Niji Superfan

That outfit is basically the less gay version of what I posted, which is what the silhouette looks like. At least his primary from Armageddon had a cool "exotic" look to it to balance out that he looks nothing like a fucking ninja. His alt gives him a ninja mask with a Carson Daly haircut.

I love the kids who don't understand dash + block to get in against zoners. Like, this isn't fucking Street Fighter, use your head. I saw the article on LL, and the free costume downloads with every new DLC release is a really nice touch. Boon said he'd try to keep the DLC as cheap as Microsoft's shitty regulations would let him, so it's cool that he's giving some free handouts to balance the price of the paid content. I'm a tad put off by the fact that Rain's silhouette looks like his MK7 alt costume. For anyone who needs a reminder, this is not a flattering outfit for him: http://images.wikia.com/mk/images/2/25/Rain06.jpg I'm really hoping that the new design is going to look cooler than I think, but in either case, I'm optimistic that his alt will look more like his traditional outfit if the primary doesn't already. They did that with Smoke, which was a good move on their part. On that note, I am seriously crossing my fingers for Cyber Smoke to be the fourth character, FUCK YEAH. Also also: noobde noobde RT @Joebelmont @noobde Which Upstairs asshole said you couldn't have and exclusive 360 character Noobde: Our studio is all 1 floor. Idunno why, but I get a kick out of watching Boon fuck with people on Twitter.

Here's a funny story for you: I had a tag match with some scrub last week. I brought Sub and Cyber Sub (what can I say, this is my star team). He brought Nightwolf and... I THINK Scorpion? Honestly, I'll just assume it was Scorpion because that's always the safest bet, I just remember his second character was Ermac. By the time it got down to Cyber Sub and Nightwolf, he started overusing the wakeup shoulder, I caught wind of that pretty quick. I anticipate it and parry with Cyber Sub. He gets knocked down, uses another one, and I think "Really? This is how you're going to play?" tl;dr this story ends in wakeup shoulder -> parry knockdown -> wakeup shoulder, which repeated until he died. This is seriously how he lost the match. It was something like six wakeup shoulders, in a row, none of which were successful. Gotta love them scrubs. By the way, I played a grand total of about ten games tonight. Wouldn't you know it, three of them were Raidens. One of them went to Raiden after I beat his Liu Kang twice, and managed to beat me by doing nothing but teleport + same retarded string + superman spam. I came back with Cyrax and shut him down in the worst kind of way. He sent me a host of hatemail, absolutely RAGING about how I'm not that good, despite the fact that I beat him across three different characters. The best part: He told me I was using cheap characters. I brought Subs, Cyber Subs and Cyrax against him, none of whom are even remotely cheap. He gave me some shit about how I used "bullshit ranged characters". This is a guy who immediately came at me with Liu Kang and spammed high/low fireballs the minute he was more than half a screen away; I'm not complaining about this, but where does he get this idea that I was using a "bullshit ranged character" at any point? All any of those characters have projectile-wise are traps so they can get in, and I play all three of them on rushdown. Better-than-best part: When I pointed out that I corner comboed him for 42% with Cyber Sub, which kind of implies that I didn't beat him because I used a "bullshit ranged character", he said "Congrats, you did a corner spam combo, anyone can do that". Wellll, for one, there is virtually no reference material out there for Cyber Sub, so these were combos I had to do on my own. Two, that particular combo is pretty intricate, and it took a lot of trial and error to work it out. Three, this guy literally used one combo with Liu Kang and the same two strings in a row with Raiden. Oh scrubs, never change.

Scorpion is the definitive scrub character, and that shouldn't be a shock. It's a mixture of 1) he's the most iconic MK character and 2) he's easy as shit to pick up. I think the character everyone ends up fighting most online is Scorpion, and I'd say they make up about half of all my games (out of 400 or 500 matches now). What I really love is watching the scrub mentality in action. It's so methodical, so systematic. If they start with Smoke, Noob, Ermac, Scorpion, Raiden or Kung Lao, you can almost automatically assume they're going to move to someone else in this rotation if they lose, ESPECIALLY Scorpion if he wasn't the first character they picked. It's usually that they'll start with Smoke or Ermac, then immediately move to Scorpion if they lose. If THAT fails, they'll either keep sticking to it because they don't know how to sink any lower, or they'll go pick Raiden and spam superman. I swear you could develop a flowchart for this shit. ...In fact, I kind of want to now.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1337654470.png Welp. I don't know how good or bad that ping is, but I know the download speed is ass.

