Im digging this! MAKE A VIDEO!
Thoughts on the newer characters (based on personal testing and having watched almost all UMvC3 stream and tournament content available so far):
Iron Fist - He does a lot of damage, but is a massive meter-hog. He also surprisingly needs assists to get his really serious work done (even with lots of personal OTG and wall-bounce tools at his disposal). Lacking in air options, but does have good assists .Overall, I think he gets placed mid-tier.
Vergil - He has crazy combos and he has lots of options to open people up on his own without assists, but he chews through meter to get things done. Being meter hungry isn’t a completely terrible affliction as lots of other great characters share this flaw as well, but with meter gain slower across the board it is worth making note of. One of the stronger things about Vergil are his great assists - often times they bring more to the table for a team than what he does on point. All three assists have their uses in varying teams - I can’t think of more than two or three characters that seriously see use of all three of their assist. Versitility is the name of Vergil’s game and for that reason he ranks high-tier, possibly even top-tier.
Phoenix Wright - Tournabout mode is great but getting there is proving to be far too much work. Frank West is still a capable character even at level 1, but Wright is mostly useless before Tournabout. Add that to the fact that Maya isn’t nearly as protecive as she first looks and you have a situation where you build a whole team based around THC or DHC specifically into Tournabout. The problem is that against a Phoenix team (another setup that is geared towards one goal) the threat is big enough to force you to play differently and adapt. Against a Wright team…you just have to rush down a bit more and that is about it . The threat just isn’t there, not to mention that I am a hell of a lot less scared of Wright in Tournabout than I am of Dark Phoenix, even in Ultimate. Low-tier…probably the lowest out of all characters.
Nova - He has the tools for rushdown and has reasonably effective short-term zoning. A lot of his Gravimetric stuff is really being under-utilized at the moment, but once people start being smarter about it, his already high damage output should be very impressive as even the best players get hit in a match so why not make that work to your advantage (not to mention they can also create new openings for him with wall bounces, etc)? His assists are also very solid, and he isn’t reliant on being assisted to complete combos. High-tier.
Nemesis - Amazing damage output, isn’t very meter dependent, and has a lot of useful and tricky resets. Has some astonishingly great matchups, but also some extra-ordinarily bad ones, which is the big thing that holds him back. His assists aren’t that great. High-tier or low-tier depending on matchup. He is an extremely matchup dependent character - something most of the new Ultimate characters manage to avoid.
Frank West - I’ll admit I under-estimated Frank. Leveling him up isn’t a huge chore, and even at level 1 he has useful tools and simple combos for solid damage. Although I personally think the shopping cart assist is a bit over-rated (much easier to punish than things like Vanilla Tatsu were, etc), it is still very useful. He does lose out to any sort of air game though, so that is his one major weakness. Assists can help him with that somewhat, but right now most people rely on him for the assist which means he will be in slot 2 or 3 with less (or no) assists to help him out. High-tier in most matchups.
Ghost Rider - Really, he only manages to be scary the first few times you fight him, and after that he becomes very manageable. Chain attacks cover a lot of ground, but they are not safe and can be punished (often before they even become active). Even when things go his way, he does not have big damage output without using his level 3. His assists are average. Mid-tier.
Firebrand - The only bad thing to say about him is low damage output. Everything else is amazing. Extremely high mobility, lots of ways to open people up, very deceiving attacks (“hard-to-blockables”), excellent priority, and he even has solid assists. Luminous Body is freightening on its own, and if it is combined with X-Factor, real magic starts to happen. His level 3 is gimmicky, but it is a very powerful gimmick that requires absolutely no setup beyond having the 3 bars (unlike other characters jumping through hoops to get to their good stuff). Firebrand is a threat from anywhere on the screen - something that not many characters have going for them. Not only that, but I’m really struggling to think of a bad matchup for Firebrand. Scary stuff. High-tier with current technology, potential top-tier once the dust settles and things get figured out.
Hawkeye - Much better than people originally thought. Makes a great point or second character on just about any team. His hypers are fast and powerful, and more importantly make for some great team synergy (Anyone else see the Gimlet > DHC Luminous Body > full screen Firebrand slide into wallbounce combos from the Big Two stream? Scary as hell, and that is just one potential DHC). Strangely enough he actually loses out to some other zoners (Arthur, Chris, - basically any zoner that does more than just “damage” with zoning tools - things like knockdowns, stuns) because it is easy to throw Hawkeye off of his rythym with a quick knockdown or large hitstun. Assists are pretty standard combo extending fare. Great mobility with the slide and his backflips. Has the “don’t you dare touch a button” factor going for him with Gimlet. He does die quite fast but it has yet to be seen if that is a huge factor or not. It never really affected Akuma that much. High-tier for the time being.
