Team Spotlight part 2!
Yeah, I know, I really am on an MvC:2 kick. Anyways, I got a bit more time to practice with my teams, and the third team on my hilight reel isn't as low-tier as the others, but it only has 1 top tier and she's a toughy to use unlike some of the others. Before I tell you what the team is, let me just say that it absolutely murdered a Magneto/Cable/Psylocke team today, so that's saying something about it. Psylocke kept Magneto from rushing down and let Spiral do swords, Spiral's swords kept Magneto from punishing Psylocke. Obviously, against Cable, the strategy was different. Anyways, I gave away part of the team already, and seeing as how this is me we're talking about here, you can probably guess who the unnamed person on my team is. Anyways, without further ado, let me unveil the team:
#3. Spiral/Sakura/Psylocke - Yeah, I know, Sakura again. What can I say? I can't use Storm, and Sakura is as good as it gets for my "all-purpose" characters. As you can tell, I like playing characters that are a challenge (a good spiral is hard to come by). Ok, so you play this team in 2 ways, and you have to be able to adapt on the fly as the match goes on because Sakura is the ace in the hole. Spiral builds bar, does chip damage, uses Psylocke to do some heavily damaging combos, and protects Psylocke from pixies and combo freaks. Against Cable, Sentinel and Doom, she can just staying on them with her teleporting and expanding swords. No errant assist calls here, one bad assist call will mean dead assist. This team in particularly does really well against Magneto/Sentinel, even better than Sakura/Jin/Doom, and the thing that this team can do, that that one doesn't is that you can zone Cable with Spiral alone. She can constantly stay out of range of their beams (below Doom, eye level with Cable and Sentinel), chips well, can avoid some hard hitting combos, can avoid being chipped back and the list goes on. Spiral has no bad matchups. In fact, Spiral is a bad matchup for a lot of other characters. The biggest thing here to remember is that Spiral does not really use bar. Her stampede sword is a bad special at the best of times, and hyper metamorphosis is level 3, besides, with Spiral, you shouldn't really be throwing out supers left and right, if you want to throw out supers left and right, play Cable, play Sentinel, don't play Spiral.
Anyways, more on team dynamics. Spiral is set to projectile assist (I know, not gamma, strange at first, I have my reasons which I'll explain in a bit), Sakura to dash and Psylocke to anti-air. The reasoning behind this is simple. When I switch out Spiral for Sakura or Psylocke, Spiral becomes my pseudo-trapper/zoner. A simple trick to do a nice bit of chipping damage is to call Spiral projectile assist and dash forward with Psylocke, lp, crouching lk, if this hits, Spiral swords will hit for 6, dash in again crouching lk, launcher, lp, lk, lp, lk, u+hk, 4 hit psyblade, cancel into butterfly super, right after the super finishes, call spiral *immediately* (as in while you're falling), they will land on the swords (yes, that's right, they CANNOT roll this part if you do it properly) and you can OTG them if they don't roll after the swords (which they won't until they catch onto what you're doing). Now, if they block the first dashing lk, 1 hit light psyblade, crouching lk, weak psyflash and rushdown carefully for a bit, calling Spiral to chip, and alternating between psyblade and dashing kick to keep them guessing which one it is that you'll do. until you hit or chip them to death. If they still have an AAA left, you need to use Psylocke to take out that assist ASAP, let Spiral's swords hit, go into a combo, then call Spiral at combo's end. The swords are not part of the combo so they will do full damage.
With Sakura on point after Spiral's done her thing, you have a TON of options available to you. Fierce Hurricane Kick and Spiral projectile is a good way to zone the opponent and keep them grounded, and if you can keep them grounded and force them to play on a level where Sakura is strongest, they run into problems (Blackheart can't get away from Sakura pressure rushdown if it's played well, Doom and Cable don't do well on the ground against a character who's designed to fight on the ground, what's Sentinel going to do if you pressure him to the point where he can't even get away, and the list goes on). Sakura also benefits greatly from Psylocke AA. Sometimes the problem with Sakura's hurricane kick, shouken air combo is that the hurricane kick only hits once because they aren't high enough or they're too short to be hit twice, if Psylocke AA hits, you can guarantee that the full combo will hit since they start higher than Sakura. I won't go over the merits of Sakura again since I already did that extensively in the other post.
Another aspect of this team is that your opponent will need to adjust to each character individually isntead of just trying to deal with them as a whole. Primarily, the biggest difference between these characters is their moving speed. In fact, the order of this team is made in such a way that the speeds go slow/medium/fast. However, don't let the walking speed deceive you, Spiral and Sakura can close gaps very fast, and if they aren't suspecting it, Psylocke will get in their face before they can blink. The third aspect of this team that I want to discuss is the teleporting. I love teleporting. Anyone who knows the characters I play knows this. I almost always have to have a teleporting character on any team I play. There are 3 very very different teleporters on this team. Spiral and Sakura have the best teleports in the entire game. Sakura's leads to her infinite runaway game, Spiral can appear right above their heads. The teleporting is good for getting out of sticky situations very very quickly, so abuse those teleports to no end, they are the difference between dying and living for a very long time.
