I’ve wondered why there isn’t a matchup thread for awhile, so now I’m just gonna make it. We can do the typical matchup things here.
So we all know the obvious bad matchups (morrigan, trish, hawkeye, ZERO), but lately I’ve been curious to see what people think of some of his other matchups?
For instance, what do people think of the captain america matchup? The first few times I played it I hated that matchup, I was trying to chi parry the shield slashes and then getting blown up when it came back at certain spaces, or getting blown up be a normal on my recovery frames at other spacings. When I saw justin play against Marn’s Cap. it started feeling a little easier once I saw he was abusing jumping C against him at shield slash range, but it still feels like an irritating matchup.
Also, thoughts on Iron Fist vs Vergil? If the vergil is bad enough to not make his teleports safe its free, but thats not an ideal matchup discussion. Once I play a vergil who knows how to make his teleports safe it feels a bit more ridiculous. Certain moves that I feel like I should be able to punish are really difficult to do so, if I’ve done it at all. The range on his normals seems to be long enough that iron fist has a really hard time doing anything to get pressure going.
Incidentally, I have trouble personally dealing with Ghost Riders. I can’t tell if its just me being free in that matchup, or because I tend to only see them online, or if theres a legitimate reason the matchup is difficult, but it feels obnoxious. If anyone has advice on dealing with that matchup in particular I’d like to see that?
So yeah, matchup discussion away
The rule of thumb as I’ve learned from many a painful experience, is that the smaller the character’s hitbox the more naturally difficult the match-up. Morrigan is the obvious one, but Ammy, Rocket Rocoon, etc. all just naturally make a lot of Iron Fist’s approach all the more difficult because they seem to slip under things.
Teleports are another really difficult trait among characters, because even if your plinking the shit out of you wavedashes they can stay away from you. Obviously where Iron Fist excels is in giant killing, he destroys Nemesis, Wesker, Hulk, and paper tanks like Akuma get destroyed with one mix-up.
I’ve been having some long sets recently and I’ve ended up in certain situations preferring Iron Fist at the back as opposed to Dorm which is how I usually orientate the team. The specific case of this was against a very capable Strange on anchor, where he uses Akuma then Doom as batteries for him then he can threaten with SoV XF into jump loops and his counter hyper.
Dorm was getting snubbed a lot by constant projectiles and sometimes mixed inputs where he teleported behind me. Essentially Strange with meter and XF had a lot to counter Dorm with as his movement isn’t particularly fluid so he gets hit by a lot of Strange’s stuff. Iron Fist however was able to pressure Strange thoroughly on the ground as he can get past his zoning with wave dashes, and if Strange was in the air he is threatened by Volcanic Roar and left/right/throw mixups upon coming down.
Though I would prefer Dorm vs Trish, if he dies I think Iron Fist has a much better matchup vs her than Wolverine does. His speed and ability to convert of throws is better than Wolverine’s, but as well as that the Volcanic Roar threat is very valuable and with XF becomes pretty much the death of her. If she tries to escape Wolverine you can Berserker Slash under her, cancel to Beserker Charge and see if she’s doing anything, and if she is DHC to VR as it’s 1 frame, like Storm’s Hail hyper.
I think being able to capitalise off of ground throws anywhere is crucial, otherwise you’re not really posing any sort of threat. That, coupled with the threat while they’re in the air from VR makes IF much scarier to face and in a way gives him a little bit more of a well rounded game if they’re under pressure on the ground, and air actions can be 1/3 or 2/3s their life gone depending on XF etc. XF makes him extremely scary as well, as he can combo all his throws and kill characters easily.
would hidden missiles help IF in any of these match ups? I use Spidey, IF, and Doom and Spider-mans assists are pretty bad
I feel like IF has a problem facing firebrand for sure…FB has a small hitbox when crouched and if yu try to do st.H,cr.H the cr.H will wiff. Plus FB has fireballs so u got watch out for those. Limiting yur movement and such. Also yu gotta watch out for the qcf+S move that bastard has. ESPECIALLY if yu’re wave dashing…can follow up with a nice combo and that move comes out pretty fast so watch out .
dante’s jam session helps a lot IF vs morrigan, doom and sentinel, the really worries is Magneto and Zero i think this last two chars are the worst MU to IF
Firebrand is another one of his worst matchups IMO, he beats Iron Fist like 8-2 (or possibly worse). Iron Fist has no way to approach him, FB controls all of the air in a large area around him, which is obviously IF’s poorest area. There’s literally no point in even attempting that matchup unless you’ve got something like Vajra or Missiles, just get IF out of there.
I’ve recently switched to IF/Dante/Akuma, and it seems good at covering his bad matchups while providing him with good combos. You can get 745,000 off any throw two bars, although you might be able to get more. You also get a safe DHC and Dante Akuma which is pretty good on it’s own.
hmm i kinda feel like certain characters with really good air tactics have to be careful when iron fist has meter because he can just volcanic roar as an anti air.for example, footdive and other divekicks, triangle jumps, empty teleports, spencer air horizontal zip unprotected, things like that. otherwise i feel that in order to succeed against stupid matchups like zero,viper,hawkeye,firebrand and all that, you must get really clean with movement,getting maximum damage from air grabs,blocking and maintaining pressure.