Fuck no. 3-6 months is too early for any sort of balance patch.
Yeah, Rocket/Jedah/Space has been my team since day 1. Jedah is just as good with Space, probably even better honestly. I canât figure out why better players using this team keep picking the wrong gems.
Mind Surge should be used to set up resets/special conditions like spell charges. You get your quick guaranteed damage, but donât blow resources on it unless you get a kill.
Also, I think big bodies in general are all right in this game; Hulk just sucks.
Reality is going be best used defensively once people learn how to reflect it. Covering holes in lockdown patterns, etc. Itâs still pretty much a âget out of jail freeâ card when used right.
Pulling people into Jedahâs Spirals sounds really strong.
Thatâs a good way to look at the stones. Specifically the storms. As a matter of fact itâs good way to figure out team building as well as certain characters are strongest when you improve their tools, certain characters are strongest when you give them more space or let them manipulate space and others are strongest when their resources are strengthened. Soul Stone specifically is kind of a mix where everyone generically can get stronger with more life and certain characters will obviously work best for dual controlling in a storm.
**
After day 1 take on the stones.**
Spoiler
Power: Interesting to see that this is the stone with the storm that generally lets you get to TOD people or get very close to it. In a game where you can normally only get so much damage before flip outs, itâs scary to have a stone storm that can potentially override that and kill people any way. Power surge is like your AA assist and is good for protecting you from offense and converting into combos. Not quite as oppressive neutrally as reality surge, but itâs good at the right moments.
The storm has potential, but I think itâll take a while to optimize as not everyone looks like theyâve figured out the bets strings when they get in to beat pushblocks and stay in FTW. I think as more people use this stone storm weâll see it be very difficult for people to not get hit once the opponent gets hit. Itâs just that since itâs a storm that mainly improves your close range and not as much your neutral, I think weâll have to see people hit confirm into the activation to get the most out of it.
Time: I donât even think I saw this stone in tournament until Sacktap used it during grand finals after his reality team was getting blown up. Itâs definitely a very undiscovered stone. I think partly because people havenât figured out that time surgexxtag is stupid as hell and basically the reality stone spam for this stone. A teleport is generally useful for every character especially one that travels as far as this one does. It only goes it one direction so it doesnât turn your character into Nova or Captain Marvel, but the fact that it travels that far, takes your character off screen and lets you tag in the middle of it will set up a lot of powerful stuff in neutral and let you avoid situations that other character teams will have more trouble dealing with.
The sky is pretty much the limit for the storm as it changes the recovery of everything you use. Allowing Zero even more oppressive Sogenmu spam, giving Morrigan back some of her old bullet hell shenanigans, allowing Jedah to spam a bunch of overheads in flight to bring him back a bit of his old VS Dark Force pressure, it can really go on for each character. I think some of the more basic characters like Ryu or Spencer probably wonât benefit as much neutrally from it, but itâs another stone like Power stone where if you find a way to hit confirm into it or generally land a hit during it you can get some really oppressive damage and combos from it. It also greatly shortens the recovery of active switches and counter switches so you can create really nasty tag strings and combos and make it very difficult for the opponent to punish your counter switch.
**
Reality:** A powerful surge in the neutral that homes in on your opponent and can approach from angles that are difficult at least with traditional methods of dealing with. Itâs probably the surge that most generically makes every character better which is good as it makes the stone easy to use for team building and easy to apply at tournaments early on. With that said I think when players optimize their anti reality surge options it will inevitably be a bit overrated and go down in strength. The surge loses to 2 things which is oppressive rushdown and running away. If you get in and reflect a surge close enough it hits the opponent and you can convert into an air combo pretty easily. Everyone uses it from the air any ways so youâll just have to learn your air conversions. If they block it youâre still at advantage. Also loses to running away as anyone with strong movement and a teleport can just move away to burn it out then teleport right before it is to disappear. Leaving you right in front of the opponent without being able to use another one unless they tag.
The Storm while good at letting you keep a lead or getting you to take back control of the match, it doesnât seem like an amazing comeback storm. Unless people come up with some crazy combos using the ice or something it seems like if anything the storm is rather random in neutral and difficult to make long damaging conversions with that can kill characters. The storm is good at keeping the opponent from hitting you, but it definitely seems like flying up to the top of the screen can avoid a lot of the pressure from the storm as at worst youâll just be dealing with a one hit lighting bolt with a difficult conversion. Reality stone may have been a stone purposely built around giving you a very strong surge at the offset of a storm thatâs meant more to regain leads than destroy characters. The fact that different ones activate depending on which attack button you hit will likely force you to have to drop and reset a lot of combos.
