ECZangief's Random Marvel Dump

Speed-Up Wolvie Team Construction: Redux

2008-10-04T17:26:00.001-07:00

This will be a sketch for now...

In light of what's been discussed about the viability of Wolvie/Doom as a duo, I'm gonna look at some of the possible options for the third slot. Honestly, I'm gonna go through the motions with some 'options' here-- hey I might find something, but I'm pretty much sold on Tron.

Options:

Psy: Psy/Doom looks like it can actually chip also. Block strings + Rocks, b.HK rolls xx Teleport if it looks hairy, re-pin. For Wolvie, assist is great for working in free Launcher into Falling Resets. A lot of room to play defensively with a solid AAA. Overall, your Psy probably should start 1st and play defensive/conservative and let Wolvie worry about chip.

Strider: This is actually pretty tempting, but it dies from the get-go because you've got 2 dudes who need all your bar. Thinking that the only way to play is start Wolvie, and work non speed-rushes into Rocks, glitch HK cross-up Tag Strider xx Orbs. Then use Strider to 'stretch' your meter. At which point Strider can Tag Wolvie back in with 1-1.75 bar and get ~2 activations at endgame. Too hypothetical.

Gief: I'm definitely going to run this squad as a secondary. As Gief gets more exp. versus Gods, I might even main it. In a lot of ways it's sounder chemistry bc its more like a 2-Way interaction, where you have two solid point options. Gief can start and just use Doom to get unblockable SPD shots while building bar, then dump Wolvie. As of now though, Gief needs Tron too much.

Cactus-man: He's only on here for Defense-Up and Life-Up. A strong candidate for a counter-pick when Wolvie's having a good day. W/o looking at it too much at all, Cactus/Doom is gonna be broken anyway.

Tron: Looks like that's it for 'options' actually. For me it doesn't get any better than Wolvie/Doom/Tron. Where Wolvie is just burning bar without thinking with Doom backing him, Wolvie/Tron is an option for a 0-2 bar mode of play, where Wolvie's concentrating on precision mixups + Tron while building meter. A 1-character piece of chemistry, and about as gung-ho as that's gonna get, although you still have 2/3 of Team Z when Wolvie gets dropped-- who wants to use either of them as long as Wolvie is alive.

Draft Day:

I'm pickin'-- DUN DUN DUN.... Amingo P. "Cactus-man" Cactussman. I just suprised myself actually. Every part of me wanted to pick Tron, except the part that said, "Hey this is supposed to be funnn." Now I just have to figure out how to make this work. Probably will start Amingo. Doom is gonna be straight cheapin' it. This team's gonna live forever.

MR. LOGAN IS... UNBLOCKABLE

2008-10-02T17:43:00.000-07:00

Stealing a few of my posts in Wolvie/Doomadooma thread and jumping off with some observations on this badass Logan. The more I look at what he can do, the more I think he's impossible to block him IF you do your homework and create double- and triple-option setups that maximize hi-lo shots and manage stun times on top of that. A lot of finegalin', but IMO will be worth it I think.

I was playing Wolvie today, and when I picked Mag later on, I literally was missing tri-jump ROM because I was an input ahead the entire time. Mr. Logan is FASSSSSST.

Basics (what he can do):

As Shoultzula pointed out, Wolvie has a Non-Guardcancellable speed-up stun infinite-- his dash startup is so quick that speed up dashing LK, LK (and about any other chain you can think of), can repeat xN until you run out of juice.

What this means is that Wolvie can do a couple key things:

1.) link chain normals free until he decides to go hi-lo, or drop assist, or qcb+P warp, etc. Better yet, he can combine his hi-lo's into the blockstring-- more on double- and triple-option Wolvie in a later post.

2.) create trap patterns with assists by linking chains to assist then back to chains.

So he gets to create easy pressure that maximizes what he can do to get a hit without a tri-jump or double-jump to fall back on.

Mobility Tricks:

Short Dash or vampire wave dash:

Shortening the dash with down cancel or LK vs style seems very useful so far bc i started getting WHOMPED by timed normals sometimes and runnin into psychic assist calls from fullscreen. LP could just as easily be used but i picked LK since I claw it out jap style. And as essential as maintaining proximity is, I'm finding success with waiting it out once i've trained them to look for those tiny openings (like a trap team can do) and baiting the response.

