Out of all the match ups I faced, I think Haggar is by far one of the most annoying since he has so many options that are pure “anti-spencer”. Most of that was already covered in previous posts. Also doesn’t help he’s one of the characters that can do an invincible move into another invincible move and confirm it very easily.
Well, I gotta say, purely based on my experiences- I’ve had really bad match-ups against Jill, Frank, and Arthur. But Jill is pretty much a stand-out to me, because from the matches I’ve played, she can make herself invincible to get a kill off of me. Like, all she has to do is counter my zipline with an invincible somersault, or sneak up behind me with a feral stance faster than you can say ‘how do you do?’ So, I’m pretty much just wondering- What exactly do I do against her?
pushblock when she’s on you. run your offense when she’s not. get an assist to cover you.
:eek: Feral Crouch is really the problem with Jill. If she has a projectile assist that keeps you standing, it’s even more difficult.
If she’s trying to command dash around you to run her 4 corner mixup and you’re not in a blockstring, you can pop Armor Piercer if she’s grounded. If she’s in the air, that’s a little tougher to deal with but s.:l: should take care of everything. At mid range (for a 1v1 matchup), you’ll want to use your good range to try to prevent her from pressing too many buttons. Jill has tools to get in, but you want her to force them as much as possible; don’t let her get in for free. Once she gets in, she starts pressing things and you either have to catch lucky Piercers are s.:l:, as Spencer is horrifically vulnerable to c.:l: when he tries to upback against almost any character.
Unfortunately, in the battle for safety, Jill wins pretty solidly. Feral Crouch to run away is good, Somersalt is invulnerable for a good bit and retaliatory Machinegun Spray beats Lancer, so the matchup essentially boils down to 1] scouting the assist she uses to get in and sealing it off, 2] making her scared to anything outisde of what she must do to get in on you and 3] spotting holes in her 4 corner game and KOing her for it. Spencer typically won’t get in on Jill, as she has an infinite number of ways to keep him out, most of them being very safe.
And don’t zip. You will die, LOL. 
This. I always play my friend and it comes down to my Spencer and his Haggar a lot. And if I dont have a life lead then I wish myself luck. You have to think of something godlike on the spot or just get stuffed by the pipe when you zipline. But you can react to a air Pipe with Lancer which helps a lot.
But I think Spencer loses to Wolv easily. Dont even challenge him on the ground since he beats all of Spencers buttons and any ill-advised ziplines lead to a free divekick for Wolv. I usually just xfactor a divekick and just kill him off. General keepaway also gives Spencer trouble imo. In the old game you could just react to projectiles and get them for free but know try doing that full, 3/4, or even 1/2 screen at times you get stuffed -_-
Agreed on Wolverine. I like being Wolverine when playing against Spencer.
Doom is another terrible matchup, IMO, much for the same reason Wolverine is…you have to get close and you open yourself up for a footdive when you do. If Doom didn’t have a move that put you in hard knockdown for five minutes, I would say this match-up is much better for Spencer.
Spencer is pretty susceptible to air grabs in between zips even sometimes with an assist out. Doom has a back grab that leads into death so definitely people with very strong death grabs will shut down his zip options.
Completely disagree on doom and wolvie. Agree on task, Jill, haggar. Bionic lancer or l. Grapple on wolvie = death, an if your gonna say that doom beats spencer because of footdive then you’d be saying that for like 80% of the cast…
I always though (and still think) Spencer walks over Dormammu … he cant to anything without risking being bionic armed (and a killing combo afterwards if spacing
is right) or l grapple. He cant even punish your assists. This matchup was even worse on vanilla for Dorm since flame carpet would cancel the bionic lancer recovery time and allow Spencer to combo right after without using the wall bounce.
I think Wolverine isn’t one of Spencer’s better matchups. His buttons are just so much better than yours, especially on the ground. But I learned to use the aggressiveness of Wolverine players against them.
If they insist on pressing buttons repeatedly as well as spamming dive kicks, just scout it out and bionic arm them. X-factoring the divekicks can also work. Also remember that you can punish raw Beserker Charge from certain distances with an arm. In general you don’t want to be grounded in this matchup. You can’t really be the aggressor against Wolverines, especially if they have a beam assist.
A weird matchup that I feel Spencer loses, is against Ghost Rider. Knives was talking about it on stream awhile back and I dismissed it until I actually faced a good Ghost Rider in a local tournament. His keepaway can make it very difficult to land an attack. A lot of his chain moves actually nullify your grapples. If the GR has great spacing and proper assists backing him it is a very difficult match for Spencer.
