Break the Team Composition! (High Level UMVC3)

Classic Fighting Games Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3
1

This is a long read, I’ve included the things I want to cover in spoiler brackets for your viewing pleasure. Please don’t take this as a guide or anything of the sort. This is just me sharing my findings with you so we can discuss it and get better.

Also keep in mind that this isn’t a team building or tier listing thread.
Please refer to the sticky threads at the top of this section for that.

**NINJA EDIT: **I don’t understand why there’s 2 spoilers instead of 1, its really weird, might be a forum glitch. I tried to fix it but I couldn’t, I hope you still get the idea though.

Break the Team Composition!

Spoiler

I played MVC2 for a really long time. I really loved the game, and I picked MVC3 since day 1 and enjoyed it as well. I however noticed that a huge amount of MVC2 players didn’t share the same opinion with me.

A common complaint by these people was that you didn’t really need to understand your character to make a comeback. I did agree with this at the time, but I wanted to make more research on the subject before coming to a conclusion.

What I wanted to find out was if it was really true that someone who has trained really hard can be easily overshadowed by an average player with XF3.
This without a question is true at the present time where even top players use XF derp at finals all the time. I however was interested in knowing if the game could evolve to the point where this doesn’t hold true anymore.

I was more so inspired by the history of MVC2. During the first years of that game, I saw hundreds of people complain about how dead easy and scrubby Cable was, and how AHVB was the scrubbiest thing to ever exist. Hell, when you think about it, AHVB is a high damaging 1 frame beam super that covers the whole screen , its dead easy to hit confirm, can be linked multiple times, and its safe on block. How does that not sound scrubby? Cable is the real father of happy birthdays.

But….
Anyone who thinks that about the way that Sanford played Cable at EVO2009 is a fool.
Sanford EARNED his AHVBs and space in that match. That Cable play was far from scrubby.

I really wanted to find out if that was going to happen with Wesker or Zero in the future.
After playing for hundreds of hours, and watching another couple hundred hours of streams, I’ve come to the following conclusion.

WITH THE EXCEPTION OF DARK PHOENIX, NO CHARACTER IN THIS GAME HAS A FAVORABLE MATCHUP AGAINST A WELL COMPOSED TEAM EVEN WITH XF3.

The composition of a team is the single most dangerous thing it has, and it’s by far scarier than any character with XF3. I will elaborate more on that in a moment, but first let me point out another thing.

If this is true, then it could be said that one of the best (if not the best) strategies to beat your opponent in this game is to break his/her composition while retaining yours.
Using this knowledge to your advantage is going to show the difference between someone who puts in the hours, and someone who just abuses the derp of the game.
This is not an easy task though. Let’s dig deeper into that concept.

The team composition refers of course to the synergy of your team, but this is a very wide term. A lot of the newer players think that this refers mainly to DHCs and assists, but that not the case. The mechanics of this game change your team synergy all the time. A simple snapback or accidental alpha counter can change the whole idea of how the team is played, and it is up to you to make sure that your selection is ready to handle those situations.

Generally speaking, a well composed team is made up of members who each enhance each other’s properties in any order. This however can’t be achieved by every single team in the game, and that’s why you also need to be aware of the way on which your team could be decomposed and avoid it.

Any powerful anchor should always have a really bad matchup against a well composed team, because think about it. You should have

-Better blockstrings
-Better spacing
-Better Runaway
-Better Rushdown
-Ability to make supers safe through DHC

There’s really no reason why a well composed team should show any respect to XF3 Wesker for example. You should instead lock him down and make him regret that his cover is gone while yours remains intact.

That’s not it though, if your aim is to break your opponent’s composition, you also need a good idea of what that same synergy is for your opponent’s team as well.
This includes knowing things like.

-Can he TOD me
-In what team orders can he TOD me
-How much meter is he going to build if he lands a hit
-How am I going to brake his composition if he brakes mine first
-How am I going to gain my composition back.
-How strong are the sub-compositions of his team

These are just some of the many things you need to be aware of, and as you can imagine, this requires EXTENSIVE knowledge of the game, and that’s the reason why I think we are still falling for predictable XF3 technology and derp tactics.

I also believe that this is the main use of X-Factor. If you find yourself in a position where you can break the composition of the opponent by killing that one character that powers up the whole team, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use your Lvl1 XF to do so. Your team synergy should still have a big advantage over a decomposed duo.

