Marvel vs Capcom 2/System

From SuperCombo Wiki

Marvel vs Capcom 2, like all fighting games has a series of basic commands you use to control your characters actions. These vary from normal moves, through special moves, to team moves or even ones with their own special abilities. Some of these commands are free, however others come at a cost of one or even five stocks of your super meter.

Video Overview

Offense

The Magic Series

On the controls you have six buttons, four of which control your normal moves, being the first two columns. The top two are your punches and the bottom two are your kicks. The first column, the light attacks, act differently from the second column, the heavy attacks. In previous Marvel/Versus titles you had six normal attacks, light punch, light kick, medium punch, medium kick, heavy punch and heavy kick. However in Marvel vs Capcom 2 there are only four buttons. What they've done this time around is combined the light and medium attacks into one button. On one press of the button a light attack will come out, if you continue to press the button a second time a medium attack will come out. It is not possible to draw a medium attack unless the light attack or previous medium attack has connected with an opponent.

To make the Versus series more fast paced and combo dependent, they added a feature that is known as the magic series. The magic series is a rule that allows you to cancel between normal moves to create large, multiple hit combos. It has been in every Marvel/Versus game to date and has even been used in other Capcom titles. The magic series rule is as follows:

{{ LP > LK > MP > MK > HP > HK }}

This is the full magic series. The game allows you to chain all six attacks together in one combo leaving the opponent unable to do anything until they fall out. Unfortunately not every character can do this full combo, but the rule still applies across the cast. In the air it's not always possible to do ("heavy punch > heavy kick") this part of the series because heavy moves tend to have knock down properties. What that means is if you do the move and it connects with the opponent, the character will be propelled away from you to the ground, causing the following attack, heavy kick in this case, to whiff.

{{ LP > MP > HP }}

{{ LK > MK > HK }}

{{ LP > LK > MP > HP}}

{{ LP > MP > MK > HK}}

As you can see, shown here are other examples of what you can do with the magic series. All though it has to be in on order, it's lenient enough to allow you to skip out attacks in the series of six, so you can shorten it to five, four, three or even two attacks. As long as it goes in the order of light punch, light kick, medium punch, medium kick, heavy punch, heavy kick and the character you've chosen can do all five/six hits, it will be allowed.

Assist attacks

Not only do you have buttons to control your character's attacks, you also have two buttons that can control one of your other two partner's moves, the third column. The top right button controls assist one, the second character in the list and the bottom right button controls assist two, the third character in the list. Upon character selection as you should know you pick three characters as well as an assist type. These assists types determine what attack your partners will do when you press their button. These come in various shapes and forms but tend to be one of their special moves. Only down side is their moves aren't instant as obviously they're not on the screen, so take into consideration the delay as they enter the screen. Don't over use your assists either as although they're an easy attack to whip out, they're still vulnerable to attack from the opponent.

There is an oddity with the assist buttons that prevents them from working on the press of a button. What this means is your partners wont come out if you press and hold it down. Always make sure that you release the button to ensure your assist comes out.

Assist types :

Each character has 3 distinct Assist Types, color-marked as α, β and γ.

  • Projectile : A ranged horizontal shot or beam.
  • Dash : Quick horizontal attack wherein the character himself charges at the opponent.
  • Ground : Horizontal attack that covers an area of ground in front of you.
  • Anti-air : An attack effective against airborne opponents, usually covering above and in front of you.
  • Launcher : Close-ranged normal attack that pops your opponent into the air for a combo.
  • Balance : A combination of the character's other two assists. Usually a copy of the character's first assist with the second assist's Variable Counter, or vice versa.
  • Expansion : An attack that has a wide area of effect across the ground and can be used to 'expand' your combos with their additional hits.
  • Variety : Mix of irregular attacks, unique from each character's moves.
  • Capture : Ranged attempt to immobilize an opponent for a short duration.
  • Throw : Attempt to grapple the opponent with an unblockable throw.
  • Air throw : Jumping attempt to catch an airborne opponent with an unblockable throw.
  • Heal : Support move that restores some of the point character's red health.
  • Enhance : Support move that improves the active character's offense, defense or speed for a short time.

