1. Something else when watching that tourney...
2. I am wondering if some analysis of situational awareness would benefit Kano
3. What's Kano's best matchups? What's his worse ones?
4. Knife Spam, random kano ball, and jlk-hk/Throw winning you a lot of matches?
1:
There's a few concepts that make a good fighting game player great. Mind games, wakeup games, footsies and spacing, and damage capitalization.
This question deals with damage capitalization. As a player, it's your job in every instance you are given to go for the highest damage that you can. That
you can, not that you read on TYM or SRK, or saw a high level player do on Youtube (When dropping combos, players who do this will claim to be going for the combo like they saw *here* or that they saw "The Koreans/Japanese/*Top Player's Name*!" do).
If your combo you do gets 3% or so less damage than the best, but you can do it perfectly virtually every time, then do
your combo. If you're getting too little damage, like 10% less (In Kano's case this is much worse than other characters, but I digress), then maybe it's time to practice a new combo...
Anyways, in tournaments, ALL players get nerves. Even vets. So they practice combos that they won't mess up on. Looking at Tom Brady's combos at Powerup, he went for 5% or so less damage, but hit the combo every time. If he did a combo he wasn't familiar with, or couldn't execute effectively on reaction, then maybe he wouldn't have done so good.
2.
Using breaker meter is at the player's discretion. If he thinks he is stopping a lot of damage early in a combo, then it's a good choice. If he thinks he is, but you cut it short with a special, and he just broke the last hit, then he wasted it. He also might only think to use it after you end your combo early, which would leave him knocked down rather than yourself. It's also about if the person who is being combo'd thinks they can turn it around with however much life they have left after you are done comboing them. If they know they can't survive, they have to breaker. This applies to all characters, really.
Having a super (especially an unblockable one that can be used as a reversal) is a big threat. Safe players will run away and try to zone you, which can allow you opportunities to punish bad fireball zoning or start your own. Scrubs will keep hitting buttons on your wakeup every time and block at bad times or just not react to it and eat shit for it. Skilled players can just make you blow it and take away your 41% damage comeback-factor. However, those skilled players also give up certain damage opportunities for mindgames and open themselves up for punishment in certain situations (Like, jumping out after a dash-canceled charge command normal as a bait can be punished by upball or uppercut, just as an example). So yes, having X-Ray is just as big a factor in mindgames as using it, and can change the flow of a match greatly, almost (or possibly more) as much a hitting it. This goes for all characters.
I don't like his overhead too much personally. It's fairly slow, doesn't go over lows, and gets decent damage, but not outstanding. Throwing is faster, at the sacrifice of range and damage, but is harder to react to. Up to you. If they're just down blocking CONSTANTLY then use the overhead on them I guess.
His "A" range? As in his best screen positioning? Well he needs to be close to get good damage like most characters, but can play fireball zoning games with his knife and punish whiffed/block moves fairly well at midrange. I have no idea yet.
3:
Can't even speak on this one yet. Sorry, as you may have guessed from what you saw last night I really only have Ermac experience as of right now.
4:
Knife spam is good. Good damage, fast, and controls good area. Abusing it is is dangerous, as is most everything in this game. Gotta be thinking about what your opponent will do, based on his options and playstyle, if you abuse it too much. Still,
fairly solid in a fireball war (Who does that in MK?) based on my extremely limited experience with the game.
Random balls are really only good if you notice your opponent doing something that isn't blocking or horizontal zoning, but is largely responsible for your losing. Examples include, but aren't limited to, dashing in and not blocking to get in range of a good attack, or jumping constantly, or even constant wakeup pressure on you. Wakeup SRKs are GREAT when they hit! It's better for whiff punishing and punishing unsafe midrange-range moves, however.
The Jump kick-Airthrow thing...that's probably just gimmicky, but if you are beating the other player in the air-to-air game, then it's a lot better than just an early jump punch/kick.
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Off the topic of that response, it seems like Choke is close to the -1/0/+1 range on block, but I'm not sure which characters can duck/crouchblock under it. Anyone have any extensive experience with this? Personally I can say it's a bad string ender against Ermac if he is ducking.
Also, I'm totally on board with Kano having some lows in his strings. That would have been sweet.
And if anyone would like to criticize/correct/comment on anything in my post, please, do so. Totally down with learning anything new.
string since it hit mid allowing you to hit standing and crouching opponents, also is a fast string that can help to chip and is easy to cancel into specials, the only time you may not use that string is if you want to punish crouching block with 
, it was so godlike to see smoke punch me in my back (absorbing the hit with the super armor) and then garbing him as he teleported to the other side for the second hit.
question was asked wrong, it should have been, "why does Kano lack a combo string with a low? 
