Avarice put it well. While Zero is disgusting on point, his lack of being a “team player” makes a few other characters (back to my opinion of Spencer) a little better than him. You can put someone like Spencer on any spot of a team and he’ll do extremely well. Zero, on the other hand, doesn’t have much to lend to a team when considering assist options.
But yeah, if we’re talking about 1 v 1’s, then Zero is too good. When it comes to full teams, however, I think there are a few characters better than him. But that’s just my opinion when it comes to the different matchups I’ve played.
zero might be the best 1v1 character. i play spencer and zero have since original they both got buffed and i’m loving it. the addition of strider is just icing on the cake.
Two problem matchups for zero are Strider and Hawkeye at the moment. This of course is pretty biased coming from my experiences playing Clock and Combo. But their ability to pressure zero is like nothing anyone else could do in vanilla.
What kind of pressure strings is Strider getting on you btw? I just keep imaging Vajra during blockstrings but even then Vajra isn’t safe. + Aint seen much of Clock’s Strider myself.
sams club is a beast and the best ultimate zero i’ve seen so far. it doesn’t matter if he dropped combos, his fundamentals and stuff were amazing. the combos he was dropping weren’t baby easy mode combos we see other Zeros dropping in tourney either.
He also mentioned Hawkeye, which made me laugh because my team is Zero, Hawkeye, Doom.
As far as Zero being the best character, I’m going to agree with other folks here and say that while he is probably the single best point character, he’s not a team player. His assists are bad* (even WITH Sougenmu they aren’t really good,) and his second slot/anchor potential is significantly lower than some other characters.
*= Though I say his assists are bad, I’ve actually really taken a liking to Hawkeye with Sougenmu Shippuuga Zero assist. If I do Hawkeye slide + Zero assist and cancel into L Trick Poison Tip, it converts into a full combo and becomes entirely safe.
Jump loop is the best but also the hardest and hardest to confirm into. Ryuenjin cancel combo is more reliable, and easier to confirm to but still a little hard to execute. 2x Shippuga loop is probably the easiest both in confirming and execution, but is the least damaging. The j.2H > j.H relaunch is just slightly harder than 2x Shippuga loop but more consistent on the relaunch and a little more damaging.
What are those combos and how do you do them (what’s jump loop)? I’ve never played Zero before, and I don’t know names of moves to any fighting game ever in anything.
I’ve watched videos, I get confused.
I’ve been a Zero main since Vanilla and I have to say, people make way too big a deal about this character. Zero can’t catch run away for shit. Magneto + Drones + Repulsion also fucks him over pretty hard, and Spencer / Hawkeye / Strange can all blow him up pretty easy with random supers when they see him barreling at them. Most people make the mistake of trying to fight Zero head on and get mauled. That’s not how you fight the character. You HAVE to zone him.
But with that said, he’s great. Definitely top 5-10 but no where near broke. He needs the damage he has now because he has trouble getting in on top of having low health, and losing hard knockdown on buster made it even harder to fight zoning / run away. But, he also gained a better neutral game with buster cancels, so once he’s in there, he’s a lot scarier.
Just to be clear it seems like everyone is saying that Zero may not be the best character because he doesn’t have good assists? LMAO that’s almost as bad as saying that he isn’t the best character because you can’t pick him for all 3 of your character slots!
On a more serious note, what are the suggestions for beating average zeroes consistently? Especially in regards to Hawkeye matchups since I switch back and forth between him and Arthur (and people seem to feel like he is an anti zero). I put average zero’s because I’m just a casual and because, frankly, I don’t think there is a way to consistently beat high level zero’s unless you’re using zero too or maybe another top tier. I just don’t see what weakness the character really has. I cannot image what it would be like to play someone with a high skill level who uses zero–they’d perfect a casual or even an intermediate player regularly. I do have some luck using flying characters against Zero–particularly Dr. Doom (keep him out while flying and doing projectiles, hit him with an air special into a big combo once he starts getting frustrated and forgets to block when he dashes in. This doesn’t work if he has vajra assist though!)
Also I wanna add that the damage in that video is pretty close to specifically just that team. Zero gets huge combo extension from both Vergil and Dante. No other partners offer that much damage to Zero’s combo extension.
