Marvel vs Capcom 2/Tiers

There are three ways to divide up Tiers in Marvel vs Capcom 2: by overall team value, by assist value, and by solo value. The following list is the commonly accepted tier list, and represents evaluation of characters garnered from years of experience and play by masters at those characters. Thus while certain characters do not often get seen or represented well, they really do have strong advantages - or disadvantages.

Joo's Tier List

This tier list is from Japanese player Joo. While there will be disagreements about the placement of some characters, it is a long-standing list and represents a generally accurate picture of the game's accepted balance at a competitive level.

God tier

Sentinel, Storm, Cable, Magneto

It is generally accepted that Sentinel and Storm are slightly above Cable and Magneto within this tier, but this is a very very slight difference.

High tier

Cyclops, Iron Man, War Machine, Doctor Doom, Strider, Spiral, Dhalsim, Blackheart

High Middle tier

Psylocke, Captain Commando, Tron Bonne

Middle tier

Ruby Heart, Omega Red, Colossus, Juggernaut, Rogue, Cammy, Mega Man, Guile, Anakaris, Silver Samurai, Marrow, Gambit, Iceman, Spiderman, Wolverine - Bone, Wolverine - Claw, Venom

Low tier

B.B. Hood, Sakura, Sonson, Akuma, Ken, Ryu, Charlie, M. Bison, Captain America, Hulk, Jin, Jill, Felicia, Hayato, Morrigan, Sabretooth, Thanos, Zangief

Bottom tier

Amingo, Chun-Li, Shuma-Gorath, Dan, Kobun/Servbot

Roll tier

Roll

Assist Types

While there are way too many possible assists to have a full assist tier list be valuable, the following are the highlights of the possible assists. Since the assists available on a team greatly affect team dynamics, there is no true best assist - simply a lot of great options that will help sculpt your team.

Top Assists

Listed in alphabetical order:

• Captain Commando: Anti-air assist.
• Cyclops: Anti-air assist.
• Doctor Doom: Anti-air assist.
• Psylocke: Anti-air assist.
• Sentinel: Projectile or ground assist.
• Tron Bonne: Projectile assist.

Other Notable Assists

• Akuma: Hurricane kick assist.
• B.B. Hood: Projectile assist.
• Blackheart: Anti-air assist.
• Cable: Anti-air assist.
• Cammy: Anti-air assist.
• Captain America: Anti-air assist.
• Chun-Li: Anti-air assist.
• Guile: Anti-air assist.
• Iron Man: Anti-air assist.
• Jin: Expansion or anti-air assist.
• Juggernaut: Juggernaut punch or overhead assist.
• Ken: Anti-air assist.
• Magneto: Projectile assist.
• Ruby Heart: Anti-air assist.
• Sonson: Anti-air assist.
• Spiral: 'Arms' projectile assist.
• Storm: Projectile assist.
• War Machine: Anti-air assist.
• Zangief: Ground assist.

Notable Teams

Marvel has 56 characters to choose between, each with three assist types to pick between. As such, there is over a million team variants to pick between. The following are particularly noteworthy choices. Generally the order of the characters can be switched within reason. Storm and Sentinel can generally be interchanged on point, but Magneto should generally always be either the first or last character on a team, and only last if he's paired with Sentinel on point. The assists chosen for the characters listed are the general preferred assists to use, but other assists can certainly be used if they're effective for you.

Generally there are exceedingly strong pairings - Storm backed by a good anti-air and hopefully Sentinel (for the DHC), Sentinel backed by any good anti-air, Cable backed by Sentinel and a good anti-air - that form the backbone of all great teams.

