I will do my best to address a few concerns here because they’re all legit.
Kensanity: From what I know from my many matches against Frank West teams is that he is most successful when he’s teams with Dante, Trish, Skrull, and other characters whose specials (Soul and Round Harvest)or Hypers (Full Team Hyper/Million dollars)are multi hitting while Frank gets to move around and take as many pictures from his hearts content. The issue with your first team of Ghost Rider/ Shuma/ Frank is that you may not get many levels off of those two characters with him in the anchor position. Ghost Rider can rack up many hit for Frank but it’s not quite the same and at best, you may be looking at Level 2-3 by the time Frank has to duke it out with other anchors. Not that Frank is a bad character when he doesn’t have level 4 but I think we can all agree that Frank is a unique character that lands on every tier per level plus his health is solid. I would put Frank in the second position so that he could be TACed into off Ghost Rider and that should help him gain levels. He may even need to take a swig of that bottle of antifreeze he pulls out to help him along. A weakness of this team is that a snapback can ruin the team synergy. Not only will they called in Shuma most likely but they will also keep Frank down in levels by killing. It’s not an impossible team to manage but you’ll have to experiment with Ghost Rider and Frank synergy since Frank’s assist is really good. Your second team in that current order sounds pretty solid since Modok has one of the fastest beams in the game and is surprisingly scary in level 3 X-Factor and after he’s “learned you” with those cubes. Even his airborne laser melts away an alarming amount of health. This team has more apparent potential that may not require as much time in the danger room as the first. Hope that helped.
I still caution against using Shuma in the anchor position. He has a hard time getting in on people without assists and can be run away from. This does change with level 2-3 X-Factor but when it runs out after having been kept away from, he just looks like a deflated green tire flying around the screen.
Eternal Blaze: You’re right. Shuma’s pose is like She-Hulk’s lamppost swing except he can’t cancel it with any moves outside of X-factor. This leaves him prone to enemies having enough time to walk up behind him, taunt, and then do the most damaging combo they can think of. However, something I learned early is that he is the biggest troll in the game. This window of posing time is perfect after he has confirmed a Mystic Stare into one of his hypers. His hypers are fast enough that a Shuma can wait for the eyes to explode which causes an OTG that he can relaunch from. A knockdown from this with his Kirby Drop allows him to repeat it a few times with this Hyper Mystic Ray hyper a few times also or (I may be wrong) for as long as Shuma has meter. I will supply a video.
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The timing of landing Shuma’s Hyper Mystic Smash from Ghost Rider’s chain hyper is tricky at best and depends on the height of the hit character. Ghost Rider’s hyper ends with two hits and Shuma’s HMS hyper OTG’s at all ranges so long as they get hit by the bouncing balls within the time frame of having been knocked down. The trick is DHCing between the first and second part of Ghost Rider’s slam move at the end of his hyper for the character to be at perfect height to get hit by all of Shuma’s hyper. When successful, it’s incredibly damaging. If not, the character pops out while Shuma is posing.
I an able to get level 4 off of ghost rider to frank west dhc very consistently but that is why i run ghost rider/frank west/xxx
i honestly only run frank west because i think his synergy with ghost rider is fairly good. i wouldn’t mind trying something like ghost rider/shuma/modok. seems like it would work well too.thanks for the advice!
Im Curious to know how you guys are using Gr with the rest of your team, not necessarily team order but what the roles your other two characters fill as well as their assist.??
I’ve been Running GR,Vergil, Dorm since the start of UMVC3 not because i had any plan of team synergy but because i just think they’re cool characters. My only sub strategy was a versatile team composition - Start Gr to zone out, Vergil for mobility and i used dorm in MVC3 so i knew he was good fr xfactor lvl 2-3 chip and damage plus he can fly,zone and rush a bit.
Now this is how they serve GR on point:
Vergil’s rapid slash assist is fucking great for zoning with GR it pushing them all the way back to the end of the screen and resets the zoning situation. I can also use it as an OTG into and extended combo with Gr’s hell fire or Back H. When i get the chance i usually DHC into devil trigger and switch gr back to buff the hitbox and speed on the assist, not to mention if Virgil gets hit in DT he will get his health right back.
Dorms dark hole assist creates a big wall that hits and eats projectiles so i can get in with GR. On hit, its very easy to combo from and on block its a good for 1 high low mixup, locks the opponent in place and does miracles for corner pressure with GR’s back H… And Again i can use it with GR’s OTG’s
So that’s the basic idea of my team, someone for any situation and my other two characters help GR enough that im content to just keep grind out games and learning match ups. Really, you just have to come to grips with the reality that GR cant fight everyone, just abuse his strengths when you can then when you face someone that gives him trouble, safely bring in some one that can shut that shit down.
Gr’s good for zoning, long range damage,punishing assist, taking hits and building a ton of meter, so use him for that. You don’t need to end every combo with a super just harass and annoy the other player so the panic and get off their game plan. Then when he dies, your other two characters should be a good clean up crew.
