What moves have the highest priority? What does “priority” even mean nowadays? It seems like a vague amalgamation and thumbnail of active frames, bounding boxes for attack and hit, invincibility, typical attack approach or use, etc. all mashed up a general idea of how likely one move is to stuff another.
So what do you consider priority / how would you measure it / and what significant moves (normals, assists, specials, or command normals) in MvC3 seem to have the highest?
Priority is just a general term like you said for how a bunch of different things affect an attack’s ability to beat out other attacks. Usually moves with invincibility will generally have the most outright priority but those moves are also usually very unsafe on block so they’re high priority but usually not reliable.
Something that’s high priority but doesn’t rely on invincibility is definitely Chun Li’s Lightning Legs. It has a hit box that goes out far past her vulnerable hit box to stuff out other moves and covers almost a whole 360 around her. The ground version can be out prioritized by certain crouching normals but you have to be at the right spacing or she’ll hit you any way. Some normals that have long hit boxes and also dont have much vunlerable hit box like Felicia’s s.L can stuff it as well. For the most part though a lot of characters can have trouble doing anything to her legs especially since they also have a hit box in the back. They start up in 7 frames and some characters like Hulk dont even have crouch normals that start up that fast and plus 10 or more on block which allows her to throw more out again right after the last. The hit box on legs make her unthrowable once started and when she’s in the air she can use air legs to stop attempts to air throw her also. She doesn’t do a ton of damage if she hits you with lightning legs but she can use it as basically a 7 frame start up non invincible reversal and braindead block string/combo starter.
The thing I like about this game also is its not like SFIV where it only gives certain specific characters good normals. Just about everybody in this game has strong normals but there are some that definitely stand out.
Obviously Sentinel’s air H and S’s are crazy high priority since they have no vulnerable hit box and are basically the same as like really long versions of Vega’s claw that he can poke you with to set up huge damage. His c.M and S are both hyper armor based moves and cover huge range and have high priority for obvious reasons. The only problems with these moves obviously are that they are terrible if blocked or whiffed and S specifically can’t be cancelled anything and is susceptible to guard XFC punish.
A lot of characters generally have strong c.L’s. Especially those with 5 frame or faster c.L’s like Wesker’s. Wesker c.L is 5 frame start up and has a low enough profile to duck under Haggar’s lariat. Easily hit confirms into c.M which is also another really good low hitting normal that has a great upper hit box for anti airs as well. He also has one of the best ground S moves with a hit box that covers almost half the screen and is only negative one on block. Captain America’s c.L is negative 5 on block but comes out even faster at 4 frame start up meaning he will beat anyone else’s poke pretty much free as long as he knows its coming. Plus it actually hits low as well and is very easily covered on block by assist. The only other characters with 4 frame c.L’s that hit low are Phoenix, Ammy and Zero but Captain America’s has the most range while still being low and 4 frame.
Some other characters like Chun Li and Morrigan have 4 frame c.L’s but they dont hit low so their use is a bit more limited. Morrigan’s has a good upper hit box for anti airs at least.
Then of course there’s the characters like Zero and Dante who have a similar affect like Sentinel on pretty much all of their normals. Which is basically that their normals are high priority because they do not have vulnerable hit boxes. They are attacking you with weapons and therefore are free to hit you while you barely press anything at them. You can’t really out prioritize their normals even if you have fast normals unless you’re right next to them and beat them by frames. Once you’re at a distance your frames wont even beat them because they will just have a weapon coming down on top of your normal and slam you out of your normal.
God Tier: Wesker standing S
This thread you opened serves better as a single post question in a general discussion thread.
Wesker S is pretty damn good. The only reason you dont really see it out of good Weskers is that it’s a terrible move to whiff. Its good for tech traps and just to throw something at the end of a bnb to stay safe but he has so many good normals that I guess it just somehow ends up having limited necessity any way. You dont really get any mix up factor with it outside of reset/tech traps and if its blocked you can’t cancel or follow it up with anything. As far as just outright priority though, it will pretty much damn near stuff anything because of the huge hit box and how Wesker’s hittable box seems far inside of the move. His S just like most S’s is also succeptible to guard XFC punish.
