1021

Any character i am learning starts on point first, then alter later.

1022

i see what your saying there and i agree with most of it. i dont really know if IM’s start of round is THAT bad… sure he certainly cant fight for the advantage hard. but hes decent at least at getting the match to equilibrium… if only cause he can back up and already establish distance against his opponent. one thing i like to do at start of round is time a jump so that im at jump in height as i gain control of my character… then i just switch up whether or not that jumping height is near or far… usually i come out clean in a neutral position… usually. i also jump over other characters a couple of times and whatnot. anyting to not have to deal with stupid shit like mags humping at start of round and mashing standing h. BUT, point taken.

since im a true believer, and honestly feel as if IM can be made to be acceptable on point, i will continue to play him that way (still looking for a good team for him) but yes i wouldnt advocate others to do it. also, i find it kind of weird that you find it weird that most character forums are based on that character on point… i mean, whats there to playing a character as an assist character? to play anchor IM all you really need to know is when to call his assist and to use his dhc correctly… i mean anchor man is derp. no disrespect at all as i use him there when im serious as well. but thats why i know hes derp there. there aint much to talk about. call assists dhc when it will kill or hamper the opponent. xf3 if shit doesnt go your way and use your new found speed and damage to truncate your combos and still get tod’s… really though anchor man is about just doing major chip while looking for your opponent to xf to negate chip or make some other mistake… then when IM’s XF wears out you still have a comeback mechanic in his comboable lvl3.

-dime

1023

With iron man on a team I feel you need at least one teleporting character to feel almost invisible (wesker, dorm, skrull, dante, vergil, dr strange, strider), iron man especially with wesker and dorm is must more stupid compare to wesker doom or dorm doom.

1024

Yeah Doom is nearly a top tier character and his issue with not being able to attack anytime during his dash is horrible for start of round shit. DiosX tried playing point Doom for a while but pretty much gave it up AFAIK after the beat down he took from Noel Brown’s point Wolverine due to those start of round issues. Other than him point Doom has pretty much gone the way of the dodo both in the US and Japan AFAIK. Using those assists in the neutral is too good to pass up on.

I feel characters like Doom and Iron Man are fine in their movement once you give them space. Iron Man’s ground movement surpassing Doom’s if you get the space because you can cancel your dash into normals period and plink dash is better ground movement than anything Doom has. Generally at the start of the round with those 2 characters unless you have Hulk AA assist expect to have a lot of problems. Hulk AA assist is really underused in general also (probably because you have to play Hulk but hey, it’s one point super armor AA).

Iron Man overall I would say is better at start of round than Doom since you have a cancellable dash period. The fact that you still have to wait 11 frames to cancel the dash gets iffy against point rushdown characters. I think the 11 frame thing is fine considering just like Doom…you can still cancel into a jump (up back) on frame 1 once you get space. The 11 frame thing only accounts for attack cancelling. You can technically block almost right after you dash.

I never said I found it “weird” for people talk about point spot for a character. Predictable…more so if anything. It’s just people generally in character threads act like the assists for characters that have really good assists like Iron Man or Doom don’t exist and just talk about whatever he does on point and not enough about the assist, DHC, crossover combination, crossover counter and TAC strategies revolving the character and how it affects their other characters on your team. People generally like to turn character threads into “my character vs. the world” shit like a SF character thread and it’s just bleh to me. That’s just not how the game operates in actual play. Especially when it comes to characters that provide strong assists and have supposedly strong TAC options like Iron Man.

I don’t think Anchor Man is as vague as you put it out to be at all. Firstly…XF chip is overrated with most characters especially with ones that don’t really have that scary of chip like Iron Man. Chipping with Iron Man is about the same as chipping with Doom in XF. They’ll just runaway from it long enough and block it long enough and then XF cancel themselves and now YOU HAVE to go in and they have a lead on you in the XF chip game. Especially if they have 3 characters left they’re just gonna lame out your chip since Iron Man nor Doom really put enough shit on the screen fast enough to really chip hard. Great strategy there. Using Doom anchor since pretty much the beginning of Vanilla I already know the chip strategy with XF3 only really works with a few characters and Doom and Iron Man are neither of them.

