magnus off them can be trouble. But in the right hands, they are quite deadly.
Trap Teams (Team Duc, Clockwork) - Although not as common as the other archtypes, these teams can still be competitive (I believe Clockwork placed at WCW2 using his patented team.) The team uses a character that can control a lot of space with multiple projectiles (Strider, Spiral), along with an assist that can provide cover and provide good chip damage (Sentinel drones, Dr. Doom rocks). Basically, by filling up the screen with as much crap as possible, they can slowly whittle away at the opponents health. If done correctly, the opponent can almost be put in permanent block stun due to the fact it can be very difficult (not to mention dangerous) to push block out of these traps.
However, like any other team this archtype has a weakness. First, they are very hard to play correctly. Mindlessly using Strider orbs and mashing on Doom Assist is not going to have anyone locked down for long. Second, while the team synergy for these type of teams is very strong, it can also be easily broken. If you lose Storm when using MSP, no problem you still have Magnus to work with. However, if you lose Strider or Doom when using Clockwork you might as well be reaching in your pocket for the next quarter to put in the machine.
So hopefully after reading this some of you will have a better understanding of how to balance Marvel’s characters. It’s not as easy as “Lets give everyone 8 way dashing!!” and “Give everyone infinites!!”
When Capcom is developing a character, they should be thinking “ok, what roles do I want this character to fill in the metagame.” For example, say I’m trying to balance Spiderman. True, I can just give him 8 way dashing, an infinite, and make him like Magneto, but why not explore other possibilities? Why not try improving him as a support character instead? Improve the invincibility of his Spider Sting assist and he can be awesome on RTSD teams, or make his projectile assist shoot multiple Web Balls so he could be valuable in Trap Teams, or maybe give him a good super to DHC into so be can be godlike on DHC teams. This is the correct way to balance Marvel. Veterans don’t want a simplied kiddy version of Marvel, nor do we want a roster of 50 Magneto clones.
tl;dr: Fuck TvC
