Alright alright enough of this non sense, time for some real talk.
And by that I mean some THEORY CRAFT because we know all the characters in the base roster and what all the stones do.
This is my day 1 online scrub beater team that is easy to play on paper. No way is this top tier or meta team, at least I don't think it will be but just to give you an idea how team construction would work in the game.
Ghost Rider + Nemesis + Space
Now you are probably thinking "bbbbut Dahbomb, those characters are wack and Space stone sucks! You are going to get rushed down and zoned out all day!"
And you might be right but just hear me out for a little bit.
First lets tackle individual strengths of each of the characters and how they have changed from Marvel 3.
*Ghost Rider: The biggest change to Ghost Rider is that now Heartless Spire is a true normal meaning that it can be chained into via other normals (like you can do Ghost Rider's shoulder tackle and then immediately go into Heartless Spire) and cancel Spire into any special moves. This makes one of Ghost Rider's best moves into an insanely powerful rushdown deterrent move. If the move retains its projectile nullification ability then Ghost Rider can trade fireballs with it and then immediately punish with a long ranged whip special.
The other change that is noteworthy is that Ghost Rider can now chain into j.HK from his j.HP like regular characters. This is worth noting because j.HK in this game cause a type of ground bounce that you combo off of which means that if Ghost Rider tags people with j.HP at certain spaces he can convert into a combo by chaining into j.HK. This is a big deal for Ghost Rider as now he can get real damage from his main anti air/air to air move.
He has a new move that is perfect with the tag system but more on that later. In general his chain moves seem to be faster than before in terms of start up and especially recovery which is going to make it harder for people to punish him. Of course these things would not have been enough to make him a lot better in this game but of course these don't take into consideration the universal changes which I will get into after Nemesis.
*Nemesis: The biggest change to Nemesis in this game is that he has armor on most of his moves and not only does armor start up faster on his moves but it works differently. He can now absorb multiple smaller hits through his armor which means he should have the last say in most melee situations making him a powerhouse against rushdown when before someone like Wolverine would walk all over him. This is a big deal and now Nemesis is a proper big body that has good match ups against pure rushdown characters and teams.
The other change that is noteworthy is that his Rocket as a better angle option now and can be fired back to back faster. Of course perfect advancing guard kinda puts a damper on his rockets in general but if you are not predictable with your rockets you can squeeze them in. In addition, his noodles cause a knockdown off of an aerial hit which means that with tags he can get a combo off of them. That is a big deal because what is just something that Nemesis used to tickle with can now do some serious damage or at the very least set up a meaty situation for himself. Nemesis also has improved hypers especially his LVL3 (most LVL3s in the game are now instant activation) but that's not that important as the previous two changes.
Now let's talk about how the universal systems in Marvel Infinite benefit these characters:
Advancing Guard: Nemesis and Ghost Rider were never particularly good against characters who could zone and chip them out, especially high mobility ones. They were big body characters who would just sort of take stuff. Well with the perfect advancing guard system they can turn things on zoners quickly. Ghost Rider benefits 100% from this system as he himself presumably has no projectiles to reflect (maybe you can reflect Judgment Strike back at him but that remains to be seen and even if you could do it, it's not a big deal for him). Nemesis is hurt a bit by being able to reflect his rockets back at him but as long as he mixes them up and is not predictable, a mistimed push block can result in big damage taken from the rockets. But Nemesis still benefits a lot from this system as he is more powerful when he can reflect projectiles back at his opponents and then run behind it.
Chip Damage: Neither Nemesis nor Ghost Rider dealt significant chip damage in Marvel 3 so they benefit from this change. Their higher than normal HP pool means they can take a lot of punishment before they finally are able to get some hits in on the opponent with their noodles/whips. As far as zoning goes, there is now very little difference between Ghost Rider chucking chains versus another character throwing long ranged projectiles.
Chicken Guarding: Chicken guarding nerf helps out Ghost Rider in particular. Characters trying to chicken guard from a big distance away from Ghost Rider can get clipped by his sweep attack into a full combo. The nerfed chicken guard means it's also easier for Nemesis to clip people trying to jump back with his attacks (before it was harder for him because his normals were slower) and with characters less likely to jump back then can more easily predict command throws.
DUD jumping: Both characters have really big 360 covering hit box moves that benefit immensely from DUD jumping. Ghost Rider DUD jumping with j.HP is kinda obscene same for Nemesis's porcupine move in the air (what his j.H was in Marvel 3). These characters can now actually set up solo cross ups with it and put other characters in uncomfortable situations. At the very least, these low mobility characters benefit more from DUD jumping as this is a mobiltiy tool that they didn't have before. This also really benefits the way they try to zone which is jump up and do diagonal down noodles/whips.
Universal OTGs: While Ghost Rider had a good number of ways to OTGs, they were usually very redundant and not very noteworthy. However, now that Ghost Rider can do stuff like OTG with his long ranged sweep that changes up things a lot. Same for Nemesis who has very weak OTG game in Marvel 3, this now opens up huge combo avenues for him. This is a big buff to both of them but especially Ghost Rider who can now OTG from really far away spaces.
Damage scaling/Meter gain: The damage scaling in this game greatly benefits these characters. In Marvel 3 both Nemesis and Ghost Rider had very front loaded damage, they didn't have long combos which is one of the reasons they weren't good. Well in Marvel Infinite having more front loaded damage is good. It does mean they will have less meter gain if their combos are shorter but the good thing is that neither of them are particularly reliant on meter to begin with. This goes into the less meter gain thing as well as both of them function fine with low meter, in fact that's one of the reasons why they were both played on point. Both of them in Marvel Infinite are much more likely to use their meter for combo breakers or their LVL3s rather than for combo enders or utility purposes (unless they really need to like Nemesis' punch hyper).
