So I played online last night and fought so many Scorpions. I really wouldn't mind that but DAMN!!! They ALL abused Demon Fire...What sucks about it is that it follows you AND it's completely unblockable. Tie that in with his ability to ignite himself, and we now have a mostly untouchable Scorpion for a small duration of time.

All I'm saying though is that Demon Fire should AT LEAST be able to be low blocked. It's a real pain, especially when people spam it. It made me have no fun in the game.

Jump? Then do a billion damage because it leaves him wide open?

MK9 had the same problem with spamming shit. I think it's just that the developers aren't out to make the kind of perfectly balanced game the fighting game community expects.

People are telling me to jump but it's not that easy for me. It seemingly follows me everywhere and gets me as soon as I hit the ground. In fact, jumping almost always means I will get hit when I land because my opponent will know EXACTLY when I'll be touching the ground. It's making me very frustrated.

These threads continue to puzzle me some. Maybe I'm just on a very, very extended hot streak of luck, but I got some 200 games under my belt now, and I've not had any problems whatsoever with people spamming past the first 30 games or so. The thing about the special moves in this game, the majority of 'em leave you wiiiiide open if you miss. The only ones that are safe to use regularly are those that push the enemy back some, Liu Kang's flying kick for instance, thus making it impossible for them to immediately counter you with a combo or an uppercut. And even those are risky if your opponent can quickly close the distance, Erron Black's pistol-whipping combos serve as a good example.

Now, Scorpion's Hellfire is rough if you're turtling. It's supposed to be. So don't. Get right up there to him and smack the fucker. Learn a couple of more advanced combos that'll net you some damage proper, and just get close to him and unleash while he's busy with the long aftermath of the ability. The damage he's able to put out on you via long-distance hell-fire will seem comparatively meek, and then it's just a game of numbers.

As l1ghtn1n suggested here, use the training room, that's what it's there for. You'll be able to set up the same scenario you're struggling with, and be able to experiment and find a solution that works for you. For the record, in the higher tiers of players, you don't see a lot of scorpion because his moves are so damn risky. I struggled a bit with the Hellfire variation when I first encountered it, but since I figured out what methods to circumvent the bullshit, I've not lost a game against a scorpion.

Overall, I've yet to find a single bullshit strategy in this game that you can't adapt to and learn to counter in such a way that you, yourself, gain an advantage from it. Admittedly, I kill most people before they have a chance to do stuff, but still.

Also, Europe seems to have less Scorpion than the US. Now, I'm not saying this makes us better on a cultural level, but I think we all know that's the case.

Training mode is definitely your friend here, as L1ghtn1n and Manta_Ray suggested. Head to the menu and "record AI" then do that move (down back 2, in case you're not a Scorpion player yourself), then just practise avoiding and punishing it. Get used to what it looks like coming out, and find out what works best for you against it. It's a fairly low-damage move too, so don't worry if you get caught by it every once in a while. You'll do far more damage when you punish them, and they'll probably re-think their strategy. Or they won't, and you'll be able to beat them easily because you've spent the time practising how to counter it.

Meh, it was easily countered in MK9 and Injustice.

The netcode is absolute rubbish so it's just all spam all day.

This.

Hellfire should only be effective when you're put in a vortex or full screen doing nothing so just apply pressure and punish the recovery of the move.

Even if you do get hit by it the amount of damage it does is pitiful, it's just a mental guard crush if you're hit by a lot so don't let it bother you and play your game. All it will take is a high damage combo to make him start to think about it.

It can take a little while to get a good feel for, but it obviously all comes down to knowing the right time to jump. Look at it this way: If you can make the right read on your opponent using that move and you're within jumping distance, you get to punish the recovery of the move with whatever you can hit them with. Presumably that's going to be a lot more damage than they get if they hit you with the fire once.

So if you don't want to get in his face in order to try and avoid creating situations where the hellfire will be useful, you have to shut that option down another way. The best way to do that is to show that the risk/reward doesn't work out in their favour. So think about what they might respond to that will make using hellfire seem like a good idea and try to bait it out while within a range where you can get the punish combo if you guess right. The bait might be as simple as keeping a certain distance and not really doing much at all. Just try not to be too obvious about what you're trying to do and don't become too focused on trying to achieve just that. Easier said than done, obviously it's very to become fixated with a single thing in a fighting game, ie trying too hard to land X-Ray because you have the meter, meanwhile you're missing opportunities. I guess the beauty of this is that it's going to be true for both players though, so if they cotton on to what you're trying to do, you can drop it for a bit and then try again when it might have slipped their mind while they're thinking intently about something else.

It might seem like a difficult thing to do, and on the surface it might seem like you're the only one who has to take a risk, but remember that if you can do a lot more damage on your correct guess than they can on theirs of when to use fire, your success rate doesn't even have to be that high to show that they aren't winning that battle and that maybe they should really cut back on the move. If you can make the jump-in in that situation a threat, suddenly the risk of using fire seems much greater and the reward starts to look less worthwhile.

Just hit Scorpion. The self-immolation thing doesn't last if you land a hit on him.

Rush that shit down.

Don't give him the fucking time of day to even try the move. It's slow in start up and recovery. Rush him down hard.

Now, the spamming of demon mixups in laggy matches is something that is actually impossible to deal with.

@thunderslash said:

Jason Oestreicher would be proud. I love that he is now the cussin'-est and the aggro-est staff member, especially around fighting games.

I haven't had any issues with it, because when some uses Hellfire and doesn't know what they are doing, I just jump it and punish that ass severely. That's the thing I love about this game: special moves leave you open for weeks worth of hits if you whiff that shit.

@rongalaxy: If you want your game to have a passionate competitive scene, you can't balance it around low-level play. Well, unless you're Blizzard.

@starvinggamer: It's kind of funny how SC2 is now, it's not like making the game that way made it more popular amongst low level players and the Korean skill level is still completely unattainable for anyone. Basically all it did was make matches take longer.

Ha!

If you fight a spammer you have an easy win. Because you KNOW how they are going to respond. So bait that shit out and punish it. And once you get in on them STAY on them make them continually guess with high/low mixups and don't underestimate the utility of crouching pokes. Most of them can interupt moves and are low startup with minimal recovery.

And as everyone said if you're getting beaten by this go to training mode so you know how to beat it next time. If you wanna not get steamrolled by this kind of stuff roll up your sleeves and get in the lab.

If you're being pounded by demon fire then you're not adapting to your opponent. If you expect him to DF then you can neutral jump, forward jump, run forward or do one of many character specific attacks. If you're staying out of his range and blocking then the obvious move for him is to do that move.