I really want to learn how to play this game. I have always been a fan of this guy since MSH. But everytime I hear about this guy in this game is always the same comments…
“He is the worst character in the game.”
“He’s ass”
“He sucks”
“Fuck Shuma!”
“Garbage Tier”
I am coming from a SF backround so why doesnt he fit? Despite all the negativity I want to main him.
Shuma is not actually a bad character at all. He is however DLC and very difficult and awkward to play. If you take shuma’s moves at face value it looks like he cant combo, get in, or do damage, because his magic series is terrible, and his dash isn’t very good. The only real weakness of shuma is he has trouble vs strong zoning. Also people need to see somebody play the character well on stream to believe anything. And to be quite honest I’ve only seen one shuma on stream who plays the character correctly. Also that was from a Japanese stream, and the time he was on is now cut off in the archive because it was past the 2:00:00 mark.
So basically people haven’t seen enough good shuma play, combined with the fact that his moves look terrible at first glance, he is an unpopular character, very difficult to play, and he costs $5 are the reasons people think he is bad.
Yeah, but sometimes a Shuma pops up, does one or two of his easier combos and is celebrated like a star 
Oh, and I´d say you can count yourself in the group of “played Shuma well on stream” people
Another problem is that there is a big bunch of myths which keep other players away. Just an example:
“He is super unsafe, you have to hit confirm like crazy with him!” - Not really, one of the safest ground offense with multi hitting far reaching cr.m into cr.h which can be jump canceled. You have to watch for pushblocking though, but it´s really not as bad as they make it sound.
“He´s a charge character in marvel, that can´t work” - Duh, why hell wouldn´t a charger fit? On top of that, only 2 moves are charge moves which are mainly used in combos or to somehow compete against zoning.
Well, he´ll most probably spend the rest of our marvel days on the bottom of the tier list even though he´s not Hsien-Ko bad (not even close).
oh god. i asked the same question about hsien ko in another thread; that was a mistake.
some people will give you a list of everything he can do and just throw in “that’s why he’s low tier” at the end of the paragraph; others will say it’s a “srk meme” >.>
whatever people mean, low tier in marvel isn’t quite the same as say low tier in street fighter: in marvel, you still have two other characters with assists that can help you, team order, etc. picking a “low tier” character in marvel doesn’t mean you’re gonna lose most of your matches. go ahead and main him. i actually applaud people who use the characters they like instead of derpy, easy win characters.
As far as I understand it, and you guys with more actual combat experience can feel free to correct me on this…
I believe Shuma’s primary reasoning for being low-ish tier is that for someone of his middleweight-brawler toolset, who wants to be absolutely point blank and turning one good touch into a kill… his mobility and air conversion aren’t quite up to snuff.
His air mobility is merely servicable instead of abusable, and the method with which he does so (Air Mystic Smash M) can be beat out by a lot of moves… or against certain characters, outright airgrabbed to death. This can be helped by assists of course, but still stands as a serious problem when faced by teams that specialize in keeping you down or out.
Shuma also has trouble converting random hits in the air into workable damage, especially high in the air. I’d say this is primarily due to the of j.S and his hitstun for combos (especially the killshots) being somewhat tight. If he gets a clean hit, he’s going to wipe a character off the map… but he’s not that great for stray hitconfirms against aireal targets.
He has the damage potential, the mixups, lots of Stare gimmicks, and plays well as a teammate… but from all the Shuma stuff i’ve seen across vids and tinkered with myself, he really needs support to keep people still long enough to work his mystic magic. Beyond that, it’s a lot of tiny annoyances peppered across the character that add up.
So… it’s really not a matter of being “Low-tier”, but of just barely not being what it looks like he should be.
Ok so I’ve played shuma since he came out, I’ve placed top 16 at majors and played against the best players around. I will tell you why shuma is low teir.
There is a very underlying fact about this game that most people are unaware about. In this game what ends up being one of the most prodominate importance of determining how good or tier list spot of character is, comes down to priority. Characters with good move sets and some effective abilities are still generall considered lower tier if it gets out ranged/beaten out by other character priorties. Its the reason vergil, wesker zero etc are all so good. Yes they have good moves, but they can basically press buttons all game relatively safely knowing they will win the priority war. Now of course this is not the be all of tier list, as some characters can compensate this with strong zoning or some other gimmick.
That being said lets talk about shuma. As most of you realize by now, outside of c.m,c.h shuma has no priority, meaning he can’t aimlessly push buttons against other characters. Also shuma has on the poor end of air grab length and his best air normal is not an airgrab normal. Also his mystic smash if a free grab or AA for most of the cast. This means in air to air combat shuma gets heavily beaten by any character that can easily mash f+H like mags or Zero. Then you take into effect how slow his ground speed is, meaning he can’t be a ground pressure/speed demon like x-23 or wolvie, so he has to take to the air regularly. Then his air dash is so slow/vulnerable you are basically taking a gamble they don’t punish it with a jumping heavy or special. Now factor in that he does not have the zoning or specials necessary to force an air character to fight grounded, or ground character in the air, he is basically forced to fight his opponents game. So this means generally your game will break down around methodically moving in or getting an assist to make it possible to get in. Now once you are in, you don’t even have the tools to stop them from escaping. Now shuma does have some ok mixups, but they basically require you to be pointblank to do it, and to be truely effective you need a strong assist to make sure they don’t just chicken block out, which you prolly needed that assist to get close enough to try and set this mixup up.