Tag System: I personally think that these two characters more than most characters benefit a lot from the tag system. If I could point out one single thing that made these characters low tier in Marvel 3 then it's that these characters had really risky, high recovery unsafe moves with little reward to landing them (relatively speaking of course, you could still die to Ghost Rider clipping you from full screen if he TAC'd into Doom from it). Well in this game, risk is very relative and just about any move can be made safe on virtually on command. In these character's case, having these types of moves is a plus because now they make excellent assists!
Something like Ghost Rider's st.HP which hits twice and has a vacuum like effect is kinda whatever when it gets blocked and game losing if you whiff in Marvel 3. In Marvel Infinite, it would set up Nemesis to get in for a command throw mix up and if it whiffs then you can at least tag out to save yourself. Same for Nemesis and his armored moves. In Marvel 3, Nemesis' armor moves carried a big risk to them as they were almost all unsafe on block. Well now you get to punish rushdown with superior armor and make them safe with the tag system.
This idea applies to their long ranged normals as well. Suddenly Ghost Rider's j.S becomes a devastating poke tool that doubles as an assist which can suddenly lead into a full combo. Yeah that's right, a full screen instant overhead can lead into a 60% combo because this is Marvel. Before you had to set up an assist in advance to combo from something like jump back j.S but now you can tag on hit if you need to. Suddenly every time someone gets in on Ghost Rider and they have to take a Heartless Spire canceled into Flames or the new move, that's now a pinning assist that Ghost Rider can use to bring Nemesis in for command throw set ups.
Another issue these two characters had (Nemesis more than Ghost Rider) in Marvel 3 was that they had bad support DHCs. Nemesis had all very unsafe DHC in which is why he had to be played on point and Ghost Rider had unremarkable DHCs. Now both of these characters have devastating pinning hypers and if you do something like Nemesis' punch hyper then you have all day to do instant overheads with Ghost Rider's j.S to open them up.
But the main reason why I picked both of these characters is that they compliment each other well when it comes to converting from long distances. Normally these characters couldn't solo convert from their long limbs but with the help of their partners they can because if Nemesis hits something with a standing Noodles far away, Ghost Rider can be tagged in to convert from max distance into a full combo. This duo makes it so that you feel unsafe and uneasy at even large distances away. They are threatening far away but now they both have better options up close that lead into mix ups (even basic mix ups like DUD jumping into high/low) to deal with rushdown.
There are many more examples of how these two characters should work well off of each other. And now for the final piece of this puzzle.
Space Stone : I don't particularly think that this duo is married to this one stone, they should be able to play most other gems with the Mind stone being of lowest priority. I picked Space Stone in particular for a few reasons:
The main weakness this team is going to have is from high mobility/aerial characters who are going to be swooping around above you. Being able to manipulate their position while they are above and control where they land is a big deal for both of these characters. Nemesis can pull them in within command range and Ghost Rider can set them away. Remember that you can also double dip on this by tagging so you can double pull or push someone. And Space surge has a ton of armor which is good for both of these characters. The main application for Ghost Rider is manipulating an aerial character's position as they are coming down so that they can get tripped up by his sweep or get mixed up by j.S into Nemesis tag. Nemesis might want to pull them in range for his anti air grab.
The Space Storm is mostly beneficial for Nemesis as he would be able to safely go for command grab mix ups when they are in cube. You could even have a cheesy option select of Nemesis going for anti air grab and then you tag into Ghost Rider Penance Stare if the anti air grab misses. Of course the defensive aspect of the cube is great for Ghost Rider too as he can safely poke people who are in the cube. Again the Space Storm would've been better with two grapplers but Nemesis alone makes the cube worth using.
The other stones didn't seem particularly great for this duo. Maybe with Time stone you can do some crazy combos, rocket barrage stuff and the air dash is definitely needed for both of the characters. Reality stone is just a general great stone to use for both of those characters but they don't particularly above Reality stone versus most of the rest of the cast. Mind stone is the worst because these characters don't really have supers that you want to be spamming. Power stone has a very good surge for this duo but the advance guard negation isn't particularly great for both of them as they aren't pixie/rushdown type characters. Soul stone is just too niche at this stage to comment on but the surge is very useful for both of the characters as the Soul surge has good range and both Nemesis/Ghost Rider could force a game of attrition with their high HP pool.
Weaknesses of the team: I think the main weakness of the team is going to be dealing with high mobility characters or characters who just spam a lot of stuff from the air like Zero. Granted they are in a better position to deal with that sort of stuff (less space in general both horizontal and vertical which means that their limbs are more likely to stuff other characters) but it's still going to be annoying for them. I think beam characters are also going to be an issue as aside from maybe Heartless Spire, this team doesn't have a way to contest beam-like projectiles. They would have to play with noodles/whips to interrupt beam specials.
The other main weakness of the team is that if one character dies then the team is done. These characters are extremely reliant on the tag system and if one dies that really cripples the other because then you are just playing a slightly better Marvel 3 low tier character. You are stuck playing characters with high recovery moves and low mobility trying to mount a comeback with a stone that isn't really the best for comebacks.
These weaknesses makes me think that one of the character gets replaced with a more all rounder type character like Ultron who can deal with stuff that both of these characters may not be able to as well. It's probably not a great idea to have a team that specializes heavily on a few aspects and shares weaknesses... best to have variety in strengths/weaknesses so the duo can shore up each other's weaknesses. But as long as you have the tag system I think this duo can do that just not solo.
So there you have it, my case for this team. Even if this does end up being a bad team, I know that this team is going to do some damage online because it has the perfect storm of stuff that historically does really well in an early online environment (easy to execute characters, high HP, front loaded damage, armor, long pesky normals that you can spam).