Snap Back

QCF+ A1 / A2

Your character will perform an animation that will cause the character hit to leave the screen and another to come in (depending on which button you used). The snap back makes whoever you snapped out unable to be called once the other character comes on screen. You cannot DHC into the snapped out character or counter into the snapped out All characters have snap backs. Some have very good reach and speed. Others might have speed but the range is very bad. For example Cammy and Doctor Doom's snap backs have very bad range. Venom and Amingo's snap backs have very good range.

The motion for an Alpha Counter is QCF+A1 or A2 when your point character is in hit-stun, and requires and consumes one super meter level to execute. This can only be done on the ground. You can extend hit-stun by push-blocking.

When you Alpha Counter, the character associated with that assist button is brought in performing their Counter move as specified by their assist type. This Alpha Counter can either be a normal move or a special move and can be cancelled as usual. Thus a popular Alpha Counter is Cable's Anti-Air Assist Alpha Counter, the Scimitar, which is then cancelled into his Air Hyper Viper Beam (AHVB).

There is a bug that happens with assist 2 snap outs where if you counter with assist two while the 'x' is still on your name you will disappear and hop back (the animation of a counter) as if you were leaving but instead stay on screen in addition to that you become invisible and semi-invincible. A general rule for invisibility is that you have it as long as your character doesn’t come back to standing animation after doing a move. So say you were Doom and you were invisible and you did his S.LP after the move was finished he would go into standing animation and that is when he will be visible. Also, jumping requires you to go through standing animation so it will cause become visible. As for the semi-invincibility, some characters are safe from being hit low or high, and some characters, both. The characters that have immunity from high and low attacks can only be hit if they move and turn visible again or if the other character causes them to turn around. Snap backs can cause things to hit more than they should. For instance Cyclops does a LP Optic Blast and right before it hits the other character performs a snap back, if timed right the Optic Blast will hit more than it should. A snap back kills frames and this affects characters in strange ways some will lose the frames of when their move hits others will get extra hits for their moves.

The A2 snap back causes strange effects for some characters:

  • Gambit does A2 snap back and right after a Cajun Strike (make sure he goes to the left wall) and he’ll fly out of the screen.
  • Ruby Heart does a phantom and before it comes out does a snap back (a2) and if the phantom doesn’t hit anyone it will cause the other person to go into block animation even when there is nothing on screen.
  • One particular glitch of interest is when you attempt to Alpha Counter into a character that you may not switch into as they were victim of a snap back.

Dizzy

As with other Capcom games, the opponent can get dizzied if they take enough hits over time. There is an internal counter for Dizzy that starts at 80. Each time you land a hit, that meter decreases. When it decreases to 0, there is a Spin-out animation. The opponent's timer resets itself to 80 after 60 frames of not being hit.

The amount of Dizzy caused is random. However, Light attacks (LP/LK) cause the most stun, Mediums cause less, and Fierces cause the least.

Offensive-Crouch Launchers (Down+Forward+P/K), Specials and Supers do not add to the Dizzy Counter.

Off the Ground (OTG) attacks, Snapbacks, Throws and some capture attacks add to the Dizzy Counter, but cannot trigger the Spin-Out animation.

If the value is 0 during an OTG, Spin-Out will not be triggered.

Once the opponent is in another state while their value is 0, any attack will trigger the spinout until the timer resets itself.

If the value turns to 0 on a hit that Super Armor absorbs, the spin out will not happen. Instead, the value increases to 1.

The dizzy value is retained after a snapout, but calling the assist resets it. If the value turned to 0 as a result of the Snapback, it will change to 1 when the character returns.

Super Flash Glitch

During the super flash screen the game pauses characters for about four frames but projectiles advance. This four frame kill most notably lets Magneto combo hyper grav into Magnetic Tempest. Additionally, if the super flash starts on exactly the frame that an assist hits, that assist will hit twice. (Further discussion on SRK.)

