I don’t think so, Sentinel needs a strong assist like tatsu or he’s garbage. Tatsu is one of those assists that makes any team better.
Akuma is a strong anchor and offers a much better assist than skrull.
You put Sentinel second to DHC Skrull in safely. You don’t keep him in, that’s just silly. Hard Drive ensures that you get to play all 3 characters. That should be the reasoning for your team order, too, not because it’s good for Sentinel.
Skrull is a better anchor than Akuma, and Firebrand is one of the few characters that can justify picking Skrull for the assist, because it’s just that good.
Skrull may be the better anchor, but Akuma is far from a pushover in x-factor 3. He also comes with a godlike assist that massively helps Firebrand and Sentinel.
Crisis mentioned that tatsu for Firebrand is an amazing asset and I can see why. Tatsu helps with approach and allows Firebrand to shutdown many zoning shenanigans. Sentinel becomes an extremely better character when paired with Tatsu and he can abuse his armored normals with ease.
Your set-up seems equally as strong as mine. Cause if we dice it out.
Firebrand dies first ->
Skrull/Sentinel (best possible assist for Skrull)
Sentinel makes all of Skrull’s stuff safe
-Meteor smash crossups into high damage
Firebrand dies first ->
Sentinel/Akuma (best possible assist for Sentinel)
-Akuma makes all of Sentinel’s stuff safe
- Flight crossups into high damage
Sentinel dies first->
Firebrand/Akuma (Strong combination)
Firebrand/Skrull (Strong combo)
Akuma/Skrull dies first ->
Firebrand/Sentinel (Strong combination)
I say they’re pretty equal. Tatsu is a massively better neutral assist than Tenderizer and has many more applications. Skrull is a better x-factor anchor than akuma.
No, they’re not equal, because Firebrand doesn’t 300% teams off of a touch from Tatsu. He does from Tenderizer.
Making Sentinel safe is not of equal value to making Skrull safe, either. Skrull is far stronger point character than Sentinel.
Yeah but Tenderizer is worthless in neutral. How is Firebrand going to get in against people who can actually zone in this game? Drones doesn’t counter everything. Tatsu on the other hand gives Firebrand a huge advantage over characters like hawkeye. Akuma may not be as strong as Skrull in anchor but Akuma is a better overall asset to the team than skrull. Tatsu allows Firebrand forward momentum in most situations, even if the opponent is using a projectile that beats out drones.
Sorry dude, there’s a reason why Tatsu is considered a top 5 assist. It’s bane of zoners everywhere and Firebrand can effectively abuse the assist to its full potential.
It’s just plain moronic to call Tatsu from full-screen against a character like Hawkeye to “get in”. It’s free food for your opponent. You use Tatsu at medium range to do that job, or you use it at close range to pin and interrupt. The freest teams in this game to me are the ones that rely on the Tatsu to get in.
Firebrand can approach from anywhere alone. I played Firebrand without assists for 4 months, and I’ve never been able to not get in. The drones are there to make the approach safer, because you should be approaching from the air while drones cover the ground, and your opponent can’t cover both air and ground at the same time in most situations.
The problem with your team is that it has absolutely nothing to do with Firebrand. Firebrand has one thing valuable about him, and that’s his unblockable. You might as well pick Zero, Wolverine, X-23, or any other rushdown character, and you’d do better with that team than you will with Firebrand, because those characters have good damage. You pick Firebrand for one reason, and that’s to abuse the unblockable. Anything else is a mistake.
There was a Tenderizer vs. Tatsu discussion in the tier thread.
I suggest you check it out.
Anyway I chose Firebrand because I really like him. That’s the only reason I chose him. Even if he didn’t have an unblockable I still would of mained him.
You keep saying this but you’re wrong. Firebrand has a VERY unique style that no one else has. His unblockable is situational. You’re locked into specific teams and it requires a lot of meter that for the most part, where it would be better to just DHC. His instant overhead combined with his QCB+L offer fast high/lows. His fireball game shuts down a lot of characters and no one can stall like Firebrand can. He also has very good DHCs (Dark Fire clears the screen DHC out and Luminous Body is a good DHC in. His command dashes offer a unique style of movement and allow him to change directions quickly and often.
Using the 300% death loop is an OPTION. It is not the only way to play him, nor is it required. He is a very strong character on his own, but relies on strong movement and placement by the user.
YOUR reason to play Firebrand might be because of his unblockable, but you are obviously neglecting his other strengths.
Exactly, Firebrand is far from a one trick pony. He has some of the best mobility options in the entire game and Bon Voyage is a godlike move. You don’t *need *the unblockable to open people up with him. He has enough bullshit to do that perfectly fine.
