I’ve kept my silence on it long enough. So…Morrigan imo is the best character in the game. I agree with JWong on this. Let’s have a look at Morrigan on point to get a picture of how to deal with her.
Morrigan combines her mobility with the ability to flight cancel her special moves. That means she can throw fireballs and then cancel them, allowing her to either “double tap” with another fireball or use the quick recovery to block or get away. People liken her to spiral, but I actually think she’s very similar to sentinel in MvC2. In Mvc 2, sentinel had fast, damaging normals that led to decent damage in combos. Sentinel also used flight and reflight to cancel his recovery and chip people with his rapid and safe normals in the air.
On the ground, morrigan can shoot the fireball upwards diagnolly, or forward. In the air, she can shoot the fireball down diagnolly or straight forward. It’s her ability to throw these fireballs quickly that make her a pain.
Close up, she can attack you from above with her shell kick, or grab quickly with her vector grab. She can also do shadowblade and flight cancel that special move. Basically, the space in front of her is directly dominated by Morrigan, and she has methods to attack above her and below her.
Doom missiles is the preferred assist with Morrigan because Doom covers space that she can’t reach. The missile home in on the opponent’s position, and the standard method of dodging missiles is difficult when there are also fireballs from multiple angles on the screen. So, just like in MvC2, beating Morri/doom will require players to change their approach to Marvel. Right now, Marvel is more of a game where you try to land a hit and kill the character, then mix up the next character. Morrigan will force more mid ranged/long ranged battles, and players will need to improve their movement. Characters without flight or air dashes basically are going to be SOL.
So to beat Morrigan:
Make her block. If it does chip damage, even better. I hate doom already, but making her block slows her down and gives you opportunities. It’s not necessarily about landing a hit…it’s about taking away her options. Character that can do this:
Striker’s teleport, skrull, Hawkeye’s arrow that eats through projectiles, <cough> unibeam from Ironman, though Ironman sucks, etc. It reminds me of how players would run into phoenix in vanilla. You’re not just going to be able to rush down easily…she’ll just run away. You need to make her block something and clear the space. Yes, she can run away and restart her stuff…but it gives you the breathing room to think up of a scheme against her. That’s going to mean people need to start focusing on assists that will make her block, like jam session, hiddien missiles, amaterasu’s ice, dorm pillar, etc. The other thing too…it allows you to build meter, which is important against her. Gone are the days where picking beam assists or akuma tatsu necessarily made the most sense.
People have mastered tri jumping and wave dashing. But against morrigan, the movement is done in the air above the fireballs. She can only shoot up from the ground. Instead of a trijump, your goal with your fast air character will be more right angled: drop jumps. Horrizontal movement to move forward/backward, drop jumps straight down. With fast movement, you can simulate super skrull, and that’s a new concept people haven’t done yet. Trijumps just happened to be angled so that everything she does can beat it. Players need to come from different angles.
Learn to punish doom. People learned it in mvc 2. Storm could C. fierce and then jump cancel block if the opponent did something to save the assist. Players need to learn to do the same in MvC3. It’s not just about damage…popping doom up and delaying him also limits how often he can be called. If you hit him preemptively before missiles comes out, you sometimes can create a hole. Of course, if you kill doom, even better. You don’t need to do a lot, but you have to keep the morri/doom player honest about calling doom…or he’ll just keep doing it.
Play the midranged game. It’s not all about crouch L. You’re not going to have a choice against her. Doom’s got a hit confirm from midrange off his butter gun…more of that kind of stuff.
Framekills: Framekills dhcs were huge in MvC2, but there aren’t a whole lot of super that let you do it. However, the ones that do (storm hail, proton cannon) can be done as dhc or done as double team or triple team supers. It’s resource intensive, but it allows opportunities you might otherwise not have. For one, it’ll force morrigan to block. #2, it’s a way to punish/kill doom. There’s also tricks you can do off of it…like the viper/ironman guardbreak (and if morrigan is in the air blocking proton cannon at normal jump height she can’t get out.
Alpha counter shell kick. It’s not safe. It’s high priority, but it’s not invincible. That’s one move in the air she CAN"T cancel. That’s right you haggar players…you have at least one tool against morrigan.
Pick Morrigan. She can do all of the above except framekills.
I don’t agree with Viscant. As a fellow brainiac with bad hands, I sorta of agree with what he thinks is the best team in the game.