That's about all for now, any questions, feel free to ask.
~Damon
#3. Spiral/Sakura/Psylocke - Yeah, I know, Sakura again. What can I say? I can't use Storm, and Sakura is as good as it gets for my "all-purpose" characters. As you can tell, I like playing characters that are a challenge (a good spiral is hard to come by). Ok, so you play this team in 2 ways, and you have to be able to adapt on the fly as the match goes on because Sakura is the ace in the hole. Spiral builds bar, does chip damage, uses Psylocke to do some heavily damaging combos, and protects Psylocke from pixies and combo freaks. Against Cable, Sentinel and Doom, she can just staying on them with her teleporting and expanding swords. No errant assist calls here, one bad assist call will mean dead assist. This team in particularly does really well against Magneto/Sentinel, even better than Sakura/Jin/Doom, and the thing that this team can do, that that one doesn't is that you can zone Cable with Spiral alone. She can constantly stay out of range of their beams (below Doom, eye level with Cable and Sentinel), chips well, can avoid some hard hitting combos, can avoid being chipped back and the list goes on. Spiral has no bad matchups. In fact, Spiral is a bad matchup for a lot of other characters. The biggest thing here to remember is that Spiral does not really use bar. Her stampede sword is a bad special at the best of times, and hyper metamorphosis is level 3, besides, with Spiral, you shouldn't really be throwing out supers left and right, if you want to throw out supers left and right, play Cable, play Sentinel, don't play Spiral.
Anyways, more on team dynamics. Spiral is set to projectile assist (I know, not gamma, strange at first, I have my reasons which I'll explain in a bit), Sakura to dash and Psylocke to anti-air. The reasoning behind this is simple. When I switch out Spiral for Sakura or Psylocke, Spiral becomes my pseudo-trapper/zoner. A simple trick to do a nice bit of chipping damage is to call Spiral projectile assist and dash forward with Psylocke, lp, crouching lk, if this hits, Spiral swords will hit for 6, dash in again crouching lk, launcher, lp, lk, lp, lk, u+hk, 4 hit psyblade, cancel into butterfly super, right after the super finishes, call spiral *immediately* (as in while you're falling), they will land on the swords (yes, that's right, they CANNOT roll this part if you do it properly) and you can OTG them if they don't roll after the swords (which they won't until they catch onto what you're doing). Now, if they block the first dashing lk, 1 hit light psyblade, crouching lk, weak psyflash and rushdown carefully for a bit, calling Spiral to chip, and alternating between psyblade and dashing kick to keep them guessing which one it is that you'll do. until you hit or chip them to death. If they still have an AAA left, you need to use Psylocke to take out that assist ASAP, let Spiral's swords hit, go into a combo, then call Spiral at combo's end. The swords are not part of the combo so they will do full damage.
With Sakura on point after Spiral's done her thing, you have a TON of options available to you. Fierce Hurricane Kick and Spiral projectile is a good way to zone the opponent and keep them grounded, and if you can keep them grounded and force them to play on a level where Sakura is strongest, they run into problems (Blackheart can't get away from Sakura pressure rushdown if it's played well, Doom and Cable don't do well on the ground against a character who's designed to fight on the ground, what's Sentinel going to do if you pressure him to the point where he can't even get away, and the list goes on). Sakura also benefits greatly from Psylocke AA. Sometimes the problem with Sakura's hurricane kick, shouken air combo is that the hurricane kick only hits once because they aren't high enough or they're too short to be hit twice, if Psylocke AA hits, you can guarantee that the full combo will hit since they start higher than Sakura. I won't go over the merits of Sakura again since I already did that extensively in the other post.
Another aspect of this team is that your opponent will need to adjust to each character individually isntead of just trying to deal with them as a whole. Primarily, the biggest difference between these characters is their moving speed. In fact, the order of this team is made in such a way that the speeds go slow/medium/fast. However, don't let the walking speed deceive you, Spiral and Sakura can close gaps very fast, and if they aren't suspecting it, Psylocke will get in their face before they can blink. The third aspect of this team that I want to discuss is the teleporting. I love teleporting. Anyone who knows the characters I play knows this. I almost always have to have a teleporting character on any team I play. There are 3 very very different teleporters on this team. Spiral and Sakura have the best teleports in the entire game. Sakura's leads to her infinite runaway game, Spiral can appear right above their heads. The teleporting is good for getting out of sticky situations very very quickly, so abuse those teleports to no end, they are the difference between dying and living for a very long time.
That's about all for now, any questions, feel free to ask.
~Damon
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