The allies and enemies of the Phoenix Force- Phoenix Team Building and Matchup thread(UPDATE!)

Classic Fighting Games Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3
1

Phoenix Overview

Welcome to the Phoenix teambuilding thread! The point of this thread is to go over team building & various team strategies for Phoenix. Due to nature of Phoenix, it is impossible to simply stick her in any team, though this is a much easier concept to swallow now than last year. Although she was nerfed in Ultimate, she’s still a formidable threat. If you want to use the best glass cannon in all of fighting games, then Phoenix is the character for you. Phoenix teams work on the same simple principle that most teams do.

-Point Character
-Assist Character
-Anchor (Phoenix)

The **point **character’s sole purpose is to build meter with aid from the designated assist character.here is no need to over complicate things by changing up the formula, (like making Phoenix the 2nd or 1st character) especially now in Ultimate. Characters with health are more health are recommended due their ability to take more punishment and naturally build more meter than those with lower HP scores.

Characters that should not be used with Phoenix are:
-Heavy meter users
-Characters who suck at building meter
-Characters with dangerously low health

An example of a team following this archetype is:

Wesker / Haggar / Phoenix

The team that won this years EVO, its a simple team that has Wesker building meter with support from Haggar, and letting Phoenix clean up lategame as an anchor. This team was devastating in vanilla, which was mainly due to the Phoenix factor. Due to threat of dark Phoenix, players would attempt to snap her in (which would waste meter) which would give Wesker (and/or Haggar) the opportunity to heal some red life.

Although its taken almost of a year, i’ve finally decided to update this thread and give Phoenix a proper teambuilding thread. Let’s do our best guys!

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Teammate information:

Akuma

Spoiler

+Excellent assist helps out your point character
-Low health
-Eats meter like crazy end game
-Clashes with Phoenix due to being an anchor himself

Amaterasu

Spoiler

+Good rushdown game, meaning she can build meter pretty decently
+Meter building assist (poor)
+Cold Star assist is great for your point character
-Low health

Arthur

Spoiler

-Meter eater
-Low health
-???

C.Viper

Spoiler

-Frequently uses X-factor
-Low health
+Crazy good combos that effortlessly build meter
-Quite possibly one of the most meter hungry characters in the game

Captain America

Spoiler

+Good health
+Great damage without meter
+Good battery character

Chris Redfield

Spoiler

+Good health

Chun Li

Spoiler

-Low health
+Good assist
+Incredible battery character now due to her self OTG

Dante

Spoiler

+Does great damage without meter
+Excellent battery character, effortlessly builds meter with those really long combos
+Can be used both as an excellent point or as an assist character

Deadpool

Spoiler

???

Dormammu

Spoiler

+Strong combos that don’t require meter
+Solid point character
+Good health
-Likes to use meter

Dr Doom

[details=Spoiler]
+Incredible meterless combos
+Great at building meter
+Good health
+Can be used as an excellent point or as an assist[/details]

Felicia

Spoiler

???

Haggar

Spoiler

+High health
+Good assist
-Not that great on point

Hsien-Ko

Spoiler

???

Hulk

Spoiler

+High health
+Insane damage potential
-Relies on meter to get the most out of his combos

Iron Man

[details=Spoiler]
+Solid assist
+Good on point and as an assist character, but not to the same extent as Dante or Doom.[/details]

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Teammate information (continued):

M.O.D.O.K.

[details=Spoiler]
+Incredible meter building combos
+Damaging meterless combos
+Acceptable point character[/details]

Magneto

Spoiler

+Pure rushdown character with a solid keepaway game that lets him build meter in 2 different ways
-Likes to use meter for his most damaging combos / gravity squeeze
-Low health

Morrigan

[details=Spoiler]
+The best meter building assist in the game, see’s a lot more us in UMvC3 now that meter building has been nerfed[/details]

Ryu

[details=Spoiler]
+Good health
-Burns meter pretty quickly with his awesome set of hypers[/details]

Sentinel

Spoiler

+Excellent assist on top of being good on point makes him a good utility character

She-Hulk

[details=Spoiler]
+High damage potential without using meter
+High health[/details]

Shuma Gorath

Spoiler

???

