Catching opponents in Pre-dial. Is it dependent on level of play?

[evansgambit]

Mortal Kombat's chain combo system is like the automatic pre-dialling combos of MK3.

It's good in that you can dial the hits in quickly and then check to see that it hit confirms. But on the other hand, you've committed yourself to a few moves ahead.

An observant opponent could notice a pattern in your play, jump backwards or back dash to bait out "your pre-dial" and punish you. Much like the concept of punishing whiffed pokes in Street Fighter.

Looking for, setting up and punishing "Pre-dials" would probably be a fairly common concept in beginner to immediate play. But just wondering, if its prevalent in higher levels of play? Have many of you been caught out this way? Probably a more common thing with rush down characters.

 

[BoysBoysBoys]

I used to get caught all the time when I first started out, using Sheeva who is slow as hell.

Eventually you realize low pokes are much safer, and build a decent amount of meter.

Really though, whether or not your character is able to dash in and do a dial combo, or start up with combos into pokes is really dependent on your character. Do they have a fast, reliable mid hitting poke that leads to decent damage? Do they have any 6-10 frame pokes?

Looking for, setting up and punishing "Pre-dials" would probably be a fairly common concept in beginner to immediate play. But just wondering, if its prevalent in higher levels of play? Have many of you been caught out this way? Probably a more common thing with rush down characters.

This is also a bit character dependent. Kitana for example, with her D1, is able to bait the opponent to low poke, and then she dash back and respond with a F21 combo for 48%. If someone is right next to you mindlessly spamming pokes and you cross them up while they're in poke animation, they get punished. This is just referencing low pokes though, not dial combos.