Being a good anchor overall probably encompasses 2 overall basic things.
The strength of the assist of the anchor
The ability of the character to comeback against 2 or 3 characters via XF3.
**With the first basic thing this allows characters like Tron or Haggar to become strong anchors if you’re just taking that context. **Ok yeah sure, if you have to use those characters by themselves with XF3 to clean up 3 people…good fucking luck. If you already burned your XF and you have to kill 3 people…just go to the character select screen and play the next match or do it MVC2 Commando style and walk forward until your character dies. With that said the reason these characters are solid as anchor any ways is that the tradeoff for not having a character that blows people up when you fuck up…they protect you from getting fucked up to begin with.
Let’s face it there’s a lot of BS mix ups in this game (completely new ones even from the ones in MVC2 via assists and moving left or right around the opponent) and characters like Tron or Haggar especially do a great job protecting you from such mix ups that sometimes are more or less accidentally good. Haggar being the best for it because the hit box on his assist covers both sides of his body so any type of mix up whether it’s high/low or left/right Haggar with the correct timing (or lack of whatever) will protect you from the dirty movement/special move + assist mix ups in the game. Long as you cover his recovery afterwards there’s not a whole lot that can go wrong other than Haggar losing significant health. Which is arguable also because if Haggar has to fight one or 2 people by himself how much health he has is only going to matter if he doesn’t have XF. Tron doesn’t really protect you from left right mix ups as well but as she’s harder to punish than Haggar and doesn’t lose health on each call making her very strong as a way to create braindead rushdown for a character like Magneto once he gets in. Even if you get hit they probably also got hit by Tron and then you land combo dead character.
If you’re a SF player that can’t stand the BS mix ups in this game, you might as well just put Haggar on your team cuz you’re guaranteed to stay in the match much longer than having to play the game long enough to memorize patterns of up downs and left rights from your opponents based on their play styles.
**The second basic thing is more commonly brought up because the ability for characters like Wesker, Felicia, Dark Phoenix, Akuma etc. to come back via playing as a point character in XF3. There’s a set of things that come up though that I believe start to equal the true strength of a character if they gotta turn into a super character to win. **
1. Can the character self OTG follow up for full combos or at least a high damage level 1 off any or all ground/air normal throws or ground/air command grabs? (NUMBER ONE IMPORTANT minus Dark Phoenix)
2. Do they get a 30 to 50 percent speed boost in XF3? (second most important especially if it’s 40 to 50 percent)
3. The character’s ability to mix you up and block string/frame trap you with attacks and throws and/or get through advance guards consistently without assists (third most important)
4. Can the character left/right mix you up practically without an assist if you’re on the ground or at regular jump height? (this is a special case that Wolverine has with his B Slash)
5. Do they have huge hit box projectile based super with quick activation that’s safe on block?
6. Does the character have any guard cancel based XF gimmicks (Guard cancel Doom Time to punish even positive frame advantage light attacks on block, Iron Man guard cancel proton cannon at close range for the same purpose as Doom Time, Command grab super guard cancels etc.)?
7. Does the character have an activation super that assists their offense or a special move that puts them off screen or invincible for a short period of time? (kitty helper to create unblockables and act as a combo breaker, astral vision to improve zone and mix up, anybody with a teleport etc.)
If the character in question has enough of both 1 and 2…they are pretty much guaranteed to at least be a solid anchor. This is the type of character like Doom where pretty much as long as you’re fighting one or 2 people left with XF3 you’ve got a chance to turn things around. Doom has numbers 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6. Which means if he only has to kill one person with XF3 he’s in a really good spot. They can’t really attack him without worrying about getting blown up by guard cancel Doom Time level 3 which traverses 3/4’s of the screen and activates basically instantaneously on a guard cancel to the point where they have to have jump cancelled their normal pre emptively to not get hit (which only some characters can do). Doom sitting on level 3 forces and guard cancel forces people to do weird things with their offense like suddenly jump in the air in the middle of it to bait the super and if it’s just one character that has to fight that shit you can use it to your advantage to amount an offense on them when they are having trouble setting up theirs. Doom gets a solid 30 percent speed boost in XF3 which makes his laser gun normal that covers most of the screen way more viable to land TOD combos and gives him better high low and left right mix ups via his dash game. He has an 830k damage level 1 super with about 8 frame start up (sphere flame) that has a rather large hit box for anti airing after throwing one of his projectile specials which means it will one shot X23 or anyone with lower health on a bad jump in and has multiple other supers that cover a lot of screen space to buy him more time if he needs, do solid chip and help fight projectile wars. He also very importantly can self OTG off a ground back throw, air back throw. Can also self launch/OTG off corner based ground forward throw or air forward throw.
The main reason why Doom only ends up being solid as anchor and not OMG serious threat is he only has 2 of what I feel the 3 most important things are to be a scary XF3 anchor. The main issue he has is that although he does have a bit of an ability to get through advance guards with his ability to cancel his normals into dashes, he can’t cancel his dash into normals. Which means his block string pressure is rather limited and he can only mix you up in gaps. Making it so if you block one mix up from him you have enough room to air throw him or run away from the next mix up. Which keeps him only solid even though he has several specific strong aspects in XF3.