The tier thread is a bad joke filled with theoryfighters that don’t even understand how to make a tier list for this game. The only person who has even attempted to make a valid tier list for this game is Viscant.
There’s no reason to pick Firebrand over Zero except for the unblockable. Firebrand isn’t even good at stalling. His aerial fireballs are weak crap that could only shut a weak player or a poorly balanced team down. His command dashes are shitty versions of air dashes. Firebrand has some of the worst DHCs in the game. Dark Fire is terrible to DHC from and terrible to DHC to outside of a handful of characters. It’s highly inflexible. Luminous Body, in terms of DHC qualities, is only good for getting him in safely. Its uses are somewhere between very little and non-existent otherwise.
Your entire post is pure nonsense.
You’re very close minded in your opinions. I don’t see a point in arguing with you because you’ll just disagree with everything with no intention of actually listening to what I am saying. You can continue to believe that he is only worth his unblockable but like I said, you are neglecting his other strengths.
EDIT/ Lol at using Zero as your example.
I agree with pretty much everything in your post, but I feel obligated to point out that MODOK, Spider-Man, and Thor are all at least on par with FB if not better (in terms of stalling).
Karst, I respect your knowledge and viewpoints on this game, but Kresent has a good point here and his previous post was far from “pure nonsense”. Is Zero a better overall character than Firebrand? Yeah, I’d agree with that. Does that mean FB is useless? Hell, no.
Zero better than Firebrand? Absolutely. Firebrand not being viable outside of unblockable? Nonsense. Hit the lab, try it again. That’s the best way to change that viewpoint around. He has too many tools to not be considered viable. Fuck tiers, i got people in my area not wanting to play my team.
I never said “Firebrand is useless”. I said there’s “No reason to pick Firebrand over Zero except for the unblockable.” I stand by that statement. Every character in this game has something to offer, and if you’re going to ignore the one thing Firebrand has over Zero, you’re effectively picking an inferior character for no reason. It would be like if FChamp replaced Magneto with Storm on point. Sure, Storm is a good character. Sure, Storm has virtues. FChamp isn’t putting her in a good position to make use of them though, so he’s gimping his team.
Zero has:
- Better screen presence than Firebrand.
- Better pressure than Firebrand.
- Safer pressure than Firebrand.
- Better mix-ups than Firebrand.
- Higher priority normals than Firebrand.
- Better hypers than Firebrand.
- Better assists than Firebrand (Sougenmu Hadangeki is better than anything Firebrand has).
- Better damage than Firebrand (like, ridiculously so).
- Better meter gain than Firebrand.
I really wanted a 10th, but I can’t think of one. Maybe someone else will for me.
Look at that list and tell me what there is not true. I think that anyone honest will look at that list and recognize that Zero simply has everything better than Firebrand, and they both have a very similar playstyle (aerial-based rushdown).
Except for the unblockable. That’s what Firebrand has over Zero. Any team that has Firebrand on it without abusing his unblockable will become better if you replace Firebrand with Zero. That’s a guarantee. It’s what Firebrand has going for him. I’m not saying “Firebrand only has an unblockable”. I’m saying that the unblockable defines the character. It’s what makes him the terror he is. Yes, you can win matches without using the unblockable. That’s not the point. Everyone here should be all about maximizing their team structure. If people want to use Firebrand like a ghetto Zero, by all means do so, but don’t pretend you’re using a noteworthy team. Don’t try to argue that he’s “just as good” if you ignore his most unique, and most powerful, feature.
- Better video games than Firebrand
Ehhhhh…I really loved Demon’s Crest. I tend to think that the MMX games are overrated, and I flat out don’t like MMZ. Firebrand is also a cooler character, who is better looking, and has a swingin’ dance, and his theme is better. Firebrand wins all over the place in style points. Even with an extremely disappointing and lame moveset, I think Firebrand’s moves are maybe a bit cooler than Zero’s too.
Sooo what your saying Karst is that we should just pick Zero because he’s the best and build a team around him.
Thanks but no thanks, I’ll stick with Firebrand and continue to use characters I actually enjoy playing as.
Safer? Definitely. Better? Probably, but I’d say that’s mostly because it’s safer.
This is kind of debatable, because it depends on what you’re talking about. Granted, Zero has infinitely better left/right mixups which are arguably the overall best in the game (Magneto is the only one who might have better). But you can’t deny that Firebrand’s high/low game is significantly better than Zero’s, which is something to consider.
This is true, but only conditionally. Minus Sougenmu, I’d say their assists are relatively even. Plus, Spitfire becomes a lot better when in Luminous Body, so that’s also worth mentioning.
