Thor matches up quite well with a good bit of the cast. Many people assume that since he is a big character, he has no way of getting in, which means he can be zoned out easily, but with the proper assists, he can get in quite fine.
But there are those matchups that even while aided still end up being a struggle to deal with. With Ultimate MvC 3 being fairly new, virtually all the character match ups in the game are new as well, and will take some time learning how to fight against properly. That’s why this thread is here, though, so if you guys run into some folks that give you problems, post it here and the rest of us’ll come up with a solution to it.
That said, let’s talk about some general generalities here.
Combating Zoning
[details=Spoiler]Super jumping is more essential in these type of match ups than anywhere else. It gives you time to see where your opponent is and what they’re going to throw out. It’s also good because certain characters can’t hit certain parts of the screen, so when you’re up there and in flight mode, you may be able to maneuver around with some air dashes to close the distance.
:l: Mighty Strikes are your best bet for moving forward. They completely nullify all projectiles, so you have should have no fear of getting hit, and if you charge it fully, you get super armor. While the charge time is pretty decent, it’s still a good idea to be smart about how you use it. It’s the worst feeling in the world to be caught charging the strike with hopes of going through whatever they throw at you, and then getting hit out of it.
Remember, when you’re on the ground trying to advance in, call your beam assist to help out with that. A zoner’s gameplan is to keep as much space in between you and him as possible, so he’ll be most likely running away, jumping back, and doing whatever he can to keep the distance between you two. That beam assist will force the zoner to sit tight and block while you make your approach.
With it taking such a valiant effort to actually get in, you want to make sure you make it count when you do. Capitalize off of every hit you make. Have something in mind for every Mighty Strike you confirm with. I personally recommend going into training mode and practicing just that. What type of follow ups can you do if it’s blocked at this range? What if you’re a little further away? What if you’re right on top of 'em? What if you hit them? What if you hit them in the air. Hit the lab and find out. (If someone made a video of different things you could do in different situations, I would post it right here.)
Remember you have a command grab, and remember you can command grab in the air as well. Test out the ranges of the grabs. Test out the ranges of the grabs on different characters and different situations. If they’re jumping, see how close you need to be to scoop 'em up. If they’re under you, see if there’s a way to take 'em right there. Some characters with bulky weapons/arms have surprisingly large hurt boxes (shout outs to Tron Bonne), so you can grab 'em from a huge distance away. Some characters have very tiny hurt boxes (shout outs to Rocket Raccoon), so you’ll need to be closer. When someone’s up in the air raining down stuff on you, sometimes all that’s needed is a super jump, Mighty Strike or flight/air dashes, and a command grab to take 'em for a ride.
Bottom line is Thor has plenty of tools to combat zoning, but you gotta make sure you know how to use 'em and when to use 'em. Get to the labs folks.[/details]
Combating Rushdown
[details=Spoiler]The game is still primarily centered around high speed/rush down characters, so get used to fighting a lot of them, but before we go into what the characters generally do, it’s very important to get a read for what the player tends to do. Not everyone plays the same characters the same way. Some rushers like to get tricky with some teleport mix ups. Others like to rush straight on in your face and keep you pinned down with pressure. Some tend to look for opportunities to reset you. The sooner you find out what type of person you’re playing against, the sooner and easier it’ll be to fight 'em back.
So you’ve got a good feel for what the other guy likes to do, how he approaches, and when he likes to go for a grab (learn to break out of those grabs, because if you don’t, you’re in for a world of hurt), you do a good job avoiding most of the hits, and even in landing a good bit of your own, but then some way down the line, you get caught in a block string, and it takes forever to get out of. You’re just sitting there, waiting on the guy to stop, looking anxiously for the slightest pause in his offense, just so you can fight back and continue in striking down your foe. I get it. We’ve all been there, we all know that feeling, but I gotta come out and tell you—no matter how tempting it gets, no matter how tired of sitting and waiting you are, no matter how much you gotta scratch that itch—for the love of all that is righteous and good…DON’T PRESS A BUTTON!!
You can’t. You shouldn’t. It does not bode well for you at all. Try to ease off on the push blocks too, because you may accidentally not push block and instead get an attack or dash and be opened up for whatever terrible carnage he has in store for you. The reason for this is because absolutely all of Thor’s normals are horrible. (I still laugh at the people complaining about Vergil’s normals.) He can’t punish things with a crouching :l: like everyone else can, he can’t use an opening in the opponent’s block string to punch the guy and start up his own combo. Thor has a super easy time falling into frame traps. All of his normals take forever to start, and even longer to recover from, so don’t ever use them as a means to escape pressure.
What you need to do is be patient. In order to properly play Thor, you need to have like the best defense ever. You need to see every mix up, every high low, every frame trap, and block it perfectly. Once you do this, your opponent will always, always, always get frustrated, and when they’re frustrated, they start getting sloppy. Look for that sloppiness. When you see that some of the approaches they’ve been making have changed, get ready to punish. They change it up to try and see if you’ll make a mistake and get hit, but if you endure for a little while longer, it’ll be them who make the mistakes.
So what do you do when you see these mistakes? You can’t punish with a normal, so what else is left? Grabs. They don’t even have to be command grabs. A simple grab’ll do the trick. All grabs are 1 frame, so you’ll beat out an unsafe poke that’s in range with an air grab. If they manage to tech, that’s absolutely fine, because you’ve created a neutral situation, which allows you to get the flark outta there. If they don’t, then you’re still in a great neutral situation, and if you have an OTG assist (like Wesker’s Samurai Edge), you’ll be able to combo off of it. And if your execution is good enough to put in the half circle back motion fast enough, you can punish with the :h: command grab, and get a free combo off of it, but most people tend to do what is known as an X-factor guard cancel to do the command grab.[/details]
Combating Giants
[details=Spoiler]This is perhaps Thor’s most favorable match up. The reason being because he himself is a big, heavy based character, but unlike other big heavies, he has amazing mobility, and extremely versatile moves, and a command grab with good range that can be done on the ground and in the air. So he can literally fly circles around the other bigs and scoop 'em up whenever he feels like it.
It’s important to note that big characters do still hit hard, so you can’t be doin’ all sorts of unsafe stuff because things like Haggar’s pipe and Hulk’s smash can really mess you up if you’re not paying attention, so play smart. That said, Mighty Strike gets super armor when it’s fully charged. The recovery on all of those long range pokes the big guys have is more than enough to punish. And Thor can still kill any of 'em off of a combo into a reset. Also, also, don’t forget about Mighty Spark. All the other big guys have nothing to combat zoning, so a few rapid fire lightning bolts will give them trouble. Expect a super jump from them to try and get around it, and then meet that super jump with a super jump of your own and hurricane them right back down to the ground.[/details]
That about covers all the character archetypes of the game. We’ll go into some more specific character match ups as the game unfolds. Make sure you guys report back to this thread with some information about other stuff that I missed.
Mighty Hurricane will give you a free combo. If you don’t feel like punishing with a normal grab, you can do any of his normal moves to be honest. (Recovery on Strange’s teleports is 19 frames I think, so that’s a lot of leeway.)