Mind Flex
Mind Gamer. BOOSH
DISCLAIMER: This thread exposes me as a scrub and will likely seem like common knowledge to most players on TYM inciting responses like “Yeah...der. Why is this even a thread?” I’m okay with this. I feel like it needs to be shared because it also shows how great MK11 really is and may help other players trying to make the next leap in their play.
The “Empty Space/Neutral/Freedom” in this game seems to connect with my brain more than ever before and really helped open my eyes to just how deep this game is (and fighting games in general). Back in 2013 I bought 1 lesson from Perfect Legend to learn “footsies and fundamentals” for IGAU. I can’t say I really learned footsies but I did learn the concept of understanding your options and having a “complete flowchart.” I took this to mean “Understand your follow up attacks and have some ‘go to’ moves that work more often than not.” This strategy worked well enough to take me from a guy that could really only land a couple of BnBs and spammed specials to someone with an offensive game plan that could be tough to deal with for casual players. Then MKX is released. I was exactly the type of player that actual good players hated to see. My offensive gameplan was shallow and predictable but with the help of unreactable 50/50 and much improved BnB muscle memory I was still able to take lots of games off of players. With IJ2 I tried to main Green Lantern, Scarecrow, and Sub Zero before dropping the game entirely. I learned some spacing with GL’s B1 and the power of command grabs, but I found myself going back to MK9 Ladder when I had a fighting game itch. Needless to say, my mind was about to explode when I could finally conceptualize how deep and amazing MK11 really is.
Fast Forward to the MK11 Beta and what this scrub learned. In the stress test I split my time between Scorpion and Baraka. For the actual Beta I played 99% Jade.
Lesson 1 - Defense
Defense matters. Strong defense requires a much deeper understanding of the game than an offense of just guessing if you should use your overhead, low, d1, d2, or fast special. You need to have a deep understanding of what your opponent can do. You have to understand when it’s your turn. You have to understand what your options are once it finally IS your turn. You need to have real and complete game knowledge. An example of complete game knowledge is Tom Brady’s video explaining how to fuzzy guard Kabal’s mixup. If you don’t know these things cold then you are just guessing randomly and gambling that it might work. The scary part is that sometimes it WILL work. These things then can turn into bad habits and transform you into a “pattern player” who gets wins but who would get bopped by any good player. In most cases, however, you will just get run over by a player who is better than you. You can see in this match how I’m completely outclassed and it looks like I don’t even know that blocking is a thing. I was guessing/scrambling and I got ran over. If you watched the Eleaguetv thing you probably saw a lot of matches that looked like this on Reo’s stream. The weaker player doesn’t have the defensive skill to even reach the point of neutral footsies once the stronger player gets on top of them.
Lesson 2 - The corner is your enemy.
I know I know, this one is fighting games 101. The thing I want to talk about here isn’t just knowing that you don’t want to be cornered. The thing here is to be actively working toward keeping yourself out of that terrible situation preemptively. Most of the time I would find myself in the corner because I was just trying to be patient and “play footsies” and then POOF the stage ran out. I simply wasn’t being mindful of the stage length. Getting put into the corner means you already lost the “footsie war” even if you did get a nice whiff punish in the process. Every character in the game needs to “challenge” at some point to avoid getting cornered. Sonicfox put out a video on footsies recently that really helped open my eyes to “challenging” in the neutral as the main way to avoid getting cornered. I still don’t remember to do it, but at least I have it on my “to practice” list now. Haha
Lesson 3 - Anti-airing is a mindset.
In general I’m always so focused “when is it my turn” that I am free to jump ins. If I just successfully blocked something you better believe I’m doing some kind of string (probably a high starter like an idiot), d1~throw, or d1d1d4. If I don’t go into a match saying “Hey scrub make sure you anti-air” and then keep repeating it then I’ll just eat jump ins for the rest of the match. Then usually I get mad that I didn’t anti-air and mess up blocking a simple block string. Having just a tiny amount of patience and a micro walkback followed by Jade’s godlike D2 is so satisfying when you actually do it on purpose. Good players do this on purpose all the time because they are thinking and making reads. They read that an opponent may jump this time and they are ready for it with an easy D2 on reaction...if not more.
Lesson 4 - The Poke War.