Dr. Strange - A hard character to figure out, and probably the least explored character of the new cast so far. It is hard to get a read of him as most players so far are just getting blown up before they can get anything going. It is hard to simply take that as the long term forcast for him though as with so many tools and some of the best (if not the absolute best) teleports in the game it seems likely that players will be able to make things happen once given enough work-in time. Great hypers, good DHC potential, solid assists. Mid-tier for now, could easily be high once the work is put in. For now the best anyone has managed stream or tournament wise is great use of his two-shot assist to amazing effect for characters like Dormammu to give them all of the time in the world to get work done.
Rocket Raccoon - I’m not sold on RR, and things just don’t look great for him in the long-term. His damage output is extremely low, and unlike characters like Zero or Firebrand he lacks the options for mixups and resets they have. His combos have to be cut short on purpose due to the way his aerial attacks work, and his traps aren’t as great as originally thought - and this goes for his assist versions as well. Log trap just isn’t turning out to be that great of an assist as it has a lot of trouble hitting opponents who are moving (it is easy to just jump over the trap…not sure if that was intended or not). Has some interesting tricks but ultimately I’m not sure it is worth the effort as you could be playing another character who accomplishes the same goals but does not suffer from RR’s problems (low damage, low health). Mid-tier at best. Unless some insane technolgy comes along, I doubt you will ever see him higher than mid.
Strider - Very different from his MvC2 incarnation, but still powerful. His on-point options are fantastic and is a genuinely scary character to face up against in many situations. I will say that people are still ranking his Vajra assist too highly though (it is easy to see coming and Strider getting hit as an assist is a scary situation). Great for keeping combos going - but not very scary at all when you have a chance to block or punish it. Level 3 setups are strong (both Rag and Ouro). High-tier, but not top-tier - I think X-Factor and just the general crazyness of MvC3 in general will make life difficult for his low heath too often to be consistently top-tier.
As for the returning cast, I would say that aside from a few obvious ones (Wesker, Doom, etc) these are harder to call. Characters that didn’t get much playtime in Vanilla are significantly better, so until we see some good players working with them for a while we won’t be able to get a good comparison.
I agree w/Maverick, compared to other peoples tools, Hawkeye as a anchor isn’t very good. I’d have to see a high level Hawkeye at anchor to really change my mind, but I’m going to have to agree w/Maverick for now. Doesn’t mean he’s not a decent anchor or shouldn’t be on your team
hawkeye is only a good anchor if you opponent doesn’t have xfact and you must have at least 1 gimlet stocked.
I think we should just assume someone isn’t a good anchor unless stated other wise. There are only a handful of characters that most would feel comfortable with as an anchor against a higher level opponent. It seems everytime a new character comes up someone always says “well he isn’t a good anchor”.
After playing an extremely competent firebrand half a dozen sets, I can tell this character is going to be top tier. The guy I was playing against used Firebrand/Vergil/Trish.
He has guaranteed unblockable setups on incoming characters along with a ground crossup move. That is all that needs to be said really but he has so many other strengths.
He can stay at superjump height raining projectiles down on you whilst you cant see yourself at the bottom of the screen. If you try to challenge that he will just dive at you with that move where he rides you to the ground.That move seems to have a ridiculous amount of priority and speed as you cant air grab him before he starts.
He has really fast normals and good frametraps/blockstrings. He can basically end any blockstring in a fireball + assist.The fireball keeps you in blockstun whilst he dashes in and pressures you more.
His firebreath super is great and it acts basically the same as a shinku hadouken which is pretty ridiculous for a small pixie character to have.
He has a freaking divekick which is like the number 1 thing to have to be good in a capcom fighter.
This guy has some of the best OFFENSE and DEFENSE in the game which reminds me of a certain character in the last game, Zero.
Finally he has a tiny hitbox when crouching that automatically makes alot projectiles and normals miss.That in itself makes half of your strategies obsolete.
Only weakness is he does about 600k damage combos at best. Who cares about that though when he basically gets free pressure all day and a ridiculous unblockable that you cant do anything about unless you have an air dash.