I want to mention something else before we finally jump to examples.
I consider that this type of gameplay was by far unexplored in MVC2.
I’m not saying it was absent since we all snapped in Cyclops or Psylocke to weaken Magneto’s rushdown or Sentinel’s air play at some point, but the game was reduced to a very small portion of the cast, and it naturally requires more creativity to figure out how to break the composition of all the combinations possible out of 25+ viable characters in MVC3 than it was for the 10-12 in MVC2.

Also, do you really think that Magneto cared about the composition of a shoto team?
Not really……
In MVC3, due to X-Factor, he most certainly should.

Let’s now jump to some examples. I will list some ways on which teams can be decomposed, making a comeback something really hard, but keep in mind this is a very small portion of the possibilities in the game. There are hundreds of different approaches to do it, and I believe that as the game evolves, we will get better at identifying the best ways to quickly decompose our opponents. I’m pretty sure that a few years from now, the strongest teams are going to be the ones that aren’t easily decomposed or can’t be decomposed at all (at which case you want to at least play against the weakest composition of the team).

I hope I can get you going in the line of thinking so we can figure out even more ways to do it.

SITUATION 1

I recently been encountering many players who use Nova/Frank/Dante.
I lost many times to this team because I couldn’t figure out how to decompose it.
Nova can use a very simple setup to level up Frank, and Level 5 Frank with Jam Session is a really though duo. Frank’s assist also boosts Nova’s ground game significantly.

At first, I thought of using XF to kill Nova and prevent Frank from leveling up, but that ended up being a bad idea because Frank could still level up easily thanks to Dante. If the anchor of this team would have been Hsien Ko for example, I wouldn’t have had any problems to use my XF to kill Nova, but I couldn’t do that in this case.
I also couldn’t snap Dante in to avoid those ridiculously ambiguous setups with Roll/Jam Session because Dante could also level up Frank just as easily.

I ended up realizing that the smartest thing to do was to snap Lvl 1 Frank in and use XF to kill him. Nova/Dante were still strong, but their pressure even with XF wasn’t even close to being as powerful as level 5 Frank with assists. Killing Frank was the best way to decompose the team.
This team is still really hard to beat though.

SITUATION 2
Let’s pretend you’re playing against a Phoenix team.
Besides snapping and killing Phoenix, what other way can a phoenix team be decomposed?

I found out that the answer lays within the amount of meter that your opponent has when you land a hit.
If your team can TOD your opponent’s point character before he gets 1.5 Meters, I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be good idea to use XF to kill the second character. That is, if you can kill said character before he gets 3 meters.

Think about it, 2 meters is a lot for Phoenix to build by herself, and any character can kill Phoenix without meter from any hit confirm.
I believe that in this situation, the composition of the phoenix team would be completely broken, and using your composition breaker (X-Factor) is totally worth it.

SITUATION 3

I had a really hard time dealing with a player who used Wesker/Doom/Dormammu.

Hidden Missiles nerfed my square jump game really bad, and XF3 Dormammu is really hard to deal with. I wasn’t sure of whom to snap in. If I snapped in Dorm, I had to deal with his pressure plus hidden missiles, and that wasn’t nice either.
If I snapped Doom in, I couldn’t use my XF to kill him because I would be exposing my low health characters to the monstrous chip damage of Dorm, and if I sent Wesker to the anchor position, I would be in a very uncomfortable position if my team ended up losing any members against Dorm and Doom.

This team is a perfect example of good composition.
No matter how you look at it, there’s always something strong that you have to deal with. The only semi-weak position that I can think for this team would be to leave Doom by himself, but the fact that Doom was positioned in the second slot made this really hard. I needed to open up my opponent at least twice before I could get this position, and its composition would be stronger than mine if I made any mistakes.

In this situation, I simply chose the least powerful situation in my opinion, which is to deal with XF3 Wesker. That however was very challenging, because I needed to kill Dorm and Doom without losing my composition and that is hard.
I luckily have powerful sub compositions in my team as well, so I could afford to lose one character.

That’s all I have for now. I hope this has been an interesting read for you.
I also hope this might help you rethink the strengths and weaknesses of your team, and the way you approach matchups.
UMVC3 is a worthy successor of MVC2, and the upcoming years will prove that I’m sure.
I’ve pointed out obvious ways to break composition, but I’m sure that some of you can think of more creative ways to do it. If you do, please share it :tup:

Thanks!

