R-E-S-P-E-C-T: The Kitana Match-up Thread

[Konqrr]

Okay some Sindel player was spamming against me, it really ticked me off to the point that I just left the game. It was fucking ridiculous. I know it's my fault for not knowing what to do against it, but the fact that this kid had some pretty horrible stats and a lil mouth....I couldn't deal with it. So basically all he was doing is spamming low fireballs, jump fireball, standing fireball randomly...in no pattern [FULL SCREEN]. When I would try to go in he would do Sindel's kicks, i don't really know the string but I think is a string that hits high then low or low then high. I had no time to do iAF because he would interrupt me everytime with a little fireball...However I did manage to land my x-ray but thats about it. Tips anyone?

Her projectiles are very easy to avoid if you aren't trying to do anything. Find holes inbetween the spam and put a fan on the screen. Get projectile advantage and make her guess. You can't play the match trying to counter her or you will lose real fast.

The combo in question is 21df4 which hits HHLMM or something. Basically, you have to block the 3rd hit low then stand block. Don't get frustrated man, sounds like you just don't have enough exp against Sindel and losing to her over and over will help you learn. You should not have quit, but tried to learn.

 

[xTHUGx]

Her projectiles are very easy to avoid if you aren't trying to do anything. Find holes inbetween the spam and put a fan on the screen. Get projectile advantage and make her guess. You can't play the match trying to counter her or you will lose real fast.

The combo in question is 21df4 which hits HHLMM or something. Basically, you have to block the 3rd hit low then stand block. Don't get frustrated man, sounds like you just don't have enough exp against Sindel and losing to her over and over will help you learn. You should not have quit, but tried to learn.

Thanks for the tips man, and I hardly ever quit... But this dude was just trash talking to thin air (I didn't have my mic plugged in), and annoying as hell. I had to mute my TV.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I added you and are now on your friendlist on Xbox 360.

 

[chrisisnice]

Kitana is my number one character by a mile and Konqrr and others have given some really awesome tips. Would it be possible to update the front page or do a character by character writeup in a new thread. It would be great to be able to get the most important tactics against each fighter mainly in one place if it is possible. Thanks for all the tips everyone!

 

[vegeta]

Up shadow recovers extremely fast. How are you punishing with f+2,1?



You can interrupt b+3,1,2. Just use d+1 between the 3 and the 1. You can also interrupt 3,3,4 by using a d+1 between the second 3 and the 4. Alternatively, you can use Kitana's x-ray to interrupt.

Ah ok. It occured to me to try D+1 but I didn't think it would interrupt the strings. Thanks, I'll bear it in mind

konqrr- comment about quitting. Very true man. I've been getting EXTREMELY pissed at this game. I'm an oldschool MK player and play tekken and SC, this game is so different than any of those and it makes it pretty frustrating. Good thing I'm too stubborn to quit.

 

[ChaseRLewis]

K my friend got into town today and we played like 50 matches sub vs kitana. Best sub i've played so far, but here's stuff i found.

1. Kitana out damages sub by a llloooooot. Refreeze combo's are about as close as he can get to you in damage but you still deal a lot more.
2. Personally I was finding j. EX fan to be worth my meter more than breaker in this matchup. EX fan leads to 45% combo from 3/4ths screen and can catch sub on his recovery frames. His freeze also is a pretty crappy projectile that only is worth using when he has clone out. Problem with this tactic naturally is you need to make sure your jump doesn't get hit by clone.
3. His reversals are WORTHLESS against kitana. After any combo you can just do a slight delay into ground fan and it will hit him out of slide. If you don't delay it he won't get hit, but than you can just cr. Block the slide. He never used EX slide on wake-up but if it has armor I guarantee you can block it. In the corner if you do a jump-in and he slides out EX Fan dash cancel into a 45% punish.
4. You can poke through clone with kitanas very long range sweep and since most subs think 22 is godly when standing in clone for some reason this will beat that. Unfortunately when they get smart they'll stand behind the clone than you really just have to have a timing for when it will disappear. Look at 1 for what to do when he gets behind and starts spamming.
5. if you hit him grounded with a fan within 3/4ths screen use that to dash into his face a bit so he can't lay a clone or run. you have significant frame advantage to do a throw/low/pressure mixup. Hell it might be worth it to try a f21 as a frametrap incase he starts spamming buttons.
6. Really only issue i had in this matchup was EX freeze. Pretty much if he does this you have to block and for like two whole seconds the match just kind of stops. Also if your in the air the combo from this seems to hurt (he told me it doesn't prorate at all if your in the air). However, if he's ex'ing thats less breaker you have to deal.
7. jumping in didn't seem to viable as i got punched or frozen for my troubles every time so just don't do it. Patience with your zoning and capitilizing when you can with EX fan and worked well.

matchup seemed somewhere between even and 5.5-4.5 sub imo as touching him is a bit hard if he just crouches behind his clone and runs out the time but that leads to him getting cornered eventually. Matchup is alllllll about patience.