Movement

Walking

Walking is the basic way of moving through out the screen in an old-fashion fighting game however, MvC2 is very different; people hardly ever walk to move around. Almost everyone has their own walking speed/rate. In some cases it might be better to walk than to dash etc, although sometimes you don’t have a choice.

Dashing

Dashing (F,F or PP) will move your character forward at a certain rate/distance. Almost everyone character has their own unique speed/rate (there are 56 characters so for all I know one or two have the same speed/rate). Dashing is a very interesting ability since it allows you to move forward and block right away. This might sound simple but there are some characters who have a full screen dash and can pretty much follow you through out the whole match unless you have a way of avoiding them. Another interesting thing about dashing is that some people ‘hop’ instead of staying on the floor for the whole time. This means that some characters can hop over people’s low attacks and proceed to throw them or hit them and start their own combos/resets/other. Another fascinating thing about dashing is that the people who are technically in the air during their jump can block and when they block they will be on the ground. You can cancel your dash with a normal, a super, special, tag, jump, block, super jump, throw (if you’re close), tap down. Since there are a lot of ways to cancel your dash it is usually safe however, there are a few things that can hit someone while they are dashing. Since tapping down can stop your dash and you can dash the very next frame after tapping down you can do them over and over to get through the whole stage very quickly (if your character doesn’t already have a full-screen dash). This ability is called wave-dashing. It is used to get to one point of the screen that is normally not accessible if you were to dash and walk or dash and attempt a move. Even those characters who hop when they dash have the ability to wave-dash. For some reason when they do this and there is an attack already put out on the floor they can hop over it even if they wave-dash!

G Conceptz put together a helpful guide on wavedashing.

Air Dash

Air Dashing is just what it sounds like. There are a ton of different properties for it. For instance; you can’t block (no matter who you are) a few frames directly after you’ve air dashed; you’ll just air dash into whatever attack the person did. Depending on your jump, air dashing will either count as your last attack (although there are special exceptions [remember, this is MvC2!] or an ability that lets you do more attacks (it restarts your super jump)however, once you’ve air dashed once you can’t do it again unless you are Dhalsim who can reset his super jump by teleporting during some point of his SJ. If you air dash during your normal jump you won’t be able to attack or block until you hit the floor

There are properties that happen when you are in normal jump mode that one take place when you’re super jumping. There are also more properties to keep in mind that happen when those two things are happening and you introduce blocking/push blocking to the equation. I will get into detail about this in another section.

Jumping

Normal Jumping is just an average jump that all characters have, some can jump high and relatively fast others, slow and low or the worst: slow and high. If you are fighting against someone that can Guard Break you easily you’re better off not jumping at all if you have one of those characters that jumps slow and high.

Here are three people that have an exceptionally bad jump: number one being Anakaris who takes an tremendously long time to land on the floor after jumping leaving him an easy target (if not protected by an assist) to be guard broken (unless he airdashes although he can‘t block throughout the whole air dash... Next would probably be Sentinel who has a very slow jump but has the ability to cancel into flight mode which saves him (depending on who he is fighting against). Number three might be Dhalsim who has Sentinel-length jump as well, however he can cancel into teleport/airdash (8-way)/fly.

Some of the other characters have a fast jump that doesn’t travel a long distance making their jump almost useless. You have to find ways to effectively use their jumps in combos or other situations.

Also, you can attack 2-3 frames after the jump (with normals, specials, supers etc. However, you can't dash for about 7-8 frames after you've jumped. Throwing after your jump is one of those attacks that can be done 2-3 frames after (why 2-3 not just 2 or 3? It's complicated and I will cover it in another section).

Super Jump

Super Jumping is like a regular jump except much higher and it has different properties and rules once you do it. For instance you can air dash after 5 or 6 frames but you can attack with a normal/special/super (for the most part, again, this is MvC2).

Doom's CR.HK can be SJC'd before it finishes. If there is something that causes you to block present you can do CR.HK > SJ(up back) repeat to get meter very quickly.

Triangle Jump

Characters with an air dash can use their dash to move down towards the ground and/or opponent. This is particularly useful when trying to rush someone down, allowing you for example to quickly superjump, air dash down forward, and attack your opponent with a quick overhead attack. G Conceptz has a video on trijumping here.

