I love having Arthur’s dagger assist when fighting dormammu. If they try to do a raw Stalking Flare (the death ball), I just call arthur and super jump. The ball follows the point character for about 1 second, and then dormammu gets hit by a dagger. No more death ball.
Super jump and throw daggers. 3 gold daggers (in XF3) will deal 30-40% damage to fliers.
Any advice for fighting Dr. Strange? he has to be one of the worst matchups for arthur.
Rushdown with j.S and go for the Hellbound slash bnb. Lance toss in gold armor will go through the eye of agamotto. If Strange has bar, don’t do anything punishable and watch out for the air grabs. Arthur can punish teleports with Heavenly Slash. He can also punish a random spell of vishanti if he is in the ground with heavenly slash cancelled into goddess bracelet (regardless of the distance).
I want to ask for some input on fighting Spencer, for he’s giving me hell.
No matter what projectile I throw, he can use his zip line to either go under it, over it, or even freaking through it. Worst of all is that the fire bottle is an absolute no-no. It will never work against him under any circumstances. He can even punish Arthur’s normals with significant ease, though I suppose I should be following up blocked normals with lances anyway. I can’t just easily block everything, either, because his zip line often crosses over me and makes defense into a tricky activity.
So far, the best I’ve got is chucking an ax slightly above the ground and following it up with lances wherever he might be going; but it still isn’t entirely effective. I’m considering employing more crossbows, though, what do you think?
How are you able to punish vishanti with heavenly slash into goddess bracelet? According to the guide, that’s only 24 frames of invincibility (when timed perfectly), but spell of vishanti is active for 30 frames. I tried it in training mode and I always get clipped by the vishanti
my bad, It won’t work, was doing some lab work with several characters and confused Vishanti with other hyper, you can actually punish Vishanti with Heavenly Slash cancelled into golden armor. Thanks for the clarification.
Yeah I did notice that golden armor works, but Dr Strange, as with any other character with a good runaway game, is not one that I like to armor up against
Reading through this thread I noticed several posts asking for or mentioning information on the durability of Arthur’s projectiles, but it doesn’t look like anyone has posted said information. Luckily I have a copy of the bible aka the Bradygames guide so I can remedy this situation:
Daggers:
Normal–3 points per dagger, for reference this makes them the same as Tasky arrows.
Golden–5 points per dagger, a substantial increase. 15 durability for all 3 daggers makes this one of the strongest projectiles in the game, even Plasma Beam H can’t go through all 3 daggers. This is notable because it means that GA daggers Arthur is the strongest projectile assist in the game in terms of durability points. GA daggers assist can easily nullify beam assists, clear out drones, etc.
Lances:
Normal–5 points per lance for 10 total. This is alot but still not enough to beat everything else clean, notably Doom Plasma Beam H has 12 points, and it’s not enough to go through Nova’s shield if he has any red life when he places it (although it is barely enough to kill the shield and hit Nova with the second lance if he has no red life to put into it). It also still loses to medium priority stuff like Hawkeye piercing bolt.
Golden–10 medium points. Basically it shits on anything. For anyone who is not aware of how the durability system works and wants to know precisely why it shits on anything that’s not a hyper, there are 3 levels of priority when it comes to projectile durability, low, medium, and high (only hypers have high durability). An attack with a lower priority will lose straight up to one with a higher priority rating regardless of how many durability points the two projectiles have. Very few characters even have medium priority projectiles at all, and definitely no one else has a medium priority projectile with anywhere near 10 points. The vast majority of normal projectiles are low priority.
Crossbow:
Normal–3 points per bolt for 6 total. 6 isn’t bad but this projectile will still lose to most others, even fairly weak ones, since the bolts go at different angles they rarely both clash with an opposing projectile, and even stuff like Hadoken can go through a single bolt.
Golden–5 points per bolt for 15 total, the same as daggers. Like most golden projectiles they will straight up beat just about anything else.
Bottle:
Normal–The bottle itself has 5 points, and the guide says that “each hit of flames has 1 low priority durability point.” It doesn’t specify how many “hits” the flames have, so I went into training mode and chucked a few of them at the dummy. The most I could get it to do was 6 hits when it landed right next to the dummy, so I assume that’s how many durability points the flame wall has. This makes sense since people have reported it eating Dorm’s flame carpet, which has 5 points.
