Kresent, you’re getting better and better everytime I see you play.
However, one thing that I’ve noticed is that regardless of how much of an advocate you are for Plasma Beam. You seem to play better and be way more comfortable with Hidden Missiles.
Thanks man. It’s nice to hear I’m improving from people. I always look back over my matches and only see the mistakes. 
It’s really hard for me to judge what is good, only what is bad. Like, I’m just really bad at judging myself so I don’t know what my strengths are, only my weaknesses. The only strength I know that I have is my mobility, because no one else seems to move with Firebrand or Dormammu like I do.
You guys in the Firebrand forum seem to be the ones who care for me the most, so I’m going to post my Final Round re-cap here, since I didn’t get to give a lot of info here beforehand. I’m using spoilers to make this post smaller, but it is going to be a really really long post with all of my thoughts on various topics from this weekend. Some of these arose from my gameplay, others came from what other people were telling me about my play, and some of it comes from my own theories. If you disagree with me, I’d love to hear your reasons, but please be civil.
Tournament play - Pool 16
I was in pool 16. I was going to post the bracket but I don’t have it linked and I can’t upload here so I’ll just tell you how my matches went
Winner “Quarterfinals” - Hush (3-0)
Team: Wolverine/Iron Fist/Dr. Strange(bolts), Spiderman/Nova/Iron Man(beam) (game 3)
This guy wasn’t bad, but unfortunately for him, I have a lot of Dr. Strange experience because of Will and I don’t think he was prepared to handle a Firebrand that could move around like mine. I think he would have done better if he stuck with the second team throughout the whole game because I had a lot harder time dealing with Nova, and the Firebrand v Spiderman match-up is a pain for Firebrand because Spiderman is so tiny.
Winner Semifinals - StaticAlpha (3-1)
Team: C. Viper/Rocket Raccoon(spit twice)/Strider
I was really worried about this guy when I saw my pool announcements. I played him in casuals last year at FR and I couldn’t get him off me. He negated ALL of my pushguards and kept grabbing me. I obviously have improved a lot since then, and played the match up very well, because he couldn’t catch me for most of the match. I flew around with Firebrand and never really ended up having to guard anything, so I never had to worry about my pushguard being negated. I got a lot of cross up QCB+M~j.S dives, so I don’t think he really knows the Firebrand match-up that well. I would have won this 3-0, but in the very first game, after I had KOed Viper and Raccoon, I successfully got Strider to the ground in the corner on incoming and he blocked Plasma Beam. I did a j.L as an instant overhead and it worked. I input Bon Voyage but did it too fast and got j.S instead. I didn’t react in time so he got the XF3 comeback with Strider. However, I won these matches pretty definitively. I’m pretty salty about not winning that very first game, but I had successfully pulled off the TAC infinite with Dormammu, snapped in Raccoon right before Viper’s death, Stalking Flare, Luminous Body, unblockable, kill DHC w/ Stalking Flare, hard tagged to Firebrand, unblockabled Viper, and then mixed up Strider. Would have been a perfect. Everyone watching freaked out about it and was talking about how I had all this secret tech and they had never seen the Dormammu infinite done before.
Winner Finals - DapVip (2-3)
Team: Dante(jam)/X23/Iron Man (beam)
Dap was the person I was most worried about. I talk to him a lot and we play online quite a bit, so we both have a pretty good idea of each others team and mindsets. However, I had some new tricks up my sleeve he hadn’t seen. I don’t particularly remember how each match went, but I do know that every time I got the first hit, I would DHC to Dormammu to kill Dante and then his X23/Iron Man just died to him, and every time he got the first hit, he’d kill or TAC infinite Firebrand and then unblockable X23 so I was left with just Doom vs his whole team. I remember I was up 2-1 and I lost the game just like that. It was 2-2 and I got the first hit, a grab into the corner with Firebrand on Dante. I kind of panicked because I wanted Dante dead really bad but it was a throw into the corner, but then I remembered a kind of risky flow chart I came up with that would work vs his team. I XF’d and tagged to Doom and killed Dante. This flowchart would have left him with just solo Iron Man if it worked, but it was risky in that it required a TAC infinite. Unfortunately, he broke my side TAC and was able to hit Doom. He XF’d and killed him, unblockabled Dormammu, killed him, and I don’t remember how he hit Firebrand but he did.
I didn’t specifically come up with this gamble for Dapvip’s team, but his team fit the criteria that I based this flowchart on. It requires a character with around 850k-950k health on point and a second character that doesn’t have many air options. Basically, you get a grab, XF, Bon Voyage, tag to Doom (now Doom/Dorm/FB), kill with Photon Array into Stalking Flare that takes some but not all of its hits to kill (~3-10 hits used). Hard tag to Firebrand (now FB/Doom/Dorm) and call Dark Hole, and unblockable. Get the confirm and TAC to Doom, infinite to kill the character building 5 bars, kill w/ Sphere Flame, DHC to Luminous Body, Stalking Flare, hard tag back to Firebrand(back to FB/Doom/Dorm), call Dark Hole, unblockable, Firebrand combo, DHC/THC/TAC to get the final kill.
Dap was really respectful, we hugged and complimented each other. They were really good and tough matches. The crowd was really impressed with both of us, but since he was GA’s own, I could definitely hear them cheering for him over me through my headphones.
Loser Finals - Honzo Gonzo (3-0)
Team: Taskmaster/Doom(missiles)/Amaterasu(cold)
So I was worried about Honzo as well. I ended up playing all three of the worrysome people in my pool. But I was the least worried about him as far as these three. It’s not that he isn’t a good player, but that Taskmaster just loses miserably to Firebrand. He tweeted that he’s going to have to drop Taskmaster after we played and I could understand why. During the whole set, he could not touch my Firebrand. There were times that I would block Shield Skills (And I managed to block all of his cross up shields), but most of the time, he couldn’t even get in range of me because of I was sporadically command diving all over the screen. Each match ended up with him being snapped for Amaterasu, or killed by a barrage of fireballs until I got a combo. I learned a lot when I played MarlinPie about the Doom/Ammy shell, and I play it now, so I wasn’t as worried about this. I kept my distance so that if he did use it, it would result in his getting minimal mix-ups. I also was placing my fireballs so that if he tried to THC, Amaterasu would get hit by it and he’d waste 2 meters. This happened at least once during the set. Everyone was watching this set since people know Honzo. This is good for me because not only did they see me do tha Dormammu TAC infinite on Taskmaster, but a lot of them came up to me later in the weekend to compliment me on beating him and complimented my Firebrand and Dormammu.
