The funny thing is if Dark Phoenix wasn’t in the game to start and it just had Jean, people would start bitching and would want her included, and would WANT her to be borderline broken " Well come on… she’s DARK PHOENIX bro ! "
I’m personally glad they have her, they just need to balance her. I say her D.Ph ability needs to be activated by the player. This gives you a good chance to mix her up on entry, which can make her whole 5 bar save up be potentially useless.
The problem Vargas isn’t Dark Phoenix, it’s LVL3 XF Dark Phoenix. DP by herself really isn’t an overpowering character zipping around the screen killing in 5 normals. If or when XF gets a tone down I really think the phoenix “problem” will in itself be neutralized. The whole reason of using 2 front characters and not spending meter is to get your 4th one with XF crazy fast teleports and instant death from a few hits. I believe the people who are really complaining about her, are actually just complaining about XF.
Bullshit, Dph by herself is still OP, she just has to do a real combo now. The real problem is that meter building for DPh is so laughably easy.
Start off with 1, build another one in a combo, score another half via random hits, dick around and let backups die and build another 2 in the process, Phoenix comes in dies and builds another half when dying boom crazy red is out.
Arthur or zoners in general is just hardcore knowledge of each match-up and projectile durability knowledge, just going with what was said earlier.
I dont really find a character that’s constantly losing health and can take chip damage as overpowered. Akuma bodies D.P. without XF. Especially without any damage or speed boost. Really good but not overpowered. Plenty of the other good characters in the game would have no problem fighting non XF D.P. because of the fact that she loses a lot of safe fails and actually has to take risks. The fact that her projectiles and teleports are much slower without XF3 allows a lot of opportunity for her to get randomed out. D.P. with meter is good but until she turns on the XF she’s overall less of an issue to deal with than regular Phoenix. Even if she turns on healing field if you catch her in a combo and turn on XF she’s definitely gone.
The main issue is definitely the fact that all of the issues of using Dark Phoenix go away and then she gets crazy new benefits with XF3. The fact that you have to use your XF to even fight Dark Phoenix is what makes her retarded. Without having your own XF she doesn’t even need to hit you. She can just chip you to death with jabs into super which is much less of a viable strategy when she isn’t using XF.
If D.P. couldn’t use XF she would have definite losing matchups to quite a few characters.
That helps to know, but I don’t think you worry about other zoning teams as a zoning team. It’s the rush-down characters (Wolverine, Mags, Wesker, Dante, etc.) that are going to get in your face and wreck you, and the fact that you can’t do anything to stop Phoenix teams from reaching Dark Phoenix.
Quoted For Muthafuckin TRUTH.
If phoenix is as broken as this thread implies, why are there no phoenix’s AT ALL in the top 8?
Do real life tournament proven results actually matter or is it all about theories and who can argue their point better?
For the record, Floe uses a Phoenix team as an alternate and beat Justin Wong at Power Up with her.
Some thoughts on Dark Phoenix:
I believe that should the situation to let her come out occur she’s the best character in the game.
I feel this is only the case when she has X-factor level 3 and she should always have X-factor 3. X-factor covers her biggest weakness which is chip damage, if you touch Phoenix with a hit in or out of X-factor if you don’t screw up she dies, however there are a lot of 100% chip set ups on Dark Phoenix that if you have a character to DHC into or X-factor un-popped kind of destroys her.
The concept of waiting her out for the match doesn’t work if they know how to play Phoenix, if you feel you can run away from Magneto for 60 seconds feel free to try it with Phoenix, if not then develop a better strategy which I would reccomend.
There are a few primary plans I utilize with when dealing with Phoenix and they are as follows:
Obviously first priority is preventing the problem, this either happens if you kill 2 characters without blocking or getting hit, or if you snap Phoenix in which is much more stable.
It’s vital to stop her from starting to run on the way in, you get 1 chance at a string of mix ups if you hit it you get rid of her, if not you’ve wasted 1 gauge and she’s gained some from the blocking.
If the bad situation occurs and they get 5 meters killing off the 2 team mates for her ASAP is very important, getting rid of her potential health wall to supplement time outs in X-factor v X-factor.
If you have more than 2 gauges you still want to snap in Phoenix, if she’s forced to eat a mix up and turn into Dark Phoenix on success when she transforms she has the option to stay and fight (Lesser X-factor, less scary) or tag out (Forced to eat a mix up coming in, less scary)
Never use X-factor unless it’s to kill Dark Phoenix/Phoenix, being able to negate chip is integral to the worst case scenario game plan, if you’ve blown X-factor Dark Phoenix with X-factor can safely do lots of chip so it’s not worth it to blow.
If it gets to the bad case scenario of they will have Dark Phoenix with no team mates make it happen as soon as possible, regular Phoenix taking out your characters means the Dark Phoenix fight will be harder. Your goals during this time are killing Phoenix, building gauge, and not losing characters. All of these are dramatically more important than timing out regular Phoenix if the player is good.
Once she activates you either need to be ready to safely pressure her right away (Hard, but better) Or get into a corner and be ready to burn 20 seconds. The best ways to do so are things that she’s forced to waste time blocking, if you can DHC into Dante million dollars that wastes a ton of her X-factor time, during that time she’s not chipping you or mixing you up. Figure out at the ratio at which your enemy Dark Phoenix can do damage how much meter you’re required to use and how much you can save, the more you can save the easier it is to kill Dark Phoenix. If you survive until her X-factor is over all you need to do is make her start blocking. If that’s successful you keep the block string going as long as you safely can so her health goes down on its own then Super to kill her on block.
