21

I played a lot with her at the SDCC build, and I’m convinced the only change in that build was the one aerial action. The health nerf sure as hell didn’t hit yet, because she still died on the OTG gunshot after a Wesker cLcMcHS jMMHS OTG Shot, which is where that shit breaks 420k. She already had a 19 frame flight start up, and to me the actual start up on her H TK Shot felt exactly the same. Just adding 19 frames of flight start up to it was enough to make it so even someone with ass reactions could teleport into a death combo on her with Dante or Dormammu. Or push the shiny new Strider Vajira assist. There’s enough changes to other characters, and the game systems themselves that I feel like direct nerfs to Phoenix, especially ones that effect her as Phoenix, and not just Dark Phoneix are massively overkill.

They could have done something simple like removed the 20% bonus damage Dark Phoenix gets, and just let the extra damage come from increased minimum scaling and feathers, for one thing, but that never seems to have occurred to them. The problem with Dark Phoenix was her massive OCC potential, and the best way to fix that would have been to lower her damage. Some of that got done with the new universal x-factor, which seems to be around 90% damage increase at level 3. Removing the Dark Phoenix multiplier would have been the next logical step.

22

The inherent problem with nerfing Phoenix in Ultimate is that they’ve already added counters to the typical Phoenix team. She was already the most fragile character out of the entire cast and needed almost everything she had in order to stand alone below level 5. With these nerfs, not only is Capcom basically forcing everyone who plays her on point (yes, we do exist) to anchor her, they’re also crippling her for the very purpose they want you to use her for. Despite the addition of aerial X-Factor to negate death by chip damage on entry, the health nerf was excessive. With a universal counter in the team aerial exchange system and the limit of one action per jump, that’s a totally unacceptable change. She needs some buffs to counter the health nerf:

[LIST=1]
[]**Increase the speed of her flight. **If the start-up time is being increased as rumors suggest, then she needs to be able to move quickly when it’s executed. It will make using flight to teleport less dangerous, and give Phoenix a way to counter people who run the clock without giving her a significant advantage.
[]**Decrease the start-up time on her standing overhead. **With her standard aerial mix-up gone, and a new emphasis placed on using her as a rush-style character, Phoenix is going to need more ways to get through an opponent’s block.
[]Decrease her hit stun deterioration. Dark Phoenix’s damage is excessive, Phoenix’s isn’t. She’s lucky if she can break 630,000 with one combo. Giving her better combo potential on hit confirm would give the health nerf some justification. If Phoenix is going to be made of Martha Stewart glass, she needs to make one hell of a boom. Since Dark Phoenix still stomps people without any significant effort, this change shouldn’t be an issue.
[/LIST]

23

Don’t be a pussy you can still play her on point you just can’t spam tracking fireballs.

Yes I play her on point btw.

If you don’t have over 900k health you die from a full bnb to DHC anyway so no biggie.

24

The health nerf is pretty wtf but doesn’t warrant any complaints. I hope they nerfed dark phoenix’s health too as well as her number of air actions. Everything else is pretty legit.

Y’all need to man the fuck up and stop whining that your crutch got a wee bit harder to play.

Nigga please. 3/4 of the cast had no way to punish this Bitch is fucking retarded. Herp derp i’m gonna send 3 TRACKING fireballs with some of the highest projectile durability in the game which will hit you even if you teleport behind me and HIT ME.

Unless you have a full screen attack(oh wait, there’s like only one) or Jam Session as an assist or a tracking teleport, you can pretty much forget about punishing those.

25

First of all, not much more than 3/4ths of the cast in this game is used all that “seriously.” I’d say about 1/3rd is.

Secondly, if you think every char is supposed to be a good matchup for every other char then you must be new to fighting games.

And finally, let’s go with your claim that only 1/4th of the cast can punish it. I count 12 that can off the top of my head, and I probably forgot a few of them. Mind you, 1/4th of the cast would be about 9 characters, so that argument already collapses on itself.

It’s also ironic you talk about manning up when you’re hoping a character that already practically has “no health” gets a health nerf. I think the problem here is that you fail to comprehend the character you’re complaining about, like most of the people who constantly cried about her, and just really don’t understand what actually needs to be done and what doesn’t.

Like I got at in my original post, if they want to nerf the crutch-factor of Phoenix, I don’t give a damn. I didn’t/don’t use her as a crutch. My issue with the changes is that it screws with the people who don’t use her in such a way. Instead of just nerfing her crutch factor they’re well on their way to making her a craptastic character entirely. Fortunately everything isn’t finalized yet, but if the current known changes stay in the final product then I guess the QQ crybabies will be happy. Too bad they’ll soon learn that the problem with crying about something instead of “manning up” and learning to beat it is that even when someone graciously holds your hand through the tears of one problem, you’ll soon be crying about something else.

