| 05 August 2011
In light of my stats regarding Phoenix, I received a commentary from Alex Thornton, a member of Always Godlike, one of the new fighting game teams emerging in the community (CORRECTION: He's not a member of Always Godlike, but Always Godlike really is one of the emerging teams; I was thrown off by his Twitter, which had AG on the front). He defends the use of Phoenix and credits Jay "Viscant" Snyder for being amazing in the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 tournament at Evolution 2011.
The title of his commentary was "Viscant is Broken." You can read it after the jump ...
Note: I did not edit it, so any errors are [sic]. You can follow Alex on Twitter.
At least when it comes to Marvel vs. Capcom 3, I fully admit that I’m a Tier Whore. My current team of Wolverine, Wesker and Akuma scores pretty high on the list of strong teams in the game and while I initially decided I’d play Phoenix the day her reveal trailer came out, I didn’t shy away from playing various Phoenix teams even after people started to complain that she was overpowered. I loved the character from the comics and admire how creatively she was executed in the game, plus I can definitely attribute a few of my early wins to people not knowing how to deal with her. Frankly, I don’t even like Akuma and would rather go back to Phoenix because her standard form in particular is a lot of fun to use. Why did I change then? Because no matter how many times you’ve seen her blow up entire teams, she’s not necessarily a great character.
There—I said it.
Seth Killian frequently compares Phoenix playing Poker and going all in on every hand. When it works, it’ll work well but when it backfires, the results are devastating. People who don’t play Phoenix tend to categorize her as an “easy button” that practically guarantees victories for even the scrubbiest of scrubs, but I’ve always felt that this was nothing but a textbook case of confirmation bias. In reality, Phoenix truly is as much a liability as asset most of the time and, just like Seth’s Poker analogy, picking her does work pretty well against some players, but against pros, it’s a dangerous tactic.
“But Viscant won Evo and he used Phoenix,” you might say. Yes, this is true, but looking closely at how the matches went, the results don’t seem to actually support the idea that Dark Phoenix wins a disproportionate number of matches. Unfortunately, there aren’t any videos for the majority of matches that went on this weekend, but rewatch the matches that were streamed and the evidence is there.
D3ATHWI5H was one of the most notable Phoenix players due to his unorthodox strategy of playing Jean Grey on point. He started his matches by throwing out a “random” Phoenix Rage, X-Factoring, then hard tagging to Magneto to combo off of the wall bounce and almost immediately kill at least one character. Given that players often call an assist as soon as the match starts, he could easily polish off two opposing characters in seconds. In his match against Commy, he lost the first round (though to be fair, possibly due to a bad button config) and took the second two. More importantly, Dark Phoenix never showed up in his matches since his deliberately reckless use of Jean Grey got her killed fairly quickly.
While D3ATHWI5H made good use of Magneto and Jean Grey, it would seem that he won his matches largely due to the mental guard-breaker of running Phoenix on point. It caused his opponents to get over-anxious to press buttons as soon as they heard “Fight,” ultimately falling for a tactic that could’ve been shut down simply by blocking an 8 frame raw hyper that he threw out in a fairly predictable fashion. The lesson from D3ATHWI5H’s matches? Pay attention to what your opponent is doing, don’t swing away at Phoenix (or anyone else, for that matter) from a half-screen away when she’s got meter, and most importantly, don’t just blow through your button check. Dark Phoenix? Not a factor.
What about putting Phoenix in the hands of proven Top Players then? Surely her “overpowered” status should be insurmountable when combined with players in the caliber of Clockw0rk and col.CC|Filipino Champ, right?
We did see Clock take down Alex Valle, but while this would be something to jump for joy over in any Street Fighter title, Alex doesn’t really play Marvel. He picks it up for fun, usually entering at Wednesday Night Fights, but it’s at best third on his list of games to practice and he mostly gets by on being so fundamentally sound that he’s competitive at any Capcom fighter he even glances at. Nevertheless, he’d probably be the first to tell you that he’s no expert on Marvel, especially as compared to a Marvel specialist on the level of Clockw0rk.
Nevertheless, Clockw0rk lost his first match to Valle after having his Dark Phoenix swatted out of the sky by Sentinel with a Hard Drive and two normals—nothing fancy, just a smart block and counter from a player who kept his head in the game and didn’t panic when she transformed. Clock did go on to win the next two matches, both of which with Dark Phoenix as the deciding character, but neither victory was free. In fact, Valle largely lost the final match of his own accord due to a tactical error of X-factoring too early.
No one knows what “could have” happened, of course, but the point is that, while Dark Phoenix appeared and Clockw0rk did win, the series was a solid back and forth that Valle nearly took despite facing a more experienced player. It was hardly the kind of one-sided blow-up that Phoenix’s detractors like to hold up as an example of her being broken on the level of Super Turbo Akuma.