Golden–The bottle has 2 frames x 5 points, which basically means that it has 10 points. The wall of flames is stated to have 3 low points per flame hit. When I hit the dummy with the bottle directly in training mode, he took 9 hits, so I assume there are 8 hits during the flame wall, which means it has 24 total points of durability (holy smokes).
Axe:
Normal–10 points. Notably this is the same as 2 lances. I think lances are better as your go-to ground projectile during projectile wars since you can get the same total amount of durability points out there, but the first lance comes out faster than the axe, meaning you have half of your durability points out sooner rather than having all of them later.
Golden–3 frames x 3 medium points. Same as the golden lance pretty much.
Scythe:
Normal–3 low points making it by far Arthur’s weakest projectile, as most people have probably already figured out.
Golden–5 low points. This is the only one that doesn’t get ridiculous in gold armor, for some reason they chose to keep it relatively crappy. At least it can nullify a Hadoken now.
For completion’s sake, the Cross Sword (b+H) has 5 low points. It doesn’t change during gold armor.
Also some info on Arthur’s Shield Deflect since it was mentioned a couple times. You can combo off it but it’s situational. It causes a stagger state which lasts a set amount of frames, while the Shield Deflect itself has 26 active frames and 15 recovery. Since it can deflect an attack during any of those 26 active frames, the amount of time between when it recovers and when the stagger state ends varies depending on how late the counter happens during the active frames. If you counter the opponent on the 23rd active frame, they might still be reeling by the time you recover allowing for a combo followup, whereas if you stagger them on the 2nd active frame you have to go through all 24 remaining active frames and then the 15 recovery frames before you can act again, so you might not have time to get the combo.
It also depends on spacing. An opponent who is countered very close to you and left in range of faster startup moves like c.L can probably be combo’d afterward much more often than one who is staggered from midscreen (like if you countered Vergil st.H from near max range) and who could only be reached by a lance charge afterwards (probably not possible to combo them in that situation). Unfortunately, it only counters low/mid attacks, which prevents it from being used against superjumpers; if it could counter high attacks I think it would be awesome against stuff like Hagger sj + pipe, since from sj height they wouldn’t be able to see that you used it and hesitate. Even more unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work on air attacks that can be blocked low either (tested on Foot Dive, though I may have mistimed it or something, would welcome others to do their own testing).
When I was messing around with it against the CPU, I found cr.M to be your best bet for a followup as it has the best combination of startup frames + range. Since the stagger sends them reeling away from you during your recovery frames, they are usually not in range for L attacks by the time you can act, and cr.H generally seemed to be too slow. cr.M -> cr.H -> Hellbound or launcher into whatever seems like it would work pretty consistently though. Also you can just cancel the counter into goddess bracelet regardless of range for easy damage.
As for projectiles, the move nullifies projectiles while active, meaning that not only is Arthur projectile immune, but projectiles that hit him simply disappear. You could use it on reaction to slow projectiles like Air Play I guess, but the most appealing use I thought of was to call an assist and then use the move to cover them. This is very situational since Arthur can win most projectile wars (meaning you’d be better off just chucking stuff to cover the assist), but there are some characters who can overpower his projectiles like Doom, and in this case you could use the Shield Deflect to get something like missiles onto the screen. Note however that it does not work against high priority (i.e. hyper combo) projectiles.
One final interesting property of the move is that Arthur has no hurtbox behind the shield, and I was able to verify this in training mode. While the move is active the shield becomes Arthur’s hurtbox, and Arthur’s body itself is not considered a part of the hurtbox. The guide suggested using this property to fight certain crossups with it, like Wolvie zerker slash; they either get countered or just whiff if you time it right. I imagine this would be very tough to pull off in practice, but it’s something to think about. I can imagine it being useful in matchups like Hulk and Cap; I verified that you can in fact counter Gamma Charge with Shield Deflect, so if they’re like 3/4 screen you could just throw it out there pretty safely and get a free combo if they decided to charge.
Last but not least, I saw someone say that the Shield Deflect seemed to cause a longer stagger during Gold Armor or something to that effect. I can say that this is not true (unless the bible is wrong). The guide explicitly states that Shield Deflect’s properties do not change during Gold Armor (which is total BS, I want that foot dive counter :’-( ).
Many thanks for the vast info in that last post. Everything is much clearer to me now.