Dash LK back and forth is pretty funny lookin, kinda like IFC storm lp's on speed. Done fast enough you can tag them on the way in and tag them on the way out as well. Good luck w/ hit confirming those though :] .

When you have them cornered dash back LK should hop you up and over sweeps and low hits as well. Don't know how reliable, but i've utilized it once vs. commando sweep, dash back in combo death.

Dashing back cr.HK while in speed-up is pretty messed up looking too-- it creates a stationary version of his lunging kick. Not sure what you can do with that as a stationary hitbox. Hella style for doing that xN.

Jap Infinite:

as seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS7jMf39sFA

its just [ standing LP, cr. LP, walk forward ] xN

-you can end it anytime with an air chain into assist (Bubble here, but Tron is a big splash into rings. They can block the last one or two depending on how they land, but you remain in the plus)

-you can also call a bubble and HK -> air combo into bubble

-you can reset with a rep of s.LP, cr.LP, db. HP to switch sides. this lets you toss another assist out and re-up

-quick enough to get a couple reps on assist then HK launcher and make your escape

-nice basic spd-up attempt bc even on block its causing that stun

I'm thinking this is the tougher infinite, but more practical in terms of reset and more importantly that it uses less jabs per rep yielding that longer hit counter before dizzy.

SPD-Up Dashing HK Properties:

Dashing HK is messed up when Wolvie is juiced up. When you do a dash HK, his sprite crosses up temporarily because of the dash momentum carrying over (AFAIK that's why). This lets you do some funny things with it.

- you can call an assist or do a tag as if you were facing the other way.

- you can do an auto-SJ that crosses up into a wrong-side air combo.

If you master the assist timing, you can create ambiguous mixups with that. Also lots of resets are possible out of the basic speed-up infinites.

Theres a really ugly reset with Tron assist as well:

Dash in LK+Tron, LK xx Spd-Up, as the first rings hit, dashing HK will let you cross-up through the rings and recover quick.

You might also be able to cross up people coming out of a roll, but I haven't tested it yet.

Slick Solo Resets:

From Launcher:

... sj. LP, LK, LP, LP, fall behind them, HK, they bounce, you x-up dash, relaunch, repeat

From Standing Inf:

... speed-up dashing df.HK, crossup magic series, falling crossup series, land crossup, relaunch
... spd-up dashing df.HK, crossup Tron tag, Tron Rock xx Wolvie tag, relaunch

From Jap Infinite:

...F,F dash, HK (cross-up), AC

Speed-Up Dashing Cr.HK Properties:

Crouching HK is broken in Speed-up Mode also-- if you dash and do cr.HK deep against a blocking/walking back dummy, your momentum will carry you through to the other side. It equals instant sandwich pin, and you recover from cr.HK as/almost as fast as it takes them just to turn around, let alone block. I'm not sure, but its a good candidate for auto-block if you don't give enough space between the x-up and your follow-up. This is FAR better than is qcb warp, if a little harder to execute.

It's very easy to set up from the block-stun infinite, just dash very close cr.HK after a solid rep.

A couple of hypothetical applications:

- glitch cr.HK and look for assists, snap-out, helper infinite

- glitch cr.HK + Doom to start midscreen trap reps

- let them out of Jap infinite, glitch cr.HK + Tron, resets

Why Unblockables Work (???)

2008-10-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been focused on why UB's happen, so I analyzed three of them to find out the common ground:

Sent Spit beam: projectile normal, causes Twitch-untwitch-twitch style guard, dummy must land or wake up into UB, proper set up *seems* to have high success rate among top players

Doom Crouching Roundhouse: sweep normal, no apparent Untwitch, 100% setup following successful UB

Chun Stomp: jumping normal, no apparent Untwitch, 100% loop seems possible from a connected UB

As far as success rates, I can't vouch for the Sent UB as I haven't worked with it a whole lot. However, I've noticed an odd similarity between Doom's and Chun's. With each, I have the most success when I create a set pattern to follow in between UB attempts.