Sonicfox touches on this concept in his footsies video but I really liked Circus’ breakdown of it in his video called The Poke War. In the stress test I was getting eaten alive by any skarlett player who would d1 into walkback whiff punish. My tiny brain couldn’t make sense of how it felt like everything she did would hit me and all of my buttons were out of range. I was getting outspaced and my opponent was playing footsies. I was guessing and mashing wakeup...like a scrub. The poke war can go any number of ways based on the specific players in the match. The best players see and REMEMBER what you do during each of these poke encounters. Also there is a good chance that the better player has been in way more poke wars and just naturally more likely to react in time as WELL as make the right read. The good player can make the read, they understand what options they have based on that read and then they execute the best option based on that read OR the option that covers the most amount of options of the opponent/safest if they are playing more conservatively. Doing D1d1d4 because it works isn’t a read. It’s a “get off me” habit. If a good player reads that the opponent will D1 after getting D1’d then the good player will walk back and whiff punish hard. The scrub panics and spams D1 or other similar tactics. This isn’t a read. This is panicking
Lesson 5 - Jumping is more than just the scrub’s tool for approaching.
This one is mostly connected with Circus’ video on the poke war but I think it needs to be listed separately. The jump is an incredibly powerful tool when you start using it correctly. Any mid level player can tell you that a neutral jump beats a command grab. Any MKX scrub can tell you NJP to victory is a real thing. I wish I could find the mkx spoof video making fun on players that just NJP all day. Anyways, if you can be smart with your jumps they can add so many extra punishes and pressure chances that you are probably leaving on the table without realizing it. Just because you are standing next to your opponent doesn’t mean you should forget that jump exists until the next time you need to get in. Be mindful of the options that neutral jump, jump over, and double jump over provide and what reads you will need to make in order to make best use of these.
Lesson 6 - Remember what got punished then adapt.
Respect it when you get punished. Way too often I fall into the “Maybe it will work this time” mindset. The truth is that is probably won’t. If you go for a basic setup and your opponent punishes you...maybe...just maybe they’ve seen that setup before and they will be ready to punish it every single time. You have no one to blame but yourself for doing something that gets punished more than once especially if you go for it again right away and you don’t at least try to condition the opponent to block something else. Don’t be like me who gets wake up rolled into a full combo every single time because I go for a Jade’s meaty F21 after almost every knockdown I get. If you get punished 3 times in a row because you did air glaives, took two steps, then shadow kicked...maybe you should change your gameplan.
Lesson 7 - Review the list of things to look out for and react to.
Every character has their certain things to respect and look out for. Most of the time this involves blocking low and then reacting to a slow overhead. Scorpion has teleport, kabal has nomad dash, and once the game is out everyone will have something. Game knowledge needs to be known cold for things like frame data, but the process of reviewing those things in my head right before the match starts really helps my reactions to slow overheads and punishes. If I don’t do this mental review then there is about a 99% chance that I won’t react to the first slow overhead or maybe my first punish is a frame too slow because I simply forgot to be looking for it. The best players rely on their reactions, but they are usually predictive reactions and not raw reactions. If you aren’t using your predictive reactions then you are getting hit a lot more than you need to be.
Lesson 8 - Play the player...not the character.
Just like Poker. You play the player...not your cards.
I subscribe to the theory that there are 3 phases to “git gud” at a fighting game.
Lesson 9 - Why I am a Scrub
This game taught me why I am a scrub. I am a scrub because I rely on strategies that work “most of the time” instead of playing patiently while making the best possible decision based on what I think my opponent will do. Mortal Kombat 11, a game about making reads, exposed me as a scrub to myself because it taught me that I wasn’t really making reads at all. Even if I was making reads I wasn’t doing anything close to the best possible option for that read and at best was “guessing” that something might work. Put it simply, if you aren’t making reads then you aren’t really playing MK11.
Lesson 10 - How to fix it.
I’m exposed as a scrub. So what next? It’s really kinda simple. Take the time to memorize the game and put a top priority on making reads and then executing the best possible option to that read. Also...watch lots of replays of myself. I’ll be playing slower than doing my basic setups on autopilot and I’ll probably lose a lot, but it will eventually pay off to change my mindset from “setups, combos, and wins” to “make the next read and execute your best option.” MK11 has already made me a better player just from a Beta. When the game finally drops it is going to be nuts.
SECOND DISCLAIMER: Some of the assumptions I made in this post might be flat out wrong. If so please tell me. This is the only way I’ll get better and hopefully other players will find the feedback helpful as well.
Here is a sample of my play to get an idea of how scrubby I am. The first set is my first online set with Jade against GGA Jeremiah’s Kabal where I relied heavily on her zoning after messing around with builds in towers.
The second set is the very last set I played in the beta against prettyboyjackal's run cancel Jade where most zoning options were shut down thanks to the threat of glow.
TL;DR
Turns out I’m a scrub...that sucks.
The Free Space/Neutral/Freedom in MK11 showed me the light.
MK11 is all about the reads.
Doing something that works isn’t the same as making a read and punishing.
You can’t make a read and react with the best option unless you really know the game.
MK11 has everything you need to take your game to the next level if you work for it.
