I had no idea of the defensive capabilities of Phoenix Rage. Just goes to show how conservative I am (or was) with her when it comes to meter. You learn something new every day!
RE: her assists, it’s truly a shame, as I would have loved to see a safe, useful assist that may have been a move exclusive to being an assist in and of itself (for example, PW’s Get 'Em Missile assist).
You have no idea how many times that move has saved me these last ten months. It truly is one of the best hyper combos in the game.
And yeah, the assist thing is a glaring shortcoming. TK Shot is the fastest non-beam ranged assist and only leaves her open for a short amount of time, and Overdrive has invulnerability to projectiles. If someone was hell-bent on using a Phoenix assist, those two would definitely be the go-tos. TK Trap takes too long to come out.
Phoenix was my point at the end of vanilla. I honestly don’t see how you can user her on point with Hawkeye and Strider being as popular as they are. If Jean had normal health those two would be 6-4 match ups for her, but since she doesn’t, they are easily 9-1s.
As my Doom improves, I’m already running into the issue I knew would happen - even with Dark Harmonizer, if I can build 5 bars, I’ve already won the match. Phoenix contributes nothing towards actually moving my team away from defeat and closer to victory, all she does is make sure I can’t lose a lead I earn. She simply is not a wincon any more, maybe if I my point character were like Trish or Storm, and I just ran and called Morrigan for meter she could be, but playing pretty much normally with Doom and Morrigan sans hyper use, I either don’t get to 5 bars because I’m being outplayed, or I’ve killed 2 and a half characters by the time I do get 5 bars.
I’m only putting up with this out of character loyalty at this point, and I’m honestly not sure how long that will last. I’m serious when I say you could put 100% unchanged vanilla Phoenix into Ultimate, and she still would not have a real place in the meta as it’s shaping up this time around. She has actual legitimate counterpicks now, along with system changes deliberately designed to shut her specifically down. Her character specific changes seem to have been simply for appeasement.
Fun fact: Phoenix can cancel her special moves at any time by using Phoenix Rage, including the active frames of her teleports. The invincibility lasts as long as the Spell of Vishanti hitbox, so long as the projectile makes contact. Take that, Strange.
Oh, and I played Fate of Two Worlds last night for a bit of reference. As it turns out, Flare Sword and TK Trap L still have the same hit stun decay, but there was a ninja buff to TK Overdrive M in Ultimate. It doesn’t knock the opponent back as far as it used to, making TK Overdrive M into Burn Out Beak a reliable mid-screen link.
Damn thanks For the info Serris that’s nice to know 
And yeah I played at a local tourney and i had my dark phoenix against strange. Just went in and we both had 1 bar. He used spell of vishanti and i phoenix raged through that. Felt pretty good!
I didn’t realize exactly what “no tracking on Flare Sword” meant until trying to do the exact combo from this video: [media=youtube]R8KS2wgzgZA[/media]
When attempted in Ultimate the second hit just plain flies in the wrong direction even when aiming at them. Pretty unfortunate and very curious if the change was deliberate.
On the other hand, has anyone been able to consistently get ground bounces with Dark Phoenix’s air stomp? It could be my training dummies get hit with impeccable spacing but it was enough to spark a question from me.
Not in the slightest. It’s possible if you start high enough above the opponent and don’t hit them with any of the feathers on descent, but if they get hit by feathers, they catch the target and prevent them from groundbouncing.
This does however set them up for a nice little reset if you cancel the :d:+:h: into Flight and then air dash towards the opponent into an air grab as the feathers bounce them into you.
This has been THE INVINCIBLE SWORDSMAN saying:
I think this is best done near the ground after a 
TKOverdrive connects then you go into Burn Out Beak. Flight and go into the air grab then :l: or teleport into air :l:TK shot, range dependent combo or if they try to fight out of the feathers go air :h:, :f:+:h:, :d:+:h:, land, :l:, :s:, jump, air series.
Ok I discovered a couple things last night:
If you cross someone over then use Flare Sword it sends you in the wrong direction, but you will be FACING the other direction as well.
So if you H teleport while you are like this you actually automatically cross up teleport above their head!
Not sure if this is new to UMvC3 but after you M TK Overdrive you can actually air dash twice
So if you put that together. If you go for a BnB and they block just M TK Overdrive, do some combination of Flare Sword and 2 air dashes (eg. Flare Sword, f.ad, uf.ad), call an assist if you’ve got one (I use Strange Bolts), and HK teleport above their head on the other side.
they can easily air grab you though if they block the M TK Overdrive /:
I’m probably gonna regret saying this but it will happen eventually. In Heroes and Hearalds mode there is a card that gives infinite X-factor at the cost of no hyper combs at all. The card Fin Fang Foom. Now everyone knows that Dark Phoenix Rising is a lvl 5 hyper combo. Well…the rules of the card don’t apply to Dark Phoenix Rising. As long as Phoenix has 5 bars she’s gonna turn. Specifically the cards I used were Mandarin as Primary and Fin Fang Foom plus Thanos as secondary.
Could this turn into another Dark Phoenix band wagon?