For example:

With Chun I do jumping d.HK close and deep, let Chun recover and fall to the ground, hit s.LP immediately following landing, hold forward as the LP recovers, walk up to the dummy, and repeat another close and deep unblockable stomp. When I get one UB, I've consistently gotten 3-4 more in a row using this method.

With Doom I do d.HK, doesn't matter what the range is, then wave dash back, then towards and d.HK unblockable again. I can repeat UB's 100% until I mess up the dash timing. I've done a bunch of other easy Doom patterns with the same results.

Conclusions:

After weighing all of the individual characteristics of these Unblockables, I've concluded that there is one specific nuance occurring that ties all three together (along with most, if not every other unblockable).

As far as I can tell with what I know about the game, these are unblockable because the game engine doesn't see a hitbox during part of the move's animation. With Sentinel this is easy to see with a jumping-away Dummy-- because of the aforementioned "untwitch" in the twitch-guard caused by the beam.

You can't see this happen with Chun or Doom, but I believe that the same issue is happening in the eyes of the game engine, except instead of a twitch-untwitch-twitch pattern, these normals simply sometimes start in "untwitch" state by animating the hit-portion of the move without first displaying the start-up (that causes twitch-guard).

Observe that with most normals, there appears to be a very quick twitch, and then untwitch while the normal is still out. Twitch guard has to be caused by a specific piece of data, whether its related to the presence of hitboxes, or attached to a specific number of frames specific to each move is a mystery to me. However, when you look at a regular normal, versus something like Tron HK Rock which causes twitch guard all the way through [Edit: not exactly true-- see below], even when hitbox data is not active, it presents an interesting conundrum. Specifically, it causes twitch throughout even though if you jump into the rock before it's thrown (when Tron holds HK to keep rock above her head), you will not get hit.

The question now remains: Why are these only unblockable part of the time?

Frame Trimming: (EDIT: THIS MATH IS INCORRECT, 1 in 5 FRAMES SKIPS)

[These numbers need to be fixed, but the concept stands]

Let's consider a curious part of the Marvel engine. The Dreamcast version (and at this point I think arcade as well) does NOT run at 60 fps. Instead it runs at a steady 72 which is translated down to 60 by the introduction of a frame skipping cycle that drops every 4th frame. So 15 times a second, there's one less frame than there should be.

This is the same phenomenon that makes Joo's 100% Sequences necessary for Programmable Pad combos to work flawlessly. These PPAD sequences are basically just a method to find where in the frame cycle you are at a given point. Pretty genius, as Magnetro pointed out to me and I'm only now really understanding why.

Full Circle:

From a cold start, i.e. outside of one of my patterns, I feel like I'm getting a random UB about 25% of the time. It's a hunch and a rough estimate; I can't really say because I'm not a computer and I can't test for this properly. I guess the only way to test is to try it once per training instance, then restart and try again. Do that a hundred times and get back to me (:]) .

However, what I believe this to mean is that one in four times, you'll execute a potentially UB move (let's say Chun Stomp) and the key point of animation (tied to the start-up) will land on the skip frame. When this happens, no twitch is registered, the game reads only the hit frames, and the dummy gets bwapped. It's my belief that any consistency in positioning or anything else being a factor in the move being unblockable is really just based in a habit, conscious or otherwise, of falling into a pattern once the first UB is achieved. After all you can hit it 1/4 times, and once a pattern is established, its feasible.

Connections:

I look at it like this: 1/4 is a perfect example of a nice, round musical tempo. Almost any drum beat you can think of is rooted in this, or a subset of this, and there are plenty of musicians that can manipulate, hear, and play notes with far more precision than 15/60th of a second.

Using this knowledge, I applied the idea of staying in a set tempo after landing Doom's UB, and was able to consistently get it with scary precision. Like 100% precision. There are really two things to pay attention to in order to do this-- first check whether it hits as a UB, then stay mindful of where in the cycle you are at from that point forward. What that basically means is that when you hit cr.HK, thats the first beat, and you just gotta make sure to dash (or do anything) in rhythm, and its a cakewalk to get the UB again.