Space: The surge for this stone will likely get more scary as time goes on. There is a sizeable amount of characters who have special moves that are just asking for an ability like spaceâs surge. Something that can just pull them into the special regardless of where they are on the screen. Things like Rocketâs ground traps, Jedahâs spirals and and Haggarâs lariat. Moves that if the opponent keeps to a space can be tough for them to be very threatening, but as soon as you can pull the opponent into these moves they can become very dangerous traps. The surge also has a generic light armor attached to it which is solid for beating attempts to spam quick buttons into conversions. Gives every character a little taste of the big body life.
The Storm is likely the most dangerous storm in the game and at the minimum the most limiting for your opponent. There is no stone that removes so many options from your opponent as space does. Firstly the fact that it puts the opponent in a box immediately upon activation means itâs great for zoning or hybrid zoning based teams as you can basically play your ranged gameplan and if you are seeing the opponent about to set up something really cheap you can just put them in a box and make it your turn. If the opponent just set up 2 reality surges and and charged up a spiral with Jedah you can just put them in a box before shit gets bad and now shit gets bad for them. Once theyâre in the box their movement is very limited and they lose access to all tag options. The fact that they lose access to all tag options alone makes it the most powerful storm ATM as it reduces 2 characters to 1 character and removes the ability to escape combos. This allows you to make it rain on them with your most swag combo and dump all your meters for a kill if you have the room to do it. Which this game is all about killing the first character as 1 character in this game is greatly reduced in options and has to make a pretty honest comeback to win.
**
Mind:** The surge is most likely the weakest surge in the game. The grounded surge has really long start up and not amazing range so without a lot of setting up and conditioning it will get mashed and jumped out of all day. Apparently the air surge starts up much faster than the ground surge, but it still doesnât have amazing range and something you probably donât want to whiff in the air too often. The surge if you do land it has potential, but people will have to come up with things that allow them to set up resets or other generally oppressive situations afterwards. Definitely the most cumbersome and least initially threatening surge.
The storm is likely the most character specific of all storms. This storm doesnât just make everyone better as not every character has really powerful neutral super moves that will make it worth it to use. Like a team of SpiderMan/Thor isnât going to make much use of this storm as neither character really has a strong invincible super move or an install super that greatly improves their neutral to make it worth it. Only thing itâll do thatâs really useful for them is give them more counter switches which that alone isnât going to make you gdlk in the storm. The storm is ideally useful for install/activation super characters as install supers do not stop the meter gain. You can activate sogenmu or astral vision and go ham with the super and still keep charging your 4 bars. Giving you plenty of room to finish a combo with level 1s whenever you wish. The way the storm works also allows you to potentially add multiple level 3s in a combo. Teams like Megaman/Zero and Dante/Dormammu will definitely greatly benefit from mind storm as they both are teams with supers that greatly improve neutral or have installs that donât freeze the meter and improve their neutral and pressure.
**Soul: **This is the most involved and difficult to optimize stone in the game. Itâs definitely not a beginnerâs stone like reality or mind where you can just kinda plop characters on and get really generic benefits to your team like homing fireballs and lots of counter switches. The surge has potential as its a long projectile that takes up good space and neutral and regenerates health. Like the reality surge itâs pretty good as a surge that you can spam and strengthen the zoning of characters that arenât great at zoning, or improve it for ones that are already great at zoning. Itâs generally a low commitment beam like attack that canât be reflected and doesnât have that bad of recovery. Once people realize this it will most likely start being spammed and people will start complaining about soul surge spam as well. Itâs unsafe on block at really close range, but it always creates push back on block so it makes it tough to punish regardless. From a range youâre pretty safe to throw it out as long as they get hit or block it.
The storm was already shown in tournament to be pretty solid for making comebacks. Just the power of getting 2 characters again in Marvel is powerful. Especially if the character died with a lot of red health and you find a way to get them back in reserve, you can get a decent amount of life back for them. This is pretty much the Zato/Guilty Gear stone where you have to control both characters like a puppet. Meaning in order to optimize it you will have to do a lot of button pressing. The only big issue with this storm is that it seems as much of a liability as it is powerful. Youâll see matches where a near full health 2 character team gets destroyed by a soul revive comeback, then another match the opponent will resurrect in a bad situation and immediately lose the character which kills the storm and their chance to comeback. Itâs definitely the most volatile storm but also the one with the highest ceiling for tech. Only Time storm maybe coming close in tech ceiling.
