Mortal Kombat 9

[Gay Uncle]

That is possibly the most disturbing video game footage I can recall seeing.

 

Shang Tsung's clown Fatality fucked with me on so many levels.

[Magnus]

You mean Joker's Fatality from MK vs DC re-uncensored?

[Vincent210]

I guess this isn't your game then.

[Lenin]

I have an extra code for Sub-Zero's Classic Costume/Fatality DLC free to the cheap bastard who asks first.

[Mom]

I rented this game and played with my friend for a couple days. Finally before I returned it we tried playing online. And here I thought street fighter lagged a lot online, but this game literally has a constant input delay like smash brothers, and I could feel it instantly. It's so horrible!

 

Other than that it's pretty dope. I love the James Bond hat dude. Of all the characters in the game, he seems to have like the most in his repertoire. He has aerial dive kick, different timing air and ground projectiles, high priority cqc move, good combos, and even some teleports if I remember right. Dude is wild! He definitely seemed like a top 3-5 type of guy.

Edited June 3, 2011 by TMRaven

[Niji Superfan]

Wow, I forgot all about this thread. Apparently I have some catching up to do.

 

The netcode is fucking awful, yeah. They're patching that within the next week, thank christ. I can think of times where I've lost a match because a dash-in parry dropped one of the inputs and made me do an uppercut, or when I missed the catch/pop-up on a combo that would've won it. It's a shame, because the game plays so smoothly offline.

 

Kung Lao is the guy with the bladed hat, and he's pretty solid. I don't know if he's top 3-5, but he's easily top 10. He has some of the strongest offense in the game, and there are only a handful of characters who can really contend with him up close. Truthfully, I still think Sub Zero is the character with the most in his repertoire, if only because he has some of the strongest offensive AND defensive play. He can go toe to toe with Kung Lao, and that's saying a lot. At the same time, when he really needs to play defense, clone + iceball controls space better than just about anything in the game, and you'll steadily build meter with those setups. He's a deceptively versatile character, and no one seems to see that. I truthfully didn't think much of him when I played the demo and even when I picked up the game, I wasn't blown away (I was mostly waiting for the opportunity to pick up Cyber Subs), but after Tom Brady started plugging Sub's merits, I had to go check him out again. Suffice to say, it really stuck, because he's easily my best character now. I think what I like best about him is that unlike the scrub-friendly characters, Subs is only as good as the player. He doesn't have any cheesy exploits, he doesn't have any super-scrubby ways to shave a third off someone's health bar, he's just an expansive, methodical character who can set the pace no matter what the matchup. That's a rare quality in MK9.

 

If you want a good trick with Kung Lao, pressure with ground hats to draw them in and go for a jumpkick+divekick. If you're doing it right, there are so few ways through that.

 

...Except for well-timed clones with Subs. :up:

 

And now, for some other shit that I missed!

 

You said Nightwolf is good at, well, stuff, but won't drop details. Speak moar.

 

Also, I'm thinking Cage+Stryker/Noob for tag. Go from Zoning-splosion to deadly pessure. Trip them up & provides an out should my zoning game fail.

 

Can I have Cage enter mid-flip kick?

 

Tag is really not meant for serious play, I hope you realize that. It's broken as shit and there are plenty of combos that can do an easy 100% damage. It was never meant to be balanced, it's just supposed to be fun to dick around with.

 

And no, Cage's tag-in attack is his shadow kick.

 

Both CSZ and Smoke's combos seem to work better online. Sektor is awesome to play for funsies too. Scarecrow fatality is so hardcore.

 

Been playing so much CSZ lately. I feel very powerful vs. other characters. Same with Smoke. You really gotta work your ass off for it sometimes, though. But I don't feel like I'm ever at a massive disadvantage.

 

NRS's lack of communication regarding the netkode situation is really inexcusable, though. I got into a really heated series of matches with some poor bastard and the game just kept desyncing. We went into a private match where the issue actually got worse.