What I think this is actually doing-- and this is a trip -- is creating a manual 100% Sequence that you can follow. More truly, I guess the Sequence is really the fact that the first UB hits (you know you're at the right spot of the cycle), and the rest is just the manual sequence to manipulate the cycle.

Problems and Possible Solutions:

1.) Tron HK Rock could be seen as a projectile throughout even though its a normal first, followed by a projectile. The Rock could be its own sprite. This would take away the uniqueness of that twitch scenario and take out some of the argument behind twitch being related to anything other than active hitboxes.

2.) There are plenty of 1 Frame Normals that aren't unblockable, ever. Mega Man, Magneto, Spd-Up Wolvie, Shuma and others all have them, and they aren't unblockable. However, I DO finally have a theory as to why this might be:

Every move has a Start-up, Hit frames (with hitbox data), and Recovery. Logic says that these should be separate. Since when did MAHVEL follow anything resembling a system of logic? After all, Start-up, Hit, and Recovery are all the same thing, with the 'difference' coming in the presence of a hitbox entering in at some point. They would overlap freely if it weren't for that.

What if Capcom was savvy to this presence of UB's? And of course they are-- every game is plagued with a handful, and they try to fix it for the next installment. What if they simply overlap the frames that cause twitch guard with the hit frames? Maybe this would solve the problem. Or even simpler, what if they took all the obviously applicable 1 frame normals, and told the game to 'look' for the frame cycle and then insert a buffer frame as necessary? It could be that Doom, Chun, Sent and others just slipped by without being tagged as being dangerous.

All this is just coming from my brain-- I don't know how games are programmed, but this sounds plausible to me so who knows.

Lastly,

Its MAH-ble BAYbee. These UB's work, so we can always just enjoy 'em for the scary little nuggets of death they are. It's my own fault for being a curious motherf***er. I lose sleep over this so you don't have to.

Very Special Thanks to Joo (and by extension Magnetro) for paving the way for anything technical Marvel!!! Respect to Risunomeijin (for introducing me to the Chun UB) and Shin (!!!) for being all-around Chun Gods. Also big thanks to Mixup, Shoultzula, Philopia, JudgeRL and everyone else who's put up with my incessant babble/brainstormed with me regarding this stuff at all hours these past few days, and taught me a thing or two about how not to be a scrub.

~ECGief

Inventive Flow Updated

2008-02-05T15:28:00.000-08:00

Magnetro has updated with some color edit information and some sprite rips/art.

Also,

Risunomeijin has graciously offered to get the 'Japanese consulate' (aka a friend who plays and has some godlike linguistical skills) on board with the translation project, so there might actually be some progress in the near future.

Japanese Vidness

2008-02-05T09:55:00.000-08:00

Been pokin' around lately for some good examples of current low-tier goin on in JP and theres one really good example in the batch of vids by way of Joo up on Preppy's site. It's "20080101-03_iida_vs_nobuyuki". These guys know what low-tier is about-- they just are having a blast.

1st matchup is a mirror Sim/Collosus/Iceman. Dhalsim's playing like its ST locking down with classic ground. Overall a really functional team. One trend I've definitely picked up on is that certain players will adjust their high-tier playstyle with a character to something thats closer to low-tier. Here Sim runs away about 5 seconds at the end but he's already established dominance. I've also seen dudes run Magnus on Capture assist and other tops taking a back seat, so its cool to see Low-tier as a state of mind rather than you know, ima take all your money.

2nd match is Sim/Colossus/Iceman vs. Colossus/Shuma/Guile. Oh and Shuma is invisible. Lol. Non stop giggle-fest with these guys.

3 is SilSam/BBHood/Doom (pink stuff) vs. Sim/ORed/Anak. Doom pink recall is too fast. But Sim is lookin more and more acceptable in low marvel.

4 is SilSam/BBHood/Doom vs. Spidey/Sabertooth/ORed.

Another good vid is "Sunahebi_vs_Nobuyuki".

1st: Hulk/CapAm/Colossus vs. Guile/Colossus/Charlie. Good ground +Frame work. Dash feints and trickery abound.

