Need rundown of assists and capabilities with assists

Classic Fighting Games Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3
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Need rundown of assists and capabilities with assists

I’m looking to make a thread in the general mvc3 forum that helps explain how the assists work and how assists work for each specific character. Basically I’d just like a quick rundown of 3 things.

  1. A generic description of each of the character’s 3 specific assists and their uses in battle for offense/defense/adding hits to combos etc.

  2. A general rundown of which assists work well for their rushdown/defense/lockdown etc. Something like this…

DOCTOR DOOM

Spoiler

Reliance on assists on point without XF = Reliant
Reliance on assists with XF2 = Moderate
XF3/Anchor abilities = Solid

Strong assists for lockdown/pressure: Haggar lariat (stops opponent from attacking, hard knockdown for s.H OTG on hit) Ammy Cold Star (long mix up lockdown), Arthur Daggers (fast start up, long mix up lockdown) Sent drones (long mix up lockdown), Chun Li legs (long mix up lockdown, fast activating), Dante Jam Session (long mix up lockdown, keeps aerial characters grounded), Dorm Dark Hole (long mix up lockdown) Akuma tatsu (aerial lockdown, passes through projectiles during active frames), Iron Man repulsor blast (long lockdown, keeps opponent from jumping/flying), Iron Man Unibeam (standard beam lockdown), Tron Fire(standard lockdown, protects your block strings), any other long active multi hitting assist not mentioned.

Strong assists for projectile and assist clearance or unblockable set up: Iron Man Unibeam (projectile/assist clearance, decent active frames for mix up), Shuma Mystic Ray(projectile/assist clearance, keeps opponents from jumping/flying), Arthur Daggers(projectile/assist clearance/fast start up), Wesker gun shot (unblockable set up),Akuma tatsu(absorbs standard beam projectiles during active frames, loses to large hit box projectiles like Dante’s Crystal or Hulk’s Gamma Wave), Storm Whirlwind (projectile/assist clearance), Deadpool Quick Work (unblockable set up), Magneto Disruptah (projectile/assist clearance),Felicia Rolling Buckler (unblockable set up, high priority against other attacks once active),She Hulk Torpedo (unblockable set up)

General assist strategy is to have an assist that locks people down or keeps them down to set up high low mix ups and air M box jumps (aka air dash M cross up). The reason why Doom is more reliant on an assist to lock people down even though he can move around and fly like Mags and Storm is that he doesn’t have a dash that cancels with normals. Whenever you dash with Dr.Doom you get the ability to cancel it into a jump instead. This is technically a nerf since it makes your wave dash reliant on forcing you to jump first. Making you susceptible to air throws even though you’re basically on the ground.

To offset this though once you get an assist that locks down once you get in you can create really long block strings with very minimal gaps since Doom has the ability to cancel his normals into dashes. This means you can lock someone down with say Ammy’s cold star and go for a mix up. If somehow you don’t land anything they still can’t push guard you because of the assist. Once the assist is gone you can start throwing out c.L’s and follow them up with c.H which does a lot of block stun and can be OS’d by doing c.L~c.H so it comes out on a hit or block but not on whiff. If the opponent push guards the c.H you can confirm with the plink that they blocked and advance guarded and then just continue dashing through the advance guard with jump cancelling your dash into an ADDF once or twice to stay right in their face. By that time Ammy Cold Star should be available to lock them down again and if they advance guard too much they push themselves into the corner and lose.

Doom on point isn’t very reliant on DHC synergy because all he wants to do is have his assists plus his normal dash cancels through advance guards help him push people towards the corner. If they’re close enough to the corner Doom has TOD’s that can do up to 1.15 to 1.2 million damage without DHC glitch. 1.15. to 1.2 is easier to achieve with an assist but you can still get 1.05 to 1.1 easy without assist once you build the 2 plus meters at the end of the combo.

Doom also goes well on point with any assist that helps clear up point or assist based projectiles or attacks.

  1. How good the character is as an anchor.

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I’ll let someone else flesh this out, but I’ll give a quick go-over:

Assist 1:** Senpuu-Bu (AKA The Pendulum)**
Hsien-Ko’s infamous – and most useful – swinging assist. She appears, hops on a chain, and swings towards the opponent while whirling her claw, giving her a hitbox. She then dismounts and leaves.

