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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.

Thx in advance.

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Alright let’s see

Rundown of Spencer’s assists:
**A: **Probably his worst or at least the assist you see people use the least. Spencer does a horizontal grapple that pulls people to the ground into a soft knockdown. Just like his B assist it’s kinda unsafe on it’s own, but this one just makes it a lot harder to continue a combo.
B: His most used assist, Spencer does a diagonal grapple that pulls people in front of him, leaving them in hitstun. This one is an excellent assist to continue combo’s and gives you a lot of reset ability as well. Characters who can otg by themselves like Taskmaster and Wesker can use this to continue a combo easily or get a nasty reset off of it. It also reaches into a zone that some characters like Sentinel have trouble dealing with. It does need a little experimenting and its usefulness varies from team to team, but overall this assist is really worth it.
**Y: **One of, if not the best wallbounce assist in the game: Spencer does his Armor Piercer special move. Unfortunately he always does the slow version, but it does do a lot of damage and works very well in combo’s. Characters that can’t normally wallbounce can really benefit from this assist, since it gives you a lot of wallcarry in a combo. Most Spencer players use the B assist but Y is actually quite useful as well.

What kind of assists does Spencer want:
Rushdown (Projectiles and Unblockables): Sentinel Drones (projectile, miniature-lockdown, left-right/high-low/throw mixups, zipline mobility), Taskmaster horizontal arrows (projectile, high-low-throw mixups), Iron Man Unibeam (projectile, assist clearance, zipline mobility), Doom Plasma Beam (projectile, assist clearance, zipline mobility), Doom Rocks (projectile, zipline mobility), Magneto Disruptor (projectile, assist clearance), Arthur Daggers (projectile, zipline mobility, high-low-throw mixups), Shuma Mystic Ray (projectile, zipline mobility), Amaterasu Cold Star (projectile, lockdown, high-low mixups), Akuma Tatsu (projectile clearance, lockdown), Chris Gunfire (projectile, zipline mobility).
Wesker Gunshot (unblockables, otg combo), Deadpool Quick Work (unblockables), Felicia Low (unblockables), X-23 (unblockables, otg combo), She-hulk Torpedo (unblockables, otg combo).

Defense: Dante Jam Session (vertical range), Tron Gustaff Fire (invincibility, combo starter), Haggar Lariat (invincibility, combo starter, combo extender), Akuma Tatsu (projectile/assist clearance), Iron Man Repulsor Blast (range, lockdown), Doom Hidden Missiles (combo breaker, breathing space).

Spencer’s strategy with assists is to use a projectile assist that can give him the oppurtunity to get in either using ziplines or just dashes. After that he can go for a high/low/throw mixup, and some assists like Sentinel Drones or Iron Man Unibeam can even give him really good left-right mixups thanks to his zipline mobility. He’s reliant on an assist, because Spencer can be airthrown out of his ziplines when he’s on his own.

When you get in thanks to the proper assist, you get a lot of mixup oppurtunities depending on what assist you have. He has a dangerous overhead and command throw and of course he always has the option to go low. The best thing is: with the right team make-up any of these three hits will get you an instant kill thanks to the DHC Trick. This is also the reason you’ll always want a partner character for Spencer that you can DHC Trick with. Characters like Wesker, Taskmaster, Sentinel, Amaterasu and Doctor Doom are typical partners for a Spencer team: they all have a reliable assist that you can get mixups with (or in Wesker’s case, unblockables) and you can DHC Trick with all of them, even with Doom.

