I main Sub-Zero. I used to main Smoke and Sektor at a point. I really had no idea who to main when I got the game. I loved the look of Reptile, the look of noob and the look of Smoke but had no idea how they would play. Basically I was liking stories, looks but had no idea on playstyle.
I picked up Smoke first I guess because he was relatively easy to pick up. Had a teleport which was nice, a smoke bomb which people did not know how to block and all was well for my first 50 or so matches. People of course started to learn and so I got off smoke for a while.
I tried Quan Chi. His sky drop was great and he was quite easy to use. But people learned to punish the sky drop after some time and I dropped him.
Then I went to Kabal. He had a low projectile which people could not get past, I basically zoned with him for a while. I was very pround of the 23% combo I could do which was back 1,2,1 nomad dash, 2,1,2. I rarely pulled it off in online matches, but when I did i felt like the bees knees. Mostly I just did nomad dash, back 1,2,1 and jump kick for 16%.
I then went to Sub Zero. I learned his string back 1,2,1 and it was 20%! Holy crap i thought. Such high damage from a single combo!. Played him for a while but noob zoners really got me down so I quit him.
Went back to smoke and kept on using the 3,2 attack and it was really successful for a while. But again, I kept using teleport and got punished so I tried another character.
I then went to use Noob. He was popular, cool and easy to use. I also learned the back 1,2,1,4 string and I felt really proud because that was very tricky for me at the time. But crucially I learned the most important thing from Noob. Cancelling into a special. I don't know why it happened with noob but I learned that you could do only a part of a combo like back 1,2,1 and use a special. It was not what noob should do but it taught me a good mechanic of the game. So I succeeded for a while.
I then moved on to Sub Zero again. I used his 222 all the time as it had an overhead. I would get people trapped in the corner and kept using it as it hit them even if they were lying on the ground. I guess they were blocking low or not at all. I also used the 22 into iceball and the back 1,2,1. Very happy times.
A particlar match against a cyrax player then changed my main again. He was using the bomb trap, very powerful stuff at the time and my constant sliding got me netted. So I learned the bomb trap, after many hours in the lab and I had many victories with Cyrax.
However, my strategy was this: Get them in a net. I had no other objective. So I started losing. I then moved back to smoke and after watching a few youtube videos learning his juggle which gave me high 20 and low 30% combos. Good times were had.
But again I was losing for some reason and I decided to start maining a character from random who looked cool and had tools. I chose sektor for some reason and he proved good. His teleport uppercut into uppercut was effective. But not enough, I learned the teleport uppercut into back 2,1 and then later jump kick, teleport uppercut back 2,1. Got a few hundred games with this guy. Great stuff.
But I never used ex teleport uppercuts and got punished. So I started using liu kang. He had very easy juggles and his 2,1,3 was simple, effective and easy on the hands. Won around a hundred matches before the lack of armor got me zoned.
I then had a crisis. I was really stuck. I had no main, I had on and off mains but nobody to call home. Then I learned Sub-Zero's bread and butter. 214 slide. It was so simple, so effective, so damaging and so easy to pull off. I also found out about safe strings and stopped randomly sliding and using 222. I now used 224, 212, and 214 each with a clone after. I had trouble with zoners. And I HATE zoners but Dash blocking , a new concept to me then helped me. I have been maining him ever since and he is the only character I have mastered in the Nekropolis. Have probably 1000 wins with him there or more.