**Stone surge tiers: **
Reality
Soul, Space, Time, Power
Mind
Reality is the current best surge (at least in tournament) so far. No question about it. Thereâs also no question that itâs also a bit overrated since it couldnât even win the first tournament event and there are characters with strong movement that can outmaneuver it, it doesnât have any real durability vs projectile and loses to reflecting. Basically if you stay in and rushdown and reflect or run away and outmaneuver it so it stays behind the player who threw it then you can avoid a lot of the general issue it presents.
Soul surge I think is crazy slept on. After messing with it in training mode itâs like a long, quick version of reality stone as far as uses and how annoying it can be. Relatively safe on block other than at near point blank range and has very good start up for such a move. Basically gives everyone a long ass beam type special that canât be reflected which like reality surge can generically improve everyoneâs neutral. Not to mention it gives life back on hit. This surge will likely be the next complained about surge when people start abusing it and it really isnât much harder to abuse than reality surge.
The Soul, Space, Time and Power surges are all about the same strength to me so far. Generally have strong points and can be abused, though donât quite as generically make a character stronger as reality does. Space will likely be scary when used with big bodies or characters with specials that can lock you down when pulled into like Jedahâs spirals or Coonâs traps. Time surge is very useful for anyone as getting an extra teleport that can be cancelled off anything normal is strong for neutral and movement purposes. Plus teleport tag is really cheap and can set up scary situations for not much effort. Power surge is good for improving the defense of your character to a bit less of a degree than reality and if it hits you can get nice combos off of it. Itâs like a reality surge thatâs more dangerous on hit at the offset of being less dangerous in neutral.
Mind surge I just donât see having a ton of scare factor or being applicable to a ton of characters. Ground one has very slow start up and doesnât have great range. Air one is much faster, but still not great range and thereâs too many characters with gdlk movement that will outmaneuver it. Probably some characters that will have good setups for landing it, but I think youâre better off using a character that just has a good command grab. Which also makes it redundant for characters that already have command grabs. Zero or Hawkeye with a command grab is better than without one, but with how hard it is to optimize damage even if it lands, probably not that much better.
Stone storm tiers:
Space, Soul
Time, Power, Mind, Reality
I donât think thereâs too much of a disparity in the strength between the storms. They are all pretty powerful in their own way and I think just need time to be optimized to get the most out of.
Space and Soul seem to be the clear strongest storms ATM. Space has the ability to turn a 2 character team into a 1 character team which is probably the most powerful thing you can do in this game other than ToD someone with the power storm. This gives you the ability to stop the team from using any tag string options or counter switch which means you can focus on just killing a character and reducing them to a one character team. Itâs also generally the bullshit stopper as you can generally just call out any bullshit setup or tag string thatâs coming your way and trap the opponent into your bidding. Being able to do this off an invincible activation is icing on the cake.
Soul storm I have up there as itâs just obvious what can happen when it goes right. 1 character team with almost no health can revive a character and get enough momentum to kill a full health team. Thatâs without any heavy optimization of the dual character control. Once people start optimizing dual character combos with the tag button itâs going to get really crazy. The only thing that keeps this from being clear and away the best storm is that it is a very volatile storm. If you use it bad your storm can end very fast and you can pretty much kiss the match goodbye. Finding a good spot to activate that wonât get you HBDâs or your revived character killed will be tough.
The other storms are a bit under just because they generally require more specific team setups or just arenât quite as oppressive neutrally or comeback wise. Mind may not seem cheap to everybody, but with the right team it can likely be very cheap as dealing with a Team Megaman with mind storm can be pretty oppressive. Both characters that get very strong with their activation supers and activation supers are immune to the meter freeze. Meaning you will just keep building meter during activation until you throw out a standard super. Will likely see a lot of install character teams with this stone. Plus having lots of meter for levels 3s chained into storm levels 3s and lots of counter switches is always good.
Time and Power will take time to optimize as Time specifically requires characters that have powerful tools when the recovery of their specials and normals are shortened. Particularly characters like Morrigan and Zero who get extremely oppressive versions of their activations when they are in time storm. Learning hit confirms into this storm will prove strong as well as you can do some very damaging combos that are basically just mash one button over and over and Iâm sure optimized stuff will be stronger. Power Storm is a similar thing. Likely requires the right characters to optimize although we are seeing it is a stone that can viably hit confirm into TODâs. Anti pushblock property is good, though havenât really seen it optimized in tourney yet. Reality storm is good for a lot of reasons, but donât really have it as a top storm as it is rather random in neutral and seems to do the least damage of all of the storms. Hard to really just pin a character down and do huge damage combos that force them to counter switch or die like the other storms.
