The store is back up! I redeemed my Online Pass but since the game hasn't received a real patch recently, I'm assuming netcode is still laggy as shit? Maybe I'll try some more ranked matches later.
So I'm getting a little tired of LA Noire. I think it's mostly my fault, since I can't help but do the street crimes every time they pop up and they are always in East LA while I'm driving around West Hollywood. Maybe I'll just start making my partner drive me everywhere instead, since I just went ahead and bought that Rockstar Pass thingy and all the current DLC.
In MK9 news, I just was watching some of the matches from the PDP National tournament in... Las Vegas I think? I was inspired by @MarkMan23's valiant efforts with Smoke and decided to give him a spin. His combos are all really hard hitting but pretty strict with the timings and complicated with the inputs. Thank god I was able to edit out all the dropped combos.
Of course the damage discrepancy between his different potential combo openers means most players are going to expect the big FKxxD+FPxxBP and make you work for it. None of Smoke's other specials seemed all that great other than his teleport as a possible wake-up move. Unfortunately he also has no real way to combo into X-Ray for any significant damage. Still, the speed and tracking qualities of his Smoke Cloud should be enough to force most other characters to be cautious.
Then there's my old go-to, Scorpion. Since NRS recently did a stealth tweak to the way damage is scaled in combos, all of my previous combo videos have become obsolete. Of course I could always just change the % for each combo in the description, but I figured I might as well try to broaden the depth each of these videos goes into. Since I have the most practical experience with Scorpion he was the obvious choice. I looked at a few other common game situations you might find yourself in, and made new combos specific to them. You've already seen most of what's on display here, but there are a few new goodies tucked away as well (+ timestamps!)
Now I'm running late for work so I'd better stop typing. I should have all of Monday to myself however so expect more Kontent then. Oh and if you guys ever see me on PSN (catbond) send me a game invite. I promise you I'm not nearly as good as I pretend to be in these videos :D
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So I just got back from Mexico. Left there at 11:00 PM and got here at 5:00 AM... then came to work 5 hours later.
I wanted to get some smaller videos up last week but between LA Noire, prenatal visits and getting my shit in order for my trip I simply did not have time. However, with amazing presence of mind, I decided I would do some quick ranked matches of MK9 and throw them up here for giggles. Little did I know how dire the netcode situation is. After losing an unplayable match to Noob then winning another unplayable match against Sub-Zero I decided it wasn't in the cards and went back to MvC3.
It was weird coming back, trying to reteach my hands to cancel instead of buffer. It probably didn't help that I decided to suddenly teach myself how to use Akuma. I was fortunate to fall into a player match with a really strong player right away and he gave me a crash-course refresher on how hard it is not to get utterly killed. I've uploaded our first couple of matches which I am labeling a first-to-seven even if the other guy wasn't aware of it. Not uploaded are the next 30ish matches which I won ~5 of using my alternate teams.
Man, I love this game. Even when I'm getting bodied by a really well crafted Tron Bonne touch-of-death combo I'm still having fun. Even when I'm screwing up my setups and dropping shit left and right I'm still having fun. MK9 is a shocking well put together game and SSFIV:AE is going to be great, but neither of those games hit the pleasure center of my brain like Wolverine constantly shouting "UNACCEPTABLE."
So now that I'm back, what next? I just finished homicide in LA Noire so there's still a ways to go in that. I did notice before I left, however, that the damage % of some combos seemed to have changed. I have no problem with patching but I think NRS is going a little too crazy with their balancing. Just because you can push out minor tweaks every day doesn't mean you should. You need to give players enough time to break their characters, then other players enough time to figure out how to unbreak them before you can even begin to form an idea of how to achieve better balance.
I'm not looking forward to a world in which I have to redo a combo video every day because some attack got its damage reduced by 2% or something like that. Unfortunately I refuse to let my videos become irrelevant. I'll probably also start playing MvC3 regularly again since PSN is back up and I missed getting salty because, "I TOTALLY FUCKING BLOCKED THAT," and enjoying it.
I was going to use "Police Brutality Caught on Tape" as the title of this blog but it felt too... click-whorish.
So Stryker, another character with minor mixups as far as I understand MK9 mixups. Without frame data or online play there is no way for me to really know what pressure tricks he has but his dial-a-combo that hits low then mid should catch people unfamiliar with the matchup.
In most situation I'd imagine that playing Stryker as a zoner is going to net you the most success. A two-hit projectile that goes fullscreen instantly and can be delayed is AMAZING. His Roll Toss as a combo ender helps with this, as it chucks the opponent back to full screen. Unfortunately the timing to land it is extremely tight. Unless you are an execution monster you'll probably be better off ending his combos with an uppercut instead. The damage will only be 1 or 2% less and it is significantly easier to land.
So tomorrow I have to get my blood taken which means I probably won't have time before work to make another combo video. I did bulldoze my way through Portal 2 but next week I'll be glued to my TV playing LA Noire. Rather than take a look at new characters I may flesh out some of my previous videos with X-Ray, Enhanced and Punish combos. Have a great weekend everybody!