Flocker went on to defeat Jewelman but Zero was arguably the MVP of his team with Dark Phoenix only having to finish off a nearly dead Wolverine and a Hsien-Ko with about half life in the first match. In the second, Dark Phoenix once again was called in to kill a nearly dead Amaterasu and then won by time out without finishing off Hsien-Ko A win, yes, but hardly a Phoenix-assisted blow-up since, by the time she appeared, Jewelman’s situation would’ve been just as difficult with any number of characters in her place. The lesson? Mostly that Hsien-Ko is a questionable choice for an anchor, a fact that holds just as true no matter who your opponent’s team is.
Nitrana went down to Box Viscant despite a strong start but died from reverse OCV with Jean Grey and a lightning fast OCV from Mr. Albert Wekser. You could argue that the mere threat of Dark Phoenix was enough to throw off Nitrana’s game, but whose fault is that? Infamous Phoenix player TTC|Tokido was knocked out before Top 8 but defeated EmptyNABS soundly without ever tagging Phoenix in, let alone going Dark. HaikuWar played Team Tokido as well but, despite managing to transform in both matches, was taken down by LI Joe’s smart handling of the situation. Once again, two strong players won matches without having to actually use Dark Phoenix, and a third player did bring her out but his opponent played the match well and avoided defeat—those who lost did so for reasons that didn’t actually involve Dark Phoenix.
Tomahawk lost to Filipino Champ after two OCVs (no Phoenix), but Phoenix player NAS lost to Nerses, in one case after having Jean snapped in an destroyed in seconds. These stories mostly continued through to the Top 8 where, despite the early assumption that Phoenix would carry a few couple scrubs further than they deserved to go, it didn’t happen. Phoenix players who won rarely (if ever) did so by getting smacked around until they got five bars and then mounting a reverse OCV after she went dark. Other Phoenix players lost by getting snapped in or tagged with a stray attack that wouldn’t have been a disaster for most characters but ruined Dark Phoenix.
Every player who made it to the Top 8 has proven their skill multiple times, sometimes in multiple games—there were no flukes. Mine is perhaps less known than some players he outlasted, but he did recently make it to Grand Finals at NorCal Regionals (in Winners’ at that) and you simply don’t do that and make Top 8 at EVO by getting lucky or relying on gimmicks. He didn’t win either event because n both cases, he was taken down (by Justin at NCR and Combofiend at EVO) due to his opponents staying focused and, for the most part, snapping Jean Grey in and killing her off before she became a factor. He played well, they played a little better, and that was that.
In the Top 8, Filipino Champ was knocked into losers by MCZ|DMG PR Rog and then out of the bracket by col.CC|Combofiend. In both matches, Jean was snapped in early and or otherwise killed off before getting to five bars. In what was perhaps the only clear case of a player gambling with Phoenix and winning, UVG Noel Brown pulled her out as a surprise pick and took a round off of EG Justin Wong. but his inexperience with the character was clear and Justin over took him in the final round. Phoenix didn’t take Noel Brown to the Top 8 and once he got there, picking her didn’t change the expected outcome (no disrespect to NFB—we’ve all seen what happens when you do that).
With Mine and Champ both knocked out, Viscant remained the only Phoenix player. First Viscant knocked Justin into the Losers’ Bracket: Justin lost the first point, perhaps mostly due to the fact that he burned his X-factor early, tried to run and then changed his mind with about 20 seconds left, all of which have been consistently debunked as useful ways to deal with The Problem. He got his head together and won the second point after snapping in Phoenix and then dismantling the rest of his team with Wolverine.
For the third round, Just had a small lead over Viscant when Dark Phoenix finally appeared (Haggar was still alive at about 75% health) and though Dark Phoenix did end up killing off the remnants of Justin’s team—an untouched Storm, a nearly dead Wolverine and a badly damaged Akuma—it took Viscant’s Dark Phoenix 30 game seconds to finish the job, an eternity in Marvel Time, especially while Dark Phoenix is out. Simply put, Viscant beat Justin, not Dark Phoenix.
Viscant and PR Rog later faced off in another even match. In the first round, Viscant wore Rog down to his Tron and 40% of a Wolverine before Jean came in with 5 bars and died in a mixup. Dark Phoenix got the better of Wolverine after a quick and dirty face-off, and Tron was gone seconds later. Like Hsien-Ko, relying on Tron as an anchor is debatable (at best) against any number of characters, so it’s hard to attribute her dismantling to Phoenix being overpowered. Rog had a chance to kill Jean early in the next round but dropped a Dante combo and allowed her to escape—he then lost the round before Dark Phoenix appeared.