These were just some things I found are important against Phoenix, but everyone has their own strategy to dealing with her.
Most people aren’t willing to stake their tournament bids on Phoenix’s 420k health. This fact has absolutely no impact on how retarded Dark Phoenix XF3 is though.
The closest thing I’ve seen to ‘zoning’ teams are when Magneto or Dante decide to hang back for a few moments throwing some projectiles while calling Sentinel drones. Rexxor showed this pretty well in the recent UFGT Loser’s Finals. However, note that at any point Magneto or Dante can rush right in and threaten.
Other characters like Taskmaster or Ammy throw out some projectiles to make your next approach predictable so they can respond in the best way possible.
Wesker’s projectile is mostly just used to pin you down and shut assists up. Even Phoenix is usually just buying time, laming out a bad character or setting up a teleport mix-up.
Yea, Phoenix is stupid because of the mechanics of the game.
DP sucks only because people usually have level 3 XFC for, where in that state she comes unbelievably broken and stupid.
Another reason she sucks is because even if you tag regular Phoenix in you have only 1 guess before she can raw tag back in in like 2 seconds. With her mobilty options it isn’t hard for he to stall for the stupidly small duration before she can well in Wesker or Magneto or whoever.
Then YOU have just wasted a meter and are at a even biggest disadvantage for doing something you were suppose to do.
Honestly, when RUNNING away for 30 seconds is the best strategy sometimes that should be an automatic red flag. Not turtle, fucking run away.
Please make her DP form a self activation level 5 hyper Capcom. It is bullshit that Phoenix players get an already great character before they get an overpowered one in your game where there is enough meter for starving kids in Africa.
XF would be fine if the damage/speed boost ended whenever you kill a character. The life regen and chip immunity can stay, those are at least somewhat interesting mechanics.
They could remove the damag/speed from XF entirely and it would still be incredibly useful. XF is basically a free combo whenever you want against most rushdown characters, allows you to sit back and laugh at any zoning team for its duration, or allows you to do highly unsafe things but punish if the opponent reacts (or threaten to punish, at least). It would be FAR more interesting if it wasn’t so godlike at lvl 3. Plus the game would be much easier to balance at all levels.
That said, I don’t expect much changes from capcom about this. An obvious tone down, SF4-ultra-style, for super and that’s about it.
@King Zeal - There must be a reason why Floe doesn’t main Phoenix right?
Umm… how does it have no impact at all? We’re talking about the character as a whole right? If the best players in the world “aren’t willing to stake their tournament bids on Phoenix’s 420k health” doesn’t that say something? If Phoenix is as busted as everyone here says she is, wouldn’t she be used as much as Sentinel was in mvc2?
EVERYONE should be using her if she was an auto-win at level 3 xf.
some people dont like whoring 5 meters and saving x factor just for one character.
sentinel was not high maintenance as her in mvc2. like in mvc3, sentinel was a good assist character nor did he requires meter to be a threat.
There are three reasons I can think of off the top of my head:
1: The risk of being snapped in and killed prior to 5 bars is too high for most tournament level players.
2: Having a Phoenix team changes the overall dynamic of what would be a normal match so much many people just plain don’t like it, including some Phoenix players. You snap me in early, I run away and try to find a safe raw tag, and we repeat this dance until I either have 5 bars or you manage to kill Phoenix, meanwhile my other two characters are neutered and can’t use their supers because I can’t risk losing my glass canon… bleh.
3: When XF3 Dark Phoenix is achieved, the victory is often such a blowout that it almost feels hallow. Tournament players do play to win, but they also want to revel in their victory. There are few bragging rights to be gained from an XF3 Dark Phoenix victory.
Neither of these reasons change the fact that XF3 Dark Phoenix is balls out retarded.
The difference between this and MvC2 is that a lot more characters can hang and compete at a top level. No one would deny that Clockw0rk’s Strider/Doom is a top tier lockdown strategy if played correctly but not many people are willing to put the time in to get to that level with them. The balance issue with Phoenix is that she absolute runs right over a good portion of the cast. If gettig five meters for Phoenix was hard then it might be different but meters are hnded out like candy in this game.
Apparently, because he “hates” her, not because of how good she supposedly is or isn’t.
In my mind the DPh problem is a combination of too issues with MvC3. Xfactor is way to good and negates any of the supposed “weaknesses” of DPh and the fact the meter gain is so strong in this game, that actually stopping her from getting 5 bars is almost totally impossible.
It reminds me of a character in BB:CT. In that game there was a character named Arakune, he couldn’t do a whole lot until he cursed you. However, once he did, it didn’t matter who was behind the wheel, he could hit random buttons and destroy any other player. This was a problem because it was too broken, and the conditions for getting someone in curse mode were almost impossible for the other character to avoid. It the same issue with DPh, she is granted an extremely over powered ability, and it’s way to easy to achieve. If any of you have ever played MTG, it’s like a combo deck. Once it gets started you lose, there’s nothing you can do. When this strategy becomes too good, it almost feels like both players are playing solitaire rather than a competitive game. Its this solitaire issue that is the biggest shame about DPh.
Also, the reason I don’t thing you see alot of tournaments won by DPh, is because while any person can win with DPh, anybody can also lose with her. That is a problem in and of itself.