How To Choose Your Marvel VS Capcom 2 Team Composition

The wait is finally over, and The Marvel vs Capcom 2 Fighting Collection is finally here. No more will fans be forced to play through Fightcade nor will they have to spend hundreds of dollars on a PlayStation 3 with the game loaded onto it, as we now have a fully functional, online version across all major platforms (plus a physical version coming this November.) The fighting game community is abuzz with excitement and while many new players may not have been able to experience the initial hype, now is the best time to get into the game since its last re-release over a decade ago. However, here comes the hard part of starting every fighter, choosing a main. While the process is usually tricky by itself, Marvel vs Capcom 2 makes it even more difficult as you not only need to pick one or two characters, but three for your team. A feat that can be incredibly daunting with its roster of 56 playable characters. Fortunately, we have a guide that can help you choose what style of team sounds good before you commit to your trio.

To do this, we are mostly going to separate characters into two categories. The first is characters that you will be fighting as primarily (most commonly referred to as mains) and the second are characters that you will primarily be using their assist attacks. Fighters can be further divided into multiple categories such as main/anchors, secondary, or batteries (which we will explain all of these later). Assists are characters that can function incredibly well when they aren’t being controlled by the player, but rather through their character specific assist moves. While most games solely judge a character based on their damage or combo opportunities, Marvel vs Capcom 2 also judges a character’s use based upon the support they provide for another character. Take Captain Commando for example. Captain Commando is one of the weaker characters in the games thanks to his limited combo potential and unsafe move set. However, his anti-air assist is a high-damage special, granting him invincibility while unleashing an attack that goes from the bottom to the top of the screen. This makes Captain Commando a solid character for those who don’t want three mains, but mostly want a character that can support their actual main(s). So now, let’s talk about those types of people, specifically those that only want one main.

Team Composition One (one fighter, two assists)

This is a team that is very solid for beginners as they only need to learn one character. By choosing to go this route, you need to worry less about how your team will compliment each other, and instead get to decide the entire team based around one core character. Furthermore, you don’t need to worry about how well your main’s assists operate as your primary goal is to keep them in the field for as much as possible. Dhalsim is a very good example of this type of character. He has some of the best normals in the game thanks to his long-reaching limbs, and with both fireballs and a teleport, his moveset compliments both keep-away or rush-down style players. However, his assists are not the best and while using an assist can always be risky, Dhalsim’s weak defence makes this especially true as your opponent could get lucky, and then choose to spend some meter to take him out. That being said, choosing this option is a great way to dip your toes into the game as you don’t need to worry about learning too many complex combos and characters, focusing all of your time on your favourite. However, the major downside of this is that if your main is lost, your hope of winning the match may soon follow as you’re now stuck with two characters that you maybe aren’t as comfortable handing the reins to. It’s an intimidating thought in a game as chaotic as MVC2, so maybe you are a little more interested in a backup. In that case, you’re going to want to look at our next team composition.

Team Composition Two (two fighters, one assist)

This is when we start to get a little more cerebral as we now need to decide what role our two fighters have. Will we have one of them be a main and one be a secondary? Or instead will we have one be an anchor while the other is a battery? The difference between these two are very important. The purpose of a main and a secondary is pretty self-explanatory. You have your main (which is the character that you practice and are best with), and then you have your secondary, whom you use as a backup. Reasons for this could be straightforward such as your main has died and you don’t want to take on your opponents with your assist, or more methodical as your main isn’t a good matchup against your opponent’s character, so you want to swap them out. Anchors and batteries, however, are where things get interesting.

Anchors are essentially your mains; they are the characters that you expect to do most of your damage with. Batteries are characters that of course do damage, but their main utility is actually to build up meter for your Anchor. This can show how vital team composition can be in a way besides assists as some characters reach their full potential when they have high meter. Cable is viewed as one of the best characters in the game predominantly thanks to his supers. Air Hyper Viper Beam is regarded as one of the best supers in the game thanks to its utility and damage output; and while Cable himself is still a good character without it, meter turns him from good to broken. In a less meta example, Hayato is considered a mediocre character. He may be fun and have some good damage, but he is also risky and in order to get the most out of him, you need to have plenty of meter so he can pull off his supers. By including a character like Storm or Cyclops who are known for their meter-building assets, they help reach both characters’ potential, regardless of where that potential lands them. 

When it comes to deciding an assist, you can either do one of two things. The first is to include one that works well regardless of the team (like as mentioned earlier, Captain Commando). The second is to use one that specifically compliments your main. However, that never means the assist needs to be a bad character overall, as that also leads us to our last style of team composition.

Team Composition Three (all fighters)

This is the most difficult team composition to pull off, but it also could have the most advantages as its primary focus is to ensure no matter what character is out, it’s someone you know you have a fighting chance with. While this team composition can ignore assists to focus on individual strength, many pro players work their team around to include characters that function well both fighting or assisting. Players who choose to go with this style often include noteworthy combos (such as Strider and Doom) and then add on an extra character (like Sentinel) who functions incredibly well on their own. Along with this benefit, many of the strategies and assists of the previous composition still apply. You could have a character that functions well on their own be a valid secondary, or you could instead implement a battery to help out your other two characters. Just like the previous composition, you do have options. The main issue with this team is that by choosing characters that you play as well, they may have some major weaknesses that can’t be covered thanks to possible weak assists from your other characters. So yes, you do always have a fighting chance, but maybe that chance could be improved with the addition of someone whose specialty is to assist rather than to fight.

So there you have it, three ways of deciding your team in Marvel vs Capcom 2. While each version has pros and cons, the only correct way to decide your team is which one you win with (or have fun with I suppose). While this piece may have been a guide for general ideas, this is no means a rule book as to what you have to do. Feel free to experiment for yourself, starting from your favorite heroes/video game characters, then go from there. 

Or just choose Sentinel, Cable, and Storm like many high level players do, that works too.