I've recently wanted to start getting into fighting games, it's what I've excelled in my genres and I'd like to nourish that skill. I know pretty basic stuff in UMVC3. My team consists of: Wolverine, Akuma and Zero. I picked these characters because I like them and I can do the most with them, the most being several basic combos. I'm not entirely sure where to start, I practice often in training mode, copying combos and seeing what each character in my team can do. I then play casually on public matches. I just really want to get better and understand complicated parts of the game, mentioning this, I'm not very familiar with fighting game 'slang' or terminology if you will, so please be wary of that. Any help/criticizm will be very much appreciated.

I'm fairly new to umvc3 as well, but I watch streams and stuff. Your team looks very strong from what I know. Training mode is a great place to start. What I did when I got the game was I went through each characters moveset, tried doing as many missions as possible, THEN I jumped into training mode to see which characters I might want to delve into further. Different people have different approaches, but more training mode is never a bad thing, as long as you know what to practice on (or what things you want to try out).

There's lots of help online, if you know where to look. Good places to start are shoryuken.com forums and eventhubs. Learn the basics, experiment on your own, ask questions on the forums and someone will probably answer your questions.

There's also lots of stuff on youtube by various people. The tutorials by Maximillian are entertaining to watch. Sorry I can't be more specific, because as I said I'm still fairly new at umvc3 and this kind of game.

From what I've found, combo videos aren't particularly useful unless you can understand why you might want to do a certain combo instead of another combo (for positioning, meter, damage etc.) Or maybe it's just a flashy combo. So keep that in mind when watching combo videos. Keeping it simple is okay.

Regarding team building, I've found this questionnaire helpful, it really makes you think of your team as a whole instead of just 3 individual characters. There's ~48 characters in the game so it's okay to experiment with team order, characters and assists.

@AURON570: Wow, everything you've reccomended I've just recently came across. Who could've guessed. Anyway, you've helped open my mind to new approaches and I understand that you are also new to the game and couldn't be specific. Thanks for the advice.

@razorzxz: I'm guessing you're playing on Xbox so I won't be able to spar with you, but I fancy myself to be a bit of an MvC fanatic (just look at the Top Editors on the left o_O), so if you have any questions you can feel free to ask me either in PM or just @ replying me in this thread.

Looking at your team, I have a few thoughts. Wolverine and Akuma are generally low execution characters. They have very strong combos that are fairly easy to do consistently, and regardless of positioning there isn't going to be very much variation. Zero, on the other hand, is one of the hardest characters to play successfully simply because you have to be constantly charging his buster and he is very position dependent. On the bright side, he has extremely high damage potential and will be able to TOD most characters if you can master him. He's also an asshole, I hate fighting Zero players.

Your team is very aggro, they want to be in your face all the time, which is generally a good thing since UMvC3 is a game that favors the aggressor. Unfortunately your entire team is also very squishy which means one mistake is all it will take for a majority of teams to kill off one of your characters entirely, even at full health. The key to your success is going to be your ability to maintain safe pressure, staying in your opponents face without leaving yourself unnecessarily open to counter-attacks. Once you some strong combos that you can perform consistently with each character, you should start focusing your training mode time on developing a smart offense.

And of course, keep playing and keep owning / getting owned and you will start seeing results.

If you want to learn the terminology and fighter slang then you can do so from Eventhubs. Fundamentals are everything in fighting games, so you'd need to know your spacing, what moves are safe and unsafe and how you can recognize and punish unsafe moves when an opponent uses them. Someone mentioned watching streams, and I usually go to Frame-Advantage to see how a particular character is used in high level play and try to adapt that to my strategy. That leads to strategy: you gotta have a plan when going into a fight. Do you want to rush or do you want to keep away. Other than that, it's a lot of trial and error. Practice your team and feel them out. Don't be afraid to learn someone new if it'll benefit your team. Also when you do play online, play to learn and not play to win. Keeping that in mind will keep the frustration levels down, at least for me.

Work on your curly mustache.

@StarvingGamer: Thanks for the advice but I exchanged Zero for Ammy with the cold star assist.

Watch streams, video, whatever.

Seriously, the most important thing to learn in fighters is how to handle all other characters and all other tactics. Learning combos and your characters is just the first, basic step. If you keep watching streams you'll naturally learn fighting game slang and the metagame and whatnot.