Some rambling thoughts on the Sektor matchup.
I couldn't sleep last night so I did like an hour of training mode around 2am. At MLG I ran some casuals with
Sao87 and had a lot of trouble against his Sektor. Something he was doing that I haven't seen other Sektors do is every time I did a string that ends with Liu Kang at neutral, he would do Sektor's 12b1 string. That's got 6 startup frames so it would beat out a b312, f12, f3, 213, I mean pretty much all of my favorite strings. It leads to a full combo too.
I was kind of curious what my options against that string are. Block is obviously an option but that's pretty boring and I wanted to see if I could do anything better. I went into training mode, set the dummy to "Human", then set the 1 button on my stick to autofire and held down the block button with my big toe (incidentally, fuck the training mode in this game forever). From there I did a string that ended at neutral, then I'd let go of player 2's block and see if an immediate standing 11 from Sektor would beat my next move. I would have liked to test it against 12b1 proper but what can you do. The good news is that the second hit of Sektor's 11 hits Liu Kang out of neutral crouch, same as the second hit of his 12b1, so it's an okay substitute for what I was testing.
Anyways what I was able to determine is that you can't beat stand 1 with any of Liu Kang's standing normals, you can't backdash away from it, and you can't jump it (doesn't work for neutral jump, cross over jump, or a jump backwards). I thought maybe immediately going into Dragon Stance might work since that moves Kang's hitbox back, but it doesn't start up fast enough to avoid Sektor's stand 1. The one thing that does work is low poke. d3 works, and actually you even have time to d4 which is great cause d4 is like plus a billion. Obviously if Sektor decides to low poke he'll win because his pokes are faster, but even so it's low risk and it allows you to continue pressure if Sektor decides to stand 1.
Another option rather than trying to beat stand 1 outright is just to end strings at unpredictable times. When I played Sao I was doing f12 by itself every time, when what I realize now I should have been doing is occasionally finishing the f121 string or cancelling into an EX low fireball. It may also help to use some of Liu Kang's more obscure strings like b2b3 or 334 in an attempt to confuse the opponent.
Jesus
Christ I am tired.