What does Iron Fist need to be a better character?

Classic Fighting Games Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3
1

And no Justin Wong playing him isn’t enough :wink: Since I’ve been playing Iron Fist, I knew he had potential before JWong picked him up. I also feel he is one of the more balanced and underrated characters. My question is, what does IF need to rise up the ranks and become a better character overall? This is just suggestions to throw out in hopes Capcom was lying about no more patches or DLC.

Some suggestions I think he needs are listed here. Note I think giving him ALL of these would break him, these are individual suggestions that maybe can be placed together with some tweaking.

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[]Level 3 has faster startup 100% invulnerable during flame animation
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Right now his level 3 is great, but for a level 3 it starts up way too slow. Needs to be increased on the startup, if anything it should be instant and should be less vulnerable even on block.
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[]More health. Should have 1,100,000 or 1,150,000
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Iron Fist is a straight up rushdown character with 0 air game and 0 projectiles. How the hell can they expect us to get in with the health thats even lowrer than 2 of the best projectile zoners in the game? (Task and chris at 1.1mil each). He needs a health bump especially since he always has to risk getting hit in order to get a hit in of his own.
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[]Iron Rage (fists of fury) Needs to be invulnerable ala Bionic Arm. Keep Same Damage
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Keep the startup if you want, but this move should be invulnerable during most of the active framesgh. His worst enemy is someone with a projectile super, so lets nullify that to an extent. Don’t speed up the super don’t make it go longer, don’t up the damage. Just make it go through everything that tries to random him out. It needs to be the marvel side’s equivalent of Bionic Arm.
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[]Launcher Needs to hit airborne opponents
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This ones obvious. His launcher being so shitty limits his combos and what he can do. In a game where air combos rule the game, he should be able to launch and relaunch using his own launcher.
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[]Defense chi (blue flame) gives 3 points of super armor instead of increased defense.
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Lets face it. The blue chi is useless and no one uses it. The defense it gives is negligible especially in a game like this where the top tier characters do stupid high damage. Combined with the increased health, giving him super armor will allow him to get in without worry and still take damage to his health without flinching so it is balanced. This would make him a force to be reckoned with as people would be afraid to throw out random assists that didn’t hit 3 times fast enough.
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[]Meter building Chi (green flame) steals meter per hit instead of adding more per hit.
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This one I felt would be just for fun although I see it as working well too to balance him. Hell they gave it to Morrigan and in addition to a bunch of her changes she flew up a tier list. Considering it would be much much harder for IF to get in and actually hit someone while green chi’ed I think this could be a fair change to that mode also because it is only a temporary boost.

These are just a few ideas to balance him out and make him a stronger character without making him Wesker broken. Right now even in XF3 hes not really a threat to anyone that can super jump…what ideas do you guys have to give IF that extra oomph

2

That would make him too good. To be honest he is fine as he is now. But if I can add one thing I would either make his launcher to hit airborne opponents or give him an air rising fang. That would be all. Not everything you listed. THATS ODDDDDDD

3

Since he’s supposed to be the Makoto of marvel I think he should have her command grab. And her fukiage (for a free juggle). And her axe kick (ground bouncing). And her low hitting crounching L. Trollface.

But seriously I don’t think they’d change his launcher, but it would be good if tweaked his moves to get more consistent combos on airborne opponents. And more untechable time after an air grab. Maybe a double jump wouldn’t be too much?

4

lol he did mean for only 1 or 2 of the suggestions to be used.

I would just like anything which altered his air trajectory, rising fang would be rediculous haha, or maybe something nice like an S which always knocked down off random air hits, with a similar OTG window to foot dive’s window.

5

Well honestly I have no idea what the point of a double jump would be considering he can’t do jack shit in the air anyways :wink:

Maybe if his M and all variations of H were unpunishable? Or conversely maybe all his rekkas would be unpunishable? I dunno something has to give here.

And yes I didn’t mean for IF to get every single one of those buffs i mentioned, although some could mix and match. Is he a complete character? I’d say almost 95% yes, but is he a good character? To an extent yes but compared to the rest of the cast (which is what you have to do in a game like this), the answer is sadly no. I only bring this up because, like all other players, i’m lazy as fuck and want to do Sentinel level damage without earning it by gun teleporting everywhere and having unpunishable moves and a mode where my mask breaks off I get +10% damage and speed…

6

He doesn’t need any of those things IMO, you need to use assists to cover his weaknesses. His laucher is ass because you’re not supposed to be using it anyway, he’s designed to work on the ground and that’s where he makes his damage. No Iron Fist combo should ever have a launcher in it unless you’re in x-factor. With the proper team, this guy kills almost everyone in the game off one touch. What he needs is a good low :l: and more range on his light attacks, so he can have a better time stopping people from jumping and so he can fish for quick hits with his amazing dash. He also needs a quick anti-air so that he has a better time defending himself from characters that want to dive down on him; Volcanic Roar is too costly to use all the time and Dragon Fang takes too long. A command grab would be a very welcome addition that would actually make him scary if he had those lows I was talking about to go with it.