2

wut?

3

Good read, you had some very good example situations there.
Gonna have to keep this in mind for Salty Battles today.

4

This is a good read. However, even a well composed team can get derped out by x-factor level 3. You have to respect it for sure.

5

With the exception of Maximum Wesker and Dimension Slash, no. XF is only useful in the same situations where you could win without it, as I think JD has demonstrated quite well.

Take any team with Haggar, for example. If you use your XF to get the opponent down to just Haggar and have someone with half-decent zoning, the game is more or less over unless he hits you, XF3 or not. It’s an extreme example, but it works fine in other cases - the only real exceptions I can think of are the two above and perhaps XF3 Dormammu, due to that unavoidable chip damage.

Situations 1 and 2 show this best, I think. In both cases, the teams rely heavily on a specific strategy (Dark Phoenix / levelling Frank) and so using your XF to cripple that is well worth it, as XF Nova or Dante for example isn’t much more dangerous than non-XF Nova/Dante unless they can land a hit.

Situation 3 is a bit different since it’s a very powerful team that can work all around with one or both characters taken out. My guess was that Doom was coming out a lot as an assist, so for me, my priority would be to hyper punish him as an assist - get him to low health - and then use XFC to kill whoever was on point and force Doom into the game with low health. You may end up fighting XF3 Dormammu, but that’s doable if you’re in a good position, especially since he no longer has any assists to cover him - the only issue remaining is chip damage from stalk flares, and you can mitigate that with good DHCs to try and recover some health if you have the meter.

In all honesty though, teams like that - from my experience - are heavily reliant on their good assist (in this case Missiles, but things like Vajra, Drones etc) so it really is worth cutting that down, because your opponent then has a massively harder time getting in or applying pressure.

Team composition - and the use of XF levels 1 and 2 to break it - is definitely something that people need to look at more. I see so many players saving XF3 wesker anchor, only to find out they can’t land a hit and so their XF is worthless, as they lost their primary lockdown assist or whatever (example: I rather like doing XF sphere flame to take out Strider if an opponent is relying heavily on Vajra to stay safe / get in).

Very good post. This sort of strategic view towards Marvel needs more attention imo.

6

What about Super-Skrull? So silly in XF3.

7

Highlight and click the eraser thing on the top left, should fix it.

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He’s the same as any other teleporter in XF. His teleports remain slower than several other characters, even in XF3; if he isn’t using them you should not have a problem. The corner is good for these situations against some people, as well.

9

This is just a matter of semantics. Let me clarify what I mean when I say you shouldn’t respect XF3.
I don’t mean that you shouldn’t be aware of the fact that you can instantly be TODed in a few seconds.
That’s a given, and a must to keep in mind.

My point is that there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be using all your tools against an XF3 anchor.
I’ve seen tons of people who simply restrain from using assists, and run away from XF3 as if they were at a disadvantage.
I’ve also noticed that a lot of people save their X-Factor on the second match if they lose the first round to an XF3 comeback.

I believe this is wrong. Your synergy is better than XF3. The problem is that you actually need to understand said synergy instead of just looking for that derp as the XF3 user. Your team should be able to control when the anchor activates (he should be activating against your point character), and the space of the encounter as a whole.

Let me use an example with my team. If I’m fighting my opponent’s second character, I have 3 meters, and my opponent has a powerful anchor.
I usually wouldn’t hesitate to use my XF to leave the anchor alone. If I used my XF, I probably needed 1 meter tops to kill the other char, and I kept on gaining meter throughout the combo. This means that I most likely have close to 4 meters.

If I have this amount of meter with Vergil, I simply wouldn’t care about what that anchor does. Spiral Swords guarantee that I own that space, XF3 or not, and I can TOD any character with 2 starting meters (gotta love that loop :tup:).
I have the complete advantage in this case, and there’s no reason why I should be afraid of that XF3 or save my XF to deal with it.

This is of course an extreme example. I hope you get the idea though.

If you are aware of its silliness, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be ready to welcome him with a deadly incoming mixup that can turn into a blockstring if you don’t land a hit. My point is not that XF3 is bad. My point is that team synergy is better, and you are not in any kind of disadvantage.

That’s the problem. There’s nothing to highlight :confused:
I checked many times and I only have 1 spoiler bracket, yet if I edit the title of it, both change.
It’s really weird :rofl: