I have been thinking bout a set-up with thor, you run thor and c.viper with her overhead assist and then whenever you have the opponent grounded you go for his :d::h: and call her assist simultaneously, for the unblock-able set-up. Now the thing is since he can cancel his :d::h: he can just fake the opponent out by calling viper and canceling into his command grab. My question to you guys now is what can thor do against an opponent holding up back? Not sure how the burn kick will react to a jumping opponent.
Oh and shout outs to thor having the most health now.
One of the best techniques you can learn if you want to play Thor is patience. There’s a reason he’s got a lot of health (the most health, now). While theoretically jumping back is a good defense against a lot of things, it’s not foolproof for a number of reasons:
Your opponents are (presumably) human. They simply make mistakes, and they make more mistakes when pressured.
Your opponent has to be doing things to try to beat you, too, meaning their defensive choices are limited. It’s hard to win a match just by jumping back all day unless you’re a good keepaway character, and nobody’s surprised to find that bruisers don’t do well versus keepaway.
Thor actually has some things to deal with folks running away. He has one of the best projectiles in the game. He has a number of strong, high-priority moves that propel him forward. He has air grabs. etc.
People get really locked into the idea of “this is [character]'s best tactic for dealing damage, so if it doesn’t work in certain situations, I’m screwed.” But that’s not how it works. While the characters everyone gravitates to early tend to be able to just wiggle the stick and hit buttons for damage (Dante, etc.), MOST characters have a couple of good damage options and a bunch of other tools to try and get INTO those options. Thor is a really glaring example of this. Ironically, what Seth said in Thor’s reveal demo about him being a “simple” character who just likes to get in there and hit things is really turning out to be untrue. He’s proving to be one of the most complex, strategy-dependent characters in the game.
Technically true yes, but push block negates the ability of many characters to put up serious sustained pressure. The game reverts more or less back to neutral, and the opponent has time to think and get himself back together. Unless you have certain moves that beat pushblock of course. Thor to my knowledge has mighty strikes and smashes, perhaps cr. H. But nobody should be getting hit by these outright, and in my mind at the moment, should just be jumping away as the attack comes in. Maybe they haven’t left push block stun by then, I’m not sure… In any case, relying on mistakes to me doesn’t feel like a satisfactory answer. What if they don’t make any? It’s not in your hands anymore. Thor’s options don’t exactly scream mixups like other examples in fighting games. This is also a double edged sword… you will make more mistakes when pressured as well…
Okay, well looking at the two things here… yes, Thor can ‘get in’ because the opponent is coming to him and trying to force stuff. But why is he doing this? The threat you take by bringing the fight to Thor is huge. Admittedly your ability to do damage increases, but is it worth it? But if you can just hold up+back and never really put yourself in terrible danger, why not do that and look to just punish Thor’s stuff (rather than proactively attack him)? On the floor you open yourself up to big damage and potential pressure. In the air… merely pressure. Also you can chip away with ranged stuff if you like. Thor has a great projectile, but its not unbeatable. It’s crouchable on top of that as well! And in any case, I don’t think Thor can deal with extreme rushdown/assist spam. At least not by himself.
And yes Thor can move forward… but so what? If the opponent has moved back, we are at the same situation. True, it is closer to the corner, but the can superjump out. It’s pretty tough to try and punish them for this. Again this is a issue of mobility. To do so it feels as if you have to be far away enough from the corner so as to not be any real threat in the first place! It’s perhaps one area that I can actually see Thor getting better at though (ie punishing superjumps out of the corner) if we have more practice at it…
And another flip side of this is, as you mention yourself, if you are working so hard to get in as Thor… you will take damage. Its hard to be on offense and have you defense tight. We all know the feeling of getting 1/3 or half a bar whittled down by small attacks, only to get an opening and do massive damage. And we think its great. But why did we get this opening? Either the opponent made a mistake or they tried to attack us or something. But why did they do this? Was it purely from our own pressure? Or did they simply stop playing the game plan that was working so well, impatient to get the damage? Something to think about…
My main point isn’t straight up saying that you guys are wrong, hell I’d love for someone to prove me wrong myself! But I’m saying, it feels like a really good way to beat Thor is to hold up back. The opponents we face might not be doing that, but thats beside the point. I’m beating people with Thor because they are coming at me, and also because they are seeming to buckle under the pressure… but think of Cammy in SFIV. Down/back beats a LOT of her stuff. But she could pressure from dive kicks. Thor doesn’t really have the same stuff, what with the overall mechanics of this game. (Actually, she seems a decent analogy… high damage once you land that hit, but its going to take a while to land it…)
If you were to deal with a player that did this, what can Thor realistically do? I appreciate Ogrimtitan of you trying to put some ideas down, but I don’t think they address the fundamental questions of how to beat up-back.