Co-sign on wolverine and ghost rider being tough/weird match ups.
Wolvy’s pretty ridiculous, especially with Tatsu assist… it’s hard not to lose the game from the very beginning of the round. Once Wolvy gets in your face, there’s very little Spencer can do. Like Habby said, bionic arm is a main key to this match up… it’s spencer’s only GTFO off me move that can stop wolvy with beam/tatsu…make them scared of you doing a YOLO arm and you’ll have a better time. Hell, the times I’ve resorted to doing Bionic Arm at the beginning of the round (cause wolvy’s ridiculous at the start of the round), I’ve had more success because it allows me to apply pressure on wolvy (Only downside is you’ll probably burn x-factor). This match up is in wolvy’s favor IMO…
Ghost Rider’s pretty weird… you can’t call assist and zip your way around like you can with other characters, he makes you play a completely different game.
I’ve found if you just stay patient and slowly make your way to him until you’re in his face (A bit easier said than done) then you’ll be fine… just don’t go all willynilly on 'em. Slow and steady wins the race.
Also think Zero is pretty annoying to fight…but that’s another story.
-Densetsu
Saying grapple on wolvie = death hardly contributes anything to discussion especially when you’ll never really find the opportunity to do so. Wolverine will always start out in your face because of the beginning and because of his normals, he starts out with the advantage. If you can survive the first few seconds then maybe you’ll have a chance to call assist and start your offense. Wolverines also love to grab and would probably spend their meter or X-factor to kill you and the problem here is, you can’t really do the same. Sure you can’t do that to anyone else but letting Wolverine go is much more dangerous than letting other characters with not so dominant normals go.
I guess moral here is to create the space between you and Wolvy, start your offense when you can, do whatever it takes to kill him X-factor canceling and such.
QFT… The game allows Wolvy to start at an advantage at the very beginning. This match up would be way easier to deal with if Wolvy was forced to start neutral… ah well. I feel like if you can find a way to get Wolvy to actually play a neutral game, then you can actually fight him. That’s why I’ll risk the bionic arm into xfactor at the start of the round…yea, I’m losing my factor and meter, but I feel way more confident when Wolvy’s forced to play neutral.
Another option I’ve found somewhat useful is just straight up backdashing. Hard for Wolvy to catch up to you if he doesn’t expect it.
I generally have the most problems with Taskmaster.
I agree here. Taskmaster seems to be a natural bad matchup since his counter super allows him to be offensive without having to worry about being Bionic Arm’ed in the gaps. His normals have immense reach and priority so challenging it with your own is a no go. He can play a zoning game if he wanted to and get a good amount of chip in before you can get in. In my experience you’ll have to catch Task players slipping because after a while most will want to jump back arrows, which at that point you can safely arm them. If the Task decides to ground himself the whole time then you might have a problem lol.
Agree with most of the above mentioned. Anyone with really good buttons gives him trouble unless you have tatsu assist. Strider, Zero, Dante, Wesker, Doom, Viper, Taskmaster, Wolverine and Morrigan are all varying levels of hard. Having bionic arm and a good assists helps but if it werent for having X factor to burn etc, all of these chars would have an edge on spencer at neutral game.
The Dante matchup can actually go in Spencer’s favour. Providing you are not zipping around like a maniac. Every Dante wants to jump up back and do airplay as a method of zoning. You can catch them with a medium grapple pretty easily. Also, I was watching Danke’s stream a few days ago and he was punishing box jump medium from Dante pretty hard with command grabs. You have to predict it, but it you can get the anti-air command grab off before the medium even comes out. I find that when corned a lot Dantes have a bad habit of trying to box jump their way out.
Haggar, Zero and Vergil (no this is not a good matchup)
I have been playing some Spencer lately and was having a hard time against a very aggressive Wolverine player yesterday. I was playing Spencer/Wesker/Sentinel, and the most effective start-of-round tactic I found was usually Bionic Arm. He didn’t back off most of the time so he’d be hit by it. The problem is usually I’d have to burn X-Factor, but it was worth it in that case because his other two characters (Spencer/Doom) were not a threat to me at all. I also found some success calling Sentinel right before Arming and if timed properly that would actually cover it so I didn’t have to X-Factor. Other than that I just tried to run away, and X-Factor guard cancel Wolverine whenever possible.
Dante, taskmaster, and zero