If you came here looking for another complaint about Dark Phoenix, you’re definitely in the wrong place. Instead, you have found quite the opposite!
Just a little tech I’ve decided to share… I wasn’t really sure it was “good enough” to be made widely known, so I’ve been holding onto it. But after using it multiple times now and being successful more times than not, I’ve decided that perhaps its worth sharing.
I’m hoping to get this nominated for an article… so I’ve written it as one. Please nominate it if you like it, and perhaps we can get it recognized on the front page 
Dark Phoenix is Broken… Literally
For quite some time now people have been griping about the character Dark Phoenix. Dark Phoenix has led to enough metaphorical tears to full up the oceans several times over. Personally, I’ve been sitting back laughing at this because my two primary teams have characters that are almost completely immune to her.
Allow me to explain.
The Dark Phoenix transformation has commonly been associated with saltiness, rage, instant death, and “cheap” wins. The only character perhaps even close to inspiring these kinds of reactions was the pre-patch Sentinel, and even he perhaps may pale in comparison. However, where most players chose to rage and complain, I chose to study the character. I had an edge in that I was already playing the characters “immune” to Phoenix since day 1, with a good understanding of them shortly thereafter. I began playing Phoenix later during the release week.
For alot of you this will be a “TL;DR” so here’s a video made entirely of his own accord by SRK forum user Cauldrath. It should give you a good general idea of what this concept is about. He also has a blog post offering a brief explanation of the video.
In order to be “immune” to Phoenix, you dont need X factor, speed, strength, and not necessarily even meter. You simply need Wesker, Taskmaster, or Magneto, reasonably consistent execution, and decent reaction time.
If my merely mentioning those names hasn’t clued you in, let me further elaborate.
The large chunk of Phoenix’s damage comes from the projectiles emitted by EVERY one of her normal attacks, excluding her supers. But this great strength from these projectiles make her even weaker in a sense than her normal form against Taskmaster, Magneto, and Wesker. Why? Because of their moves that seemingly nobody uses. Counters.
More specifically, it is their projectile counters that make them largely immune to Phoenix. This is because regardless of the distance Phoenix attacks from, on most of her attacks her flames hit PRIOR to the actual physical hit (if she’s in range to physically hit you at all). What this means is that where you’d normally need to preemptively guess which particular kind of attack she is about to perform (Overhead/High, Mid, or Low) in order to counter it, you no longer need to guess for most of her attacks because almost ALL of her normal attacks essentially become projectiles.
This means that the same counters which work on projectiles work on MANY of Phoenix’s regular attacks, thereby SEVERELY limiting her means of attacking you. Almost any attack Phoenix makes on the ground becomes essentially a projectile-based attack as far as the counters are concerned, meaning they are all countered by the same move!
It doesnt matter if she’s standing or crouching, on all of her ground moves (excluding command attacks and launcher) the projectile hits first, thereby making the “Fierce” counter (H) counter all of them.
In the case of Wesker, this leads to GUARANTEED death for Phoenix from a regular, meterless, x-factor-less combo.
In the case of Taskmaster, you need one meter to damage her (canceling counter into Legion Arrows), but the counter itself completely nullifies any damage you would have taken, and if she has taken at least ONE hit of any kind prior to the counter and super from Taskmaster, then the super will kill her if it deals full damage unless she has used healing field.
This also almost completely makes jab feathering an inviable attack against either of them due to the “Fierce” counter.
What about the FEW attacks it doesn’t counter (and there is literally only a few)? They’re ALL countered by the “Light” counter (L).
So here’s a list for reference of everything the the “Fierce” counter (H) stops:
Standing: L, M, H
Crouching: L, M, H
Air: L, M
ANY non-super excluding those is stopped by the “Light” counter (L), meaning:
Standing: S
Crouching: None
Air: H, S
Standing Command Attacks: -> M, -> H
Air Command Attacks: -> M, -> H
[LIST]
[]Counters for both characters are only 5-frame moves, making them viable for spamming or reaction purposes.
[]When used repeatedly as opposed to on reaction, using the counter move may potentially tech throws or lead to a blocked attack depending on what point the attack is initiated during the input.
[*]If you have Magneto and 3 meters, you can cancel the counter into Gravity Squeeze for an instant kill on Phoenix.
[/LIST]
Of course, her special moves aren’t effected by feathering and thusly don’t change. All of her fireball projectiles are obviously countered by the “Fierce” counter, as are the traps.
It also becomes dangerous for Dark Phoenix to whiff ANY of her physical moves because the feathering they emit can be countered with the “Fierce” counter.
Also, for the players who don’t have the reaction times necessary to fully use this, even using it randomly will often result in success, especially if you can follow which particular kind of teleport your opponent uses. If it’s either of the ground teleports, 6 out of 7 of her normal attacks are all stopped by the same “H” counter. If it’s the air teleport, simply use the “L” counter instead, and you’ve got a chance at a free hit or killing Phoenix.
In addition, fighting Dark Phoenix is one of the few situations where it becomes BENEFICIAL to be in a corner. When using this technique, being in a corner means that any attack Dark Phoenix makes must be frontal (the direction of the counter) because her teleport does not allow her to teleport behind you. This makes mixup situations all but nearly impossible for her to pulloff without an assist, thereby eliminating the need to even change the direction of the input for the counter. Keep in mind that a whiffed counter attack by Wesker WILL take him out of the corner, so you need to be prepared to either get back into it, or swiftly move to the other.
Lastly, Magneto’s assist counter works BEAUTIFULLY on Phoenix… if you can get him out at just the right moment. This however is extremely risky as she could very well end up killing both of you. Using Magneto’s counter assist in combination with Wesker’s or Taskmasters “Light” counter does make it near impossible for Phoenix to attack you at all, due to the fact that Magneto’s assist will nullify the feathering of her attacks even if the Physical hit doesn’t reach. If the Physical hit does reach but the assist has ended, chances are it at LEAST destroyed the feathering projectiles; so by using the Light Counter there’s still a good chance you’ll catch Dark Phoenix. If you can find a way to alternate between the counters to cover one another, you could almost essentially end up with almost 360 degrees of protection ala Neji (if you don’t know, don’t ask 
). Also, if Magneto’s counter does hit, meter becomes largely irrelevant to kill her as almost any air combo following Magneto’s counter assist (assuming the hit triggers it) will kill Phoenix. However, it is probably safer to just burn 1 meter if you have one to spare.
So I hope this is a stepping stone toward lessening the complaints about Dark Phoenix and stopping her. As you can see, more than half of her attacks end up able to be countered by one single move, and those that aren’t are all covered by one other.
Now if you’ll excuse me… I’ve got more labbing to do
