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| Hold Back to block all high, mid, and Jumping Attacks, as well as Overheads. Hold Defensive Crouch to Block mid and low attacks.
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| <br><br>
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| = Block =
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| Blocking is your main means to defense. Although it sounds completely obvious, learning how to Block is one of the most fundamental skills in Fighting Games, and it'll never be more important than in Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. With the amount of angles you can be attacked from, Blocking is truly a skill in and of itself.
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| <br><br>
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| Blocking will obviously allow you to avoid taking the damage from your opponent's attacks. Once you Block an attack, you are rendered "stuck" in Block Stun and will freeze in place for half a second and then start sliding back a fixed distance, depending on the strength of the move you blocked. If you are in the corner, then the opponent will be pushed away from you as opposed to you sliding back. But that only happens if the opponent is on the ground. If they are in the air, they will not be pushed away from you while you are blocking.
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| <br><br>
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| == Block Stun ==
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| If another attack connects on your character before you end your Block Stun, you will again be put into Block Stun and forced to Block again. In fact, when a second move connects while you are in Block Stun, you can even let go of the controller altogether and still block the next attack. So for example, if Iron Man performs his Unibeam, once you Block the first hit of it, you can let go of the controller because you will automatically block every other hit from the beam.
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| <br><br>
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| This is what is known as a Block String and also known as Absolute Guard. It's a sequence of attacks that, once you Block the first hit, you are trapped in Block Stun for the entirety of the sequence. It's basically a "combo" against someone who is blocking.
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| <br><br>
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| However, if you are blocking in the wrong direction, even during a Block String, you will still be hit. So, let's say the enemy does a Jumping Hard Attack from Spider Man and you high Block it. If he lands and does a Crouching Light Attack, which hits low, while you are still in your Block Stun and you don't switch to crouching, you will get hit. You still have to adjust high or low for blocking, even during Block Stun.
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| {{StrategyCorner |
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| When it comes to breaking the guard of the opponent when they are on the ground, you really have to take advantage of the fact that, while on the ground, the opponent has four different directions from which they can be attacked. Between high or low and left or right, you are given four angles in which to strike: high on the left side, low on the left side, high on the right side, and low on the right side. By utilizing your moves properly, coupled with Assists, you can make it a nightmare for your opponent to safely block all four vectors of attack.
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| <br><br>
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| For example, if you activate Kitty's Helper with Felicia, you can have her helper kitty attack from the sky and her pounces must be blocked high. Meanwhile, you can attack with an Assist from the front and then start using either your Cat Walk or Medium or Hard Cat Spikes to jump over the opponent. You can even just continue attacking the opponent with low attacks until the helper kitty lands on the head of the opponent, creating an unblockable.
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| <br><br>
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| Another example is with Storm. She not only has Air Dashes for Triangle Jumping, but she can cancel her regular jump instantly into her floating ability which cancels her regular jump halfway up, allowing her to perform an air attack that must be blocked high almost instantly. However, she can also choose to Air Dash down and land with a Crouching Light Attack, which must be blocked low. She can even jump forward and Air Dash downward behind you and attack you from the other side, which is particularly effective after calling an Assist to attack from the original side. So with all of these options, it's really easy for Storm to trip up your blocking while you are on the ground.
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| These are going to be the hallmark of successful attacking with rushdown characters. If you cannot figure out a way to trip up your opponent's defense, you will have a very hard time in defeating them when they clam up when you get close. There are other ways to break defenders -- chip damage, Throws, etc. -- but confusing them as to which way to block can easily be the most effective. Not every character has the tools to perform such mix-ups, but if you do have them, learn to use them.
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| }}
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| <br>
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| == Proximity Blocking ==
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| Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 also has Proximity Blocking. Your character will only block if the enemy's attack actually touches you. Otherwise, you character will never get stuck in block animation if the opponent's attack whiffs, no matter how close it is to hitting you.
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| = Air Block =
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| To perform an Air Block, just hold any of the three Back directions while in the air.
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| <br><br>
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| == Safety At Higher Ground ==
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| There are no different directions to Block in the air, so there is never a concern to block different directions. This makes Air Blocking much safer than blocking on the ground as there are less ways to get an opponent to block the wrong direction.
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| Outside of not having to worry about blocking in the proper directions, everything else that applies to regular Blocking on the ground also applies to Air Blocking.
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| The main thing worth noting is that, as soon as you Air Block anything, any upward momentum you had will immediately be ended. Regardless of which direction you were traveling in the air, after an initial freeze in the air for half a second right when you Air Blocked an attack, you will start going down and slightly backwards away from the opponent.
