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Basically what Shao Kahn is reduced to doing since his strings are bad.

ty lewis

Noob
Sorry to paraphrase, but agreed especially on these points. That SZ clearly did not know the MU.

Playing the whiff punish game only gets you so many games before to a good opponent adapts and realises SK is a skin deep character sitting at mid range. Once they realise this and you spam another high, you're getting blown up. Once they realise they can sting you with a d2 during up hammer, you're getting blown up. No more fake pressure for you. Then you're forced into the b2, f3, b4, hop 2, etc game and your list of options has shrunk, trying to squeeze a combo out of a miracle hit confirm /sigh

He's still fun, but yeah, agree with you.
This is Exactly my point. People think he's decent but don't realize just how punishable he is on a majority of the things he can do. The only way you can play safe is by ignoring 80% of his movelist in order to do good.

If this Sub-Zero actually knew what he was doing against this Shao Kahn the chances of him winning are stupidly high.

And people are gonna try to act like a team spooky tournament is filled with some legit ass people when they are out here in grand finals doing suboptimal, random ass shit in order to get wins.
 

DragonofDadashov24

Let’s see whose fire burns hotter
As I predicted.. NRS has a tendency to make the first DLC a low tier trash... case examples: Darkseid, Goro, And now Shao Kahn. Your only hope is that he gets ridiculed buffed like Goro. Hahaha.
Darkseid was potentially top tier in the beginning. Goro got to A+ tier after the last balance patch. Don’t get how are they low tier.
 

Kroaken

Life is a block string with no gaps.
I think his norms are fine tbh I would rather have specials not suck. taunts take too long, priest feels kind of redundant when he already has taunts + priest takes too long, and a lot of his other moves feel like fluff that don't really add to his viability, like the ground pound or the overhead jump. Only specials I use ATM are the seeking wrath hammer and annihilation for the combo ender

like in terms of pure fundamentals I think shao has a really good setup, it just doesn't lead anywhere because of mediocre and obnoxiously slow special moves so you don't really get to have a sick pop-off when you get one up on your opponent, you use good footsies to get a lead and then you just keep doing good footsies until you win
He could basically be played variationless with little to no changes. I was only here til Shang dropped (hopefully) anyway. So I'm out :p good luck.
 

Metzos

You will BOW to me!
Darkseid was never top tier. He was "gimmick" tier. He did hit like a truck though. Just because people dont know the MU, it doesnt mean the character they lose to is top tier or decent. They reason i say what i say for SK is because i have labbed shit up and have over 300 offline matches to back it up.

I bet the people who say "stop crying scrubs, git gud" etc dont even know the basics of SK weaknesses.
 
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Metzos

You will BOW to me!


rofl... yeah Semi-Evil Ryu is "terrible".... .. .
Well, on the particular MU he did play like he didnt know what he was doing. I know SER and he is a really good player in general but Jackal got away with murder on that GF.
 

Metzos

You will BOW to me!
Shao Kahn is mid tier, yes one of the lowest in the game and we all understand that. All I'm saying is we know his many weaknesses, complaining about it more and more will get us nowhere. Hes going to get fixes but until then we should focus on doing something productive
We are not complaining we are producing facts regarding as to why they released such a half assed character, whom they knew their customers were hype about, plus the fact they busted our balls for how many months to pre-order the game to get him.

You said in a previous post that we speak off our asses and we dont lab stuff or try to learn the MU's. I m a member of tym for quite a long time, since the early days of MK9 and i m not someone who whines about something without reason. People who know me here, i believe can say that at least.

SK is trash and that is a fact many top players are sharing.
 
his damage without buffs is good, but for a character with so many unsafe strings I would think he would be doing high 40%mid screen combos with the buff
 

XxTheGoblinX

Le_Supreme_
We are not complaining we are producing facts regarding as to why they released such a half assed character, whom they knew their customers were hype about, plus the fact they busted our balls for how many months to pre-order the game to get him.

You said in a previous post that we speak off our asses and we dont lab stuff or try to learn the MU's. I m a member of tym for quite a long time, since the early days of MK9 and i m not someone who whines about something without reason. People who know me here, i believe can say that at least.

SK is trash and that is a fact many top players are sharing.
Which top player said he was trash? From what I heard, Reo says he is mid tier and Honeybee says every character is viable in the right hands. This character surely has flaws but is not trash. If his buffs had better recovery time would he still be trash?
 

Wetdoba

All too easy...
Which top player said he was trash? From what I heard, Reo says he is mid tier and Honeybee says every character is viable in the right hands. This character surely has flaws but is not trash. If his buffs had better recovery time would he still be trash?
King and Rico have been on the Shao is trash train
 

Gaxkang

Banned
Normally you cannot confirm off one hit because of what you mentioned. The reason it works with Shao Kahns F3 is because there is a much longer cancel window than other normals so you can buffer the shoulder input. Takes practice but very doable in time
I compared between F2 and F3 and F3 feels like a slightly slightly bigger window, so it's something yeah.