A good way to beat a lot of people is holding up back. It doesn’t just apply to Thor. Many other characters have just as hard of a time if not harder than Thor. I don’t really understand this up back argument… sure it is a good way to counter Thor but someone wont just be holding up back the entire time. That is why you MIX IT UP and don’t become a pattern player to the point where they know to hold up back.
If they hold up back, can’t u just go for air throws against them? It’s just one of those mix up situations. You can see Justin Wong vs Marn at Canada Cup, both tried to use jump back to avoid Zero or Sh-Hulk mixups, but in both case, once read, they countered it with air throw. Thor command air throw is one of the best if not the best in game It’s leads to massive combo.
Sorry guys been gone for a while Been working my thor game like mad though and I must say after a solid week in the lab thor is highly underrated @ Chef say what? Holding up back will only get you killed fighting against thor I have SEVERAL sneaky ways to get a MH in and if youre just holding a direction and trying not to advance or bring the fight to me I can bring it to you. Granted its much harder without assists but I always find that jumping foward airdash foward M Mighty Strike down tends to either hit or get me a nice set up on block. I can generally time MH right after block stun wears and theres NOTHING they can do about it. With Dormammu black hole assist or Dooms Hidden Missiles assist its even easier to get a throw in but there are options solo. Lastly the H air might hurricane is Sooooo underused I pretty much have it down to muscle memory and after getting my fightstick I can pretty much just jump and grab people out of whatever they thought they were going to do. If you can scare them into not jumping the fight is pretty much over.
Just to use an example of what “be creative” means as a solution:
If your opponent is doing nothing but holding “up-back” against you (actually a somewhat plausible scenario if you play a good Thor and have gotten them scared), jump forward + air dash + buffered Mighty Hurricane (possible assist to cover you) = anywhere from 600k-death if your execution is good. A retreating opponent is actually very much what Thor wants to achieve by landing some quick, scary damage early in the match.
Honestly it is easy to bitch and moan about what Thor doesn’t have or how hard it is to use him properly. That isn’t what this thread is for. This thread is about trying to help level up each others Thor games by finding new creative ways to use him as well as find out deeper things about the character. No other character specific forum I have visited is nearly as beneficial as this one. Every other one basically just focuses on combos and thats it. Every post is about some dude who found some variation to some BnB that really doesn’t make a difference.
So yea it is dumb to sit around and be complain about the negatives with this character. That is counter productive though… we need to continue pressing forward and try as hard as we can to get Thor as good as he can possibly be. Plus the game has only been out for a month… things will change and evolve over time.
Also we should really start organizing all of this info. We have some really good shit but it is kind of scattered throughout and would be much more beneficial on the front page. Time to start putting together all of this awesome creative brainstorming in one place!
The fact that it is a relevant tactic against others doesn’t invalidate it as a tactic against Thor. So we still have to think of good ways to deal with it. Other’s do have options. Teleports. Cross overs, having a good ranged game etc… yes the opponent may decide to not be defensive the whole game, but I’ve covered that in my last post. My point also is that Thor’s mixups are not amazing, as most of the options get beated by up back.
Jumping towards -> MH or IA Mighty hurricane ‘may’ be an option, but I’ll explain now…
If you are jumping towards, and buffering a MH, then you are letting your guard down. You can be hit. Same if you put a dash in. If you are air dashing towards, you are at very least putting your stick in neutral (ie… you aren’t blocking.) Plus to make matters worse you can’t airdash above a certain height. So if the opponent has that distance that you need to airdash, if he throws something out I can see there being enough time (due to the airdash height limit needing to be reached) for their active frames to come out, and you will be hit out of MH. Now, what this all comes down to is two things. 1) How good is MH at grabbing people out of active frames? Is it possible? We don’t know what the hitboxes/grab boxes in this game look like. The only time I think I’ve landed a MH is either from a netural state, during startup or recovery. 2) The range and speed of the MH used. I think we’ve gone over this enough already.
I’m not saying it won’t work (heck it works for me!), but I’m saying in theory fighter land it doesn’t make too much sense.