Some cards have undocumented effects on your hit stun. Specifically, her TK Trap becomes so bad that the opponent will fall out after the first hit. No more X-Factor infinite. It can be avoided with the right set-up, but it’s not that great. Besides, you have to get three bars to get to X-Factor again after she transforms. Unless you know the touch of death combo, she’s very vulnerable.
I didn’t know her TK traps took a hit stun. Her basic magic series into air combo is still enough to kill everyone while in XF, I think. What I was really worried about was the cL spam wagon specifically, which is still a possibility. But as always time will tell.
In my opinion, with the changes in the game overall, and a few unfavorable matchups, the following changes:
[LIST]
[]Only one air special per jump, unless flight is used first.
[]Tracking on TK Shot H has been reduced considerably.
[]Shots and traps now disappear when Phoenix is hit.
[]Tracking on Flare Sword has been removed.
[*]Crouching M slide length reduced by 50%.
[/LIST]
are excesive.
Jean and Phoenix could be a character to be feared with any of the following:
better TK shot H (stay longer in screen at least), traps and shots that stay, or multiple specials per jump.
The real problem with Jean in vanilla was the Dark Phoenix metagame, but now this metagame has changed, so Phoenix can be defeated with any team, and even then she has bad matchups. In my opinion the nerf bat was excesive.
I think the nerf was too excesive. Just look at that list. Her health nerf is ridiculous. Her health is too damn low. Jean is too fragile. I don’t care if Dark Phoenix dies in one hit, but Jean should be more viable by herself. Frank West is a decent character in Level 1 or 2. Phoenix Wright can still fight without his power aura. Why can’t Jean be decent without Dark Phoenix. Why don’t they just Nerf Dark Phoenix. I hate that traps dissappear when she is hit, the same that happens to Rocket Racoon. They are traps for some reason. Why can’t she block after an air fireball. Many other characters can do a similar attack. You can just feel the Phoenix has to work too hard to be useful to a team. They just went too far.
Are you seriously implying that Regular Phoenix is WORSE than Phoenix Wright and lv1 Frank West?!
I mean… SERIOUSLY?
Phoenix is not a crap character now. Her gameplay has changed dramatically from vanilla, but she is still great for rushdown. In vanilla, you could be ass with your first two characters and just bring it home with Phoenix. With the meter building nerf to the game, and her lower health, you just need to not rely so much on her. She is just my sweeper for what Ammy/Deadpool can’t finish off. Phoenix has bad matchups now, but why shouldn’t she? Every character has to have obstacles to overcome and she shouldn’t be any different. I think the only things that she was nerfed too harshly on was the stupid health nerf, traps dissappearing and not being able to block after air fireball. I think they were smart to reduce her air actions, but she should be able to block since the fireball dissappears when she’s hit. If the tracking properties of air H fireball were the same as vanilla and it didn’t dissappear when hit, then I could understand not being able to block afterwards.
I updated the original post to weed out some inaccurate information. As it turns out, the TK Trap combo extension was present in Fate of Two Worlds. However, Phoenix did get a buff that wasn’t mentioned in the official changelog: A raw TK Overdrive M can now be linked into Burn Out Beak from mid-screen. This improves her rushdown and point game considerably, however, the health nerf makes it less viable.
I think the changes they made with Phoenix alone is fine.
One fireball in air unless they fly- seems fair
Traps go away when she is hit - harsh but fair still
and everything else which i find is a fair nerf except for the health nerf. I don’t think she deserved that one
but the problem with Phoenix is not even Phoenix its the game mechanics that changed. With gaining meter even harder, and the THC to steal meter. its ridiculous with every character but more so Phoenix.
Sure air x-fac saves her from Dorm chip coming in but still. A lot of players aren’t even scared or wanting to snap back Phoenix in cause doing that and killing her will just allow the opponent the ability to use supers now and if those characters are like Wesker and Dante who benefit so much from x-fac and supers then your better off killing those two and getting Phoenix with like little under 4 bars which more likely or not will make the opponent use x-fac to not take chip
With these different game mechanics and nerfs to Phoenix there sadly is no reason to use her anymore, think about it. If you are working hard to gain meter for Phoenix by damaging the opponents characters, it is possible you would have killed that one character with a single super bar if you weren’t playing for Phoenix and still not even being able to gain enough meter for her to turn dark.
I see no use in Phoenix anymore, she just doesn’t scare anyone any more and doesn’t even make your opponent play different or go for snap backs. the only person i actually even see use Phoenix anymore is Viscant and even from what i saw had more success without her.
I admit, MvC3 Phoenix needed a nerf cause of how easy it was to win with her but this is just ridiculous in UMvC3, Hell i see more Hsien-Ko’s and even Trons (which got way nerf) then i do Phoenixs let alone 1 every 40 matches i have seen with Dark Phoenix
I think saying she is useless is a little harsh. She just isn’t as overpowered as before. Unless the person has just wrecked my two other characters, I don’t rely on Dark Phoenix for the win. I think the key is to not play scared and to not be afraid to use the meter to get a KO. You just have to be more conservative with your meter and not do random hypers. If she gets touched it’s usually over… but on the other side, if she touches a character, they should die also. She is a true glass cannon. I’ve always loved Jean in the comics so I will probably always try to make Phoenix work. The only way I’d give her up is if they put other characters from Marvel I like as much, i.e. Ms. Marvel, Gambit, Cyclops, etc.