X-23 Can Control It: The Phoenix Matchup

Classic Fighting Games Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3
1

Since it’s looking more and more like Phoenix will be sticking around in high-level play, I think it’s worth creating a new thread to discuss the matchup in some depth. X-23 definitely has some options against Phoenix and Dark Phoenix, but I think the more information we share here, the more prepared we will be to handle any circumstances in a match with a Phoenix or Phoenix team.

Obviously there is plenty to talk about, but I wanted to kick things off with a post about the old “X-23 Can Control It!” setup, which involves killing normal Phoenix at point blank range, canceling into Dirt Nap, and landing Dirt Nap during Phoenix’s recovery from Dark Phoenix Rising.

[media=youtube]l1dlrQmgczQ[/media]

I thought about this because I watched the GimR “How To One-Shot Phoenix” video (embed below) and then I readETR’s reaction to it on his blog (check it out!)

[media=youtube]37jnnm1XZ1M[/media]

The important part of the video is the first couple minutes where it explains the mechanics of the Dark Phoenix Rising transformation. To recap what’s in the video:

Phoenix is invincible for 34 frames
Frames 1-30 (startup phase) are her curling up, at Frame 30 the cinematic zoom-in happens and Phoenix says "I can’t control it!"
Frames 31-34 (active phase) are a frame 0 attack (i.e. if you’re not blocking or invincible on frame 30, you’re getting hit with it) and she is still invincible
Frame 35 the player regains control of Phoenix (there is no recovery phase, or it is 0 frames, however you want to look at it). A teleport at this point would take 10 frames.

You could represent this hyper like this:

ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssscaaaaxxX

Where s is startup, c is cinematic, a is active. I think Phoenix’s fastest normal is 3 frames (cr.L? can someone confirm, don’t have frame data in front of me), so x would be the time it takes for her to strike after the recovery.

So, with that all in mind, let’s talk about X-23’s Silent Kill. As I understand it:

Frames 1-5 (startup a) : this is the “flash” and X-23 starts to lean backward, X-23 is not invincible, can be hit out of this phase
Frame 6-19 (startup b) : now X-23 is invincible, and she continues leaning backwards
Frame 20 : close-up cinematic, X-23 says "Dirt nap!"
Frames 21-29 : recovery frames, now invisible, X-23 is still invincible but cannot yet act
Frame 30: player regains control of X-23 and can now act, no longer invincible, remains invisible

The actual strike time is difficult to gauge, because of her being invisible and all. What we do know is that her S attacks become the same as her standing and air L attacks except that they activate the Level 3. So with this in mind, I think we can assume that her strike is a 4 frame attack, although if anyone has any information to the contrary then that would be useful.

Using the same notation as above X-23’s hyper looks like this:

aaaaabbbbbbbbbbbbbbcrrrrrrrrrxxxX

where a is startup phase a, b is starup phase b, c is cinematic, r is recovery, and x is the time it takes to strike with Dirt Nap.

If we compare the frame data, a situation where X-23 could land an unavoidable Silent Kill on Phoenix during her transformation is theoretically escapable assuming Phoenix strikes with a 3-frame attack at the soonest possible frame. We can illustrate this as follows (sorry about the underscores, I had to reformat this because the code tags were being dumb):

X-23 would strike in time, but the last active frame of Dark Phoenix Rising hits her as she becomes vulnerable:

Phoenix: ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssscaaaaxxX
X-23: ______ aaaaabbbbbbbbbbbbbbcrrrrrrrrrxxxX

X-23 avoids Dark Phoenix Rising, but cannot strike in time:

Phoenix: ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssscaaaaxxX
X-23: _______ aaaaabbbbbbbbbbbbbbcrrrrrrrrrxxxX

In practice during a match, however, I think this can still work. I don’t think Phoenix has any 4-frame normals in air (again, correct me if I’m wrong) so if you land a killing blow with an OTG Ankle Slice like in the video above, then this could possibly be unavoidable, but it would still be extremely tight on timing (you’d have to cancel your Ankle Slicer the moment it dealt its damage). Also, if the Phoenix player ever attempts to teleport their way out of this setup instead of mashing out of it, then this will certainly work.