The main thing you wanna be doing with Iron Man anchor is going in really since touches will lead to usually meterless or at most one meter TOD’s easily. Especially with the speed boost he gets. Chicken block is an issue but all you need is one throw towards the corner and you can get em out of there. Iron Man doesn’t seem to have as many cross up strategies as Doom did as anchor (Doom can super jump ADDF M and cross up people chicken blocking into TOD’s). Like Doom I’ll just learn to improvise and see what i get.

Outside of that you still have plenty of other strats considering this game EASILY makes it so XF3 is far from the last thing your anchor can offer. The game has basically meterless, hit stun reset tag situations with TAC’s so your anchor pretty much never has to be the anchor as long as you land a hit with your second character. You basically get a 66 percent chance to tag in your second character free and get big free damage into what will most likely be a DHC any way if they’re alive before you need to spend more than one super. Which then allows me to utilize Iron Man with Jam Session assist and work on using Dante as anchor also.

Anchor Man (or any anchor really) is hardly about just the XF3. The bigger issue is that people are too lazy to do anything different. Having an anchor that can provide a neutral assist for two characters but still be used with an assist if you choose two is a great double option.

Even XF3 Wesker IMO has better technology if you get him in second with an assist. The only anchors I feel are clearly scarier in XF3 than XF2 are like Dark Felicia and Dark Phoenix. Dark Felicia pretty much operates as if she has an assist because all of her moves destroy advance guard+command grab+aerial ground bounce dive kick+super invincible assist that lasts for 10 seconds and sets up unblockables. Which is completely better than Dark Wesker.

1025

I think the only reason people thinks Doom is better than IM on point is because Doom has easy hit confirm both air to air and air to ground(or next to retarded with j.s) and easy combos from air throw. I noticed from my own experiences, when I am chasing a game with them, I can sometime turn random j.m, j.h, and foot dive into a huge combo and Doom can easy do both high/low and left/right mix ups, while IM’s cross up game is almost non-existent. But I struggled to do the same with IM, even if I land a random hit in the air (probably the most likely position to land something while chase people chicken blocking), most likely I can only get j.h, j.d/h, j.s xx Uni-beam, very rarely I can turn it into a combo. I feel like this is one of the main problems IM on point suffers, and it is hard enough to land a hit with him as it is.

His combos are obviously easier and as damaging as IM. If IM players can figure out how to turn random hits into combos as easy as everyone else, then IM will move up a tier easily.

Meanwhile I think Team Hyper, TAC combo, and Uni-beam assist are what makes IM worthwhile in the team. 1 frame beam hyper punish is great and if you have the meter and xfactor (Team Hyper with a character with fast hyper and xfactor, or close range DHC and then xfactor), it is likely a dead character. I think strong TAC combos are underrated, IM can easily add 200K or more damage after a long combo or if you started the combo with the beam assist via this stupid mechanic while gaining more meter and take away from your opponent. It is very scrubby but it works.

1026

Doom is a great point character same goes for akuma which people still always play last and i believe akuma point is top 5 of course backed with good assist drones, task, ideal beam or projector.

1027

I disagree. Doom and Akuma on point even with assists are pale compare to the likes of Wesker, Zero, Viper, Magneto, Dante, Vergil, Fireband, Wolverine, Dorm, Spencer and many more. And that is already more than 5 characters. Doom and Akuma are decent point characters but nowhere near the level the top tier.

There are reasons why these characters are true top tier point characters. I think Capcom purposely designed this game this way to prevent strong characters have the best of both sides.

1028

Akuma and Doom backed with drones for example is better than wesker with drones don’t let akuma low health full you. The differences here is you have to build a team around them while wesker and the other don’t need a team built around them.

1029

I don’t know what makes you think that. But if Akuma and Doom on point is better than Wesker, then Noel Brown would not have won a single tournament and bodied Dios-X.

