Mjolnir lies broken! - Anti Thor Strategies

So, lets discuss ways in which Thor is vulnerable. We should know better than most right? I’m making this thread so that we properly recognise Thor’s weaknesses in this game, and hopefully when we understand how he gets beaten it will make us think about how to minimise these situations coming up. Also if others come here its going force us to up our game!

Here are the obvious to start with.

Airthrow Thor out of aerial Mighty Strikes - Get some distance from Thor then watch for patterns of movement. When you get a feel for it, get up there and air grab him, especially out of the start up of charged Mighty Strikes. Also try grabbing Thor out of the recovery of uncharged ones.

Ground throw Thor out of tri-dash pressure - Especially if you have a decent move that will come out if the throw doesn’t activate. There are a surprising amount of gaps in Thor’s ‘pressure’ unless done correctly.

Mighty Strike is extremely vulnerable during its start up. If Thor isn’t mindful of his spacing, if he doesn’t take into account how fast the other character is, if he isn’t protected by an assist, often times you don’t even need to air throw him out of it. You can literally dash under him, and get a full combo before he even lands. X-23 and other speedy characters are especially great at this.

Really if you take advantage of how slow he is, you won’t need to respect much of anything he does. A good Thor will be trying his best to space things out while applying pressure, but if you’re always in his face, he won’t ever get that chance. People see Mighty Strike and think, “oh he turns himself into a flying hit box, I can’t do anything about that” when really you got all the time in the world to do whatever you want about that. Don’t respect give him any respect unless he earns it.

And if you really wanna mess up Thor’s day, use an anti air assist. Thors like to stay in the sky because that’s the only place he doesn’t suck, but he’s really not that good at being dominant there unless you let him be. Strider will knock him out of all of his air actions. Jam Session when used properly will too. Sure, if you use these assists against a Thor baiting them out, they’ll get blown up, but if you use them in response to anything he does, if you use them reactively instead of proactively, you’ll give him a very bad day.

Then of course there’s the keep away zoning that he hates so much. This adds on to controlling the air space that he wants to move around in so much. For him to pressure you, he has to get in. He can’t get in with a bunch of hit boxes on the screen. Mighty strike can break projectiles when its active, but the distance it covers is extremely lackluster for the amount of time it takes to start up, and if he charges it, it takes that much more time.

  1. 21 frames is not “all the time in the world”
  2. jam session while annoying, has to be used sparingly against Thor
  3. Vajra is free to many of the Thor options when he is not blocking, Strider needs real cover
  4. X23 is overall free to Thor + bfs
  5. uncharged mighty strike M can beat Hypercharging star Cap hyper so i dont see how its lackluster
  6. how many characters can punish an air mighty strike M when its correctly spaced?
  7. how many characters can punish a correctly spaced air mighty strike M after they blocked an air mighty strike M?
  1. “All the time in the world,” should be translated as enough time to visually see, react, and punish for fast characters. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
  2. If by sparingly, you mean whenever Thor performs an air action within Jam Session’s range, which is again what I had hoped to convey in my post, then yes.
  3. But not while he is in the middle of an action and being mindful of the assist. Once again, I apologize for my apparently cryptic language.
  4. Irrelevant to the statement I was making. She is fast enough to make Mighty Strike whiff and punish it on reaction. Other characters fast enough have that same ability.
  5. I fail to see what that comparison has to do with the context of my post. To further clarify, my “lackluster” comment was referring to the distance it travels for the amount of time it needs to start up.
    6 and 7) Is my post really that hard to comprehend? Again, I apologize. When, I prefaced my post with “if Thor isn’t mindful of his spacing, doesn’t take into account how fast the other character is, and isn’t protected by an assist,” I had hoped for the reader to interpret that as, “Thor must do these things at all times in order to stay safe, otherwise the following is true.”

If Thor can beat Wolverine and Jill, who are fast as ****, what hope do X-23 have? she is way more unsafe

Again, completely irrelevant. This isn’t a match up discussion. This thread is not about match up discussions. I will not talk to you about the Thor/X-23 match up with you here because that’s not what I’m bringing up. Furthermore, we’ve already had that very same discussion in the match up thread already, so if it pleases you, re-read my thoughts on it there.

