UMVC3 Heroes and Heralds Casual Deck - Mephisto

First of all, I'm just an Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 player, so don't expect any expert opinion here. I'm just sharing the fun stuff I've learned while playing the Heroes and Heralds mode. :)

For now, I'm sticking with the Mephisto-themed decks, as it has served me fine so far, since it fits perfectly with my own playing style in UMVC3, which is basically flinging Hyper Combos as much as I can.

BTW, in case you're not aware: levelled card effects have at most 4 levels; levelled card effects can be stacked if multiple cards have the same effect. So an effect with [Lv.MAX] – aka [Lv.4] -- can be just from one card, two cards (Lv.2+Lv.2), or all three cards (Lv.2 + Lv.2 + Lv.1).

Also, there is only one main card per deck. The main card uses the Primary/Main effects, while the other two cards use their respective Secondary effects.

So without further ado, here's the Mephisto card itself:

Mephisto

Mephisto - Rank A, Marvel Primary Effects: Increases HC Gauge at start of the match [Lv.3] HC Gauge refills automatically [Lv.2] Secondary Effects: The length of instant attacks will be increased [Lv.1] Increases HC Gauge at start of the match [Lv.2]

As you can tell, decks using Mephisto are focused on one thing: maximizing the HC Gauge. Not saying that this is the de facto card for this type of deck, but it is at the very least a good starting point. And you can get this card pretty early on – at least I did, so I was able to play with it quite extensively.

So here are some decks based on Mephisto as the main card.

Mephisto-Dual Surfers

HC Gauge Madness. This deck does one thing and one thing only: ensure that your HC Gauge gets filled up all the time.

The Silver Surfer card secondary abilities include HC Gauge Auto-refill [Lv.1] (exactly the same as one of Mephisto's effects) and increases speed of assists vitality recovery [Lv.2].

So you end up with the following effects:

• Increases HC Gauge at start of match [Lv.3] (Mephisto)
• HC Gauge automatic recovery [Lv.MAX] (Mephisto + 2xS.Surfers)
• Increases speed of assists vitality recovery [Lv.MAX] (2xS.Surfers)

Breaking it down further:

Increases HC Gauge at start of match [Lv.3] – basically means that your HC Gauge is at Level 4 at the start of the match. How could this be a bad thing? :)

HC Gauge automatic recovery [Lv.MAX] – you get one full HC Gauge level every 6 seconds or so. That's if you're just standing. I like free stuff :)

Increases speed of assists vitality recovery [Lv.MAX] – the stacked bonus effect from the two Silver Surfers helps to keep your other characters alive. However, it can only recover up to the red recoverable health bar – it's not a full-blown regenerator card effect.

With this deck, your HC Gauge is almost never empty. However, it does practically nothing else. Particularly, you can run into big trouble with Regenerator-Reflector decks, if you can't dispatch of their characters immediately.

Mephisto-Grandmaster-Silver Surfer

In a nutshell, here's what the deck does:

• Increases HC Gauge at start of match [Lv.3] (Mephisto)
• HC Gauge automatic recovery [Lv.3] (Mephisto + S.Surfer)
• Increases speed of assists vitality recovery [Lv.2] (S.Surfer)
• When 3+ HC Gauge and on the ground: Vitality refills automatically [Lv.3] (Grandmaster)

I just got the Grandmaster card recently – apparently, you have to play as "Heralds" to get this; now I got 3 Grandmasters in like 5 matches or so. I'm thinking of building another deck around it. Anyway, bottomline is that I got a lot of new cards after playing the other side. Need to confirm this later.

One of the issues with the first deck is that you don't have any way to recover vitality. Thus, you get twice the disadvantage against decks that regenerate and reflect damage.

Anyway, by I traded one Silver Surfer for the Grandmaster and I ended up with a deck that regenerates a lot of HC Gauge and vitality. HC Gauge and assist vitality recovery has been slowed a bit, but still at a decent rate at Lv3 and Lv2, respectively. But you still have the bonus HC Gauge at the start and you now have a conditional vitality regenerator – the condition being you need 3 HC Gauges or more and you need to be on the ground. Depending on your style, these conditions may or may not suit you. I just chose this since it works fine for  me.

Other Combinations and Tweaks

There are several cards which I haven't experimented on yet with Mephisto.

Lin reduces the usage rate of HC Gauge [Lv.1]. I wonder how that works with a full HC regenerator deck. Also with cards that use HC Gauge when hit/activated like the Super Armor cards (e.g. Juggernaut, Francisca von Karma, Blodia, Colossus)

Dr. Wily causes attack power to increase proportionally to the amount of HC Gauge stored.

Claire Redfield lets you recover vitality after an Advancing Guard, at the cost of HC Gauge. However, you take more chip damage.

Devilot is an interesting card (successful Delayed Hyper Combo absorbs vitality [Lv3] and HC Gauge [Lv3]), as I rely on Delayed Hyper Combos a lot as well.

Well that's all I got for now. :)