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Sub-Zero General Discussion

Dankster Morgan

It is better this way
Ive tried Sub today for the first time since the beta, I definitely like him less atm ...
Ive noticed two things:

Something ive not seen mentioned, but im pretty sure is different in the beta -

His clone has like a timer before u can use it again??? When the first one disappears it seems like u have to wait for like 3-4 seconds until u can do another one - whats up with that??

and getting the j12 dicekick combo is super weird now, it connects in a really janky way, i tried it for a little bit and off of b2 b2 j12 db4 it kept whiffing and when i fucked around with the heights it seemed really specific to get it??

Idk, both of those things seem horrible now compared to beta sub, he was such a chad honestly
The klone was nerfed in 2 ways. It stays for 1 second instead of 1.5 and it has a cool down of 3.5 instead of 2.5 seconds.

F1 is now 15 frames up for 12.

Damage nerf, he does less damage with 3 bars than 1. Takes both Sareena cameos and a bar to crack 40%.

And as Tom Brady pointed out in his new video, the only strings he can jail off a D1 on hit have gaps.

I don’t want to act like a lunatic but he’s pretty challenging to play right now, I’m sure a lot of the cast’s damage will be nerfed a bit. Hopefully he gets the gaps in 122 or 212 fixed, because I know they’re not gonna revert the ice klone nerfs. Would be nice if he hit a bit harder and ice ball froze longer since it’s slow as fuck and almost useless in trades since they don’t stay frozen long. And he only gets 26% off a freeze on a grounded opponent.
 

Versa

Noob
I agree with most of what is said in Tom Brady’s new video, at least I can’t speak on the other cast members but looking at Sub-Zero in a vacuum it makes sense. The klone nerfs were the hardest adjustment from the beta obviously. And his 3 bar combos should do more damage than this 1 bar. I’m still happy with the character but I’m mostly playing against lunatics on ranked. I’m not doom posting Sub-Zero, but Tom is very level headed and reasonable in this video.

Unless anyone has any counterpoints, this video is pretty damning.

This is my favorite Sub-Zero iteration in a LONG time and I was super amped to use him (my favorite fighting game character).

This is my first time taking MK seriously since I was a kid, so I don't want to enter competition playing a really bad character. I'm so disappointed. I guess I can at least still use him as a Kameo until he gets some buffs.
 

Dankster Morgan

It is better this way
Unless anyone has any counterpoints, this video is pretty damning.

This is my favorite Sub-Zero iteration in a LONG time and I was super amped to use him (my favorite fighting game character).

This is my first time taking MK seriously since I was a kid, so I don't want to enter competition playing a really bad character. I'm so disappointed. I guess I can at least still use him as a Kameo until he gets some buffs.
The counter point is “ice klone”

I’m stubbornly always going to main him no matter what, most games I even play him exclusively. He’s my favorite gaming character, not just fighting games. I might learn someone else to supplement. Which is fine.
 

Versa

Noob
The counter point is “ice klone”

I’m stubbornly always going to main him no matter what, most games I even play him exclusively. He’s my favorite gaming character, not just fighting games. I might learn someone else to supplement. Which is fine.
I love and respect that, I used to be just like you, dedicated no matter what, but I don't enjoy suffering anymore just because I like a character. Loyalty is meaningless to a fictional character in a a competitive video game. MK has a ton of cool characters, so even if I can't use my absolute favorite, I'll still find someone I can enjoy and revisit when he's viable.

This game seems to have really high power levels, strong pressure, and insane damage output. I want to use a character that actually lets me experience Mortal Kombat 1 properly as he has none of these things haha.

My #1 issue with Sub-Zero's design is they base his gameplay and balance around clone. It's a cool move but not very interesting to use and definitely not fun to interact against. He's a powerful, skilled ninja with the ability to conjure ice from his hands. There's so many more cool things he could be doing than hiding behind a ice cube for the past 19 years. I wish they'd stop giving him the move and just make him a dope, aggressive ninja with ice powers. Freeze and slide are fine to keep as legacy moves. Clone always ends up either overpowered and nerfed into the ground later, or weak like he it is now. Very tough move to balance.
 