Not sure about cage think i need more experience. So far the matches have been all about don't fuck up. If you do your probably dead. He has this ridiculous mixup where he can just spam kicks into EX balls for nearly 15% chip damage a rep and the only way out is to crouch without block but there's a mid at the end of the string he can let go instead if he thinks you'll just duck. I think 2FP works here works but seemed inconsistent so might just be a lack of being used to doing it. Pretty much if you don't messup there's nothing cage can do, you messup you just die but again might need more experience with his strings as only played his cage like 10 matches.-

 

[Konqrr]

Good stuff man.

So you can punish iceball attempts like Noob tackes with jump over and low EXAF? Nice.

Cage is hard.

 

[ChaseRLewis]

Good stuff man.

So you can punish iceball attempts like Noob tackes with jump over and low EXAF? Nice.

Cage is hard.

ya you just have to be careful about clone. Something i learned from watching Brady vs Chris G is that since freeze is so crappy at fullscreen (like absolute fullscreen not close to it) pretty much every character can safely projectile him and block his freeze. If you hit him that means clone dissapears and you can run in, plus your advice moment he clones throw a projectile from some added pressure really made him have to think with clone out to quote him "more than he normally had to with sub-zero".

 

[xTHUGx]

I thought I heard Konqrr saying before that the timing is strict to throw an EX AF after jumping subzero's ice. Is it?

 

[ChaseRLewis]

It's not easy, reminds me a lot of Sagat's low tiger. His final few recovery frames are standing. So if it goes over him you could have punished it just you didn't do it correctly.

Thing is because EX fan is MUCH faster than normal fan you can actually jump over his ice ball in some situations and get him on recovery. Normal fan seemed to not work very consistently because it's noticeably slower, however, doesn't mean they are worthless. They gain meter and if they hit they setup a lot. You just have to be unpredictable with them and do them from a safe distance.

My whole mind game was if he sets clone -> fan. Did it hit? No. Is he inside clone or behind? behind. Go fullscreen and do unpredictable iAF and try not to get hit by EX freeze. He eventually realizes without using EX meter i'm winning this situations so he steps forward more into his clone and throws freezes. Thing is when he does this he sets up the ideal distance for me to jump forward EX fan which leads to a huge combo, so my gameplan kinda hinged on him trying to take advantage of the situation by moving forward a bit. It worked well and he didn't really have any other options other than just sit there crouching under my fans forever which means I'm getting lots of meter so I could eventually move forward with less risk involved.

Also normal freeze at fullscreen doesn't seem to always give a full combo or maybe he just wasn't thinking of it. Lots of times i got hit for very minor dmg in this situation.

The tricks i said are kinda stuff you can get to work but they all require setup or mind gaming your opponent. That clone is f'ing nuts. Only reason i'm not convinced it's a really bad matchup is that kitana can kinda luck into some really high dmg so kitana is a bit more favored in the random factor/punishment area.

 

[ChaseRLewis]

accidental double post

 

[lobo]

how do i get out of the liu kang infinite?

 

[xTHUGx]

how do i get out of the liu kang infinite?

Seriously? I thought this had been answered.

 

[Konqrr]

Seriously? I thought this had been answered.

He's trolling lol

 

[ChaseRLewis]

Raiden---------------------------------------------------
What do people use to stop raiden after a teleport. Played a guy today who pretty much exclusively low jabbed and while i'm not unaccustomed to that i found out today that super man punishes 2FP on block not only that it's negative on hit so 2FP really wasn't leaving me in a good place.

Don't know was winning mainly because of super man punishes but man were those raw teleports even when i saw them coming at nuetral annoying me more than they should have.

To be fair we found out later the PS3 didn't have the latest patch on it after playing for awhile, but i read BP->LP punishes it and couldn't get it to work even when I twitched my ass off. Though i did attack forward a few times more often than I would have liked too. Plus just ducked the BP every time i went for it.
Nightwolf---------------------------------------------------
Also what do people think of the nightwolf matchup? Was going pretty even with one today he doesn't seem to have a lot of punishment opening and shuts down projectiles really well. Really all i could do was random fan right outside sweep range and abuse my low range sweep as it seemed to hit him alot. Seems like it's probably in his favor. Is his axe punishable? sometimes it seemed like yes and other times seemed like no.