No, not like this. There's lag and there's lag and there's this. What the hell kind of connection are you on, Lenin? It's not news to me that mine is mediocre as fuck, I've been looking for alternatives.

You say that like it isn't my world too. It wasn't even the case in COD4, for the most part, or even MW2. It's really just Treyarch's games that have ass for netcode, and that's largely why I'm looking forward to MW3 so much. It'll be nice not having to empty a clip into a guy, get dropped by him and watch a killcam where you apparently never shot.

I've been hearing about a lot of issues with the patch, yeah. I'm somewhat thankful that MS is holding out on it, because NRS clearly shit the bed on this one. Hopefully, it's something minor that they overlooked, and not "Welp our completely redesigned netcode is even more fucked, please wait six months for another patch". This netcode fix really needs to fucking happen, though. I am so sick of dropping combos or losing whole inputs in the lag. I tried to do a slide earlier, and the entire motion got lost in the lag. I wound up just standing there and doing literally nothing for about two seconds. It's bearable most of the time, but when it happens in a really close match and I do a low jab just because the slide motion for an ice clone didn't register, I get pretty pissed.

Yeah, Boon is the shit. It's kind of neat to me just because I can remember knowing who Ed Boon was from magazine interviews and the like when I was five or six years old, and now you can tweet him shit. It's crazy to look at all that in retrospect now. He's usually been pretty cool about giving the fanbase what they want and now he's taking notes on it, so I think that'll really help the game. ...That, and it's just fun to watch him fuck with people in his responses.

HAHAHAH holy shit, I was lurking Boon's twitter (OF ALL THE THINGS TO DO ON A FRIDAY NIGHT) to find the comments you were talking about. I came across this: RT @crankycraig @noobde I request Kabuki Joe to enter the MK universe. Noobde: Kabuki No. Christ, I lost my shit laughing at this.