Teams

Character selection

In Marvel vs. Capcom 2 the player selects three different characters to form their team. Each character has six different colors to choose from allowing players to color coordinate teams.

Switching Characters at the Vs. Screen

Additionally, the order in which the player picks their team can be altered during the "Vs." screen. By holding down the assist 1 button, the player can swap the first and second characters shown during the loading screen. Holding down assist 2 results in swapping the first and third characters shown during the loading screen. Holding down both assist buttons swaps the second and third characters.

The First Attack Glitch

By swapping your starting character during the Vs. screen you activate a glitch. Once activated it allows you to hold any of the four attack button and when the fight begins, if it's still held those attack buttons will automatically come out. Bear in mind though it is said a perfectly timed attack is more accurate than using this glitch, so don't always expect to get away with it at high level play.

Typically it is most advantageous to 'glitch' something very quick such as Magneto's 1-frame cLK, but you can also glitch a dash (2P - you can glitch either a forward or back dash), a switch-in (LP+LK or HP+HK), or a button-only special move such as Storm's Lightning Attack.

Note that this input glitch applies to all available inputs, so you can also glitch directional inputs which lets you superjump almost immediately.

Assists

The Assist 1 (A1) and Assist 2 (A2) buttons can be used to call your assists one a time. (Pressing both A1+A2 together will cause a THC.) The corresponding character will then pop on screen and perform their assist type attack. You can call them as often as they would like until they die. They will take normal damage when hit while on-screen. Red bar health recovery will stop until they are again off-screen.

Rules

  • Assists can only be called when your character is able to attack (not in hit or block stun.)
  • You can't call out an assist in super jump mode.
  • You may not call an assist that has been snapped out until the red X over their life bar goes away. Their life bar will briefly flash "ASSIST OK!" when they are enabled again.
  • Once an assist hits as part of a combo, you may not call another assist again in that combo. Vidness says that his "triple assist" combo exploits the glitch whereby an assist that is the same as the point character does not get counted as an assist. You can also call the assist multiple times before the first hit of the combo, which can let the assist hit multiple times in some combos.

Vulnerability

As you will notice if you play against MSP more than once, your assists cannot block. They will be called in, perform their move, pose briefly, and then leave. At any point they can be hit (subject to their normal hit box) and will leave as soon as they recover and hit the ground. If juggled, they can be hit infinitely until death. Thus you will want to protect your assists or you will lose.

Assist Glitches

  • Tron Bonne's "Y" Projectile assist should be her medium attack (5 pts per hit) but uses her fierce damage (15pts per hit). This is true for all medium normal attack assists but is only particularly useful for Tron.
  • Per Vidness, an assist that is the same character as the point character does not get counted as an assist hit.

Delayed Hyper Combo

A Delayed Hyper Combo (DHC) is when you cancel the super attack of your point character with a super from the next character. The classic MvC2 example is hitting the opponent with Storm's Lightning Storm super and then DHC'ing (canceling) that late into Sentinel's Hyper Sentinel Force. You can DHC up to twice in the same super sequence: the normal super screen background is blue, the first DHC screen background is green, and the second and final DHC screen background is red. You cannot reuse the same character in a DHC sequence: to DHC twice you would need all three characters alive.

Team Hyper Combo

The Team Hyper Combo (THC) is an attack used by pressing the A1+A2 buttons at the same time when your character is on the ground. It can be activated with a minimum of one super level, and can use as many super levels as you have characters left on your team. For each super meter consumed, one character is activated. The activated characters then perform their Team Hyper Combo move. Thus if you have five meters but one character left, only one super level will be consumed and your point character will do their THC. If you have two meters but three characters, only your first two characters will do their THCs.