2nd: WarMach/Ruby/BBHood vs. WM/Akuma/Iceman. They're just playing around with calling assists in the air while filling the screen with bombs and missiles. BBHood solo lookin good with lots of charge time management.

3rd: Thanos/Doom/Hulk vs. Guile/Jugg/Iceman. Thanos/Hulk has moves. I wanna see bubble assist though.

4th: Venom/Spidey/Marrow vs. Sim/ORed/Anak. Sitting just outside range and whiffing a high priority hit is a legit low-tier tactic.

5th: Morrigan/Jill/Ruby vs. Colossus/SilSam/Guile. Ruby blue wave xx switch is rad.

Tron Rings Properties

2008-02-04T11:01:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been focusing in on one of the more random properties of Tron Proj. assist. Namely that at a certain timing, a Cross-up hit followed by an immediate Tron call, land, *HIT ... will cause a 'blow-through' where Tron Rings push the other character back to the original side if the '*HIT ' is properly timed. Very cool because the better they are at blocking, the more likely they will cross themselves up. Actually I can only confirm this with Gief/Tron out of memory, but it should work with anybody plus Tron.

The timing on the blow-through hit is so tight that its easy to turn it into a big mind game, and once you've run through your option tree enough times it becomes viable to randomize it and just freestyle from what you react to. One thing I've noticed lately is how much of a factor muscle memory is to seemingly god-like reaction time-- where its a matter of how quickly you can guess what comes next and not simply the manual quickness of your inputs.

Weak little postup but nobody reads this shit anyways.

Randumb

2008-02-03T19:29:00.000-08:00

Gief Double Fierce

Versus certain characters (Mag and Cable sized) Gief can do a jump-in forward+Fierce Punch then link into a rejump f.FP for a quick double fierce. Don't know the specific trick to it but its a hard link because it only works at a very specific point where Cable's and Mag's hitboxes are particularly wonky. I'm pretty sure there must be a small frame window within Mag/Cable's getting hit animation where the hitboxes overlap. It works off of a cross-up splash too so when I get it figured out it means Gief/Tron can lay down the hurt with something like x-up Splash, Tron, jump away f.FP, Tron rings, etc. Its basically corner combo damage anywhere onscreen.

Wolvie/Knives

Mixup posted a gnarly Wolvie SJC combo, something like: dash in magic series, cr.HK sjc LP, LK, LP, HP. I play Wolvie backed with Spiral Proj. and dump an assist call into the dash series giving them something to think about as they're getting up. Probably enough time to activate Speed-up and go to town. And since Spiral is off screen and the knives are blocked you can recall knives or dump Tron to set up infinite 50-50.

I'm having second thoughts on Wolvie and Doom compatibility. Yes, its easy to lose your rocks with screen shift and Wolvie doesn't need chip to get a hit, but that said a little chip never hurts. Some lockdown pressure means that you can get some breathing room and spot that point when its time to go apeshit. Everyonce in awhile I pick Wolvie/Spiral/Doom and get an air combo ending in FS with knives out then call Doom rocks as they wake up into Spiral knives. It's gimmicky but IMO Spiral/Doom is a good balance because they are reserved where Wolvie is gung-ho.

Doom and 'Rush-away'

There's a pretty bumpin' Doom thread on SRK right now and thats making me want to master the canceled cr.HK SJC rushdown trick. Seems like it would put Doom over the top if its mastered-- he gets mad runaway and big guard stun exploited rushdown. I'm big into the idea of the characters that can freestyle between rushing and keepaway because if you're able to tune into the pacing of a match, you get to pick out when to throw in those mix-ups that turn the tide of a match. It's a completely different type of mental layer than something like Magneto RTSD. I don't play Storm so I'd jump at the chance to run these antics with Doom.

Intro to Team Construction Theory

2007-11-28T18:42:00.000-08:00

In the past few months I've gotten really into the idea of breaking down team chemistry as it stands in Marvel into some kind of a loose formula. There's a lot of variables in the game when it comes to what teams work and why, so that's as good a place as any to start.