While I agree that Reality Surge is a bit overrated, I think Reality Storm is being a bit undersold. If you tag it resets the cooldown for summoning an element just like the surge, so zoning patterns can be augmented with projectiles and elements from both characters(including one or two reality surges.) Combine all this shit with a character that has a teleport like Strange or Dormammu and you will have a hard time not getting hit.
Oh mistaked you for talking about the surge for a second.
Yeah with the right teams you can make the storm pretty oppressive, but that goes for any team or storm. Itâs just a storm that will likely require certain teams to optimize rather than having something that can generically turn the entire match around like Space or Soul. The right team may make it really crazy, but generally it seems like a storm thatâs more just for holding the leads and not really huge comebacks.
Plus tag doubling up on the storm elements burns the stone gauge pretty quickly if the projectiles hit the opponent. Doesnât seem like something you want to do too much of unless the gauge is near full.
I didnât know the reality storm got the elements reset on tagâŚthat changes things.
People have already been doing that, but it burns out your storm a lot faster if you do it too much (on hit specifically it burns really fast). If you double up a couple times and land those storms on hit you can burn up nearly half of your storm timer. Which at a half full surge means itâs over already when people are already struggling to kill characters with full storms.
Can definitely see a knee jerk nerf to reality stone soon,
Having a small argument about space storm not being the best storm with someone from my local. He has good points, but I still think itâs the best at this point. The tag lock is ridiculous in my eyes.
Yeah I remember when Otter still posted here that he already felt that just it putting you in an enclosed corner was already pretty OP. Then once it was found out that it locked out all your tag options that was pretty much a wrap. It basically turns a 2 character team into a one character team and locks them into a box with limited movement. All of the other storms have a oppressive shit, but you can always counter switch if it gets too oppressive. If a space storm user locks you in the box and lands a combo with enough meter, you have no way out and basically have to lose your character.
The general ability of the storm to basically make you invincible and then put the opponent in an enclosed space is just extremely powerful. Makes it so anytime you know you are going to deal with something stupid you just activate and now you put the opponent in the most limiting situation in the game.
Yeah, agreed. The thing he said was what are you going to do if you are a zoning team and you use space⌠couldnât believe it. So I countered that. Then he mentioned how clock and smooth viper were counteringnspace when they were in it. I donât remember that/didnât see it but you can definitely fight while in space so heâs got a point there⌠then I said you can use space as a Supreme get off me reversal and he countered with âall stones have invincibility on activateâ and I just stopped right there as itâs obvious that there is no longer a point to the conversation.
Space may or may not be best in the months to come, but right now I do still see it as the best overall cause of the crazy reversal, the tag limits and the fact that you canât really move when movement is the biggest key in marvel.
If it allowed tags and stuff Iâd think it was only ok.
Has anyone seen this yet?
Not yet. Japanese starting to break the game already.
Luckily you can counter switch out of that. Otherwise I guess either Spidermanâs web lob or the ice causes a combo to keep going with very little damage/hit stun deterioration. Interesting to see that other storms can go wild with hits and damage without dropping out.
Since this is a tier thread and the games been out a weekâŚwe should probably start talking actual tiers and stuff now?
For me:
A tier
Dorm, Dante, ultron
B tier
Everyone else ATM till some cheap shit is found.
Dorm:
Flight, airdash, rose garden, good at counterzoning and getting in, has a beam super for lockdown tags. Literally seems like the perfect character. If any character is S tier yet, for me itâs dorm.
Dante:
just works really well right now. Combos arenât to hard and neutral is easy to apply. Has great lockdown on hit to give dorm a free rose garden. Good all around character.
Ultron:
Also has an airdash and good zoning, his airdash normals are strong and he works well with the 2 aforementioned characters.
Dorm/ultron is looking like the best team in the game at this early point as they are both basically point characters with great support skills. They are basically like putting 2 doctor dooms on a team⌠yet having a magneto function in one of them and none of mvc3 dooms awkwardness in the other characters function.
Looking to see what comes around to really put this team in its place and counter them.
Yup, Spider-Manâs web ball has a set stun and is not effected by hit stun deterioration. I guess the same is true for realityâs ice, though Iâm not certain.
There are a few characters Iâd separate from the everyone else tier. Nova, Zero and Captain Marvel while not as good as the top 3 definitely belong above the rest of the cast.
What does everyone think about Haggar, Thanos, Ghost Rider, and Nemesis? Are they just good because itâs early or are they legit?
Ghost rider feels more like unfamiliarity fight now. The others are legit