THCs are generally derided but are useful for:

  • Accessing super moves the character can not perform normally. Examples are Zangief's Mega Lariat, Rogue's Rushing Punches, Kobun's Walking Forward Kobun, Spiral's one-level Transforming Punches.
  • Accessing a super for the other character without requiring a switchout. This is commonly popular when Captain Commando is on your team: you can use the THC to attempt to punish super-jumping characters who are not in block.
  • Heavy damage. This was popularized via "one hit kill" teams such as BB Hood / Juggernaut / Captain Commando : the tactic is to build three meters and get one clean shot on your opponent.
  • Trickery. Since it takes one hit per character to stop them from performing their part in the super barrage, if one character is going to eat the hit, the other characters will continue the THC and possibly deal out the damage you need.

As you should be able to see, the THC is not generally of great use, but can be an effective tactical addition to your game if your character/team has a good THC. For Psylocke or Tron based teams you would likely never want to use your THC, but for Commando-based teams it's of high occasional value. For low tier teams, it may be a critical gimmick for your team.

Defense

Marvel vs Capcom 2 continues the defensive logic originated in Street Fighter 2 and evolved throughout the Vs series of games.

Blocking

To prevent or minimize damage from an attack, you need to block it appropriate to that attack. Attacks can be normal, high, low, or jumping. Blocks can be low or standing (normal). A low attack must be blocked low. A normal attack can be blocked either low or standing. A high or jumping attack must be be blocked standing / normal.

Chip Damage

Certain moves will inflict damage even if you block: this is called chip damage. Doom-B's rock assist and Iceman's beam attacks are notable examples of moves that cause chip damage. Additionally, certain characters will cause chip damage even with their normal moves: these include Sentinel and Jin with Saotome Shine active. Iceman uniquely avoids chip damage from most energy type moves that chip and only takes chip damage from physical type moves.

Super Armor

Certain characters, such as Juggernaut, Hulk, and Sentinel, have Super Armor. This allows them to take up to one non-heavy attack without going into hit stun. Heavy attacks and certain other attacks bypass this Super Armor.

Hyper Armor

Hyper Armor allows the character to take an unlimited number of hits of any type without entering hit stun. Mech Zangief and Colossus with his super active have access to Hyper Armor. Rogue can also gain access to it by copying it from someone with it active. This video shows two examples of hyper armor: the Mech Zangief assist continuing through attacks and Rogue (with Hyper Armor copied from Mech Zangief) continuing to attack regardless of taking hits.

Base Defense

Attack damage assigned to the defending character is scaled based upon that character's base defense. For example Akuma takes much more damage from the same combo than Sentinel will. The base scaling for each character is as shown:

Damage % Characters
75% Sentinel
81% Colossus
87% Blackheart, Hulk, Juggernaut, Zangief
93% Captain America, Dr. Doom, Omega Red, Rogue*, Silver Samurai*, Thanos, Tron Bonne
100% (normal) Amingo, Cable, Captain Commando, Charlie, Cyclops, Gambit, Guile, Iron Man, Jin, M. Bison, Ruby Heart, Ryu, Sakura, Venom, War Machine
106% B.B. Hood, Chun-Li, Hayato, Jill, Ken, Magneto, Megaman, Sabretooth, Spiral, Storm
112% Cammy, Dan, Dhalsim, Felicia, Iceman, Psylocke, Shuma-Gorath
118% Marrow, Morrigan, Sonson
125% Anakaris, Spider-Man, Strider, Wolverine
137% Akuma, Roll, Servbot, Wolverine (Bone)

Tech Rolling

Tech Rolling is when you hit the floor and roll away. This technique helps to get characters out of extended combos. However, some people can make their off the ground combos (abbreviated as OTG/’s) unrollable by inputting their attack before you land on the floor. To perform a tech roll you have to do a reverse fireball motion (B,DB,D + any punch or kick button). Characters are invincible when falling down after being SWEPT. The only character in the game that can be hit before he lands after being swept is ----- Dhalsim!

Not every move that knocks you on your back will let you roll out of it – there are some moves that require you to mash if you want to get up quicker (ex. Gamma Crush). However, some moves are genuinely unrollable (ex. B.B. Hood’s Cruel Hunting super). Some supers that carry characters across the screen (ex. Magneto’s shockwave) are unrollable. Lastly, some moves require switching the way you input the roll command. Meaning that instead of rolling the way you’re supposed to (B,DB,D + any punch or kick button) you would have to do the opposite motion (F,DF,D + any punch or kick button).