Top Tourney Teams

• Magneto-A/Storm-A/Sentinel-A. AKA MSS One of many teams that allow you to exploit the Storm/Sentinel DHC, which generally should allow you to completely kill an opposing character.
• Magneto-A/Storm-A/Psylocke-A. AKA MSP.
• Storm-A/Sentinel-Y/Cable-B. AKA SSC or Team Cody. Favored as a keep-away team. Make sure to get the rushdown, and watch out for the quick Cable AAA.
• Storm-A/Sentinel-Y/Cyclops-B. AKA Matrix. Storm being Trinity, Sentinel being a robot, and Cyclops being Neo and spreading the code via his optic blasts.
• Sentinel-Y/Storm-A/CapCom-B. AKA Team Santhrax. After Sanford Kelly, a top New York player. At the time when the team was created, Storm was first, and Sentinel was second.
• Cable-B/Sentinel-Y/CapCom-B. AKA Team Scrub. This is a fundamentals-focused team that beginning players can do well with. Once Cable has three levels, it's quite deadly.
• Sentinel-Y/Cable-B/Cyclops-B. AKA ScrubClops.
• Magneto-A/Cable-B/Sentinel-A. AKA Team Row or Team RowTron. After Rodolfo "RowTron" Castro, a top Seattle player. Rodolfo first played this team in the summer of 2001 and used it (then virtually unknown) at the B5 tournament of that year. He went on to dominate the West Coast with it over the next year and took second to Justin Wong at ECC and Evo2k2 in 2002, when the team truly got noticed. He continued to use this team in tournaments for years afterwards until it became widely known as "his" team.
• Magneto-A/Iron Man-B/Sentinel-Y. AKA Combofiend. After Combofiend, a top California player. He would use this team either in this order or in Sentinel/Magneto/Iron Man order, which rotates easily between that and the Magneto-base configuration via DHCs. Later players who adopted this team often substituted Sentinel-A (rocket punch) assist for Sentinel-Y (drones assist) in order to get an easy setup assist for Magneto and Iron Man.
• Sentinel-Y/Strider/Doom-B. AKA Team Clockw0rk. After Clockw0rk, a top California player. Generally a very interesting team, but if Strider or Doom dies the team is usually in bad trouble.
• Magneto-A/Storm-A/Tron-Y. AKA MST. This team does an incredible amount of damage. As Isaac put it, "mash buttons and good things happen".

Top Not Quite God Tier Teams

• Rogue-A/Storm-A/Tron-Y. Played to near perfection by Vegita-X, it showcases Rogue's speed and cross-ups, as well as having a painful DHC.
• Juggernaut-Y/Tron-Y/Doom-B. AKA Team Z. Famous as being MikeZ's team, it does incredible damage and generally benefits from a glitched Juggernaut.
• Any Character/Cable-B/Tron-Y. Generally Tron Bonne's assist is very exploitable and make most non-high-tier characters relatively playable.
• Ruby Heart-A/Iron Man-B/Doom-B. A very serious trap based team. It has solid DHCs, not to mention it can also deal out a lot of damage.
• Claw Wolverine-A/Sentinel-Y/Bone Wolverine-Y. Primary team of low-tier technician Joe Zaza, who has made impressive showings in various occasions. It is almost entirely an old-school rushdown kind of team.

Other Teams of Interest

• Spiral-A/Cable-B/Sentinel-Y. AKA Team Duc, after Duc Do, a top Los Angeles player known as THE Spiral player. The team that basically won Evo2k5. Extremely good at trapping and chipping.
• Blackheart-B/Cable-B/Sentinel-Y.
• Blackheart-B/Sentinel-Y/CapCom-B. AKA Team Watts, after Mike Watson, an old school Los Angeles player who used this team in the very early days of the game - a very fundamental team that's great at controlling space. Alex Valle used to be a dominant player with this team in early 2001 until Justin Wong arrived on the scene. It's still played in tournaments today by StiltMan and others.
• Storm-A/Sentinel-Y/Cammy-AA. Justin Wong's second team, and the first Storm/Sentinel team ever to win a major tournament, first seen by a wider audience at B5 in 2001.
• Magneto-A/Cable-B/Cammy-AA. Justin Wong's first team, the first Magneto team ever to win a major tournament. This team was what he first established his dominance with in mid 2001. Historically speaking, it can still be viewed as the strategic ancestor of Team Row, which first appeared shortly afterward in Seattle and was first used in a major tournament by RowTron himself at B5.
• Iron Man-B/Storm-A/Cable-B. AKA Team Japan, used by a number of the top Japanese players.
• Iron Man-B/War Machine-B/Doom-B. One of the many Iron Man/Doom pairings, used to creatively set up the Iron Man infinite.
• Cable-B/Storm-Y/Doom-B. A very versatile team that can keep an opponent at bay big time.
• Magneto-A/Cable-B/Psylocke-AA. SooMighty's Team Old.
• Blackheart-B/Cable-B/Doom-B. A trap based team with a user concept. BH/Doom builds meter for Cable, who then keeps away and uses that meter.
• B.B. Hood-A/Juggernaut-B/CapCom-B. A very hostile team. B.B. fills the meter up then unloads a THC to punish opponents' mistakes.
• Wolverine-A/Gambit-A/Bonerine-B. Joe Zaza used this team to take out SooMighty's MSP during a casual match.
• Charlie-B/Storm-A/Doom-B. AKA "Slash Shock"
• Magneto-A/Charlie-B/Tron-Y. AKA "RomSlash"