Hopefully someone out there learns something from my journey of Scrub Discovery.
The “Empty Space/Neutral/Freedom” in this game seems to connect with my brain more than ever before and really helped open my eyes to just how deep this game is (and fighting games in general). Back in 2013 I bought 1 lesson from Perfect Legend to learn “footsies and fundamentals” for IGAU. I can’t say I really learned footsies but I did learn the concept of understanding your options and having a “complete flowchart.” I took this to mean “Understand your follow up attacks and have some ‘go to’ moves that work more often than not.” This strategy worked well enough to take me from a guy that could really only land a couple of BnBs and spammed specials to someone with an offensive game plan that could be tough to deal with for casual players. Then MKX is released. I was exactly the type of player that actual good players hated to see. My offensive gameplan was shallow and predictable but with the help of unreactable 50/50 and much improved BnB muscle memory I was still able to take lots of games off of players. With IJ2 I tried to main Green Lantern, Scarecrow, and Sub Zero before dropping the game entirely. I learned some spacing with GL’s B1 and the power of command grabs, but I found myself going back to MK9 Ladder when I had a fighting game itch. Needless to say, my mind was about to explode when I could finally conceptualize how deep and amazing MK11 really is.
Fast Forward to the MK11 Beta and what this scrub learned. In the stress test I split my time between Scorpion and Baraka. For the actual Beta I played 99% Jade.
Lesson 1 - Defense
Defense matters. Strong defense requires a much deeper understanding of the game than an offense of just guessing if you should use your overhead, low, d1, d2, or fast special. You need to have a deep understanding of what your opponent can do. You have to understand when it’s your turn. You have to understand what your options are once it finally IS your turn. You need to have real and complete game knowledge. An example of complete game knowledge is Tom Brady’s video explaining how to fuzzy guard Kabal’s mixup. If you don’t know these things cold then you are just guessing randomly and gambling that it might work. The scary part is that sometimes it WILL work. These things then can turn into bad habits and transform you into a “pattern player” who gets wins but who would get bopped by any good player. In most cases, however, you will just get run over by a player who is better than you. You can see in this match how I’m completely outclassed and it looks like I don’t even know that blocking is a thing. I was guessing/scrambling and I got ran over. If you watched the Eleaguetv thing you probably saw a lot of matches that looked like this on Reo’s stream. The weaker player doesn’t have the defensive skill to even reach the point of neutral footsies once the stronger player gets on top of them.
Lesson 2 - The corner is your enemy.
I know I know, this one is fighting games 101. The thing I want to talk about here isn’t just knowing that you don’t want to be cornered. The thing here is to be actively working toward keeping yourself out of that terrible situation preemptively. Most of the time I would find myself in the corner because I was just trying to be patient and “play footsies” and then POOF the stage ran out. I simply wasn’t being mindful of the stage length. Getting put into the corner means you already lost the “footsie war” even if you did get a nice whiff punish in the process. Every character in the game needs to “challenge” at some point to avoid getting cornered. Sonicfox put out a video on footsies recently that really helped open my eyes to “challenging” in the neutral as the main way to avoid getting cornered. I still don’t remember to do it, but at least I have it on my “to practice” list now. Haha
Lesson 3 - Anti-airing is a mindset.
In general I’m always so focused “when is it my turn” that I am free to jump ins. If I just successfully blocked something you better believe I’m doing some kind of string (probably a high starter like an idiot), d1~throw, or d1d1d4. If I don’t go into a match saying “Hey scrub make sure you anti-air” and then keep repeating it then I’ll just eat jump ins for the rest of the match. Then usually I get mad that I didn’t anti-air and mess up blocking a simple block string. Having just a tiny amount of patience and a micro walkback followed by Jade’s godlike D2 is so satisfying when you actually do it on purpose. Good players do this on purpose all the time because they are thinking and making reads. They read that an opponent may jump this time and they are ready for it with an easy D2 on reaction...if not more.
Lesson 4 - The Poke War.
Sonicfox touches on this concept in his footsies video but I really liked Circus’ breakdown of it in his video called The Poke War. In the stress test I was getting eaten alive by any skarlett player who would d1 into walkback whiff punish. My tiny brain couldn’t make sense of how it felt like everything she did would hit me and all of my buttons were out of range. I was getting outspaced and my opponent was playing footsies. I was guessing and mashing wakeup...like a scrub. The poke war can go any number of ways based on the specific players in the match. The best players see and REMEMBER what you do during each of these poke encounters. Also there is a good chance that the better player has been in way more poke wars and just naturally more likely to react in time as WELL as make the right read. The good player can make the read, they understand what options they have based on that read and then they execute the best option based on that read OR the option that covers the most amount of options of the opponent/safest if they are playing more conservatively. Doing D1d1d4 because it works isn’t a read. It’s a “get off me” habit. If a good player reads that the opponent will D1 after getting D1’d then the good player will walk back and whiff punish hard. The scrub panics and spams D1 or other similar tactics. This isn’t a read. This is panicking
Lesson 5 - Jumping is more than just the scrub’s tool for approaching.