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| {{StrategyCorner |
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| Many times, when your opponent begins rushing you down, they will count on you being unable to block in multiple directions correctly all the time. They are looking for that one opening to hit you and go into a huge combo afterwards.
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| <br><br>
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| In the previous section's Strategy Corner, a technique was described with Felicia where she can attack you from all angles using the Kitty's Helper Hyper Combo, Assists, and her mobility. So if Felicia starts attacking you with such an onslaught, what's your best course of action?
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| Well, because Air Blocking removes one entire guessing game, the high or low game, you can actually try to find an opening to hold up and back to try jumping backwards. If you can get into the air, you can start blocking all sorts of moves, including the helper kitty, and be okay. You will only have to worry about Felicia trying to get through you to the other side and, thus, you only need to react to one situation, making blocking a lot easier. And once you block, start utilizing the Advancing Guard to get your opponent away from you.
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| So in many cases, when your opponent starts their rushdown, it may be better to take to the air and try blocking as many hits as you can from the sky. Once you drop back down, find another opening to get back into the air to more safely defend again until you can find the hole in their offense and you can make your escape or throw a wrench into their offense. Just be careful not to sit there holding Up/Back for too long trying to jump. If you do, attacks that hit low will snag you and you will be comboed by your opponent.
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| }}
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| = Advancing Guard =
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| To perform an Advancing Guard, also known as Push-Block, just perform a Block or an Air Block and, while still in Block Stun, press any two of the main Attack Buttons.
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| <br><br>
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| == Leveling Up Your Defense ==
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| While Blocking is the most fundamental building block of defense (no pun intended), the most important aspect of defense is the Advancing Guard. Characters in Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 have so many ways to overwhelm their opponent with offense and the best way to counter that is by using Advancing Guard.
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| What Advancing Guard does is, when activated while blocking, it will push your opponent a very large distant away from you no matter what move it is that you blocked. So even if Felicia performs a single Crouching Light Attack and you block that or Ryu throws a Hadoken at you and you block that or Sentinel performs a Jumping Hard Attack from the air and you block that, hitting two of the three main Attack Buttons will cause a "barrier" to appear around your character as they lean forward, and the opponent gets pushed away.
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| The benefits of this are obvious: it gets your opponent off of you and keeps them away. So when a character like X-23 is constantly pressuring you, you can keep them off using Advancing Guard. Advancing Guard must be learned. It is sometimes the only way to swing momentum. Without it, you'll likely be overwhelmed and get K.O.'ed almost instantly by rushdown characters.
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| <br><br>
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| == Advancing Guard Limitations ==
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| However, Advancing Guard has some limitations. The first limitation is that it has no effect on Assist Characters. So if your opponent calls in Chun Li with her Gamma Assist, the Hyakuretsu Kyaku, and you start blocking one hit of the move and you perform an Advancing Guard, you cannot push Chun Li away. Also, your Point Character will not be pushed away either.
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| The reason your Point Character will not get pushed away is because, technically, characters who land the attack are the only ones who can actually be pushed away. Since Assist Characters are immune to being pushed away, neither character gets pushed away. However, there is another way to take advantage of this phenomenon. If you perform an attack that remains on the screen even after you leave, the new Point Character will not be affected by the Advancing Guard! For example, using Trish, perform a Round Harvest Hyper Combo. Once the blade starts hitting the enemy, normally if the opponent performs an Advancing Guard, Trish will get pushed away.
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| However, if you DHC to swap to another Point Character or even just perform a Cross-Over Attack to swap to a new Point Character, the blade from the Round Harvest will remain attacking the opponent even after Trish leaves. If the opponent performs an Advancing Guard while blocking the Round Harvest, your new Point Character will actually not be affected! Because the Round Harvest was performed by Trish, Trish is the only character who can technically be affected by the Advancing Guard! Since she's now an Assist Character and a new Point Character is in place, the Advancing Guard will have no affect on the new Point Character! So you can continue advancing on the opponent without fear of ever getting pushed back.
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| The other main limitation is that, once you perform an Advancing Guard, you are stuck in "Advancing Guard Delay." Advancing Guard lasts a very specific amount of time and, until that time passes, you cannot perform any other actions outside of blocking again. The Advancing Guard Delay is not very long, however, but it does lock you into place for a second.
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| So let's say Felicia comes up to you and performs a Crouching Light Attack canceled into a Medium Attack version of the Cat Spike. That sequence is not a true combo nor Block String, so if you blocked the Crouching Light Attack, you can recover before the Cat Spike and hit her with a quick move.