 

Which is to say nothing of the lag which at times can be so bad fairly basic combos just aren't going to happen. It's depressing.

 

Considering Sektor has the absolute best wakeup attack in the game, one of the fastest uppercuts, a solid shutdown for jump-ins and some of the best normal strings, I'd say he's pretty far from a "funsies" character. He's A+ tier, if not S, and he's probably just shy of the top ten. Also, working your ass off, Smoke. Pick one. I'll play Smoke occasionally because it's fun to try going rushdown with him, but he's the most absolutely scrub-friendly character in the game. The zen of Smoke is to smoke cloud back and forth to control space and build meter, then hurtle smoke bombs whenever it's safe. Voila, Smoke. There's just no thought to playing the character.

 

Also, NRS has been saying for the past month that the big patch coming out next week is going to contain a netcode update, so I don't know where the hell you're getting a "lack of communication" from.

 

Double post faggotry:

 

Anyone catch this video?

 

In addition to manipulating blood, she has a crappy looking X-ray that only does 29% damage. Hope that get's fixed or there's some combo opportunity somehwhere in there. Still want her, though... Bloody Money Shot fatality is pretty dope.

 

"Some combo opportunity somewhere"? Did you SEE her strings? It's like you don't even need to try to do mixups with her. More than that, are you seriously bitching about a 29% Xray? Average Xray damage is roughly 35%, so you're effectively bitching about 6% damage? You can make that back in chip, for christ's sake. Even then, the amount of damage it does is not as concerning as how much it scales in combos; if it scales as gracefully as, say, Sub Zero's, it'll be one of the better Xrays in the game. Above and beyond all of this, Xrays become less and less common as the level of competition goes higher, because a breaker becomes much more valuable to you when every single punish is for 20 percent, if not 30 or 40. Regardless, Skarlet looks fucking awesome. I'm probably going to rush out to buy her right away, and I didn't even give a shit about her during her reveal. She looks like the missing link between Mileena and Sonya, and that's reason enough to want to try her out right there.

 

This is also worth posting up. It's just a rumor/rumor. It could be nothing, but if they're following Capcom's model of leaking content checklists and calling them "rumors", then it's a different story. One that ends with me hype for Frost.

 

You know, honestly, Skarlet probably should've been in the game at launch. Seriously, first non-sucking MK game in 14 years and we get... CySubz as the only new character? Simultaneously lame and cool.

 

I can guarantee you that DLC list is a load of shit, for three reasons:

 

1) The retro costumes are coming out before Skarlet is, which already clashes with their forecasted DLC order

 

2) Skarlet and Kenshi aren't going to be in the same DLC pack, and it's confirmed that Kenshi is coming out further on down the line

 

3) Ed Boon already posted a tentative list of DLC characters on his Twitter even before release, so as to see which characters had the most fan demand. Frost and Mavado (whose name they didn't even spell right) weren't on there.

 

Point-blank, this is just some stupid shit that some dumb kid thought up based on the reveal article. He concluded that Kenshi and Skarlet were going to be packaged together because they were in the same reveal, so he made up some other character pairings that people might want to see. I can almost guarantee you Mavado won't make it into the game, and if he does, it won't be for quite awhile.

 

The characters Boon named were Rain, Cyber Smoke, Tanya, Shinnok, Kenshi and "new character". We obviously got the last two first, which I suspect was just to cover their bases, as MK9 lacks 1) new characters and 2) any old characters from MK4 and on. The only other character who seems a likely inclusion at this point is Fujin, based on a leaked DLC placeholder (just a barebones male character model) who the announcer called "Fujin". I really doubt they would've recorded a voice clip for a character they don't plan to do anything with, but there's been no word on him one way or another at this point.

