I think Wesker beats Iron Man if he plays really lame but most don’t do that. Iron Man’s matchups vs characters you see go, in my opinion, something like what I’ll list below. Notably with Iron Man assists help him out very little, whereas the other persons assist matters heavily; as a one on one character I think he’s actually pretty strong he just can not at all deal with the other guy in a start of round or coming in situation when they have an assist to apply consistent pressure. For this reason I’ve actually begun to really like Iron Man as an anchor, and the Iron Man/Doom shell is honestly infinitely better as the Doom/Iron Man shell because of the ridiculousness of Doom with unibeam assist and the fact that Iron Man is frankly somewhat scary in x factor with kills of repulsar and an incoming 5050 that leads to more mixup.
Viper: 5-5: IM gets outzoned pretty hard but she has a tough time getting him out of the air, just gotta play super gay and air dash down off smart bombs, if she tries to approach you you automatically win though.
Dante(anchor matchup): 6-4: Pretty free and one of the few matchups I like using cr.H missile in, every option he has to react to missile with is easily reactable(unibeam for projectiles, repulsar for teleport) and you can jump unibeam his airplays on reaction, yet again if he goes in he will die and he has a tough time getting assists out with unibeams blowing up all his options to cover teleport.
Haggar: VERY assist dependent, 6-4 vs most Haggar teams, 4-6 vs. Jam: Haggar get’s kept out pretty easily but he’s still able to advance forward. This is normally not an issue as it is very easy to super jump vs Haggar, however Jam completely blows this up and gives him corner pressure that IM probably won’t make it out of, Jam in general fucks up IM pretty bad.
Morrigan: 4-6: Most Morrigans will get blown up by IM because the matchup is weird, he can stay in the air forever and if he gets hit by a fireball he can stay there even longer. Repulsar also blows up Morrigan’s favorite corner escape of airdashing at you with shell kick. Unfortunately he can’t force anything and if the other guy is smart enough he’s simply out gunned.
Spencer: 3-7: Free as fuck, need 3 meters to not get blown up for doing anything on the ground, and even if you do repulsar isn’t fast or horizontal enough to beat out zip plus assist, best option is to control space from a neutral super jump and hope he gets impatient but really you shouldn’t ever win this.
Strider(anchor matchup): 6-4: He can’t teleport on you for shit and missile plus unibeam beats his projectiles. I tend to net a lot of kills in this matchup by confirming level 3 off a neutral game unibeam hit because Strider players get antsy when they can’t mash teleports.
Vergil: 3-7: I would make it 2-8 if it wasn’t Marvel. He cuts unibeam, outranges your normals that outrange everyone else, and generally counters every facet of what Iron Man has to do to eek by in matchups. You can land a cr.m if you get lucky and make sure you kill off it, once swords comes out(which you can’t stop) it’s actually unwinnable.
Wesker: 4-6: All he has to do is super jump gun, you can’t touch him at all and even if you do have an assist it’ll get sniped, the only reason it’s not worse is because it takes him a long time to kill you this way so you have a lot of chances to random him out with repulsar or air throw. If he tries to approach you on the ground your cr.m is actually better than his and you can catch him.
Zero: 3-7: Same as Wesker except he kills you off his runaway and does scarier mixups, don’t get impatient with repulsars in this matchup because he can bait them very easily with his varied air movement, best bet is to scare them and hope for an air grab.
Dormammu: 6-4: Pretty easy actually, he can’t risk doing pillars while you are in the air because of how ridiculously fast you cross the screen and kill him for it, teleports also get wrecked. It feels like his air dash was tailor made to beat Dormammu actually this matchup feels so nice~~~~~.
Dr. Doom:(anchor matchup 6-4, if doom has assist 4-6): You out gun him and he can’t approach you where you can approach him, sadly if he has just a little more durability and a better way to bait Repulsar, such as a beam or really any projectile, suddenly the tides are turned and you can’t really zone him out anymore, this match is a lot of fun and very good practice for learning repulsar vs. air throw and placing good crouch mediums.
Hawkeye(anchor matchup): 4-6: Really hard to approach him, but if you can get him to blow his meter it’s winnable, also notably his level 3 will normally whiff on response to your own, so if you can catch him on the ground it’s pretty safe to go for even if he has meter, stay at super jump height and try to bait gimlet, if he’s not biting then go ham.
Magneto: 4-6: Disruptor is far too fast for Iron Man to handle and Magneto moves around to well to get hit by repulsar legitimately, try to knock him out of the air with j.h and super jump on reaction to his approach and come down with j.s to attempt to beat crossunders and the like. If he zones hard enough you will lose so you have to scare him somehow.
Nova: 4-6: Slide beats the shit out of Iron Man you honestly have no answer for it at all other than to jump, I like to corner myself in this matchup so he can’t mix me up as much as I land and then simply mash ADD normals from the air which ends up becoming a bit of a stalemate. Don’t get scooped.
Phoenix: 3-7: You’re fucked.
Sentinel(anchor matchup): 6-4: The only thing you really have to watch out for is him reading unibeam with HSF and j.m, outside of that repulsar zones him very hard and jump unibeams take up too much space for him to handle. j.h and j.s wreck him pretty bad just stay patient.
Taskmaster: 3-7: you get outzoned and super jumping and mashing ADD(IM’s best answer to everything) doesn’t work vs shield skills. Secret Move beats hail mary level 3’s for only a bar and if he has an assist it only gets worse. Absolutely one of Iron Man’s worst matchups.
Wolverine: 4-6: He’s too fast and repulsar is too slow, take the same strategy as vs. Nova and make sure to ground throw if he tries to slash you in the corner, that should never work.
Iron Man is better than I used to believe but most people are playing him the entirely wrong way and not understanding his tools to win. Iron Man is not a character that needs to be “unlocked” he in fact has a very simple gameplan and is simply unwieldy to use. Abuse range(j.h, cr.m), abuse anti air(repulsar), and abuse damage(convert everything into level 3 or x factor and kill). His main mixup is low throw(very good throw range and damage off throw in the corner) and his incoming is pretty decent so abuse it, repulsar no spread throw is unbeatable vs people who have never seen it before. If you aren’t using unibeam as your assist you should really play another character because it is very unique as a beam and the reason to pick Iron Man. Learn your ranges, and don’t be an idiot.