1030

Noel brown has not won a single tournament to my knowledge. They are characters, which you need more than ABC hence why people overrate wesker. Wesker true strength is mainly xfactor and the fact that he can runaway from yours.
Tron is another character everybody is sleeping on saying she is ass point tron can kill 90% of the cast with one touch why your combo will drop on her wonky hitbox.

1031

I don’t really care about Akuma since there’s like only one guy I’ve seen use Akuma on point in tourneys and he wasn’t really the best player ever either. Akuma’s assist is way too good to be using him on point despite whatever potential he has on point. He probably does have a lot of potential that I or many other players aren’t fully realizing but…you’re still giving up Akuma assist to play him on point which I don’t like.

Doom is just not going to get a lot of mileage out of starting the round against characters like Zero, Wolverine, Felicia, X-23 etc. His movement is a problem during claustrophobic situations where he can’t immediately cancel his dash into an attack. Forcing him to deal with that all the time at the start of the round is not a good look considering he also doesn’t have anything like armor to deter such things. If you put him up first with tatsu assist you can do ok but you’d get more mileage out of f+Hing with Mag+Akuma start of round easily. A character that can dash and stagger his c.L’s repeatedly also.

Noel Brown has won several local tournaments in the NY area, and has stayed within top 3 at most relevant majors (even with the issues of having Frank West on your team). This is considering he was just a guy that followed J.Wong and did some things here and there in tourneys at best before MVC3.

Wesker’s true strength is on point with assists. His XF3 is powerful when it works but he just does not have enough tools that beat advance guard to rely on as anchor. The best thing about him as anchor is that he provides an OTG assist for 2 people. Dark Wesker either kills your whole team with welcome mix ups or just ends up getting lamed out. Which is why Dark Wesker usually is never the main reason a character wins a tournament.

Especially when you consider how easily J.Wong lamed out Noel Brown’s XF3 Wesker with Iron Fist and how Masta CJ still mainly relies on his team up front since Magneto is way too gimped without a neutral assist if Dorm dies. Which is why more often Masta CJ has been DHCing into Wesker so Wesker can get an assist and Magneto becomes the anchor.

Teleport + assist is the best thing about Wesker easily and Mine has already realized that himself getting 2nd place at SCR with Wesker up front with Disruptor assist.

1032

actually the chipping strat with IM is a good strat. i use it. i win with it. i also lose with it. of course it isnt some DP or dark wesker shit. i never said IM could consistently come back against 3 characters… sure its possible. but it isnt something to bet on. chipping like i said is just basically to get the opponent to DO SOMETHING PREDICTABLE instead of just siting there waiting to counter you. that jap anchor IM that you linked to used a chipping strat to get his opponent to do shit. sure he only had to like 3-4 chip/hit unibeams… but that was enough to get his opponent to do what he wanted him to do. the thing about a chipping strat is that IM’s L unibeam in xf3 not only does respectable chip… it also is much faster and therfor harder to punish plus gets its good durability out there quicker while BEING EASIER TO MAKE CONTACT WITH. IM gains lots of control with it, and actually gains a decent neutral game with it.

as far as making comebacks 3v1 of course you should try… but it isnt something that will be common. if you rush in you are no wesker. you stand a good chance of getting IM bopped and tod’d. and if your down 3v1 with an assist character at back… you simply got outplayed. anchorman isnt designed to make comebacks against 3 characters. the only thing he has to suggest it is his ludicrous damage. but thats it… hes no can opener without proper setups and reads. luckily since his damage is so high he can truncate his combos easily and still get kills off of glancing blows like random repulsors into PC for stupid damage against characters that are already missing health… etc etc

but w/e i see what your saying but its probably just different styles.

-dime

1033

If I play akuma on point I will start the match with shoryuken xx hyper seem like a waste of meter but, it create space, happy birthday, throw teching means free srk, block I am safe you are safe although low health means your blocking has to be on point if you opponent manage to get in shoryuken xx hyper, tastu M +3 beats point and most assist, demon flip to zone, cross up, call assist and kill assist calling generally akuma has got most option cover air hado and ground, fastest dash and work speed.

