Team Building
Character Overview
Vergil himself is generally a rushdown character, with long-reaching normals, good pressure and lockdown potential, and good ground movement. As a support, he offers a versatile DHC option that can be used for safety, confirms, and dealing damage utilizing his Sword loops, as well as an assist that offers fantastic corner carry. He also benefits greatly from X-factor and meter, which makes him one of the best anchor characters in the game. However, he has poor incoming defense, therefore it is common to bring him in via a DHC and play him with XF2 even when he is third.
Team position
Vergil is best known for his usage as an anchor character, however he has seen success and has solid options for any team position. His role and needs/considerations will vary based on where on the team he is placed:
Point
Vergil excels at lockdown; he will basically want to get in and force opponents to block for long periods of time, until they either die of chip damage, mistime a pushblock, or do something he can punish. On this position, he will generally want characters who offer space control and can help him get in, such as Doom's Plasma Beam or other Beam/horizontal assists. Other examples include Strange's Bolts and Ironman's Unibeam. He also benefits greatly from characters who can effectively cover his main weaknesses:
1 - Air zoning. Vergil has very limited air mobility, and his only air-Ok special is Round Trip. This gives him very limited options to chase down characters who have good air mobility, therefore he benefits from anti-air assists, such as Dante's Jam Session and Strider's Vajra. Vajra is especially noteworthy, as it can interrupt attempts to stall in the air from anywhere on the screen, while also offering Vergil good combo extensions without adding scaling, as it is single hitting. Vajra's tracking also improves his mixup game, particularly on incoming - It allows for a variety of corpse-hop setups, it gives him consistent confirms off dash-under raw S, and it gives him teleport mixups after a blockstring that cannot easily be escaped by pushblocking. Vergil's long reaching sword normals also give him good options to effectively protect Strider. Another option is Shuma's Mystic Ray, which offers both a beam and an anti-air in a single assist, however it is also very slow, and there is limited reference footage available as few people play Shuma.
2 - Meter dependence. Vergil relies heavily on both Spiral Swords and Devil Trigger as part of his neutral game; this often results in him getting hits where he does not have sufficient resources to kill the other point character. Therefore he benefits greatly from battery/damage engine characters who can tag in to pick up the slack. A common one is Doom, who can easily pick up from tags after Lunar Phase's ground bounce. He can also set up a variety of other characters using his wallbounce; Strange is a common one for this. He can also set up Frank in this way. Another option is to TAC; he can use Round Trip to set up TACs late in a combo. Good TAC characters include Doom, Magneto, and Morrigan. A unique option is to utilize Morrigan's Dark Harmonizer, which simply gives meter every time it is called.
Vergil also benefits greatly from Doom's Hidden Missiles assist, which improves his lockdown game once he gets started, and helps act as an anti-air. This is mostly useful with either a third who offers the horizontal/beam coverage, or against flying characters who regularly zone in the air, such as Morrigan. Hidden Missiles also offers extremely damaging and meter-efficient combo extensions, mitigating his issue of meter dependence. However, it can be difficult to set up against opponent teams that have multiple beams.
Example teams: Vergil/Doom/Strider, Vergil/Doom/Dante, Vergil/Strange/Doom, Vergil/Dorm/Shuma
Second
Vergil in the second slot is primarily a damage engine; his follow-up potential from Spiral Swords makes it one of the most damaging DHCs in the game, particularly with bounces available. This makes him a good support for point characters who struggle to kill on their own, such as Joe, Trish, and Morrigan. He offers the most potential for characters who do not use bounces, however he can still work without them; he has a wallbounce-only followup that offers similar damage potential for situations where only the ground bounce has been used, and even if both bounces have been used, he can switch sides using j.S in order to allow for Sword loops. Vergil's poor incoming defense leaves him the most vulnerable in this position, therefore teams that use him here will typically be front-loaded. It can be helpful to have a point character who also offers a good assist, to keep him in front after DHC'ing him in to kill a character.
Example teams: Trish/Vergil/Dante, Joe/Vergil/Doom, Deadpool/Vergil/Strider
Anchor
Vergil is a fantastic anchor due to his extremely high damage in XF2/3, and the benefits he gets from meter. The damage and speed boosts from XF stack with Devil Trigger, turning him into a killing machine that can easily snowball teams in seconds if he gets out. However, he is very vulnerable on incoming, therefore on this position he will typically want to be with a second character who can effectively escape incomings and then DHC to him and act as an assist, bypassing this problem. Common examples for this are Doom and Dante. Vergil on this position will also offer his assist to the point and second character; Many characters can effectively utilize Rapid Slash for either zoning or aggressively forcing opponents to the corner, as it carries them fullscreen even on block. However, Vergil is completely vulnerable while moving forward, therefore he needs to be covered. The most common way to do this is utilizing projectiles, such as Morrigan's Soul Fists, Zero's Hadangekis, and Doom's Plasma Beam/Molecular Shield/j.H/Photon Shots.
Example teams: */Doom/Vergil, */Dante/Vergil (There are too many viable point chars for both of these shells to list)