Dankster Morgan

It is better this way
I love and respect that, I used to be just like you, dedicated no matter what, but I don't enjoy suffering anymore just because I like a character. Loyalty is meaningless to a fictional character in a a competitive video game. MK has a ton of cool characters, so even if I can't use my absolute favorite, I'll still find someone I can enjoy and revisit when he's viable.

This game seems to have really high power levels, strong pressure, and insane damage output. I want to use a character that actually lets me experience Mortal Kombat 1 properly as he has none of these things haha.

My #1 issue with Sub-Zero's design is they base his gameplay and balance around clone. It's a cool move but not very interesting to use and definitely not fun to interact against. He's a powerful, skilled ninja with the ability to conjure ice from his hands. There's so many more cool things he could be doing than hiding behind a ice cube for the past 19 years. I wish they'd stop giving him the move and just make him a dope, aggressive ninja with ice powers. Freeze and slide are fine to keep as legacy moves. Clone always ends up either overpowered and nerfed into the ground later, or weak like he it is now. Very tough move to balance.
Klone is a tough move to balance, but I honestly think with a few small tweaks he could work as is, even if the ice klone stays gimped. The gimped klone and not having a 50/50 might give them a little more freedom to buff other aspects of him. If he had the 122 gap removed and deadly vapors did appreciable damage, you’d have to respect him when he successfully counter pokes and he’d have a way to control the screen better without making the ice klone better since deadly vapors would be a little more threatening as a way to compliment klone and klone punch (it’d also give him a little more damage in combos if he spends bar). It’s not that I don’t want the ice klone to be better, I just don’t think they will reverse the nerfs.

I actually don’t mind fighting against the klone. In MKX it was the klone enforcing a 3 way mixup that was a problem, the actual move itself is awesome.

Like I said I think Sub will be just fine, more egregious characters will be nerfed, he will improve naturally that way, and who knows maybe he gets a little help too.
 

BanTheTesters

“My AGENT is tougher than you...”
Moderator
How have the sub matches been going for you guys and gals so far?

and what do you think of em?
 

Dankster Morgan

It is better this way
How have the sub matches been going for you guys and gals so far?

and what do you think of em?
He’s fun, I like him a lot. It can be hard to open people up and he’s very unsafe. If someone spends 15 minutes in the lab they can learn their character’s klone cancel punishes, and his damage sucks. But I enjoy his play style. It is satisfying to consistently read your opponent and catch them with the klone and get whiff punishes, but I’m not having success doing much else.
 
Yep I'm dropping Subby as a main. He will always be a cool character in my book but they basically designed him around 50/50 and clone then nerfed it.
I'll wait till he is fixed and I'll see what first patch does.

Raiden is finally good so I'll probably check him out.
 

Versa

Noob
The damage nerfs to Sub are completely absurd. Allowing characters like Baraka and Kenshi to exist in their current state while nerfing Sub like they did is actually criminal.

Someone needs to alert Congress.
It's absolutely ridiculous. Not sure if any of you play SF6, but it reminds me of how they nerfed Kimberly extremely hard post-beta but left Ken/Juri/Guile in tact LOL.
 

Amplified$hotz

I like Tekken 8
I honestly don’t think Sub is that bad. I played him all day yesterday and did fine.

Something I do have an issue with is people who mash D1. Can anyone give me some advice on this?

Im thinking of backdashing after f1 or f12 on block, then cancelling the back dash into f12 again to punish the poke.
 

Dankster Morgan

It is better this way
I honestly don’t think Sub is that bad. I played him all day yesterday and did fine.

Something I do have an issue with is people who mash D1. Can anyone give me some advice on this?

Im thinking of backdashing after f1 or f12 on block, then cancelling the back dash into f12 again to punish the poke.
I don’t think he’s terrible either, you’re just doing a lot of work for minimal payout. I do pretty well with him too but frankly a lot of my damage is from punishing wake-up attacks because people fucking panic in the corner, or whiff punishes. Some people are magnetized to the klone and just won’t ever learn.

