shuma is a crappy anchor
He doesn’t have any options vs super jump without assists. He can’t cancel mystic smash, so it’s nothing like a footdive. Even if you get hit by it in the air, 99% of the time it won’t be convertable into a combo unless u are near the ground. It’s really not hard to just stay in the air against him. His approach is weak without assists etc etc. Chaos dimension is a terrible crutch unless you have xfactor 3 on and even then, it is escapable unless it’s on incoming. Even if u do get a hit with chaos dimension, the damage on it is pretty shitty, and there’s no followup. I really feel like the only place he should be run is first. Some anchors that aren’t very good like doom manage to keep their position because of assist strength, but I still don’t think mystic ray is and will ever be near the strength of hidden missiles or drones or vajira or jam session.
I disagree about Mystic Ray. It really is one of the best assists in the game. Chaos Dimension does over 700K in XF3 - I don’t consider that shitty damage for an unblockable. The rest of your post, I agree with.
What’s your XF3 combo? I was really hoping that he had an infinite or something.
Yo, apparently there was a Japanese Shuma-Gorath player who was tearing some ass at Tougeki 2012. His name is Tonosama, and he runs Shuma-Gorath/Rocket Raccoon/Amaterasu, and he reportedly has a TOD combo. I’m gonna keep my radar up for this guy.
Is it in these archives?
You’re free to disagree, but here’s how I feel about it. Mystic ray is a great assist, no doubt, fantastic, but it has some issues that don’t make up it way up there.
- it has 55 frames of startup (I don’t really need to explain this one
- It causes very little hit/block stun unless you are in the corner or very close, making it not a very good punishing assist
3)It does very little damage, hindering it as an anti air assist
Yeah you can run it like angelic, but wolverine akuma would be better since akuma beats everything. Yeah, you can use it as an anti air, but it’s risky as fuck since it has such slow startup, and you aren’t going to get much damage or a combo if it hits unlike vajira, jam session, missiles
To address your other point. Most anchors have 750k-850k damage. This means, shuma still has to land another hit, and he doesn’t have a lot of chip options, so basically, either way he has to land a hit. He can do 1 million in xfactor 3, so if you chaos dimension, YOU STILL have to land one hit. That isn’t a very good use of 3 meters tbh. Not to mention, he has pretty bad matchups vs the majority of top anchors.
Hawkeye- Could very well be 9-1 (Shuma loses this freeeeee)
Akuma- Shuma has no options without assists to beat akuma’s high priority. He can snipe any mystic smash free or just shoryuken it. If you try to play the mystic ray/stare game, he can laser you for free. 6-4 (?)
Sentinel- This isn’t so bad. Possibly 5-5, but that’s not saying much at all since sentinel has horrible matchups.
Dr. Doom- 6-4 in doom’s favor. Shuma beats the photon shot game, but he has no answer to plasma beam. If he tries to get in, sphere flame will be right there. Doom’s weakness as an anchor is approach, but there’s no reason you have to approach shuma as he isn’t dangerous from fullscreen.
Ammy- I really don’t know since ammy is one of those characters that requires a lot of thinking, and I don’t know many good ammy players, but I will say that with x-factor, she is easily the strongest anchor in the game. Counters vs mystic smash,dives in the air to stay away from danger… slowdown etc.
Strider- This one isn’t really even a matchup. Strider isn’t a competent anchor without xfactor/level 3, and if he has it, he beats any other anchor free.
Spencer(?)- 6-4 Spencer can grapple everything since shuma’s moves require far too much commitment.
Even if you xfactor then chaos dimension, a lot of popular anchors have ways to escape your setups without assists.
If you want to play him third, be my guest, but it’s not worth it just for his assist IMO.
doom beats shuma for free
hawkeye on the other hand i think is pretty even, you just need to be patient and not throw out random smashes, they put themselves in the corner anyways so just walk them back there and kill them when they move to defensive escape from offense
spencer does not beat shuma what so ever. all 3 of shumas supers beat bionic arm clean. yes, even the ray for some reason. he can’t cross shuma up without an assist because shumas standing M hits above and behind and your next normal will turn you around if he did cross up so you get a full punish. and if he tries to grab you with the arm, that’s a projectile, you can devitilization that for free meter which will confuse the shit out the player usually. if they get wise to it and try to bionic arm you after the devitilization any super you do will still beat him. i’ve never had an issue with spencer vs shuma unless they have a very good assist to cover them, otherwise you can just stand there and wait. that grounded overhead is easily command thrown
Thanks.
The 55 frame startup isn’t a problem for me. My other two characters are Morrigan and Dormammu. I tend to be in the air throwing fireballs with one and teleporting a lot with the other. I just need a good assist for both of them because I’m tired of using Firebrand.
I’m not looking for the assist to punish. Mystic Ray does 3 big things for me, and I think you’ll agree that no other assist aside from Hidden Missiles offers all three:
- Assists in zoning.
- Controls the vertical very well.
- Allows for teleport cross-ups.
It’s very versatile in what it can do. Does it do any of these the best? No, certainly not.
