Anti-Phoenix Strategy/Teams

Classic Fighting Games Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3
1

I’m not mad about Sent anymore, I’m mad about Phoenix. It seems to me that if your team can’t land a combo into a snap in to kill Phoenix, you’re basically gonna lose. This means keepaway teams just won’t work against Phoenix teams, ever.

By the time you kill a Phoenix player’s first two characters, they’re bound to have 5 bars and level 3 X-factor stored up.

Even snapping her isn’t a free win if they have basic defense. If they come in blocking, they can push you out and then fly away and throw tracking balls. She probably has the best options in the air of any character I can think of.

I’d like to start some kind of discussion here about some anti-phoenix strats. One thing that would really help is if we could get a list of every character’s best combo into a snapback. For some characters (like Iron-Man) I’m not even sure if they can get a decent combo into a snapback without an assist.

2

Shouldn’t this be in the Phoenix section then?

For Magneto I do the ROM or any flying combo and end with J.S, then I wave dash and call She-Hulk my OTG assist, immediately use Hyper Grav and snap them out.

For She-Hulk I do any combo from launcher ending with J.S, Activate Run, OTG with torpedo, Activate Run, Cancel Run, Snap.

3

Oh, SRK. Always gotta whine about somebody. I wonder who will be OP next after we figure Phoenix out? lol

Snapbacks are one frame (according to the guide) and have decently-sized hitboxes so it’s actually super easy to replace basically any grounded move in any combo with a snapback. The thing is, you have to have a plan for when Phoenix comes in. You can’t just do it and hope for the best; people are starting to realize that regular Phoenix is actually still a really good character, and a good Phoenix player will just kill a character and safely raw-tag out if you don’t know what you’re doing.

4

Do whatever it is you normally do to land a combo and throw a snapback somewhere during the combo.

For killing Phoenix, do whatever it is you would do to land a combo and end in Super earlier because she dies fast. She’s just another character you have to fight, but with a lot less health and scarier with 5 meters. If they raw tag, just punish the raw tag with another snapback.

5

In general I also try my hardest to save X-fac if I don’t get the chance to kill Phoenix early, and end up having to deal with lvl 3 XF DPh.

Having your own X-fac is a huuuuuuuugggeeee help when it comes to dealing with lvl 3 DPh. You stop taking chip damage, so she needs to rely on teleport or other mixups to do damage to you. I dunno how legit this strat is, but I often back myself into the corner when facing DPh. Backing yourself into the corner eliminates her teleport mixups, since she can not teleport behind corner characters. Without her behind teleport stuff I find her mixups to be a lot less scary. You still need to watch out for her overhead and throws though.

So that’s my scrubby general strategy in case I can’t kill Phoenix early. Pop your own X-fac to counter DPh’s X-fac, and then immediately retreat to your corner. Once she loses her x-fac bonus she’s alot easier to deal with. There are alot of shitty DPh players who use lvl 3 x-fac as a crutch and they dunno wtf to do when it runs out since they can’t roll their face over the buttons for easy wins.

6

It’s harder to counter a good Phoenix team than it is to counter Sentinel. You may need to rethink your strategy and maybe switch one character in the team.
The thing is we can’t help you with any general tips.(People already told you most of the theory part) We need to know your team specifics.

7

Well I think the first thing people need to stop doing, is assuming a certain strategy is a “free win” vs a phoenix team. At the moment at least, no matter what you do, you will have to work to beat phoenix the same way you will have to work to beat every other character, but until she is dead, your primary objective should be to kill her. I see TONS of players, snap her in, she survives and then they give up and start playing the team like its a regular team, only to have dark phoenix come in and wreck there entire team. So until she dies, you keep snapping her back in.

Secondly, when you snap her in you need to remember 2 things, one is she will always raw tag out, so if you realize she is getting away just wait for the raw tag and combo whoever comes in and snap him out. Every time she raw tags her teammates lose a lot of red health so even if your not killing her your still making progress. The other thing you need to remember is most phoenix players start their offense in the air using those fireballs. They have long ass start-up so if you have any move that can hit her out of the air, like iron mans tilted proton cannon, jam session assist, or hard drive wait for her to start shooting and the fire away. Magneto is probably the best at this cause its a free magnetic shockwave/gravity squeeze.