Boon is a smartass, though. He likes to troll the community just to lead people on and get a reaction out of them (I'm not giving him shit for this, I usually get a kick out of it). When he says Fujin isn't in the game, he's right, but that doesn't mean he WON'T be in the game. If Fujin is in the works for DLC, I'll bet this is what he's getting at. Hell, even when he says "come back in a year and tell me Fujin is in the game", it's entirely possible he's saying that because... Well, Fujin WILL be in the game by then. Like, don't hold me to any of this because it's just a vague possibility, but I really wouldn't put it past Boon. That said, I could not give less of a fuck about Fujin and Boon may very well have just ruled him out. It's just, well, you can really never tell with Boon. I kind of lol'd at the Tanya comment, but the backstory there is that she was in a list of DLC characters Boon was considering (I think I brought this up earlier in the thread). I'll bet you that if anything, based on the "u r good", he's just implying that he "found" Tanya in the background of the arena. Basically, there's some kind of smartassed humor underlining everything Boon says, you just need to look harder for it at some times than others. When someone tweeted him a link to the alleged 360 exclusives, including Puzzle Kombat from MK6 and the Pit III stage, he responded with a Youtube link to a Fleetwood Mac song, from the album "Rumors". It took me awhile to even catch the album name. Brady playtested Skarlet, IIRC. I imagine he'll playtest Kenshi as well, and it would make sense given that he has the details on how he'll play before there's even a shred of coverage on him. Don't hold me to any of this, mind you. I agree that Frost might be cool just because I already rock the shit with both of the other Sub Zeroes, so I'd probably take to Slut Zero too. I wasn't too impressed with her in MKDA, but then, they're bound to give her some new moves to round out her arsenal. They sure did with Cyrax and Sektor. In either case, I wasn't really debunking Frost because I'm so sure she won't be in the game, I just thought it was ridiculous how so many people were convinced she's on the way when we have no reason to assume she's on the way. Yeah, she's in a background, big fucking whoop. Taven and Daegon are in a background too, but you'll see Bill fucking Clinton as DLC before you see either of those cumrags. Interestingly enough, I actually half-suspect Reiko as an eventual inclusion, even if I wouldn't bank on it. I actually found out that when Sub Zero is getting kidnapped by the asshole patrol, you can hear Shang announcing that Reiko vs. Kenshi will be the next fight in the tournament. I don't see that as reason enough to assume they're just DYING for their chance to show off Reiko, but it's something to think about and even at face value, it's a pretty cool reference. If Cyber Smoke isn't a separate character, I'm going to be so pissed. I can't see why he wouldn't be, but I was just so impressed with all three of the cyborgs. Cyber Sub is like the perfect bastardization of Cyrax and Sub Zero; he has just enough of both to draw parallels but still enough of himself to be a completely different beast. I figured it'd only make sense for Cyber Smoke to be the bastardization of Sektor and Smoke, which would be an especially nice fit when you consider that MK3 Smoke borrowed a lot of shit from Sektor. More than anything, I just really like what MK9 did with the cyborgs. They all look unique enough without deviating from the form, they still feel like their original incarnations and all three of them have fucking oodles of depth (well, less so Sektor, but he's still pretty neat). All I want now is a grey one to complete the set. Hell, I'd even like to see some completely new cyborgs, as MK9 still lacks "new" characters and that'd be a safe way to get them out. They're doing it with Skarlet, so why not do it with some of the other classic fallbacks? After what happened with MK4 and especially MK5, you can imagine I'm not too optimistic about some really "fresh" characters, so hey, more of the same but different would work for me. FUCK YEAH PURPLE CYBORG WITH LASERS OR SOME SHIT. Also, the patch is out tonight. A bunch of PS3 players are reporting it, though I got nothing on the 360 side when I tried it. Brady says MS is still validating it, and they're usually slower on the draw with that than Sony is because they're Microsoft. Also also, if you've never actually listened to the guy on the PA in the subway stage, listen to him. It is seriously the best shit ever.

The patch will probably be monday morning. CEO wraps up sunday, if I'm not mistaken, but I doubt they're going to go out and update on nine PM at sunday (is that even allowed?). Here's a fun fact: Brady let slip in an interview that NRS plans to release four DLC characters throughout the summer. Skarlet and Kenshi are the first characters confirmed, while Frost and Fujin are speculated. I really see NO reason to believe Frost is going to be in the game, apart from the one time that Brady didn't rule her out when asked about "Frost, Kenshi and Skarlet" on his stream. Of course, he didn't acknowledge her one way or another, so that's really not much to go on; for all we know, he just didn't want to say x character isn't in the works when they may still be included somewhere down the road. Fujin DOES have the leaked soundclip, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, so there's that. I know there was a third character someone hinted at in an interview with Boon who he didn't deny either, but I can't recall who it is; I'll try and dig it up again. If at least one of these four characters isn't Cyber Smoke or Rain, I am going to snap shit, because we really don't know when there will be another DLC character after these four. They may do them in short bursts, they may do them steadily. Brady quoted one of the bigshots from NRS as saying that they're going to release DLC characters constantly if they sell really well, so this is where that old "vote with your wallet" axiom rings true. I could not give even half a fuck about Kenshi and never did, as far back as MKDA, but I'll probably still buy him just to feed the machine and get me my Cyber Smoke. It's not like four or five bucks once a month is any skin off my back. UPDATE: Found the interview. I missed this, but when Boon was asked if any other guest characters were being added, he said "We have some really cool stuff I'm not allowed to talk about", so that might be interesting. I've truthfully never cared about guest characters, but it's worth keeping an eye out for. I couldn't find what I was looking for, but this is still sort of neat.