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| However, if you block the Crouching Light Attack from Felicia and perform an Advancing Guard, you will go into Advancing Guard Delay. So even though those two moves in that attack sequence used by Felicia is not a true Block String, thanks to Advancing Guard Delay you will be forced to also block the Cat Spike from Felicia. So by performing an Advancing Guard, you've essentially turned that sequence into a Block String. If you hadn't performed the Advancing Guard, you'd have been able to do something in between.
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| {{StrategyCorner |
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| Eventually, you will run into some players who become adept at pushing you away via Advancing Guard every single time you touch them, which makes it very hard to stay in their face for a rushdown. However, by understanding the mechanics of the game, you can actually learn to try and bait Advancing Guards and punish accordingly.
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| For example, if you jump in on your opponent and attack and the perform an Advancing Guard on your Jump Attack after blocking, you can take advantage of this. High blocking a Jump Attack and performing an Advancing Guard has a command overlap with Back Dashing: holding Back and pressing two of the three Attack Buttons. So you can learn to actually jump at someone and do nothing and land with a quick attack instead. What happens is that the opponent will instinctively try and perform an Advancing Guard on your Jump Attack. But since you didn't do one, they will accidentally execute their Back Dash instead! So landing with an attack will allow you to hit them out of their Back Dash and start up a combo.
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| If you run up to the opponent while they are crouching, however, trying an Advancing Guard will not cause them to Back Dash. It will just cause them to perform a Crouching Attack depending on which two buttons they used to try their Push Block. However, if you run up to them and delay your attack for a brief second, you may be able to bait your opponent into trying an Advancing Guard and then can hit their move with a faster move before it comes out. Since Advancing Guard requires at least two buttons and, when two buttons are pressed at the same time, the stronger of the two buttons comes out, the fastest move the opponent can get as a result of a whiffed Advancing Guard is a Medium Attack. Delaying your attack and then pressing a Light Attack can cause them to whiff their Advancing Guard and then hitting their Medium Attacks or Hard Attacks before their move starts hitting.
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| Also, if you know your opponent is going to perform an Advancing Guard on you, one of the best ways to get in is to perform a move that will close the gap even after they perform the Advancing Guard. For example, with She-Hulk, if you attack the opponent with a Crouching Light Attack and you expect them to push you away with an Advancing Guard, cancel the move into your Hard Attack version of the Heavy Strike. That moves causes her to run forward and try to throw the opponent. So even though the opponent has pushed you back, the move itself will cancel out the backwards momentum of the Advancing Guard and still catch the opponent right when they recover from the Advancing Guard Delay.
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| You can even use moves that hit like Thor's Hard Attack Mighty Smash. Let's say you the enemy in the corner and you anticipate them Push Blocking your Crouching Light Attack. Cancel the Crouching Light Attack into a Mighty Smash and the backwards momentum from the Advancing Guard will be counteracted by the forward momentum of the Hard Attack Mighty Smash, which will make it so that the Mighty Smash lands right on the opponent. And since the Mighty Smash cannot be punished on Block, you stay in their face despite the Advancing Guard. This technique takes anticipation, but can be quite effective if you have moves that close the distance and are safe on block.
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| }}
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| == Air Advancing Guard ==
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| Also worth noting is that, when you perform an Advancing Guard during an Air Block, you "lock" yourself in the air for the entirety of the Advancing Guard Delay. Once that ends, you will start falling back down just as you would normally after Air Blocking an attack. However, the difference is that with Air Blocking, the initial portion of you falling back you are still in Block Stun. After the Advancing Guard Delay ends in the air, you can immediately perform any action.
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| <br><br>
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| == Advanced Advancing Guard ==
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| Besides the obvious benefits, there are two additional benefits to Advancing Guard:
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| * You can ignore chip damage from a limited number of hits during each Advancing Guard Delay (usually one)
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| * You will not be affected by block stun during Advancing Guard Delay
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| The use for the first is fairly obvious: if you Advancing Guard at least every other hit of a multi-hitting attack, you can reduce your chip damage by half or possibly even more.
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| The second is mainly of use for punishing multi-hitting attacks. If you time your last Advancing Guard so that the Advancing Guard Delay ends just after the last hit is blocked, you will not be in block stun. Thus, you can make your frame advantage equal to the entire recovery of your opponent's move and punish appropriately.
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| <youtube>boTvPeZDYx4</youtube>
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| = Air Recovery =
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| If your opponent hits you and you recover from Hit Stun while in the air, you will automatically perform an Air Recovery. If you do not hold any direction on the controller, you will bounce up and slightly back a very short distance the instant you recover. If you hold Back on the controller, you will bounce up the same height but bounce backwards a greater distance. If you hold Toward on the controller, you will still bounce slightly up but bounce forward a small distance instead.