3 points of armour on Blue Chi would be pretty ridiculous. With the way this guy can get across the screen so quickly, especially with an assist, you could pretty much never call an assist with against him with Blue Chi active. You could just get in for free and do a string, if they block re-buff chi, call assist and do it again until you hit them.

If he had those things I spoke about he’d be a lot better.

7

He needs a good team built around him. That’s pretty much the point of a character like that. Dragon Fang is a really slept on assist but he’s a character that IMO with the right assists is basically top tier at point blank range. His jump is absurd fast so if they try to chicken block they have to deal with OS throw all fucking day. A real fast low would nice for him to be a little stronger at opening people up without an assist and keep them from chicken blocking but I feel his power at close range is really slept on in general.

8

i definitely agree with justin on this. he needs an air option or a set of options that do two things…

  1. alter his air trajectory/positioning
  2. gives him a superjump height air option that can be converted into meaningful damage reliably (wallbounce, groundbounce, hard knockdown, longer post-airthrow-combo window like nova, w/e, or perhaps non-S initiated aircombos causing flying screen like they’re supposed to, stupid tvc team:tdown: )

right now, ironfist is FREE to air throw resets that can’t be back/forward airteched out of (spiderman). he’s also really weak to super jump foes because his options to counter them are lackluster (weak air combos that don’t lead to anything, airthrows that are difficult to followup on, rising dragon super that’s meh outside of xfactor and certain dhcs). building teams to cover those weaknesses is ok, but if i’m gonna use dante, strider, wesker, etc., why not use another character that has better synergy with them instead of ironfist? that way i get a team that doesn’t have those same weaknesses, and has better overall synergy anyway.

9

I don’t like this aspect. I understand it, but IMO that is not how his character is built right now in his current form. It shouldn’t be that a team is forced to be around him. He isn’t good enough that this should be warranted in the first place.He is definitely a good character, but he lacks tools on his own or with assists to make him worth it (and despite this I still use him, sometimes on anchor as stupid as it is).

If he had any of those things you guys suggested, I still think he would lack necessary tools especially in this game the way its played. Doom, Dorm, Magneto, Hawkeye, and more absolutely RAPE him in every shape or form even with IF having assists. I agree giving him too much would break him, but he needs something more substantial then a frame change here or a air move there. Just my opinion since playing him day 1. I know nothing really will come to fruition with it, but we’re just here to discuss anyways.

Also I LOVE his Dragon Fang assist and I abuse the crap out of it with Zero’s lightning and dashes and Frank’s roll on incoming characters. It also works well in allowing frank to snapshot twice in 1 combo.

I want an opinion from you guys. Who do you feel best fits with IF team wise? Right now I am running a Zero IF Frank and it works decently all around especially since shopping cart helps IF ground game. I’ve seen spencer work well too.

10

-Cr.A hits low
-Longer OTG window off all throws

  • A FUCKING DOUBLE JUMP

Instant B+ tier.

11

Well, he’s such a 1 dimensional character that the only way to play him is with a team built around him.

I think IF can only be played on point tbh. Your team is not really helping IF in any way becase when Zero dies you’ve pretty much lost the game, especially against a zoning team. They don’t have to let you get in to use shopping cart so you pretty much have to work extremely hard or get lucky at this point. For Zero there are better assists for helping him accomplish his gameplan who in turn happen to be better characters than Iron Fist.

The best team imo for Iron Fist is Iron Fist/Spencer/Hawkeye. With this team you have a decent anti-air which sets up combos, horizontal space control which you can combo off of from full screen, cross under mixups on incoming characters thanks to Spencer, 1 million+ meter positive combos, respectable damage off of throws, resets with Spencer (which you don’t need if you do the right combos.), you could probably play in any order, and two good characters who work well together when IF dies.

12

It is a joke though that Iron Fist has really little combo potential off of his throws which are his only real air option atm, after which he has to break his back to connect the tight link to OTG, while Doom can throw, go take a piss, come back, leisurely build 2 bars in any combo he likes and probably kill you with DHCs/level 3.

I do disagree however about Iron Fist’s only position being at the front right now (though later in the games life he’ll probably only be really usable in that position or 2nd IMO), but at least for now I feel he can work well as an assist char in the 2nd spot really well, despite my personal placing of him at the back.

