@starvinggamer: Just makes certain inputs more difficult, seems like a learning curve thing (i.e. playing a fighting game that isn't MK). I did look for the option originally but failing to find it didn't seem to hurt me too badly. Instant air fan lift + njp is extremely short range (to the point of almost being useless outside of oki) apart from being relatively difficult to pull off consistently, I'd much rather use just a standard jump forward punch fan lift punch.

Maybe the legends (James Chen every tournament) will tell of how Chris G didn't turn off Negative Edge just like he doesn't plink.

Edit: Kung Jin still hits really damn hard. Oh noes my 41% now only does 38%, the horror!

@ichthy: I think the ice klone now disappears if Sub blocks a hit.

Also, it looks like Blanche now has a stage Brutality.

They fixed the matchmaking for both lag and rating and apparently there's almost no one around my rating in player matches so guess I'm stuck doing ranked now. ubiquitous 90% win rates going to deteriorate down to 80% or something I suppose (people usually still aren't very good even if they have 200 wins and 100 losses or whatever).

@fredchuckdave: Can you elaborate on "fixed the matchmaking for both lag and rating"? Are you saying they are now correctly displayed or that people are getting less lag and are matched up with more adequate opponents or all of the above?

And what is the difference between now and before? Also which platform?

@hassun: I tried getting that to work (the brutality), not really sure how you do it.

PS4 I've gotten a bunch of 50% chance to win matches in a row with 4 green bars (though that doesn't mean there's 0 lag in the match it generally means it's pretty good).

The Kitana invasion boss actually makes use of the new attack, also turns out if you play Kitana for like 50 hours you get pretty good at fighting against Kitana.

@hassun: The ping bar is way more accurate when it shows you the connection stats. Also you can back out of ranked matches now if they don't at least have 3 bars.

Yesss! I look forward to seeing people explode by getting hit by the body of an old lady.

@starvinggamer Unless I'm doing the input wrong it doesn't seem like it's possible to hit a crouching character with instant float > njp.

Jack-7 got revealed. Well I expect returning folks in the next couple of weeks.

@fredchuckdave: You mean air float?

@thephantomnaut: Tron Jack!

@l1ghtn1n: Doesn't Tekken need like at least 150 characters?

Considering how absolutely terrible most of the new character designs are we'll have to rely on the known faces. Still looking forward to a new 1v1 Tekken though. Always preferred it over Tag.

In other news, Razer has signed a new fighting game player:

Question is, does this mean Itabashi Zangief is no longer on Team Razer? At first glance it seems like he's still sponsored by them. Maybe just a Twitter character limit thing.

@starvinggamer The response to REO's thread on TYM about the 50/50 is pretty funny, he's right though people will get hit by it for the same reason people get hit by raw dust in Guilty Gear; whatever your brain is expecting to come next is going to override your reactions most of the time.

Toryuken team tournaments going on, twitch.tv/torontotoptiers

For people who are planning to watch more of Toryuken:

Schedule:

Stream 1: http://www.twitch.tv/torontotoptiers

Stream 2: http://www.twitch.tv/torontotoptiers2

Brackets: http://challonge.com/users/torontotoptiers

Infiltration carrying StarmieG was pretty incredible.

Infiltration winning the entire USFIV 2v2 tournament by himself. We're off to a good start.

@flstyle: Weren't there prizes attached to that?

@flstyle: Not quite as funny as the Jwong/ChrisG/FChamp team at NWM but I'll take it.

Some Russian MK going on at twitch.tv/netherrealm at present, players seem reasonably solid.

MK play isn't too bad so far, certainly much better than the Texas pools though there's a lot less people there.

That Russian MKX stream totally has Russian Alex commentating, must be a celebrity commentator from Gamebomb.ru.

@flstyle: Wait what? Streamed at Justin Wong's personal Twitch channel?

Yeah... Not sure what that's all about, Justin's idea maybe? Dunno.

@thunderslash: For Combo Breaker Arturo Sanchez and Justin Wong are teaming up. The after hours content will therefore be streamed on Justin's channel.

@hassun: What's Justin's end of the bargain?

@flstyle: Views? "CPM"?

Views for his own channel though. Seems like an odd thing for Art to agree to, oh well. I'm sure he'll get something out of it.

Dunno, Justin gets a lot of casuals right? Maybe it's like advertising for Art's stream saying hey jwong fans, if you like what you're seeing, subscribe to my channel too.

Makes sense to me!