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| <br><br>
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| == Flipping for Safety ==
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| Whenever you recover from Hit Stun in the air, Air Recovery automatically kicks in. Air Recovery allows you to escape a lot of resets and traps because, now when you recover in the air, you have choices on which direction your character will travel. For example, She-Hulk can easily set you up in the corner with a purposefully abbreviated Air Combo so that she lands when you recover and can catch you with her Heaven Throw Hyper Combo, which grabs people out of the air. However, now that you can perform an Air Recovery so that you bounce forward, you can escape these sorts of traps and force more of a guessing game on the opponent trying to set you up.
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| {{StrategyCorner|
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| By default, everyone will be used to holding Back on the controller when getting hit in the air, so as a result most people will begin their Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 career performing backwards Air Recoveries constantly. Unfortunately, smart players will start to take advantage of this and set up traps, typically through Air Throws, to counter your Air Recovery.
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| So heed this word of advice: learn to start varying your Air Recovery direction now. If you start growing accustomed to learning to vary between going forward or backwards with the Air Recovery, it will make you that much harder to predict which way you are going. Thus, it will be a lot harder to punish the Air Recovery. So start getting used to going both directions now.
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| }}
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| Also, during the start of the Air Recovery, you are actually invincible for a small period of time. That means old tricks that were resets in the air will no longer work in Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. In MvC2, for example, Storm could perform an Air Combo and cancel her move into an Air Dash behind your character to combo you from the other side and, if you didn't block correctly, she would reset the Damage Reduction and get even more damage on you. Now, those tricks won't work as easily because, not only does the little flip in the air on Air Recovery throw off your positioning, but the invincibility will allow you to react and block these sorts of resets.
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| The invincibility is very short, but it is enough to allow those ready to react to it and take advantage of the invincibility. However, you can attack the instant you perform an Air Recovery. If you do this, you forfeit all invincibility that you gained from the Air Recovery. So if you are being struck in the air, make sure you are not needlessly pressing any buttons while getting hit (such as mashing Special to counter an Aerial Exchange) or else, during Air Recovery, you may accidentally do a move you did not intend and then get hit by another move because you've lost all your invincibility.
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| = Rolling =
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| After being struck by a move that causes a Hard Knock-Down or a Soft Knock-Down, hold the controller Toward or Back to roll in that direction. When struck by a move that causes a Forced Tech Roll, you cannot perform a roll at all.
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| <br><br>
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| == Re-Positioning Yourself ==
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| First things first: Rolling in Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 will not allow you to escape any combos. This is stated right away because, in MvC2, Rolling was a technique that allowed you to avoid combos that could hit you after you became grounded. In this game, Rolling is simply a means by which to re-position yourself when you get up off the ground. Rolling will never lessen the amount of time you are lying on the floor.
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| If you do not hold any directions after getting knocked down, your character, when they get back on their feet, will perform what is referred to as a "Tech Roll" after a similar move from previous Street Fighter games like Capcom Vs. SNK 2. The character rolls backwards a very short distance and immediately gets up onto their feet.
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| When you hold a direction, however, your character will roll a much longer distance in the direction you hold the controller and get up on their feet at the end of this roll. You are completely invulnerable during this roll, so there is no way the opponent can hit you out of it. The roll is, however, a fixed distance: there is no way to alter the distance your character travels.
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| {{StrategyCorner |
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| Rolls have a fixed distance, so if you anticipate your opponent rolling, you can actually get to the area where their roll will stop and have a surprise or trap waiting for them. You can choose to lock them down the instant the roll ends or just go for a Throw or go for a high/low mix-up. For example, opponents rolling out of the corner becomes a very obvious tactic at some point, so it's easy to anticipate it and be ready to punish them for it. Even you cannot directly punish a roll, you can definitely set yourself up so that they can be caught off guard at the end of their roll if you anticipate it and meet them where they stop.
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| So it becomes a guessing game of sorts on wake up. Do you roll left or right or maybe just get up in place? Smart opponents can anticipate where you go if you roll the same direction every time, so learn to vary it up a bit, just like with Air Recoveries. The easiest way to lose fights is to start becoming predictable, so learn to vary up your roll directions.
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| }}
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| == Rolling With the Homies ==
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| One very important aspect about Rolling is that, during the roll, you are actually free to perform Cross-Over Assists! That means, right when you start to roll, you can press the Assist Button and, even before you finish rolling, your Assist, depending on how fast they are, can have already come out and started attacking. This is particularly useful if you choose to roll through your opponent and rise up on their other side. Your Assist will be called on the original side and you'll get up on the other, essentially sandwiching your opponent between you and your Assist.
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| [[Category: Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3]]
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