Introduction
An up-and-coming jewelry designer from Italy who claims ancestry to ancient Greek warriors. As a child, she was inspired by a vision of the Colosseum in its prime. Today, she seeks glory with a smile—and an eye for beauty.
Marisa is a high-damage juggernaut with a variety of far-reaching normals. She excels once she gets her opponent into the corner where there's nowhere to go to escape her onslaught. She also has several moves with armor that allow her to bully through an opponent's attacks, including a unique ability to break Drive Impact attempts easily, as well has having slightly more health than most characters, allowing her to take more hits in a match.
Marisa is able to charge all of her heavy attacks and some of her specials by holding the associated button down. One of her shining normals in this regard is 5HP, a long range punch that leads to good damage, especially when used as a punish counter. Some of her other good normals are 5MP, 2MP, and 5HK, as these are all pokes that are either fast or have great range. Marisa's charged moves also deal significant chip to the opponent's drive bar if they are blocked, and some of them even recover quickly, allowing Marisa to continue pouring pressure on her opponent.
Her special moves are almost all used for getting in and staying in. Gladius is a chargeable straight punch with great damage and upper body armor, which allows her to quite literally punch right through her opponent's attacks. Phalanx is an armored superman punch that's great for going over fireballs or sneaking in after blockstrings to reset pressure, as all versions are plus on block. Quadriga is an extremely long range horizontal step kick with surprising safety, especially when spaced. The EX versions of Phalanx and Quadriga break right through armor, making it a bit difficult to drive impact these moves. She also has Dimachaerus, an uppercut and slam move which grants her a good knockdown to continue her pressure - and a combo extender with the HP version. Obviously, just striking isn't going to open a defensive opponent, which is why she has Scutum, an armored stance with access to an overhead, a low, and quite possibly her most frightening move, a command grab.
Although she has some of the most damaging combos in the game, Marisa's offense can be volatile. Charging a heavy attack can leave a large gap where an opponent can counter or jump away. Some of her moves have armor, but the armor does not protect against low-hitting attacks. She also has very few cancelable normals, and overall lacks tools that other characters have to keep defenders in check, often times relying on pure aggression to break through the opposing players confidence and forcing them into making a bad decision. In addition, her reversal options are extremely weak to throws; even though they are armored, none of them besides her Level 2 and Level 3 super arts have throw invulnerability. Her drive rush combos from lights are incredibly lackluster, that is to say she doesn't have anything other than repeated lights. Because of this, Marisa has a hard time abusing the system mechanics to aid in her offense.
While much of Marisa's offense is fairly straight forward and lacks consistency, she makes up for it in massive damage potential, having some of the highest damaging combos in the game, and a variety of other attacks that can quickly drain an opponent's health and/or drive bar, putting the fear of the gods into her adversaries.
If you like a big strong lady with big strong normals, or you just like hitting things really, really, REALLY hard, then put on your Spartan helmet and charge into battle with Marisa.
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Classic & Modern Versions Comparison
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Players to Watch
- Big Bird - (https://twitter.com/Bigbird_fgc)