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.