Honzo and I were supposed to MM after. He tweeted something about posting pools w/ notable players and if he didn’t mention you, to money match him. So he didn’t mention me and I challenged him and he said yes but we wanted to wait until after pools. He agreed and after I won, he said he was still down. I found him that night but he was already drunk and we tried to play Sunday but we couldn’t get ahold of each other and when we did, there were no set-ups. We agreed that the next time we run into each other, we will money match for some amount of money in a first to whatever.
So that match qualified me to get out of pools. There was a four hour gap until I played the next guy.
Top 64 - Losers side
Top 64 losers round 1 - KappaCommando (3-0)
Team: Taskmaster/Haggar(lariat)/Dr. Strange(bolts)
This guy wasn’t bad, but as I said before, Taskmaster loses horribly to Firebrand and I have A LOT of Dr. Strange experience from Will. Along with this, Haggar loses to both Firebrand and Dormammu. I don’t really remember this match well because they went pretty fast. Just like every one else, I don’t think he had faced a Firebrand of my caliber and my Dormammu is no slouch either. He could never catch me with Taskmaster or Haggar. Taskmaster got snapped to the back in every game and Haggar usually ended up being the last character because when I didn’t snap Taskmaster, I was sniping his Bolt calls.
I played his brother, Dr. Salt (Felicia/Doom/Amaterasu) before this set in casuals and then later in a FT5 for $5. More on that later
Top 64 losers round 2 - Angelic (0-3)
Team: Wolverine/Dormammu/Shuma Gorath(ray)
So this is the only match in the tournament where I felt like I had no idea what was going on. After my last match, I spent two hours waiting for Justin Wong and Angelic to play in winners. I spent this time to ask for some advice from Noel Brown, SomeBrownKid, Stone, Ray Ray, and a couple others. I got a lot of good advice that I tried to apply but I just couldn’t get it down in time. I wanted to play Justin Wong, actually. While Justin is probably the better player, I felt like his team would be easier for mine to handle since he doesn’t have a full screen assist and Firebrand/Dormammu is pretty good vs Storm/Akuma. Along with this, Angelic plays Dormammu so I can’t do my Stalking Flare DHC on his, and he also is learning Firebrand/Dormammu, so he knows a lot about the team that would make it harder to use it vs him. As I said, it took two hours since the last one for this match. I kind of wish I had kept playing or warmed up again because I felt like I was playing cold when I went into that match.
In the end, he 3-0’d me pretty badly. It was all the Wolverine. In all but one game, he steam rolled me with Wolverine. His incoming mix-ups are ridiculous. Any time I tried to get away, Mystic Ray would hold me down. The one time I got a hit, I TACed to Dormammu and snapped Shuma, got a hit, XFed to get the kill. But I didn’t know that you can’t pillar xx hyper Shuma in the corner, and I learned the hard way. The crowd was kind of taunting me during this entire set because I was losing badly and they wanted Angelic to win. However, after it was over, Angelic shook my handle and mentioned that he could tell I wasn’t used to that match-up and turned to tell all the spectators that I was the guy who had been helping him with his Firebrand/Dormammu tech over the last week. I went outside after that but it was really nice of Angelic to tell them that and because of it, some of them came up to me later to compliment me and one jokingly scolded me about helping him find the TAC infinite into unblockable stuff.
I never got to play Angelic in casuals and he lost to ASAP Ricky (Viper/Doom/Vergil) in the next game (2-3). The ironic thing is that I beat Ricky in a FT5 for $5, 5-3 on Friday night.
So that was it, I was out. It was a good run and I wasn’t too upset about the people I lost to, since they were my friends and they both showed me that they respect me a lot.
Money Matches
I don’t remember the details of all my money matches because a lot of them were late at night but I’ll do my best to post them all in the right order
ASAP Ricky - $10 FT5 (5-2)
[spoiler]Team: C. Viper/Dr. Doom(beam)/Vergil
This guy is really good with this seismos and Viper movement. His mix-ups are nasty and his Vergil is pretty good too. I can’t remember how it went because this one was on Thursday night after we drove up there so I was pretty tired. I remember it being a really good match and he was really impressed with my Firebrand and Dormammu. He was hyping me up all weekend to his friends. I remember him getting hit a lot by Bon Voyage and just like vs Busby, I managed to bait and then block or punish every one of his EX moves. Like everyone else, I don’t think he had the experience vs a good Firebrand. It was late though so this battle was a little sloppy on both our sides.
I THOUGHT this was streamed on Sixfortyfive, but I couldn’t find it. We played on the stream station while they were recording :/[/spoiler]
RTKO - $5 FT5 (5-3)
Team: Wolverine/Spencer/Dr. Doom (beam)
So I didn’t realize this was RTKO until after I had picked my characters and we started playing. He was in my pool but I didn’t end up having to play him since he lost to Dapvip then Honzo. This one was right after Ricky, and I had control most of the time except for the few times where I wasn’t paying attention to meter and he was able to Bionic Arm Firebrand. His incoming mix-ups were good enough to win the game if he ever hit me so my goal was never to get hit. Obviously that failed on three of the games. Dormammu didn’t do much work in this one other than being a damage engine. I made a sick Doom comeback w/o XF on one of them vs his whole team w/ XF.
I played him again in a FT5 the next night but it wasn’t for money. He won that one 4-5, but used Rocks instead.
Neokarsh - $5 FT5 (0-5)
Team: Nova/Spencer/Taskmaster
I sent an open invitation to MM anyone in the salty suite room and Neokarsh accepted, though I didn’t know it was him. Long story short, he bodied me with Nova every time except the times where he got a Bionic Arm on Firebrand when I was coming in with a command dive normal. He beat me pretty convincingly but was really friendly about it, and even said “It’s 4 AM Marvel, it doesn’t really count”. I smiled and laughed and said you’re right, but I told him he was still really good and I told him I suck at fighting Nova so he gave me a couple tips. I wanted to play him again to get more Nova experience and possibly redeem myself for getting 0-5’d, but I never got the chance. Neokarsh and Angelic were the only people I played this weekend that I felt like they bodied me. This was my last MM on Thursday night.
??? - $5 FT5 (4-5)
Team: She-Hulk/Iron Fist/Hawkeye (poison)
So I’m both really mad at myself and really disappointed in this one. First off, this was my very first match on Friday so I should have warmed up beforehand. Secondly, I should have eaten before I started putting up money because I was making some terrible decisions. I got hit by She Hulk’s crumple like 100 times on Dormammu. He would happy birthday me with Iron Fist’s pillar super into Gimlet. I would not even think to put down a Flame Carpet before throwing Dark Matters vs Iron Fist, so he would dash up in on me every time. I also stupidly kept rushing in on She-Hulk and getting hit by Iron Fist’s assist when what I normally do in that match-up is just shoot fireballs until they allow me to get a confirm. The dumbest part from me is that I thought he was playing triple arrow until game 3 but was using the poison arrow. I switched to arrows because of this and played more zoney but just got impatient because I was hungry. The reason I’m mad at myself for it is because in the final game, I get a hit on She Hulk and he pauses in the middle of my combo and then unpauses and tries to keep playing, but it caused me to drop. I’m like “Dude wtf” and he’s like “we can run it back”. I didn’t feel like arguing because I was grumpy still so I went back to the character select screen. But in the last game, he got a happy birthday on Firebrand and Dormammu when I tried to (Dark Hole assist)+(DP+M) cross-up. I told him that I was really salty about that pause and it was scummy and I just walked away.
