Niji Superfan

Well, I know they removed Ermac's ability to combo off a 2 2 or 3 1 2, so it wouldn't surprise me if they took some shit from Kabal. Cyber Subs lost the ability to combo off a 1 1 1 as well, from what I heard, though I never used that in the first place. It's really not much of a nerf, considering 2 1 is hit confirmable into better things and 1 1 1 is not. So, I took a good, long look at myself the other day, and I realized that I'm not playing to my greatest strengths with Sub Zero. As someone pointed out, I play fighting games very, very aggressively. I don't let up for one minute; I rush your shit down, and if you won't give me an opening, I'll fucking take one. Now, on one hand, Subs can do that. He's the Ryu of MK9: He has offense, he has defense, he has space control, he has it all. On the other hand, his offense isn't quite up there with someone like, say, Kung Lao. ...Or fucking Cyber Sub Zero. While I was in my totally sweet introspection stage, I realized I need to start putting some real work into my Cyber Subs. He's my third best character, but truthfully, I've just never pushed him as far as he can go. I never hit confirmed my 2 1s into freezes for maximum damage, I never learned practical combos for situations outside of just midscreen and corner, I never learned when to chuck iceballs or how best to place my divekicks. Sure, I win the majority of the time I use him, but whenever I DO lose, I just go "Good job, you fucking idiot, this wouldn't have happened if you just stopped being so lazy and really learned the character." So, you know what? I'm doing that. I'm learning the character. I've played Cyber Subs almost exclusively over the past few days, and already, I feel like I've improved by leaps and bounds. I get a solid 40% off every single opening, and it's ridiculous how fast I'm breaking down the kids I'm playing. This is definitely the sort of aggressive character that plays to my strengths, even better than human Subs does. At this rate, he may very well be my new main, and Subs might just be a very reliable second. We'll see if I'm still singing the same tune a few weeks from now. ...Oh, and I also uncovered this. This is the most terrifying goddamn thing I've ever seen, and I saw The Ring when I was thirteen.

No, I really have no problem with Street Fighter. I respect it on the basis that it's a classic and it's essentially the standard all 2D fighting games will be held to, for years to come. I said it was bad to troll you once when you were being really annoying with your fanboyism.

...Wow. Either Brady's losing his mind, or NRS really went overboard on Skarlet. I really should've gone hidden cursor, yeah. I don't know why it didn't occur to me, I think I was just too tired. I usually do when people start trying to do this counterpicking bullshit.

Wow. Magnus likes Megaman X3, AND he thinks Street Fighter is shitty? I wonder if he has good taste in anything?

Oh dude, the best part? This guy was bragging about how he beat my Sub Zero with Skarlet, once, and "I just got her". Well, neverminding that it took him four tries to beat me once, just barely. Neverminding that he counterpicked my Noob with Smoke because he knows that's an 8-2 (it's literally Noob's worst matchup, REO and Brady agree), which he still just barely won. Neverminding all of that, he told me Liu Kang was a 4-6 with Sub Zero. Fuck. That. How the hell does that make any sense? Liu Kang has a stupid-safe projectile which he can alternate high, low and air. He has some solid anti-air to stop jump-ins, as well as a parry for the same purpose. The ice ball is too slow to catch him on a projectile trade, so you're basically limited to EX freeze to actually catch him. You have to burn one bar just for an ATTEMPT to get in and do your one combo, at which point he's just going to use his brainless 50/50s or his glorious 3 1 2 string. This guy tried a host of characters on me, none of which could stop my Subs. Whenever he did pick Liu Kang, all he did was spam fireballs and jumpkick me whenever I tried to get in. The fact that this works at all is unbelievable. I knew he was a TYM scrub, by the way, because he had the gall to say "Actually, Smoke vs. Noob is 6-4". When you need to defend your character choices by sliding numbers around, you know you aren't playing an honest game.