<character of choice>/morrigan/doom…For instance:
Magneto/doom/morrigan
or
Morrigan/doom/vergil (chris G’s team)
Zero/Morrigan/doom, or Morrigan/zero/doom, depending on what you want to start.
Personally, I think Filipino champ needs to combine his team with Chris G’s team to make Filipino G:
Morrigan/Dormammu/Doom. Stop picking phoenix…Morrigan counters phoenix HARD if she still has xfactor.
Oh, since I forgot to mention it. People consider for anchors that vergil, strider, and akuma are best.
Level 3 xfactor morrigan with sister buff on is going to be like the new phoenix.
As a Morri/Doom player here’s my take on the characters that give me the most problems. Now before I begin, I have played the character for 6 months and I feel I am intermediate with her although no where near Chris’ level of course…
Point Vergil with a tracking assists, preferably Vajra. Problem is no one plays point Vergil but when I run into this team online Vergil players that immediately put on the belt and apply pressure are a huge problem for me. When they put on the belt you have no option but to block, it’s such a powerful super. Plus, you have to respect Vajra and anticipate Vergil teleports for the crossup. Having a horizontal assist for the mixup is also of course very useful. Some potential teams with point Vergil could be Vergil/Dante/Hawkeye or Magneto (Yipes could pull this off), Vergil/Magneto/Stider.
Point Wolverine is of course always a problem but however the problem Wolverine has is that if he doesn’t get in on her in the beginning of the round he’s done. In addition, Wolverine players never use an air tracking assist because it’s pretty useless for him so Morrigan is free to roam the air against him.
Point Nova can also be a problem but he has the same issues as Wolverine and he simply cannot get in with the ease Wolverine can in the beginning of the round. Plus, we saw Chris dominate Moons yesterday 3-0 which is just crazy because Nova is on paper 5-5 against her.
Point Dorm is also a good choice and I wish Fchamp played Dorm/Mags/Doom hidden missiles all 3 rounds against Chris. Dorm has to abuse his pillars to keep her from soul fisting in the air and use stalking flames since nothing on Chris’ team can counter that ball, but it’s of course easier said than done with limited meter in the beginning of the round. Dorm/Doom plasma beam/Strider I feel could be lethal against Morrigan but unfortunately that team does not exists among high level players.
Lastly, you mention alpha counters and it definitely sounds like a good idea. I’ve never had anyone do this to me, however one move that does annoy me and works as it’s own alpha counter is Jill’s invincible somersault kick. Jill players basically cannot be shell kicked and I would love to see more Jills, since I think she’s like a Wolverine that is highly unexplored.
Honestly, the best bet of beating Morridoom is to punish the Doom assist as much as possible and to up your movement. Morrigan/Doom is definitely a very good and feared shell right now, but this game is also relatively new. Once people step their shit up, I think we might see a shift of the tiers.
The bigger problem really is Chris G. There’s already stuff that direct counters morri/doom IMO to the point where only Chris G would be able to consistently win against. Like any other Morri/Doom would feel the hardship. Until a top player steps up and uses it against Chris G, its just gonna be words and prophecy.
The bigger issue is that Chris G is what J.Wong was to MVC2 now and its apparent when he can just have a really half assed 3rd character and still not get knocked out of a major.
Completely agree, it’s mostly Chris G, MorriDoom is good but there are other top tier teams that are better in my opinion. Problem is that all other top players (Justin, Fchamp, Yipes) play good teams but not broken stuff that can counter Chris G. Justin basically plays 1 top tier character with one assist and one character that is there for mostly team supers. If Justin simply replaced Storm with Doom (Plasma Beam) in addition to Akuma (Tatsu), he would beat Chris G more consistently. Justin did go 2-3 against him in WB and he only lost cuz he dropped a happy birthday. Chris is really good but not unstoppable IMO
Unless I’m mistaken, he has been trying this team out. Not like Magneto/Morrigan/Doom is bad either, and his Magneto is like a zillion times better than Chris’s.
I remember using nova’s rocket super (the one that no one uses) against two morri/doom teams and it practically plowed through the soul fist bullet hell. yet again a good morri/doom player may counter that.
Maybe you mean Gravimetric Blaster? Players fish for lucky hits all the time with Human Rocket, it’s pretty much impossible to punish if the player knows what he is doing.
