Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3/Game Mechanics/Dashing

To perform a Forward Dash, you have two options:

1. Tap Towards on the controller twice in a row rapidly.
2. Pressing any two of the three main Attack Buttons while the controller is Neutral or while holding the Towards direction.

To perform a Back Dash, you have the same two options:

1. Tap Back on the controller twice in a row rapidly.
2. Pressing any two of the three main Attack Buttons while holding the Back direction.

Please note that Holding Down/Toward or Down/Back will not allow you to dash via the buttons.

A Dash of Mobility

Dashing is a very important part of Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. Mobility is key in every Versus Game, and, while on the ground, Dashing will be your main source of mobility while on the ground. Dashes move your character very quickly in the direction you are Dashing. This allows you to traverse the screen on the ground much more quickly so you can either close the gap on your opponent or quickly get away from them.

Some characters have slightly modified Dashes on the ground. Morrigan's Dash takes her into the air at about a 30% angle, so she gains access to her Air Moves instead of her ground moves. This happens on both the Forward and Back Dash. Hsien-Ko's Back Dash behaves as you would expect, but her Forward Dash behaves exactly like her Dash from the Vampire series: she disappears briefly and teleports forward a fixed, short distance where she then reappears. As long as you keep holding the controller forward, she'll keep teleporting forward in a slow pace, where she reappears and then disappears again to move farther forward. During the portion in which she disappears, she actually is invincible and can pass through attacks. And finally, Arthur simply does not have the ability to Dash at all!

Canceling Your Dash

What makes Dashes powerful is that they can be canceled before they complete. There are three ways to cancel a Dash: with attacks, with a Crouch, and with a Jump. When you cancel a Dash with a Normal Move, you gain the extra benefit of maintaining the momentum of the Dash with your attack. That way, if you get in on your opponent and start performing a series of Normal Attacks on them from a Dash, you will be able to land more hits on the enemy before being pushed out of range thanks to that momentum. When you cancel a Dash into a Special Move or a Hyper Combo, however, the move does not gain any extra momentum and always behaves the same as if you performed it while standing still. And when you cancel a Dash with a Crouch, you'll slide forward a tiny bit before coming to a stop. Obviously, Morrigan is the one exception that cannot cancel her Dash into a Crouch.

With attacking and crouching, however, different characters have different windows before they are allowed to actually cancel the Dash. For example, X-23's Dash can be canceled into a Normal Attack or Crouch almost instantaneously. Chris, however, cannot cancel his Dash until after a short period of time, when his front foot becomes planted again. Ryu has an even larger window than Chris before he can cancel his Dash into an Attack or a Crouch. Then there are characters like Dormammu, who cannot cancel their Dash into a crouch or an attack at all.

Strategy Corner

Taking advantage of a Dash's ability to be canceled into a Crouch allows players to perform what has come to be known as "Wave-Dashing." This technique existed in MvC2 as well and was widely utilized as a means to travel the fastest you possibly could travel across the ground. The way it works is this:

Whenever you perform a Dash, usually it's the start of the Dash that has the most speed and momentum. When you cancel it into a Crouch, you do slide forward a bit as mentioned earlier. However, you are still grounded so now, technically, you can do another Dash! Because you can dash forward just by pressing two of the three main Attack Buttons, the easiest way to dash again is to simply let go of the controller and press the two Attack Buttons.

So now, if you learn the proper rhythm for your character, as each character's rhythm is slightly different, you can alternate between pressing Down on the controller and pressing two of the three Attack Buttons and what you'll end up doing is repeatedly starting your Dash and immediately canceling it with a Crouch and the immediately performing yet another Dash. So you end up stringing together the fastest part of your Dash repeatedly in a very short amount of time. This allows you to travel across the screen very quickly, allowing you to take better advantage of Knock-Downs and moments when you have the chance to try to close in on your opponent. It's a very powerful technique when used properly in the right places, so don't overlook this technique.

However, when it comes to the third type of canceling, every character can cancel their Dash into a Jump at any point of their Dash with no restrictions (except for, once again, Morrigan, who goes into the air). Also, when you cancel a Forward Dash with a Forward Jump, you also gain a momentum boost on your Jump so that your regular Jump travels a father distance as well. However, Bask Dashing and performing a Back Jump does not make you jump backwards farther.

Downsides to Dashing

Dashing comes at a small price. Whenever you perform a Dash, whether by tapping the controller or hitting two buttons, your character will be committed to that Dash for a short period of time. That means if the opponent is, for example, Ryu and activates a Shinku Hadoken Hyper Combo from across the screen right when you perform a Dash, the Hyper Combo will connect on you if you try and block.

This is different than from MvC2. In the previous game, you could cancel a Dash into a Block only if you performed the Dash via the method of pressing the two buttons. So even if Cable performed an Air Hyper Viper Beam, which hits almost instantly, during your Dash, you could stop and Block just by holding Back on the controller during the Hyper Combo freeze.