I agree with someone in the GR Threads who said that Ghost Rider has to engage the War of Attrition. He can do good damage but like you said, Onyx, he’s good for building meter and frustrating the opposition. In my GR/ Shuma/ Dorm team, I’ll have Ghost Rider picking angles while he’s being covered by Shuma’s fullscreen beam. If I’m fighting a teleporter or Trish, I’m a little more conservative with my Jump S. I use the two of them basically as one character to build meter for my Dormammu as anchor. When GR dies, I let Shuma do his thing for a while but then I bring in Dorm so he can start charging spells while being covered by the assist as well but I’ll bench him before he’s half life or so. I’m not afraid to sacrifice Shuma while one of the best anchors in the game heals up and takes advantage of Level 3 X Factor. His ability to kill someone off of raw chip is obnoxious.
So i had some decent games on the peacful jay stream this morning, and since i don’t have a capture device or play in tourneys this is the only way i can show my GR team. My Matches start at 18:45:52 and from what i remember i go on a streak so you can watch a bulk of my matches continuously. Lemme know what you guys think about my GR any tips welcome! The link to the vid is below.
I think you could make more use of qcb.L in certain situations. For example, you had Chris use his Grenade Launcher hyper on you, and you just blocked. If you would have done qcb.L you would have grabbed him, and even if he DHCed to Hulk, then Hulk would have gotten grabbed. Some odd decisions here and there that seem like fight jitters, like releasing Dormammu’s 1D2C when no one was on the screen or performing weaker than possible combos with Ghost Rider.
Ya that random super with dorm was utterly random jitters there’s no other explanation. That incident when Chris used his super then DHC’d into Hulk, i was just waiting for the DHC but i had no idea that if i would have tried qcb L or H i would have grabbed hulk out of his super start up (0_0) thats some good info thanks!.
On another note i have to cosign with the guy that was advocating shuma’s assist as Gr’s bff… I played someone today that was suing that assist and he ws able to combo from it pretty much anywhere once it hit. It was really eye opening.
I don’t feel as though either is a great assist for him.
Not quite as well as Plasma Beam, in my experience. I don’t disagree that Mystic Ray is a top 5 assist for Ghost Rider, though. The question becomes about who the third is for a team like that, though. Probably Hawkeye or Arthur.
I use both Plasma Beam and Mystic Ray and its a really good combination IMO. The only thing I have trouble with when I have Ghost on point is people that have a better horizontal assist than Plasma Beam like Unibeam or Arthur’s Daggers. Doom and Shuma have Godlike synergy and I cant use any other character than Shuma with Doom because they work so well together.
I liked your use of Vergil’s assist to pull the opponent away to give Dorm and GR breathing room for some of their stronger moves. The Iron Fist and Spencer match up for GR is interesting because they both seem to be able to hit GR from a good distance away before he gets the chain out. The Heartless Spire is risky against characters who are willing to jump right over it so fast or, in Spencer’s case, ignore it. Overall, I thought the GR play was really solid aside from some combos that I don’t think you’d drop were you playing offline. I wished you could have dashed forward to land a combo off of a successful Vergil assist.
Iron Man along with other beam assists work well with GR but Shuma allows him to plan, attack, or play defensive. I say Mystic Ray is one of the best assist for him if not the best. The problem with beam assists that aren’t Shuma is that they cover the same horizontal bar of screen that GR can cover and with no form of a berserker slash, it makes GR’s angles of attack predictable. Shuma gives everyone on the other side something they have to think about.
Missiles are good for faster characters but GR isn’t exactly fooling anyone. He has to wait for them to fall and even then, a character can shoot or move out of the way of the missiles since GR can’t teleport over to them to set up the mix ups that usually follow missiles. Missiles also only home in on the opponent but not their assist, which may hit GR out of the attempted combo.
As an aside, we all know that Dorm’s jump M contests Fireballs, beams, etc. Once I was fighting a Dante who did his Jam Session move. I super jumped into it with Jump M to get to the other side and killed him while he was still in recovery frames. It was an accident input but it turns out that in that situation, the negation of the damage also applies to Dorm’s whole body which is interesting.
The thing about Rapid Slash is that it is a double edged sword for Ghost Rider because in some matchups you are giving the opponent exactly what they want by putting them on the other side of the screen.
I agree. Not exactly a loss for a Ghost Rider player. His low sweep into other moves eat up a lot of specials upon the instant they’re performed. Nice job in the stream, btw.
He can benefit quite well from those but that assist isnt that great since combo extending with it is a little awkard. If you can make up some good combos with it both in the corner and midscreen then i would suggest using it but if you cant, then i would just use greyhound
I appreciate your feedback thank you yeah I haven’t find much reliable combo extensions with it and I stayed away from greyhound since I was using doom anchor with molecular shield but I’ll just go back to the drawing board I’ll probably keep ghost rider plus molecular shield because I love the synergy just need a player for the second slot.