This set taught me to always eat food and warm up before serious matches. It also taught me not to underestimate other some people’s characters, even if they’re bad. It’s important to separate the player from the character. While they may play a bad team, they may be someone who happened to dedicate a lot of time/effort into that character/team, and they just happened to not luck out and be very good. I’ve been pretty good at adapting to the player so far, but I let my opinion of She Hulk and Iron Fist cause to underestimate the player. I should have been looking more for what specific moves he was using and how he was moving around, as opposed to just trying to rush it. Also, from now on, if it’s tournament, an exhibition, or a money match and someone pauses on me, you better believe I’m taking that match without a second thought, even if I’m up 2-0 or down 0-2 and obviously getting bodied.
Dekline - FT5 $5 (5-4)
Team: Dante(jam)/Trish(trap)/Vergil
I didn’t know who he was at first. We both sat down at a casual station at the same time and I felt a lot better since eating and warming up, so I just asked him if he was interested in playing. I guess he didn’t recognize me either because he accepted it without a second thought. He was friendly but I could kind of see it on his face when he won the first game very definitively that he thought he was going to win with no problems. This was Dekline, from Texas (I think). When he told me that, I recognized the name but didn’t know who he played so we went straight into. He had some really nasty Dante mix-ups and combos that involved DHCing to Trish after a full combo, hard tagging back to Dante and then doing a ground bounce reset w/ Rapid Slash into more combo into Million Dollars. It was a really long and complicated combo and he did it fully around 3 or 4 times in this set without dropping it. After the first game, I beat him really badly by getting the TAC infinite into unblockable on Vergil, then killing Trish on incoming and just running from XF3 Dante and zoning him. However, after that, it started going back and forth. Eventually it was 4-4 and I had hard tagged from FB to Doom but dropped my assist extension at the end of the combo so Trish dropped out. He got a hit on me and I expected him to TAC because Trish was almost dead so I was mashing S with Doom, but he dropped him combo and I got a Foot Dive at SJ height. I was able to convert it even though I didn’t dash cancel it and then comboed into Chaotic Flame and was able to kill Dante, who I had previously snapped for Vergil (who I killed already). I got really lucky that he dropped it and I was able to convert that S because I would have lost my assist character and he would have DHCed to Vergil and had a mix-up for Dormammu on incoming. He complimented me and I complimented him. He told me my Firebrand moves like crazy and was ridiculously hard to catch. His Dante was the star of his team.
Dr. Salt - FT $5 (3-5)
Team: Felicia/Doom(beam)/Amaterasu(cold)
Dr. Salt is a Florida player. I actually saw him on stream a few days before FR. He beat me in the casuals (only 3 games) before top 64. I ran Beam that time and ran Missiles the second time to help deal with Felicia’s air options. One of the most upsetting things in this set was getting grabbed over and over. I had been teching EVERYONE’S grabs and grabbing everyone else all weekend, so I was mentally broken when he would grab me every time with Felicia. She is just so tiny in the air with a big grab box, and I never got used to the range she had. Not only did he attempt to grab me more than anyone else that weekend, he was the only person to consistently be able to grab me and I missed the tech. He was also really good at locking me down on incoming with Cold Star and using Kitty Helper to unblockable me, and then he would do a long combo that used the other cat and kept me standing. I feel like Felicia was the main problem in this match-up because whenever I killed her, I won. His Doom/Amaterasu was good but I’ve gotten good at handling any Doom variant with my Dormammu. This was also somewhat match-up inexperience on my part, as I was blocking high when being held down by Cold Star out of habit even though he didn’t have Kitty Helper. I also got hit by the pushblock negating low slide she has because I kept wanting to pushblock and jump. I feel like if I played him for a while, I’d get a lot better at the match-up but the grab range on Felicia would still prove to be a huge problem for both Firebrand and Dormammu. However, I can’t blame it all on inexperience because he was just as inexperienced vs a good Firebrand.
He was a really cool guy though and we’re gonna try to play again some time.
Busby - FT5 $20 (5-2)
Team: C. Viper/Morrigan/Strider, C. Viper/Dr. Doom/Strider (last game)
The video of this one is up there. I felt like I made a few bad decisions because it was getting late but by this point, I had been playing a lot of Vipers (Ricky and some in casuals, along with Marlinpie a while back and another Viper in my community), so I’ve been getting really good at this match-up. Even though I didn’t get many confirms on Viper, I was trying to play in a way that included short, erratic bursts of movement with short periods of blockstun. This was so that it would make it easier to Bon Voyage if he wasn’t in blockstun often, but so that he wouldn’t be able to tell when I’m moving or just jumping/waiting, so I was able to bait quite a few EX Seismos. In the first game, I do the solo unblockable on him but I missed my assist call. I didn’t expect him to be able to react in time anyway, but he did an EX Seismo and somehow it misses and I got the unblockable. I was really surprised so I hovered there for a minute before I realized it and then did the j.S but missed the c.L. I just didn’t expect it to work after I saw the Seismo. Also in the first game, I’m Dormammu and he does an EX Thunder Knuckle. I was already blocking because I’m always wary of the EX punch when that close. When I blocked it, I knew he had to cancel it into EX Seismo or XF to be safe, so I waited a split second to make sure he wouldn’t do it. When I saw the EX Seismo, I knew he had two options: Jump cancel or dash cancel. I knew that if he dashed, I could grab him and if he jumped, I would get hit trying to grab him. Somehow, I was able to react fast enough to see that he dashed and grabbed him. I was kind of impressed by myself at that, because it was 100% on purpose. I had input b.H and buffered a medium teleport just in case he jumped so that I could cover both actions, but I didn’t need to.
I didn’t realize this until after we played. Someone told me that he single handedly (One player victory) beat Team GA in the Curleh Mustache, and he also eliminated Ray Ray in top 64. I’m pretty sad that the security guard came during the middle of the money match and I’m also sad that Neo got on commentary during it to talk about Full Schedule. Because of this, our match didn’t get any real commentary and didn’t even get updated scores. I felt really bad about this but there wasn’t anything I could do, but in the very last game, he got a c.L with Strider on Dormammu and someone walked in front of the screen to go talk to the guard and he dropped it. I wanted to start over for it but he didn’t say anything and after that last guy took my $5 after pausing, I decided to just keep my mouth shut. He was friendly about it though and the people that were still in the hotel were impressed by both our play.