As I said, I respect your opinions, and you did a good job of clarifying yourself. Superficially, I agree with you that Zero is a better character and (generally speaking) he’s a better choice for more teams than Firebrand. There’s not really any way to argue against that. However, I also support Kresent’s claim that you don’t NEED to abuse the unblockable in order for him to be viable. He’s still a very dangerous (not to mention FUN) character without it. Plus, that swag factor means a lot on a personal level. 
I’d probably say Firebrand has better mobility than Zero, but not by a terribly large amount. Got teleport and Lightning, that’s obviously good, but equalized by air dives that cover the same angles quicker and safer without buster. Both have Dives at more or less the same angle, Zero has an air dash but not really a good mobile one. But Firebrand still has Bon Voyage and Flight, DP Moves(DP+M is underrated) as well as the option to speed all of these options up by 25%
Also, not sure how we should view the whole ‘mixup’ argument. Firebrand’s High/Low is vastly superior sure, but at the same time Left/Rights are more potent because of the being on the ground requirement. But the ground is only a small part of the screen and Zero pretty much gets a full combo at any section of the screen, something I don’t think a single other person in the cast can claim.
You are really too stupid to understand what I’m saying, aren’t you?
In terms of the character alone, Zero pressure seems more difficult to get off you than Firebrand pressure. In my experience, I sometimes have to pushblock Zero for a full 5 seconds before I can breath, while that’s not the case with Firebrand. The safety and quality of the pressure are definitely interlinked, though. Zero can do s.H to f.H, which means two advancing guards needed to get him off you, and then he fires the buster and cancels it into his command dash, which requires another pushblock, which he responds to with f.H, which requires another pushblock. And that’s not even taking assists into account. Firebrand just doesn’t have anything like that, his pressure is primarily assist-dependent. Things are a little different in Luminous Body, and Firebrand’s pressure is probably a bit above Zero’s if you have a cornered opponent vs. him.
Zero’s are better because he doesn’t need assists to do them. He just needs himself. Firebrand has no high/low game unless he has an assist pinning you or he’s in Luminous Body, and even then it’s the weak (high damage decay) j.L to qcf.S which can be chicken blocked. So Firebrand, even after spending a bar of meter, has one mix-up that isn’t even good, while Zero can cross you up from anywhere while also being 100% safe. Assists are just gravy to Zero, because it means he gets to cross you up all over the place. So, to summarize, Firebrand needs to spend a bar of meter to even have a single mix-up, or he needs assists to reach Zero’s level of mix-up potential, while Zero just likes, but does not need, assists.
I think Hell Spitfire H just becomes not-total-ass when it’s in Luminous Body. It’s still not good, and I’d take any of Zero’s assists over it. If Firebrand even had Hell Spitfire L as an assist, I’d say they’re comparable (why Capcom, why?!). Zero’s assists are also potentially good crossover counters. Who knows what Capcom thought the merit of Firebrand’s assists were.
This is the one claim I have never made. I did not say “Zero is a better character than Firebrand”. I did not even say this is true, generally speaking. My point was rather that Firebrand is entirely balanced around abusing his unblockable. That is why he is so inferior to Zero in every other respect. Capcom, I imagine, knew that if Firebrand had even half the good stuff Zero has, he’d be absurdly good - too good. Firebrand needs to be inferior or the unblockable would make him ridiculous. Therefore, one must note that Firebrand is essentially about the unblockable - that is what he is about, that is what he has that makes him worth picking over Zero. You don’t need to pick Zero over Firebrand; you (and anyone else) can play whatever one wants. But one is gimping the team if one is not using Firebrand the way he was designed to be played.
I loathe it when people make a major claim that hinges on an abstraction like “viable”. Define your terms if they’re so crucial to the claim.
Sadly, Zero’s “dive kick” is far better than Firebrand’s. Firebrand has the worst divekick in the game, it’s really unfortunate. It just has far too many startup frames for what it’s doing. Most good Firebrand players just stick to Bon Voyage, which is a very good move (maybe Firebrand’s only great move aside from the unblockable).
Firebrand’s flight is also one of the worst in the game. It’s just terribly slow, and the poor guy doesn’t have any great ways to come down from flight if his opponent is underneath him.
More to the point, which one has better mobility? I think they have different virtues, here. Zero’s aerial mobility is far superior, since he can stay at superjump height while changing his X-axis movement, and Firebrand cannot. Firebrand obviously has a much better ground dash than Zero. However, Zero can use his command dashes to instantly cross opponents up with buster shots, making them very valuable tools, and Firebrand doesn’t have an equivalent. Also, as a semi-mobility feature, Zero finds it much easier to reverse his aerial direction than Firebrand and come down safely. Good movement is partially about safe movement. I can’t even teleport against Zero because buster shot auto-corrects his direction toward me, and I get killed.
I hope my further discussion on this issue makes it clear that Zero has the better mix-ups.