Spencer

[details=Spoiler]
+Good health
+Crazy damaging combos that don’t require meter
-Uses meter frequently
-Competes with Phoenix an anchor[/details]

Spider-man

Spoiler

+A good point character
-Lost his web throw loops and thus now relies more heavily on meter

Storm

[details=Spoiler]
+Solid point character with great keepaway options
-low health
-tends to burn meter[/details]

Super Skrull

[details=Spoiler]
+Pretty high damage potential
-uses quite a bit of meter
+good health[/details]

Taskmaster

Spoiler

+High health
+Easy to use bnbs that build meter
+Excellent assist for your point character

Thor

[details=Spoiler]
+High health
+High damage combos that don’t require meter*(i haven’t seen any yet, word of mouth only)[/details]

Trish

Spoiler

+Incredible assist options
+Pretty decent on point
-Low health

Tron Bonne

[details=Spoiler]
+High HP[/details]

Viewtiful Joe

Spoiler

???

Wesker

Spoiler

+The poster boy for battery characters on Phoenix teams. High damaging combos that build meter
+Great otg assist for your point character
+Doesn’t even need to use meter
+Good health

Wolverine

Spoiler

+Still a potent rushdown character that has no problem building meter
-Some of his more damaging combos require meter use
+Swiss Cheese infinite (thought its most likely going to get patched / banned)

X-23

[details=Spoiler]
-Low health
+Great rush down character that can build good meter
-Uses a lot of meter to do good damage[/details]

Zero

Spoiler

+Solid on point
+Easy to use meter building bnb combos
-low health

UMvC3 characters coming soon!

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Matchups:
(pending)

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Matchups (continued)
(pending)

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Is it alright to post haha? I’ll remove it just in case you wanna reserve more stuff.

Anyway, I need a bit of help deciding which chars would go with Phoenix. Right now, I’m running X-23/Morrigan/Phoenix, but it seems a bit suspect. Any advice please?

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X-23 shines best with a dedicated team to help her out - you won’t get her full potential on a team with Jean, unfortunately. Laura’s best assets are her quick combos and Dirt-Snapback - the latter one doesn’t flow well with your team.

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**
Summery as of yet:
Haggar, Chris, Taskmaster, Sentinel, Magneto, Morrigan, Wesker, Dante, Zero, Akuma, Iron Man, Spiderman, Spencer, Doom, She-Hulk**

So far I’ve been maining Wesker(samurai edge) Morrigan(meter charge) Phoenix(tk shot) and it works really well. Wesker and Morrigan both can play solo and don’t need meter.
Wesker’s assist (hits low) also sounds nice in theory with Morrigans overheads but I’ve yet to find a good setup for that.
I’ll give Chris and Haggar a spin though.

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I’m thinking Doom, Morrigan, Phoenix for a team. Doom is awesome, enough said, requires no meter, can hit real hard, awesome keepaway and has awesome assists. I think I can use Morrigan’s assist to gain meter with him pretty well. Morrigan provides the obvious meter boosting, but she’s another really good all-around character and can play multiple styles depending on the opponent. Phoenix is obvious, get 5 bars and pull her out, gg. You have three great all-around characters and you get to build meter well, since it’s a phoenix team you’re going to be more dependent on controlling that pace of the match the entire time, but there aren’t any teams or playstyles that I think will counter three characters who can play any suitable style.

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For meter building point chars to use with her I’d suggest v.joe… akuma… magnus… wesker…

And then with jean sitting either in the 2 spot or 3 spot (I keep her #2)… a strong zoning assist like doom, sent, dormommu or even hulks g.wave assist… these characters help keep people out… provide more meter… give you easy hit confirms into your bnb… and maybe best of all… they have high health. So if jean bites it at 3 or 4 meters… with xfactor left… there’s no reason they can’t come in and still steal a win.

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Taskmaster is great if you love Keepaway/Rush down as much as I do.
Sentinel is good free damage tank…

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ive been goin akuma, shehulk, phoenix. im at about a 2.5 to 1 win ratio on ranked with most losses coming from sentinel teams but thats another thread…>.<
akuma can do 500k+ dmg in a combo without using meter,
she hulk has 1150 health to compensate, a slide that combos into launcher full screen, a command grab and aa command grab thats cause instant stun, fast low hitting assist…

so pretty much i try to rush down with akuma demon flip fireballs, mixing up with dive kick, get as much damage and meter as i can, TAC out to she hulk and try to work her beastly close up game, then as soon as i get 5 bars i rush down with phoenix fireball teleport mixups until shes dead, then i xfactor and fireball/feather spam with phoenix until she has a bar and i use it for healing field, rush down like crazy until their team is dead or i am dead… then i have akuma and she hulk left and im free to play them normally, using hypers in their combos…

obvious weakness has been against sentinel and teams that spam shit from full screen…
i think sentinel would be better than she hulk to use for that role but im just not a fan of his gameplay so i gotta do what i do… not sure what to switch or if i should just try to get better with this team… only played mvc2 as a little kid so im a beginner at this.
and can phoenix teleport instantly if i spam it when their hyper combo animation starts? i keep trying to teleport behind machine gun spammers but to no avail

