Justin Wong's Secret Plan to Win EVO
Watch the video first and then come back here:
This video started off with a pretty different concept from the final product. Originally, it wasn't going to be centered around Justin Wong at all. The title was going to be something like How 95% of Marvel Players Lost to Morrigan at Character Select. The parts about why the Morrigan/Doom/Vergil team is so good and the five main strategies to beat it would still be the same. But instead of using Justin Wong as a positive example of how to use the strategies and win, I was going to look at some of the players who struggled against Morrigan and analyze why.
I don't think this would've gone over very well.
People would (rightly!) point out the fact that I'm a nobody who hasn't won anything, so who am I to judge. I don't think this would discredit my points/analysis or anything, but I have a tough time being that antagonistic, even though the internet seems to like that sort of thing. I think the spiciest title I considered was Why RayRay Almost Never Beat Chris G.
Luckily, nobody reads these posts, so I can talk about it a bit here. If you've already watched the video, you'll know that I lay out five strategies to deal with Morrigan/Doom/Vergil. I allude to it in the video, but I'll state it plainly:
Morrigan/Doom/Vergil is an end-game team and possibly the best team in the game. It is not possible to guarantee a win by picking a specific team to beat it. However, it is 100% possible to lose to Morrigan/Doom/Vergil at character select.
I spent the better part of a decade playing and spectating Marvel 3, and it always blew me away how a bunch of excellent players stuck to their guns and played their main team into Morrigan/Doom/Vergil, even though it was garbage against it. I wasn't the only one to notice this!
Since I already threw RayRay under the bus, let's look at his main team as an example. RayRay mains Magneto/Doom/Sentinel—a great team. Playing that team, RayRay made top 8 at multiple majors, including EVO. That being said, I think it struggles against Morrigan/Doom/Vergil. Again, my five strategies vs. Morrigan/Doom/Vergil are:
Maul: Pressure hard and try to land a hit during the opening gambit. If you can't, keep up the pressure and find a hit quickly.
Dark anchor: Use a strong anchor character you can exploit meter and level three x-factor to reverse OCV.
Stall: Evade fireballs until astral vision runs out to deny Morrigan another activation.
Fight Straight Up: What it says on the tin.
DHC Momentum: Spend two bars to DHC between two characters in a way that lets you pressure Morrigan.
What can RayRay's team do? Magneto can stall pretty well. He can use flight and plink dashing to avoid fireballs and missiles. He can throw some Magnetic blasts to negate a few fireballs. Once astral is over, he can fight back against Morrigan. He can use his beam to punch through fireballs and snipe Morrigan/Doom on the ground. Once there aren't astral fireballs coming from behind him, he can call Doom beam assist to gain some momentum and try to move in.
The problem is that there is no backup plan. If Magneto is about to die, RayRay can DHC from Magneto to Doom, but this is just going to leave Doom at full screen with no meter. At this point, Doom can stall out astral, but this doesn't really get him anywhere. There's no way for Doom to ever re-establish momentum and bring the fight to Morrigan.
If Magneto just dies early, RayRay will likely have two bars for Doom/Sentinel, but there's no way to really spend that meter and bring the fight to Morrigan. RayRay basically has to win the point war, stalling out the first astral activation, playing clean, and then landing a hit on Morrigan and killing her. This doesn't guarantee victory (Doom/Vergil is still a very real threat), but the opposite scenario, where Mags goes down early, very nearly guarantees defeat.
We can contrast that with Filipino Champ's Magneto/Dormammu/Doom team. As another point Magneto team, at match start, it can do the same thing RayRay's team does (stall astral and fight Morrigan straight up), but then it has some very important additional options. If astral isn't active, Magneto can usually find a DHC from magnetic shockwave into Dormammu's stalking flare. This will clear the screen and force Morrigan to block the stalking flare. With that momentum, Dormammu can fight Morrigan quite well. He can keep forcing her to block pillars while calling assists to keep control of the screen.
If Magneto dies on the Magneto/Doom/Sentinel team, Doom/Sentinel is almost a lost cause against Morrigan. If Magneto dies on the Magneto/Dormammu/Doom team, Dormammu/Doom still has a pretty real chance against Morrigan/Doom/Vergil. Chris G ran into both players at EVO 2014, so you can watch for yourself:
I don't really know how to end this post. I guess that up through Marvel 3's original EVO run (ending at EVO 2017), this story stayed the same—lots of players losing to Morrigan/Doom/Vergil at character select. I hope this doesn't happen at EVO 2023.