If I have a life lead and breaker, I’ll test the waters and see if they will punish klone cancel, or if they can react to B2. If they have shitty reaction speed or haven’t labbed ice klone to learn their punish THEN I can really get it rolling. But I feel like shit when a Sindel player won’t scream punish my klone cancels or a Shao Kahn player won’t S2 punish, Scorpion won’t teleport, anyone with Sektor kameo won’t launch me, etc because what I’m doing isn’t real, I’m not playing well, I’m taking advantage of someone not knowing any better, and building bad habits while doing so.

So it goes back to whiff punishing and baiting out klone freezes which is effective in a lot of cases but it’s like holy fucking shit I got them, they whiffed in front of me, I got my punish. I spend a bar and both kameos and barely get to the 400 damage mark (and that’s IF I’m using Sareena to mitigate his poor damage, and not someone who compliments his move set better), now they’re in the corner (his corner carry is god tier), but his corner game feels kind of toothless with the ice klones shit recovery and cooldown (I have more to learn, I know it’s probably better than it seems, but regardless), they have to panic. You’re baiting, punishing, whiff punishing all day and he’s pretty good at that. When you could put up a klone in the beta and have enough time to do something like throw an iceball or even walk back before it went away, and could have another one out sooner, he had much better control of the screen. I think he’s perfectly usable for ranked but I see why people are struggling. Brady and Sikander are much better Subs than me, but they look like they’re having a tough go too. Cause you can play great but too bad, Raiden touched you once, threw you once, and landed a projectile or two and now you’re fucking dead. I’m disgusted that I can read someone’s mind like a Jedi master 4 times in a row (bait a whiff punish, read they’re gonna jump and IA klone, somehow hit them with ex iceball on a very preemptive guess they’re gonna throw a projectile maybe, etc) but still not have done enough damage to have won the round.

I spent 20 minutes doing Mileena combos yesterday and I was repulsed by the damage this bitch just shits out. I do think Sub suffered from getting public exposure before everyone else and all the pro players with their shit clickbait Sub is broken thumbnails to get clicks from fucking idiots on YouTube.

Im venting here because this is the place to do it, but make no mistake, I’m still hopeful for Sub in this game. I’m still invested in improving with him and getting as good as I possibly can with him. If I lose to better players using better characters, so be it, but I don’t want to lose to jabroni Sindel players who pick her just cause they think she does well against him.

I want you to have to really learn Sub-Zero to beat me, that’s my goal for now. Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
 

Amplified$hotz

I like Tekken 8
I don’t think he’s terrible either, you’re just doing a lot of work for minimal payout. I do pretty well with him too but frankly a lot of my damage is from punishing wake-up attacks because people fucking panic in the corner, or whiff punishes. Some people are magnetized to the klone and just won’t ever learn.

If I have a life lead and breaker, I’ll test the waters and see if they will punish klone cancel, or if they can react to B2. If they have shitty reaction speed or haven’t labbed ice klone to learn their punish THEN I can really get it rolling. But I feel like shit when a Sindel player won’t scream punish my klone cancels or a Shao Kahn player won’t S2 punish, Scorpion won’t teleport, anyone with Sektor kameo won’t launch me, etc because what I’m doing isn’t real, I’m not playing well, I’m taking advantage of someone not knowing any better, and building bad habits while doing so.

So it goes back to whiff punishing and baiting out klone freezes which is effective in a lot of cases but it’s like holy fucking shit I got them, they whiffed in front of me, I got my punish. I spend a bar and both kameos and barely get to the 400 damage mark (and that’s IF I’m using Sareena to mitigate his poor damage, and not someone who compliments his move set better), now they’re in the corner (his corner carry is god tier), but his corner game feels kind of toothless with the ice klones shit recovery and cooldown (I have more to learn, I know it’s probably better than it seems, but regardless), they have to panic. You’re baiting, punishing, whiff punishing all day and he’s pretty good at that. When you could put up a klone in the beta and have enough time to do something like throw an iceball or even walk back before it went away, and could have another one out sooner, he had much better control of the screen. I think he’s perfectly usable for ranked but I see why people are struggling. Brady and Sikander are much better Subs than me, but they look like they’re having a tough go too. Cause you can play great but too bad, Raiden touched you once, threw you once, and landed a projectile or two and now you’re fucking dead. I’m disgusted that I can read someone’s mind like a Jedi master 4 times in a row (bait a whiff punish, read they’re gonna jump and IA klone, somehow hit them with ex iceball on a very preemptive guess they’re gonna throw a projectile maybe, etc) but still not have done enough damage to have won the round.

