Anyone have any tips on fighting Taskmaster? I’m really having a hard time on this match up.
On getting hit with hyper beams etc., I found that most people throw them out when you start to get into a pattern, mostly because they get frustrated and don’t know what else to do, or they read your pattern. Try to keep your projectiles mixed up, and sometimes just empty jump to reposition yourself. I like to jump forward then dj forward or up and throw a bottle. If the other players start getting into a pattern (Deadpool machine guns, EMP, Doom beam, etc.) you can always toss out your bracelet to beat it. Waiting and appropriately timing lances/daggers usually works too.
For Taskmaster I’m still trying to figure this one out. His arrows and hyper usually beat yours out on pure speed, but yours beat his if you can anticipate. He can pretty much hyper your daggers and lances on reaction too. He’s also more mobile than you and can cover most ranges/angles, AND can do his hyper in the air. He can go toe to toe with Arthur pretty well at range, and it’s tough to keep him off up close. Pushblock is your friend, try to make good use of your opening and use bottle to keep him out.
Bottle is a good tool for MODOK too, double forward jump and bottle toss over his shield. I think if the bottle breaks in front of his shield the fire passes under too. I have to double check though. You can also duck blaster then :f::h: and duck the next one to get closer.
Arthur’s duck in general gives you a break from a lot of projectiles, so that you can duck one and throw lances/bracelet to beat out most beams.
For people who superjump, I like to use :f::h: to go under them and just start my keepout game from the other side. Sometimes you can catch them with dj :h: or bottle (or both). Other than that, it’s a good time to Gold armor and crossbow.
Some notes on particular projectiles:
Bottle- I love bottle, this keep you safe up close and when you’re jumping at someone. I often jump or double jump in and throw this at mid to close range. Since it basically drops right in front of you, the opponent often just has to block it directly or block the flames that come out. If they get hit b the flames, you can scythe > launch if close enough, or lance/bracelet. It also works great against people approaching you, as it has a nice arc right up and in front of Arthur. Useful to do jump u/f + :h: xx bottle vs. jumpins.
Axe- This I use mainly to push people away or to cover both normal jump and grounded opponents when I’m not sure what they’ll do. Try and throw it at a height that covers both of these and the opponent will usually have to super jump or block/get hit. Useful to try and push people back that are trying to normal jump over daggers/lances.
Crossbow- I use this when I expect people to normal jump over lances. Usually after I beat their projectiles a few times with lances. After I hit/block with this, I usually j.crossbow or air daggers.
That’s about all I have for now. Anyone have some gold armor strat? I usually just throw lances and then crossbow if they jump/superjump and bottle/axe when they try to approach.
I feel Arthur should almost never be played on point in Gold armor, just because it’s often so much more useful to keep him as an assist where his timer doesn’t run out, and where you can generally get another character to do more damage from a combo. He’s a VERY good character to save for a level 3 X factor though when in Gold armor. If your opponent already has used X factor and you have Gold Armor, you can basically chip them forever with daggers and Crossbow and make a relatively safe comeback that way.
Also I personally think daggers are overall more practical than lances in gold armor especially concerning the option of hit confirms. Without gold, it’s the other way around when you need that extra priority from lances to win projectile wars.
If there is one move I wish I knew how to implement practically, it’s the shield deflect. Like, I definitely think that move has potential, just we need to know more frame data so that we know better where to look for pressure gaps. Furthermore I’m really curious to know if you can get enough frame advantage from it to start a normal combo.
Taskmaster is considered by many Arthur users that he is either one of the hardest matches or the easiest matches that Arthur will encounter, the truth is…That it depends on who’s behind the pad/stick.
I have seen 2 types of playstyle with Taskmaster.
First, the overview and later the tactic.
1.Rushdown/Hello Skeletor
This type it’s just freaking annoying, he will rush you with the Spidey Swing, Shield Skills and with a pesky assist, like Sentinel or Doctor Doom. He will try to do a tricky crossup once that he manages to get in your territory that is achieved by doing a Spidey Swing and just an a.
, landing and starting a magic series. If that thing connects, say goodbye to 60% of your health bar.
Also, he will be just standing or crouching waiting for you to screw up a move to attack. Sure, you will have problems because that annoying assist will chip damage.
Another tricky move that Taskmaster has in his array of moves it’s the Unblockable Slash (insert name here). He will take advantage of your blocking and will start abusing this move while you are guarding the assist that the opponent is using.
1.Tactic
If you feel confident with your skills with Arthur you should probably stick to the Ghosts n’ Goblins playstyle listed in the main post. Use your assists to counter-attack his wave of projectiles.