...Wait. 2-8 in THEIR favor, or hers? Generally, when you say x character is a 2-8 with y character, the first number represents the first character, but I REALLY doubt Sub Zero is an 8-2 with her. I could really see it being a 2-8 for him, albeit not that extreme. If she is the second number in these matchups, I really hope REO is just trolling (as he's known to do). I'm still kind of waiting on Brady's input, because while I don't agree with everything he says, he does tend to be more levelheaded in his assessments than REO is. It's a good thing I learned to play a mean Noob, because I've REALLY come to despise Liu Kang, by the way. He has got to be the most effortless character in the game. I had some guy go through a rotation of characters trying to beat my Sub Zero, and the only way he was able to do it was by turtling with fireball spam and then jumpkicking me whenever I got in. If he got up close, he'd just do that retarded 3 1 2 combo, where you do that three times in a row for the most stupidly-easy 29% in the game. He then had the gall to brag. Best part: As soon as I went to Noob, he counterpicked with Smoke, because he knows that's an 8-2 for Smoke. I didn't call this guy out afterward because whatever, you run into this shit online, but the fact that he thinks he's hot shit for this is just depressing. Also, while I wholeheartedly agree that Sektor's flamethrower defies all logic and reason (the kind of shit it does should've been a weird telekinetic move for Ermac, or at least some kind of tractor beam shit if it was kept on a cyborg). That said, Sektor is a hard fucking character to play at a high level, because his only way in without some kind of setup is with a F4 or 1 2 B1, both of which have piss for range. His mixup requires him to be in his stance, and so a setup is required. He's definitely a potent character and he's been proven to be competitively viable, but no fucking way is he the easy street. ...Of course, he can also rack up 40% off a rudimentary BnB if he has even one bar, so uh... That's pretty fucking nuts too.

I want in on this raffle to get an ACV beta key. Niji said I should post that here.

Apparently, you didn't see this. A lot of pro players have called him out on this pretentious shit, and they have every right to rub it in his face when he gets bodied at Marvel 3.

H-HILBERT -- Fine. C-EKHAZAR -- Fine, if unoriginal. A-LATONA -- Completely and utterly useless, no matter what the circumstance or the justification. Bottom-tier part. L-WHITEGLINT -- Decent, but 63AN is a better fit. AALIYAH might even benefit this design more, pending an arm swap. FCS-JUDITH -- Fine. GEN-JUDITH -- Fine, though you could easily go heavier than this. There's no reason you can't have the AALIYAH or SS-GL. MB-VIRTUE -- Makes sense on a blader, I guess. BB-LATONA -- Decent, if unremarkable. SB-SCHEDAR -- I don't see the point to this at all. OB-JUDITH: NON-AA -- You don't need to specify that this is non-AA. KRB-JUDITH is the AA variant. RA-ELTANIN -- I don't think this is worth the sacrificed arm slot, but it'll suffice. LA-MARVE -- Solid, but inflexible. More on this below. RB-MP-O901 -- This could be better. LB-TRAVERS -- So could this. SH-061ANRM -- You need flares. Badly. I don't even know what your tunes are, and I don't understand why people don't just post the name of all the stats they tuned for simplicity's sake. I'll just ignore them altogether. Alright, I can really only take a "hybrid" so seriously. Blades are just a cheesy gimmick weapon in FA, where you either don't connect or connect for half your target's AP. Regardless, this AC's weakest link is its arm part: LATONA is useless, pure and simple. You'd hardly be any slower with the TELLUS, and even if that was an issue for you, there's no reason you couldn't get by on the 63AN. The LATONA's merits are few and far in between, and none of them can't be easily accomplished by a good midweight arm. Hell, the SOBRERO is probably a more worthwhile arm than LATONA. The MARVE is a solid weapon, but you really have no options here. You have a missile, a low ammo rifle, and what? A grenade? This isn't consistent. You need a more flexible rifle, capable of dealing damage from multiple ranges. The 47AN comes to mind here. The TRAVERS is a bad fit in general. Simply put, you don't have the raw design strength to get away with such an inconsistent weapon, because you have nothing to fall back on if it fails you. Your options are basically going up to a reliable missile or using the KAMAL to catch people rushing in, though you still can't really go on the offense with it. It WOULD, however, give you a free blade opening. I don't even really remember which missile that is on the back, but I want to say it's one of the spreads. Really, a missile's a missile. Stick the ones that work, try to keep your weight/drain low and be on your way. I WOULD recommend a VTF to give you stronger rushdown, since you could joust with it and it would actually support your MARVE fairly well, but that's just me. The SCHEDAR is kind of a poor fit. I really don't know why you wouldn't use the LATONA over this, and you could easily do better than that. I tend to just put the HOLOFERNES on everything whenever I can get away with it, but LATONA should still be fine here. Beyond that, there's really not much to say. To me, this is just an unremarkable AC with an ELTANIN on it, and that seems to be all that really sets it apart. It's not bad, just... Not groundbreaking.