FUCK YES I BROKE 40% IN THE CORNER WITH CYBER SUB, NO METER. I fucking KNEW it was possible, goddammit. I still think I might be able to hit 45% with a practical corner combo, though I'd be satisfied with even a 42 or a 43. I also came up with a bunch of really cool bomb traps with him from midscreen that are guaranteed to piss off a whole lot of scrubby kids online, and an accessible 40% midscreen combo off his guaranteed freeze trap (which makes the fact that it requires two bars a lot more justifiable). I am a bad motherfucker. You can catch Raiden in a teleport with a fast string, i.e. Sub's 2 2 opener. The problem is that you have to preempt it; you can't just intercept it on reaction like you could with Cyrax, Noob or Kung, to name a few. You just don't fight Raiden on offense if you have any options whatsoever. Sub can fuck him up royally with good clone use (set the clone and stand in front of it so prevent any teleports), and Raiden's anti-air is extremely weak. Good jump-in combos will shut him down hard, and there's nothing he can do to stop you. You also need to bait his superman as often as you possibly can, because as cheesy as it is, it's extremely punishable on block. Reading a good Raiden has plenty to show for it. If your setups are good enough, you can pin him at mid range such that the superman is punishable, teleports can be read and stopped and for most characters, jump-ins can be shut down with anti-air (while yours can get in just fine). At this point, all he really has is his projectile, which is slow as fucking molasses and punishable at mid to close. Raiden has a lot of pressure, but he can't take pressure. He can get AWAY from it much of the time, but he can't directly shut it down, and so he's easily exploited once you can cover his exits. This is just one more matchup where Sub Zero shows you that he's king shit of the universe. For all of Raiden's cheese, Sub can bend him over with good reads, good traps and good setups. The fact that he has more accessible high-damage combos means he's more likely to win in a tradeoff as well. To say NRS's patch attempts haven't been successful is ignorant and unfair, as they've yet to release a real "patch". They put out a hotfix with some quick adjustments, but that was just intended as a precursor to the full patch to begin with. The full patch wasn't ready by the time of the hotfix, so they just released a smaller one with some of the tweaks that were ready at that time. Most of the changes in the final patch were addressed even before the hotfix came out, some of them even weeks after the game came out (the Raiden nerf, Smoke ball OTG, Sonya infinite, and so on). Consider that NRS managed to buff a character like Baraka, the worst character in the game, enough to make him competitively viable. I'd say that's pretty admirable for such an early fix, and so far, the only patch tweak that's been in bad taste was the increased advantage on Kano's upball (something the full patch is actually going to undo). All in all, you really can't judge their attempts at patching the game when they've yet to patch the game in full. Once the full patch comes out, we'll know whether or not their attempt was successful. Well, the reason the bomb trap worked is that you had enough advantage after the command grab to throw a mid bomb, dash in and hit them with his 1 1 1 string (or 2 1 2, depending). They can block it, but they don't have enough time to jump out. The block stun will pin them long enough for the bomb to go off, so even if they block the 1 1 1, they get juggled and you can lay into them with your combo du jour.

That's exactly the problem: Decent players will get grabbed and just IMMEDIATELY mash 1 to get out. I think a five or six frame window would be fine and it'd still make it easy enough to bust out of if you preempt it, but I don't think any throw should have such a large tech window that you can look up and go "Oh, hey, I'm being thrown, I guess now would be a good time to tech that". I trust Brady if he says it has any potential even as a mixup, and while I can easily live without the bomb trap, I'd be pretty sour about the command grab itself being nerfed. It's easily one of his best assets for pressure. I'm still not too pleased with Raiden's tweaks. I don't know just how much he's going to suffer without the frame advantage on those strings, but I can tell you right now that his combos aren't what make him cheesy S+++ tier. It's, y'know, the fact that he has a fullscreen wakeup attack with armor. You have almost nothing to lose with EX superman on wakeup, and that's bullshit.

Wow, nothing new all week? That's disappointing. I'm still waiting for Ironsoul to sack up and try to challenge me on this (or at least offer up some sort of rebuttal), because I know he'd love to think he's an authority on this game. Sadly, we all know he doesn't have the testosterone for that and even if he finds some, it's already back-ordered to his voicebox.