On its own, it’s nothing special, and you’re liable to get hit out of it by a random attack (I’m actually not sure if the hitbox is like in VSav, where it circles around her). However, it’s when it’s combined with her Hyper Armor powerup, Rimoukon (going gold, gold armor, etc.), that this assist truly shines. For this reason, it’s usually best to place her as your middlewoman so you can DHC into the armor. Placing her on point also works, though you’ll want to throw out a Gong to cover you against projectiles so you don’t get hit out of transforming, then hard-tag out.

From here, Golden Pendulum is useful for a couple things:
1.) Offensive Lockdown: If you’ve got the opponent in the corner, or if you’re close enough for the assist to hit, call it. If the opponent blocks, they’ll be stuck blocking for the entire assist because it hits multiple times, and you can plan from there. If it hits them, well, they take a decent amount of damage.
2.) Get-Off-Me: Not as good at this as Tron/Haggar (though if Ultimate changes stay true, it could be), but if the opponent is pressuring you, you can call the assist and hopefully hit the opponent. This can kill the opponent’s momentum, which is always a good thing.

The factor that separates this assist from others is that she’ll just plow through the opponent’s attacks instead of flinching and leaving. This is what allows it to accomplish the above. Oh, and you can’t get Happy Birthday’d too.

Remember to call this assist carefully, and not too often, because Ko lingers around for a pretty long time. If the opponent feels you’re Pendulum-happy, they could do a full-screen/beam hyper. Because Hsien-Ko takes full, unscaled damage, and just goes through the attack, she could lose up to half her red health. Then calling her will be even riskier (unless she just got KO’d, of course).

Assist 2:** Henkyo-Ki (AKA The Gong)**
The community hasn’t played around with this one as much, but a recent post in the main HK thread reports that Gong may be more useful than we think it is if used in conjunction with Rimoukon. Because of how slow the shockwave moves, you can create some mixups with it or continue combos. It can be used as a Get-Off-Me as well. You can also trap the opponent between you and the wave, kind of like a mini Aegis Reflector, I suppose. This needs more research, though it sounds promising.

Assist 3: Anki Hou (AKA The Item Toss)
I’m not sure whether this was meant to be an AAA, or just your standard projectile assist, but compared to her other assists (especially Pendulum), you won’t be using this. The fact that you can randomly get a bomb – which will pass through your opponent harmlessly – instantly makes this not worth it.

Keep in mind that your opponent will probably try to snap Hsien-Ko in because of how weak she is on-point (hopefully, that changes). If this happens, remember that Rimoukon lasts a grand total of… five seconds.

Reliance on assists: She needs all the help she can get. Stuff like Hidden Missiles and Task Arrows can help her get in, but unfortunately, you should only use Hsien-Ko on-point if you really have to.

As an Anchor: Hsien-Ko gets improvements in XF, of course, but unlike most of the cast who see signifcant boosts, Hsien-Ko instead merely becomes usuable. Try to avoid having her be the last character. However, when this does happen, you’re not completely helpless. Make use of her speed to actually put her tools to good use. Also, if you have meter to spare, pop Rimoukon. It stacks on XF, so you’ve got an XF’d zombie girl who doesn’t flinch running at you. This can be surprisingly effective against inexperienced or unprepared opponents. Just don’t get hit too much; her health is still rather low.

3

I’m just going to post about a couple characters because I won’t pretend that I’ve tried all characters with her extensively.

As a general note, Hsien-ko benefits greatly from having at least one other teammate alive when she is on point, due to assists and the DHC trick.

Doom

The majority of my time with Hsien-ko has been with Doom on the team, so he takes up most of this post.

The first is the choice of the assist. I tend to go for Hidden Missiles for a few reasons. Hsien-ko is slow and usually can’t catch up and combo from beam assist knockback. Smart use of the missiles goes a long way to help Hsien-ko’s neutral game. Hsien-ko tends to be pressed for time with the desire to keep a wall of gongs out while advancing toward the enemy, so if you get a good opportunity to put missiles out, the descending missiles can give you somewhat of a “safe” time to advance with airdash/pendulum/etc., or rebuild your position. Also, the coverage of the missiles (in the air and behind you) is an area that Hsien-ko is unable to protect on her own. That’s one big plus over a beam assist, since Hsien-ko is already fairly good at controlling the ground. In some cases it’s even safe to use missiles to anticipate someone teleporting behind you.