So PSN is back up which is great for everyone who redeemed their MK9 online pass BEFORE it went down. Unfortunately I'm stuck sitting here twiddling my thumbs until the store comes back up as well.
Well, not exactly. I did go ahead and dive into Reptile and, well, yeah not much to say here. Another seemingly standard character that hits like a truck plus maybe some shenanigans with Force Balls. On the plus side, his combos are all pretty easy to do.
In other news, I finally cleared floor 300 of the Challenge Tower by giving in a picking Stryker instead of Scorpion. His BnBs are pretty strong and it's painfully easy to beat Shao Kahn with gun spam. I'll probably be looking at him for my next video. Unfortunately for you guys, since PSN is back up I have finally been able to link my account to Steam which means I can FINALLY play Portal 2 on my PC. So I'll be grinding away at that with a majority of my free time going forward. Then L.A. Noire will be here and well... I'll still try to do a few of these every week though and once the store is back up, I'll probably begin chronicling my journey through MK9 ranked matches.
Every joke I could think of for the thread title seemed way too obvious so I tried to be meta. Or is it self-aware?
Anyways, I already did Ryu so I figured I'd do Ken as well. Or is Scorpion Ken and Sub-Zero Ryu? In any case, after staying up all night watching Tom Brady's amazing space control at PowerUp I wanted to figure out how to maximize damage as Sub-Zero. He may lack pressure options but Iceball pressure while hiding behind Ice Clones should be enough to open up most opponents for some punishment. If the enemy makes 4 mistakes, they're done.
So I've never been a fan of using popular characters in fighting games, especially not marquee characters. In SSFIV I've always leaned heavily on Rose and Dhalsim while in MvC3 my favorite team is Haggar/Deadpool/Anchor(currently Dormammu). The closer we get to PSN coming up, however, the more certain I'm becoming that Sub-Zero and Scorpion are going to be my go-tos. Depending on my mood I can go mixup crazy or troll with endless zoning. I'm getting really excited to hop into ranked mode. Maybe when the time comes, I'll start a new MK video series tracking my progress. Or something.
Anyways, I better get to bed since it's 4 AM again o_O and I need to wake up in the morning to call MadCatz and bitch at them about the Fightpad I just bought not working aergh! Well, if you have a moment please check out the Whiskey Media fighting game community channel on youtube, send us a message, leave us a comment, thumb up some of our videos and please please please subscribe. I'll be back Monday with some more Kontent for you guys to consume.
After promising myself I would slow my roll, I have proceeded to stay up until ~4 AM every night this week working on new combo videos. Actually right now it's 5:15AM and my girlfriend is probably going to be slightly irritated when I crawl my way back into bed. OHWELL!
So Sonya Blade, no combos off of a low or an overhead. WTF is with this chick? Because of her linearity I went ahead and dug a little deeper beyond going for max damage with various setups. She has two equally powerful combo enders, one which pushes the enemy very far forward and another that switches sides with the enemy. Since no damage is lost regardless of ender, you should always be finishing your combos with positioning in mind. She also has a very powerful jump-in that can be done by canceling a jumping punch immediately into her dive kick immediately into a ground chain. You have to press the buttons incredibly fast however and it's the first time I've found myself wishing I was on a stick instead of a pad so I could piano those inputs.
Also of note, since these X-Ray combos are all the rage it seems I went ahead and made one for Sonia. Then I looked at how much damage it did and it really didn't seem like it was worth 3 meters. Then I started testing with enhanced moves and found you can do exactly the same amount of damage with an X-Ray combo finisher as you can with 2 enhanced specials within a combo. So all none of you Sonia players out there should start saving your meter for enhanced moves and breakers. No matter how cool X-Ray looks just say no.
Also @Renahzor was kind enough to point out a glaring omission of a jumping punch after Nomad Dash in my Kabal video for a few extra % of damage. I don't really care about Kabal. But I DO, however, care about Scorpion. Thusly I have uploaded an updated Scorpion combo video that is almost exactly the same as the first, except better. Get over here!
So it's almost the weekend which, I guess strangely, is when I have the least amount of time for games. Since my girlfriend and I have disparate work schedules the weekends are the only times we really get to hang out so no sitting in front of my computer Saturday and Sunday. I'll try to grind out another one or two videos sometime either tomorrow night or Friday morning. Blah blah blah Whiskey Media fighting game community channel blah youtube blah blah subscribe blah. Links tootherblogposts.
@DougQuaid alas Kano. He really has no mixup game to speak of, with nothing off of a low and minor damage from an overhead. Basically if you're fighting a Kano player block high. I did make an interesting discovery however. Normally you can cancel a jumpkick into an airthrow but it looks like if the kick is blocked, the throw animation never comes out. Basically any time you are jumping and kicking with Kano, you might as well also be throwing because it's free damage.