Arthur needs protection, even if he (the opponent) has an assist like Doctor Doom and his Hidden Missiles, your assist will cover you in 2 ways, either receiving the damage or guarding you with a special move like Dante’s Jam Session. Thanks to Arthur’s short height you will have the opportunity to use your projectiles to keep Taskmaster away.
Also, use the Golden Armor in this one, because all of your projectiles will destroy both Taskmaster and his assists, including the Sentinel Drones.
Don’t be afraid to use your projectiles, if he switches to a Counter Stance to try to reflect your projectiles then that means that he is either afraid of your projectiles, or wants to try to deflect an attack to do a hyper. Either one leads to one answer: he will stop using his assists, and this will be your opportunity to chip or take out as much of his lifebar as possible.
Also, watch out for your Hyper time bar as it will deplete fast, be ready to change Arthur before hid armor breaks or try to time an assist to protect your Armor Break.
Other solution and I quote Brahma for this neat info it’s that the Fire Bottle will keep Taskmaster under pressure all the time, learn when and how to do this because this can lead to a major screw up and thus leading to our Silver Knight demise.
Defensive/‘I want to have photo reflexes like Taskmaster’
Okay, remember Guile from SSFIV? holding back and throwing projectiles until you screw up?, pretty much like that, plus the ability to counter-attack.
This type of play style it’s very strange and I have only seen a few players use this effectively, it’s abusing Taskmaster’s counter-stance, baiting attacks and putting you in situations where you have no window of time to recover or to respond with an attack. And of course using the same tactics that every Tasky player uses.
1.Tactic
Right…Probably you want to switch Arthur in this one, because Tasky will only be keeping you away, yes, that’s right; he might as well copy that ability and use it for his advantage. He will take little pieces of your life bar with every Aim of Hawkeye and if you try to counter-attack with a projectile he will either Hyper on reaction or try to deflect it.
If you want to endure the pressure and you are very confident, then you can use a mixup of both the Brave Knight and the Chivalrous Knight play styles. You too have the options and the tools to force him to either retreat or to punish him, the Fire Torch, the Silver Shield, the Joust and many others moves, and the main idea it’s to provoke him into changing his style or to pressure him first.
More info available soon, please share your experiences with other characters and other match-ups, doesn’t matter if it’s too hard or too easy, everything will be helpful.
I use the Silver Shield a lot in my rushdowns, the move HAS the potential to become a staple move because it’s the only special move that Arthur has to easily stop and punish Rushdown characters, like Wolverine and Amaterasu. When used properly can lead to a BnB combo or to hit-confirm a Goddess’ Bracelet, the window it’s a little small but hey, the reward it’s big.
I need to find more info about the properties of the Silver Shield and the Blessed Silver Shield, maybe it’s visual or my imagination but it appears that if someone strikes the Silver Shield the amount of stagger inflicted it’s minimum, and when powered up it staggers a little more. Also I need to double check that both shields deflect/reflect Projectiles/Attacks that hit low or at medium height, because it loses to attacks that come directly from the air.
I’m not sure if this has been pointed out before, but as you cross up with jumping s you can cancel into crossbow and continue the combo off cr. M. This same way you can do an instant overhead with j.m, j.m, j.s xx crossbow. Works on all big characters and maybe others.
One thing of note is that IM repulsor assist nullifies Doom missiles. You have to be careful though, if you do that a few times you might get him hypered, so make sure you keep him protected.
I think Gold Arthur on point is good, even without XF. His projectiles beat out pretty much everything but hypers (and some hypers too) he can easily chase runaway superjumps with crossbow, lock down with lance and bottle and push them out with axe and bottle. You pretty much have a solution to anything your opponent tries. Plus, everything does really good chip. The only time I don’t reccomend gold armor is vs. teleporters, as a good player will time and space their teleport to negate Arthur’s keepaway. As always though, smart play and not falling into patterns can help out here, but I’d rather save Gold armor for a non-teleporter.
When my GA meter is about up I do a few things:
-I usually throw gold axe which pushes them out so I can raw tag safely and keep armor as an assist, or throw gold axe and let my armor break, at which point I can get regular armor back and DHC into something safe (or wait for a jumpin and GA DHC into Shulk AA throw hyper)
-DHC bracelet into something safe, so I can keep GA for assist.