The point that I was making in my post here was a fast character can make Mighty Strike whiff and be able to punish it. X-23 can do it. Wolverine can do it. Dante can do it. Vergil can do it. Ammy can do it. Any character with a combination of decent normals and a good ground dash can do it.

But in the 1st post your “can” sound like “every time they go for it they will punish Thor” which is not true. This isnt matchup discussion but you were the one who brought names

ways to beat thor

  1. punish spark L and his ground normals. Bionic arm spark L. Go under spark L
  2. outplay mighty strike. counters, multihits, wall-groundbounce trades
  3. insta fullscreen hypers, tracker hypers, huge normals
  4. grab/jab him out of hurricanes
  5. dont do stupid stuff against mighty strike, dont get too close, dont call assists braindead, dont go “under mighty strike”, its a fast way to lose a character, dont use anti-airs against mighty strike, they fail if its not Hulk/Haggar, bait mighty punish
  6. chase him above sj.height
  7. kill him. expend XF or use TAC infinite then mixup his bfs. Dont let him survive. airgrab resets always end with your point dead
  8. punish stupid thor players (not thor). airgrab poorly spaced mighty strikes, cr.L/s.L a bad spaced s.S on block, punish/airgrab a poorly spaced j.H

It is true if the conditions of my first post, “if Thor isn’t mindful of his spacing, doesn’t take into account how fast the other character is, and isn’t protected by an assist,” are met and the player knows how to make a read, which is something that happens in real matches. I brought up names to further exemplify that point. For the fourth time, I apologize if what I said was somehow cryptic or hard to understand.

My blood pressure is rising seeing that you even had to explain yourself DJ, let alone read what you are replying to, don’t apologise it was clear what you meant.

ANYWAY back on the topic. Overall a good takeaway message is that people give Thor too much respect. Its not like he has Hagger’s pipe or lariat. I’d also argue that you’d almost WANT Thor to be rushing you down, since his block stings are so terrible. Once he commits its going to be a problem for him unless his assist is locking you down.

no, yours are xD

Yea my cousin and friends spend their time spacing me out and trying to respect my Thor. I laugh knowing they’re just giving me time to set up and offensive.

This would probably be a lot better if someone clarified everything or had a video based example to follow. Also I find it hard to believe someone would MS without the cover of an assist let alone trying to dash under him couldn’t thor just end his charge early and confirm off the assists (assuming the thor player called one)? That though in itself is probably a weakness to thor is that his reliance on assist can have him potentially get happy BD’d alot. Especially characters like spencer with his Bionic Arm.

I was thinking of picking up thor and the things I can say that I know about thor as far as weaknesses are
Reliance on Assist
Slow projectiles
Tendency to get anti or thrown for staying at jump height
In ability to keep up with characters with faster mobility options.
Lack of a guaranteed defence option. (mighty punish to me is really only useful when you Xfactor cancel.)
Ability to deal with people who can camp out at the top of the screen AND call assist. ( Characters like trish who can jumpxxairdashupxxfly call assist. Completely invalidates MS’S)

So basically if you can anti air him or flood the areas of the screen he likes to be in before he can get started, and invalidate mighty strike thor isn’t a problem. Thats just what I see from thor from practicing with him a few times, and watching players on streams (even though most thor players on stream don’t have a REAL thor team.)

The best way, in my experience at least, to beat a solid Thor team (Thor point, decent shell to back it up) is snap Thor out for the anchor. It degrades the team to having 1 of the worst anchor’s in the game, and destroys most shell’s synergy. At the end of the day I believe that alone is what keeps Thor sub-par, as in a game that’s so comeback happy (thank you X-factor), Thor simply doesn’t have what it takes to turn things around against a good opponent, and no amount of damage-boost can save him from that.

I agree completely. I’ve even told people directly, ‘snap Thor out and you will do better’.

They then can land an incoming mixup on the next character and as you say, if they end up just facing Thor then there is no major problem, especially since he doesn’t get a speed boost in X-factor.

XFC into hurricane grabs can work, but again only once, you probably still have more characters to work with.

The solution to this of course is to have a team where Thor at the back is still useful somewhat.

Another tactic that definitely screws Thor up is managing to cross under him in the sky. Messing up his inputs and getting Mighty Spark instead of Mighty Strike to come out is a major problem, you can be grabbed for free.