See, I really have no problem watching him take Noob over Subs because Brady plays a really interesting Noob. He's the only Noob player I've seen at a pro level who goes on the rushdown. Hell, he's the only rushdown Noob I've seen that's not me, and I have around a thousand online matches. I'd actually really like to see Brady bring out Ermac sometime. From the bit of Ermac footage I saw from him, he looks like he knows how to play a mean Ermac, he just chooses not to. I think it'd be pretty interesting to see Ermac played on offense.

Well fuck me, and here I thought I was the only one calling him Keanu. Holy fucking tits was that ever a cool trailer, though. I can't wait to play Kenshi, and I say this as someone who has never given even half a fuck about him. He always struck me as a generic weeaboo stereotype with a bland character design and moves ripped straight from my homeboy Ermac. MK9 is flipping that shit on its ear. Somewhere along the lines, someone finally thought "You know, we have this fucking guy with telekinesis and a NINJA SWORD, why aren't we doing cooler shit with it", and it's about goddamn time. I have a feeling he's going to be like a more offense-oriented Ermac: Good players will have to work their ass off to make him impenetrable, and bad players will cry and weep about how how he's a "cheap character". I call this "The Noob Saibot Clause". Honestly, I've probably put in at least an hour of practice with every character I've picked up. This game is just oddly captivating to me, I don't know why. All the characters feel so distinct. I love Street Fighter for its elegant simplicity, but like, I just don't get that. You have a few standout characters I think are really cool, i.e. Abel and Seth, but for the most part, everyone feels cut from the mold. No one has interesting attacks like a projectile parry or a bomb/net trap or a human cannonball a--Okay, wait, they do have that. Still, look at Guy, Sakura, Sean, Yun, Yang. How different are all of these characters, really? Guy has been one of my mains since Alpha because I was a huge Final Fight fan, but like... The differences feel shallow. It's like I'm really playing Pokemon. I shit you not, I have something like 30 hours total playtime with Subs, and god knows how many with the rest. Probably something similarly fucked up. Brady's saying Noob is his main? That's a new one. I did hear he lead with Noob at ECT though, so perhaps it's true. He may just play Subs because he performs better, who knows. I'm still really intrigued by the idea that he'll be playing Kung Lao at Evo, though. Brady's really in a catch 22 situation with the community right now, and I think it's kind of unfair. If he doesn't take first with Kung Lao at Evo, people are going to go "hahahahah, he picked the best character in the game and he still can't win, what a scrub". If he does take first with Kung Lao, it's going to be "hahahahah, he had to tier whore just to win, what a scrub". It's okay when Justin Wong does it, though! Hell, I had some guy on GFAQs tell me "BRADY'S NOT THAT GREAT, I'VE NEVER SEEN HIM DO SOMETHING THE PLAYERS ON XBOX LIVE DON'T DO". Uh, probably because the shit that these people are doing came straight from him, or some other high-level player if not. I've been on "Live" since the game came out, I've listened to the fanbase, I've watched the combo videos. I can tell you right now that the face of the community changed drastically after Powerup, and why? It was the first MK9 major to be recorded. It was the first time people could go watch high level play on the internet to get a feel for how the pros were playing their characters. Art Sanchez is a guy who's been in the fighting game community a long time, from Street Fighter to Marvel to MK9, and even he admitted that most of the strategies adopted by high level players originated from Brady. I do think he goes a little overboard on the stream monsters, but given their arbitrary all-give-no-take attitude towards him, I can't even blame the guy. I guess I can empathize because I dictated the metagame of AC4 much the same as he's dictated the metagame of MK9, and I had a lot of the same: "WHATEVA MANG, YO MECHS AIN'T THAT GREAT, I SEEN LOTSA GUYS IN RANKED USIN DAT MECH". Gee, did you ever wonder where it came from?