I’m not sure what the “startup” is on a raw tag, but it’s possible that this would also beat Phoenix players who just want to raw tag their team member in immediately upon transforming. Does anyone have any information about this?

Hopefully this gets everybody excited about a thread full of valuable X-23 vs. Phoenix info. Plenty more to come.

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Reserved for future stuff

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Reserved again

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It’d be nice if it was looking like Phoenix was going to be the new thing in tourneys. LOL.

I dunno…isn’t supposedly some new shit to do to Phoenix now when she transforms is just try to stay in her face during the blast if you make her transform on the ground? That way you can XF guard cancel through the block stun of the explosion and hit her while she’s vulnerable? I know I did that one match against my local Phoenix playing friend although I can’t say for sure if that was an inescapable situation or not.

Ryuga had a pretty good idea about using XF to get the meter needed to kill off Phoenix on one snap utilizing an assist and dirt nap. I’ll have him go further into that whenever he posts.

Far as what I know with X23 I’m more just working on coming up with forcing her down to the ground with an assist and block strings ala Wolvie and then going for a mix up to kill. When I’m done working on stuff I’ll post up what seems to work the best. Other than that I’m just practicing on everything I know about fighting Phoenix because inevitably there are just some times where you’re going to be fighting 5 bar ass Phoenix and as much as you’d like to reverse it…you can’t so might as well just know the few things you can do.

G**enerally if I have to fight 5 bar Phoenix with X23 my new strategy is “rushdown against rushdown, runaway against runaway”. **Basically it’s a strategy of just taking the gamble and trying to land a hit on a Phoenix that rushing in and pressing buttons and doing wild shit trying to kill you off. If the Phoenix player for whatever reason wants to make a threat to your life unless there’s like 30 seconds left or you know their rushdown is terrible you might as well fight that bitch off to get the match going and not start losing characters early. The main thing you’re most likely going to end up doing against a good Phoenix is the “runaway from runaway” strategy. Now this isn’t the same as running away from Phoenix like the week 1 shit where literally all you’re doing is super jumping till the clock reaches zero.

**The idea of this runaway is to make Phoenix’s homing fireballs as useless as possible. **Unless the Phoenix player is doing amazing and still has both of their characters available where they can run you down with assist based mix ups the Phoenix player is most likely down to just them and one other character who may or may not have good assists. If their slave character doesn’t have a strong assist you know they’re going to jump/super jump up and throw the homing balls of fire. **Which once you see her start to throw a second homing shot you should start regular jumping backwards. What this does is it forces the homing shot to stay airborne because they move slowly so of course they’re going to track at a slow rate. ** If you keep regular jumping backwards it forces the homing fireball to stay in the air and away from you because they assume you are positionally you are in the air instead of trying to make you claustrophobic where Phoenix can do a free ass teleport. What this also does is positionally keep the fireballs far away from you. Especially if you have a lot of space to jump backwards by the time you jump backwards 2 or 3 times the homing fireballs will be out of range to safely teleport. If they teleport after you have jumped back enough times not only will the fireballs be nearing time to disappear, but they will most likely be too far away to even safely teleport to begin with before they even disappear.

A Phoenix can throw no more than 2 air fireballs while still being able to teleport. Moving away from the ideal position they would like to throw the H shots means they are forced to attack you with traditional offense rather than braindead safe call extremely durable homing ball and do another special move so they can instantly close the gap on you shit. You can do little things like jump back 2 or 3 times to move far enough away from the fireballs and then start throwing out instant talon dives to scare Phoenix off from teleporting next to you. Especially if she does a ground teleport near you you can instantly recover from the talon dive and blow up the long recovery with some normals and start a combo. If you land a little late your talon dive can blow up a normal she tries to stick out during the teleport.

