MK11 KABAL Discussion

[Blewdew]

I have a question about Kabal's Nomad Dash Cancel.

If your opponent reads the cancel, can they interrupt it? I ask because there have been times that I've canceled into something plus and got poked. I don't recall there being a "Kounter/Punish" toast either.

If this isn't the case, then perhaps I'm getting the timing wrong sometimes.

It depends on what you‘ve canceled from and what you‘ve canceled into. From f22 and f4 your +1 so you have to be frame perfect if you don‘t want to get poked out of your d1 so the timing is pretty strict

 

[Nihil]

Hi,

I played a lot more MS recently. It's really not as bad as I could think previously but really I have trouble to be totally agree with you. Of course I'm pretty bad right now with him, sometimes hit confirming sometimes cancelling when I shouldn't

I saw the Xarakamaka games you shared.

First against Ganon, I admit his playstyle is really interesting and as someone said, He plays it (almost) optimally for what we know about Kabal MS. I say almost because, he uses too many times low buzzsaw in a Strange way, after f2 which is nonsense. After f2 it's too Dangerous because anyone who know the mu, can block low and punish you. Obviously Ganon wasn't good enough for this. After b1 if you put some distance between you and your opponent yeah, why not, maybe it will catch him thinking about the overhead. But after f2?

Against Happypow he was more careful(even if he did that f2 low saw amplified a couple of times without to be punished). And to be honest I think Jacqui is not a real bad mu for Kabal, MS or CC. I guess better for MS, because Jacqui has no zoning and no reach aside b2 and bf2, Xarakamaka played it really softly in the first matches and catch happypow often in midstance after few backsteps. In this way MS is pretty good because of the hitconfirm. he abused back throw too. It's one of the weakness of happypow: techthrow and specially using the amplified version...I saw his matches a lot(I m frencha and I play Jacqui too) and it's a constant.
In 2nd match Happy started to remember he had b22 to get in and it was over for Xarakamaka.

So what is really interesting with Xarakamaka? Good knowledge of frame data, of course. Great use of NDC, and by that, I mean, the fact he will trick his oppontent but what he is really good right now is to hit confirm.And this is the scary thing about MS. Good pokes, good strings and if you hit confirm well, you can manage to win a lot of games. But I think it demands really too much regarding of the damage and the counterpart where you won't be able to breakaway most of the time and if you are scared of the damages of your opponent there is no need to play MS. ANd finally you admit it too.
Against Sonya, you think CC should be better. Against cassie too(skarlet apparently).
Against Geras I think CC should be better because of the damages of gerras and his 6 frames.
It means it seems against a lot of top tiers Kabal will struggle right now.

By the way I am Always amazed to see top players putting kabal top tiers. I guess you have an explanation about that, and I will be interested to see.

 

[Eldriken]

It depends on what you‘ve canceled from and what you‘ve canceled into. From f22 and f4 your +1 so you have to be frame perfect if you don‘t want to get poked out of your d1 so the timing is pretty strict

Not what I meant. I'll explain. I guess I left out the important bit. Haha. My fault.

What I'm meaning is, I've gotten hit while doing the NDC. You know the flash it makes, I've gotten hit right when it starts up. Is that due to me or is it something the opponent can do if they read the cancel?

 

[Nihil]

Not what I meant. I'll explain. I guess I left out the important bit. Haha. My fault.

What I'm meaning is, I've gotten hit while doing the NDC. You know the flash it makes, I've gotten hit right when it starts up. Is that due to me or is it something the opponent can do if they read the cancel?

Let's take an example.

You do f22ndc then d1.

Apparently f22ndc let you at +1?

In theory if you do that just frame, you should have 1 frame in advantage but if your opponent low guard f22ndc he will certainly have the lead if he do a d1.

So if you Don't cancel it just frame(I Don't even know if there is few frames to cancel in fact, but i guess) opponent can d1 without you can do anything if he decided to not respect the ndc. So maybe it's due to you but again if someone does not want to respect ndc and poke you if you Don't poke you will be hit(and sometimes you can be hit even if you poke if you Don't cancel right)
And if you are facing somone like Gerras witha 6f poke, it will be harder...