B2 3 hits, but it's inconsistent in the patch. I just stick to B2. I can still get a solid 30% off that. It's not that I don't see why Kung Lao is good, because his outstanding appeal is that he has no real weaknesses. There's nothing in the game he can't do. He can zone, he can rushdown (god, can he ever), he can play the air game, the list goes on. The issue I have is that he just feels... Dull. I'm going to learn to play a good Kung Lao just to say I've done it, and I'm doing the same with Raiden (I'm seriously doing this just because I picked up Shang and I want the option to turn into him if I need to counter a bad matchup). I've always really liked Raiden and I played him a lot in MK4, MK5 and MK6, it's just... He's so boring here. Teleport. Repeat the same cheesy-ass strings. Superman occasionally. Feel dignity slipping away. Regardless, he's another one of those characters I'm just going to learn. Jax, Cage and Reptile are all on the list as well, but those will come much later. Sub Zero is the only character I feel like I've mastered, with Ermac coming pretty close and Cyber Subs feeling... Perfected. I'm still trying to master Cyrax and Sektor, and Noob is really working his way up there. I'll probably move on to Jax and Reptile once I get Kung Lao, Raiden and Shang down, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I've been kind of let down by Brady, but I'm still pulling for him just because he's a Subs player. I mean, it's not like he got completely bodied, he made top twelve at a major. I suppose I just figured he'd place top three at the very least, especially considering REO and Michaelangelo were up there. Apparently, he says he's going to play Kung at Evo, which should really be interesting. I'm disappointed that he won't be playing Subs, but I really want to see this. According to PerfectLegend, Brady actually does play a really good Kung Lao, and I wouldn't judge his Kung by the Chris G matchup: Brady made the mistake of changing characters too many times. It's simple fighting game logic: If you change characters from your main for anything other than a bad matchup, you're not going to do as well. Going down to a character you don't play as well is never going to benefit you unless they can perform better against your opponent's character, and that just wasn't the case here. When asked about what happened, Brady said he sort of fell out of it. His exact words were something like "I had an answer for what he was doing and I stopped doing it", which you can honestly kind of see if you look at the videos. In either case, he made a huge mistake in going to Noob and Kung. PerfectLegend made the same mistake at PDP. You just don't do that, especially if you're shaken.

I don't know why more people don't seem to get that you can go in with Smoke, you just need to spam sweep until you can manipulate them into blocking low. As soon as you see a low guard, you have a fast overhead + smoke ball to punish it for 30%. That overhead is almost as fast as some jabs are, and you can chain the smoke ball into it with minimal effort. Like, this is a character with the fastest sweep in the game and an overhead that's just as quick; those are all the mixups you need. Smoke's standout quality is that he can abuse his smoke cloud to build meter like no one else in the game can. You can use this to get in or out, and if you turtle with it, you can rack up a full meter in no time. Considering just about all of Smoke's EX moves are fucking solid and an X-ray with a wide range of applications, this is a huge asset. I can easily manage three breakers in one round on a good day. Also, I started learning Kung Lao, really just to see what the big deal is. ... I don't see what the big deal is. P.S. Apparently, Brady got taken out in the top twelve at ECT, so we didn't even get to see him on stream. I was really disappointed to hear that.