Conclusion
[spoiler]So Final Round taught me a lot. I’m not trying to brag but some of this post is going to come off as a little arrogant. Please excuse anything that makes me sound conceited. I’m just not really sure of how to properly word it.
-
I’m quickly becoming a high level player
This one is the main one I’m worried about saying. A lot of people would contest this but I realized something this weekend. Not only do random people recognize me, but top players are starting to as well. Angelic and Apologyman hype me up whenever they get a chance. All of Georgia thinks I am top 2, if not the best, in NC. Ray Ray has told me that he thinks I’m good and I’ve played against a lot of players who were impressed by me like MarlinPie, Xian, Clockwork, Marvelo, and others. I really do think that when I actually sit down and practice offline before a tournament (like I did for FR), that I am only limited by my own knowledge. During the tournament (When I was fully rested, full of food, and warmed up), I had near perfect execution. I barely dropped any combos and there were very few instances of me messing up a command dive input or accidentally getting it in the wrong direction. I teched almost every grab that everyone attempted on me (Except Dapvip and Dr. Salt), and my decision making for the most part was really good and received a lot of compliments from spectators. I think I’ve figured out what is holding me back, and it’s not necessarily my fault, per say. I constantly go to the lab and do research and practice set ups and combos. I work the most obscure stuff in training mode so that I can get it in match, but something that I can’t practice in training is the match-up. Check the next number. -
Match up experience is what is holding me back.
I think I’ve gotten good at handling most match-ups. I do a lot of research on this game so I know a lot about each individual character and how they move and attack, and what is safe. A lot of characters that most people tend to have trouble with, I really prefer to fight. I handle Morrigan better than anyone else I know, and I’ve gotten great at handling Strider. I didn’t get hit by a single non-XF Vergil cross-up this weekend, and no Zeros could touch me. However, Nova and Wolverine don’t fall into that category. I lost to Yipes’ Nova (only Nova) in my first match in TFC. I lost to Marvelo’s Nova(almost only Nova) in LF of my pool at NEC. NeoKarsh’s Nova destroyed me in that MM this weekend. I got eliminated Angelic’s Wolverine and I had a lot of trouble with RTKO’s Wolverine this weekend and Noel Brown’s Wolverine at TFC. I’ve realized that I literally have no experience against a top level player of both Nova and Wolverine, other than losing badly to them. I think that if I had both a top level Wolverine player and a top level Nova player in the same room as me and got to play long sets against them, I would do a lot better in general. While I don’t think that I would suddenly start winning everything by figuring out these two match-ups, I feel like these are two very common and high damage characters that give me and my teams problems. Being able to fight them better means I don’t have to worry as much about a random Wolverine or Nova in tournament that could easily take me out because of my inexperience and the match-up advantage. However, ignoring the random players, it’s important to note that a lot of top players play these characters. Specifically, Wolverine. At any tournament, you could run into JWong, Angelic, Noel Brown, Kinderparty, PR Balrog, etc. He’s such a strong and common character that you’ll probably run into at least one in tournament if you keep winning.
------Nova: One of the main problems w/ Nova is that High Speed Tackle completely destroys my momentum. Any time Firebrand doesn’t get the hit, my goal is to DHC to Dormammu’s Stalking Flare by using Dark Fire to clear the screen. Nova can just block the Dark Fire and then High Speed Tackle into Dormammu (through the ball), XF to kill him, and then Firebrand will come in with almost no health. This means that I have no safe DHC options vs a Nova team, so it’s significantly more important to get the first hit. However, Nova’s s.L and j.H are very good normals at handling Firebrand’s Bon Voyage and command dives, so I have a lot of trouble approaching him. Specifically, ADB~j.H is almost unapproachable without an assist. The shield gives me problems too because it stays so long, but it’s mainly the combination of his normals and the threat of High Speed Tackle.
------Wolverine: I think my problem with this guy is that I just need to witness his mix-ups more. Wolverine is scary because is a character that doesn’t really put you in blockstun for long. His goal is to tick you with any one of his amazing ground light normals (c.L, s.L) and then do cross-ups from that, or instant overhead you when you end up in blockstun from assists via j.L. I am generally pretty good at flying around and moving so that he can’t hit me, and if I can get my space, I’m good at keeping up a fireball game using both grounded and wall clinged fireballs (with a special mention to the use of the H fireball in this match)that really limits his movement. -
My Firebrand and Dormammu mobility might be some of the best in the world for the respective characters.
I said this before multiple times in this thread but I never really wanted to admit it in risk of sounding arrogant. My Firebrand movement is ridiculous. It hadn’t gotten to go to a real tournament (other than that one small weekly and one small monthly in NC) since NEC in December. I had stopped playing online for one full month before Final Round so that I wouldn’t be trying to execute combos or play slower/safer as if I were playing online. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to play anyone in that month, so I had no idea how much I improved. I had been playing online a lot before but I felt that it was hindering me in a way. But when I get to Final Round this year, I realized that playing online helped me get better at my mobility and playing safe. Online has an inherit input lag. Everything you see in the screen is some number of frames behind because that is how long it takes to transmit to the players. So technically, to win online, you need to do everything slightly earlier than normal. Meaning you have to start predicting what will happen and reading the opponent more. I didn’t realize that this would translate to my offline game so much, but once I started playing people, the stream of compliments came in.
-----Firebrand------: It kind of started off with just the Team Marq room. I played some people and even though I didn’t win all of them, everyone was talking about how my Firebrand was always changing directions and moving up and down so seemlessly. They were impressed with how I combined empty wall clings, wall clinged fireballs, command dives, Bon Voyage, and DP+M to always be on the move. Multiple people (one of which was Honzo Gonzo) told me that they have no idea how to catch my Firebrand because the way I was moving around the screen was random (In the good, respectable way, they said) and really hard to predict. People were asking me all night how I move like that and what causes me to move certain ways. I taught a lot of people a lot about Firebrand this weekend but the main one was explaining, in detail, how Firebrand’s mobility is his strongest tool IMO. I talked about how each of his movement tools cover multiple different options and combining them makes it really hard to tell if Firebrand has committed to something or not. I explained how I use Bon Voyage as a mobility tool, not just an attack, because it moves him down forward faster than any of his other moves and has almost no recovery. I explained the use of DP+M vs DP+L and how to cross up or not cross up with them. I spent a while on how command dives work and about your limited number of air actions, and I finished up with talking about how to use wall clings to transfer momentum in another direction or using wall clinged fireballs to both move and zone.
