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Rain Matchup Discussion: Who do you struggle/do well against?

DarksydeDash

You know me as RisingShieldBro online.
I don't see this MU being very good for Rain. I haven't personally played this MU but I do play both characters to some degree. I'd say try to stick as close to Kotal as possible and exploit the fact that his mids and pokes are (relatively) slow. He still has tic throws and his D3/D4 are great but imo once you get into the mid range or full screen Kotal has the advantage. His normals are so huge and some with disjointed hit boxes and receded hurt boxes that make them hard to whiff punish, and they all lead to a lot more damage than Rain can get. From full screen he can put up sunlight and besides argus plunge amp or the KB idk what Rain has that can even make it so he doesn't heal more damage than he takes. He can also parry your katars while buffing his own damage and even though you can duck disc or evaporate one mistake can you eat a KB that does the same damage as a regular Rain combo.

EDIT: A bit more info on sunlight - always try to punish it if they do it in the neutral. It heals 105 over 10s so your aim is to do more than 105 to negate the effects.
Here's DJT VS Aztec (probably the best Rain player VS probably the best Kotal player):
Hope this helps :)
Speak of the devil..
 

JGillette

My thirst for knowledge cannot be quenched
Honestly it's a nightmare because it's very momentum based. You can't let Kotal touch you, and you have to manage your meter very well.

I hate this MU because its very momentum based like Noob Saibot, in the sense that Kotal does so much damage, that one touch is all it takes. Kotal can then just sit in the sun (especially in the corner). Against Aztec, he uses the kat against me and this especially means you can't run away all game, but the disgusting thing is that you can never throw a Katar at Kotal without meter. He can duck it, and either use F2 combined with good wave dashing to full combo punish.


I also want to mention that Kotal's cmd grab will straight up punish you for trying to water parry, and his d3 will low profile all of Rain's mids except d3, much like Cetrion's.

What you can do:

Check him after MB disk with AMP Katar.

Kotal doesn't have a fast mid so you can always try to check him with a d1 or d3 and his only real threat is poking you back. You can just block that, throw or swing at him again.

Know that Kotal's F2 is the button he's looking for. Practice flawless blocking it in neutral and after Rain's strings with Pushback like b212 so you punish him for trying to get his turn back. Again, meter management is key.

IF you do get a life lead, he'll most likely try to set up the sun and hide behind it. With good movement, you can get in on him quickly and round house kick him right out of the sun.
thank you very much for your recommendations.
 

Immortal

Blind justice....
Just a note to that video. It isn't as bad as it looks. DJT is an amazing player but it's quite obvious he didn't know Kotal MU at that time. Kotal 2,2 isn't safe, b2,2,3 can be easily interupted and im not sure if i even saw one Fblock from DJT which is odd since he do it all the time (in other games/MUs).

So my thinking here is that his match isn't a good representation of this match up; however there probably isn't much (any?) videos of this MU on high level on YT/Twitch since barely anybody plays Rain (not to mention in tournaments) and while Kotal is a decent character outside of few character loyalists no tournament player use him since there are way better characters in the game.
 

RoboCop

The future of law enforcement.
Administrator
Premium Supporter
Just a note to that video. It isn't as bad as it looks. DJT is an amazing player but it's quite obvious he didn't know Kotal MU at that time. Kotal 2,2 isn't safe, b2,2,3 can be easily interupted and im not sure if i even saw one Fblock from DJT which is odd since he do it all the time (in other games/MUs).

So my thinking here is that his match isn't a good representation of this match up; however there probably isn't much (any?) videos of this MU on high level on YT/Twitch since barely anybody plays Rain (not to mention in tournaments) and while Kotal is a decent character outside of few character loyalists no tournament player use him since there are way better characters in the game.
Matchup issues aside, I see those 21% full kombo 1-bar punishes and just think, how is this fine? It's the same issue RoboCop has; the character strengths do not warrant such pitiful damage. At least RoboCop can bf1 all day, not sure what Rain has that makes NRS think that damage output is acceptable. Kotal is throwing out safe 3-hit strings that deal more damage than Rain's unsafe 1-bar bnbs lol.

As a consequence, characters like Rain and RoboCop will always have to deal with their opponents' fatal blows. Other characters can deal more than 30% to kill you without you ever gaining access to FB, but not these low-damage-output characters. Feels bad.
 

