Marvel vs Capcom 2/SonSon/Strategy

Strategy

SonSon's six special moves and three Hyper Combos give her a longer movelist than most characters, and her staff gives her pretty great range and she attacks quickly even without it. Her normals make it easy to cancel into specials and supers as some are multi-hits. For starters, I want to break down her moves and their main use cases, to help build a rough gameplan draft you can use. I'll be using less objective wording here, and with as many options as SonSon has, knowing when to use each one can make or break a match.

Assist Choice

Heal

SonSon's Heal assist spawns a tangible peach that the point character needs to touch in order to restore some of their red health. The collision for the peach is accurate to the sprite (which means it isn't very big), so it can easily be low profiled by crouches or dashes, so be careful. She comes out behind the point character, so by default they're protecting her, but if they jump then she becomes an easy target for long ranged attacks. Always try to call this assist when you have more than enough time to grab the peach and go back to your gameplan. Depending on the point character, they may have special moves that can make grabbing the peach easy or simply faster than backdashing, such as Strider's LP Wall Cling~Kick (use that move with caution, as always) or Marrow's Ricochet Slash. Since SonSon is still treated like a character, she can be dragged around by the screen's corners moving. What this means is that certain attacks like Captain Commando's Corridor or Gambit's Cajun Explosion can also 'bring' her to you if you're midscreen, so in theory you could call her during a combo and get red health back uncontested! What might be the worst aspect of this assist is that its Alpha Counter is Fuusetsu Zan, which doesn't give her much to work with after spending the bar to switch in. The range on it is still nice, so it can reach from distances where Alpha Counters may usually whiff, but you don't exactly benefit on hit.

Projectile

SonSon's Projectile assist.

Anti-air

SonSon's Anti-air assist is her popular assist, and for good reason. It's fast, big, disjointed, and covers a great range in front of you on the ground and pretty high into the air too. On hit it sets them up around super jump height, which can work great for combo extensions, and the damage is good too. The active frames start while she's still grounded, so it can also OTG if you need it to.

People tend to pick either Y, as its great traits are more immediately useful. Team Hyper Combos with her A and B assists have the THC-exclusive and automatic version of En'Ou, so depending on the team setup that can be a stronger asset to have for damage output, chip potential, as well as and screen clearing.

Normals

Lights

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Mediums

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Heavies

2HP knocks opponents down 5HK Moderate damage, but risky because it takes a lot of frames to complete. j.HK good air to ground combo starter. Lower frames compared to air HP.

Command Normals

6HP knocking opponents back. Relatively quick and can stop rushdowns.

Throws

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Specials

Shienbu

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Seiten Rengeki

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Kingin no Hisago

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Fuusetsu Zan

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Wall Walk

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Hofuku Zenshin

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Hypers

Tenchi Tsuukan

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En'Ou

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POW

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Strategies

*Offensive and Defensive Balance is key! - It's good to lay on the pressure, but if you openly attack at every chance you get, your opponent will read for holes in your defense. What you want to do is be inconsistent to throw your opponent off their game so they can't predict your movements and options. It's an easy pitfall to get stuck in since SonSon can attack so fast and so often, but if your opponent is blocking all your attacks and making you bleed when it's their turn, what's the point? On the other hand, blocking too much will get you killed for sure. [?Once you're in the corner you will get assist spammed to hell and back since SonSon cannot get out of the corner easily nor does she have a wide radial attack for clearing space as other characters do.?] Kinggo could be a saving grace, but that move is Very conditional since it can be blocked.

There really isn't much of a specific "advanced" strategy that is only for SonSon, it's applicable to all characters: play smart, capitalize on openings and human error, and anticipate.

Against Gods

Against Storm? You're going to die. BUT if you are trying to do something, tiger knee (SJ) Shienbu can be okay if she's far away, since you can block on the way down. If you do normal jump monkeys, you are helpless afterwards. Wall Walk is also a good tool. If you predict a ground typhoon correctly, you can kick her out of it into Seiten -> Tenchi. If she's flying and typhooning in the air, you can try anti-airing with Tenchi. Also remember that you can use En'Ou's invincible startup to get through her hailstorm. Even at top level play, don't expect this matchup to be fair.

Against Cable? You are REALLY going to die. If you try ANYTHING, you are getting shot. You have to be patient and navigate the minefield to get close to him. If he does a normal shot near you, you can sweep him with down fierce. But yeah, anything you do is very punishable by Cable. You can fake a Wall kick by doing the Wall Walk~P to cancel it, in order to bait out an AHVB[?why would you risk this LOL?]. But that's pretty much all you have :( If you have enough energy, you could monkey-up and take an AHVB, but you can punish him after the first one and then DHC.

Final Thoughts

SonSon can be quite versatile if used correctly. There are few weaknesses she has[?, namely her assists aren't that strong?]. I've been able to rival some very very skilled Magnetos because SonSon's 2LK is almost as quick as his LK. If you like her, then use her, because the tier guides don't mean anything if the players aren't skilled.

--Yeyzor 05:57, 9 July 2010 (UTC)yeyzor