 

[SaltShaker]

Not what I meant. I'll explain. I guess I left out the important bit. Haha. My fault.

What I'm meaning is, I've gotten hit while doing the NDC. You know the flash it makes, I've gotten hit right when it starts up. Is that due to me or is it something the opponent can do if they read the cancel?

Let's take an example.

You do f22ndc then d1.

Apparently f22ndc let you at +1?

In theory if you do that just frame, you should have 1 frame in advantage but if your opponent low guard f22ndc he will certainly have the lead if he do a d1.

So if you Don't cancel it just frame(I Don't even know if there is few frames to cancel in fact, but i guess) opponent can d1 without you can do anything if he decided to not respect the ndc. So maybe it's due to you but again if someone does not want to respect ndc and poke you if you Don't poke you will be hit(and sometimes you can be hit even if you poke if you Don't cancel right)
And if you are facing somone like Gerras witha 6f poke, it will be harder...

Yea I second this, not sure why it happens as I'm not experienced enough with Kabal yet, but it seems against people who "know how to fight Kabal" I get poked out of flash probably half of the times.

Like for example, I can do F2 cancel into F4string, so only a 6F should trade and 7F or slower should be a CH for me. But I'd say about 2/5 times I get low poked or D1. Not sure if I'm doing it too slow or it's a spacing thing. Hoping I'm just doing it too slow lol.

For reasons unknown, grab seems to almost always frame trap.

 

[Nihil]

Yea I second this, not sure why it happens as I'm not experienced enough with Kabal yet, but it seems against people who "know how to fight Kabal" I get poked out of flash probably half of the times.

Like for example, I can do F2 cancel into F4string, so only a 6F should trade and 7F or slower should be a CH for me. But I'd say about 2/5 times I get low poked or D1. Not sure if I'm doing it too slow or it's a spacing thing. Hoping I'm just doing it too slow lol.

For reasons unknown, grab seems to almost always frame trap.

I just tried in lab f2ndcf4 and at worst it'as a trade between the poke and the f4. So maybe it's because of the online, timing can be different and delayed.

F2ndcd1 if timed carefully, even a crouch gerras can poke on it. Which is ok since f2ndc is +3.

 

[Manticore]

Hi,

I'm new here, even if it's not the subject
I was wondering why you think Mean Streak is equally good than Clean Cut.

Because of the bad damage output, I find the ndc pressure bad.
I mean I lab a lot and it's simple.
You can't really use ndc a lot. First, you can't play it as a gimmick because you will get heavily punished.
If someone bait your cancel he can full punish you, it means 30+ and maybe KB for more. The only possibility is to d1 which is a not really worth a defensive bar.
So you can realease your ND, but the trade is not fair since Kabal has poor damages.

Mean Strak can try to make différents mix up with f4 1+2/ f4 low buzzsaw, or B12/B1 low buzzsaw and F224/F22 low buzzsaw.
Technically any good players can react to that mix up. So if you low buzzsaw, it's full punish.
Biggest problem is when you amplify your buzzsaw, you are safe on the second buzzsaw BUT between the two buzzsaw, you can full punish Kabal with s1 or 10frames mid(sure about 9frames with Jacqui), maybe more, I don't really remember.

So kabal has abolutely no decent mix up in Mean Streak and usually take full combo since he rarely has two defensive meters.

I don't want to say Kabal is bad. He has really greats normals, safe on everything, but Mean Streak is a poor choice and against really good players who know the MU, on the paper it will be impossible to play.
You will have to NDC very few times, poor output damage, no safe mix ups and reactable, so Clean Cut is basically the true choice to win with him.
Unfortunately I hate that variation

Maybe I'm wrong! it will be interesting to see what do you think.