For my team he works for Wolverine and he works for Dorm. If either of them die, the other one still functions well with IF, at which point I’ll try to get IF in as a battery and to do as much damage as possible when the opportunity arrises. Getting him in through a DHC also allows you to get him in the position you want and not have to work as hard to start pressuring them.

He’s not nearly as bad in the 3rd position though as you might think, provided he has meter and XF available. If it’s down to 1v1 it’s really not bad at all, but if he’s left vs a dedicated zoning duo or a whole team he’s screwed. I’ll edit this as carry on later I think but I gtg for now.

13

About the chi armor thing, having 3 points of armor is pretty crazy but that would solve getting hit by things like Zero Lvl3 Buster which is 3 hits. Also it would be nice if armor activates on the first frame. Would make some things easier.

14

i’m still a firm believer in ryu being IFs best teammate. then felicia, chun, wolvie, tron, strange, doom, hsienko, and honorable mention to phoenix, shulk and vjoe IMO.

15

Agreed. Even 1 hit would suffice that does not disappear unless actually hit. DJ and GG above said he had no issues getting in, which is true, but once he gets in all anyone has to do is superjump and IF is screwed again. He needs something to blow up the derp helmsmashes and foot dives.

16

There’d be so many dead Vergils if I could punish that stupid move.

17

Honestly while I get the idea of threads like this, I don’t like how people keeps wanting characters to get buffed in ridiculous ways. If you like IF, play him for what he is. He doesn’t need anything to be a good character because he’s already good. His quirks are kind of what makes him fun. I’m kind of a person that don’t want to see characters I liked played by everyone. There’s already too many jwong wannabes out there as it is.

What will make IF better? Tridash, teleport, invincible supers, dive kick, super armor, 1 frame command grab with combo followup, 1.3 mil hp…instant broken tier. =/

As for an iron fist team, I have IF, sent, spencer.

There’s probably a lot of discussion in the team building thread (idk since i don’t follow the forums much). IF should probably be put on point but it’s nice to have a 2nd character to switch him out for. Rising fang is such a good assist after all. A general IF team building strategy is, IF point with rising fang assist, character that has a safe DHC and preferably don’t need wall bounce for full combos, assist character that can be a good anchor.

You kind of have that going but the biggest problem is frank anchor. lvl1 frank sucks. Rather your team would probably do better putting zero on anchor since zero anchor is actually pretty ridiculous and you can use IF to help level up frank maybe. Maybe even zero, frank, IF so you can quickly level up frank using the dhc trick and then switch in IF. Or just switch out frank for a better assist anchor like hawkeye, task, or sent.

I personally don’t like assists like unibeam, or shopping cart especially for IF. They all greatly scales combo damage which makes it so IF has to get in more times to finish someone off.

Spencer assist is pretty much just a combo extender for IF and apart from that, I don’t feel like they have great synergy (I like extended combos tho). Using slant shot to extend IF’s standard BnBs are nice but what I think is the most useful about slant shot is converting a full combo from airthrows. Also normally, if IF does his high low rekka mixup and connects, he pretty much then goes to rising fang, wavedash, rekka-> super, with no real chance to chi powerup in between unless you skip a rekka and kara chi into super. With slant shot though, you can do rising fang, wavedash, rekka -> dragon palm then use slant shot to crumple and chi powerup, this makes the rising fang combos quite a bit more damaging. Also there’s an anti-air aspects of slantshot for IF to get a full combos off people that stay in the air a lot.

IF doesn’t really help spencer tho since spencer really needs his wallbounce and since spencer doesn’t have a safe DHC. So then if you put spencer 2nd, (like IF, spencer, hawkeye) IF pretty much only serves only as a point character. Ofcourse you can put spencer on anchor but spencer doesn’t really need xfc if you know his combos.

That’s not really a “weakness” of IF. He has pretty much the same options against those as everyone else.

18

Make launcher hit airborne opponents but only knee to hip high. St F.H is good can be combo off of and act as an anti air.

19

Rising fang and Kowloon wall doing QCF on its own not rekka style and a ground and air S launcher

20

Ok, I try not to speculate about such things since it just leads to disappointment, but I think I’ve got it. Put invincibility frames on twin snakes. As many as on a shoryuken. Keep absolutely everything else the same, and he becomes viable. Putting invulnerability on it would be just the right amount of broken. He goes from free to “stay the fuck away from him at all costs because he’s just going to blow through your shit with twin snakes and get a full combo”.

I like that he’s a ground character, I love the rekka chains, but he actually needs to be able to control his space as well as, say, Hulk does. Standing H is the only thing that keeps hulk afloat, and that’s what IF needs, a good defensive option that leads to offensive opportunities. And since you can’t cancel his rekkas on whiff (normally) anyway, it wouldn’t be that abusable.