 

ANYWAY, on my end, I've just been trying to branch out and learn a lot more combos. Generally, when I win a match online now, I'll pick a new character each time and move down the line until I lose again. I usually find myself going Subs -> Cyber Subs -> Ermac -> Sektor -> Cyrax, by which point they either leave or I actually lose. I'm still getting the hang of using Cyrax in a high-pressure situation. I've also been trying to play Noob on rushdown lately, which is extremely difficult but definitely a lot more interesting than the scrubby high/low spamming Noobs you'll see most often. He's definitely got strong rushdown potential, it just requires a lot of work. The upknee is basically the shoryuken of this game, and he's got high/low projectiles to mix it up with. You can get some really solid mixups going by alternating the charge and the upknee at the end of your strings, and they both have great coverage. I'm also trying to pick up Shang, but I haven't quite been able to get on top of his combos yet. It really doesn't help that I have a lot of other characters on the go and he's one of the hardest characters to play. Still, I'm seeing plenty of great combo potential in there and apart from having a dick-slow uppercut, he's got some great normals. It really helps that a lot of his combo potential comes from his fireballs, which you can't breaker.

 

Still, I've had MK9 for a month and a half, and I think it only gets better with time. This game definitely has more lasting appeal than MvC3 did, though that's not saying a whole hell of a lot.

 

Oh, and on the subject of DLC, for anyone who missed this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrMfeE8XKhE

 

I can't fucking wait for this. It'd be really cool if Cyber Subs could use them, and it'd be no more out of place than Ermac using an MK1 costume when he was never in the game. Let's face it, blue retro cyborg would be sweet shit.

[Lenin]

ANYWAY, on my end, I've just been trying to branch out and learn a lot more combos. Generally, when I win a match online now, I'll pick a new character each time and move down the line until I lose again. I usually find myself going Subs -> Cyber Subs -> Ermac -> Sektor -> Cyrax, by which point they either leave or I actually lose. I'm still getting the hang of using Cyrax in a high-pressure situation. I've also been trying to play Noob on rushdown lately, which is extremely difficult but definitely a lot more interesting than the scrubby high/low spamming Noobs you'll see most often. He's definitely got strong rushdown potential, it just requires a lot of work. The upknee is basically the shoryuken of this game, and he's got high/low projectiles to mix it up with. You can get some really solid mixups going by alternating the charge and the upknee at the end of your strings, and they both have great coverage. I'm also trying to pick up Shang, but I haven't quite been able to get on top of his combos yet. It really doesn't help that I have a lot of other characters on the go and he's one of the hardest characters to play. Still, I'm seeing plenty of great combo potential in there and apart from having a dick-slow uppercut, he's got some great normals. It really helps that a lot of his combo potential comes from his fireballs, which you can't breaker.

 

I just TL;DR'd the shit out of you. Here's your chance to do it to me:

 

I do sorta the same thing with the characters online. Usually start with Ermac/Sindel/Nightwolf just to gauge where they are, if they suck, I use whoever the fuck I feel like, if they're good or actually trying, I break out one of the Sub-Zeros, or Noob.

 

And rushdown Noob? Define that for me. I don't see the appeal to rusher Noob based on what I think of when I read "rushdown"... Then again, watching my opponent twist like a worm trying to get through the shadow army and my virtually unfuckupable AA game is why I enjoy Noob. The only time I bother actually moving forward is when the zoning has done it's work and I can get you in the corner to spend some meter doing b+1,2,1,4>enhanced up-shadow, 2,1,2>(enhanced) disabler or 2,1,2>en. up-shadow, 2,1,2>en. up-shadow, 2,1>en. up-shadow, 2,1>shadow tackle.

 

Noob reminds me a lot of my old Venom shenanigans in Guilty Gear, immaculate zoning into some horrible things happening to you in the corner. But probably the best way to play Noob is at about 1/4th the screens distance, as few pixels outside of where your opponent can punish a blocked shadow, which is more aggression than people will usually engage in while playing him, but not necessarily rushing. His normals and strings are lethargic in comparison to most other characters and lack priority, he's also missing any substantial combos and juggles outside of the corner. His only weakness there is how much meter you need to spend to be effective, which is a big reason you should lame it out and just throw shadows for a little while. The first round is usually tedious, but you can end round two fucking FAST if you make even one good read and didn't have to blow a breaker to get through round one.