Though, Capcom doesn’t seem to have much issue with wiping tears and holding hands, so I guess perhaps crying is a good “strategy” in this case; so long as they don’t get tired of it heh. For the sake of manning up though, I’d say learning to beat something is better than crying about it regardless.

Hopefully they bring back 1.3 mil Sentinel. All the crying about that was truly good times , heh. (And for the record, no, I don’t play Sentinel. I didn’t play him at all until he was 9xxk, heh)

Speaking of Sentinel, I noticed you supposedly play him. You don’t find one character having the highest damage normals, highest damage simple combos, an invincible air super, one of the best assists, flight mode, super armor, certified lvl 3 crutch factor, and 1 button projectiles to be “herp derp?” If not, you certainly have no weight to be over here complaining about ANYTHING lmao. And don’t even try using the hit box argument heh…

Anywho, any further dialog will obviously only end up a full blown argument which I frankly don’t see the point of from what I can gather of your knowledge of the subject character. If you have further concerns, PM me, or consider this my last & only response to you on the subject.

26

IMO all Phoenix really needed was reduced benefits in XF. For a character of her power she didn’t need to share the exact same benefits as every other in XF level 3. If her XF3 was shorter than the other characters that would make more sense and we would actually see some non XF Dark Phoenix play which actually requires some fucking work. LOL.

The nerfs they’re doing to Phoenix pretty much put her in the “gamble” tier that they wanted her to be in. Capcom didn’t want Phoenix to be this good. They had already nerfed her before Vanilla came out but were afraid to nerf her because they felt she wouldn’t be good enough. Of course once smart people realized how easy it was to build 5 meters in this game and how her “health draining” nerf in Dark Phoenix was remedied by turning on XF which made her almost twice as good of a character it was obvious they missed some shit. I played the game a week before it came out and tried out XF3 Dark Phoenix because I had theorized her power in XF3 would make up for her low health. When I also found out her health didn’t go down and the speed and recovery on all of her specials dramatically decreasesd, I pretty much ran to the Phoenix forums and was like “wow XF3 Dark Phoenix is ridiculous”.

The way I see it with the nerfs you’re not going to want your team to get hit at all because only one H shot in the air means even Captain America will have an easy time killing you off a snap back. I think Capcom figured that snapbacks would balance her but air dash upwards to H shot times 3 killed snap back set ups for a lot of the cast against her. You had to constantly be coming up with all kinds of elongated mix ups and set ups for her on snap backs to kill her and you had to get them out immediately or she ran away. ** With the 5 seconds of not being able to call assists + only one H shot…the one time you get snapped in you’ll most likely lose Phoenix now to any ok mix up.**

If they’re not going to nerf her XF3 in Dark Phoenix then making her riskier before the 5 bars was the only other way to go about it. There was just no way a character that gets 2 lives and can pretty much kill your team with dark phoenix trap left right mix ups was going to stay the same. You’re not really fighting a character more so than a concept and that’s what made people fee that Phoenix was broken or not fun to fight. Beating a Phoenix team in Vanilla pretty much requires you to win without losing a character. If the Phoenix team kills off one of your characters the chances of winning are far too low. **She forces you to fight the meter system and X Factor. Not actually fight her. **

[FONT=mceinline]I honestly see the nerf to Phoenix relegating her to pretty much mid low tierish unless you play perfectly now. I just don’t see how Phoenix players are going to survive the snaps now. If Capcom is content to make XF3 Dark Phoenix a nearly insurmountable character without getting lucky (since she can 50/50 kill your entire team if she even hits one of them), the only way to balance her is to make her a gamble. Now that she actually has to guess against every character on a snap instead of just wolverine + akuma assist it’s going to be a lot rougher. **The nerfs should pretty much see her out of tournament regularity because getting to the 5 bars will basically be about getting lucky now. Which means people won’t have to worry about getting lucky against Dark Phoenix as often. **[/FONT]

[FONT=mceinline]The only way I can see Phoenix being consistent is just somebody making the most out of her on point. Playing for Dark Phoenix is going to be extremely hard to do.[/FONT]

27

But wouldn’t lowering the time spent in X-Factor leave her opened to be chipped to death once it’s gone? just as bad as a level 1 X factor. I think if she’d Xf at all she should lose the feathers, the additional damge was a cheap since she already got 20% extra for being in Dark Phoenix mode. But that in turn would let her bounce characters off the ground with her d.H which would be just as cheap since she could do all of phoenix’s bnbs with X-Factor hyper which did tons of damage, but she wouldn’t be able to stop hypers like maximum spider or Phantom dance easily as with the feathers. But I guess it doesn’t matter since capcom already made their decision and as you already pointed out, a “gamble” tier. lol it seems Seth was right, she’s a hard character to figure out how to implement correctly since if you take away something it weakens her dramaticaly or if you change something like the example I gave she’s cheap and weak.