Kabal only has one real difference with Kano, his combos look cooler. He may be able to combo off of a low but his only overhead options cause a knockdown and do about 10% damage. VS Kano block high, VS Kabal block low. Actually there was so little to explore as Kabal that I went ahead and did a real corner combo. It might be incredibly uncreative, but it gets the job done and, most importantly, leaves the opponent in the corner. Good luck finding a way to actually get in a situation to use it.
I'm starting to think I accidentally stumbled upon the most diverse characters in Scorpion and Mileena first and every character from here on out is going to be very linear. I think Scorpion is going to be my go to guy though, I don't know how I could live without combos off of mid and low from outside of sweep range. I've watched a few Kitana videos and her combos seem pretty long and complicated, maybe I'll take a look at her next.
I'm assuming you've heard this plug before, but if you're looking for more quality content from other GBers, check out the Whiskey Media fighting game community channel on YouTube and subscribe. PSN will be back soon and SSFIV:AE is on its way. Also if you haven't yet, check out my previous combo videos for Scorpion, Mileena, Liu Kang and Raiden. As always your thoughts and comments are appreciated.
Wtf Liu Kang, I'd have to take him online to be sure but he seems like an absolute pressure monster. Two quick strings lead to over 1/3 life combos either starting in a low or ending in an overhead. And one combo is all it takes to take the opponent across 2/3 of the stage and into the corner. I've been avoiding corner combos in my previous videos to try and keep things simple, but with Liu Kang you really have to know when your opponent will and will not end in the corner because if you do the wrong ender, you will whiff. Wattah!
Raiden was far less interesting. He has no real way to combo off of a low or out of the air, so there wasn't much for me to explore. However, the timings of his best combos were so tight that this video actually took me the longest to complete.
Is it just me or does it seem like his Torpedo scream isn't as long as it used to be. I remember when I was a kid playing MK1 in the arcade that it sounded like "alibabakah" or something. We may know that a Ryu says "Tatsumaki Senpu Kyaku" when he does a Hurricane Kick but Raiden remains a mystery. As a character he seems a bit mehhh. No great speed, no great strength, limited options. Maybe Torpedo spam is king of laggy online play.
I know I've been extra prolific today but don't expect me to keep up this pace. It just happens that I stayed up waaay too late last night watching the GSL and Mondays are my day off. I'll probably throw up another one or two videos before the end of the week. Again if you haven't yet, take a peek at the Whiskey Media fighting game community channel and show us some love. Subscribe or thumbs up our videos or just leave a comment letting us know what you think.
Taking @Kyreo 's suggestion I dove into Mileena (that's what she said) over the weekend. It's amazing how much more difficult it is to come up with strong combos when you don't have a projectile that wraps up the opponent in a nice, neat, beatable package. I tell you, it was a lot more frustrating trying to pull off combos consistently with her and I don't think I'll be picking her up for serious play. Anyways this is what I've got:
To be perfectly honest, I hopped in with Baraka first but he really has no good midcreen combo options. I think that BPxxBPxxFP+BP, fd, F+BKxxBK, Blade Charge is the beginning and end of Baraka's potential. Mileena's tools for opening the other guy up aren't quite as sexy as Scorpion's. Scorpion's low hits from outside of sweep range as does his shoulder charge overhead. Mileena's cartwheel kick overhead also has pretty good range but it comes out sooo slow. Honestly outside of her Ball Roll, nothing that Mileena does feels particularly fast.
Anyways I hope you guys enjoy and again, please check out the other videos our cohorts have uploaded to the Whiskey Media fighting game community channel. It's been pretty inactive recently since most of us use PSN (lol) but a few videos have been trickling through. I might want to take a look at Kung Lao next since he's supposedly top-tier, but a lot of people are anticipating an attack from the nerf stick which would likely invalidate any videos I made using him. I guess I'll check if Nightwolf has any useful overheads.
So after tearing my way through Story Mode and 299 levels of the Challenge Tower (fuck you Mileena) I decided to step away from MK9 for a few days since PSN has been down and frankly, I was getting pretty angry with the game. This morning, however, I started thinking about how much fun I was having messing around with Scorpion in practice mode and figured I'd buckle down and really try to figure out some shit. An hour or so later I had this to show for my efforts:
Rather than go for flash, I just wanted to figure out the most effective combos doable mid-screen from a variety of standard offensive positions. The results were a powerful hitconfirm, a combo off of a quick low, two overhead combos with significantly different openers and an air-to-air anti-air combo. If I had more time before work I probably would have tried to work in a punish combo for all the blocked floaty specials but maybe I'll save that for another video.
With this video in my pocket (and uploaded to the Whiskey Media fighting game community channel, check it out guys!), I'm hungry to move on to my next character. Do any of you guys have any characters you'd like to request? I'm thinking of taking a look at Kabal or Nightwolf since I really enjoyed using them but any suggestions are welcome. I can't wait until PSN comes back so I can use my advanced knowledge to get horrifically beaten.
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