-----Dormammu------: So for the longest time, I thought my Dormammu was pretty mediocre because there was already a really good one in FChamp and the person who influenced me to pick him up (Zak Bennett) was also better than me. What forced me to get good with him was that I got tired of fighting against Morrigan and being able to visualize how to move and build/use spells, but I didn’t have the experience/execution to avoid the fireballs. I guess over time, my movement got gradually better. Because of this, I also got gradually better at knowing when I can stock and use spells, when I can use normals to negate fireballs, the proper/safe way to teleport so that I don’t get hit or grabbed out of it. I also started throwing in purposefully whiffed SJ ADDF~j.H to play mind games with people to make it harder to predict when I am going to teleport or build a spell. Because of this, I’ve gotten really good at building spells that seem really risky, but work out because the opponent expects me to end with a Flame Carpet or Dark Matter and doesn’t want to get it by it. Anyone, I feel like fighting Konfucious in NC is what made my Dormammu really good, but I didn’t realize it until this weekend. It wasn’t until I was watching other Dormammu’s in tournament (and even FChamp’s Dorm in some games) and I was, quite frankly, disappointed in their movement and decisions. Most of them didn’t seem to have a good grasp what movement options are safe, and when. And very very few of them were good at building spells. I saw hundreds of opportunities in a lot of matches where the Dormammu could get one or two free spells, and all of them prefer to just fishhook or teleport. So I realized that even though I think I’m just playing Dormammu in the safe and evasive way that you are supposed to play him, most every one else is not playing him right. I’m not saying I have a better Dormammu than Champ (I don’t, plus he is a better overall player), but watching his Dormammu this weekend, it looked really rusty. I think his Dormammu is going to continue to decline if he keeps running Magneto/Doom/Phoenix. My Dormammu is probably my best character, but SomeBrownKid put it best as “Second Character Syndrome”. Since Dormammu is my second character and I have a team set-up so that my anchor isn’t my best bet and my point is reliant on the second character for damage, this causes me to usually have more resources for Dormammu. And because a Firebrand hit ideally leads into Dormammu killing and then getting to start his spell game, my Dormammu is simply required to do more work than my other characters. Basically, because the team is technically a Dormammu team and most hits lead to him, I end up using him more in various different situations so I am basically forced to make him my best character. Good thing I enjoy him so much. -
I need to get my own monitor
I need my own ASUS. I practice on a CRT TV at home. CRT TVs technically have 0 lag, and the tournament standard ASUS has a maximum of 5 ms of lag. This means that I am not playing on the same set-up as the tournaments, so anything I practice at home is slightly different in tournamment. I dropped a few things like the Dormammu infinite because of this, so I need to get my own monitor so I can practice in my room at tournaments, be prepared for the input lag, and also have a casual set-up of my own at majors. It’s really hard to find casuals outside of the hotel rooms. Even then, most casuals are full the whole time and people want you off after one set, even if you won. I didn’t get to play as many people as I wanted to. I wanted to play SomeBrown Kid a lot for that Wolverine experience. I wanted to play NeoKarsh again and I wanted to play against @ATP2014, but we couldn’t find any set-ups. Same with my MM with Honzo Gonzo, couldn’t find a set-up. Angelic and I kept trying to get together to play but it never happened, and I only got to play like 3 games vs Marvelo. I wanted to play Profit (Zero/Ammy/Phoenix) but I couldn’t find him when I had a set-up available. For my next major, I’m definitely going to try and be more assertive with who I play. I felt like I got stuck watching while all these “top” players pushed their way to the front of the line. I need to find a way to just get them to give me a chance so I can prove that I can compete with them too and prove I’m not just some random who is trying to throw money at them. -
I need to money match more
No one knows how to fight Firebrand. Along with that, a lot of people don’t know who I am. If I’m not going out of my way to money match top players that I know, most people haven’t even seen me before because no one but Firebrand players look for my stuff here and I am never on stream. I realized that a lot of people are willing to do low dollar money matches and still willing to play longer sets (like FT5 for $5). It’s just enough money to be worth winning, but not be a devastating loss. Playing more games means more experience, which everyone I played seemed to be down for. More games = More consistent results, right? Everyone else seems to agree. Well since no one recognizes me, it was really easy to find random players that were willing to money match me. I have a feeling that everyone (but NeoKarsh) was surprised at how good I turned out to be. At my next major, I think I’m going to save up some kind of stash that I will dedicate solely to money matches. It’s a great way to get both myself and the other player to actually try hard, and money is always fun to win. -
I need to travel more.
Not much to say on this. I just need to travel more. Traveling more means more match-up experience and tournament practice. It also means more recognition and “fame”. I mainly want to travel and show people that there is someone else out there that is dedicate to Firebrand and capable of controlling him. -
I need to get more match footage of myself in tournament or vs good players.
I would like to travel to someone’s house for a week (Like FGTV or something) and just play on stream for an entire week vs everyone there and give them all teh Firebrand/Dormammu match-up experience and get all the experience from them. It’d also help get my name out there since it’d be on stream and I’d have footage to look over later to see what I can improve on. -
I’m in an “assist” crisis
@Helter Skelter , I’ve been doing a lot of debate about my assist lately. So I like Plasma Beam because it gives me extra durability I need, better ground control, makes grounded Bon Voyage and DP+M safe, works really well with cross ups, and has shorter duration than Missiles, so I have more chances to hard tag to Doom if I get the right confirm. But you’re right, I am more comfortable with Missiles. I ran Missiles when I first picked up Doom and it’s been about 14 months now. I player Missiles for the first 8 and Plasma Beam from then on. So I technically have more experience with Missiles but in the NC meta, the characters played tend to handle Missiles well (Bolts of Balthakk is played by two high level players here). I run Missiles in specific match-ups, like vs Morrigan w/ Missiles or Vajra, and Zero w/o a beam. The main problem I have is that Missiles causes me to cut combos short a lot and I don’t get many opportunities to hard tag into Doom from Firebrand.