First off, there's a few different styles of teams. The most well rounded (in terms of chemistry) is a team like Mag/Storm/Sent. With this team, you've got a combination of 3 God Tier characters where each can function on point benefiting from the other's assists very well. In terms of options that you have at any given time, with any given character, the team interaction just feels natural. Now, some of this effectiveness lays in the potency of these characters as individual threats, but there are Low Tier examples as well. For instance, Mega-man/Son-son (proj)/Ken AA. You have to work harder to get it done (individual characters lack the solo versatility of the Gods), but the 3-way chemistry is there.

The second type of team is one like Sent/Storm/CapCom. Here's a squad that has very good chemistry for 2/3 of its team. In other words, Sent and Storm love having each other as an assist, but they realllly love Commando's Anti-air. At first glance, somebody new to the game might be thinking that this team setup would be inferior to one that's got the above-mentioned 3-way interaction. This isn't necessarily true, because with a well-designed team, you can have a 2-way interaction that is SO GOOD that it can swing it with any team, any time. In this case, even though CapCom isn't able to go toe-to-toe with Top Tiers solo, his assist function is so to Sent/Storm that it justifies his sub-par point-play. MSP is another great example of this.

The third type of team interaction is a team like Sent/Strider/Doom. This team is all about Strider/Doom. A fully-functioning Sent is absolutely necessary, but your Robot is there to set up the S/D lock-down. S/D is an example of a team interaction based upon one point character that is SO BEASTLY that it's worth running despite the fact that the rest of the team doesn't function as anything resembling a cohesive unit. Notice that even though the characters that aren't optimized in terms of chemistry are Sent/Doom (i.e. not bad characters), they still lack the kind of chemistry that a really well-built team has. This is why, as great as Sent or Doom can play solo, your average S/D team will drop if the other player can either, 1.) kill Strider or, 2.) nullify Doom's effectiveness with a proper counter assist. Either way, they take away the one great piece of chemistry that is the backbone to the team.

It's interesting to observe how the potential effectiveness (another way to think about it is "brokenness") of a given team can both raise or lower as you add chemistry to the equation, depending on what you're looking for in a team. For instance, with MSS, you get solid team interaction in terms of assists, DHC ability, and general functionality. SSC you get a really nice thing going with Sent/CapCom and Storm/CapCom, as well as bits and pieces of really good Sent/Storm and Storm/Sent interaction-- namely that killer DHC from Lightning Storm to Hyper Sentinel Force. And with the last type of team, SSD, you get unparalleled interaction between Strider/Doom that can snuff out any other team if you are on your game and can stay one step ahead of your opponent.

On the other side of the coin, while SSD has a beastly chemistry between Strider/Doom lockdown pressure, it's the easiest type of team to shut down, because if you stop Doom, you kill a huuuge part of the team's effectiveness. With SSC, CapCom is the weakest link, but when you take him out, you've still got to handle the toughest, most versatile duo in the game. With MSS, take your pick; remove one element and like SSC, you've still got to deal with a God-Tier duo.

Understanding Team Chemistry isn't just important to think about when building up a team-- it's even more important to consider when fighting a particular team. If you know the chemistry, you know how to shut it down.

More in the next couple days.

ECZ

Gief Notes Vol. 1: Fight Approach

2007-11-22T07:22:00.000-08:00

As one of the few serious Gief players (only?) posting on SRK, I been forced to figure using the character on my own. I can't really complain though, because in searching for ways to employ top tier techniques with low tier characters, I have to look at the game in a really deep way. This has improved my play with alll of the characters. However, in my opinion, the low tier cast has the ability to be even more dangerous when they are leveled up sufficiently and then sprung onto unsuspecting competition-- no one will have even seen your beast strategies if they don't think your character can hack it at high level play. Case in point: Team Z. Mike Z annihilated people with that squad, because he explored it fully before he took it to comp. He knew how to exploit all the engine glitches (like Guardbreak) that the top tiers can, but he was doing it in new ways that his competition wasn't able to pick up on.