You know who I actually realized is really great for fucking up Raidens? Smoke. God damn, he just shits all over him. You can seriously just out-turtle him. Stay back and wait for a teleport. If he does, throw or sweep. If he does superman, block and punish with an easy 30% BnB. If he runs out of better ideas and tries to spam projectiles, parry it. Smoke was my last character picked up, and goddamn, I underestimated how much fun he can be. He has a surprising amount going for him as well. He has one of the fastest sweeps in the game AND a fast overhead you can follow with a smoke ball. You can sweep a dickload to force your opponent to start blocking low more often, pop him with the overhead and bam, 30%. The best part is how easily you can build meter with the smoke dash.

I don't think the X-ray itself is an overhead, it's just that the hits leading up to it are. Or something. Idunno, I'll have to actually go in and look at it. Luckily, that'll be easily because I got Skarlet for free xfd Also, source for Brady's tier list? Is he actually saying that's the order of the characters, and Kung Lao is the best in the game, or is he just saying Kung is the best way to tier whore because he's so piss-easy to pick up?

Not going to happen. Her X-ray is piss-awful by itself, and it scaled so badly in combos as to be useless. There's almost no reason to use it unless you can close out a match with it for certain.

...That's... Unblockable damage to you. It does an unblockable 7% damage to you and a very much blockable 15% to them. Set the practice dummy to block in practice, and then try this.

I got Skarlet for free last night due to a glitch xfd I really don't know where the hell you're getting this unblockable blood ball idea from, because it's not. I don't even see it being an especially useful move apart from anti-air or guaranteed punishes, and only if you want to close the gap when you have someone down on their last legs. Skarlet's biggest asset so far is her dash mixup, as far as I'm concerned.

Well fuck me, that's a letdown. I still doubt anyone has come up with my corner combo, considering the only corner X-ray I've seen from him is TylerLantern's, which is 62% and impractical to a fault. You will seriously never pull something like that off in a real match. Anyway, the combo is (from memory) 2 1 Freeze, jump in punch 2 1 1+2, NJP, standing 4, jumpkick X-ray. Solid 52% to close up a match as soon as you get your guy in the corner. Make sure the jump kick after the standing four is a forward jumpkick, because it won't work from a neutral jump. Also, FIRST PICS OF RAIN FUCK YEAH: http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/8224/im...10621060511.jpg Also also, the next two free costumes, coming with Kenshi in July: http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/9338/im...10621060533.jpg What's interesting is that the free costumes are based on the MK2 outfit instead of the MK1, which is weird. I think it looks a lot cooler, but at the same time, I think it's really dumb that they're doing these before the UMK3 outfits. Whatever, hopefully they'll be up next. I have a feeling we're going to get a Kung Lao and Liu Kang pair at some point, though. Rain looks fucking sweet, nothing more to be said. I was so skeptical about his silhouette, but I was pretty fucking impressed with this shot. He somewhat resembles his MKA design, but they kept it more traditional this time around and it's really working for him. He almost gives off a Magneto vibe, to me.

Not believing that til I see a source.