Doom on the other hand has to rely on his air mobility or hidden missiles + assist calling to score a hit against characters like wolverine, X-23, [S](i hate doom v zero)[/S],

Back to Tony Stark

1034

My issue with the chip set up is it’s just not scary enough and gets beaten by them turning on their XF any ways which refills most of the life they lost from the chip and…you’re better off just going in for the kill or chipping them without turning on XF. At high level play even Dark Wesker players tend to refrain from popping XF early because you want to be able to land a hit and kill a character popping it during the combo or after they die so you can maximize your XF3 time. I did the same thing with Doom. I tried to kill them without XF first then pop it later to maximize time. If I felt I had to get in to get things going I would pop it early but for the most part I just start running right in with air photon shot into ADDF M or S because things have to get popping if you’re trying to tear 2 or 3 people down. Chip isn’t really gonna kill people but running in with XF will.

I tend to only go for the early XF pop if there’s 2 people left though. I always hold on my XF if I have to fight down 3 people. A lot of point characters can easily runaway from most character’s XF3’s (Spider Man can run away from everybody’s XF3 except for maybe Dorm’s) so definitely better to hold onto.

I’ll give you that it’s not a bad strat if you’re only fighting like one guy or 2 guys and the 2nd guy has like less than half health or something. Then it’s more of an issue. If they’re stacked on full health though I don’t find it that scary IMO but it’s there to try I guess.

In general I’m not really using Iron Man for the 3 v 1 comebacks since most characters with strong neutral assists aren’t very good at 3 v 1 comebacks any way. I never put Iron Man as anchor going saying “I’m doing this cuz I wanna kill down 3 people”. I feel it’s overrated reason to put a character as anchor. I didn’t think that when I placed Doom as anchor from like first day of Vanilla and not using that as the reason for Anchor Man either.

I pretty much knew that going into placing Doom as anchor and know that obviously with Iron Man anchor. It’s more the creativity outside of the XF3 and providing 2 characters a neutral assist that’s more important to me.

**Overall though…yeah it just seems like different styles that we’ll have to make the most of. **It’s Iron Man so all the spots are going to have issues I guess but I feel especially assist, DHC and TAC wise he has the tools to really add to your team. He’s not just that typical awesome point warrior you add to your team. He can basically fill in the stuff your point characters need but function pretty well with an assist and still kill people off most things if he hits them without an assist.

I like having a beam assist that does more than just put people in cross up situations like Iron Man’s. Gives more versatility for mix ups where you can lock people down and set them up for other types of mix ups also.

Point Iron Man is hardly the worst thing in the world but I just feel like you’re missing out on the assists and putting him in the exact situation that everyone is afraid of Iron Man being in at the start.

1035

i think ive finally got my IM on point team figured out which means ive got 2 teams:

tourny team:

dante/dorm/tony

tony cause i love him team:

IM/storm/arthur or chun

for IM/storm/arthur which will also be a tourny team i like it cause of these things:

IM starts with krispy and transitions to PC to hail to bracelet for incredible damage or hailstorm to golden armor to safe hard tag for golden daggers.
i like storm and arthur cause they both give safe dhc to keep my characters alive. plus this team is versatile in transpositions as i can start IM regularly or i can start storm who will have unibeam for long range support or daggers for close lockdown, plus storm has an easy fly combo to transition into IM’s corner TAC combo. arthur starter moves IM to anchor yet allows storm to remain in middle where the strat will be to build 1 bar then dhc gold to hail for safe golden daggers.

this team basically gives me a little bit of everything i desire in safe DHC’s, strong TAC’s (IM and storm) and strong on hit dhc. the team doesnt really have a weakness besides maybe max range. anchor arthur can be a bit gimmicky but the team is designed to not have to go to anchor arthur in the first place. and if anchor arthur does comeup as he will… i have a decent anchor arthur… cause hes derp as fuck.

overall i think arthur storm and dante have the best of both worlds in damaging hypers and safe ones. i can also easily subout IM for dante and not lose a step.

i think this team will be the basis for any other teams i play… its very all around and its only real weakness is storms weak meter build and somewhat low HP of the team… but low hp teams are what marvel is all about. hopefully the safe dhc compatibility will help resolve that issue though.

what do you guys think?