 

Spacing out around a quarter screen distance trying to force a fuck up so you can connect 2,1,2>shadow tackle or 2,1,2>teleport or b+1,2,1,4>teleport or whatever string>special combination you want to inch them towards the corner and it's hard to go too far wrong. Also, you can 2,1>disabler and watch them panic. People are so funny when they know their block button doesn't work. I haven't tried it because I hoard the shit out of my meter, but I'd assume you can 2,1>enhanced disabler too, which is awesome if it works since the enhanced disabler rapes their block button AND inverts their directional inputs.

 

Shang Tsung is fucking legit by the way. But you're wielding an obnoxiously sharp double-edged sword in using him. It's the tits that he can drop 40%+ damage off your life for 1 bar, but you're going to be eating a lot of damage if you fuck up your already hard to use zoning because you either won't have breaker or you won't want to use it because then you'll have basically no combos since he needs enhanced ground skull for all his damage...

 

...which is why you have Soul Steal. You don't need it to win, not by a long shot. But it's a 10-30% damage boost which is amazing no matter what but it's recockulous should you Wondertwin your way into the skin of a character like Johnny Cage or Cyrax. So it actually does help you that you're working on a lot of other characters, since to play an optimized Shang Tsung you should be able to consistently pull off at least one or two combos with every character, as well as knowing some of their set-ups.

 

I'd bet money that Shang Tsung is probably the best character in this game, just on the basis that he is every character, but 10-30% stronger. And when he's not doing that there's an infinite wall of fireballs. And he has that clown fatality. If I had something in my personality that resembled the will to ever actually try, thus allowing me to play this game competitively, I would focus all my efforts on learning Shang. If that tells you anything.

 

On another note, the balance patch that was supposed to be out the 7th got delayed. Somebody (Tom Brady?) said that it was because Microsoft and Sony are taking their sweet time approving the patch itself. But I'm going to tell myself it's because NRS read the internet backlash to the Quan Chi nerfs and decided to take that atrocity back to the lab. I played around with that guy a while ago and did some good work, but goddamn the man is shittier than 2-girls-1-cup if it were shot in a port-a-potty behind a taco stand on the Jersey shore. Rune trap was the only way I found to deal any real damage. Skeletal Boost is hardcore worthless. Regular rune is slightly less worthless. Steering the Sky Drop is a fun gimmick, but it's just a gimmick. His fireball and trance are pretty fucking good though. You can throw SO many of those fireballs SO fast and just chip away until your opponent decides to go into a crouch without blocking to avoid it only to get smacked by Trance from a retarded distance.

 

Back when I was playing him I thought "boy, this worthless motherfucker would be way less of a worthless motherfucker if I could get a Skeletal Boost off of a Trance", then I read in the patch-notes NRS released that post-patch he'll be able to move immediately after landing a Trance and I thought "fuck yeah", then the next line was "Quan-Chi Skeletal Boost after Trance removed" and was all like D'AW! because FFS.

 

Then I read that he was losing some of his advantage after a Sky Drop. Again: FFS.

 

Right now he's one of the worst characters in the game. After this patch he'll be as useful as a fetus in a Thai whorehouse. The only good thing about him will be his sweep, which is right up there with Smoke and Kabal's in terms of awesomeness, and his fireball, which makes Ryu's hadouken look like shit.

 

I'll concede that Quan-Chi is probably a tough little bastard to balance, though. It'd be easy for him to be pretty OP with not a whole lot of work, but I'd rather have a game with another OP character than an absolutely useless one. I'd like to see Skeletal Boost not be random. Have d,b4 be health boost and d,f4 be damage boost, and let him connect that off a Trance into a mixup. And/or have his Runes launch for a juggle or something. The guy is going to have nothing but mixups into no damage and that's bullshit.