I’m debating on something really hard though. I played RTKO in a second FT5 with nothing on the line. This time, he ran Rocks instead of Beam. I stupidly ran into it a lot for no reason because I wasn’t used to it, but I had a super long thought session about it and realized that it is just a combination of Missiles and Plasma Beam, and may be the perfect assist for me. It’s great on incoming mix-ups because of it’s start-up and duration, plus multiple hits. It’s slow moving so it is really good at covering Firebrand’s approach and it works kind of like Tatsu as far as the way it locks down. Vs characters that like to get in your face(FB, Wolverine, etc), it’s really good at saving you because the Rocks start up pretty fast while spinning around Doom. I think this would be great for certain match-ups, but I’m not sure which ones. If my theory is right, it should be my best choice because it is both great for lockdown and protecting/saving me. I think it’ll be great for Dormammu to handle teleporters too. We’ll see. I’m taking a few days break and then I’ll test it. [/spoiler]
I’m sure this post came out very arrogant with me talking myself up so much, but that wasn’t my intention of this post. I have been really thinking hard about my place in the Marvel community and how I compare to others. Especially to other Firebrand players, now that two good and popular American players are picking him up. This is the conclusion I came to. Please don’t hesitate to disagree with me and tell me why. I love to hear other people’s opinions of myself because I am terrible at evaluating my own play and playstyle, which makes it hard for me to know what I need to work on. Please don’t think that I’m trying to act like I’m better than all the other Firebrands and don’t want to help them, because I want to do everything I can to help everyone improve so that, in turn, I can improve and learn more.
Well guys, that turned out to be SUPER long. Like, two hours to write. I wrote this in multiple segments but it is a full summary of my matches and thoughts at Final Round. I don’t expect anyone to read it all but there is definitely some good information in this post, so read it if you have the time. If you have any questions, please let me know. :]
Thanks for reading!
-Kresent
First of all, Kresent, the fact that you worry about coming across as arrogant makes you seem decidedly less so, especially since you defend your opinions so well. So thumbs up to you on that!
Second, based on your match history and the input from other players, I’d say it’s more than fair to consider yourself a high-level player. Maybe not top-level yet, but I think you point out the biggest reason for that: lack of exposure/experience. I hope you are actually able to get more of both because I love seeing your team in action, and I’m confident that the more you play against other top players the better you yourself will become. I greatly look forward to that happening, especially as I’m unable to do any competing myself.
One input I have on the Missiles vs Plasma vs Rocks debate: I feel it really is a counter-pick scenario, especially with your current team. All three assists are really solid, but they all sort of dictate what kind of gameplan you’re trying to run. Missiles encourages a keepaway/chip style and tends to favor Dorm over Firebrand; Plasma is very much for a rushdown game, which obviously helps FB more than Dorm; and Rocks works as an anti-rushdown/defensive assist, while also giving some lockdown.
I think you might be right that Rocks is overall the most balanced option for your team, but I feel it will fall flat against other defensively oriented teams (MorriDoom, for example). I think if you swap to whatever your team needs most, you’ll be all the more unpredictable.
Kresent, excellent write up. Here’s my thoughts:
-DO NOT fall into the fame monster trap. You’re a good player, but you want people to compliment you on your wins more than anything else. You’re not arrogant and you have goals. That’s more than enough.
-Your Dormammu is your shining character and I’ve learnt so much from watching you play him. VERY GOOD movement and excellent zoning/spell game.
-Dormammu’s infinite is potentially meta game changing and we need to further refine it to be easier and most consistent against every character.
-If players have movement as good as yours, Firebrand doesn’t need an assist to help him get in and out of a situation. He much prefers an assist to lock a character down. I sat and watched countless matches of Firebrand players and they’re assist calls are normally to make risky moves safe or assist in durability wars.
-Firebrand’s zoning game is really quite solid and it helps in softening up an opponent before literally swooping in for a kill.
-I think Molecular Shield (Rocks) is the assist for you.
-We need more Firebrand player and we need to attempt more diverse teams to find our more about him. I found out so much about Firebrand because I changed from FB/Dorm/Shuma to FB/Vergil/Dorm.
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Anyway, beyond that I wanted to say well done and I hope you continue to improve. You are becoming a player to watch.
As for Zak. He’s seemingly busy working.
I edited a little bit of that post just now because parts of it just left a bad taste in my mouth =/
@“UnSaxon51” I’ve actually been messing around with counterpicks lately. I’ve been working on my FB/Doom/Ammy team for certain match-ups but I’ve been switching between Missiles and Plasma Beam pretty liberally lately. I started with Missiles when I picked up Doom on this team and it worked for a while, but I always felt like my Firebrand wasn’t just flailing around because I had no way to lock down quickly. I was also playing against a lot of people that were good at handling Missiles, such as Bolts assist, Nova, and sometimes Zero. So I switched to Plasma Beam and fell in love my new cross ups potential and extra durability, along with being able to hard tag more often.
The characters I tend to use Missiles against are Morrigan, Magneto, Zero, Doom, Strider (Vajra), most mid to bottom tier characters, Skrull, and some others. But I really prefer to have something quicker when I’m playing characters like Wolverine, Spencer, Dormammu, Nova, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Dante, Vergil, anyone using a good beam or DHC, and others.
It’s really hard for me to decide though. Both assists come with their own pros and cons and I’ve had extensive experience with both of them. Idk if I’ll main Rocks assist, but it’s definitely something I want to try out. There are a few specific match ups that I think will benefit from rocks, like Wolverine, Dante, Strider, and maybe Vergil. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea behind it because it works a lot like Akuma’s Tatsu, who I used for almost a year as my first real team. I really like Tatsu with Firebrand, and Rocks is like a slower traveling Tatsu, but with longer lockdown. It seems like at least one hit of the rocks tend to go under a lot of things. I also learned the hard way vs JazzRapp that Rocks is very effective vs Firebrand’s rushdown.
@"Helter Skelter"
I have really been feeling like my Dormammu is my best character lately as well. I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I think I figured out why though. Back when I first started going to the weekly tournament in Raleigh, when I was playing FB/Dorm/Akuma, I would always lose to either Jon Slayton’s Zero or Strider, or Konfucious’ MorriDoom. I eventually convinced myself that I was losing because I was always getting stuck full screen and had no options there so I dropped Akuma for Doom, even though Akuma is one of my favorite characters in this game. Unfortunately, I still kept losing to both of them. With Jon, it was because I just didn’t have a firm enough understanding of the game at the time. With Konfucious, I was losing because I couldn’t move well enough. It came to a point where everyone was telling me to drop Firebrand or Dormammu for someone else. I got irritated by everyone trying to tell me how to play my team. It worked out well, timing wise, because I went home to my parents for a summer and just practiced so much. I guess that summer of practicing movement was what I needed to step it up with him. On one hand, I don’t even fear fighting Morrigan anymore (Other than ChrisG). But on the other, I just feel so helpless with Dormammu some times. I think it’s cool my Dormammu is my best, but Firebrand doesn’t get beat by his bad match ups as hard Dormammu does.
I’m going to do a lot of work with the infinite soon. Down TAC is set, but Up and Side will be very hard to get consistent. I can’t think of any other ways to set them up, either.