Now, getting Arthur out with GA intact is good, since it lessens the damage he takes and gives him stronger dagger/bottle assists, but leaving him with only seconds on the GA timer can be risky, especially if you tag in back in only to armor break. The solution for this is to DHC back into bracelet when you need Arthur. The armor won’t break until the bracelet is over. On hit you’re safe and on block the pushback and blockstun usually keep you safe. I think a few characters can hit you from fullscreen (Dormammu flame hyper, Hulk wave/tsunami, Shulk torpedo xx hyper?) but most other characters can’t close the distance fast enough to hurt you.
Alternately, you can always tag Arthur out naked/normal armor so that you can DHC in with Armor hyper.
Honestly, GA can be kind of matchup specific. There are some matchups and players that you want to use GA on point, some for assist, and some Arthur does fine without it.
Totally agree with Brahma regarding the GA on point, it’s about matchups where starting with the GA on point it’s better or not.
About what Crono_SteelShade said about the crossup with the a.:s: it’s very helpful, but I think that I made a point about this on another post, if that’s the case, then I will bring out what I wrote because there’s a little of frame advantage if you cancel the a.:s: with a projectile to land a standing :l: to hit confirm a magic series.
The idea it’s like this:
Do a normal or super jump, on your way down do an a.:s: and when you hit the character cancel the hit with a projectile, the projectile will either hit or whiff, both of this results will lead to a frame advantage that normally will be too difficult to do when performing only an a.:s:, because Arthur once that he lands after the attack will take a little step to recover completely, at this time you will be open for an attack or a launcher.
By doing this you will completely bypass the ‘recovery’ that Arthur has and you’ll land with enough time to hit-confirm a magic series.
With GA, especially if someone is spamming beams or machine guns, GA puts an end to it. Gold lance into gold lance is very good, and they do a hefty chunk of damage and decent chip, and makes them think twice about throwing projectiles at you. It forces an extremely strong keepout against both characters that rushdown, as well as other keepaways. The only thing that is really strong against it is teleport.
One of the biggest problems Arthur has with GA is meter usage. Using one gold armor requires another meter if you let it break. Another after that for GA, which means if you plan on keeping Arthur on point, you need to have a god battery on hand. It seems like a lot of people use Arthur as a battery for their other characters, but IMO he is much more dangerous with meter. GA, Bracelet loops, lv3 are all excellent tools, and I’ve found that even though I picked up Arthur for a battery and assist initially, I’ve recently started to use my other characters to battery for Arthur. I’m even thinking about pairing him with Morrigan or Ammy to help build meter during keepaway.
I really like the idea of Arthur with Ammy. I believe that there’s some synergy there, that both can contribute to each other nicely by using each other assists.
Imagine Ammy pressuring with the Fire Torch…The shivers…o_O.
And the Bloom assist it’s a yes-yes when pairing Ammy with Arthur for the extra meter that he really needs.
Anyone fight vs. Dormammu much? This one is pretty tough for Arthur, his keepout is tough to get around with Arthur’s low mobility, plus he has teleport and Chaos flame that both wreck Arthur’s projectile game.
Also Ace, was thinking maybe on the first post, have a section with each projectile, then a spoiler tag that gives all the info on that weapon, i.e. properties in normal/GA, durability, how to use etc. What do you think? I’d be happy to contribute.
It will be much appreciated, the info is there, if you need a hand I will gladly help too, just give me an example of how do you want to do it.
Right now I’ll focus on Dormmamu, since I was experimenting with Taskmaster and got some results, because right now Im feeling that the match with Dormmamu it’s like 6-4 like Tasky’s.
Don’t really play a lot of Dormammus, but when I do they usually try to out camp me. I think Gold armor is a must for this match up, but that’s just me.
Ace, probably a project I’ll get to next week, I’m out of town this weekend.
Part of the problem with Dorm is that Chaos flame can beat your whole projectile game on reaction. He sees you throw something, bam 1/3 of your life gone. Coupled with Arthur’s low mobility, Dorm can just run away from Arthur all day, and teleport or flame everytime you throw something. Getting in close is no good either because of flame carpet and teleport. You just at him, carpet or teleport, you try to joust in, same deal. So far I don’t see a good answer for this matchup with Arthur.
Also, I’m realizing how big j.bottle is to Arthur’s game. It’s both his best keepaway tool and his best approach as well. It’s quickly becoming my most used projectile. On jumpin bottle, if the actual bottle hits a grounded character you get free c.s.:h::f::h: into combo of your choice. If you’re farther away like after a jump back bottle you get free daggers/lances. If the flames hit I usually crossbow or bracelet.
Also awesome is lv3 super when they call in an assist, XFC into bracelet. Makes quick work of pesky assists like Doom missiles.
