Hey, i’ve been playing MvC3 and i’m starting to get my execution down and i’m have some good teams, and can perform some pretty good combo’s now but I was wondering can anyone help me learn how to play basic startegies like zoning, keep-away, and rushdown?
Can you teach me the advanced definition of these three strategies and how to play them and what characters are best at each category?
Keepaway is what it sounds like. It is a defensive playstyle that emphasizes controlling areas of the screen and utilizing that control and your character’s mobility options to stay away from the opponent. The goal of keepaway is to obtain an advantage through chip damage, capitalizing on desperate mistakes made by your opponent, and either win by time out or wear your opponent down.
Avoid unfavorable confrontations with your opponent. Use your mobility options (teleports, dashes and airdashes, pushblocking) to keep your opponent a safe distance from you, and try to goad them into taking risks and doing unsafe moves.
Use projectiles and assists to control areas of the screen and prevent your opponent from using them to attack you. Control is extremely important to all playstyles, but most important to a defensive style like keepaway. There are basically four areas to control - the bottom of the screen (would be used for dashing in and calling assists - that being why this area is usually most important to control), jump height (would be used for airdashes), super jump height (sj height is used to control the other areas), and the area directly above your character’s head (used for ambiguous crossups like Zero’s and Spencer’s). Recognize what areas your opponent would want to use the most and cut them off.
When a team is capable of cutting off almost all avenues of attack, it may be referred to more as “lockdown” than “keepaway”.
Note that though you may be playing keepaway, you might not necessarily want to be keeping your opponent at fullscreen distance. Characters like Deadpool, Dante, and Taskmaster can effectively control space and keep their opponent out at any distance, but also want to remain somewhat close to their opponents so they can dash in and land BnBs when the opponent makes a mistake.
Sentinel, Doctor Doom, Haggar, and Phoenix are popular keepaway characters. Magneto can be played keepaway if you want. Arthur is designed as keepaway, but word on the street is he is not very good at controlling the bottom of the screen and ends up getting beaten by Magneto’s EM Disruptor.
The goal of rushdown is to first lock the opponent down so that they cannot fight back, and then proceed to attempt 50/50s over and over. Keeping your opponent from fighting back is key - a reset may forfeit a large amount of damage, but if it keeps the opponent in a state where they cannot fight back and leaves you in a state where you can continue to push 50/50s, guess who’s eventually going to win?
Assists like Amaterasu Cold Star, Chun Legs, and Sentinel Drones are popular for their ability to pin enemies down and control their space for the entire duration. Storm, Magneto, Wolverine, and Zero are popular rushdown characters.
Zoning is basically another word for controlling space. It isn’t really a playstyle, it’s something you should be doing no matter what your playstyle is. Rushdown cannot rush down if they cannot control the space needed to rushdown, keepaway cannot keep away if they cannot control the space the enemy wants to use to rushdown.
I know you probably do not like the characters I have mentioned, but imo you need to understand why these characters are the best at what they do before you really go and try to do it with anybody else.
That’s my take on it, anyway. Could be totally wrong.
I have some quick questions. If i wanted to try and play keepaway with MODOK or Arhtur how would I? Would i just go to the opposite side of screen and use barrier, balloon bomb, amd psionic blaster to keep them away from me? And if someone else is doing this and i manage to air-dash over there projectiles should I do an overhead and then try and start a combo? Finally, how would you play defense against someone like Wolverine? Once he gets in he just wrecks me in like two special moves and a hyper, my whole health bar is gone and he just does the same to my next character and I can’t get out of this cycle. Lucky, I JUST picked up an arcade stick today and i’m liking it a lot so that’s a plus to getting owned lol.
Now what I would like to see/read in this thread is “what do you in this situation?” kind of thing. right now my main problem is when to X-Factor, when to super jump and what to do full screen.