It’s hard to build a good Firebrand team. That’s why almost no one plays him. There are a lot of good pairings out there that have their own unique synergy with Firebrand (Like FB/Trish and FB/Storm), but if you’re trying to play an optimal Firebrand team, your choices are pretty limited. If you’re really dedicated to the character, you learn to suck it up and play the characters that make him better. Unfortunately, your life as Firebrand will be a lot harder if you don’t want to play some combination of Doom, Dormammu, Amaterasu, Shuma, or Skrull.
I would love for Zak to get back into the game. He always had something new to showcase and when he played the game consistently, he was one of the best with all three of his characters.
Yeah, I’m trying Firebrand/Vergil/Dormammu but I’ve also found stuff for Firebrand/C.Viper/Ammy, Firebrand/C.Viper/Dante, Firebrand/Zero/Dante. So his potential in other shells is definitely there.
God it’s hard to do video dumps at work, and I’m hardly ever home to use the computer but here is all the more recent stuff I’ve attended this year.
Elite Tech (house tournament/stream)
Vs Shadow (Magneto/Doom/Akuma)
Capitol Fight District
Vs Bloody Picture (Nova/Spencer/Dante)
@Helter Skelter , have you checked out Utaderasu yet for Firebrand/Vergil synergy? I was just recently thinking of adding Vergie to the team, but i haven’t figured out a solid unblockable setup that can take over my Nova.
@Gamegeezer.
So I think it’s nice for us to comment on everyone on the FB forum.
Firstly, and most importantly. Don’t drop your team. I don’t quite understand why people haven’t tried Firebrand/Doom/Vergil but your team is strong and actually deals with many matchups well. Your unblockable setup is extremely unique and ideas like that will further progress Firebrand as we are thinking outside the box.
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I think you should sit down and study some other players using the shells within your team. Learn what they use and abuse to get a win.
Firebrand/Doom:
Kresent
Apologyman
Zak Bennet
Nova/Doom:
Marvelo
Coach Steve
Infrit (he’s still better with Sentinel, though)
Nova in general:
The two players above
Nemo
Moons
Yipes
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Next. Execution and hit confirms. The very nature of the two point characters you use will allow you to get easy hits, however you want to make sure to make the most of them. I think practicing optimum BnBs would help you get a better understanding of what you can do with the hits that you land.
You need to have both Nova’s and Doom’s infinites down to a science. These will allow you make sure damage is always an option if you get a hit with either Firebrand or Nova.
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Zoning. You do throw a lot of fireballs and that a really great quality. I normally get too caught up in rushdown and forget to do that. So well done in that respect.
Learn the wall cling fireball trick. With Gravametric Pulse and Plasma Beam assists. You will have a very strong zoning game.
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When you feel like you want to do a unblockable reset, ask yourself if you could get away with a TAC as well. Nova having 5 High Speed Tackles under his belt is a massive threat.
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All in all, I really like ‘your’ team. Take ownership of it and push it as far as you can. I think you have a good Firebrand. You just need to abuse the tools it has.
I’ll try and have some matches up soon. I really want to get good and I have a few tournament this year to attend.
Here is the proof of concept for the strange hard tag. My friends recording software was not working with my Mac so I had to do it on my phone. We are going to try to record again on Wednesday and hopefully it works and I can go into some more details about the timing involved when hard tagging strange.
I’ve been seriously wanting to put Strange on a Firebrand team. This may have just sealed the deal.
Hopefully, Kresent can give Gamegeezer and the rest of us some feed back.
Hey guys, I’ve been super busy lately. College is tearing down on my pretty ahrd right now, but I was able to watch some of these videos
@Gamegeezer
So I don’t want this to sound like I think you’re bad so please don’t take it that way. I am just pointing out some stuff that I noticed while you were playing. It’s easier to point out what someone does wrong than it is to point of what they do right.
Zoning/wall clings/stalling
So you had good use of wall clinged fireballs. That impressed me because it’s rare for Firebrand’s to use that well. But I saw some problems here. I never felt like your fireballs were “placed”, only “thrown”. I was disappointed by the lack of QCF+M fireballs on the ground, as it’s his best projectile angle and would have been super useful vs MODOK, Doom, and some others. There were also multiple times where it would have been better for you to wall cling and just stay there for a moment, but you seemed to jump off the wall instantly every time.
I would like to see better use of your various fireball angles to prevent movement. Don’t necessarily shoot a fireball thinking “YEAH I GOTTA HIT WITH THIS”. Throw a fireball thinking “Okay so this fireballs means that they can’t be in that area of the screen, so I can now approach from this other, now safer angle.”
Mobility
I think this is where your biggest problem lies. It may have just been these videos, but I didn’t see ANY plink dashing, and there was minimal wavedashing. You need to start super jumping more. You also need to start combining your command dives. After a bit of watching, it got to the point where I could tell that you were going to approach before you even started doing it. You need to start chaining forward and back command dives so that you can play mindgames with the opponent. You were running headfirst into attacks because every time you did one command dive, you went into Bon Voyage. I saw this happen a lot with Nova’s shield, Hidden Missiles, and MODOK’s s.L. So try to start faking your approach to bait an assist call and then come in with a command dive into a normal. Use Bon Voyage sparingly as an attack. It’s more useful as a mobility tool than an offensive tool.
The only way you seemed to be able to approach with was either DP+M or Bon Voyage while calling Plasma Beam. So any time that you were full screen, I kind of got the vibe that you felt helpless. I think I got this vibe because you tried to approach EVERY time you got full screen, even against characters that you should zone against.
I will saw that your blocking is really good. But I think you’re blocking too much. I saw so many situations vs Hidden Missiles or Drones that you could have NJ/SJ and block it in the air or completely avoid the mix-ups, but you would just crouch block and let them attempt to mix you up.
On the note of the DP+M and assist mix-up, you need to use this less. You were using it every time that you got stuck at full screen. This made it really easy for them to block because it was obvious when it was coming. Try to use it more when they are NOT on the ground. You don’t want them to block or see the DP+M. So do it when you are off screen or when they are coming down from SJ height. If they block the DP+M, they can (easily) grab you before the beam hits them.
Unblockables
You got a lot of unblockables, which is good. But I think that had a LOT to do with your opponents not knowing about the set-ups and general lack of Firebrand experience. In a game vs Bloody Picture, you tried to go for a non-meaty unblockable set-up on Dante. I facepalmed pretty hard when he actually got hit by it, but you need to do some research on what characters you can do this unblockable on, because characters like Dante come in higher, or have double jumps/air dashes, and can easily punish you for trying to unblockable.
Another thing is that Gravimetric Pulse unblockable with Firebrand. You went for this A LOT, and I was shocked to see it never get punished. There were times that you used it in a way where the character had no options, but there was times you used it where the opponent could have easily XF’d into invincible super and completely changed the game. The only reason they didn’t do it is because they didn’t know better. Like Helter said, try to go for a TAC instead.