Missiles are also useful to Hsien-ko as a combo extender, if it’s not already been called when your combo begins. With the right timing you can call it during the ground string, do the default M M S aircombo, then one or two missiles will OTG the opponent, popping them up for another ground string into relaunch, which tends to move them quite a distance toward the corner, where Hsien-ko wants them to be. There are some other combos where you can combo into the missiles and then make use of Hsien-ko’s multiple air specials, for example if you can connect an air chain, land, and cross under with :d::h: + :a1: before launching, you knock them into the missiles and can link various things while they’re trapped.

Finally, missiles are one of the extremely rare cases that can actually allow you to combo after airthrow. Her airthrow is usually basically uncomboable, but missiles are so slow that if you called them in advance you can get a lucky OTG sometimes. And there are certain difficult setups where you can actually call missiles right before the airthrow, Hsien-ko drags the opponent down into doom’s missile launcher and you can still combo them when Hsien-ko recovers.

Otherwise, Doom’s meterless damage is somewhat of a complement to Hsien-ko’s lack of it. With Hsien-ko, you can go for an exchange and get a large air combo with Doom after the tag.

For hypers, Tenraiha can always DHC to Photon Array or Doom’s Time. From Doom, air Photon Array easily DHCs to any of Hsien-ko’s hypers, including super armor -> combo or the next character’s hyper. Other notes: you can raw tag to Doom after Chireitou and tack on an H plasma beam for extra damage. Tenraiha -> XFC -> raw tag to Doom -> stand H otg combo also works.

Others

In general I find any assist that covers a good area of the air is helpful to Hsien-ko, as is something that keeps the opponent stuck in a position for a moment or pulls them to you.

Hsien-ko doesn’t hit the scaling limit with her combos before hypers, so any kind of combo extender assist can almost double her meterless damage. It can’t be one that knocks the enemy too far away, though, like Akuma tatsu or any beam.

If the combo extender assist gives time for you to activate Rimoukon before continuing the combo, you can use exchange in combos more reliably than most characters, since the worst thing that can happen is you absorb a little damage and get a free mixup when you land.

Any character who can start the DHC trick can boost the damage of Hsien-ko’s combos. 2 characters I’ve found who suit this role are Tron and Spencer.

Tron’s Gustaff Fire assist is helpful both in its regular invincible way and also as somewhat of a combo extender. Exchanging to Tron guarantees a huge-damage combo, with Tron’s OTG ground spin -> Hsien-ko pendulum assist -> Tron capture beam xx Servbot Surprise xx Rimoukon (DHC trick damage reset) -> raw tag back to Tron -> continue combo. DHCs are fairly good between them as well, and after a Chireitou -> raw tag, tron can H drill -> lunch rush.

Spencer’s use of the DHC trick with Hsien-ko isn’t as damaging, but still useful. His slant shot assist can be particularly good for Hsien-ko, however, and he’s a bit more well-rounded than Tron on point. If you combo into slant shot against an airborne opponent, they’re placed back standing on their feet in front of you. Since Hsien-ko’s combos usually depend quite a bit on spacing, it helps a lot to be able to pull them back to you. After they’re pulled in, you can do another series for a relaunch, or take advantage of the close position and do a reset.

Usually Hsien-ko’s mixup is limited because she has a hard time catching up with tech rolls, but this way you can create a case where you know the opponent is going to be standing still right in front of you, so you can actually mix up quite well with teleport dash and high/low. It’s particularly useful when you use Slant Shot to pull the opponent back to you after Chireitou, although the timing for this requires practice.

4

Noble Cactus posted a nice rundown of the assists, but I figured I’d throw in a few notes as well.