**Eventually you’ll probably run into a situation where you end up heading towards the corner where you have no more room to jump backwards. **This is fine IMO because even if she gets you towards the corner it makes her ability to mix you up with teleports and traps a lot more limited. You now have to deal with the fact that her throws actually set up damage in the corner but if you know how to tech throws and deal with a high low mix up that’s all you really have to deal with. This is considering that it’s pretty safe to chicken block in the corner against Phoenix any way. What you can then do from there is take advantage of X23’s wall jump or H talon attack to propel yourself out of the corner and play the same game back on the other side of the screen. I would recommend the wall jump since it keeps you lower to the ground and allows you to do all of your air special moves in the reverse direction after you cross her up which could possibly force her in the corner also.

This will then make it easier to do more offensive things like force her to throw a bad air fireball and wave dash up and air throw her before it releases. If you feel she’ll get the first air fireball out you have the best wave dash in the game so you can easily wave dash behind Phoenix before a second air fireball can release and air forward throw her from the back. The first homing fireball will never reach behind Phoenix at that speed so it’s pretty much free to do minus her cancelling into a dive kick instead.

If you end up popping 5 bar Phoenix and she has another character available she’s most likely going to try to lame you out for a bit with some Dark Phoenix double H shots to take some chip or free damage off of you before tagging back in. Just deal with whatever little petty shit she can do and then let her go back in. From there you can kind of assess what you have at that point on your team. Like with my team of Dante Jam Session, X23 Ankle Slice, Doom Plasma Beam, I’m going to see if I still have Dante or not. If I do and have 4 meters I’m definitely going to spend the meter to snap her in and then turn on jam session and just blow up Dark Phoenix before she comes in with Dirt Nap. If for whatever reason I dont have 3 or 4 meters yet I can kill off the next character with or withour XF and then definitely have enough meter by then to jam session dirt nap her to death.

If I’m only down to X23 and Doom I would most likely just try to kill off the last character and keep Doom in so I can at least use plasma beam and jump forward at her with a block string to try to lock her down into a dirt nap on the come in. If that doesn’t work…then you’re only left with the run to the corner and chicken block and hope for XF guard cancel if you still have XF. You definitely dont want to burn your XF against Phoenix unless it results in the guaranteed removal of Phoenix from the playing field. If you burn your XF early against Phoenix and she didn’t die and gets 5 meters…just shake their hand unless you somehow get a chance to kill Dark Phoenix as she’s coming in cuz that shit is over and done.

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On the topic of Doom/X-23 vs phoenix. I just thought of a certain situation that might be death, or maybe in your favor, vs a phoenix transformation. If you end up killing Phoenix with a sphere flame, DHCing to dirt nap may be safe since the SF comes back down in a shower covering the screen, it may scare the phoenix player to either teleport, and maybe get hit by the SF on the way down, or atleast keep them in a short blockstun for the dirt nap to connect. ideas?

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Unfortunately the fire coming down only happens on a block or whiff to save Doom from damage. Which ground photon array does the exact same thing but better for that purpose. If you actually hit with sphere flame you only get the concentrated damage from the blast with no flames coming down. The sphere flame would have to not actually hit Phoenix for such a situation to work.

In general though I try to use that situation to hit Phoenix with the Sphere Flame and then either super jump up and dirt nap her or stay on the ground and wait for her to teleport and mash S. Dark Phoenix takes more damage against capture state supers like Dirt Nap so you dont have to chip her first to kill her like with regular Phoenix. Long as you land a raw dirt nap she’s dead.

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That’s not true, and the situation I’m speaking of, she dies on the way up.
Combo her into Sphere Flame, she dies on the way up, DHC right before she transforms. SF goes up, comes back down AFTER she transforms, forcing her to take the damage or to try to block it. When that happens, if she does block it she will be vulnerable to a dirt nap, if she is hit, she is also vulnerable to one.
Of course all this speculation is all situational, have to have Doom on point and X-23 in the back, 4 meters is needed for this setup. But as I was testing stuff out in training mode it all seemed to work pretty well and not be strict enough that it wasn’t worth it.