There’s trouble in paradise when your mixups don’t get the job done and of course you can always resort to using a lockdown assist. However, with this you would abandon the possibility of using one of Spencer’s most popular tools: his Bionic Arm. The Bionic Arm has 11 frames of invincibility and starts up just as fast as Magneto’s Disruptor. If your mixups fail and the opponent is coming toward you, you can use the Arm to punish any mistake in his offense. Against zoning types, the Bionic Arm will help you get through projectiles. The fault in this strategy lies, of course, in the amount of meter Spencer has. You can help him out by giving him a useful defensive assist: Dante and Doom have two good defensive assist that even give him a DHC Trick option. And of course characters like Haggar, Tron and Akuma can only benefit Spencer. Alternatively, if you don’t want to bet on a defensive strategy even for a while, you can put a battery character first and build meter for Spencer to use while benefitting from Spencer’s B or Y assist. Characters like Wesker, Taskmaster and even Chris are used for this kind of strategy.

Spencer does well on point for his ability to get a DHC Trick instant kill while benefitting from a projectile or defense assist. He does well second because he can gain a lot of meter to use for Bionic Arm while still giving him the option to use the DHC Trick.

And now for the myth: Spencer is only a decent anchor. His assists don’t really warrant putting him in the last position: they’re good assists, but not as good as the more common projectile assists. On his own his mobility is a lot weaker, since he can get airthrown easily out of his ziplines. What makes Spencer scary in the anchor position is that he’ll have a lot of meter stored to use Bionic Arm with: and he can even make them safe with X-Factor to put him in a mix-up position. He also has good matchups against more common anchor characters: he beats Sentinel, Akuma, Tron, and with a lot of meter even top tier characters he can easily turn around a bad matchup like Wesker. On the other hand, it’s easy to run away from a lone Spencer: he has no chip options. Even if Spencer uses X-Factor, if the opponent doesn’t press buttons Spencer will be in trouble, since he doesn’t have an assist to back him up.

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Good stuff. I see he’s basically like an unsafe version of Wesker as anchor. Personally I don’t feel chip is that important for being anchor because the reason why people fear characters like Wesker/Sentinel/Felicia or even Spencer himself in the back has nothing to do with chip. Throws are strong in this game and being able to convert damage into throws is the THE scariest part of being an anchor period. With Spencer obviously being able to convert damage off his throws pretty well into damage like Wesker/Sent/Felicia etc. Sent has a hard time establishing close range to land the grabs without assists and his normals are easily push blocked down but if he does get in the air and ground throw game that can convert to combos is definitely a problem. Felicia on the other hand excels against pushblock because she has a bunch of moves that pass through advance guard once she gets in so she sticks like glue if she touches you. Kitty Helper beats advance guard completely also so if she’s in your face with kitty helper you’re basically just dead.

Like Taskmaster or Akuma can have strong chip options with the beam in XF but unless they got 4 or 5 meters and you’re down to like one character with half their life bar you’re not going to necessarily die. Both characters have offense that is easily advance guarded against and pushed away and you can jump and runaway especially if you have strong movement to force them to whiff bad supers. The only time chip becomes a big strategy IMO in XF3 is when the opponent has already burned their XF but if it’s a situation where both characters have XF stocked you’re not going to be able to rely on chip where as you’ll always be able to rely on grabs that convert to TOD’s.

With that what is the general ease to convert his normal ground/air throws or command grabs into combos in XF2/3 and how much damage on average can you get specifically in XF3 after a throw?

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His damage isn’t all that big off normal throws, but I’ll have to say I’m not the best execution-wise. More technical players like Stark or Duck Strong might be able to get TOD’s off any normal throw. Unfortunately off his normal throws you have to do an otg which will immediately wallbounce. An airthrow midscreen will get you about 800k meterless in XF3, in the corner I can only get 700k (although an air/jump loop should be possible for a bit more damage). Ground throws can be followed up in the corner and midscreen for the same amount of damage (combo’s after airthrow are easier though).

Fortunately the damage on his command grab gets into the 1.25 mil meterless, both in the corner and midscreen. Funnily enough, I find the corner relaunch more difficult in XF3 than without and the midscreen relaunch combo actually seems easier with XF3.
All these damages are with X-factor activated before the throw (so not during the combo).

Getting the combo’s after the throws overall isn’t particularly hard, you should be able to convert off an airthrow at any height, even superjump height.