While looking at the advantages that teams have, it seems obvious that they put solo’s in the dirt, but when I play that is rarely the case. There are teams that have made me eat dirt, but there are also solos that have done the same so I feel that’s due to the player more than their ratio.
I haven’t experienced many Alpha counters, but when I do they don’t affect the outcome of the match all that much. I think they are supposed to be used when a character has a normal for an assist, so they can go Alpha counter into s.mk, c.hp, air combo, bnb whatevs. But, I have no idea, I don’t use teams.
People DHC against me all the time, nearly every instance where it’s practical, but it really doesn’t affect the tides that much. I mean, sure, if I stop blocking for a bit they can do some damage, but I don’t. And besides, supers do half as much against solo’s as they would have against anyone else, so you have to keep that in mind.
Red life can definitely be a problem (If I decide to just let them recover it all, sure), but it offers limitations and a measure of predictability as well. I don’t know about characters that aren’t Cerebella, but her snapback is ridiculously easy to slip into a combo, so that means that if I pull out any combo I’m switching in that injured character. So, I’m going to set up a mock situation.
Situation: I fuck up your point character enough so that you have enough life to not die from chip damage, but a hp or hk will kill you. So, what now? You are stuck with limited options if I’m not impatient (it’s the same as sitting on a life lead, I just have to be patient).
You can try to come at me and risk letting your character die, you can raw tag and let me get a full combo into snapback to bring your original point back in, you can burn two supers for a safe DHC (if you have one), or you can try to wait for me to make a mistake.
And even then, if you get your next character out and come at me with a character healing in the background, that means a few things as well (outside of the simple “don’t get snapped back”). If you’re running a duo, you can’t use assists or DHC’s until they gain back a decent chunk of that life, because all I have to do is counter attack (with a super or a short combo) and eliminate that character. If you are running a trio, that means you have to remember which assist you can safely use and which one you can’t, and you have to be careful when you DHC for the same reasons.
And, sure, you don’t have to wait until I mess you up to switch characters, but no one ever does that until they have less than 40% health. And since simple combos usually do about 40-50% life, you probably won’t switch until it’s too late. You can switch all willy nilly, and you can DHC often to get new characters out, but I probably don’t need to explain why that isn’t a healthy game plan.
So, there, reasons red life isn’t that godlike from where I’m sitting.
Also, I don’t go for TOD’s, so I don’t know if that makes a difference, but my attacks normally look like this: moderate combo, reset into moderate combo into super. From full health, a trio is standing with barely any health (that’s not me using the corner, or using character specific combos), and a duo can’t take another moderate combo.
I don’t know who will disagree, or what, but this is what I see. I think that some of the stigma of using a solo comes from the scrubs that play: If you don’t know how to play, chances are you are going to start with one character. Also, a lot of people here probably have played some other team games (mvc series mainly), so they are coming in with comfortability using teams, meaning the good players who switch to this game are probably using teams. But, a player like me who hasn’t had any other team-game experience before this one, I am not comfortable using a team, or fighting one. Even though I’m a good player (not great, or exceptional), I have limited experience fighting teams, all of which came from this game. So, combine the experienced players using teams and the inexperienced players going solo, and I think that a lot of what you experience from solo players isn’t really what you should be judging the solo option on.