I know I (and others) have said this several times now ad nauseam, and I first heard it from SonicFox and agreed. Which is, just because Sub and Scorp may be “bottom tier”, that doesn’t mean they’re “bad” characters. And that a lot of us don’t think MK1 has any bad characters, and not just because Kameos can make every character viable in some way either. But we’re so conditioned to think “bottom tier = bad” because that’s typically the case.
Anyway, without going on too long of a diatribe/tangent on that aspect, I also wanted to say that you’re not really supposed to be able to easily react to Sub’s overhead or his slide. There wouldn’t be too much utility in it even being an overhead if you could 100% react to it. And this isn’t just an “online thing”. Obviously everything is easier to react to offline, and some things ARE pretty consistently reactable offline where as they’re not AS consistently reactable online. But I don’t think Sub’s OH falls into that category, especially if the Sub player is using his OH starter correctly. As for his slide, pretty much the same thing for a half to full screen slide. But an EX Slide within sweep range or so? You’re not “reacting” to that no matter if it’s online or not.
One issue when discussing “reacting” or “reactions” is not everyone is using the same definitions. Based on a strict definition, It’s very difficult to just straight up “react” to something in a fighting game. Like for instance if you were playing MK1 for the first time, never have played it or seen gameplay, but you’re familiar with NRS games. It’s gonna be difficult to react to something that you’ve even seen before in previous games, such as Scorpion’s spear full screen. But this is especially true for moves that are brand new. I know people reading this are probably thinking “well yeah, no shit sherlock”, but that would be doing something on pure reaction based on a stricter definition. Most people also would think “it’s easier to react to something the more familiar you are with it. Which is both true in a way but also untrue in another way, all depends on how we’re defining these terms. It’s very hard to “purely react” to anything in a fighting game especially if you’ve been playing it for awhile. Which again, most people would say the opposite is true. But when I’m saying “pure reaction”, what I mean is there is zero anticipation or prediction involved. Under that definition, you’d then agree with the “it’s harder to react to something the more familiar you are with it”, because the more familiar you are with it, the more anticipation and prediction becomes apart of your reactions.
However, I’d say most people use the term “react/reaction” in a less strict way. So I’d say it’d be better to refer to the aforementioned definition with the term “pure reaction” and when you’re not using it with that meaning, just use the term “reaction”.
I know this sounds confusing and unnecessary, but… everything above I wrote last night after I had taken an ambien, lmao. Sometimes those sleeping pills will make me say some wild things, surprised I didn’t end up posting it, must’ve fell asleep in the middle of it. But after re-reading all of it, I think it’s good/interesting enough to post. I went through and fixed some grammar mistakes and what not so it was more understandable though. ¯\(ツ)/¯
