Some gameplay tips for beginners / specific to MVCI mechanics

[kileak]

EDIT: Formatted is a bit better and added a couple more notes to chicken blocking and flight cancels.

After spending a number of hours in training room, and reading a number of posts asking about some random questions, I've found that Capcom didn't quite fully explain the deeper mechanics of this game.

I've spent some time explaining these random tips for a couple of friends, and thought I might share these random tid-bits across to everyone here. For the sake of those of you who just got the game (and perhaps are just starting out to the VS series), here's a a couple of random tips I've gathered. Keep in mind that I'm no expert in the game, but just sharing some observations across to anyone who's interested.

This isn't meant for you pros by the way, but it's a good read for beginners who's looking to up their game.

Movement

1. Any dashes can be done by pressing LP+HP together. This works in the air as well.

2. During dashes, you can't block unless you cancel out of it with a down direction (see Wave dashing below).

3. Wave dashing - a technique where you cancel your current dash into a crouching position. This allows you to chain multiple dashes together; some characters run faster with wave dash, some don't.

To do a basic wave dash, perform the following motions:
Forward Wave dash : LP+HP, d, LP+HP, d......
Backward Wave dash : b+LP+HP, d (or d/b), b+LP+HP, d (or d/b)......

4. For character with 8 way air dashes (eg Nova / Captain Marvel / Ultron / etc), you can point your air dash by pressing a direction and LP+HP together. A common technique called triangle jumps is to jump and immediately do a down-forward airdash followed by a quick normal for a fast overhead (has to be blocked high).

5. Some air dashes slows down towards the end of the dash. For example, doing a raw air dash WITHOUT any moves for Iron Man will cause him to slow down towards the end of the dash. To overcome this, press a normal during the air dash to keep your air dash momentum going. Whiffing a normal move deliberately is a good way to land on the ground quickly to sneak in a low attack when doing triangle jump mix-ups.

6. New to MVCI is the short hop (almost like King Of Fighters style); you can do this by doing a super jump (d,u), and immediately pressing down. The jump arc is shorter than a regular jump. A unique property to this is that you will automatically face your opponent once you jump over him, leading to pseudo universal crossup mechanic.

7. For clarification purposes to point #6 above, jumps work like this when you jump over your opponent :

Normal jump - you will always face forward from where you jumped; meaning, if you jumped over your opponent from left, you will always face left until you land.
Super jumps - you will automatically face the opponent after you're jumped over him; meaning, if you jumped over your opponent from left, you will turn around to face him. This applies to short hops (point #6 above).

Tagging

1. Tagging is always free, no matter what your current character is doing (except when getting hit).

2. While tagging in, your incoming character will run into the opponent if he's close enough, giving you an extra hit. While this can be useful for certain situations (e.g. blockstrings, continuing combos), sometimes you do NOT want to add that extra hit. You can make your incoming character NOT run into the opponent by holding back (or up-back to jump backwards).

3. The incoming tagged character will always come in the direction where your current character is facing; this means that if you jump over the opponent, and tag, your incoming character will run in from the front direction, not where your current character is. Useful for sneaky left/right mixups.

Defense mechanics

1. Push blocking reduces your chip damage (damage taken ). Keep in mind this makes your blockstun longer (meaning you're stuck in block longer), so for some situations, it's probably better to take the chip damage to avoid nasty situations.

2. A good way to avoid high/low mix-ups is to chicken block by holding up-back; this effectively lets you avoid high/low attacks. It should be noted though, that you take chip damage from blocking any moves (including normal moves) while in air. By contrast, normal moves do not deal chip damage to you on the ground. Also, on the pre-jump frames (the first few frames of your jump animation), you won't be able to block, so if you're stuck in a situation where a move is directly overlapping you (this situation is referred to as meaty), jumping will make you take the hits in a grounded state.

3. Holding tag while your current character is being hit in combos will bring in your partner. Keep in mind that your partner is not invincible to the opponent's attacks, so it's not a free get out of jail card.

4. When your current character dies, and your next incoming character is jumping in, you can choose 3 positions to land. Hold forward to land closer to the center of the screen, neutral (no direction) for default landing, and back to land closer to the corner. This is essential for avoiding certain setups on incoming.

Combo mechanics

1. Combo scaling (how long you can carry out your combo) in MVCI works by damage, not by hits. This means the higher damage you've racked up in your combo, the more likely the opponent is to flip out of your combo.

2. A good benchmark for damage to hit for your combos is about 5000-6000++. While it's MVC where style counts (SWAG all the way!), things to watch out for in a good combo is landing it universally across all characters, builds good meter, can start the combo with no meter, wall carry (brings the opponent to the corner) and more importantly (in my opinion anyway, for MVCI), the final position of your opponent. You would want to put your opponent in a position where you can set up good mix-up opportunities, and I personally think it's better to sacrifice a little less damage for better positioning.

3. Cancelling normals into air dashes are done in this manner :

General rule is that you're able to cancel a normal into an air dash like a special move.

So taking Ultron as an example, you would do the HP > dash > HP with the following input:

HP > direction + LP+HP > HP.

There's a trick to it though - You can actually use this shortcut instead if you want to do multiple HP > dash > HP in a row. When you're in a dash, pressing LP+HP would give you a HP, therefore:

HP > direction + LP+HP > LP+HP (HP comes out instead) > LP+HP (dash) > LP+HP (HP...)

If you've binded a button to LP+HP, you can just continuously mash that button to do the above; just make sure to start with a HP first.

