i don’t get why people are even responding to frustratedsquirrel. he admitted in another topic that he didn’t even buy mvc3 so how the hell is he going to know whether or not advancing guard of all things is “scrub friendly”. to me being a scrub is not about not being good, it about wanting to completely change something about the game simply because you can’t deal with it. there has already been many post already about how easy AG is to counter so i don’t even know why he is still defending his position in the first place.
The last thing I’m going to add to this basically is that also like said above, advance guards put you in longer block stun than if you had just standard blocked. This means that when you advance guard if the opponent knows how to use movement plus assists to get around it you’re only putting yourself in a longer block stun. Even when you bring up a character that probably shouldn’t be used on point a lot like Haggar…the reason he has moves like the violent axe and hoodlum launcher combinations is because you’re supposed to use them when the opponent advance guards so you go right back in on the advance guard and get frame advantage. You’ll still technically trap them in a block string even though they advance guarded because the game pushes you in through the guard and forces them to block any way. Which means you have them in a tight block string even though they advance guarded. His M hoodlum if you delay it after a normal will grab up people who push block
A lot of characters can do this though. Like X-23 can do things like force you to block an MFC’d s.H. This gives her plus 12 on block but is easily advance guarded mainly because of the long block stun. Which makes it so that something that normally would instantly give you crazy advantage and free mix up for literally pressing a normal in someone’s face becomes something you have to think about a little more to make work. No one would like playing against a character that can get plus 12 on block on a hard normal (at 9 frame start up) that they can RAPID FIRE unless AG was in the game. This technique also kills the pushback X23 normally receives if her s.M or s.H is not MFC’d which means X-23 would never leave your face.
Now from there what you’ll do is after they block the normal you’ve already got a heavy frame advantage. Which they push on advance guard afterwards you can dash forward through the advance guard (which X-23 has the best ground dash in the game) and then press on a normal that can’t be crouch poked like s.M to maintain advantage. Once you get assists rolling with this you can lock people down long enough to definitely land a hit. Even before the assists you can bait the opponent into throwing out a normal or an advance guard when they’re out of the block stun and blow them up also.
Similar strategies like that of course you will see from characters like Magneto and Wolverine on the regular. Magneto forcing you to block an air normal and then cancelling it into a flight that passes through the advance guard so that he can stay on on the offense and get another mix up while you’re trapped in block stun. Wolverine waits for you to block one of his normals and then cancels it into berserker barrage special so he can run through the advance guard and stay in on the opponent. He can also wait for an advance guard and then berserker slash through the advance guard to create an ambiguous mix ups or set up berserker charge pressure with assists.
Plus the general idea of pushblocking/advance guards is that when the opponent pushblocks they are always pushing themselves closer to the corner. Once the opponent gets into the corner pushblock becomes nearly useless because the whole point of push block is that the distance is created through a spacing that is generated by both you and your opponent moving backwards. Once you hit the corner you don’t move backwards anymore allowing them to instantly run back in with ease. That’s why especially when someone calls an assist to lock you down you’re better off not advance guarding the assist because if you do you’ll push yourself towards the corner without pushing the opponent away from you.
The block strings you’d be able to create in this game without advance guard would generally lead to the most random BS offense. Pretty much to the point that no one would care to play the game competitively. Yet it’s that funny combination of crazy offense plus the strength of advance guard that leads to an interesting balance of combating offense and defense where both people are at a constant battle for space control and whoever blows up the advance guard first gets in and does their shit.
Plus it’s not like SFIV where advance guard is like shoryu FADC ultra and gives you big damage for breaking through a block string. I never saw anyone do big damage, kill a character or win a match because they advance guarded at the right time. It’s that instantly converting defense that can’t be stopped by any offense into huge damage that I couldn’t stand about SFIV. Even if you block the shoryu they are still safe and only burnt 2 meters which is stupid. It creates that effect of being able to constantly sit on something that the opponent can almost do nothing about from an offensive standpoint. You have to give them space to set up offense simply because of what they are sitting on. At least in 3S there are legitimate offensive moves that will beat a parry or red parry so you don’t have to use defense to beat their defense. There’s also gaps inbetween multiple parries where the parries don’t actually work which negates abuse of them.
Most other game’s parry systems give you full combos and bnbs and damage. MVC3’s doesn’t even give you that.** The only thing that lets you do that is XF guard cancel and you only get one chance to do that. Plus there’s plenty of ways to bait a bad one so they end up burning XF prematurely with no immediate reward.**
Have you never seen/played/heard people bitch about Wolverine? Do you play this game at all?
I love Advance guard
i don’t have much of a problem with it… but here’s why i think advance guarding is a scrub friendly mechanic
- it makes the scrub players mash more buttons while they’re are blocking… and with the “new” mvc3 players… they love just pressing buttons without any thought
-95% of mvc3 matches i see people push block a LMHS string… and they usually push on the S… and that’s what makes the mvc3 crowd bad players… you don’t need to punish on reaction to be considered good
Advanced guard is without a doubt a noob friendly mechanic, but does that make it not necessary, or important? Not at all, without it, the block strings and stuff in this game would be MUCH longer. Just the first thing off my head is Chun’s lightning legs.
Personally I am just bugged that you are able to do it so late after you are hit because I would like to punish some things with a Dash but I get a Pushblock and it just burns me up that I just reset the situation and could have killed them … very annoying … mayby make the window a little bit smaller but other than that there are ways to stop it with assists.