There are plenty of finer points to the above argument, but most of them usually break down to very specifics like the list of save moves that straight out beat our mystic smash etc. If you really want to know why shuma is bot tier. I’ll pick 3 characters I never play, Vergil, Mags Dr doom, and I’ll beat your shuma in a straight up battle effortlessly. Now I knows its a team game and all, but the fact that you have no chance in 1 v 1 's like this is a huge part of why he’s bot team. There are several other matchups I could list just as bad these just tend to be most popular three.
No, he is pretty bad, but how bad he is happens to be emphasized too much. The japanese shuma was fighting people who didn’t know the matchup at all. They were letting him get in with so many unsafe things. Raw mystic ray at point blank, m mystic smashes (free to air grabs), raw supers, etc. All it takes is one recognition of an unsafe tactic, and you can kill the character. That’s shuma’s main problem too. . . commitment. He has to commit to everything he does too much, and if your opponent is familiar with the match up, he loses a lot of tools as he can’t abuse the best stuff because it’s all unsafe.
Hsienko is hot garbage. Don’t even compare shuma to that complete ass character. Hsienko has no mobility. She serves no purpose other than gold armor assist, which doesn’t even warrant keeping her. I think the mentality of aiming to be a low tier hero is idiotic, especially in this game. I understand character loyalty as I am loyal to shuma, but I don’t understand the idea of wanting to make a team of low tiers. If you are truly dedicated to a character, you will actually have the intelligence to construct a GOOD team around that character, regardless of how strong the other two characters are. I really hate when people make some garbage ass team like spiderman/modok/captain america or something stupid like that, and then complain that spiderman is ass.
^ prime example of why you should think twice before asking why a character is low tier. took less than one day to receive one of these replies. i’m just gonna clean up your post so everyone doesn’t get the wrong idea; however, for obvious reasons, i do not want you to reply.
don’t turn this thread into a hsien ko topic.
uhm, really? because people used vanilla tron, vanilla haggar, and vanilla, wait for it, hsien ko just for their assists.
don’t know where you got this from my post, but okay then.
if someone has a horribly constructed team like this, they’re either a beginner, it might be a little kid playing, because children play this game too, or they just don’t get the object of the game. i got lucky because i really did pick my three favorite characters and throw them on a team together; they ended up having great synergy. i just had to change assists.
Oh I’m quite aware of how much shit his opponent let him get away with and anybody familiar with shuma wouldn’t let that slide, I’m just saying he is the only other person I’ve seen make good use of shuma’s tools. I’m not saying shuma is top tier or anything, but i do believe he is pretty good. As far as committing goes I don’t really get that. At neutral c.m c.h stare is perfectly safe, and if it hits drop the stare and go into full combo. C.m In general is great and should be the move you throw out most. I find shuma to be pretty damn safe as long as you don’t do anything stupid(well ok I guess his command grab is very unsafe), so I don’t really understand what you may be doing that is unsafe. All The people I fight are all VERY familiar with the shuma matchup as I have been playing him since he was available in vanilla, and my problems with shuma don’t include being punished unless I whiff a command grab. I fight teams like Taskmaster Virgil hawkeye all the damn time, and ill admit if i didn’t have a good neutral game assist, beating stuff like that is very hard. I feel his worst matchups though are spiderman and modok, Trish gets a lot more manageable when you can C.H her divekick every time. But shuma should be played on point with characters who can make use of stare tags(teleports),HMS DHC’s and ray assist, with those characters having assists that help him get in, lock them down, or push them into the corner. I don’t think there are many viable shuma teams, as only a few characters really fit into that category.
On a side note shuma with coldstar in the corner is as about as hard to block as a good firebrand+ammy in the corner I think its leftright 50/50 followed up by two instant overhead or low mixups (much harder to block than tridash high lows). Also its a kill combo if any of the attacks hit. Its pretty dumb stuff and makes me feel like zero as sometimes my opponents don’t even get to play.
Shuma Low tier is bullshit, end of story, I don’t even need to hear an explanation on this. Thats how right I am! 
Nah it’s pretty accurate
No its not 
Are you dumb? Hsien-Ko’s assist doesn’t even COMPARE to Vanilla assists.
Hsien-Ko’s assist is the easiest assist to Bop in the game, ESPECIALLY in gold armor; which cost a bar and UNSAFETY to get into the first place.
The minute I see Rimoukon’s assist out, I could plink dash backwards and THC her and kill her off.
THe best part is that I don’t have to worry about her dropping out and regaining invulnerability, since herp derp Rimoukon is fully Super-armored.
Thanks for the free kills!
well, i mean that isn’t totally true… I really like MODOK/DOOM and i’m looking for a third, Shuma seems like a great fit. of course I could try vergil or wesker or something but I just dont think they bring as much as mystic ray does… then again, i could be in for a rude awakening.
Shuma is arguably the most difficult character in the game and costs $5 to own. It doesn’t even matter that he’s potentially extremely good at that point because everyone will just falsely label him as poop and only give him credit for Mystic Ray assist.
You don’t get to be liked by the public until you can 0-death without batting an eye and are just compatible with anyone so that everyone can ride your ass to victory.
Exactly why Angelic doing so well at SCR will bode well for other Shuma players, even Moons has been using his Shuma team as of late.