I don’t particularly care about the damage it does.
Because of my team, most anchors come in with some life missing. There aren’t many teams that never get their anchor hit against Dormammu and Morrigan.
No argument about the bad matchups in general. I think your matchup analysis is very fair. Can Shuma-Gorath duck under Plasma Beam, though? I know Morrigan can.
Shuma-Gorath does strike me as the kind of character capable of making the “slow, skillful” comeback a la Frank West. In other words, not something I can do - haha.
Good to know.
He can’t duck under prasma bream. I wish devitilization absorbed more than 1 durability in projectiles ._.
I actually tried morrigan doom shuma. After many efforts, my ideal setup was shuma/morrigan/doom in that order. I found that mystic ray+missiles+meter building meant that I could keep my opponent away with hyper mystic smashes and when shuma got low. I could mystic stare xx hyper mystic smash then dhc into astral vision and set up the trap while they were in blockstun. I also found missiles+morrigan to be a lot better since missiles keep them in blockstun significantly longer and tacing into doom was infinitely stronger to account for morrigans shitty damage. Best of luck though. I don’t agree with that spencer analysis at all. You seem to think that I’m talking about an idiotic spencer that throws random bionic arms. Devitilization is also pretty fucking risky since it has so much recovery. That’s my point though. You can wait vs spencer… neat, so can he. There’s nothing scary about shuma from fullscreen. If you even try to mystic ray, he can grapple you into a tod. Also, you are fucking INSANE if you think hawkeye vs shuma is 5-5. Hawkeye destroys him so badly.
I’d take the doom matchup over hawkeye anyday. Hawkeye slaughters shuma everytime. VS doom, you have at least a chance to outplay him. Also, the advice dodo gave vs spencer is definitely useful, but most people do run spencer with a very good assist, so that complicates things.
I used to run shuma with dorm for awhile and it works really, really, well. Ray assist helps dorm with easy otg combos in the corner, but its harder midscreen. The only problem is running him anchor (which I have done). In all honesty though, if you have xfactor left for shuma, he can be a pretty damn scary anchor because of how fast he is and how fast you can throw out mystic rays. I’ve made many comebacks with him both with and without xfactor, but I’ll admit, many times when I do that I feel that everyones unfamiliarity with shuma is an immense help…
Yes. Yes, it is. I’ve been looking for his matches in the archive, and as of right now I have found one of them.
It starts at 0:25:30 in this video:
About to watch it!
Holy shit, I think I just found the match everyone’s been talking about:
It’s in this video, and Tonosama comes on at 2:15:34.
I… I’m actually amazed. That was the most epic Shuma-Gorath display I’ve ever seen in a real match. His approach is very creative, and his execution is just ridiculous.
Haha, I was just about to post the links! Nice work finding them.
woah that Shuma is serious. Taking some notes on his corner carry combos.
you bait out the bionic arm, obviously. devitilizations recovery can be super canceled, shouldn’t have to post the obvious, again. shuma has FULL SCREEN rays and eyeballs to shoot which are a threat if they connect. what can spencer do full screen that out weighs what shuma can do? he has a one hit projectile that and shuma has a one hit projectile counter…so they have to come to you and their quickest and easiest way to do so is with a bionic arm. if they see you doing rays they will try to bionic arm you which is a free punish with 1 bar that can be xf canceled into a dead character.
st M is shumas best normal. it’s anti cross up hit box speed and 2 hits make it perfect against spencer who relies on annoying zipline cross ups. even if the hit box on the zipline absorbs one of the hits of the M the 2nd will still catch him.
you can wait vs spencer, gain meter, chip, land a mystic stare, or make them waste one of their own and punish. so can…oh wait no he can’t derr
Happy to see a competent shuma on stream. Its about time I see somebody else do real combos and instant overheads. That’s a pretty good shuma team too, as spitfire is an amazing assist for shuma as he needs something to help get in, I use bolts but spitfire looks even better. Having a lockdown assist is immensely useful. Its also important to have your next character be able to teleport as mystic stares are good for neutral game, but don’t really shine until you can tag into somebody with teleports. Because The Spring finishes quickly I also see HMS DHC being amazing. The opponent gets pinned by shuma’s super down while RR teleports and does instant overheads on the opponent. Rocket Racoon with Mystic ray and coldstar is also very strong. Although his opponents clearly had no idea what shuma does and ran into a bunch of stuff that they really shouldn’t get hit by, that was solid shuma play with an intelligently build team.
I noticed he doesn’t use c.h on incoming corner characters though. You can c.h (left or right) jump back call ammy and still pin them down(or continue the combo) with cold star for the high low. Its like magneto s but more priority its jump cancelable and shuma still faces the corner cross up or not so there is no visual clue.
Some more play from Tonosama at Tougeki.
0:22:35.
I hereby dub Tonosama the best Shuma-Gorath player out in the physical space.
He has best I’ve seen perform on stream so far, but once I get some of my matches recorded you might change your mind 
Haha, alright then.
Japan looked like of clueless on how to fight the character >.<