I play Shuma on point, and I also use Dr Strange. Testing out Nova also because he lets me do unblockable resets with Shuma and Dante. I usually use eye for the absurd amount of lockdown. If you play him on point you need to be spot on with your combos. Make good use of mystic stare, when you tag out the bombs dont go away unless they tag out. So If you have a teleport character you can set up some nasty stuff.
Although honestly, if you fight a hawkeye/morrigan on point you may as well not start Shuma because you won’t win that match unless that they are bad.
They really just need to give him other approach methods other than shitty smash. I would rather they not give him a derp a herp teleport. I think shuma’s main problem is that he has to commit too much. When you mystic smash, you are unsafe for a large majority of the move. When you mystic ray, you are unsafe for the longass startup. When you mystic stare, you are unsafe. His hypers are also unsafe. It’s really hard for him to have a strong neutral when he has to commit so ridiculously much.
that was the point of my post also. I totally agree, as smash is his main way in, but if the opponent is literally smacking their face against the buttons they can still beat it. It gets beat by a large majority of moves and has a tiny hitbox and as you said, you’ve gotta fully commit. Regardless, shuma isn’t gonna change so the only thing to really help him get in is an amazing assist. I’ve used all three of doom’s assists with pretty good success, and as you guys were saying, strange seems like he could fit well with shuma
In no way am I denying the importance of an 8-way dash, but more often then not the only time I use an air dash other than forwards or backwards is when I’m playing Doom and I down-forward dash to keep some of his air combos going.
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I run Shuma/Doom/Cap for my team. Just started picking up Ultimate in the past few weeks in a competitive sense. And when I was messing around in training I found something cool (that I’m sure I’m not the only person to figure out). This has been tested in the corner against Cap, not sure how it works mid-screen yet. You start walking at the character to get close as possible. Then you do j.
:h: :s: and the special lands and performs a hard knock down. You can then OTG Mystic Ray. I’m not sure what to do out of Mystic Ray. Also, for those of you who have trouble with buffering, remember this: You can start charging down as soon as you’ve jumped up in the air. So as soon as you get the hard knockdown, you should have enough charge to activate Mystic Ray. I’m sure someone has come up with this before, but I was wondering what you guys thought about it.
The 8 way airdash isn’t for mix ups, at least not the main reason. It’s so that he can apply pressure and move around the screen better. What good are mix ups when you have no solid foundation to base one off of?
EDIT: I’m not sure I understand what Shuma gains from a double jump, could you explain to me where you’re coming from?
I really like doom with shuma. One of the best teams imo for him atm is Shuma/Doom (missles)/ akuma. Missles gives him a lot of combo extensions, and the assist is really good to cover his flaws. Akuma assist is well… akuma assist and also really helps doom.
Lithium what you can do after hard knock down changes. If you OTG with mystic ray you can connect standing :s: if your hit decay is somewhat small. If its in the medium range you can do heavy mystic ray into lvl 3. If high hit combo you really can’t do anything outside of maybe connecting an assist. Honestly the only thing shuma needs is faster dashes, as simple as that and it would make a huge difference. Double jump would also work because you could normal jump and combine with double jump to dodge the simple projectile patterns so many characters run.
If I were to make a shuma first team the first thing I’d make sure to have is a high priority assist that can be used defensively or for corner pressure because he does struggle against some good pressure with long range attacks… The two best at this are Akuma and Frank. Both actually love shuma assist as well and do pretty well with comboing, for instance using stare to hard tag frank in for level ups or using mystic ray to force people to try and block akuma instant overheads rather than chicken blocking. There are other options but I personally would use one of them.
The other thing is that I would make sure you have a fast ranged assist just to beat out basic zoning or force them to block mystic smashes. The team I personally would make would be something along the lines of Shuma/storm (ww) or Mag/akuma or Shuma/trish/frank (level 4 frank of shuma combo anyone?)