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I’ve been going Wesker/Phoenix/Sentinel for the past couple of days. I’m an OCV/Comeback kind of guy, so I typically try to do as much damage and meter charge with Wesker as possible using Samurai Low with Overdrive assist to relaunch and do a bit more damage before letting the combo lie. if it comes down to it, by the time Wesker dies, I have five meters and fullhealth Phoenix and untouched Sent. I can afford to fuck around a bit, so I go rushdown Jean and teleport behind bad Hypers.

I had a team with Trish(Air)/Morrigan(Meter)/Phoenix(Shot), but after losing quite a bit, I realized that I A) REALLY FUCKING HATE PLAYING AS MORRIGAN and B) Build enough meter as it is without her. Dropped that team.

I had a team with her on point (please don’t do this lol) that was Phoenix(Shot)/Magneto(Beam)/Doom(Beam). I mainly just filled the screen up with shit. Magneto assists and tries to get the corner lockdown, then Doom assists and tries to keep the corner lockdown, Jean jumps and shots homing shots. Once they got in, if I didn’t have 5meters by then, I have to fight my way out. Never fun. lol. I DID get a couple of OCVs this way, though.

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Thanks, I realised this after getting literally pasted on by everyone in a session LOL. Everyone was saying “man, you’ve gotta change your team!” I wasn’t getting anywhere with X-23, I was actually doing better with regular Jean if you could believe it haha.

I think I might run Tron/Phoenix/Morrigan or Ameterasu/Phoenix/Morrigan, I’ll give them a shot. Leaning more towards Ameterasu because of Cold Star.

15

I’ve been going Arthur(fire bottle)/Amaterasu(bloom)/Phoenix(TK shot)
Arthur is on point playing keep away until i get 5 bars then i look for an opportunity to switch in.
Also King’s armor Arthur with the fire bottle is such a good assist!
Still working on Ammy but I like her and I might ultimately switch to cold star.

16

I been doing She Hulk / Hulk / Phoenix. I’m not convinced it’s a “great” team for Phoenix, but I’ve been having some success with it thus far. Random notes:

-I use alot of air tag combos for building meter fast. IMHO there’s no reason you should be skipping these.
-She Hulk’s dizzy grabs are prefect opportunities to set up air tag combos, plus she has great resets from OTGs so she doesn’t really need to spend super meter to get good damage.
-Hulk Gamma Wave assist has a ton of priority and is great cover for She Hulk. IMHO without this assist She Hulk would be pretty worthless on the team.
-Hulk does stupid good damage with basic air series, so again he doesn’t really need to spend super meter to put a hurt on someone. He can win a decent amount of projectile wars with Gamma Wave. It’s sooooo good in this game. The only sucky thing is the startup. He’s a pretty solid character overall though. I don’t think he gets enough credit.
-Phoenix comes in AS SOON AS the team gets 5 bars. I want her in there to zone ASAP. We been talking about this in the general Phoenix thread but she’s a great zoning character in normal form and can lame out a huge majority of the cast with homing TK shots, traps and teleport. I play her until she finally dies and goes DPh then I immediately tag her out for Hulk or She Hulk. Just as an FYI–you get a FREE, safe tag-in if the explosion from the DPh transformation hits the opponent. Just hold an assist button right before the explosion hits.
-Now I can play She Hulk & Hulk as normal and use supers where applicable. DPh gets saved until the end of the match for dat lvl 3 X-factor lulz.
-I always put Phoenix on TK shot assist, but I rarely if ever call her. However, DPh’s shot assist is really nice. Very good priority and chip. I use it to help Hulk get in, but you gotta be careful calling her.

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damn bronze next you going to switch to she-hulk wolverine phoenix :rofl:

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ahahaha I know right :lol:

I was playing She Hulk / Thor / Hulk at first but Thor gets bodied way too quick from rushdown. I planned on messing around with Phoenix anyway, but having Thor get bodied only accelerated the process. :lol: Hell I needed to learn a rushdown and/or zoning character anyway.

19

you know, i like phoenix so much i would gladly give up the whole dark phoenix thing if it meant her getting normal life. I think a lot of people just play because of the xfc DPhoe gimmick, but i actually like using her regular better…

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^^Same here.

Dark Phoenix seems so gimmicky.