However, there is a way to duplicate that in Marvel Vs. Capcom 3! Even though you are committed to your Dash, you can use a technique to get around this restriction. In that scenario I listed earlier, where Ryu activates that Shinku Hadoken right when you started your Dash, it's true if you try and hold Back you will get hit. However, if you hold Back and Up at the same time, you'll cancel your Dash into a Jump and then, during the Pre-Jump frames right before your character leaves the ground, the Jump gets canceled into blocking on the ground! That will actually allow you to Block the Shinku Hadoken from Ryu.

What that means is that you can pretty much block anything during a Dash. So if you perform a Dash right when Spencer performs the Bionic Lancer, which hits almost instantly, you can hold up and back to block it successfully after the Hyper Combo activation flash. You definitely have to remember this tactic, or you'll find yourself dashing into and eating Hyper Combos left and right.

Air Dashing

To perform an Air Dash, once again you have two options:

1. Double Tap the controller, while in the air, in the direction you wish to perform your Air Dash.
2. Hold the controller in the direction you wish to Air Dash in and press any two of the three main Attack Buttons.

For characters with both an Air Dash and a Double Jump, however, you cannot double tap the controller in any of the Up directions to Air Dash in those directions because tapping Up causes you to Double Jump instead.

Air Dashes are very powerful tools because they give access to very quick and sudden attacks and , like Double Jumping, also allow character to alter their jump arcs, providing them with significantly improved mobility in the air to attack from different angles or to escape traps from the opponent.

You can perform an Air Dash during a regular Jump or Super Jump pretty much at any point of the Jump. So you can Air Dash right when you leave the ground, at the height of your Jump, or even right before you are about to land from a Jump. Also, for the most part, Air Dashes count as Special Moves so you can also cancel airborne Normal Moves into Air Dashes. However, there are some odd exceptions to that rule where a Normal Attack in the air can only be canceled by an Air Dash and not a Special Move. A perfect example of this move is Doctor Doom's Foot Dive: his Special attack in the air.

Note that when you perform an Air Dash, you preserve whatever state you started off in. So if you are in a Jumping State and perform an Air Dash, you stay in Jumping State, so you can still do things such as use a Cross-Over Assists. If you were in a Super Jumping State when you performed your Air Dash, you will not be able to perform a Cross-Over Assist.

Classes of Air Dashing

Air Dashing is only available to certain characters and, between the characters that do have Air Dashes, they can vary wildly. Typically, Air Dashing comes in two categories: 8-Way Air Dashes and 2-Way Air Dashes. For a complete list of character's who can perform these type of moves please refer to the List of Air Mobility in the strategy section of the guide.

The Power of Air Dashing

Just like with ground Dashes, the main benefit of Air Dashing is that you can cancel Air Dashes with attacks mid Dash. This allows you to perform many surprise attacks by changing your Jump arc and attacking immediately in a different angle than your opponent was expecting.

Strategy Corner

The true power of Air Dashing is revealed through what has come to be known as "Triangle Jumping." The reason it's called this is because you are basically performing very quick jumps in the shape of a triangle by jumping forward and then immediately performing an Air Dash down and towards the opponent. This makes you land super quickly and if you throw out an attack on your way down, it means you can attack with a move that must be blocked high in less than a second after leaving the ground, essentially giving you a super fast overhead attack.

Now, obviously you can Jump at any angle and Air Dash at any angle as well to make this effective. But it's one of the cornerstones to a good rushdown character ever since MvC2 where Storm and Magneto could Triangle Jump at you all day long. The trickiest thing is that you can air dash downwards in Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 and you'll land immediately, meaning you could skip the air attack all together and go into an immediate low hitting move right when you land, creating the ultimate high / low mix-up.

In fact, many characters' Air Dashes are so fast in Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 that you can't even get off a stronger attack before you land! If Magneto, for example, performs an Air Dash as low to the ground as possible, a Special Attack pressed during the Air Dash will come out too slowly and Magneto will land before the attack connects. Magneto, thus, has to either Air Dash downward from a higher height to give his Special Attack time to come out and hit the opponent or choose to Air Dash with a Light Attack, as that will be fast enough to come out before Magneto lands. Either method works fine, but the Light Attack version is much quicker and harder to block.

Triangle Jumps remain a very deadly weapon in Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 but are not easy to perform. However, if your character is capable of performing Triangle Jumps, you would be very much pressed to learn how to perform them to make your character as effective as possible.

However, unlike ground Dashing, where you can cancel Air Dashes with Crouches and Jumps, you cannot cancel an Air Dash in any other way. Therefore, when it is said that the weakness of an Air Dash is that you are committed to the Air Dash, there is no way around it this time. So if you perform an Air Dash and your opponent activates a Hyper Combo, you will be eating that Hyper Combo. There is no Jump Canceling to save you.

Air Dashes in Combos

As with Double Jumps, Air Dashing can also be used to extend Air Combos. Canceling a move into an Air Dash allows you to squeeze in more moves in the Air for extra damage. However, only two characters possess a wide array of Normal Moves in the air that can be canceled into an Air Dash for this to be useful: Magneto and Storm. Otherwise, the majority of the characters with Air Dashes cannot cancel any Normal Moves into an Air Dash.