It actually goes from destroying projectiles that hit it to reflecting them in GA. That’s it, though; too bad =(
I messed around with GA shield a second ago and it can deflect both of Morrigan’s soulfists in her mirror mode, but the timing is pretty tight. I guess it can at least make her block something every once in a while.
What does Arthur have that beats Skrulls Meteor Smash?
Heavenly Slash. It might be tough to do if you don’t know what direction he’s coming down from though. Also keep in mind that Meteor Smash is punishable on block (iirc).
I know it’s punishable but the guy I play against has arrows behind it to make it safe. Also when the meteor smash causes me to switch sides it is severely hard to react to.
Yeah that sucks. Another option is the cross sword (b+H) which covers the area directly above Arthur’s head, but it’s slow and can’t be canceled, it would have to be used pre-emptively. You could also try using lance charge to get away from where Skrull lands, then canceling into goddess bracelet to punish, though if Task arrows are out at the same time it could throw a wrench into things. Of course, you have your own assists which could be used to nullify Tasky arrows or stop Skrull himself as he’s coming down (repulsor blast or Hulk AA assist for example). But if all else fails, you just basically have to treat it like a teleport and respect it.
I’ve found Cross Sword to actually be very useful against quite a few aerial approaches. Zero and Wolverine, for instance, usually end up taking the sharp end to the face trying to super jump against my camping.
I thought about using back+H but it is really slow. Also I run Arthur anchor so I really don’t have the option of using an assist. I might just have to repsect it like you said or just learn to react to in with Heavenly SlashxxGoddes Braclet.
I play a ton of Skrull players and Ive gotten these to work:
s.M (You have to throw this out as soon as you see him do it, big chance for error but I have landed this before consistantly. Gives you a free combo afterwards)
4H (Pre-emptive but it does work well)
s.S (Has a nice hitbox around Arthur and you cant get crossed up since it auto corrects, tends to trade though. If you dont trade you get a free air combo)
Heavenly Slash (Will beat the smash clean but you might get crossed up as always.)
Fire Dragons (For obvious reasons)
I also suggest that rather then keeping Skrull out by throwing daggers/lances/etc, focus more on baiting out Meteor Smashes and landing an anti air. Most Skrull players wont run up an punch you head on anyway. Of course that doesnt meant dont use projectiles, throwing out a crossbow every now and then is always good to maintain control.
Arthur/Missiles vs Hawkeye/Missiles, what’s your thoughts on this matchup? Played this earlier and it seems impossible for Arthur, greyhound interrupts assist calls, gimlet punnishes every button you press, Arthur doesn’t have enough speed or durability, Hawkeye seems ultimately like a better character than Arthur.
Yeah, Hawkeye is a douche (and totally a better char than Arthur), but the matchup is not nearly as hopeless for Arthur as it would be for some. Probably the most important thing to keep in mind is that all 3 of Arthur’s hypers are frame 1 invincible, and since you can jump during goddess bracelet, you should be able to punish Gimlet pretty much anytime you’re on the ground when Hawkeye does it. Gold Armor + DHC can also punish it and give you gold daggers assist, which should make it easier for your other chars to fight as gold daggers overpower all of Hawkeye’s projectiles except piercing bolt (but that has twice the startup of triple arrow) and will pierce through Hawkeye to hit Doom as well. You can also just do random goddess bracelet and unless he’s already in the air Hawkeye has to respect it.
Speaking of gold armor obviously gold lances walk all over Hawkeye’s projectiles if you just get a second to chuck one. I would start by doing a random super to get frame advantage (goddess bracelet is super + on block) and then start chucking the lances, just make sure you do it when Hawkeye’s grounded or he will gimlet you. As long as you have more meter to goddess bracelet in response to gimlet, you should be able to just throw lances for the next twenty seconds without Hawkeye doing anything about it. Golden crossbow will also beat pretty much anything he does if he starts jumping alot.
Another option is to rush the fuck down. Your best way to do this would be random goddess bracelet for frame advantage + assist call afterwards to cover your approach, or better yet, gold armor in response to gimlet. Since gimlet is so laggy you will have frame advantage afterwards and you can move forward while simultaneously forcing Hawkeye to respect you with S-canceled air crossbows. There is also the option of saving Arthur for last so you have XF3 + gold BS and are more likely to have the fire dragon on deck which completely changes the matchup.
But at the end of the day, if you find yourself having to fight him as regular Arthur without meter, well… yeah, you are probably boned there. Welcome to playing Arthur 