I spent 20 minutes doing Mileena combos yesterday and I was repulsed by the damage this bitch just shits out. I do think Sub suffered from getting public exposure before everyone else and all the pro players with their shit clickbait Sub is broken thumbnails to get clicks from fucking idiots on YouTube.

Im venting here because this is the place to do it, but make no mistake, I’m still hopeful for Sub in this game. I’m still invested in improving with him and getting as good as I possibly can with him. If I lose to better players using better characters, so be it, but I don’t want to lose to jabroni Sindel players who pick her just cause they think she does well against him.

I want you to have to really learn Sub-Zero to beat me, that’s my goal for now. Thank you for listening to my TED talk.
I agree. I think he has one of the best neutral games. At least top 5. And that’s why they don’t want him to be too good.

If people don’t react to your clone cancels I’d say use bf2 or kameo. Or backlash if you have the life lead. They have to get to you.

His corner game is really good if you stay at around max bf2 range. You can bully everyone who doesn’t have a teleport. Like you said it does require you to keep making reads while many characters only have to make a few.

I think he just needs a frame data buff.
 

Dankster Morgan

It is better this way
I agree. I think he has one of the best neutral games. At least top 5. And that’s why they don’t want him to be too good.

If people don’t react to your clone cancels I’d say use bf2 or kameo. Or backlash if you have the life lead. They have to get to you.

His corner game is really good if you stay at around max bf2 range. You can bully everyone who doesn’t have a teleport. Like you said it does require you to keep making reads while many characters only have to make a few.

I think he just needs a frame data buff.
I don’t know if I agree with top 5 neutral, with the old klone cooldown I’d agree, but I’ll concede top half of the cast most likely neutral wise. I think he’s a far cry from someone like Baraka who just fucks anywhere on screen.

That makes me feel better because that’s how I play the corner too. I’ll do an instant air klone in case they jump, then either send BF2, dash and throw, dash cancel into F12, go for an air to air 12 if I’m certain they will ju, or dash into d3, or even dash B3 xx Sareena if I’m feeling lucky (desperate)

B3 is underrated as a whiff punish, I have more success catching whiffed jump ins with B3 than F12. Could be just a me thing.

I agree with you on what to do if they don’t react to klone cancels, he will push your shit in if you don’t punish the klone cancels, but it’s fake pressure because it’s very easy to. It was worse than I initially thought, Brady demonstrated in a video that you don’t even have to punish klone as a reversal with several characters, you can react to physically seeing the ice klone and still be able to punish, so there’s not even a mind game, it’s completely fraudulent against Scorpion and Sindel for example.

I don’t think beta Sub would be out of line at all in this game, but I get it, people hate the ice klone. If he’s gonna have the gimped klone, I don’t know why the hell they had to nerf F1 as well. I think Tom’s video was pretty reasonable in terms of actual suggestions for Sub-Zero. I think deadly vapors should do more damage, it’d fix his combo damage to a degree while still keeping him a low damage character and he’d have a slightly better grip on the neutral without the ice klone nerfs being retracted. He’d be a more effective counter zoner as well.

His strengths in this game isn’t that what Sub does is so devastating, it’s that he denies Cage from going full Cage, or any other character. It’s that in theory you have to play differently against him, more so than anyone else in the cast, that Sub-Zero demands you learn the matchup. The problem is that when you do learn it and see what’s under the hood, that idea goes away for a lot of characters. If he’s supposed to be a defensive powerhouse that denies characters from playing how they want to play, he needs more options that demand respect.
 

Amplified$hotz

I like Tekken 8
I don’t know if I agree with top 5 neutral, with the old klone cooldown I’d agree, but I’ll concede top half of the cast most likely neutral wise. I think he’s a far cry from someone like Baraka who just fucks anywhere on screen.

That makes me feel better because that’s how I play the corner too. I’ll do an instant air klone in case they jump, then either send BF2, dash and throw, dash cancel into F12, go for an air to air 12 if I’m certain they will ju, or dash into d3, or even dash B3 xx Sareena if I’m feeling lucky (desperate)

B3 is underrated as a whiff punish, I have more success catching whiffed jump ins with B3 than F12. Could be just a me thing.