This highlights an important point. Assists. So perhaps a decent counter to ‘up back’ is to hold them there with assists. This makes sense. I knew this already, so perhaps I should have pointed out that I meant when Thor is alone. In any case, scaring people with Thor is absolutely the way to go. I play with a friend every day, and he almost NEVER jumps at me any more. If he does I can usually makes him pay, and he always cries out ‘WHY DID I DO THAT?!?’. But just scaring people into not doing something doesn’t automatically mean you now have another way to do damage. The same friend never stands withing kara MH range. He’s been hit by it before too many times, its not happening again. But what do I have to punish him for not standing there? Not much.
You point about Mighty strike is interesting… but not to sound like a broken record, if they just hold ‘up back’ as you do it, surely they jump out of it? Then the mixup comes if you instead decide to jump and mighty hurricane. A sort of 50/50… Also what about push block? I could have sworn you can push block it at least enough to get some breathing room…
Umm… how is pointing out and trying to solve issues surround your character’s potential weaknesses not helpful? It is by its very nature progressive to developing Thor.
And I’m not bitching and moaning. Bitching and moaning would be just saying ‘man thor sucks, I can’t seem to land any of his shit and he’s slow as hell’ etc. But I haven’t said that, I’ve carefully and rationally thought out a tactic that (at least to me) appears to be a good way to counter Thor. Not that he is specifically bad, just that there are ways to play against him.
Knowing what your characters loses, and adapting to it, to is crucial to being a better player. Period.
And this is the kind of discussion that I hoped to generate in terms of how to deal with ‘up back’. Whether intentional or not, Jak puts forward an interesting idea. If it was jump cancelable, then NOW this is a 50/50 mixup against up/back. Does the opponent jump, or stay on the ground as a cr.H is thrown out, because either air MH or grounded MH could come out… Sadly, yes I tried it a while back and no you cannot.
@Chef You made some good points about holes in each viable tactic against opponent who turtle with up-back. But you might take the suggestions too literally. You can take those as suggestions and evolves around them.
For the jumping forward with air throw attempt, I only do it when i’m already in melee range, or else it’s better to air mighty strike L to get in. It covers a lot of space, it has good priority and best of all, you have frame advantage when blocked. For the air throw part, all normal throws come out in 1 frame, so basicly it beats every normals if you time it right. H version of MH comes out in 1 frame also and I think it should be the one using in this situation. M version comes out in 3 frames and the L version in 5 frames (I use L version after the Mighty Smash reset because I usually do it too fast.)
As for assist, I think Thor like a lot of characters, have a hard time just opening up an opponent without assist. I usually have to bait out their ground strings with backdash + tridash L or backdash + tridash MH. But air to air wise, i think Thor can handle himself pretty well.
Attack from the air. Take advantage of the fact you can use Mighty Strike 3 times in the air before you land and the fact that you can still Airdash after one. Staying in the air will help against Dante’s teleport shenanigans as well. You never want to get into a ground war with Dante because you won’t win. While you are on the ground use Mighty Spark but don’t spam it because they can just teleport behind you into free damage.
Ok this could be interesting, ill have to test that out next time i get my hands on the game but if he can cancel it into flight mode then he might have a legit 50/50 right there.
I know what you mean but unless there’s a patch looks at the robot it’s up to people here. It really sucks because it’s NEVER a 50/50 guess. At best it’s actually a 1 in 4 chance of getting your throw when you consider how mashing upon recovery works for a lot of the cast. I dunno, things are bleak but there’s always the off chance that someone discovers something great that changes things around. I have a feeling that there will be a patch just as the movie comes out. Companies are like that. If Thor really ends up being a bad character when it’s all said and done then so be it. Blame Capcom’s game testers, the crew that designed his moves and Killian for talking about things that he doesn’t know. Until then…we have to try.
I think a better analogy would be Zangief, where he deals most damage when he gets in and have the momentum, but he might only have 1 chance per game. I think Thor is an evolution of that type of character. Now that I think about it, if we set our plan to push the opponent to the corner and try to keep them there, is that a good viable option for Thor? I can see it work other then playing against teleporters. A lot of characters have good movements, but a lot of them are unsafe, (ex: wolverine’s slash, dante’s teleport) If we can work our opponents to the corner, will it be just like fighting akuma in corner? Super jumping out might be an issue, but Thor mobility actually shines in the air, and his air to air is quite good.
It’s leads to massive combo.