Hard tags and TACs
So I’m sure you already noticed this but you dropped basically every TAC. You need to have these down to play Firebrand.
As far as hard tags, you’ve got the basics down, but there are some things you could improve on. The first one is that you need to come up with Doom extensions using Firebrand’s and Nova’s assists. You were missing out on a lot of damage and meter off of your Firebrand hard tags that could have won you the game. Another thing is that you need to take the opponent’s team into consideration when trying to hard tag. Learn all of the various ways to hard tag into Doom, including XF. Specifically in the first set, you could have easily guaranteed a victory from the first hit if you were willing to XF. EX: Get a hit on Magneto, XF->Bon Voyage->Doom tag into death. Now you have excess meter, an incoming set-up on Doom, and you don’t have to worry about XF3 Akuma because all three of your characters fly.
Basically, learn to use XF to kill specific characters on a team to set up unblockables or unwinnable situations for the opponent.
Meter management
If mobility is your main problem, this is your second one. I saw A LOT of times where you would use the meter on a character and not kill them. Then you’d have 0 meters and they’d DHC out. There were other times that you would Luminous Body at full screen when you only had one meter left. Even if you were able to get the hit from it, you wouldn’t be able to build enough meter or damage to kill, even if you had Doom(Barring TACs). Firebrand is a character that always needs 1 meter (a least) in reserve, because he can’t kill without meter and he won’t build very much off of any confirm. But you just seemed to be so willing to use it on random Luminous Body or High Speed Tackle
The other thing is that you should never DHC out with Luminous Body. If you’re trying to DHC out of Firebrand, use Dark Fire so that you can DHC INTO Luminous Body later on. If you are in Luminous Body and on assist, the only way for you to DHC in is to use an (unsafe) Dark Fire.
Other
Where are the grabs? Firebrad has a great grab range and a tiny hurtbox, so you should go for a lot of grabs with him. You need to work on your option selects. Get in the habit of doing an OS j.H before your dives or Bon Voyages. It’s a free option select that cancels into a safe move. The only time I saw grabs was when you had solo FB in the very last game.
Pay more attention to the enemy’s assist calls
Stop pushing so many buttons on wake-up. You got falling j.Ls on so many characters after air teching, and you would be mashing c.L on wake-up vs characters like Spencer. The only reason you never got punished for it is because none of your opponents seemed experienced vs Firebrand.
Take control of the start of the round better. Don’t just wiggle in your starting spot. Your amazing options selects and walk speed force characters to act different at the start fo the round vs Firebrand. But you weren’t taking advantage of that. Try to work on using your SoR options to take control of the corner. Ex: Vs Hulk, you can walk backwards, then jump over them and back off. This puts Hulk closer to the corner than you are. Instant advantage. Vs Nova, walk towards him at the start to scare him backwards, then use your faster walk speed to back off and control the pace of the match.
Summary of what to work on
More mobility at SJ height. Focus on mind games using ALL of your mobility options to bait assist calls and whiffs, then punish.
Learn to plink dash on the ground
Zone more and learn to use your fireballs to limit movement.
Replace some of your Bon Voyage’s with QCB+M~j.H/S.
Try to use Bon Voyage more as a mobility tool instead of your only offensive approach.
Work on your meter management. Recognize how much meter you can build, how much you need to kill, and be aware of how much meter you’ll need later. There was too much use of meter to approach so that when you did get the hit, you never had the meter to kill. An example of this was the THC unblockable vs Tillo. You got the hit, but couldn’t kill, so you lost the game for it.
Pay more attention to your opponent’s assists. You were getting hit by way too many stray missiles. Firebrand should never get hit by missiles.
Less buttons on wake-up
Stop dropping combos and TACs. They’re too important on a Firebrand team.
Summary of what you seem to have down
Your blocking is really good
Your punishes were on point.
Good use of wall clinged fireballs to help you move forward
Good set-ups
I like the use of the L command dive
I really like the team. A lot of potential and dirty set-ups (But you need those TAC infinites)
More of me at FR. These were all Thursday night, so it was after a long car ride down to Georgia for me.
FT5 vs DizzyDee for $5 at about 6:00, then some casuals with him after
FT5 for $10 vs A$AP Ricky
[details=Spoiler]For anyone wondering what I mean by “place” your fireballs instead of “throwing” them, go to 1 minute into this video and see how I place my fireballs vs Doom to keep him in the corner.
Also the sequence around 5 mins in was pretty great. I was happy to not mess up that unblockable, because he couldn’t take the hit on that one either.
We became pretty good friends after this and he also eliminated Angelic right after Angelic eliminated me[/details]
FT7 for $5 vs RTKO at about 2:50
FT3 vs Sixfortyfive
This one was on Friday I think, was close to 3 or 4 in the morning. I pull off the Dormammu infinite in game one but this was my first time playing someone who used Rocks. I kept running into it. Overall, a lot of drops and bad decisions on my part in this set.
FT3 vs Jazzrap
- HvH color synergy. Awesome.
- That Doom hardtag after Dark Dimension was so sick.
- What’s the timing like to do Missile H after an air throw. Looks great for repositioning.
As always, nice stuff.
You do it instantly after the recovery of your QCF+H but you need to be close enough to them to cross up. Meaning you can’t do it off of every throw confirm because you have to dash up to them. The only throw that you can always do it on is forward ground throws.
BTW guys, please don’t hold back on me. I am not just posting these to show off, I want some criticism. I’m trying to improve. So if any of you see anything with my play or with any of my characters that I could do better, please don’t hesitate to tell me. Be as brutal and honest as you can.
Hey guys, I’ve been a lurker on here for the most part , but I finally got to make it out to an offline event (in AZ).
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Wch331pM4zk
I play matches at:
1:20 Me vs Fizzykups
57:54 Me vs Wenster
1:05:00 Me vs Forward
https://youtube.com/watch?v=syiLGDdfkBg
Then, I play Angelic here at 9:55
Feedback and criticism please!
Skillz, I watched your matches a few weeks back on your stream archive. Really, really good and solid play. Excellent zoning and excellent movement. I also respect that you were willing to go for so many TACs to get your game started.
Too be honest, I think you just got hit by hard match ups at the last few games. Wolverine and Spencer are annoying unless you able to maintain a decent zoning game.
It must be great having two other Firebrand players among you.
Generally, I think firebrand actually beats Spencer and wolverine, but I was unfamiliar with how to play against those shells.
Running more and more sets with Fizzykups I agree I think firebrand is a bad match for spencer. With Wolverine I think it can be bad for wolvie but its really easy to get over-run so your plink dashes must be on point and you have to be really confident because at times you have to just stand your ground.