Finally, if all this fails and your faced with a 5 bar phoenix, for the love of God people stop killing her. Unless there is a specific reason, like too much time left on the clock, or too little of a life lead to be playing around like that, do not kill her. You have a team of iron man, dante, and sentinel, 3 characters with a flight mode and decent health altogether. Stay in the air for as long as humanly possible because phoenix can’t get much if your air borne. And even if she opens you up, she can get about 400k with no meter, which means she will have to open you up a lot to kill all 3 of your characters.

Of course it still early and despite my tone I am not gonna assume I know everything so if anyone has anything to add or correct feel free to do so.

8

I play Phoenix and play against her a lot so I think I have a qualified opinion on this.

Dark Phoenix isn’t the problem, it’s X-Factor. Have you ever played vs. a Dark Phoenix without X-Factor or played as one? Life becomes terrifying, there are so many things that can chip you to death completely or come very close. I think eliminating the X-Factor threat is the best way to kill Dark Phoenix. You can do this in a couple ways.

Make Dark Phoenix fight when she still has teammates left. When Phoenix comes in, turns Dark then tags out right away, snap her back in and put some work in on her. She can either use X-Factor or she’s going to die.

Outlast the X-Factor. You can do this with safe supers like Amaterasu’s super or hail. Just kill some time, then super jump to the other side of the screen blocking then burn another one, etc. If she has 5 meters, you probably have a stockpile also.

If you have 3 characters to just Dark Phoenix, your goal should turn to lasting as long as possible with your first character and trying to keep your X-Factor so your last character can get the huge chip for a guaranteed win. If you have 1 character vs. Dark Phoenix, you are going to lose and should change your strategy to random hit. If you have 2 or 1 and a small bit on the last one you probably are not going to live long enough to run out her bar and it’s time to get random also. You also should probably burn X-Factor earlier so your incoming character doesn’t eat guaranteed chip death.

If you want character advice, I think Amaterasu counters Dark Phoenix. I should start working on an Amaterasu team just for this reason. I think a team like Magneto/Amaterasu/Sentinel will cause Phoenix based teams a lot of trouble. All 3 characters have an answer for jump back fireballs, the 1st 2 land a lot of snapbacks and Amaterasu can kill off X-Factor time better than any other character in the game.

Just random thoughts for now.

–Jay Snyder
Viscant@aol.com

9

Thanks, good advice

10

I wrote this in another thread…

To add to this, a team with Ryu or Akuma would lend well. They both have beams that connect to the end of the screen pretty quickly. Ryu is one of the few characters with a horizontal air beam hyper. He can tag her on reaction of any move she makes with the :qcf:+:atk:+:atk:. If she teleports behind you, she’s running into a hurricane kick hyper. Anything else, and she gets hit with the beam.

Akuma’s air hyper isn’t horizontal but it still takes up a lot of space. Also, his hurricane kick neutralizes her fireballs and he’ll keep going.

Deadpool doesn’t have a horizontal beam hyper, but he’s one of the few with an air horizontal projectile.

Random hypers vs Phoenix are a legitimate strategy. Don’t scoff at them.

This has been THE INVINCIBLE SWORDSMAN saying:

I like Bronzefist’s strategy of backing yourself into a corner. Never thought about that.

11

I agree that the X Factor is what makes Dark Phoenix a monster. The speed boost removes the start-up and recovery of her slow shots and make her teleport tricks too quick to react to. Without X Factor, she is just a buff character with a serious stamina problem.

12

There is 3 tactics against a phoenix team that I have found to be very useful during the matches that I have been playing:

1: Snapback - When you want to be an advanced player at some point, you are going to have to learn viable combo’s, where you can easily snapback your opponent without inflicting the damage of the combo by a lot. This is not only useful for Phoenix’s but also damaged assists with a big red bar to make sure he won’t regenerate at any point during the game.

This won’t always work, because even if you learn to snapback properly, a good Phoenix can block your post-snapback setups and just kite you and create save swap outs with another character.