Immortal

Blind justice....
You can drive yourself nuts with such a questions. ;)

Why did NRS made Sheeva stomp the way it is? Why NRS made Kabal borderline broken with custom moves? Same with Cetrion or Jacqui not to mention Joker who has half screen (vs most characters) safe launcher also second most auto-pilot basic string which you can stagger and confirm into crazy dmg; Why Liu Kang has the most auto-pilot 1,2,3 string in the whole game which makes you guess all the time (especially online); Why did they make Sub Zero OH only semi reactable - even people like Sonic or Ninja get hit by it offline half of the time (and it's like pure 50/50 online) and so on.....

The simple answer to those and several other questions is - balancing, competitive scene is an afterthought for WB (and any other big gaming company). Sure they will throw some $ here and there, release X patches, DLC (this again is more of a cash grab than fan service obviously) but anybody working in the industry knows, it's all about the casuals, like real casuals, those who play story mode, krypt, towers and after a week or two move on to another game. For those people this (and almost all games) game was made, coz those people make 90% (more) of the game sales and that is the only metric that does matter.
 

Mandolore1123

Man of Science Who Wields the Living Lightning
Matchup issues aside, I see those 21% full kombo 1-bar punishes and just think, how is this fine? It's the same issue RoboCop has; the character strengths do not warrant such pitiful damage. At least RoboCop can bf1 all day, not sure what Rain has that makes NRS think that damage output is acceptable. Kotal is throwing out safe 3-hit strings that deal more damage than Rain's unsafe 1-bar bnbs lol.

As a consequence, characters like Rain and RoboCop will always have to deal with their opponents' fatal blows. Other characters can deal more than 30% to kill you without you ever gaining access to FB, but not these low-damage-output characters. Feels bad.
IMO similarly to Robocop, Rain's neutral does revolve around his Katar projectile, so he does have a good projectile that he can "spam". I'm honestly fine with dealing 27% a pop for a bar but my main problem is breakaway. I spend a lot of time trying to open ppl up and when I do it's either a single AMP katar (9%) or after a 133 where they can just break. If they are smart they'll wait until I attempt a 242 mid combo and break there so they can full combo punish me (which is easy because the optimal combo off 133 is 133~geyser palm AMP, dash 242~geyser palm). If I could say do a D2 or something and still get some nice damage that'd be great but unfortunately if they break during D2 I do like 4% less damage (from 25% to 21% for 133~geyser palm AMP, dash D2). I do think he needs a slight damage buff, but at the moment I'm not good enough with the character to actually know what he needs and what are buffs that would be nice to have but unnecessary in the grand scheme of things
 

DarksydeDash

You know me as RisingShieldBro online.
Let's all just be thankful that Kotal doesn't have a cmd grab KB because there's still a bug in the game where if Rain gets cmd grabbed during water parry, it triggers the KB.
 

Mandolore1123

Man of Science Who Wields the Living Lightning
Let's all just be thankful that Kotal doesn't have a cmd grab KB because there's still a bug in the game where if Rain gets cmd grabbed during water parry, it triggers the KB.
I mean if he has 3 totems up and sunlight one command grab does like 40% which is probably more than any command grab KB :>
 

MURK

Noob
I haven't played many mu as rain but imo here's what I think so far...

Liu- 6'4/5-5
Johnny- 5-5
Kotal- 5-5/6-4
Joker- 5-5/6-4
Frost- 4-6
Cetrion- 5-5/4-6
Noob- 5-5/4-6
Scorpion- 6-4
Sindel- 5-5
Sub- 6-4
Nightwolf- 5-5/6-4
Robocop- 5-5
Jaqui- 6-4
Kabal- 6-4

I'm still not comfortable in some of what I listed but this is my rough draft
 

DarksydeDash

You know me as RisingShieldBro online.
I haven't played many mu as rain but imo here's what I think so far...

Liu- 6'4/5-5
Johnny- 5-5
Kotal- 5-5/6-4
Joker- 5-5/6-4
Frost- 4-6
Cetrion- 5-5/4-6
Noob- 5-5/4-6
Scorpion- 6-4
Sindel- 5-5
Sub- 6-4
Nightwolf- 5-5/6-4
Robocop- 5-5
Jaqui- 6-4
Kabal- 6-4

I'm still not comfortable in some of what I listed but this is my rough draft
Are those 6-4 numbers losing because there is definitely no way Rain beats Kotal, Jacqui, and Cetrion.