I agree with you on what to do if they don’t react to klone cancels, he will push your shit in if you don’t punish the klone cancels, but it’s fake pressure because it’s very easy to. It was worse than I initially thought, Brady demonstrated in a video that you don’t even have to punish klone as a reversal with several characters, you can react to physically seeing the ice klone and still be able to punish, so there’s not even a mind game, it’s completely fraudulent against Scorpion and Sindel for example.

I don’t think beta Sub would be out of line at all in this game, but I get it, people hate the ice klone. If he’s gonna have the gimped klone, I don’t know why the hell they had to nerf F1 as well. I think Tom’s video was pretty reasonable in terms of actual suggestions for Sub-Zero. I think deadly vapors should do more damage, it’d fix his combo damage to a degree while still keeping him a low damage character and he’d have a slightly better grip on the neutral without the ice klone nerfs being retracted. He’d be a more effective counter zoner as well.

His strengths in this game isn’t that what Sub does is so devastating, it’s that he denies Cage from going full Cage, or any other character. It’s that in theory you have to play differently against him, more so than anyone else in the cast, that Sub-Zero demands you learn the matchup. The problem is that when you do learn it and see what’s under the hood, that idea goes away for a lot of characters. If he’s supposed to be a defensive powerhouse that denies characters from playing how they want to play, he needs more options that demand respect.
He can punish so many projectiles and kamoes on reaction with slide. He can hit kameos off the screen with df4. You can’t really contest his pokes because klone cancel. He can do frame traps from 3/4 screen that lead to a full combo. He builds infinite meter compared to his opponent. He forces people to do unsafe things to get in. He Has great anti airs

He has no weaknesses at all besides his bad frame data and low damage.

You say it’s fake pressure, but top level players get hit by klone and klone cancels too. Sub-zero is annoying for everyone at all skill levels. You can see F0xy get opened multiple times by sub-zero in this set (starting at 07:09:08)

Deadly vapors would be dumb if it did more damage. You could just spam it all day against, and it would be too easy to close out rounds. On top of that it damages kameos too. Which increases their cooldown time I believe.

Beta sub wouldn’t be out of line, but he’d be around Kenshi level coupled with Sareena.

Sub does demand respect. He’s top 10 everywhere on screen besides face to face. Up close he’s basically a training dummy. Even then he has great normals.

I think he just needs better block advantage. And remove gaps on some of his strings.
 
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Dankster Morgan

It is better this way
He can punish so many projectiles and kamoes on reaction with slide. He can hit kameos off the screen with df4. You can’t really contest his pokes because klone cancel. He can do frame traps from 3/4 screen that lead to a full combo. He builds infinite meter compared to his opponent. He forces people to do unsafe things to get in. He Has great anti airs

He has no weaknesses at all besides his bad frame data and low damage.

You say it’s fake pressure, but top level players get hit by klone and klone cancels too. Sub-zero is annoying for everyone at all skill levels. You can see F0xy get opened multiple times by sub-zero in this set (starting at 07:09:08)

Deadly vapors would be dumb if it did more damage. You could just spam it all day against, and it would be too easy to close out rounds. On top of that it damages kameos too. Which increases their cooldown time I believe.

Beta sub wouldn’t be out of line, but he’d be around Kenshi level coupled with Sareena.

Sub does demand respect. He’s top 10 everywhere on screen besides face to face. Up close he’s basically a training dummy.

I think he just needs better block advantage. And remove gaps on some of his strings.
Ok yeah I’ll concede the deadly vapors thing, I was frustrated when I wrote that comment. He could totally cheese you at the end of a round. I’m not saying he can’t open you up either, and it is useful in counter zoning used correctly. Ice klone is always gonna be an excellent move by nature, it’s a top 3 special move in the game for sure. Meter building is also good in most cases. And slide is a top 5 non launching special in the game too. I also agree that Sub is annoying as fuck to fight. Poke / counter poke game is good too. Anti airs and air to airs are great too. I complained a lot, so I want to reiterate, I don’t think he’s garbage. I’m not advocating for safe klone cancels either, especially not F12. What I meant by fake pressure is canceling a string into klone, for a lot of characters that shouldn’t be a thing, poke into klone though is another thing.