Edited June 7, 2011 by Lenin

[Niji Superfan]

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.

[Lenin]

Found something not serious with Sub-Zero. The 2,2,2 string + the corner.

 

Basically, if you knock someone down in the corner and they won't get up, the third hit will OTG and reset their knockdown. If they do get up, 90% chance they won't block high. I call it the retard trap because it always and only works on retards. The game is to see how many times you can do it before it stops working.

 

I wouldn't post this but I just did it too like five people in a row online, with enough success it actually pissed me off. They can probably still taste my salty Irish nuts in the back of their throats.

[Niji Superfan]

Found something not serious with Sub-Zero. The 2,2,2 string + the corner.

 

Basically, if you knock someone down in the corner and they won't get up, the third hit will OTG and reset their knockdown. If they do get up, 90% chance they won't block high. I call it the retard trap because it always and only works on retards. The game is to see how many times you can do it before it stops working.

 

I wouldn't post this but I just did it too like five people in a row online, with enough success it actually pissed me off. They can probably still taste my salty Irish nuts in the back of their throats.

 

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.

Edited June 9, 2011 by Altaire

[Shirtless Crackhead]

So what all did the patch do?

[Lenin]

Hasn't come out yet.

 

It main effects on gameplay are supposedly making Kung Lao's spin more easily punishable, making Cyrax kinda have to work for bomb trap, the removal of Smoke's OTG shenanigans, making Kano's upball less safe because only Johnny Cage gets to have a safe and reliable anti-air... there was some other stuff too but it's not coming to me and I can't be bothered to hit Google right now.

 

It's apparently going to improve online play too. I honestly don't care about this because I'm a pessimistic fuck. Also because ever since they released the hotfix back in wheneveritwas, I haven't experienced any atrocious lag, despite the fact that first hotfix did nothing to fix netplay. I'd say at this point I get maybe two in ten games where there's noticeable lag and those are usually just spikes that work themselves out. As opposed to where it was before when it was like 80% of matches being totally unplayable from the lag and the remaining 20% just ending in desyncs.

[Mom]

Even after that very first patch, the online play had a constant amount of input delay, not a good look when it's on the same level as smash bros input delay.

[Lenin]

Doesn't change the fact I haven't experienced any real problems since the hotfix. Post-hotfix they actually improved for me. Lag is still and issue and this game's netcode is shitty for me just because two games out of ten getting lag spiked is unacceptable, but outside of that it feels only slightly worse than SSFIV's netcode.

[Niji Superfan]

Even after that very first patch, the online play had a constant amount of input delay, not a good look when it's on the same level as smash bros input delay.

 

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.

Edited June 10, 2011 by Altaire

[Vincent210]

Quan Chi needed Trap Nerfing? o.o

 

Also Cyrax sounds like his tier status just went out the window.

[Lenin]

They're just nerfing Quan Chi to settle the bet they can make him worse than Dan.

 

Cyrax's command grab will be fine, what's going on now, according to Tom Brady is "you're probably not going to ever land it off of a net against somebody with a connected brainstem. You'll have to learn how to land it as a mixup. Some people will miss the break, some won't. And the bomb trap is going to turn in a mixup opportunity rather than be guaranteed meterless damage. The whole thing is going to tear him out of S tier and drop him into the slums of... A/A- tier. People are just going to have to spend some meter and live with all those beefy damage reset combos." Something like that.

 

The only REAL problem with Cyrax was that the command grab was a two frame break. That's fucking hard, and even if you KNOW it's coming the odds are hugely out of your favor to break it which is bullshit. 10 frames of tech is unreasonably long though. I can literally scratch my nuts and react to that.

[Niji Superfan]

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.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

What if they just nerfed the wakeup?