Completely agree with you. Also your wake up and break away suffers a little if you use the cancels a lot

 

[Blewdew]

Yea I second this, not sure why it happens as I'm not experienced enough with Kabal yet, but it seems against people who "know how to fight Kabal" I get poked out of flash probably half of the times.

Like for example, I can do F2 cancel into F4string, so only a 6F should trade and 7F or slower should be a CH for me. But I'd say about 2/5 times I get low poked or D1. Not sure if I'm doing it too slow or it's a spacing thing. Hoping I'm just doing it too slow lol.

For reasons unknown, grab seems to almost always frame trap.

it seems like grab frame traps because it beats pokes, so if you're opponent tries to mash out of the cancel the throw will have priority.
and if you get poked out of you're f22 cancel you're execution is probably a frame or two off the perfect timing. you can only frame trap with d1 after f22 if you're frame perfect and you play against a 7f d1 or slower character. geras for example can trade pokes even when you're frame perfect. it's the same with f2ndcf4, you have a 6 frame difference so you're only going to frame trap if you're execution is frame perfect otherwise you'll get poked out.
if you have a mashing happy opponent you can use your plusframes to walk back and whiff punish the poke with b1 if it's not working out otherwise.

 

[Blewdew]

Hi,

I played a lot more MS recently. It's really not as bad as I could think previously but really I have trouble to be totally agree with you. Of course I'm pretty bad right now with him, sometimes hit confirming sometimes cancelling when I shouldn't

I saw the Xarakamaka games you shared.

First against Ganon, I admit his playstyle is really interesting and as someone said, He plays it (almost) optimally for what we know about Kabal MS. I say almost because, he uses too many times low buzzsaw in a Strange way, after f2 which is nonsense. After f2 it's too Dangerous because anyone who know the mu, can block low and punish you. Obviously Ganon wasn't good enough for this. After b1 if you put some distance between you and your opponent yeah, why not, maybe it will catch him thinking about the overhead. But after f2?

Against Happypow he was more careful(even if he did that f2 low saw amplified a couple of times without to be punished). And to be honest I think Jacqui is not a real bad mu for Kabal, MS or CC. I guess better for MS, because Jacqui has no zoning and no reach aside b2 and bf2, Xarakamaka played it really softly in the first matches and catch happypow often in midstance after few backsteps. In this way MS is pretty good because of the hitconfirm. he abused back throw too. It's one of the weakness of happypow: techthrow and specially using the amplified version...I saw his matches a lot(I m frencha and I play Jacqui too) and it's a constant.
In 2nd match Happy started to remember he had b22 to get in and it was over for Xarakamaka.

So what is really interesting with Xarakamaka? Good knowledge of frame data, of course. Great use of NDC, and by that, I mean, the fact he will trick his oppontent but what he is really good right now is to hit confirm.And this is the scary thing about MS. Good pokes, good strings and if you hit confirm well, you can manage to win a lot of games. But I think it demands really too much regarding of the damage and the counterpart where you won't be able to breakaway most of the time and if you are scared of the damages of your opponent there is no need to play MS. ANd finally you admit it too.
Against Sonya, you think CC should be better. Against cassie too(skarlet apparently).
Against Geras I think CC should be better because of the damages of gerras and his 6 frames.
It means it seems against a lot of top tiers Kabal will struggle right now.

By the way I am Always amazed to see top players putting kabal top tiers. I guess you have an explanation about that, and I will be interested to see.

I mean I'm not saying mean streak is the best variation of the game nor is it better than clean cut it definitely has it's weaknesses but it's still extremely effective if you're willing to practice his stuff. clean cut is way easier to play but is a completely different character so of course clean cut is better in some matchups.

I don't see him at the top either, characters like cassie,sonya, geras are too strong to put kabal in the same category. big part of why he get's placed so high is because he has:

1. a lot of good mids (b1,f2,f4)
2. really good frames even without cancel
3. no gaps in his strings that can be flawless blocked
4. very good krushing blows

He's a really good character, definitely top 10 material but I don't see him in top 5 currently.