What do you mean he makes people do unsafe things to get in? Outside of characters like Cage. You can gain a lot of ground while klone is on cooldown.

As for pokes into klone, I need to do more testing, but I suspect there’s characters who can punish on reaction to the klone coming out similarly to F12, I’d love to be wrong though.

I think Sub will be just fine, and like I said earlier he got exposed to a large population of people 2 times before release even, and Kenshi was nerfed as well, and has a lot of holes in sento stance even if the setplay is terrifying. Johnny, Liu, Kitana, and Li Mei were kinda chillin as is, and seemed weaker than Sub and Kenshi in the context of the beta. In looking at those 6 characters, I don’t think we were done dirty. A bigger patch will roll out and maybe more characters aside from the beta 6 receive damage nerfs, or something of the sort.

Im not gonna say what I want for Sub till I play at least another month now, I don’t want to be that guy. In the meantime the RE4 DLC just dropped so Sub can sit in the freezer for a bit.
 
The damage nerfs to Sub are completely absurd. Allowing characters like Baraka and Kenshi to exist in their current state while nerfing Sub like they did is actually criminal.

Someone needs to alert Congress.
I honestly prefer characters to have the veriety of Kenshi, Raiden and Baraka, I'm glad they are moving away from MK11 and stepping closer to 9/X. Obviously MK1 isn't like 9 or X with it's pressure, pace, mixups but it's close.
If Sub Zeros clone wasn't ignored by many things(normals, specials, Kameos) and his D1 to jailing strings 12/21 didn't have gaps and it required opponent armor to go through clone, Subby would be close to Baraka at least A tier.
 
The t
I honestly don’t think Sub is that bad. I played him all day yesterday and did fine.

Something I do have an issue with is people who mash D1. Can anyone give me some advice on this?

Im thinking of backdashing after f1 or f12 on block, then cancelling the back dash into f12 again to punish the poke.
The two universal options to mash D1 is D1 and throw.
All D1's are negative on block in MK1, so that means you can get a guaranteed D1 back or throw on reversal.
The only problem with D1 back after their poke is that his only jailing moves from it have gaps. Tom Brady made a video about this.
So you can D1 and backdash or just throw them which is a kounter and guaranteed.
 

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
Premium Supporter
The klone was nerfed in 2 ways. It stays for 1 second instead of 1.5 and it has a cool down of 3.5 instead of 2.5 seconds.

F1 is now 15 frames up for 12.

Damage nerf, he does less damage with 3 bars than 1. Takes both Sareena cameos and a bar to crack 40%.

And as Tom Brady pointed out in his new video, the only strings he can jail off a D1 on hit have gaps.

I don’t want to act like a lunatic but he’s pretty challenging to play right now, I’m sure a lot of the cast’s damage will be nerfed a bit. Hopefully he gets the gaps in 122 or 212 fixed, because I know they’re not gonna revert the ice klone nerfs. Would be nice if he hit a bit harder and ice ball froze longer since it’s slow as fuck and almost useless in trades since they don’t stay frozen long. And he only gets 26% off a freeze on a grounded opponent.
Wait.. why in TF did he receive these nerfs from the Beta? Did Cage and/or Kenshi receive any nerfs from the beta? He didn’t deserve any of these nerfs whatsoever, lmao what in the hell?

Yeah, unfortunately not going to be using him until he’s fixed. Not buffed, but fixed. Because changing him back to how he was isn’t a buff to me. No wonder I haven’t seen many people using Sub. This is absolutely ridiculous, smh
 

Dankster Morgan

It is better this way
Wait.. why in TF did he receive these nerfs from the Beta? Did Cage and/or Kenshi receive any nerfs from the beta? He didn’t deserve any of these nerfs whatsoever, lmao what in the hell?

Yeah, unfortunately not going to be using him until he’s fixed. Not buffed, but fixed. Because changing him back to how he was isn’t a buff to me. No wonder I haven’t seen many people using Sub. This is absolutely ridiculous, smh
Kenshi was nerfed but not this significantly. It’s frustrating but I’m gonna roll with it and hope for the best patch wise or otherwise.