The person who is not tech rolling can choose which direction the tech roller is going to go by placing their character on a certain side. If he/she moves to the right of the opponents character the opponents character will roll to the right. (Side note about rolling: OTGs do not cause stun so you cannot dizzy someone if all of your attacks are OTGs. One infinite that abuses this rule is Amingo’s QCF+LP (specials don’t cause stun) OTG with S.LK repeat: it can be done for 999+ hits.

Some properties about OTGs, rolls and wake-ups:

  • The person who is rolling is invincible till they get up.
  • Everyone’s roll is the same, meaning they travel the same distance and at the same speed.
  • When a character is in their rising animation they are invincible. This means that attacks can go through them and they will not be hit until they are in their standing animation. This allows a character to be crossed up while they are getting up. For example, Magneto’s CR.HK can cross up characters. If Magneto’s sprite is RIGHT in the middle of the character that is getting up it will cause confusion regarding which side they should block, so it becomes a cross-up. This can also sometimes cause unblockables to occur. However, if the move the person is trying to do is a low attack the character getting up can jump straight out of the attack since there are some invincibility frames when jumping straight out of the rising animation. The only thing that can stop this is a move that would hit you from mid or high.
  • Characters can control which direction their opponent will roll when tech rolling by standing or being above the opponent on a certain side. Some characters can perform this technique by simply holding their position after performing a sweep. For example, if you're Magneto or a character who moves forward during their sweep you would just sit there as the opponent rolls to the other side (forward).

Force-Rolls

Force-Rolls are when the character hits you right before you hit the floor or when you’re already on the floor and he hits you with only one move. That causes you to start rolling. However, this kind of roll is different than normal tech rolling. You can be hit during the first few frames of your Force-Roll. For instance: Psylocke does a CR.HK and OTG’s with a CR.LK (if she doesn’t do anything afterwards you’ll start to roll away from her but you’ll be in the air for some reason) if she waits and does a dashing CR.HP it will OTG you and won’t count as a move that produced stun. So, it’s possible to get two different kinds of OTG’s in a combo. On that example of Psylocke: she can do an infinite on Servbot by doing [CR.HP -> Psyblade -> OTG w/ CR.LK, pause for a little bit/let the CR.LK animation finish, -> dash] As you probably guessed, it can be done for 999+ hits.

Another interesting thing about force rolls is that if you are hit with a CR.LP or CR.LK you will pop-up into the air in a strange way. And if you’re hit with a sweep (normally) you will fall down as if you were knocked on your back again. Theoretically that would be an infinite ([OTG, CR.HK]). Oh, and if you’re hit with a standing move usually a S.LK you will be knocked on your feet in a strange way. It will look like you bounced a little then landed on your feet.

Tech Hitting

Tech-Hitting can also be called Tech Throwing. Which means you get out of a throw before the character does his damage on you or after he does his damage on you but before you land on the floor. EX: You can tech hit Sentinel’s throw after he throws you into the corner before he can OTG you. Or you can Tech hit out of Juggernaut’s HP throw in the corner before he kills you in 5 hits. To do a tech hit you have to hold the joystick left or right and press HP or HK while doing so. You can do it at the start of the persons throws or at the end right before you land. Not all throws are techable, you can’t tech specials or supers. An important thing about tech throws is that you can’t tech roll if the person performs an unrollable OTG on you. EX: Juggernaut can hit you before you land making a tech throw on the floor impossible. Some people’s throws and follow-ups to those throws are so dangerous that you must tech hit before they actually do their damage/animation.

Another big important thing about tech hitting is that you are put into normal jump which means you lose unfly and you can be guard broken no matter how high up you on screen. Although it’s not as bad as it sounds since you can block once + call an assist.

Tech Hit/Tech Roll Buffering

When you are thrown, do the motion for tech roll, then finish the motion when you hit the ground, (so if roll is half circle forward, you end on forward, when you hit the ground) and hit FP or FK.