Really I wish NRS had just ditched the dial comb system.
 
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haketh

Noob
Is he prolly at the lower end in this game? Prolly yeah.

Is the gulf between characters that wide? Nah.

You prolly do need a pocket character for him for now but he's still viable in the game so far, hell prolly everyone is. If you think he's completely unviable trash I question your perspective in FGs.

Also confirming off of solo F3 is more than possible. That thing has 3S Ken levels of cancel frames.
 

Invincible Salads

Seeker of knowledge
i don't really care about the buff abilities, whether they get faster or not, i'd much rather prefer a setup like i got, Straight hammer, air hammer and Skewer. plus changes to his strings and KB's
 
Is he prolly at the lower end in this game? Prolly yeah.

Is the gulf between characters that wide? Nah.

You prolly do need a pocket character for him for now but he's still viable in the game so far, hell prolly everyone is. If you think he's completely unviable trash I question your perspective in FGs.

Also confirming off of solo F3 is more than possible. That thing has 3S Ken levels of cancel frames.
He isn't unviable trash, but he is a long way from being say A or A+. He is viable so far because of a couple obvious things:

  1. There aren't many SK's around,
  2. Not many people know the MU - same can be said for a lot of characters at this point
The OP has done a good thing by showing this, because this has gotta be addressed sooner rather than later - sure he's viable(ish) right now, but just wait until the flawless block meta gets stronger, and people wake up to his gaps (there are ALOT of them), he's going to really struggle then with the strings he has.
 

Metzos

You will BOW to me!
Which top player said he was trash? From what I heard, Reo says he is mid tier and Honeybee says every character is viable in the right hands. This character surely has flaws but is not trash. If his buffs had better recovery time would he still be trash?
Yes he would still be trash because all of his strings have gaps. The meta of this game is flawless blocking. SK has gaps everywhere. This means, as the character is right now, that he ll be fblocked and launched for free 8/10 times of the match, which reduces him to his only 3 options:

B4 and d4.

Naked f3's. And yes i know it has a good special cancel adv but lets be real here, that shit is not consistent, especially in a tournament enviroment, i dont care what any1 says, unless i see a SK player using it consistently in tournaments, i m not convinced.

Hop attacks.

Throws.

Yolo charges.

Noticing anything? Those are UNIVERSAL moves, except f3 and charge. Not a single character specific normal string.

Like i said, thats SK atm.

REO'S tier list had him to the bottom tier last time i checked.
 

XxTheGoblinX

Le_Supreme_
Yes he would still be trash because all of his strings have gaps. The meta of this game is flawless blocking. SK has gaps everywhere. This means, as the character is right now, that he ll be fblocked and launched for free 8/10 times of the match, which reduces him to his only 3 options:

B4 and d4.

Naked f3's. And yes i know it has a good special cancel adv but lets be real here, that shit is not consistent, especially in a tournament enviroment, i dont care what any1 says, unless i see a SK player using it consistently in tournaments, i m not convinced.

Hop attacks.

Throws.

Yolo charges.

Noticing anything? Those are UNIVERSAL moves, except f3 and charge. Not a single character specific normal string.

Like i said, thats SK atm.

REO'S tier list had him to the bottom tier last time i checked.
Yes and lowest Tier in Reos list was B TIER . Not D not F so obviously hes not as bad as ur making him out to be. People are already Fb the top tiers who also have a good amount of gaps. So thats not only going to be Shao Kahns problem. But this convo is getting nowere ill just wait for everyones tune to change when he gets his fixes. Until then im just gonna work with what I have and get better at the game.
 

ty lewis

Noob
Forever King and Tom Brady. two professional players that put time into learning Shao kahn both say he is trash. Forever King is one of the first ones to say this after learning the character due to all of the characters issues. However Honeybee is right in that every character is viable due to how the balance of the game is. The more that the meta progresses though, the worse that Shao Kahn will get due to everyone figuring out all of his strings except one start high and almost every single one of them has gaps that allow flawless blocking punishes to hit you.

The reason why i played the way i did in the video against the kitana is because there is literally ZERO reason to go for any of his strings as you get nothing out of them. The only time they are worth doing is when punishing an unsafe move on block.

Now this wouldn't be such an issue if his Highs did not whiff on crouch blocking opponents and if his F34, which is his main string, didn't have such an obvious gap in it begging for a flawless block. (and if it was actually special cancelable)

there is no doubt that he is one of the worst characters in the game, that doesn't mean it's impossible to win with him. It just means you have to restrict yourself so much in order to win that it's either boring or tedious.