In Grand Finals, PR Rog lost the first round after again failing to capitalize on snapping in Phoenix and letting her slip out of a dropped combo. Dark Pheonix did appear but Viscant had the life lead at that point and Rog had already burned his X-factor in the attempt to snap her in early. PR Rog clutched it out in the second round, however, and won a close match with Wolverine on his last legs in spite of the fact that Viscant had the life lead when Dark Phoenix came in. Viscant came back in the next round with a near-perfect Wesker OCV. Rog won one more by snapping in Phoenix and, despite having only half a Tron to face Dark Phoenix (and the scraps of a Mike Haggar), took him down with a well-placed Level 3 and reset the bracket.
In the next set, Viscant won the first two rounds with Dark Phoenix, though neither was a narrow victory. In the first round, Viscant again wore PR Rog down to having only 75% of an X-factor-less Tron before Dark Phoenix went to work (with Haggar still alive for the assist) and then setting up the same situation after burning a Level 2 X-factor on Wolverine. Dark Phoenix certainly reduced the chance of a comeback, but Viscant has a solid lead in both cases before she appeared and was again facing a character that isn’t known for having a big comeback factor. In the tournament point, PR Rog once again failed to kill Phoenix after snapping her in early, allowing her to go Dark and kill Rog’s team, once again with Haggar still alive.
All of this does support at least some of the conventional wisdom on Phoenix: snapping in her in works, but you’d better kill her while you have the chance. Running away isn’t really effective, and you’re probably better off saving your X-factor until she goes Dark or is already dead. Most importantly, don’t panic when you see her on the Vs. Screen or when her team gets to five bars—if you allow her mere presence to intimidate you into making bad decisions, you will be punished for it.
Conversely, the EVO results seem to completely fly in the face of some other popular assumptions. No one made it to Top 8 by relying on Dark Phoenix to make up for a lack of skill and, at least based on the matches we have video of, it doesn’t appear that a disproportionately large number of Phoenix players even made it out of their pools. Some top players ended up losing to Phoenix teams, but few of those matches were complete blow-ups and in many cases, the losing player had an opportunity to take care of The Problem and missed it due to their own errors or miscalculations.
More to the point, several highly skilled players who did use Phoenix can very directly trace their losses to having their glass-cannon shattered by an opponent who read the situations and followed through on their plans. That’s not to say that Filipino Champ or Mine would have won the tournament had they played different characters—there’s no real way of knowing that—but it would be an equally far leap to say that those players only made it as far as they did because they were using an “overpowered” character. Many of their victories didn’t even involve Dark Phoenix, a fairly large task in and of itself.
Champ, Mine and Viscant are all great players who happened to choose Phoenix as their weapon of choice. One could even argue that Viscant was at something of a disadvantage given that Haggar is a sitting duck for a huge portion of the roster, leaving him with only Wesker as a reliable back-up plan. Phoenix is a QB with a great arm but bad knees, and Coach Viscant didn’t have much roster depth to compensate for the likelihood that Phoenix would get injured in the second quarter.
Is Phoenix a powerful character? Absolutely. Is she a good character? Maybe, maybe not. It would seem that, statistically at least, there’s no evidence that she’s as dominant as They would have you believe when put up against a player that knows what he’s doing. Given the atypical style with which you have to play her, she almost exists outside of tier lists and, for better or worse, is her own entity.
At the start of any match with a Phoenix, both players are at the same disadvantage: the burden of having to play perfectly. One player has the tools to build an atomic bomb and the other has the tools to simultaneously dismantle it. The Phoenix player has to have a rock-solid defense to make sure she lives to reach her potential and his opponent needs to mount a well thought, tightly executed offense to prevent it. Both players are fighting against the same clock, just in opposite directions.
Typical matches allow some room for error but a Phoenix match leaves almost none. The fact that Viscant made it through a gigantic bracket full of killers and only lost one set is a testament to just how solid his defensive abilities must’ve been, especially given that he had one character of questionable value and another who can be killed in an instant. The stylish combos and fast blow-ups make it easy to forgot the importance of defense in Marvel, but Viscant remembered and his reward was winning the tournament. Take a look at his tutorial with Cross Counter if you haven’t already—the man knows what he’s doing and there was nothing lucky about his victory.
It may be hard to see in the moment because emotions are so high (read: salt) but as a former Phoenix player who had to drop her because I can’t play those perfect games so consistently, I know all too well how hard it must’ve been to defeat so many good players with such an unreliable weapon. It may make you feel better to blame Capcom, but if you lose to a Phoenix player—or as a Phoenix player— it was probably for the same reasons you lose any other match: the other guy played better. Yes, once bad decision may have cost you that match, but hey, it’s Mahvel, baby—one bad decision is what loses most matches.
Those Phoenix loses may sting more because they confront you with your own weakness, but what percentage of Phoenix matches are you actually losing as compared to any of the other top characters? Over time, it’s probably about the same. Furthermore, how many of those loses were from you getting blown up by an overpowered character and how many were just due to dropping a big combo, trying to run, or structuring your team poorly by putting an assist character third because you just assumed that they’d never have to see action?
Besides, we all know Wolverine is the real problem…
