Mortal Kombat 9

[Crimson Fury]

Love the new game! Haven't put in enough time on it to really have a strong opinion yet about character balance and such, but so far I've had fun.

[Lenin]

For Skarlet: b2 db2 dash 2 3 df2 dash 212. 35%, mid-screen, meterless, effortless. You can also do the same combo only replace that last 212 for f4~3 and it does 39%.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

For Skarlet: b2 db2 dash 2 3 df2 dash 212. 35%, mid-screen, meterless, effortless. You can also do the same combo only replace that last 212 for f4~3 and it does 39%.

 

Huh?

[Lenin]

d = down

b = back

1 = front punch

2 = back punch

3 = front kick

4 = back kick

 

Standard MK combo notation since the internet was shat into existence by Al Gore and Japanland.

 

EDIT: Okay, Bloodbitch is absolutely insane.

 

Just end all your combos with 1,1,2 for a reset into your d,f3 shenanigans. You can loop 4~d,f3~b2 three times, and you can cancel d,f3~4 with the f2 with good timing and get a combo or do the same thing only with b2, but you don't get a combo. And it's safe.

 

It should be your go to strat if you like winning a lot. And when you're not doing that she has everything else in her bloodfuck toolbox. Kabaltana.

Edited June 22, 2011 by Lenin

[Niji Superfan]

In training mode, when the blood ball hits, you get big letters that say "UNBLOCKABLE"

 

...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.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

The blood ball one of them slow moving projectiles or something?

[Lenin]

...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 already corrected this. When I was in training mode with her I just saw "UNBLOCKABLE" and moved the fuck on. It actually didn't dawn on me that they'd consider the self-inflicted damage an attack.

 

The blood ball one of them slow moving projectiles or something?

 

When she was being demoed, it was slow as shit. Now it's actually pretty fast, but has start up too slow to be worth anything.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

I'm just waiting to hear about some OP x-ray ended combo doing insane damage or something.

[Niji Superfan]

I'm just waiting to hear about some OP x-ray ended combo doing insane damage or something.

 

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.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

Nevermind then, does that mean she'd be doing the rage thing for damage boosted combos and shit?

[Lenin]

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 how I've been using it. It's also a pretty good down to the wire reversal. There's a strange hit box to it too, that you can use to your advantage. I think it his overhead too. So that's nice.

 

 

Nevermind then, does that mean she'd be doing the rage thing for damage boosted combos and shit?

 

Huh?

 

Anyway, if anyone wants to tierwhore this bitch up, this is how Tom Brady recommends you do it:

 

1. Kung Lao

2. Raiden

3. Nightwolf

4. Johnny Cage

5. Reptile

6. Sub-Zero

7. Cyrax

8. Cyber Sub-Zero

[Niji Superfan]

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?

[Lenin]

REO, fellow competitor, friend of Tom Brady posted that for him over on TYM from an AIM correspondence. REO/The Justin Wong of Mortal Kombat's top eight is basically exactly the same too.

 

And that was Tom Brady actually listing character order. Whether or not it's true is debatable but that's how Brady sees it.

 

EDIT: You know some things that should really happen for this game DLC-wise? One, the compatibility pack for Skarlet and the MK3 Cyrax/Sektor skins really needs to be a mandatory-to-sign-in patch. This is a character I fucking PAID for and I only get to play her with my opponents permission. What a load of horseshit.

 

Two: Automatic blind character select. I just think this whole process would go a lot faster if my opponent didn't have to wait and see who I pick before he picks Scorpion.

 

EDIT 2: I wrecked a Raiden with Skarlet and got her totally superduper goregasmic second fatality off on him. That made me feel good. Then I checked my stats and saw it was my 1337 match. Fuckin' gdlk.

Edited June 25, 2011 by Lenin

[Niji Superfan]

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.

[Lenin]

Yeah, Smoke is pretty beastly. I'll have to try him again. I've been playing CySubz/Subz/Ermac/Kung Lao/Johnny/Noob the most, basically since launch. Who could I never get to work for me? Fuckin' Smoke. The three button wonder, and I could never really use him successfully (at least not successfully enough for my taste) against expressly non-zoning characters. But he's really fucking strong. His high/low game is so lacking though. You can train your opponent to respect sweep > oki and block low all day, but at least 50-55% of the cast can just mash and/or uppercut the fuck out of that overhead on reaction when they see the lunge (well, probably not online); it just has zero priority over anything. Smoke also loses hard to universal d+3s. It's all made up for by that super sexy abare, though.