Pretty much agree with everything you said. But I dont think that his divekick is anything special. Useful? Yes… but I would take Trish/Wolvies dive kick any day.
I’ve been using it a lot actually, but it’s certainly a risk to use it. It’s vulnerable for about twice as long as it’s active if it doesn’t counter anything. Sometimes you don’t even get any reward for it besides getting out of the corner. The recovery is really fast but if you counter something late in it’s active frames then your opponent might be able to block before you even get to act. Once you learn to use both Illusion and 7 rings at the right times though it becomes very hard for your opponent to hit Strange.
Think of Hell Dive M + air H and air Bon Voyage as his dive kicks too. He has a divekick for literally every angle, all leading into full combos. Firebrand is just silly.
I’m glad that people are starting to see firebrand is a problem in this game. That character is amazing and people should start to figure him out now.
It is very possible to level up Frank on the merits of another character. For instance, Okami Shuffle > DHC to Frank > (alcohol), snapshot. For lvl 4-3, depending on if alcohol was used.
No doubt that at lvl 1, Frank is very hard to get in a hit with. But, if I’m able to DHC into him, I completely avoid that stage and get my roll/chainsaws.
I also greatly disagree with the Haggar analogy. Frank (oh god, almost typed “Hank”) is much, much, MUCH more mobile than Haggar in every way; good wavedash and karadash, good, invinicible roll, better jumps, and a slide. In addition to this, his potential for mixups due to the roll make him quite a threat on point. Aside from this, his Giant Throw makes it verrrry hard to escape block pressure. He can keep you grounded and in a bad situation with Giant Throw L. The recovery is so fast, if you pushblock it, he can wavedash back in your face before you can retaliate.
As for Frank losing to zoning, I suppose that this is to some extent true, but it isn’t for free. This is all from my perspective (and that of my team, Ammy/Frank/Doom), of course, and Frank in different teams may have a problem. However, when paired with a good beam or other such assist, Frank can make his way around zoning for the eventual hit. It should also be noted that Frank can content for a while with careful applications of zombies of both types.
Again, what you say is largely true for an anchor and point Frank,but not necessarily a second slot (since my Ammy’s goal is to get Frank to 4, I can’t really relate to the lvl 1 woes). I do not condone the placement of Frank on point, because as you implied earlier, getting higher in level isn’t guaranteed; and I’d -much0 rather open someone up with Ammy then lvl 1 Frank.
Agreed with all of the above. Once you start playing someone who can corner you with his crazy spinning zombie pressure it can be frustrating to fight against Frank.
So if I wanted to put a team together of Firebrand/Frank/Nova, what would the order be and what assists should I use?
It’s so hard to find a team to main in this game:(
A local player here said this game is going to be ‘Zoners vs Teleporters’. I completely agree.
Don’t think Wright is low tier just yet. He really needs a team built around him, but it’s not that hard. I’ve changed my PW team to PW/Nemmy/Strange. Nemesis’s Clothesline Rocket assist, if it hits, gives Phoenix enough time to gather a good 3-4 pieces of evidence thanks to the wallbounce and/or rocket. and obviously, his assist becomes GDLK in Turnabout.
You dont HAVE to use all new characters
top tier: spencer, dr doom, hawkeye, dante, wesker
while there are definitely other characters that I feel can be successful (nemesis, storm, vergil, dormammu, dark phoenix, wolverine) and other characters that I think, with time, will become very strong (firebrand, strider, vergil again) i think those 5 are the most obviously strong.
spencer may surprise some, but he has a surprising amount of buffs and their impact is very apparent to me. add to the fact that out of the whole cast, he’s one of the best characters in terms of pure damaging combos, and that his buffs allow him to confirm hits much easier, and you have what i feel is top tier.
then there are characters like magneto and zero that are going to be recovering from their obvious changes and probably will emerge around the same effectiveness.
and then there are assist characters which haven’t been completely fleshed out yet. frank west shows potential in some areas.
wtf firebrand actually a threat? man, i was going to sleep on him too LOL.
I am sort of confused how so many people slept on him. It was super obvious that he had tools for mixups out the ass but the only thing people payed attention to was the damage. Not realizing the damage is low for a reason.
pretty funny since ppl treat strider this way and i say basically what you’re saying. i didn’t really pay attention to firebrand so it was mainly ignorance on my part.