28

Lowering the time spent in XF I personally think would be the best way to balance it because then it would make Dark Phoenix less of a hassle to still win against. If the XF3 only lasted 10 seconds you’d still have a decent chance to win. Honestly if you can’t kill 2 or 3 characters with 10 seconds of XF3 you pretty much don’t deserve to win. One of the newer strategies to fighting against Phoenix teams is basically to burn XF early to kill the first character so you can focus more time on snapping the second character before she gets the 5 when the second character comes in without an assist. Which if that goes wrong they are fucked because Dark Phoenix can easily just XF2 the whole team down no problem also. That’s the main reason I try not to go for that strategy because even though XF3 Dark Phoenix is hell to kill either way I’d rather just have that small extra insurance over just being fucked by her chip without XF.

It seems like Capcom doesn’t really want to change how XF works with the character as far as how long it lasts since XF3 Dark Phoenix was the absolute worst aspect of fighting her. It’s kinda clear that they want to make it so you can’t do shit but a hailmary Daigo maneuver to win against that shit since she’s supposed to be this insurmountable force once she gets into the field. You can’t balance a character like that any other way but making them low tier before the 5 bars. That way people are forced to accommodate a lot more heavily for her non 5 bar game and will have to accept the fact that a lot of matches they’ll be fighting with a 2 man team. Which the balance of XF3 Dark Phoenix and actually having a difficult time getting 5 bars would reduce her to mid tierishness. You’re basically balancing a ridiculously top tier end result by making it ass and requiring work from the beginning.

Which is basically what Zappa is in Guilty Gear except Raoh still isn’t as strong as XF3 Dark Phoenix. Sometimes you get enough of a good run in a round that you build up the 8 orbs and you get Raoh and just run through the round. Sometimes you have trouble building the orbs and just have to play a sub par character with random stances and hope for the best. ** The main thing is that the work required to get enough orbs to make Raoh come out so Zappa is top tier actually required work and landing specific things. Not just “landing 2 combos in a game with hilariously fast meter build”.**

29

I’m planning on using her even with her normal form being assfucked and even with the meter drain and all the “Capcom wants to BSDM you for picking Pheonix” shit they are adding to the game. XF3 Dark Pheonix is just too hilarious for me. I’m starting to wonder, other than playing it really smart and safe, how to make her work in this new game.

30

I don’t really thing Phoenix will be all that bad…

She definitively deserves to be nerfed, she’s way too powerful…

If I was to choose how to make her less good.
I’d make the salty balls limited by one in the screen at each time (not 1 action per jump, but just not more than one fireball on screen)
Also, I’d remove the wallbounce on TK Traps of Dark Phoenix to remove the free mixups.
Finally, remove the mini projectiles from the light attacks of Dark Phoenix and you’re game.

1 action in the air + health nerf associated with new TAC mechanics will result on Dark Phoenix being REALLY hard to get, but almost as broken as she is today…

Regular Phoenix was Good… Dark Phoenix was Broken…
now, Regular Phoenix will be meh and Dark will still be broken… LOL!

I’d rather see Regular Phoenix still being good and Dark Phoenix being just top… not broken.

31

One very nice thing I can see about the new meter drain on side exchanges is that it may lead to regular Phoenix living a whole lot longer than normal in a lot of matches. If you ever have her on point with 5 bars, chances are great that if you get caught your opponent is going to be pretty desperate to drain meter. Mashing side counter may well buy her several extra chances for that “free regular Phoenix damage” that can often end up being an important part of her game.

Just watch out for the inevitable morrigan b&bs that will contain the meter drainer ball somewhere near the end of them (this will be nastier when morrigan is in your opponent’s 2nd slot and they down exchange to her, knowing you are forced to block the side exchange, and she meter drain kills you anyways, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it)

One question I have, that I surely should have figured out from the footage already available but have not looked into yet, is-
When they say that Phoenix gets 1 aerial action then “floats to the ground” - is it a defenseless state like using aerial black hole and typhoon (while not in flight) where she cannot block, use airdash, attack, etc - or is she merely limited to one special move with no other restrictions?
I ask because playing her with only 1 air special while other things are available isn’t really so bad…

Although we cannot say that changes we have heard of up until this point are in any way final, let’s talk about the ways we can still use her successfully right now:
In my opinion, especially with the significant nerfs incoming to several of the games other top rushdown characters, Phoenix with the appropriate assist will continue to rank among the top couple of characters in the offensive rushdown department- you may have to rely on this aspect heavily in ultimate. As many have already said, capcom is upping the ante on the risk v reward aspect of the character early in the match- your other 2 characters should have fantastic synergy with each other, b/c things are intended by design to go poorly from time to time for you regardless of how you play it.