[Lenin]

I used to hate fighting Johnny Cage more than anyone until there was a random ass influx of Raiden players about a week ago. I rarely ever agree with the concept of nerfing anything in a fighting game but I really wish bad things would happen to the Raiden coding. The game's rules just don't apply to him. If there's ONE character that isn't justified in having a safe teleport, it's Raiden. You need to react before it even happens and have a fast uppercut to do anything about it. The loss of frame advantage of his combo strings might mean it'll be a little less easy for him to run all over the rest of the cast. But he'll only be at -1. You will STILL have to sit there. Trying to jump away or poke out of that will just end in you getting superman'd. That's really all it is, another situation in which you can connect a 2-frame start-up ultra-priority move that carries your opponent to the corner. It's awful.

 

And for all your effort Raiden can't be pressured, anything vaguely unsafe eats superman. Can't zone him, teleport is awesome. Can't do oki, ex-superman is retarded. Raiden is all bullshit. It seems like you get the bulk of your damage in that fight just punishing the supermans you can bait. And it's a hard move to bait, if you blink, you won't block it in time. The fact that he can throw it out at midrange safely against a good portion of the cast is bullshit too. Raiden is like the full-character version of Cyrax's command-grab. You can read a Raiden player like a book with no words and still not get anything to show for it.

 

I get that NRS is trying, but some of the shit they're nerfing only makes sense until you stack it up against everything they've decided to leave alone.

 

They should totally nerf Raiden's wake-up. The fact he is so goddamn AMAZING at pressure... punishment... rushing... doing high damage combos... everything, he shouldn't have a fucking "get off me move" since at that point I've earned the right to at least TRY and get something out of the fact I managed to score a knock down on him and his stupid fucking hat.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

Well, he is the thunder god.

[Niji Superfan]

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.

 

I used to hate fighting Johnny Cage more than anyone until there was a random ass influx of Raiden players about a week ago. I rarely ever agree with the concept of nerfing anything in a fighting game but I really wish bad things would happen to the Raiden coding. The game's rules just don't apply to him. If there's ONE character that isn't justified in having a safe teleport, it's Raiden. You need to react before it even happens and have a fast uppercut to do anything about it. The loss of frame advantage of his combo strings might mean it'll be a little less easy for him to run all over the rest of the cast. But he'll only be at -1. You will STILL have to sit there. Trying to jump away or poke out of that will just end in you getting superman'd. That's really all it is, another situation in which you can connect a 2-frame start-up ultra-priority move that carries your opponent to the corner. It's awful.

 

And for all your effort Raiden can't be pressured, anything vaguely unsafe eats superman. Can't zone him, teleport is awesome. Can't do oki, ex-superman is retarded. Raiden is all bullshit. It seems like you get the bulk of your damage in that fight just punishing the supermans you can bait. And it's a hard move to bait, if you blink, you won't block it in time. The fact that he can throw it out at midrange safely against a good portion of the cast is bullshit too. Raiden is like the full-character version of Cyrax's command-grab. You can read a Raiden player like a book with no words and still not get anything to show for it.

 

I get that NRS is trying, but some of the shit they're nerfing only makes sense until you stack it up against everything they've decided to leave alone.

 

They should totally nerf Raiden's wake-up. The fact he is so goddamn AMAZING at pressure... punishment... rushing... doing high damage combos... everything, he shouldn't have a fucking "get off me move" since at that point I've earned the right to at least TRY and get something out of the fact I managed to score a knock down on him and his stupid fucking hat.

 

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.

 

What if they just nerfed the wakeup?

 

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.

[Lenin]

Well, here's what the patch is going to do:

 

1. KL spin will ahve 6 more recovery frames on block

2. KL hat loop removed

3. kabal block infinite removed

4. sonya block infinite removed

5. various bugs fixed

6. wake up moves punishing certain characters after a ground breaker removed

7. stryker xray punsihed on hit fixed

8. advantage on cyrax command throw lessoned

9. cyrax command throw break changed from 2 frame windown to 10 frame window

11. sindel able to scream after 21 now and able t juggle with b3~scream

12. smoke bomb otg removed

13. cyber sub bomb has a smaller buffer window

14. jax ex dash punch goes farther and has armor.