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Ah I see…so you DHC in a situation where the sphere flame kills her before the blast. I can’t remember if I’ve ever had that happen fighting against Phoenix. Which makes sense because I usually never have Doom out there fighting Phoenix until X23 is already dead. It’s worth trying out definitely.

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Thanks for the shoutout MoFro, I’m actually writing an extensive guide on beating Phoenix after I took a look at GimR’s video. I’d say it’s about halfway done, but it delves into all of the things you guys have been talking about, I’ll make sure to put some mention in this thread after it’s done.

My personal favorite is the snapback into Silent Kill. Simple, efficient, and rage inducing.

As a side note MoFro, I would suggest using a THC with 5 meters against her. I prefer that Dormammu dies, THC with X-23 on point, X-factor, wavedash forward, activate dirt nap, and kill Phoenix while she’s in blockstun. Not 100% effective (Teleports are possible) but definitely worth a shot, and hard to react to properly if the opponent doesn’t know what’s coming.

X-23 is naturally one of the best counters to Phoenix in the game, in my opinion. It’s just a matter of using her on point and allowing her to survive to her.

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I really don’t think x-23 is a counter to Phoenix. I use Phoenix also and I can say that characters that can’t do ANYTHING about fireball spam she owns for free, Dark Phoenix or not.

My general strategy for Phoenix teams is waste xfactor and kill the first character right away (unless you can kill the first character in one combo without xfactor). This is because I find that most Phoenix teams rely on their first character to do most of the meter building, the 2nd character is the assist. Take for example Viscant’s teams. Wesker/(ironman,tron,or haggar)/Phoenix. If Wesker dies right away those 3 characters aren’t building shit for meter. If you had killed the first character with an XF combo you should have 2-3 meters which is perfect for DHC glitch. By the time Phoenix comes in she only has 3 meters and you can take your time trying to get your hit in. You don’t want to rush in mindlessly because every fireball or trap you BLOCK builds meter. Best to avoid and attack intelligently.

Second is just kill the team and save xfactor for Dark Phoenix. Once she becomes Dark Phoenix get to the corner and stay in the corner. She can’t teleport behind you or cross up if your back is against the wall. Eventually when xfactor runs out she’ll have to go up to you and attack for her healing sphere to work, because you have xfactor you can xfc while blocking her physical attacks and tag her.

Third, use Phoenix against Phoenix =P.

This is all easier said then done but that’s what I like to follow. I don’t like to snap her in because Phoenix’s now are good enough to fight with her and block your incoming mix ups. If they raw tag their other characters back in you just wasted a meter and she built some.

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I dont think anyone in the game direct counters Phoenix except Akuma or Dorm. The whole point of the character is that she’s supposed to be the best. It wouldn’t even make sense to put her in the game if she wasn’t the best. She freaking eats stars.

With that said X23 arguably does better against Phoenix one on one (not counting DP) than say Wolverine. X23 has the best wave dash in the game so she can easily air throw Phoenix from the front if she goes up to chuck one fireball or dash behind her and air throw her in the back should she throw more than one. She has a lot of aerial movements including a wall jump to screw with the trajectory and lame out the homing balls also.

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Out of curiosity, does anybody know the lag (both startup and endlag) on X-factor?.

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A properly timed air H talon strike is a good way to close the gap on Phoenix and if you can get an air throw from it, she can be set up on wake up. If she’s in the corner and air thrown into the corner, well that’s a dead Phoenix.

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isn’t xfactor instant on startup and recovery

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This thread is what gave me the idea to do this, so I’ll just leave this here:
[media=youtube]-pd8HbyEx_4[/media]

Should be an unavoidable setup if you do it right.