Marvel vs Capcom 3/Systems/Defensive Actions: Advancing Guard

Summary

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.

Leveling Up Your Defense

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 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.

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.

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 rush-down characters.

Advancing Guard Limitations

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. The opponent will be pushed back whether they are attacking you or not, but Chun will stay in place. So Cross-Over Assists become a key technique to countering Advancing Guards.

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. And even though you can block a move during Advancing Guard, you cannot perform another Advancing Guard until the Advancing Guard Delay ends.

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.

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.

Strategy Corner

WAYS TO COUNTER ADVANCING GUARD

Air Advancing Guard

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.