That's probably because the first patch did nothing to address the netcode. The netcode fix is going to be in the upcoming patch, which will be right after CEO. The patch is nerfing some of Quan Chi's traps, removing Sonya and Kabal's infinites, removing advantage on some of Raiden's strings because he's a cheesy fuck, removing advantage on block from Kano's upball and changing Smoke's smokeball so it doesn't OTG anymore. It's also absolutely ruining Cyrax's command grab by setting a ten frame tech window instead of two AND lowering advantage. The latter is already enough to remove the guaranteed bomb trap, but the broadened tech window is just going to shit all over it. I'm pretty pissed about that, considering Cyrax is one of my better characters and the bomb trap absolutely facefucks turtling. Also, dash in ->4 into throw is seriously one of the greatest mixups for Ermac. ->4 is two hits, one low and one high, and they're completely vulnerable to a throw if they don't block it. This has so much mixup potential, as you can either dash in + ^4 (which is an overhead, and will open them the fuck up when they try to block low) or dash in + throw, which low guard can't stop. You can also hit the dash in ->4 by itself twice, then run in for a throw when they try to block it. God damn I love Ermac.

There's also this. I'm sure this is justified easily enough, but the problem is that they just... Didn't. There was no elaboration on why no fucks were given about the fact that Raiden has fluorescent blue blood and is wholly unaffected by a series of lobotomies.

The actually good version of this that will work on anyone is to 2 2 4 in the corner, because you can hit confirm into an ice clone to back off if it fails or you can follow up with an iceball + 2 1 4 slide (or xray) for big damage. One corner combo I use that I haven't seen anyone else come up with is neutral jump punch (or two, depending on the setup) + standing 4 + 2 1 4 slide (xray if you have it). The best part of this combo is you can do it after the refreeze reset, and you can easily hit upwards of 70% damage with it if you have xray (I'm going to be sad when the patch removes this reset). For me, it's really cool because that kick causes stationary drift, allowing you to link in a string of choice afterward, and kicks don't scale quite so hard in combos. I'm kind of proud of that, purely because you don't even see guys like Tom Brady doing that with Subs and it's highly practical.

The grenades that couldn't hit you if you were beneath or behind it, whereupon you could still easily hit him. The plasma cannon was Leviathan, and I think it was only in the Nexus incarnation. The LR version was truthfully pretty barebones, and while I may just be remembering it wrong, I think it was a lot smaller as well. I'll agree that AA's massive MT is rad as fuck, and it's probably the best massive MT in the series. Unfortunately, that's due in no small part to how weak the competition is. AC2's massive disorder unit was really cool, though. It was piss-easy, but admittedly, it was pretty intimidating. The coolest part is that it was at the site of one of your first missions in a wall passage that was freshly busted open, so upon seeing it, you were just like "HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS THING WAS HERE THE WHOLE TIME?!" AC3's was alright as well, but it still felt comparatively underwhelming just because it was like a lame version of AA's. Then again, show me something in AC3's single player that wasn't a lame version of AC2 or AA.

IIRC, it wasn't too hard to just overboost your way through the missiles, it's just that no one did it when they never had to. Cover was just so much easier to abuse. I beat this thing on hard with nothing but the Nazi stormtrooper laser rifle and the ammo pack (which wouldn't even be necessary on normal). It's really not difficult at all, especially not if you just stay under him most of the time. Where did you find out its name, in any case?

I never used auto-sight, or even second stage. Raw as fuck.

Wait, I missed this part of the first post before. Uh, bull fucking shit. Point me to one MT in the series, even a massive MT, that's any better than an AC. There's a reason the lamewad protagonist always beats them. The only MT that might even arguably have an edge on a fully-geared AC is the massive MT from Another Age, and he's still too slow and clunky to be able to shut down an AC.

If you're going to do video capture proper, ask Combatace for what he uses. He runs an HDPVR setup that cost him around $200, and I remember him showing me a high quality standard def alternative for $100.