[Niji Superfan]

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.

[Lenin]

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.

 

I think I have horrible luck. The second I see a crouching opponent is the second they usually start mashing uppercut and I always seem to lose with Smoke's overhead vs. an uppercut. At least the faster ones. I have HUGE success throwing it out as a meaty, though.

 

Don't Smoke bomb just off the b+2, though. You can add a little more damage doing... I think it's b+2,3~smoke bomb. And it looks pretty cool too. Unless they took that out in the patch. I don't think the smoke bomb hits OTG in that situation, but I'm out of practice with him.

 

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.

 

QFT.

 

Also, I started learning Kung Lao, really just to see what the big deal is.

 

...

 

I don't see what the big deal is.

 

The only reason to play Kung Lao now is if you actually like Kung Lao. Back in the pre-patch days during the long-long ago, Kung Lao had massive damage output generated from the spin, which back then was basically unpunishable in addition to being the most versatile move around. Sick anti-air, hilariously good on wake-up, I think it was tied with Reptile's elbow dash for third fastest move behind Raiden's respective enhanced and regular supermans... in addition to launching for that damage.

 

Now he doesn't break 30% without meter or a corner, and spin is super punishable now with all the post-patch added recovery. Online it might as well have never changed, since people online can't punish anything that recovers at a distance because I guess it's just really hard to dash in when your asshat is obscuring your vision. I'm not really sure.

 

I think the joy of playing Kung Lao is in his defensive strengths rather than his rushdown. Just hanging back and throwing hats to either keep them away or baiting them to jump in at me so I can spin and combo them. His anyjabstring~spin, jump kick~dive kick, f+3~spin BnB as well as anything ending in his 3,4,throw,2 string are great for pushing your opponents into the corner, and Kung Lao pushing you up against the wall is still destruction, even after the damage nerf. I like that one string he has... I forget what it's called, it's like seven really fast punches in a row that sends them full screen on hit, and on block does like 10% chip damage and builds 2/3rds~ a bar of meter. It's wildly punishable on block but you can cancel it into ground-hat and make it safe, and probably get that to hit too. I also just like dive kicks in general.

 

The reason his popularity still remains is probably because no one in this game utterly STOMPS the clueless quite like Kung Lao. Even when all you have to do to watch him drop down the tier list in real time is block low. People also don't realize that jumping in on Kung Lao = free combo. I can't tell you how many people just jump in, eat a combo and just keep doing it over and fucking over until they die. It's absolutely pathetic.

 

Essentially, there is no big deal regarding Kung Lao unless you're really into bait-and-punish characters with no mixup options whatsoever. His 2nd fatality never gets old either, so there's that too.

 

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, Tom Brady has consistently disappointed me in every tournament appearance that I've been aware of ever since the one he closed out with Noob. Did you see his matches with Chris G at CEO? Flawless victory vs. his own dignity. Hahaha. It actually wasn't really that bad, but when he whipped out the Kung Lao, my eyes rolled so hard I swore I saw my own optic nerves. He's good and definitely the highest level Sub-Zero around, but I think all the other high-level players have either caught up to him or surpassed him.

 

If you really are bummed about Tom Brady being eliminated from ECT, Wonder Chef's showing at FFA from a little while ago will probably makeup for it if you've yet to see it:

 

 

I mean, how often does high-level Sektor play come around? Virtually fucking never. I just wish he didn't go with human Sektor. I hate that shit sooo much. Regular Sektor looks like a Beetleborg. Why would you want to fuck with that?

Edited June 27, 2011 by Lenin

[Niji Superfan]

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.

[Lenin]

I was watching... Fuck, I want to say it was Outcast's stream or something. They had Brady on right before/after the first hotfix berating the people in the stream chat for being retarded. Somebody asked him why he mains Sub-Zero and he corrected them saying "Actually, it's Sub-Zero sub, Noob Saibot main." I just thought that was interesting. I'll try to see if I can find that stream again.

 

I go around the cast too much to really say I've got anything mastered. I'd say my strongest characters are probably Kung Lao and Ermac just because I once spent fifteen minutes in training mode with them. After that it's CySubz. I also ended up randomly getting pretty okay with Sektor just because I fucking LOVE the Scarecrow. My regular Sub is okay but I mostly use him to gauge the retardation level of my opponent. It's simple math. You take the amount of times they jump right into your ice clone after they watch you plant it, multiply it by how many times they get caught in wake-up slide and then divide it by how many times the best punishment they can muster is an uppercut. The result is your opponent's IQ, accurate to within .5 points.

