Offline Disscussion

I hosted a tournament the other day and got sent into losers of my own tourny.

I got eliminated by a Sonya/Jax/Kung Lao line up.

Now let me say that I have been playing Stryker since release and my biggest downfall was playing on multiple sticks/controllers until finally setting on a hitbox as my main stick.

Now I am sinking time into playing him offline but I would probably need to keep going to tournaments offline to be sure but I think Styker at the highest level can only take out certain characters. I think a Kung Lao, Jax or Sonya who doesn't want to play mind games can just shake Stryker up for wins if you make ANY mistakes.

Stryker is like Zerg from Starcraft, unlike the other races he has very little ground for mistakes. Absolutely 100% cannot drop combos playing Stryker every inch you fight to push your opponent into the corner can be lost with a misused combo.

And at the same time ironically he also has an amazing comeback factor if your blocking isn't poop.

All in all the skillsets you will need to master to be good with Stryker are those that are universal too MK. Ducking highs and throws, reading zoning attempts and impecable anti-airs.

The tournament winner for this week of offline was a Jax now we played on a 360 so I will run next weeks on a PS3 exclusively and see if Evo rules make me win at all.

But so far I am extremly frustrated because I thought my offline Stryker had more of a chance but the ludrious nature of Sonya/Jax atm make Stryker unable to compete until this hotfix comes out I think.

If anyone wants to make me think I am delusional I could be but my offline matchups the otherday felt like 2-8 even in matchups where I have more experience than most.

edit: to be clear I need to work on my combos I think its been awhile since I practiced maybe on 360

I remember using Stryker in casuals in every tournament I go to, I lose with him every time due to not knowing how to attack properly against certain characters. I blocked/ dodged everything but I could never really get a full combo or punish going... just maybe a D+4, 4, uppercut, gun, or a grenade. But sadly Kitana raped me close range...

You should feel lucky that you have the chance to even play offline with other people =)

Its expensive, tiring and exhausting for me to keep this charade up. I have been going to tournaments with Stryker since last year and its not at all lucky I do not feel lucky I feel like I have wasted my time playing this character. I could have picked up Tekken or Street Fighter and experienced far less non-sense than I am playing MK with Stryker.

I think good reads is the only thing that makes a good Stryker, the definition of a good gunshot or a good roll on reaction is a good read. Its not just pushing buttons.

Also the inputs for 360 online are different than PS3 but they both use the terrible delayed input system but regardless.

I did throw some blame on me but ultimately I wanted to paint a warning that without the hotfix patch I would recommend new players not pickup Stryker and if they want to be competitive they ought to play a character with good matchups (favored ones).

I'd say play Sonya, Jax, Lao, Raiden, Freddy and other than that I mean there aren't characters that are worth playing because the bad matchups in this game are really bad. Like I have the honor of playing against Michaelangelo on PS3 and his Kenshi is a weapon that Stryker SHOULD NOT be able to win against period.

Also Jade which is a character that people have labeled bottom tier has only one good matchup vs Stryker so thats also speaking volumes as well.

I don't even want to buff Stryker I like how he is I just think these 39% Sonya resets and Jax corner shenanigans put them at such a high level that too not play them over Stryker in my opinion is a mistake for anyone playing in competitive tournaments.

Now the reason I put the blame on me losing past the characters was because the people I played against in my opinion were weren't doing anything unfair or cheap, they just played their characters to the best of their ability.

Strykers meter game is kind of ass, his X-Ray raw is dispoable I recommend never using it its ridiuclously unsafe against the full cast and above else there are better ways to spend your meter.

Ex-Gunshot in combos is pretty much a round ender or anti-break option. Theres some goofy game ender combos you can do fullscreen like ex-gunshot ~ ex-gunshot for like 10% but the last shot wiffs, I mean its stunting stuff at that.

So apart from looking cool and having an overall balanced character design the fact is other characters in this game are RIDICULOUSLY better than Stryker. There is a bigger discrepancy than is being given credit here.