In order to play well with Gief, you've got to take the same approach. First step is to know his arsenal. Obviously, if you've followed him through the series, his main weapon is as its always been-- the 360 SPD. In the Versus series, he's picked up some new tricks as well. His Aerial Russian Slam (623K) is a special, not a super, so you can freely use this non-techable air grab. You'll have to, because Gief is without an effective (in terms of movement) Dash, so the ARS is great for forward progress. He's also got an Iron Body power-up, which is interesting because you can cancel out any hit you take into a 360. It's interesting to mess around with, because no one has explored it fully.

Some of his notable normals are Crouching Jab, which comes out fairly fast, so its a good tick hit into SPD. Jumping LP/LK are good for stuffing tri-jumps early, although you'd have to counter call in anticipation of their rush assist.

Okay, here are a couple archetypal displays of possible Gief gameplans:

Gief as point character:

Start Gief > "soften" them up with wake-up Drivers > Rush when possible > build meter with SJ HP/HK xx 360 or TK Lariat > Safe switch or DHC out > use Gief assist.

Gief as reserve:

Start XX > play as per normal > build meter > use Gief assist > DHC to FAB > finish off remaining characters.

Gief plays well as point if you build him a sufficient team-- you can design a team chemistry that really makes it easy to set up his offense, or a more balanced on to help him with defense and give him a more limited entry point to his rush. However, it should be known that Gief plays equally well (and with the option of a more open gameplan if he is shutdown) as a reserve/assist character. In this way, you can run a team that is based off a core pair (Mag/Psy; Storm/Sent; Strider/Doom; Spidey/Tron; etc) that also likes the long pin that a successful Zangief Lariat assist will earn you. And everybody likes that, so there are a lot of options.

Low Tier Team Construction Theory: S-Up Wolvie

2007-11-21T12:30:00.000-08:00

Besides the ever-present Gief kick, I've picked up Chun and Speed-Up Wolverine lately. They're both fast, with a good overhead presence coupled Tron (with Chun being dangerous with her top-downs solo as well). I can't comment too much further on Chun just because she's throwing me for a loop as far as execution right now-- I just need some more time fiddling around with her arsenal.

Wolvie on the other hand, I've been messing with long enough that I can get into some of his options. First off-- teams. Wolvie, like 90% of the lows, doesn't have a lot of specific teams run by a vast amount of players. So it's a lot of fun just screwin' around with character interaction, trying to hit upon something unexpectedly useful. Since it's Wolvie, I was looking for some character's with decent to incredible projectile assists, because I want to get that horizontal control slash jump-check goin on to set up Speed-Up rushes.

Here's some of the character's I tried (and why):

Spiral (projectile) : When I want to play-test a potential team for horizontal control, this is what I usually start with. Reason being that Spiral's Knives assist is quick, holds up to a lot of projectiles, is resistant to disappearing after fly-screen, chips well on block, and is open for recall very quick (meaning you can set them up to block one Knife assist, and reset your offensive progress under the cover of a second).

Son-son (projectile) : Son-son is another useful horizontal assist; it stands up to Spiral in almost every department, and has an added perk. While it doesn't chip for any useful damage, the 3 monkeys spread as they travel, so they become super-useful when you are able to set up Monkey recalls. It's Doom-like screen coverage that moves even slower, so more time for mixups.

Sentinel (drones) : Sentinel is great for a lot of characters. There's a reason why Zaza was running double-Wolvie/Sent. However, I just don't like the way Wolvie has to work off of drones, because if they're blocked I can't recall drones effectively because they leave the screen at the bottom unlike Spiral or Son. The pro to picking Sent. is that top tier love you get, and a safe DHC. I'm more into straight low-tier though.

I tried a few more-- Gambit (nothing special), Jugg Variety (fun, but Wolvie has to work too hard to cover miss-calls), and Doom (as Shoultzula pointed out on SRK-- you'll lose your rocks every time you change the horizontal plane unless you so very specific combos)-- but none of them held up to my idea of how Speed-up Wolvie wants to play, which in my opinion is all out rushdown, but backed with safe assists that turn your blocked rush strings into trap reps. I'm a trapping whore, because I don't have top-tier reaction time. Too much green or whatever the case, I just need to always have some kind of position control going on at any given time to stand a chance.

