I agree! Great points by the way.
I agree pretty much entirely with all points you bring up and have been having moderate success with her. She has number of good normals that allow her good whiff punishing and easy hit-confirms, on top of being pretty safe. Her damage is also largely meterless outside of MB Square Wave for same-side OKI which is a great plus.
I do however think it is worth having a discussion about areas Kitana is currently lacking without having to re-tread things we all know such as “
no Sonya mix-ups” or “
she can’t zone like Erron” etc.
For one – while the combination of a good set of jumping normals, Air Fan Toss, and the somewhat unique Fan Flutter give her a pretty compelling air game compared to much of the roster; it currently does not feel strong enough to really define her as a character. Even with those extra options many characters feel comfortable taking to the air against her. Given that she lacks a great zoning, mix-up, or pressure game this seems like a bit of a missed opportunity.
Speaking of missed opportunities - it is a shame that Kitana has the millstone round her neck of having what may as well be a single tournament variation. Half Blood Stance brings almost nothing to the table that rounds out her kit on top of some really baffling design choices such as the stab KB being tied to the awful sai projectile and the fact that teleport kick seems almost un-usable thanks to its delayed start-up and non-existent follow-up options with or without MB. The saving grace of the second variant could have been Edenian Razors which allows for some great meterless combo damage in the corner – but comes at the expense of Fan Lift which neuters Kitana’s already somewhat middling damage anywhere outside of the corner given she lacks a traditional pop-up string for extending combos without it.
There is also the somewhat double-edged sword of that meterless damage. While on the one hand this means we can play relatively conservatively with offensive meter, it also happens to highlight the fact that she lacks any particularly compelling MB options. Aside from the moderate utility of MB Fan Toss and the slightly extra damage from ending a combo with MB Square Wave there really is not anything for us to spend meter on special-wise which feels like a bit of a let-down, especially when transitioning from characters that meter-burn to get extra damage / corner carry in BnBs.
All-in-all to me Kitana feels somewhat hampered by the load-out system. Too much of Kitana’s power-budget is locked away to either custom load-outs or in lose-lose scenarios like the aforementioned trading Fan Lift for Edenian Razors. Small loadout tweaks like the Fan Toss Variants, Retreating and Advancing Fan Flutter, Royal Protection, Ground War etc. being built into her base kit rather than locked behind allocation would round-out her game a lot more. It all comes back to that slightly sour taste of realizing that there are characters who are “
komplete” without their variants and just get extra power from them.
All of this doesn’t change the fact that I think Kitana is in an alright place though and again – I have been having moderate success with her. MK11 is at its core fundamental enough that Kitana’s quality strings and easy hit-confirms / whiff punishing has a lot of mileage in the current state of the game, I just wonder if it is going to continue to hold up as people get a better handle on the characters with 50/50s, 40% single-meter damage etc.
I’d love to hear your guys thoughts and if I’ve got anything completely off the ball / missed the mark completely compared to your experiences.