That way, you've done the motion and button for the roll, but you also are trying to tech it, since you hit forward and fp when you hit the ground.

If you don't get the tech hit, you get the roll.

Guard Breaks

A character in normal jump mode can only perform one special action until they land. A character switching in to the game is in normal jump mode: thus if you can get that character to block once, you can hit them after they recover and start falling again.

Push Block

Push Blocking is done by pressing the two punch buttons while you’re being hit or a short time after. Almost every character in the game has their own guard stiffness time which means that they will remain in guard stun for a period after there are no more attacks to block on screen. For instance Cable is in guard stiffness for 23 frames after making him very hard to throw after a whiffed move. Cyclops is in guard stiffness for about 4 frames! So Cyclops would have less time to push block something after it is gone than Cable. Push blocking works differently on the ground, in normal jump mode and in super jump mode.

Push-blocking states

On the ground – When you push block something on the ground and let go of block you will eventually be 100% free meaning you won’t have any guard stiffness after a while. You can use that to escape out of almost any trap on the ground since jumping is very fast (2-3 frames to be off the ground). However, there are moves that can stop your jump, for instance Strider’s trap can stop your jump because the orbs prevent you from being off the ground for too long so you’ll get hit before you fully escape high into the air. However if you continue to block instead of trying to do something you’ll just keep blocking and won’t be guard broken if you were being hit by a Proton Cannon or something. When you get out of block stun you can do anything, not just super jump, a funny thing to try is using instant supers and DHC’s to punish something while it’s still going.

In Normal-Jump mode – There are various times you can be in normal jump mode, not just after normal jumping up. For instance if you tech-hit or if you unfly and you don’t have unfly, if you’re Dhalsim and you perform a drill while in SJ mode, and many other things! Anyway, when you’re in normal jump mode you can be easily guard broken and sometimes push blocking helps. Even if push blocking is your first action when you jump into the air you’ll still be vulnerable when you finish your push block animation (well, its just one frame held for a second or two). So it’s easy to say that push blocking can be very dangerous unless you’re in a certain situation where the person can’t hit you or you can call an assist to protect you while you fall.

In Super-Jump mode – Usually push blocking in during your super jump just means that you will be able to throw the guy if he’s rushing you with attacks. However that’s not exactly true, you can be guard broken in super jump mode after a while and if you’re being bombarded with continuous attacks. For instance if you’re playing Magneto and he air dashes towards you and does his magic series and you push block it – he can go into a tempest for a little then into hail storm and you’ll be guard broken!

Guard Canceling

Consider a move such as the Hyper Sentinel Force super. If you are blocking the first set of drones and let go of the stick, you will remain in block stun for the duration of the super. However, if you push block you will cancel that block stun early after taking the currently blocked hit. If you keep holding back, you will keep blocking. If you instead put the stick in neutral, you will get hit by the next hit of the move unless you take actions to avoid it. The most common example by advanced players is to push block and superjump out of Hyper Sentinel Force, avoiding most of the chip damage and positioning yourself better. Slipgater made a tutorial video of this here showing just jumping out, and NKI has a nice video of punishing HSF with AHVB.

Countering

Countering in Marvel vs Capcom 2 originates from Street Fighter Alpha, and as such is often called an "Alpha Counter". It can also be called a Hyper or Variable Counter. The motion for an Alpha Counter is b,d/b,d + A1 / A2 when your point character is in hit-stun, and requires and consumes one super meter level to execute. This can only be done on the ground. You can extend hit-stun by Push Block.

When you Alpha Counter, the character associated with that assist button is brought in performing their Counter move as specified by their assist type. This Alpha Counter can either be a normal move or a special move and can be cancelled as usual. Thus a popular Alpha Counter is Cable's Anti-Air Assist Alpha Counter, the Scimitar, which is then cancelled into his Air Hyper Viper Beam (AHVB).

One particular glitch of interest is when you attempt to Alpha Counter into a character that you may not switch into as they were victim of a Snap Back.


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