Well fuck me, I was going to post this. That's pretty much spot on to what he looks, actually, because it's literally a non-CG version of his reveal pic before release. It was that exact design with that exact pose, just as a render. That's pretty much what we'll be getting three or four weeks after Skarlet. I think it's a good look for him, and I'm really curious about his alt now. Also, I busted out some new Cyber Sub technology that I've yet to see ANYONE figure out: He can follow his splits kick (up + 4) with specials. No, I'm not fucking with you. You can use this mid-combo for a fucking 40% midscreen BnB, no meter. Hit confirm a 2 1 into freeze, jump in punch 2 1 1+2, dash in ^4 slide. It's awkward to get a feel for; oddly, I got it perfectly the first time I tried it and only started fucking it up after a couple hours of doing it. It's fucking meaty, though. I'm still finding out good setups for this, but pretty much anywhere you could use an ^4, it can be followed with a bomb for potential traps. Considering Before you get your hopes up, no, you can't follow the same kick in the ->1 ^4 string with specials. I found this out COMPLETELY by accident due to lag. I tried to do standing 4 after a jump-in punch; this all got lost in the latency, and all I got was an up+4 and SOMEHOW, a slide. It looked so fucking weird I thought it was a glitch, so I had to go hit the lab to try and figure out what the hell I just did. I think the fact that you can't follow it with specials in the string is probably why I never thought to do anything with the naked ^4, since I figured they had the same properties. I also have a 52% corner X-ray for anyone who gives a fuck and wants to try it.

If their definition of new is old, so much the better. I'm happy to hear Rain is the third inclusion, even if I've been saying he'd be one of the first DLC characters for months and months. It's not hard to tell that he was one of the last characters to hit the cutting room floor and the fanbase wasn't pleased to hear that he lost out to, say, Sheeva. Also: I figured some of you might find this interesting. I really had no idea Skarlet was going to be so good. I thought she'd play pretty well, but A+ tier is better than I'd hoped for. Also, for anyone who hasn't heard, the 360 side is going to be releasing an all-access pass deal with Skarlet on tuesday. Basically, you can pay five bucks for her, or fifteen bucks to get all four of the announced DLC characters as they come out. Ultimately, you're just paying fifteen bucks for what would normally cost twenty and getting the characters downloaded for you automatically, but it's a pretty sweet deal if you were planning to get even three of the four. I'm probably going to wind up going with this.

No go, unfortunately. I still have ACFA, but I traded it in AC4 years ago when it was still selling for a decent price. That I haven't traded ACFA is only because it's not worth anything anymore.

I love how you say this like it's at all remarkable. This is a really good AC if you can make the tiny lockbox work for you, and I don't have a problem with it using DINGO2, but really? Why didn't you just fucking go ahead and say "Oh, you used ANANDA? Sweet man. Oh hey, you used GULL too! Man, today is just full of surprises." In either case, I'm fixing to download LRp at this rate just to get back into building ACs.

Not true at all. Look at Smoke and Ermac, neither of them look anything like their classic renditions. Ermac looks more akin to his MK6 appearance (which I'm kind of okay with, even if it's not nearly as cool as that appearance was), and Smoke looks completely different. I'm pretty sure his primary was meant to be something along the lines of "Hey this is what Smoke's equivalent of MK3 Sub Zero would be", which I'm pretty okay with. I honestly think it would've been better if they'd used that facemask for his alt and just never put one on his primary, though. It'd fit the whole design better, and if you really want masked Smoke, you have a costume for it. I'm confident Rain will have at least one good costume to work with. Even most of the characters I was disappointed with had a pretty cool alt (especially Ermac), and the ones that didn't look as good were just retro to a fault. Baraka, for instance, looks straight out of MK2. That might be fine if they didn't give him a really kickass overhaul in MK6, which kept his overall image while making him look a whole lot fucking meaner. Still, all in all, MK9 did a good job of getting everyone up-to-date and still making them look badass. ...Except for you, Reptile, you scaly bird-looking motherfucker. P.S. For anyone who didn't notice, the retro costume pack that's out now is officially titled "retro costume pack #1" or something to that effect. Either way, it has a number one at the end of it. I think it's safe to say that we'll see another pack before Kenshi is released, and with the way the fanbase has been clamoring for UMK3 ninja retros, I have a feeling we'll be seeing those. P.P.S. I still say Cyber Subs should be able to use the MK3 cyborg skin. It's no more left-field than Ermac using an MK1 costume when he wasn't even in a game before UMK3.