I hope we can make this thread about her options, irrespective of tier or whether she “deserves” to have certain aspects of her character changed, and how we can continue to place salty balls onto the screen (or if that was not the intended discussion for here let’s do it somewhere).

From what we see so far it really seems like, just as before vanilla was released, everyone is pretty ready to write Phoenix off as a “gimmick” character- before it was because of her health value, and now because 1 very potent aspect of her runaway game has been neutered. Fact is, she will continue to have a rapid and effective rushdown/mixup game that kills off characters fast, even if setting up that situation is a little more conditional. I think she will not be a character people can write off because of that.

The disruptor and wolvie slash nerfs are going to make her ground fireball game seem better, fortunately, notwithstanding some horribly imbalanced offense that may arise with the new characters (or the new screen exploding ryu).

To end these jumbled thoughts, just want to say go and force yourself to play her with 1 aerial special, and even though I know there are going to be a lot more changes to take into consideration across the board in ultimate, I think you will find that her skill set even with that restriction outpaces most of the cast considerably. This character is going to continue to blow through teams who make small mistakes early in the match, which is her most fun feature for me, so I don’t feel a great cause for concern.

32

@MurderSheDid exactly. I posted this so that we could find out how we can possibly deal with this new change and come up with alternatives not whine about it lol. On the meter losing aspect i think morrigan’s meter stealing move is made for both sides. Anti phoenix in the sense that she can drain you bar and Pro-phoenix in the sense that she’s making the opponent lose the ability to snap phoenix.
We just need to figure out what we’re gonna do now that she gets snapped in cuz that triple homing fireball stuff aint there anymore

33

Triple fireball stuff is far from being everything that Phoenix has…
Ok, a lot of characters just can’t do shit against it, but Phoenix still can fight fairly well against the ones that can, you’ll just have to be more on offensive than you had before…
I’ll miss air fireball into teleport or dive kick a lot… but surely will welcome air xfactor to save phoenix from certain death sometimes.

I still think this was the wrong way to nerf Phoenix, but she’ll be FAR from useless…

34

The problem you guys are going to have like I said…expect to be playing Phoenix on point A LOT more often to get 5 bars. Keeping Phoenix in reserve will not work as easily because in Vanilla she got away by being able to H shot down a lot of mix ups on snap in. If you don’t get Phoenix out there to build her own meter she will die easily to a snap back. If you don’t get Phoenix out there on point with a good assist to build her own meter you won’t be seeing Dark Phoenix or match wins very often.

35

D3athwish baby! Motherfucking D3athwish! Dude was a fucking Oracle at EVO. I can’t believe I actually rooted for a Phoenix player. He didn’t last, but his technology was something to behold. It was something different, and him being a MVC2 player at that, really made me smile.

36

In the old MvC3 Phoenix’s TK shot usually either went throught most projectiles or just nullified the attack, now they don’t have priority anymore. In the vid go to the 1 min mark.
Vipers new move out beats TK shot H. Though C.Vipers move was probably ment to go though all projectiles.

Spoiler

[COLOR=#0066cc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p73vsHDHe_g

With Dr. Strange’s reveal, I can’t help but think phoenix is gonna have a hard time beating him. Not to mention one of his specials redirect and can hit from behind and his teleport seems on par with Phoenix’s. That health nerf is look more stupid then ever now.

37

yh i saw that 2 . maybe its jus viper’s beam iono :frowning:

38

If they did nerf the durability of her projectiles then all of the other nerfs are looking mighty disheartening. I would have been fine with lower fireball durability points and No feathers or strength boost as DP that would have been acceptable but this… for shame.

39

Viper has to charge her beam any way so I doubt it’s anything like lowered durability. The fireball didn’t really have that much durability to begin with. It was only 5 low priority points which is the same as a hadoken. What made it a problem was how she could put another one on screen and then teleport to have 10 durability points worth of projectiles self assist her for mix ups. If she was fighting a character that didn’t have really fast air dash or flight movement she could just keep throwing out up to 15 low priority points on the screen and you had to try to beat that shit with your projectile. Which even if your projectile had more durability it’s only realistically going to stuff one of them any way.

40

I was playing Phoenix these days, and I started to fear something really important…

well, My opponent was using a team with Wesker, Trish and Dormammu, all characters with decent runaway abilities…
If he killed my two other chars, and just ran away from Phoenix, she had a REAL hard time chasing those characters, eventually I got to him by spaming a lot of projectiles and teleporting and/or using TK Overdrive, but with only one action per jump I feel that catching someone that runs away with Trish, Storm, and other characters as mobile as those would be next to impossible, If the new nerfed Phoenix is alone with those 5 meters, you’d be forced to charge Healing Shield and jump in… and as you just used a meter up, your opponent would actually fight you… lol.

Am I overreacting or is this really the biggest challenge that nerf will put on her?