 

[Saltea Moonspell]

Hi guys,

So I've been avoiding playing Kabal since lunch, even though I played the shit out of him in MK9. Picked him, as KL is not really offense heavy, as I would like him to bel.
In 3-4 days ago, Tthe transition from MK9 Kabal to MK11 was mind-blowing. Didnt really have the time yet to go through all the Kabal forum, but I will. I found love for the game, as I thought it was lost. He is absolutely fantastic, the MK9, cancel variation. I love my+8 frams NDC on block. I love my MK9 signature AA: d1,f4, dash followup. The air saw follow up in cross up is fantastic. I find difficult to confirm 11, saw corner follow up in online play. Playing Scorpions....Jesus fuck, I dont know what is worse. Hellfire Scorpion, or this Version.

Few question from a fresh operator:

What is the best 1 bar combo after dash? d1, 23,hook grab?
What is your best AA's? I use S4 into dash, and S1, 23, dash,

How do you approach meter management? What do spent your meter, outside of combos for? I think the double ground saw, is worth it?

 

[Naumboss]

Hi guys,

So I've been avoiding playing Kabal since lunch, even though I played the shit out of him in MK9. Picked him, as KL is not really offense heavy, as I would like him to bel.
In 3-4 days ago, Tthe transition from MK9 Kabal to MK11 was mind-blowing. Didnt really have the time yet to go through all the Kabal forum, but I will. I found love for the game, as I thought it was lost. He is absolutely fantastic, the MK9, cancel variation. I love my+8 frams NDC on block. I love my MK9 signature AA: d1,f4, dash followup. The air saw follow up in cross up is fantastic. I find difficult to confirm 11, saw corner follow up in online play. Playing Scorpions....Jesus fuck, I dont know what is worse. Hellfire Scorpion, or this Version.

Few question from a fresh operator:

What is the best 1 bar combo after dash? d1, 23,hook grab?
What is your best AA's? I use S4 into dash, and S1, 23, dash,

How do you approach meter management? What do spent your meter, outside of combos for? I think the double ground saw, is worth it?

Optimal one bar after dash (grounded oponnent) is 4 bf1amp dash d1 dash 23 db4, if oponnent is in the air I always do d1 dash 23 db4 and the best AA is people say d3 but it’s quite impractical

 

[Naumboss]

Guys what can I do after 111 bf3 3 bf1amp?

 

[Blewdew]

Guys what can I do after 111 bf3 3 bf1amp?

I rather use the bar for amp db4 at the end instead of 3 bf1amp it's really not worth doing. so just 111 bf3 dash d1 dash 23 db4amp for 28%

 

[SaltShaker]

Finally starting to get the timing consistent on the Dash Cancels. I think what was throwing me off was that not all normals have the same timing off block, but now that I've been using him longer it's coming more natural.

Still mind-blowing how this variation, or even character isn't used more. The only reason has to be because he isn't a "just pick up and play" character, and takes time to get down. He has almost anything you need for most MUs and I never really feel underpowered in any MU.

 

[Saltea Moonspell]

people say d3 but it’s quite impractical

I dont see d3 being as good as d1. Maybe perhaps that it lowers the hitbo

Finally starting to get the timing consistent on the Dash Cancels. I think what was throwing me off was that not all normals have the same timing off block, but now that I've been using him longer it's coming more natural.

Still mind-blowing how this variation, or even character isn't used more. The only reason has to be because he isn't a "just pick up and play" character, and takes time to get down. He has almost anything you need for most MUs and I never really feel underpowered in any MU.

You are correct. But for those who played him as main in MK9, this isnt really a big demand imo. Within only couple of days, I was able to naturally operate. I love this version, and will not trade it for the other, regardless the MU.

 

[Blewdew]

Finally starting to get the timing consistent on the Dash Cancels. I think what was throwing me off was that not all normals have the same timing off block, but now that I've been using him longer it's coming more natural.

Still mind-blowing how this variation, or even character isn't used more. The only reason has to be because he isn't a "just pick up and play" character, and takes time to get down. He has almost anything you need for most MUs and I never really feel underpowered in any MU.