Only thing i know for a fact after playing that matchup .... NEVER raw EX fan unless you want to give your opponent a free combo.
General ----------------------------------------------------
I tested if 26BP was frame advantage and it turns out its at least frame advantage enough that if you do low jab it beats their low jab consistently. Should've tested more, but by the time i remembered to try it we were all ready to pass out.

 

[xTHUGx]

He's trolling lol

Lol,

Ok so I've been playing close to a BUNCH of Skarlet's now that she was recently released...and I was wondering if anyone had a punish for her Teleport? To my experience from fighting her you can't jump and hit her with a 2 followed by a Fan while she's in air, you can't hit her with a fan, But I have however gotten to hit her with some phsycic SB's. Hopefully this isn't the only punish we, Kitana players can do. Anyways I hope someone replies with an answer or some opinions, anything would be appreciated.

 

[xTHUGx]

Accidentaly double posted...

 

[BoysBoysBoys]

Punish with F21 or 21BB2 depending on the lag?

 

[ChaseRLewis]

Games kinda feeling like tekken to me right now. Don't have enough experience in certain matchups imo.

Who do people think are her negative matchups?

Nightwolf and Cage seem rough to me. Cage though some time seems easy, match up just seems a bit random.

 

[Konqrr]

No idea on the Skarlet matchup but I heard you can punish her teleport and up/down slashes with 21.

Kitana's worst matchups are Scorpion and Kano. Kano might be improved now that his upball and knife were nerfed but I haven't had a chance to play since the hotfix.

 

[ChaseRLewis]

No idea on the Skarlet matchup but I heard you can punish her teleport and up/down slashes with 21.

Kitana's worst matchups are Scorpion and Kano. Kano might be improved now that his upball and knife were nerfed but I haven't had a chance to play since the hotfix.

Scorpion? EX spear/EX Teleport? didn't expect that one, but than again all the one's I play are pretty bad.

 

[lobo]

No idea on the Skarlet matchup but I heard you can punish her teleport and up/down slashes with 21.

Kitana's worst matchups are Scorpion and Kano. Kano might be improved now that his upball and knife were nerfed but I haven't had a chance to play since the hotfix.

it didn't make too much of a difference imo. she can 21 punish upball, but good kanos aren't just throwing it out on block anyways. his zoning game is what kills her and whatever recovery they added to knife throw is negligible. it is still 3-7 for her at best imo.

 

[Konqrr]

If Scorpion has meter, you can no longer throw fans at all and he dictates the match forcing you to eat hellfires or aaSpears. Against good Scorps, it's really difficult.

Kano, I would say, is her absolute worst matchup.

I remember Brady saying that Noob is a bad matchup for her, but I feel it's 6-4 in her favor when she has meter. He can't throw random tackles out while she is free to avoid them or he loses 45%.

Something that I have been wanting to do recently, is go through each characters wakeup moves and see which ones are useless against Kitana. I have tested ALL of Jax's wakeup moves, invincible and not, and her d3, df2 beats them all. If he does the overhead, the d3 whiffs and you can block the overhead. If he does the dash punsh or ex dash punch, the d3 whiffs and you duck under it. What Chase said about 7-3 matchups... that is what Kitana vs Jax is. Kitana basically shuts down all of Jax's tools. d1 stops dash punches for free. He can Xray your d1, but that is a huge risk lol

Make sure you read the matchup stuff in the thread where I got the link above, it's good stuff.

 

[M2Dave]

Punish with F21 or 21BB2 depending on the lag?

f+2,1 is too slow, but 2,1~b,b+2 works for Skarlet's Teleport (d,b+4), Up Slash (d,f+2), and Down Slash (d,b+2). The Up Slash is the hardest to punish. The slide (d,f+3,4) is safe on block. Daggers are too fast for Kitana, but I think if she stays at the range where f+2,1 hits, she'll be fine.

 

[Slips]

If Scorpion has meter, you can no longer throw fans at all and he dictates the match forcing you to eat hellfires or aaSpears. Against good Scorps, it's really difficult.

I have to disagree with this. When Scorp has meter, its a pretty even match-up. But when he doesn't have meter, she owns him hard. Even when Scorp has meter its not like he can see her IAF and he gets a free combo. He has to throw it out in anticipation. Bait him to do it till he runs out of meter and the match is back to being heavily in her favor.

Scorp cant start even play the game until he's got meter, when he does, a good Kit will cause him to waste it.

And its not like Kit doesn't have answers to hellfire/aa spear mix-up either.

PEACE

 

[ChaseRLewis]

found out raiden seems to be taller than average when crouching. It's weird. Like f+4 is special mid vs him so it seems you can do your 50/50 easier on him if you can set it up.

Of course at any point he can just teleport but it's interesting.

edit: hm .... it only works at absolute point blank range so really no additional setups for it but interesting none the less.