Noob's rushdown game is unbelievably tight just for upknee combos. You can run in with <-1 2 upknee/tackle mixup or 2 1 upknee/tackle. The sheer coverage makes him stupid-good at pressure, and he has no problem getting in either. He also zones best from fullscreen distance purely because he has two extremely fast projectiles, making it hard to counter-zone him. There aren't many specials that can stop him from that distance, as nothing is quick enough to beat him out in a fullscreen tradeoff. The only specials that are a serious threat from this distance are Ermac's push and Raiden's superman; certain ranged kick/dash attacks can get in from that distance, but an upknee can shut them down on reaction. The disabler is more or less useless at high level play because any halfway conscientious player knows when they can't block, and they'll be waiting to shut down whatever you do on reaction. Even the EX disabler doesn't accomplish a whole lot, because they're still going to catch you with the wakeup. You also don't want to end strings with the shadow tackle unless you're playing rushdown, because if you're trying to zone, it's always going to be more beneficial to end with a tackle or slide for pushback. If you'd bet money that Shang is the best character in the game, I should probably just give you my paypal. Shang is far, far from the best character. He's top-tier, but all the shit you're accrediting him with only sounds good on paper. Yes, you can use soul steal to turn into your opponent with a sizable damage boost, but for what, seven or eight seconds? The problem with this is that a smart player will just turtle you out for that period of time, and you'll see a lot of people rush in recklessly just to capitalize on the damage boost. Very rarely will you see someone make use of soul steal for its damage boost, because not only is it highly situational, it demands that you know the character you're turning into. Shang gets shut down by Raiden or Cyber Subs in the WORST kind of way, simple because he lacks a fast special to stop the divekick or superman. Even if you manage to soul steal and turn into one of them, what of it? They'll just wait it out until you change back or rush in to get punished, whichever comes first. Soul steal is more useful for adding damage to your BnBs than anything else, because at that point, you can just turtle. Either they'll rush in and you'll be able to punish them, or they'll play it safe and let you turtle until you change back. Shang's only real advantages in high level play, apart from some all-around good normals, are that his combos are largely fireball-driven and projectiles can't be broken. Other than the initial launcher on his BnBs, you can't break the combo, and he can easily rack up 40% with just one. Unfortunately, Shang has NO good combos without meter, and this is the tradeoff. Not only do you not have your breaker, you don't even have combos in some cases. He can easily be top tier, but it takes a lot of work and he still has too many bad matchups to be the best character in the game. Everything you just described sounds great in theory, but I can assure you it's lost in the translation. I'll STILL maintain that Sub Zero is the best character, largely because there are hardly any bad matchups for him. In fact, I can't think of anything off-hand that's less than a 5-5, and most are at least a 6-4 in his favor. His 2 2 is one of the absolute best strings in the game, period. It's great to get in with, safe on block if you finish the string and kick off with an ice clone, and it covers jump-ins; you can also hit confirm into an ice ball at any time. He can play a strong offense, but even if you get him on the defensive, he's just going to keep building meter with clones and iceballs. If you try to teleport in, should you have that option? 2 2 string, motherfucker. If you get in with a 2 2 iceball, you can easily punish for a minimum of 35%, no meter. This is especially nice when you consider that he can wait for you to try and throw a fireball or get in with a special and use all that meter you let him build to punish you with an Xray. There is seriously nothing stopping you from waiting out a zoning attempt and tearing across the screen for a guaranteed 35% damage. I can't remember the last time I was as gay for a fighting game character as I am for Subs, considering he has more potential than any character in the game without even the slightest degree of cheese. He's not like Raiden with his lame EX superman, he's not like Kano with his lame upball (which is getting nerfed, and rightly so), and he's not like Sektor with his EX telepunch spam. Point-blank, Sub Zero is only as good as you make him, and I like that. ...Especially because I make him really fucking good. :::::up::::: NRS delayed the patch because CEO is in a few days, and they decided not to release the update for a major tournament. I think it's retarded that they didn't at least release the netcode update, but I understand why they'd delay the character fixes for an event like this. Quan Chis is also far from useless, rune trap or not. He has arguably the best uppercut in the game, along with one of the best sweeps, and still has some decent BnBs off of trance. He doesn't even need to get in, he'll make you get... Uh, out, I guess. I don't see why the boost is an issue anyhow, considering you should only ever be using the EX boost to begin with.

Granted. I just had to put it out there that it paled in comparison to COD4.