What if certain characters had useless variations?

I can't get my head around master of storms being viable when we have Thunder God and displacer raiden for example.I want to know what way you think that NRS should approach patches when variations are significantly weaker than the other 2 or just have horrible match ups as a whole.

Use master of storms raiden,spectral ermac or sun god kk as an example as to me they seem weaker than their other variations

You think it won't happen? Half the cast will have 1 or 2 useless variations, and very few will have all 3 as viable. History has shown this.

I clicked other. It should be left as is. They'll be for fun and playing around with friends. At a competitive level it would be impossible for all three variations to be equally good, and tweaking and buffing "other" variations of the character will unbalance the rest of the roster.

Patience is what's needed. Anything game-breaking, instant fix, of course. Anything to do with matchups should not be touched for at least 5-6 months. Imo.

Don't forget that what we see may still be changed, variations that look weak now may be very good on release.

I think the only really useless variation I've seen so far is Ermac's Spectral. What's the point of flying around? It's vulnerable, you can't block. A good anti-air or Scorp teleport should do the trick. It seems to be even more useless than Sindel's levitation in MK9 because you can use that one for pressure.

BboyTzilla said:

What is really making me irritated is that NRS hasn't implemented a hidden character select for MKX

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You know this how? I'm confident there will be a hidden select feature on the full game.

Endding said:

You know this how? I'm confident there will be a hidden select feature on the full game.

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Because I'm the BEST, that's how. LoL. It obviously hasn't been confirmed.
These post are based off of what we've seen not hoping to see.

imo better useless variations than useless characters

Let's talk about what is too weak or too strong after EVO. Minimal but meaningful changes are the best when balancing IMO.

I chose Other. I'm going to assume an underpowered variation will buffed like its own separate character. Similar to MK9, faster start up/recovery for moves, added armor, and/or damage buffs would be likely. I don't see them completely redesigning a variation--that could lead to endless tweaking and rebalancing.

But to the OP's point, Master of Storms and Spectral currently look inferior to their respective peers. But let's wait and flesh them out, as they could eventually be strong.

I agree. There are going to be alot of variations that'll be match up specific.. Then there will be ones with more flexibility of being used in any matchup. More than likely because of that they probably wouldnt even buff it if you have other options for your character.. Unless its just completley untolerable which I hightly doubt would happen.

BboyTzilla said:

Because I'm the BEST, that's how. LoL. It obviously hasn't been confirmed.
These post are based off of what we've seen not hoping to see.

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I am basing my post from, Injustice and MK9 and not demo / other versions which aren't the full.

altered start up/recovery and/or damage buffs only, please nrs?

BboyTzilla said:

I feel that some variations are weaker but the only one that really comes close to useless is "SPECTRAL" Ermac. I'm sure it will only be a counter for very few other variations.

What is really making me irritated is that NRS hasn't implemented a hidden character select for MKX.
So that would let 2nd pick always have the spectral Ermac counter pick advantage. That's the only way a weak variation could work.

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I can see why they wouldn't have hidden character select because the way their character select screen and animations look, it would look silly if you only saw one character for player 2 and no one standing there for player 1... Char 2 would be talking to their self

SaltShaker said:

very few will have all 3 as viable.

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I look at you Quarrel Lao


I think they should just adjust damage/frames etc and not completely change the variation with new moves or other stuff until its really needed.

BboyTzilla said:

I feel that some variations are weaker but the only one that really comes close to useless is "SPECTRAL" Ermac. I'm sure it will only be a counter for very few other variations.

What is really making me irritated is that NRS hasn't implemented a hidden character select for MKX.
So that would let 2nd pick always have the spectral Ermac counter pick advantage. That's the only way a weak variation could work.

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errormacro7 said:

I think the only really useless variation I've seen so far is Ermac's Spectral. What's the point of flying around? It's vulnerable, you can't block. A good anti-air or Scorp teleport should do the trick. It seems to be even more useless than Sindel's levitation in MK9 because you can use that one for pressure.

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Agreed. It appears to me that Ermac's second variation (at least, I think it's the second: the one that allows you to combo off of ground slam without meter) is by far the superior choice. Extra meterless damage is a huge bonus for any character.

That being said, we really didn't get a good look at Spectral. We know that he has unique special moves while levitating, but they only showed the ground slam (nothing new) and the air charge, which wiffed.

The air charge looks similar to Zod's BF2, which is a great move in Injustice.

Indeed, Kung Lao already has all 3 variations OP and broken.

There are 90 of them, some of them are going to be useless. Nobody's getting any new or losing any moves in a patch.

This does seem to be a legitimate concern. Hopefully there even a bad variation can have it's good match ups that work better than the other two. I also think the Master of Storms Raiden could be useful against a strict rush-down character.

Well there be variations that are way dominant than others? your damn skippy

but im sure even the most useless will have some use, sure even NW and Stryker where more useful than some chars, so its okay, but i hope they balance it best they can

i voted other , nothing is to say sonic daigo wont pick up a ''shit'' variation and find something godlike ..
lets not have another injustice scorpion incident

I'm 110% sure there will be no useless variations.


There will, however, be variations that excel at specific match-ups and not much else.

Speculatory examples:

Spectral Ermac dominates characters and variations that have mostly ground based combat and few or no solid anti-airs. He can float out of their reach and pelt them with attacks and good spacing and baiting.

However characters with good anti-airs, like Cybernetic Kano and his eye lasers, pretty much make Spectral Ermac's variation ability next to useless in their match-up.

Or.

Master of Storms Raiden's lightning traps are hell for character who have no teleporting attacks or projectile invincible moves. Those characters have to guess when to block when they are between Raiden and multiple traps as they can't easily get behind him or go through his orbs.

Characters like Displacer Raiden, however, can easily jump in and out of danger and apply pressure to keep Master of Storms Raiden from setting up or connecting his traps.

It's usually possible to radically change how a character/variation is played at the highest level just by playing around with the frames (startup, recovery, etc) a little bit. For example, take Ermac in MK9. He was sent tumbling down the tier list just by slightly increasing his recovery on force push. Total rework only becomes necessary when a character is designed extremely poorly.

callMEcrazy said:

It's usually possible to radically change how a character/variation is played at the highest level just by playing around with the frames (startup, recovery, etc) a little bit. For example, take Ermac in MK9. He was sent tumbling down the tier list just by slightly increasing his recovery on force push. Total rework only becomes necessary when a character is designed extremely poorly.

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FYI: I used to think this too, but I looked around at the notes Somberness had on pre-patch MK9 frame data and it turns out that pre-patch push was -16 on block, literally one frame less than what it is now.

Sometimes the holes in some moves just plain don't become apparent until more top players are acquainted with the feels/mechanics of the game. Sub-Zero was touted as the ultimate hit and run character at the start of MK9's life, and, well, unless you're fighting Cage, good luck doing that now.

I feel like there are lot of characters who already have the potential to have at least 1 worthless variation in competitive play (Cassie's brawler variation seems like one of these).

If some got supplemented by their normals acting differently (different frame data/hitboxes), it could balance them out but then you're kinda playing with fire. Some specials are just gonna be better than others and some variations are gonna have those better specials.