-dime

1036

Looks pretty good to me! Teleport+Beam assist, get paid. My only suggestion would be to try and use XF1 or XF2 on this team. Dorm is still pretty ridiculous with XF2 and I think you’ll get more value out of that then XF3 Tony.

This one I’m not as thrilled with. I think Storm and Arthur are fighting for resources on this team - they both love to use your X-Factor and meter. Their assists also aren’t great for extending IM’s combos which is one of his big strengths on point (950k+ damage combos that build 2 meters while only using 1). Chun is an awesome assist for him, but she’s got her own issues of course.

If I was going to optimize a team for Tony, it’d probably be something like Iron Man/Dante/Sentinel or maybe Iron Man/Dante/Doom.

1037

This team is dirrrty similar to my Iron man team of Task, Dorm, Tony only if i can be bothered to learn Dante.

Aurthur is also great.

1038

yeah, that team is team obvious scrub cheese! LOL its why i hate this game, but ive got to be relevant and that means playing with the bigboys.

well, i dont really want dante on my IM team as i already have him on my tourny team… plus i only grudgingly like dante (and dorm). as far as using assists for tony to optimize combos ive always viewed 2 assist as lengtheners in combos as impractical as far as consistent combos are concerned since the point character will generally be using one assist to open up with. also i plan on playing tony as very reset and tac heavy cause i think he can do that, which will allow storm or arthur to use there resources. also i plan on this team being very tac based in general unlike the dante dorm team. basically this team is all resets and tac combos.

as far as arthur needing meter all i really need is 1 to play a proficient arthur… lance lockdown/crossbow spam builds a ton of meter whether or not the opponent is trying to hide behind XF.

but i do see what you are talking about and i do have a preconceived strategy for dealing with that. my biggest concern is whether or not i can make decent use of storms whirlwind with tony and the low hp of storm and the fact that daggers only affects a lower portion of the screen… but i know from testing that both IM and storm can make ridiculous use of arthurs daggers up close as lockdown

chun is simply a character that im good with that ive finally found decent dhc compatibility with at anchor. and she has that awesome corner reset lockdown and midscreen upclose lockdown. problem is that on that team IM is needed to really have a fullscreen presence and i feel that puts a little to much emphasis on him.

gah… i hate doom. hate his dhc compatibility. hate his XF3. i know hes good but ive never been into him.

thanks for both of your guys inputs!, i do think i will be trying out that XF2 strat with dorm and IM. cause IM still has a comeback mechanic in his lvl 3.

-dime

1039

They’re still practical in some important situations though, like punishments and poking out of pressure, and often air throw/throw combos. But I agree that Tony needs help in the neutral game more than he needs combo extensions, but many assists (like Jam Session, Drones, Hidden Missiles, Plasma Beam, etc) can do both. And while that doesn’t mean you can always use the assist for both at the same time, it still happens.

Watching Joker play IM with Drones, you get the impression he’s mashing :a2: as often as he reasonably can, but he still gets to extend a lot of combos with Drones because sometimes he gets hits when they aren’t involved.

Yeah I wish I enjoyed playing Doom because it’d make all of my teams easier to put together. :frowning:

1040

hey guys, just watched an incredibly competent IM play on the arcade ufo stream archive at 55:30…
hes got the best tony neutral game ive seen thus far and puts alot of tonys movement strategies to good use. not a combo machine at all but his movement is really nice. best IM ive seen in awhile.

unfortunately i dont know how to copy paste on safari (my girls comp cause mine decided to die) but just look in the first page of the stream thread to see the link or the last page of commentary… if anyone could link to it in the video thread that would be cool. and also see if you guys can see the one pattern this tony uses to devastating effect. i definitely learned something special from this player.

-dime