I believe that the *Golden Armor *is a must too, but wanna know the downfall of this?, many enemies just sit there running with Dormammu and wait patiently until you either screw up with a projectile to counter-attack with Chaotic Flame or wait until your timer runs out to do the hyper.
It’s very situational y’know, if you manage to lock out Dormammu before he does the same to you then it’s allright, but if you see that you are having troubles with him both on the keepaway and the offense, then tag out Arthur, there’s no need to waste poor Arthur or meter; but save it for your Golden Armor or Silver Armor in case that your time meter is running out once that you tag in Arthur again.
Also watch out for the Purification ‘locks’. Don’t get cornered in the Air by any means, always try your best to get out, the same applies in the ground, you have a better chance to fight Dormmamu on the middle rather than the corner.
No worries then, have fun in the weekend, in the meantime I’ll further investigate the latent problem with the Dormammu match to develop a strategy and give it up the final touches to Tasky’s match up too.
About the Fire Bottle, today I was testing this on Live and the results were satisfactory, either using it in the Air like a “drop-bomb” to approach, or to cancel the a.:s: with the torch for an easy hit-confirm besides the crossbow that is, and finally to do some tricky cross-ups using the a.:s:.
I strongly suggest and request to all of you guys to take the time to give it a try on the Fire Bottle, believe me, it’s amazing. This move and the Silver Shield should not be taken as an assistance move but as a staple move in our approaching, zoning and pressure.
Anyway, it’s very early in the morning and someone stole my Lunch out of my locker (those bastards), after finishing the prosecution of the scoundrel who did this I’ll take time in the afternoon to test with my friends those 2 matchups (Tasky n’ Dormmy).
Well, I played a low level Dorm recently, and this is what I think.
Arthur is good against Dorm. As an assist.
Not having a dash is reeeeealy lame against Dorm, just because he doesn’t need to predict anymore to keep you out. But seriously, Gold Dagger assist is really good at locking him down, and then once you get in on him, like any other keepaway character he suffers at getting you off him. Provided of course he isn’t catching you with random Hypers. At any rate the point is generally you’re better off using another character with better mobility to get in on Dorm. Saving Arthur as a projectile assist really helps in this matchup.
Ugh, still on the Dorm matchup. The best I can do with Arthur on point is try to stay in between his l/m/h purification/hole ranges using joust and don’t get caught in the air, which is hard, because I feel like it’s hit best approach. Up close don’t bother trying to hit him directly if he’s near his fire carpet. If he’s farther back jump over it with bottle approach, and hope he doesn’t teleport. As always, don’t get predictable because he can Chaos flame a lot of your stuff.
I did have some success with gold bottles. In fact gold bottles stop a lot of stuff like Doom missiles, Sent armor, stops Tron, does damage to Hsien-Ko while you block. Plus it has fire even after the bottle hit an enemy. Great as an assist too, thinking about dropping daggers to try this out.
I was playing against this Super Skrull player for a bit. I kinda like this MU because I think Arthur cuts off Super Skrull’s approaches.
If you are throwing out projectiles he’ll use Meteor Mash. Heavenly Sword Stops it. His air dash sends him upward, I usually throw axes or fire bottle or just use anti air assist like Dante’s Jam Session.
Super Skrull just sucks imo. But yeah, Arthur almost certainly shuts him down pretty convincingly.
Skrull can aa grab Arthur out of the air quite easily because of Arthur’s floaty jump. This can easily lead to a highly damaging combo, shutting down Arthur’s main form of offense. This mean you have to spend more time on the ground. And meteor smash is still scary. If they’re arbitrarily throwing it out, no problem, but if they read your projectiles game they basically get a free meteor smash into combo.
Dormammu aint fun
This shit is 7-3 his way.
Arthur’s projectiles <<<<<<<<< Dormammu’s projectiles except f+hp I think.
The best suggestion is to bait out Dormammu’s hyper. Not the ball, the fire stream. The stream hyper is ass unless you combo it. If doesn’t look like it has recovery time, but the hit box just stops after a while, so you can counter with your hyper which you can loop, which means that Dormammu’s dead. pressing jab makes the illusion that he is throwing knives, so if the dormammu player isn’t paying attention, he will try to do stream, and then you can bracelet his ass.
The ball super is too good. It follows, and he can teleport behind you, which means that you get pwned.
Just some ish to think about:
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Rushing down with Haggar or Tron is a solid idea. The invulnerablity will help you get in easier.
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Lance DOESN’T work.
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Torch is your best friend. TK Torch is great to rushdown.
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Axe is good for Dorm’s square jumps.
Um… thats all I got.