Old school combos in the corner for 2 meters do more damage than the X-Ray. His X-Ray scales but if someone doesn't break midscreen off of a back 1, 22 than by all means take the round with it but I think his X-Ray was over-nerfed pre 1.00

Pre release his X-Ray was an overhead (which made sense).

To be clear Stryker isn't a zoner but hes one of the few characters that can win with pure zoning.
He can build meter which is pretty much worth using on breakers, his X-Ray properties are 36 frames (slower than most), and his EX-properties add 2% damage to about 4% bonus damage also way less than most characters.

It just seems in the order of fairness of shitty players Strykers zoning game was very much neutrered and because of this we have to rely on his inferior footsie game.

And in my honest opinion at a high level conditioning with guns is not going to work vs smart players. They WILL NOT put up with it, if you do shenanigans against them they are going to bully you for it. The risk vs reward isn't in Strykers favor for zoning, counter-zoning or footsies. For mixups they are slow, and easy to read. Strykers frame trap is slow and unsafe.

Even Sonya a rush down character has a superior safer projectile (ie. she can use her weapon facing you and cannot be punished) to be its ridiculous that a character that is labeled 'zoning' has all unsafe zoning tools.

And if he IS a footsie character than why are all his footsies and pokes so much vastly shorter then the rest of the cast?

The only thing Stryker has going for him is that if you are a character specialist they're is enough tools here on this forum (and with enough practice) you can "stay competitive" with Stryker but as far as top 16 I don't think hes in this iteration of the game ever going to ever come close to the rest of the cast.

Again this is an offline discussion. If you just want to have fun online I think Stryker is ok.

And when it comes to managing meter and frame advantage Nether Realm provided us with no information on the latter. I even asked the devs at Evo they don't even know because according to them there 'isn't any' which maybe I was too smoked out at the time but that just seemed like goofyness to me.

Stryker has one of the worst back dashes (using it more than 1 time is ludicrous) and I won't quit Stryker just yet but I will quit MK by this Evo if they don't address this game with hotfixes because I don't want to be left like midway to wait another 4 years for actual viable changes to the issues.

Which will probably be the full and utter removal of Stryker in Mk10.

He has a lot of graphical bugs in him where I don't feel they spend half as much time on him as they did on say Kung Lao. He has weird animation glitches and hes like Cyrax in that hes a bit of a leaky boat but instead of good leakyness its just suck.

Some huge problems I disliked; the removal of the X-Ray overhead, the 3% global Stryker damage nerf (thats right, Stryker has been nerfed before!)

Stryker also has no way to open people up. His offensive pressure is basically counter-zoning and baiting. Which is just a very nice way of saying he can only react when hes on the bitch end of things.

MoFuzz who won this weeks runbats @ MK Wed I ran pretty much said I need to drop Stryker for Raiden. I can keep playing to spite him but I think he was just giving honest advice if I want to go to evo (which he isn't even doing which is the part that made me want to write this).

Random raw X-Ray actual just worked for me online I did it to stuff a nightwolf shoulder charge wake up in the corner. Rofl.

I am going to work on playing Stryker as a rushdown character. I think the only time I can take rounds off the Tom Bradys and REOs of the world will be when I can keep pace of constant unrelenting pressure. Stryker can do it I can do it in bursts so to speak but it takes a lot of real life stamina to keep the actions per minute high enough to be a sonic.

Stryker is fast when he hits the opponent, so if you hit their soft fragile skull you can keep hitting them infact Strykers character design stays true too 'ground and pound' and where he does have ways of stacking on the goofiness.

Its just a lot more work (I'd compare this to playing Zerg in Starcraft over Terran or Protoss)

@Carefoot

I felt the exact same way a few months back after my Stryker was getting blown up offline, i thought i was so superior to my competition that it must be all Stryker's fault which lead me to drop him for awhile. As it turned out it was my playstyle with stryker that was to blame, i had hardly any grasp on his footsies and expected Gun Cancels to open up my opponents defenses when of course they just D1 or uppercutted on reaction (which was giving me serious WTF moments, shitty online players made me think that Gun cancels worked as an opener).