Senpu-Bu: As mentioned earlier, this assist has gained an infamous reputation of being overpowered bullshit and is often compared to Haggar’s Double Lariat and Tron’s Gustaff Flame. However, it is actually different in a lot of respects and when compared directly, I feel it is worse overall. First and most importantly, when outside of being powered up with Rimoukon (gold armor), the assist is virtually worthless due to the long startup in addition to Hsien-Ko being vulnerable the entire time. Attempting to use this assist for anything other than combo extenders without gold armor is just asking for Hsien-Ko to be killed - often she won’t even get the chance to start swinging. Once powered up, she will no longer take hitstun and nothing will stop her, but she is still vulnerable and will take full unscaled damage from whatever hits her. Even against an opponent that is simply mashing, you need to mind the damage Hsien-Ko has taken or she’ll be dead before you realize it. As mentioned earlier, the move has a painfully slow startup, which makes it very easy to block on reaction or simply avoid by faster characters if you are just tossing it out. The hitstun on the move leaves much to be desired as well, meaning if you’ve used it to interrupt a grounded opponents attacks and want to combo off it, you need to react quickly in order to capitalize. This is contrast to Haggar and Tron, who not only start their attacks immediately and either enjoy a miniscule hitbox (Tron) or a large window of complete invulnerability (Haggar), and each have over 200k more health than Hsien-Ko so are able to soak up more damage. To put it bluntly, Haggar and Tron’s assists are much safer for the player to just whip out, whereas Hsien-Ko’s assist requires the player to carefully manage it in order to get any real use from it. Haggar’s assist also has the special benefit of scoring a hard knockdown, making it easy to combo off of for characters who can self-OTG, and Tron’s Gustaff Flame generates a hefty amount of histun.

As a Hsien-Ko player, I feel Senpu-Bu only has one thing over Double Lariat and Gustaff Flame - the fact that Hsien-Ko moves while doing it, whereas Tron and Haggar are stationary. If used smartly, Hsien-Ko can interrupt a lot of supers while taking minimal damage herself, so long as she is close enough to connect with the opponent. Just be careful when facing off against opponents who have supers that persist on the screen even after they have been hit - namely Storm’s Hail Storm and Sentinel’s Hyper Sentinel Force. Calling Hsien-Ko out against these kind of supers is a death wish.

Henkyo-Ki: As Noble Cactus pointed out, not much lab time has gone into figuring out what to do with this assist because looking at it on paper, it is pretty worthless. Hsien-Ko appears behind the player and bangs her gong, sending out a shockwave that will act as both a projectile and projectile reflector. On point, there are three versions of this move, all of which have different levels of startup and range they travel before fading out depending on what level of strength is used. Unfortunately, it was decided that Hsien-Ko would use the medium strength version instead of the heavy strength version, and the difference between the two is massive, with the heavy version lasting almost twice as long. Because Hsien-Ko appears from behind, the shockwave will barely travel in front of the player before disappearing, meaning that the only way you will manage to actually reflect any projectiles is to either manage to get behind her after she has banged the gong, or jump over the projectile so that the shockwave can hit it. But if you were going to do that, you may as well have just avoided the projectile on your own and not used the assist. If not timed correctly, the shockwave could simply fade out before the projectile hits it, leaving your point character vulnerable!

There has been some speculation that this move may be best used more as a ‘get off me’ assist after being powered up with Rimoukon, and I admit the idea has some merit. Because she is on the screen for a much shorter amount of time, you wouldn’t have to risk the level of punishment that you could face when using Senpu-Bu. This isn’t really worth it though in my opinion as the hitstun generated from the shockwave is practically nothing, so even if you stopped an incoming assault it would be difficult to combo off reaction, plus it doesn’t cover the amount of area that Senpu-Bu does.

Anki-Hou: Hsien-Ko appears behind the player and throws out one of eight random items. The items travel at slightly different speeds and trajectories depending on the ‘type’ of items thrown. ‘Damage’ items - daggers, Chun-Li bracelets and shurikens travel very fast and reach full screen. ‘Dizzy’ items - Bonsai pots and stars travel slightly slower than damage items, don’t quite reach full screen and have a slight arc on them. And then there are the bombs. There are actually three bombs, each with different set timers on them that clock down before they explode. Bombs are more lobbed than thrown - they don’t quite reach full screen, they have a slight arc when tossed and they have the same properties that Joe’s Shocking Pink has in that they can be ‘bounced’ around the screen by normals, specials and supers. Unlike Shocking Pink however, the explosion doesn’t harm Hsien-Ko.

Here’s where the bad part about this assist is discussed. First and most importantly, the damage and dizzy items have only 1 point of durability and will lose to literally every other projectile in a trade, with the other projectile still heading for your face. The bombs have no hitbox whatsoever, meaning that when tossed, they will phase right through an opponent or incoming projectile. This means that for every time you call out the assist, you have a high chance of getting a projectile that will literally do nothing and won’t even win a projectile trade. This assist is insulting - do not use it.