2: Keep away - Even though this is very situational ; Keep phoenix at about 5-10% HP, and let the timer run out, do not let her transform into Dark Phoenix. Try to snap her out and kill the other characters if shes the last one. Of course this is a risky choice, and very punishable if she catches you with a xfc lvl 3 combo, but without being Dark Phoenix, it is very possible to keep her away and having a good eye on the timer/health bar.

3: Aerial Rave - Not a lot of Phoenix players expect this, so you have to work on the setups. Once you have Phoenix with a level 5 Gauge in a combo, make sure you snap your character out the moment she will hit Dark Phoenix, your character flying in can catch her without getting hit stunned by the aura. It’s tricky to time but if done correctly you can continue destroying her with her little HP.

Hope I helped, just keep playing and practicing. It’s always going to be very hard killing a spamming XFC LVL 3 Dark Phoenix, if not impossible. Only thing you can do is anticipate it.

Oh btw, Sentinel’s Hard Drive makes him immune for projectiles so it will just ignore Phoenix’s DP. Prolly some other hyper’s that do that tho, no clue.

x-23, captn both have one aswell, dunno how usefull those are against phoenix

13

The attacking player has to make decisions about when in a combo to snap, because if you always try to snap at the end of a combo to maximise damage to their first character, you are building Phoenix extra meter by hitting them more in the combo.

You can minimise Phoenix’s meter gain by snapping early from hits, but this affects your own meter management, as you won’t be building the meter you need for each snap.

14

i just say snap her in before dark phoenix. Keep on snapping her in, forget about completing combo chains… just end it with a snap back and rush her ass down.

You can see that with Jwongs strat against Clockwork.

15

This is a really good idea and I’m mad I never thought of it :rofl:

I always gave up trying to snap her in after she went DPh. I’ll definitely be doing this more since a lot of players don’t know how to use DPh outside of herp derp lvl 3 x-factor.

16

Another thing about time out victory is that Phoenix only has about 420,000 life. This means that even if she has full life, all you need is an average stamina character at roughly half life in order to beat her. I think some people panic because they see Phoenix with a full life bar and their own team with all three characters diminished. They think they’ll lose in time out, so they might as well take their chances with DPh. What they don’t realize is that for time out purposes, Phoenix’s lifebar is really half as long as it looks. Additionally, you can still beat up Phoenix until she has a small chunk of life remaining, which will make the time out victory even more likely. Just be careful not to awaken the sleeping giant within.

One more thing, I noticed that Phoenix has a hard time controlling the far side of the super jump screen opposite her own. Her fireballs only hit at a downward angle and her homing projectiles dissipate at that distance. Her M TK trap seems designed to hit that space, but it isn’t much of a deterrent. She can attempt air throws, but not without opening herself to them as well. All in all, i think the superjump screen at the opposite side of phoenix is the best place to be if you’re planning to run away.

17

Personally I like to use Sentinel against Jean.
Sent’s j:s: can break Jean’s :h:fireball up. So if she trys to run and throw homing fbs at me I just sit back and break them up until she slowly dies.
Now being rushed by Jean is another story; one that I cannot speak on because the Jeans I fight are runners. Ive never had the pleasure of being rushed down by her before.

18

Sadly that doesn’t work because time out goes by % of health left not by the ammount. Or else the bulky guys like sent and thor would NEVER lose by time out.

My thing for pheonix is snap backs, snap backs, and more snap backs. Anytime I get meter i blow it on snapbacks. even if she goes dark pheonix earlier it’s better to deal with it not when she only have levle 1 xfc then when she has levle 3 xfc.

19

If you have a huge life lead, then just run away (ie. you have 3 chars and they only have phoenix). Level 3 X factor dark phoenix is just too random and you’re more likely to survive running away for 60 seconds. Just keep moving so that her teleports won’t put her in good position to rush you down.

20

I made a video explaining in a bit of detail exactly why you should be using Taskmaster and Wesker’s projectile counters against Dark Phoenix’s normal attacks.

Shoryuken - Literally Countering Dark Phoenix