Total ass tier:
All of Viper’s normals aside from air S.
More contenders for excellent high priority attacks:
Seismo’s hit box in regards to its speed positioning and use is really stupid good, it hits over maximum normal jump height, safe on block, combo-able on hit, cancel-able into invincible moves, cancel-able into itself for a true block string even on push block, and pretty much the best hitbox ever. Actually EX Seismo is invincible for a long time, safe on block, hits a huge area and you can combo after it, if it didn’t take gauge it would be Ivan Ooze tier, and even with the gauge requirement it’s still amazing.
Taskmaster’s air S and air C benefit from similar things to Dante and Zero, their start up is tolerable they hit a huge area and their vulnerability is very limited. C even beats out Sentinel pokes thanks to its angle and double hit status. Shield skills is also exceptional since it has start up only 1 frame slower than his jab but has a large hitbox, moves him forward and s projectile durable.
zero j.2H/j.H
wesker j.S
haggar pipe
ammy’s EVERYTHING
This. And I agree with the Seismo bullshit from C. Viper. Seriously, she doesn’t even need normals, just Seismic gun the crap out of everything. Her cr. M is decent though. Sure it’s like -6 or something, but you’ll cancel everything she does into Seismo anyway, and you can always cancel that Seismo into more Seismos.
Jill’s air throw.
Lightning Legs is the first thing that came to mind when I read this. That move outprioritizes nearly everything…
Tron’s jump H and f+M
Dante’s stand M
Hulk’s stand H
Ammy down+M has to be one of the best pokes in the game both as ground and AA
@chrisis Imo Vipers C.M is pretty good too
This actually isn’t quite right. Priority is a variable assigned to moves. It determines which move takes effect when hitboxes overlap with hurtboxes at the same time. The one with the higher priority will take effect over the lower priority move.
Invincibility actually isn’t related to priority, it just makes it irrelevant.
In the vast majority of Capcom games if both hit boxes hit both hurt boxes then it trades, not a priority battle…
The only game where that actually happens that I know of is like Melty Blood where hard attacks will always out prioritize lights in a forced priority system. In most fighting games its just done by frames and hit boxes which you can’t really assign values for. It’s move properties vs. move properties.
Yeah trading is usually what happens if two moves collide on the same frames and have similar hit boxes.
projectiles are the only thing with true priority in this game.
But when people refer to “priority” in games that don’t actually have a priority system, they mean some weird combination of having a good hitbox, good startup time, or invincibility. Or some such nonsense, the word is basically a way of saying it’s a “good” move without actually telling you why it’s good.
Projectile priority is an interesting system, or at least an intuitive version of more implicit priority systems in other FGs. Someone should write up a tier list for that, it wouldn’t be subjective at all, just based on durability points and priority ranking.
Has anyone hacked a hitbox viewer for MvC3 yet?
Godtier
Everything Zero does (i swear the only thing beating that is…tron assist and lariat assist)
Everything Wolverine does
Everything Ammy does
Hagger’s Pipe (seriously fuck this damn thing)
Top Tier
Sentinel’s frying pan and boot
Everything Wesker does
Everything Dante does
Everything Trish does
Everything Morrigan does
Taskmaster’s B’s and C’s (sword slashes)
edit : yea somebody needs to hack this game so we can see these retarded hitboxes
I’d say the highest tiered priority normals are ones that can be easily spammed with no reliable counters, like zero and ammy’s C.
Dante and Trish probably make the best use of their high priority normals though, just look at all those super fast air dash C, dive kicks and S crossing up, and they also have standing normals that cover their backs when used defensively.
Then we have wolverine’s dive kick…
Morrigan has a 4 frame standing low. DPh has the fastest low in the game at 3 frames if i read the guide right.