Now let’s look at characters who have all 3 of the what I feel are the most important things like Wesker and Felicia. Wesker specifically is easily one of the best because even at only a 30 percent speed increase his teleportation moves become much harder to react to even though he doesn’t have an assist. His H teleport becomes a legit 4 way mix up from a long distance away. Has access to basically the best OTG attack in the game allowing him to have a surefire way to kill you off any air throw. He also has a command grab and the ability to cancel his dash into normals reliably which gives him a strong frame trap and advance guard killing game. His command grab of course giving him another inescapable throw that will lead to TOD’s with his other tools. This easily makes him one of the best in XF3 period. He also has quite a few of the extra tools in 3-7 in some fashion. The only one he doesn’t have is number 7 which is not exactly required by any means but nice to have.
Felicia is another absolute monster in my eyes in level 3 XF. A few characters (including Wesker himself) can reliably run away from her for a while but that doesn’t really matter too much because her speed increase will usually eventually get her in. The main issue is that once she gets in she gets everything. Her 45 percent speed increase makes it so her delta kick which travels pretty much the full screen distance safely will hop her over some projectile or attack inevitably and get her in. Now with this 45 percent speed increase she has access to 4 frame rapid s.L that takes up a 3rd of the screen, a bunch of other really solid normals, can self OTG off regular forward/back throw, can self OTG off 5 frame start up command grab with dangerous range, can self OTG off forward or back air throw which all lead to combos that will kill most of the cast or easily or put them in a reset situation afterwards where they have to 50/50 guess again or die. Even if you decide to save your meter and dont combo into super to finish them off they’re basically still more or less dead because the mix up is too dangerous after a reset. Once she resets you she gets access to a strong frame trap game of forcing you to guess if she’s going to air throw or do her M cat spike and she can do this over and over. If you think she’s going to air throw and you try and stick a normal out to tech or counter hit it and she does M cat spike, it will counter hit which will cause a ground bounce and that gives her TOD combo. The M cat spike has an extended hit box that pretty much no air normal can reliably beat out any way. If you think she’s going to M cat spike and try to block and she air throws you, TOD. This M cat spike also crosses up so you can ambiguously get it to hit behind them and force them to block the wrong way and then TOD. This easily covers 1 through 3 already.
She also has access to some of the best anti advance guard tools in the game. L cat spike and M cat spike are both barely affected by advance guard. L cat spike turns into an infinite on hit and M cat spike can cross people up and cause ground bounces on counter hit and doesn’t really get pushed back much on advance guard either. Has a 5 frame command grab with dangerous range to blow up mashing of normals or advance guard and has regular 1 frame throws that do the same thing. Delta kick leaves her plus on block and doesn’t get affected by advance guard much and if she puts you in the corner can create near infinite block strings with it. She can definitely guard cancel gimmick you by baiting you to attack her and then guard cancelling into her long ranged command grab which will set up TOD. Lastly she even gets access to a super that basically acts as an assist for her (making her the only XF3 character in the game that literally gets an assist). This assist will break her out of combos if you hit her unless you move around Felicia so much that it happens to go the wrong way long enough. It also is ANOTHER tool of hers to break through advance guard since it has the properties of an assist in that it doesn’t get pushed back by successful advance guards. This “assist” also can’t be counter attacked or stopped by any attack, creates cross ups and overheads by its own self which gives her access to 4 way mix ups just by going near you with the super. If she’s getting blown up by projectiles she still has a last ditch level 3 that travels full screen to blow them up.
The absolute scariest part about Felicia in XF3 is that if she kills one of your characters with a combo that places them in the corner…the next character and every character coming in after that is basically going to die unless they have a way to fly out. Kitty helper locks you down and then you just die.
Like Wesker she gets access to everything but like one thing in the 1-7.
**Then there’s a look at characters like Chun Li, Spider Man etc. who have things that appear scary in XF3 but when you look at the overall tools they don’t have enough to do much more than annoy you in XF3. **
**Chun Li **specifically seems like she has what she needs to be a monster XF3 based anchor. Stupid hit boxes on lightning legs that do decent chip, the only character in the game with a whopping 50 percent speed increase (to the point where you may find her hard to control at first), strong high low game if she can force you on the ground and near unseeable left right mix ups. Now this is all good EXCEPT for the fact that she has no way to scare you with throws as an XF3 anchor. This is a huge liability because it means people are going to do one thing when they realize your Chun Li is anchor. Chicken block for their life and push block the shit out of your lightning legs to mitigate any mix up severly. What’s the worst that could happen? Even if you do get ground or air thrown at most it’s just a mix up afterwards and it takes longer for her to land after an air throw giving the opponent more time to roll away from her after an air throw. Just one important factor kills her from being no more than an annoyance in XF3 and not a dominating force.
If you’re missing numbers 2 or 3 but still have number one you’re good for at least being solid. If you’re missing the grab combo convertion…you’re not doing too hot anymore unless you’re Phoenix or Dark Phoenix (who still gets it in corner situations).
As a last minute case to look at… Dark Phoenix specifically doesn’t have the ability to combo off throws unless you’re in the corner which mitigates a lot of her normal mix up any way. Though other factors of Dark Phoenix pretty much make up for it like the fact that she acts as a 4th character that gets access to 20 seconds of XF which that alone specifically cuts her above the rest as an anchor. The only other character I can think of like DP that doesn’t have the top 3 all the time but probably still a legit factor is probably XF3 Arthur due to his crazy 4 or 5 block string chip deaths.
In general though if you got 1-3, you’re among best in the game when you flash red when no one’s left.