Long story short, I chose to play mostly Wolvie/Son-son for the horizontal lock aspect of my Wolvie team because to me the spread pattern for Son Monkeys outweighed the allure of the safe-chip on miss from Spiral Knives. I figure Wolvie doesn't mind trading chip damage for an incredible control on anything in a fat arc in front of him. Now, Wolvie doesn't get that instantly, but has to set it up with Launcher + Son-son, pkp, HP/HK, land recall Son. So it's not free, but incredibly useful when you can set it up.

Now I needed to fill that last slot. I had one no-brainer choice, but I didn't want to go with it until I tried a few others:

Tron (duh) : Wolvie/Tron is too good. Overhead plus Tron dump is enough of an offense for most any low to work with. Wolvie's no different. Lk, Lk Tron xx Speed is free for the start of your Speed-up rushes. Etc.

Sent (Rocket Punch) : I had to try this to see how Sent's other assists would go along with Wolvie. I like the block-stun off of RP. It gives Wolvie time to set up some approaches. It still paled in comparison to Tron.

Thanos (Bubble) : This one I tried because of this vid. Wolvie/Thanos plus infinite execution = a whole bunch of resets from S-Up stuff. In retrospect, this assist goes more with horizontal lockdown stuff, because it looks pretty safe on block. I'll go back to this as my execution gets tighter, because [sLP, cLP] xN is haaaard right now.

In the end, the team I settled on became Wolvie/Tron/Son-son. This is a pretty point-centric system of team building approach, but IMO that's the best way to at least start with finding teams for the more obscure (harder to use) characters. Damage from Wolvie on point is off the hook with this team. You can use Son-son + Launcher to set-up free Tron pins on landing. Decent safe-DHC's, but Wolvie -> Son-son is a hard DHC puzzle-- haven't quite solved that one.

Sick of typing, thats it for now. I'll do a Gief Teams one next.

First Post

2007-11-19T17:38:00.000-08:00

I don't expect this to go anywhere quick, but for now this will just be a place for me to post up any random Marvel observations, thoughts, combos/set-ups, links, frame data-- but whatever.

Anyway, a lot of Japanese Marvel players keep "combo" blogs, or something to the effect, so I wanted to create something like that for Low Tier Marvel info. I spent a long time playing the "top tier" characters in the classic Street Fighter games, but at some point I just got tired of the same match-ups and switched to Charlie and Zangief in Alpha 3. It didn't take long after I learned Marvel during the past year or so for me to drop my first team (Duc), for a more fun squad of Gief/Tron/XX. I like the way Gief can punish anyone who plays sloppy with their rush-down strings with an instant Piledriver. Gief/Tron also gets dangerous real quick if you can play smart enough to get in close.

That's it for that; here's the real reason I wanted to get this off the ground...

The Joo Translation Project:

As a part of my training regimen, I took to investigating frame data from a Japanese source, combo video maker Joo. I learned that a few other players, namely the American combo video maker Magnetro2k (who made the incredible Dhalsim DVD) were interested in translating Joo's data (Magnetro having asked his permission) into english. Now I don't know much Japanese, but I do know enough Romaji to be able to make heads or tails of much of the technical terms used in the game, so between Magnetro's extensive knowledge of the game engine and my minimal understanding of the language, we have been making slow progress. ST guru and Japanese speaker NKI, though extremely busy, has graciously offered to help us here and there with the Japanese terminology we can't figure out.

My goal for this log is to compile a list of translations for common Marvel terminology, as well as information on the Marvel scene in Japan as it is today (apparently fledgling, but still enough interesting stuff going on here and there to check out). I'm hoping to get enough information on Japanese Marvel and Street Fighter terminology in one place that it becomes easy for the US Marvel community to learn from, and interact with the Jap. players. A little far-fetched maybe, but I know that especially in the low-tier realm, we can learn a lot from those guys. So, that's that.

If you're reading this, are into Marvel, know Japanese, and/or want to help out with the project in any way find me on AIM: ECZangief, or PM the same name on SRK. If you've got any links to Japanese Marvel videos or information, I'd also love to hear from you.

-ECZ