It‘s the same with sq dvorah in mkx who was top tier in any state of the game yet no one played her. There are way more people who just want to play strong and easy to pick up characters instead of investing some time in the one they actually like.
Mean streak kabal is a similar case, though you don‘t need to master his hard stuff to get at least decent results, sq dvorah was literally unviable if you couldn‘t do her cancels and conversations

 

[Saltea Moonspell]

@SaltShaker

Have you noticed how plus is f3 ndc?
Also, I just love to use air saw in jk crossup. Occasionally you can confirm it with d1->f4->dash!

 

[SaltShaker]

@SaltShaker

Have you noticed how plus is f3 ndc?
Also, I just love to use air saw in jk crossup. Occasionally you can confirm it with d1->f4->dash!

+8 on block life brah! I find it the easiest of the 1 hit normals to confirm too which makes it that much better. I've applying it mostly when I have them respecting my pressure, and on their WU. Probably my favorite outside of the F4 cancel.

Oh yea? How much are you getting? On JK crossup I've been doing F2 combo for about 306 damage. I find the F22 after a JK crossup very easy to visually hit confirm so I've went with it so far.

 

[Icefyre]

I love Mean Streak for his NDC, the pressure he gets from it is fairly unique. I have a lot of fun with it, but I wonder how you guys feel about him using defensive bar for the cancels. Defensive meter in this game seems really important, so utilizing his NDC for + frames means you can't use breakaways or wake up rolls like other characters can. Almost feels like a sort of glass canon type character. Still, though, he has pressure that other characters don't and it's so much fun lol.

 

[Saltea Moonspell]

+8 on block life brah! I find it the easiest of the 1 hit normals to confirm too which makes it that much better. I've applying it mostly when I have them respecting my pressure, and on their WU. Probably my favorite outside of the F4 cancel.

Oh yea? How much are you getting? On JK crossup I've been doing F2 combo for about 306 damage. I find the F22 after a JK crossup very easy to visually hit confirm so I've went with it so far.

try to utilize f3 in the corner. You can get a follow up if I recall correctly.

Regarding crossup, I like to do it with instant air saw, follow with knee or d1, knee. Can't remember. Its all still fresh to me. Will lab in later on and see what I can come up with.

 

[Blewdew]

I love Mean Streak for his NDC, the pressure he gets from it is fairly unique. I have a lot of fun with it, but I wonder how you guys feel about him using defensive bar for the cancels. Defensive meter in this game seems really important, so utilizing his NDC for + frames means you can't use breakaways or wake up rolls like other characters can. Almost feels like a sort of glass canon type character. Still, though, he has pressure that other characters don't and it's so much fun lol.

Yeah that’s kind of his archtype. I usually try not to use both bars for cancels so if I happen to be comboed most of the time I still regenate Meter fast enough to have a breakaway ready if I really need it.

 

[Saltea Moonspell]

Yeah that’s kind of his archtype. I usually try not to use both bars for cancels so if I happen to be comboed most of the time I still regenate Meter fast enough to have a breakaway ready if I really need it.

This variation requires really good meter management, MU knowledge and opponent diagnosis. Imo, without that regardless of everything else chances are, you get mopped.

 

[y0da]

Could some1 explain what exactly am I doing wrong, that after BF3 AMP, dash cancel 23, the BD4 - hook slam - often doesn't hit?

 

[sprintz98]

Could some1 explain what exactly am I doing wrong, that after BF3 AMP, dash cancel 23, the BD4 - hook slam - often doesn't hit?

I assume you mean BF1 amp. All you have to do after BF1 amp is microdash 23 DB4. If your dash goes too forward then the hook slam won't hit.

Btw the optimal combo after bf1 amp is dash d1 and then microdash 23 DB4.

 

[Mandolore1123]

Btw the optimal combo after bf1 amp is dash d1 and then microdash 23 BD4.

Easier execution for less damage is BF1 AMP, F22~DB4.