Rules for these type of cancels are :
1. Since you're allowed only one airdash per jump (normal / super jump), you'll be able to cancel one air dash from a normal.
2. In flight/float, you can do this indefinitely until your flight runs out.

Gem mechanics

1. Gems are considered special move in terms of properties; this means you can special cancel into them from normals, and tag/super cancel out of them (need clarification on whether this works for all gems).

2. You can activate Infinity Storm when in block-stun (while you're blocking); this can act as a kind of counter if you're locked down in blockstun.

3. You are not on negative frames after activating a gem, despite the look of it. This means you're able to block immediately after activating it.

4. Even with all shortcuts turned off, you can do your lv3 super while in Infinity Storm by pressing Gem Surge + Tag.

5. All Level 3 Supers are free in Infinity Storm; this means that even if you do not have any super meter, you can execute it for free during Infinity Storm.

6. If your opponent activates Infinity Storm, you will not be able to activate your own Infinity Storm. On the occasion that you execute it on the exact time, the game mechanic determines which frame the game is on, and gives priority with the following rule :

Even frame - Player 1
Odd frame - Player 2

Misc tips

1. You can do up to 3 special moves (except for some exceptions / Flights) in the air; for example, using Ryu, you can do up to 3 hadokens in the air before you land.


That's all I can think of off my head at the moment; will try to add some videos and more tips as I go along.

[pr1me]

good stuff, this thread should be pinned down.
Ive heard that u cant chicken guard in this game like in mvc3, there is a window on the way up , where u r vulnerable to attack. Haven't tested it myself though.

[Sp00kyFox]

doesn't chicken guard simply refer to blocking during a jump? this still works in Infinite and you avoid high low mixups this way.

[Bibacious]

How do I do multiple cancels with chars who can float?
I see pros comboing multiple HPs in the air by using dash or float, I have no clue actually.
I know I can easily combo HP->dash->Hp but I can't dash afterwards anymore and float has too much of a "casting time".
HOw the hell do I combo multiple HPs with Ultron, Chun or cpt marvel for example? It drives me crazy.

[GrgoljBlaster]

Imagine if game bothered to explain any of this... Jesus, no wonder less and less people invest their time into fighting games.

[JoiseyDragun]

The whole Being able to cancel a block with Infinity storm thing I didn't know about. Very interesting.

[DarKnight_Doom]

Good thread!


I believe this video can also help a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eAt0J3PSFY

[pr1me]

1 more "basic" tutorial I've watched
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gxkj0wtC7A

Also FGC legend James Chen doing marvel school on his channel
https://www.twitch.tv/jchensor/videos/all

P.s.

Join marvel discords guys, u can always find ppl to fight, latest tech and answers to your questions there
https://discord.gg/ThU4St8 shoryuken.com one (i believe)

https://discord.gg/GRDkEma reddit one

[kileak]

Originally posted by pr1me:

good stuff, this thread should be pinned down.
Ive heard that u cant chicken guard in this game, like in mvc3, there is a window on the way up , where u r vulnerable to attack. Haven't tested it myself though.

Originally posted by Sp00kyFox:

doesn't chicken guard simply refer to blocking during a jump? this still works in Infinite and you avoid high low mixups this way.

You're right; I tested this in training just now, and it seems that one the first couple of frames for the jump frames, you can't block.

It seems that on frame 1-2 (? not sure), you won't be able to block. More notably, you'll be hit as grounded as well. I'll add that to the top list. :)

[kileak]

Originally posted by PermaVirgin:

How do I do multiple cancels with chars who can float?
I see pros comboing multiple HPs in the air by using dash or float, I have no clue actually.
I know I can easily combo HP->dash->Hp but I can't dash afterwards anymore and float has too much of a "casting time".
HOw the hell do I combo multiple HPs with Ultron, Chun or cpt marvel for example? It drives me crazy.

General rule is that you're able to cancel a normal into an air dash like a special move.

So taking Ultron as an example, you would do the HP > dash > HP with the following input :

HP > direction + LP+HP > HP.

There's a trick to it though - You can actually use this shortcut instead if you want to do multiple HP > dash > HP in a row. When you're in a dash, pressing LP+HP would give you a HP, therefore :

HP > direction + LP+HP > LP+HP (HP comes out instead) > LP+HP (dash) > LP+HP (HP...)

If you've binded a button to LP+HP, you can just continuously mash that button to do the above; just make sure to start with a HP first.

Rules for these type of cancels are :
1. Since you're allowed only one airdash per jump (normal / super jump), you'll be able to cancel one air dash from a normal.
2. In flight/float, you can do this indefinitely until your flight runs out.

[kileak]

Originally posted by DarKnight_Doom:

Good thread!


I believe this video can also help a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eAt0J3PSFY

Yeah, I actually picked up a number of tips from this series of videos, just thought it might be helpful to consolidate it into a single thread for the folks here to refer to. :)

[kileak]

Originally posted by GrgoljBlaster:

Imagine if game bothered to explain any of this... Jesus, no wonder less and less people invest their time into fighting games.

Isn't that the beauty of fighting games...? I think I spend more time in Training Room trying to discover and explore a fighting game engine more than actually playing against other people. Not to mention the countless coins I threw into an arcade machine (when they existed in public) to practice combos against the AI.

Guilty Gear Xrd series DOES explain all of it's weird engine quirks in it's (admittedly very awesome) tutorial, to the extent of even explaining option selects.