@hassun: @flstyle: @starvinggamer: Just plain old cross promotion, pretty simple. Art's ability to go on 20 minute discussions promoting stuff is legendary, all the while with that evil half cough half laugh going on.

Here's Very Hard Raiden kicking my ass post patch, I still think he's pretty good though the standard combos don't do even close to as much anymore:

NRS in charge of coding.

@hassun: Funny but not really that significant.

Gunshow is amazing, this commentator isn't.

Finally a good Swarm Queen D'Vorah. Hopefully someone will start blocking the overheads so that we can see if he has run cancels out of low.

@starvinggamer: D'Vorah nerfs incoming. Every time a character wins a tournament, guaranteed. Kung Jin might have to win like 3 or 4 more to get nerfed again though, alas.

Edit: Commentator's growing on me a bit, just like the other canadian dude that was commentating the team tournaments. Can't resist canadian charm.

D'Vorah has been extremely good and recognised as such from the get-go though.

@hassun: Eh more on the periphery. Being harder to play makes you rarer at least to start with (though Venomous isn't too bad).

This D'Vorah mirror is actually pretty fascinating though.

I guess in a long set you have to use the X Ray at the most dramatic moment, D'Vorah's is one of the best in the game though so they probably could have landed it earlier.

Canada, land of the bee.

@fredchuckdave: I think it's one of those typical cases where you wait until you know for sure the super move is going to kill if it lands.

@hassun: Nah it was just a style play that would probably work, but provided you don't do it at predictable times the good ones are viable (not too sure about Sonya's though). Superman's in Injustice was like 0 frame startup so if you weren't blocking before it came out you'd get hit by it; pretty good balance methinks.

@fredchuckdave: I dunno, I still think people will save it for a situation where it's a guaranteed kill with nearly every character including D'Vorah. Gotta make sure it kills so you're not sitting there metreless.

In other news, back to rooting against Infiltration because he's just been winning waaaaay too much recently. I really want K-Brad to get a win again.

@hassun: There are a few kinds of characters in MK, some have X-Rays that are awful and only use meter on special moves, there are some that have EX Special moves that are awful (or mostly awful) so they only use X-Rays, D'Vorah is somewhere inbetween so in that case you might be right but it really depends. If you look at Ferra/Torr's X-Ray there's no way to avoid it basically so you have to be standing and blocking no matter what and if you're in a situation where you think the opponent is going to do something else you get a ton of free damage (and Ferra/Torr's meter isn't super important) and usually a knockdown. It's not like Honeybee desperately needed the meter if the other D'Vorah was at 50% or whatever, especially given the tit for tat nature of the fights until then.

The question is "do I take the free 32-40% damage at the risk of giving my opponent a read?" Which it just depends on the player, if the player keeps doing X-Rays at similar times that's easy to exploit but if they do it at very random times then not so much. In MK X-Rays are a shitload better than Ultras are in Street Fighter so just never using X-Rays could just be weakening your game; though obviously Kazunoko is still around.

Combo Breaker might be the first event where the US takes all the top 3 spots, though mainly due to scheduling.

@fredchuckdave: When I think of characters who freely X-Ray in MKX I think of Sonya (who has a counter X-Ray AND gets a combo off of it) and Ferra/Torr who can just incorporate it in a combo or get an easy punish with it.

COME ON K-BRAD!

@hassun: I really think Sonya's is dead in the water in tournaments now though (could be wrong), poor Sonya's will have to come up with some other way to use their meter.

Off the top of my head outside of wake-up Kitana and Mileena don't really have good ways to use their meter (aside from damage gain, I mean Mileena has an overhead mixup via EX-Ball but everyone blocks high against Mileena) and both X-Rays can be used as anti-airs. D'Vorah and Takeda both have reasons to use their meter but their X-Rays are also good. Raiden's X-Ray is extremely good but so are his meter burns so you only see it every once in a while. Kenshi's and Ermac's can be used as anti airs as well. The list goes on. Unless you're crazy on point with the Breaker it mostly only helps if you're in the lead and it pushes the opponent back in the corner, not to say the breaker isn't good but it usually just delays the inevitable. I mean REO barely used it and he's top 3 right now (obviously you wouldn't X-Ray with Kung Jin).

@fredchuckdave:Yeah if you're a character who doesn't really require a lot of metre to combo or play in general you can use the threat of a random X-Ray quite well of course.

@l1ghtn1n: If he manages to win Stunfest as well he's far and away the current favourite for the CapCup. Europe and Asia will be out in force there and we all know the Americas are already free to him.