No offense, but those teams sound very bad for him. The magneto one is decent though.
um ok… I say any of those 3 teams is better than one you proposed but I’d love to hear why you think they are bad teams.
If you really don’t understand how missles+akuma would benefit a character that heavily struggles to get in more than a mediocre version of a beam assist or lockdown assist that causes a shit ton of scaling, then I think you should reevaluate your team building.
Missles is not a good assist for shuma. He has no way of protecting or setting up doom assist. You also still lose to basic hawkeye or taskmaster type zoning since you wouldn’t be able to setup missles. The projectile assist for shuma needs to be fast, its the same reason you don’t run sentinel with shuma. Just because something is a good assist does not make it good for everyone. Also Dr doom doesn’t benefit very much akuma assist since the priority from akuma assist is already built into his dive kicks. For those two reasons that team isn’t a very solid team.
A)Missles is not a good assist for shuma. (False)
B) He has no way of protecting or setting up doom assist. (He has no way to protect any assist, which is one of his weakest attributes. Also… call missles… mystic ray. If all goes wrong, and you really need to… hyper mystic smash
C) And whirlwind lets him get past hawkeye? What about Frank West? You’re not making any sense.
D) Yes he does. Do you even play doom? That is an extremely dumb statement. Footdive is good, but it’s hugely overrated.
F) Have you actually tried putting into the time to learn other assists with shuma? From the stuff you post here, a lot of what you’re saying sounds like you’re still on day one shuma. Not to be rude, but missiles is a fantastic assist and so is drones. Shuma has one of the most complex neutrals in the entire game, and it’s not straightforward. In this sense, it can seem difficult to protect slow assists. You have to master his weak neutral in order to be able to accomplish this, but missiles is incredibly good for him. I would reccomend you go into the lab and try mashing on missiles assist while repetitively inputting mystic ray. It is very effective, and the assist itself is amazing for combos.
Stupid Shuma, why is his backwards airdash so much better than his forward one? Seriously, cancel his back airdash with an attack very early and he pretty much flies across the screen.
-I agree that Shuma needs fast and long range assist, since he’s slow while attacking from fullscreen with rays and stares, it’s logical that you need something faster than your attacks. I’ve seen some Shumas using drones and hidden missiles without much success, at least, hidden missiles can make Shuma’s hypers safe against a superjumper and can provide some combo extension, drones can help too but since we have slow dashes, we can’t approach fast and attack, before the drones hit, mainly because we need to pass that space between the enemy and us. Witth a long range and fast assist, we can even call it and use H mystic smash to approach and be somewhat safe, since, it covers almost fullscreen distance but is very punisheable.
As a Shuma, you’ll always have trouble at which assist you can use, because, you have to find one that can cover your flaws, help Shuma with combo extension and have synergy with Shuma’s assist for all the same back reasons…-
Oh SRK why do you produce so many bad players…
Because this post is extremely insightful and productive. . .
I’ve been running shuma with doom since vanilla and both missles and plasma beam are beneficial to him. Honestly it all depends on the kind of team you are facing. If im facing someone like hawkeye on point, I’m gonna go plasma because I need its fast start up. Anyone who cant zone shuma out indefinitely I’d probably go missles against because it instantly puts people on the defensive and shumas air grabs and devitalization are definitely underestimated.
So I’ve known this for a long time, but I have not posted it yet.
Shuma’s Mystic Smash assist has really funky properties when you’re cornered. When you call Shuma, he’ll jump half way across the screen before he uses his assist. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t intended to do so but it’s pretty funny.
yeah if i was lame enough to use doom it would be the plasma beam so shuma can actually get in against hawkeye, task, missiles, etc
Shuma-Gorath shows up in the newly unveiled piece of artwork:
http://www.eventhubs.com/images/2012/feb/14/new-ultimate-marvel-vs-capcom-3-artwork-shinkiro/
Man, I was so hoping that Shinkiro would one day draw Shuma-Gorath! Could this piece of artwork be any more epic?