Then after a while i started to reevaluate Stryker as a whole. It really comes down to counter zoning to keep them honest, AA to keep them grounded and zoning to get meter and/or health advantage. Gun Cancels are to build meter and condition your opponent, you make them play your game. This pacing and footsies world you create lets Stryker's footsies and pokes thrive, things like D4-G/C , 4 G/C and 3 are great great to check your opponent with and after every Close range G/C you want to try and counter their pokes rather than use it to link more attacks, Dash canceling into a D3 or D1 or backwards canceling into sweeps, 3, 4 or Roll toss can really start to lock your opponent down after awhile

i have found that because of all this Stryker actually gets better the more you play someone or the more someone understands Stryker's power.

The only thing that holds Stryker back is ourselves, he goes 5-5 or greater with 65% of the cast and doesn't have any 3-7 MUs. If we out play our opponent it should equal victory almost every time (save for freddy, Kung Lao, Reptile or possibly Mileena. Might have an answer for her D4). This can be a weakness when compared to the rest of the cast however, people that play the likes of Quan chi, kitana, cyrax or kabal (and other characters) can ride their character most of the way and only have a few tough matches in a tourny bracket.

This has lead me to pick up a secondary to help Stryker out cause in reality people like Krayzie, tyrant, DJT and Online tony are just plane better than me, Stryker isn't going to cut it in a 5-5 vs the likes of them

I knew the minute I picked up Stryker, I was gonna have to work real hard to get decent with him. I usually try to stick to playing with people who destroy me, but I wasn't always like that. I use to just stick around playing with people who I would destroy, but later realized I wasn't learning anything. Since then I've seen my Stryker improve a lot, although I still get destroyed by very good players. Also, I feel very satisfied when I beat a top tier character, using Stryker. I never played with anyone good or decent, offline so idk how I would do in that situation.

Well I would hope Online tony would still detroy all Stryker players seeing how he leveled up with Stryker super fast at the start of MK9 with him (learning the juggling mechanics) than moving to a character he deemed worthy of competitive play. JuiceBox was the other notable pro player who was playing Stryker at the start of MK9 as well. Also dropped him.

He did this day 1 Stryker combo that I to this day still bust out on people because the inputs are impossible to fuck up.

The street fighter analogous best of 10 system doesn't even begin to iterate how bad '8-2' matchups that Stryker has. Let me put it like this. If Strykers gun was half as good as it looked maybe he could beat Kung Lao in a top 16. For now he doesn't even deserve to be tiered because he has never made top 16 at a major.

And all the matchups you list are 5-5 or 6-4 realistically for them.

Realistically anyone who is going to be playing Cyrax at a tournament could potentially be a 7-3 for Cyrax if they know what they're doing.

"8-2 match-ups" . . . .

care to explain who all goes "8-2" with stryker?

At least his is better. I got a 10-0 matchup . I agree with what @Vulcan Hades said, it is all based on your experience. Although I dislike the whole tier list or best of 10 system which is the reason why I hardly comment on MUs. Seriously, if you are experienced enough and master all the aspect of your gameplay, it wont matter who is at the top or whether you are supposed to win 4 out of 10. In the end you (the player) will be responsible for losing or winning. If MK is as balance as ppl claim, someone with good experience will overcome the shortcomings and win most of his matchups. I think the line get's cross when a char has way to many tools to make the counter window non existent.

I've been playing stryker since day one. Sadly I still lack a LOT of mu experience against certain chars. Sometimes I think I know a mu and then I get surprised and realized that I still had a lot more to learn. I will repeat what everybody have been saying. Stryker is NOT a walk in the park when it comes to learning him. But there is something about him that screams "I am not bottom tier". I lose a lot because I cant get rid of my bad habits fast enough. I tend to stick to what I know even when it clearly doesnt work. The beauty of MK9 is that you cant use the same formula for every chars...yes IT"S THAT SIMPLE.

so @Carefoot maybe you looking at stryker the wrong way. Hit the lab and try to work on what you have a hard time against. Come up with a counter and practice it till yo do it in your sleep