So I’m not a top player and a lot of my match up experience comes from laggy online matches. That being said, I’m a cosmic lord on psn (which I realize doesn’t mean all that much since the level of competition online isn’t great) and I’ve played a lot of phoenixes at varying levels of skill. Despite what all the commentators say on the stream, I feel that laming her out is by far the most effective strategy. My win-rate against phoenix based teams is probably over 80% and that comes from playing incredibly lame and running away from her.
From what I’ve seen watching streams at major tournaments most people don’t know how to run properly from her. They’ll successfully run until there’s maybe 10-20 seconds left on the clock and then accidentally turn her dark cause mashing on attack is too tempting in this game or they’ll get crossed up by random teleports and lose their characters. I’m tired of seeing people on stream waste tons of meter snapping her in only for her to super jump away, spam a few salty balls and then tag out again. Here’s my strategy against her. Do what you will with it.
Many successful Dark Phoenix teams are structured as point character/assist/phoenix (eg. flocker plays zero on point backed by tron, viscant with wesker backed by haggar, Tokido and Detrimantix with wolvie backed by Sent). However, these point characters are handicapped by conserving meter for phoenix as any of these characters can easily TOD when allowed to use meter. When facing a phoenix team, your top priority should be to kill the point character, NOT to snap in phoenix. As we’ve seen from SB and other majors, more often than not, phoenix is able to escape and you’ve just wasted meter and the opportunity to kill the point character. Forget about snapping her in unless you’re confident about your ability to mix her up as she comes in. Instead, just kill the point character while trying to avoid losing your point character, which should be easier than usual as the phoenix player will generally avoid using meter (eg. Flocker’s zero had so many chances to kill characters but didn’t just to conserve the meter) and you’ll simply have more opportunities by virtue of that alone.
Once you’ve killed the point character, just play incredibly lame against the assist character. These will usually be suboptimal characters anyway so this shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish. Your goal should be to take minimal damage, not to kill them as quickly as possible. In fact, the more time you waste off the clock, the better. Also, by playing super lame, they don’t build meter. This character will either die or the phoenix player will realize your strategy and tag her in. If the assist character is still alive, try to hit phoenix and snap the assist back in. Your goal should be to create as much life difference between yourself and the phoenix player as possible. If you can’t run from haggar for a good 30 seconds, you’re either playing a really shitty character or you need to step up your game.
Eventually you’ll be left facing phoenix and if you’ve played your cards right, you should be up at least 2 characters on her. You might argue that this works in theory but in practice you’ll probably lose a character or two to the phoenix players point/assist character. I disagree with this. The phoenix team plays handicapped from the get-go by losing the option of using meter. If you play smart and take advantage of this, you should be able to kill the point character without losing yours simply by virtue of them not being able to TOD you as they usually would, losing the option to random super (or in wolvies case, using berserker charge to make berserker slash safe), etc. But as you watch even top players against phoenix teams, they start off with a mental handicap and play much more aggressively and worse than usual because they feel that they have to snap in phoenix before she can get the meters. If you decide from the beginning that you’re not going to waste meters trying to snap her in and play standard/lame, it’s a huge mental advantage.
Anyway, getting back to the situation where you’re facing just phoenix alone, running away from her is really not that hard if your character has an airdash or double jump. If she just jumps back and spams salty balls, great. Play gradius, don’t block but try to dodge them all. The tracking ones move slowly and disappear after a fixed time so it’s not that hard to avoid them without taking chip if she’s more than half screen away. Practically speaking though, she’ll try to rush you down and she only has the following options to open you up.
- Low
- Overhead
- Tri-jump
- Teleport
- Throw
- Cross-under
Options 1-4 can be avoided simply by super jumping away after pushing back her spamming crouching a (which she will spam, guaranteed). Do NOT try to jump when she’s standing in your face because if she’s spamming cr. a you will get hit. Wait to see what she does. If she hits cr. a, push block and super jump away. If she goes for anything else, super jump away. Her teleport always appears relative to the character so you should always be on the lookout for the teleport. She cannot attack immediately out of her teleport. This means that if she teleports, do NOT try to block unless you were dumb and she’s somehow forced you to block a fireball or trap. Super jump away. When you’re in the air, she will try to air throw you. Best situation is to always position yourself out of airthrow range. Tech if you can, otherwise just take the damage. She has no good follow-up options from an airthrow outside the corner. The only thing that can be difficult to avoid is if she tries to cross under you when you land. That’s why if you have a character with a double jump or airdash, always try to alter your trajectory before you land to try to throw off the timing of her mixup and to give you more time to react to it.
And do not rush her trying to beat her to a pixel of life because chances are you will accidentally turn her dark. Just poke her here and there and whittle her down and do NOT swing randomly or do random supers because a smart phoenix will just take the hit on purpose.
I also play phoenix and players that try to run are the ones that I have the most trouble with. Luckily for me, most players don’t know how to run properly so they get opened up in the end but if you play lame enough and have enough of a life lead, you should not be losing to phoenix.
If you don’t believe this strategy and you live in the US or Canada and have a good internet connection, I’ll be happy to play your phoenix team online in a first to 10 and we can post the results here. I go by ac_tesla and I only play on PSN.