15. jax has a gp fake

16. quan chi sky drop adv lessoned

17. quan chi reset after trance removed

18. quan chi skeletal boost after trance trade removed

19. quan chi can now move after trance

20. raiden no longer has adv after b312 and 334 are blocked. he is now at -1

 

Tweaks coming a few hours after the patch:

 

1. sonya cannot link military stance after d4

2. sonya dive kick inf removed

3. kabal cannot link dash after d4

4. KL infinite removed

5. kano up ball is now more disadv on block

6. more various bugs fixed

 

Point taken. I forget how undertested this game was. We're still in the anti-bullshit phase. I still really disapprove of NRS's treatment of Quan-Chi. Anyone can argue all day over how bad he truly is, but he was 100% not competitive before. People say the only reason everyone thinks he sucks is because no one (by which they mean Tom Brady) has told the dipshits how to use him, but even Tom Brady has said before that he's horrid and the patch is just going to make it worse. He called CySubz v. Quan Chi post-patch as an 8-2 matchup out of Quan's favor, so I guess if he's right, there's at least a small silver lining for me in that if someone is brave enough to take Quan, I'm basically guaranteed that win even more so than I was before.

 

His uppercut, sweep and fireball are all super awesome though so there is that at least. Again, according to Tom Brady, almighty MK dictionary, this will be the last patch for a while. Which makes sense, this removes most bullshit so everything can get hashed out at a competitive level finally rather than just watching people exploit their way through the tourney brackets.

 

And speaking of tournaments, CEO started today which means this patch and Skarlet are supposedly right around the corner. That and the fact this patch is encouraging me to basically double the amount of time I spend playing Sindel and I'm hype to finally have at least one female character in this game I can enjoy playing. Skarlet will be worth the buy just to learn her shenanigans to fight against her properly. You seen that E3 gameplay? Bloodbitch is like a bottomless toolbox. Hope it plays out that way.

[Niji Superfan]

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.

[Lenin]

Tom Brady isn't an NRS employee, so unless/until he's confirmed to be doing play testing of some sort for the DLC characters, I'll take what he says about them with a grain of salt. But still all the while acknowledging he usually is pretty reliable.

 

Fujin does have the soundclip, which could be in there for a few reasons. One being that he'll be in the game at some point, the other being maybe he was going to be in the game, but they opted out and just didn't clean up very well. The soundbyte was brought up to Boon over Twitter and his response was "come back in a year and tell me Fujin is in this game". Then somebody got cheeky with him and said "I hope Fujin gets a good fatality in MK9" and Boon's response was "Fujin is not in MK9."

 

Now when somebody tweeted at him "Can you give Tanya a good fatality in this game, please?" his answer was "Did you find Tanya already? Damn u r good". So there's that.

 

Then at some point somebody tweeted something about wanting Rain in the game and Boon's reply was "You make a convincing argument!"

 

In other tweets he proceeded to basically deconfirm: Havik, Mavado, Mokap, Kira and Li-Mei.

 

And I don't see any reason to think Frost will be in the game either (aside from her being in the background of a stage or two fighting Kenshi, I think... but who gives a fuck?), but I want her A LOT more than I want Tanya. So I'll still campaign for her until she's confirmed beyond all doubt to not be up for DLC. I'm pretty down with Rain being in though so long as he has the control sphere, my favorite move in basically any fighting game. Prince references FTW too.

 

As far as Cyber Smoke goes, if you don't get him as a separate character, you can probably bet you'll at least get it as an alternate costume.

 

EDIT: Don't know about Monday for the patch. The original June 7th date was just a community assumption because of the DLC costume pack; it was never intended for release then despite popular belief. Writing code takes time and it might not be ready then. "This month" is the best answer, but all NRS really said was "after CEO", which could mean Monday. Also could mean July 1st. It's iffy. Monday would be beastly though. I just want Skarlet so bad.

Edited June 11, 2011 by Lenin