 

More importantly: Keanu Reeves available for DLC July 5th. Jesus Christ that was fast.

 

I am SO sold on Kenshi. Those fatalities are fucking godlike. The whole playstyle looks so goddamn stupid awesome too. I can honestly hear the screams of "OP" from 90% of the MK community already.

Edited June 27, 2011 by Lenin

[Niji Superfan]

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?

[Lenin]

[Niji Superfan]

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.

[Lenin]

I want to see Brady play Skarlet more than anything. People in this community just don't seem to understand dick unless Tom Brady does it for them. I want people to realize that Skarlet isn't a rushdown/combo character.

 

Or maybe I'm insane. But I've spent a lot of time playing her, and it just seems logical that she does zoning and mixups, and the combos are reserved to fuel her biggest selling point which is 40+% meterless damage in punishment situations. Most of her starters are just too slow to actively go combo hunting. Aside from her 2,1~df2, 2~db2, u3,4~teleport, which does 35%-ish and gives you oki.

 

Most people just try to rush me down with her and get destroyed for their troubles. Or they spam teleport because they're failed abortions.

 

Actually, I lied. Her ability to punish isn't her biggest selling point. It's that she seems to be a counterpick to Sub-Zero. She shuts down the clone and ice ball just by existing and it seems like her projectiles recover to fast to trade with ice ball if they ever do throw it out unless the spacing is just so. But Sub-Zero has to play her game, and is ill equipped to do so.

 

EDIT: Finally started working on getting Kabal's f3,2~spin cancel--henceforth referred to as "The Soul Crusher"--and it's a fuckton easier than I thought it would be. Then again, the dash isn't canceled with b,b anymore. It's done with back+block like the enhanced version, so that's interesting. After like... two hours in training mode, my hand hurts like FUCK because of this, but being good with Kabal is worth it.

 

EDIT 2: Just played a Skarlet who managed to kill himself by doing the blood orb. I'm not fucking kidding.

 

EDIT 3: Yo, Altaire. You like Sektor and hate morons right? This thread is for you. Just read it.

 

EDIT 4: This is new, Skarlet's match-up chart vs. the cast according to REO:

 

Scorpion: 2-8

Liu Kang: 2-8

Kung Lao: 6-4

Sub-Zero: 2-8

Sindel: 4-6

Ermac: 5-5

Reptile: 2-8

Kitana: 3-7

Johnny Cage: 2-8

Jade: 5-5

Mileena: 4-6

Nightwolf: 5-5

Cyrax: 3-7

Noob Saibot: 5-5

Smoke: 7-3

Sektor: 3-7

Sonya: 2-8

Jax: 2-8

Kano: 3-7

Stryker: 2-8

Shang Tsung: 3-7

Baraka: 2-8

Kabal: 4-6

Raiden: 7-3

Cyber Sub-Zero: 4-6

Sheeva: 2-8

Quan Chi: 2-8

 

I've spent so much time trollololing with her, I really don't doubt this completely. Her kunai shenanigans are really that strong.

Edited June 30, 2011 by Lenin

[Niji Superfan]

...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.

[Lenin]

...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

 

The only matchups she has out of her favor are the anti-zoners. Her grounded kunai on block (the first one) has the same level of pushback as Noob's shadow tackle, she can dash cancel after kunai 1 and immediately--motherfucking IMMEDIATELY--throw another one. This negates dash blocking in, and jumping in is negated by air kunai. Sub-Zero gets destroyed by her.

 

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.

 

Liu Kang's combos being easy mode doesn't really bother me. It's the fact that actually using him in a fight is easier than learning how to masturbate. You can just get in somebody's face and slap your dick on buttons and just do safe 50/50s all day.

 

Then again I've been playing Kabal mostly so I hate that faggot for a number of reasons. I miss it from back in April when every Liu Kang player decided unanimously that the only move he had was Bicycle Kick

 

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.

 

Dude, I once flawlessed a dude with Quan-Chi and got a voice message tirade about how I was a tier whore. MK online is where brain cells go to have their corpses raped.

 

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.

 

That Big J guy was really pissing me off though. I don't know how many times that guy proved he was too stupid to read my clear concise english in that thread, but I'm glad all Sektor players aren't like that.

 

Which is more than I can say for Liu Kang players.