This one is mostly connected with Circus’ video on the poke war but I think it needs to be listed separately. The jump is an incredibly powerful tool when you start using it correctly. Any mid level player can tell you that a neutral jump beats a command grab. Any MKX scrub can tell you NJP to victory is a real thing. I wish I could find the mkx spoof video making fun on players that just NJP all day. Anyways, if you can be smart with your jumps they can add so many extra punishes and pressure chances that you are probably leaving on the table without realizing it. Just because you are standing next to your opponent doesn’t mean you should forget that jump exists until the next time you need to get in. Be mindful of the options that neutral jump, jump over, and double jump over provide and what reads you will need to make in order to make best use of these.
Lesson 6 - Remember what got punished then adapt.
Respect it when you get punished. Way too often I fall into the “Maybe it will work this time” mindset. The truth is that is probably won’t. If you go for a basic setup and your opponent punishes you...maybe...just maybe they’ve seen that setup before and they will be ready to punish it every single time. You have no one to blame but yourself for doing something that gets punished more than once especially if you go for it again right away and you don’t at least try to condition the opponent to block something else. Don’t be like me who gets wake up rolled into a full combo every single time because I go for a Jade’s meaty F21 after almost every knockdown I get. If you get punished 3 times in a row because you did air glaives, took two steps, then shadow kicked...maybe you should change your gameplan.
Lesson 7 - Review the list of things to look out for and react to.
Every character has their certain things to respect and look out for. Most of the time this involves blocking low and then reacting to a slow overhead. Scorpion has teleport, kabal has nomad dash, and once the game is out everyone will have something. Game knowledge needs to be known cold for things like frame data, but the process of reviewing those things in my head right before the match starts really helps my reactions to slow overheads and punishes. If I don’t do this mental review then there is about a 99% chance that I won’t react to the first slow overhead or maybe my first punish is a frame too slow because I simply forgot to be looking for it. The best players rely on their reactions, but they are usually predictive reactions and not raw reactions. If you aren’t using your predictive reactions then you are getting hit a lot more than you need to be.
Lesson 8 - Play the player...not the character.
Just like Poker. You play the player...not your cards.
I subscribe to the theory that there are 3 phases to “git gud” at a fighting game.
- Learn to execute your buttons and moves. “Learn combos bro.”
- Game knowledge. Memorize frame data of everyone and “learn matchup options.”
- Mind Games - Play the player
Lesson 9 - Why I am a Scrub
This game taught me why I am a scrub. I am a scrub because I rely on strategies that work “most of the time” instead of playing patiently while making the best possible decision based on what I think my opponent will do. Mortal Kombat 11, a game about making reads, exposed me as a scrub to myself because it taught me that I wasn’t really making reads at all. Even if I was making reads I wasn’t doing anything close to the best possible option for that read and at best was “guessing” that something might work. Put it simply, if you aren’t making reads then you aren’t really playing MK11.
Lesson 10 - How to fix it.
I’m exposed as a scrub. So what next? It’s really kinda simple. Take the time to memorize the game and put a top priority on making reads and then executing the best possible option to that read. Also...watch lots of replays of myself. I’ll be playing slower than doing my basic setups on autopilot and I’ll probably lose a lot, but it will eventually pay off to change my mindset from “setups, combos, and wins” to “make the next read and execute your best option.” MK11 has already made me a better player just from a Beta. When the game finally drops it is going to be nuts.
SECOND DISCLAIMER: Some of the assumptions I made in this post might be flat out wrong. If so please tell me. This is the only way I’ll get better and hopefully other players will find the feedback helpful as well.
Here is a sample of my play to get an idea of how scrubby I am. The first set is my first online set with Jade against GGA Jeremiah’s Kabal where I relied heavily on her zoning after messing around with builds in towers.
The second set is the very last set I played in the beta against prettyboyjackal's run cancel Jade where most zoning options were shut down thanks to the threat of glow.
TL;DR
Turns out I’m a scrub...that sucks.
The Free Space/Neutral/Freedom in MK11 showed me the light.
MK11 is all about the reads.
Doing something that works isn’t the same as making a read and punishing.
You can’t make a read and react with the best option unless you really know the game.
MK11 has everything you need to take your game to the next level if you work for it.
Hopefully someone out there learns something from my journey of Scrub Discovery.
