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Question How good was Sindel really?

Wemfs

Wemfs

The only morality in a cruel world is chance.
I'd like to hear everyone's opinion of Sindel, the evil bitch who murdered nearly the entire cast of MK9. I've always been intrigued by this character, but hardly ever saw anyone use her at a high level except for a few. Is Sindel just not that popular of a MK character? Was the learning curve too steep?

Was she overrated? Underrated? Were there not enough representatives of her in tournaments to know for sure?

How does she match up against the top 5? Does she have any horrendous match ups?

Where would you put in her in the tier list? Top 10? Top 15?
 
xenogorgeous

xenogorgeous

.... they mostly come at night. Mostly.
very good zoning potential, however she lacks on great damage/variation combo strings departament
 
Flagg

Flagg

Champion
She was pretty underrated imo, not enough people playing her at a high level. She had a couple of midscreen combos that did 40%+ damage WITHOUT meter. I think there was more to her than pure zoning.

Her hair grab was an amazing anti wake up weapon.

EDIT: some things I found strange with her. What was the point of her EX Hair grab. The move did like 1-2% extra damage. Strange considering her EX projectiles hit pretty hard. I know people are gonna say "she didn't have armour"....nor did someone like Ermac and it didn't really hurt him. There was more to the game than just armour.

Her EX Scream had absolutely crazy frame advantage in strings and levi cancels were good for grab shenanigans. My fave female character after Skarlet.
 
Wemfs

Wemfs

The only morality in a cruel world is chance.
Flagg said:
She was pretty underrated imo, not enough people playing her at a high level. She had a couple of midscreen combos that did 40%+ damage WITHOUT meter. I think there was more to her than pure zoning.

Her hair grab was an amazing anti wake up weapon.

EDIT: some things I found strange with her. What was the point of her EX Hair grab. The move did like 1-2% extra damage. Strange considering her EX projectiles hit pretty hard. I know people are gonna say "she didn't have armour"....nor did someone like Ermac and it didn't really hurt him. There was more to the game than just armour.

Her EX Scream had absolutely crazy frame advantage in strings and levi cancels were good for grab shenanigans. My fave female character after Skarlet.
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Keep in mind I don't really know that much about this character, but yeah her EX Hair grab was a waste of meter I think. No point in using it at all unless to finish a round. Sindel mains correct me if I'm wrong ;)

40% midscreen no meter is pretty decent. I'm not too sure what she can get in the corner tho.

You can also dash cancel out of her ex scream for a potential mix up/throw? And her levi cancels leave her at a huge advantage it looks like, going off the frame data
 
Espio

Espio

Kokomo
Sindel is a weird ass character because she went from being downplayed to majorly overrated. And it depends on who you were to classify as top five.

Kabal, Sonya, Mileena, Kitana and Kung Lao (possibly others) clean her clock something fierce.

She can fight Freddy reasonably well. I think offline Kenshi probably beats her slightly.

She went 5-5 with Sub-Zero, Stryker, Noob, Jade and quite a few low tiers.

Beat Kano, Sheeva and some others possibly.

Lost to Cage, Ermac, Reptile.

I would say top 15 is a huge stretch, bottom 10 is more appropriate in my honest opinion.
 
xWildx

xWildx

What a day. What a lovely day.
Sindel was good, but nothing spectacular with above average zoning. Her levi-cancels were good, but seasoned players who know the MU shouldn't have much of a problem poking her out of her pressure, she's not exactly speedy. Add to this the fact that her hitbox is a bit on the larger side and she has no armor to escape pressure... and, well there you have it. She's good at what she does, but outside of MU dependent counter-picking she's probably not going to be getting very far.
 
Whitefox

Whitefox

Noob
5-5s scorpion
Loses 3-7 to lao IMO

Prob like 25th.

I've seen some crazy sindels do scream mix ups and cancels and it's kind of akward to deal with.
She can probably get away with lack of Mu knowledge.
 
Laos_boy

Laos_boy

Meow Hoes
Her corner resets were hella under used.
D4 into b1 was under used. Levi cancel were pretty technical. They could be used to create pseudo 50/50 like b3 levi cancel b1 her xray was pretty good too like b3 xray. I think she was just technical. On paper she sounds great.( good zoning, pressure cancels, 50/50s, launching low) but her issues were obvious once played

U4 was overrated. S1 was goodlike
 
Flagg

Flagg

Champion
Wemfs said:
Keep in mind I don't really know that much about this character, but yeah her EX Hair grab was a waste of meter I think. No point in using it at all unless to finish a round. Sindel mains correct me if I'm wrong ;)

40% midscreen no meter is pretty decent. I'm not too sure what she can get in the corner tho.

You can also dash cancel out of her ex scream for a potential mix up/throw? And her levi cancels leave her at a huge advantage it looks like, going off the frame data
Click to expand...
Her Ex scream cancel gave her insane advantage. I had a mid screen combo with her that did about 43% meterless. You can end a few of her corner combos with mid air EX fireballs for pretty big damage. Her X Ray I think was the only one in the game that hit low. You can also delay her scream....but for what reason I don't know as its still a regular scream. Her standing 1 was a pretty good anti air as well. Some of her combo's I couldn't do online, she suffers in that regards. It's like some of her moves like Ex hair grab, delayed scream had other functions that the developers forgot to add in.

She murders characters like SZ. 5-5? No way. She does pretty good against other zoners as well. Her low fireball was really good in that sense. I think she beats Kitana as well.

Damn I either need to get my 360 fixed before Christmas or find one on the cheap. Wouldn't mind dusting her off lol

I put quite a bit of work into her at one point and thought I found a bit of a anti wake up tech (but later I found you can roll out of this....I think):
 
Flagg

Flagg

Champion
Jip, B3F2, scream, jip, B3F2, F12, D4>>hair grab did about 43% damage if I remember rightly.

One of the Chile guys, think it was @DoctrineDark released some insane video where he was doing all sorts of levi cancels off all sorts of normals.
 
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That__John__Guy

That__John__Guy

Patzer
High level tournament play for MK9 became how well a character did against a handful of characters, particularly Kabal. It doesn't matter if a character was 5-5 or better against most of the cast, if you lose badly to Kabal then the character is largely considered not to be tournament viable, since you are guaranteed to run into a lot of Kabals and will thus not make it far in winners. Doing well against everyone but the top 5s is worse than doing well against everyone but the bottom 5s, since the top characters are going to be prominent at tourneys. Losing horrendously to Kung Lao and Sonya and so on is pretty much a kiss of death. That said, perhaps a high-level player could have pushed Sindel into new territory, discovered new tech, and proven her tournament viable (like Bit with Kitana or Pig with Kenshi). A character's stock can rise or fall over time, but without someone making top 8s with Sindel in a major it won't seem like she is top 10.
 
EGP Wonder_Chef

EGP Wonder_Chef

Official Quan Chi Nerf Demander™
Flagg said:
Jip, B2F3, scream, jip, B2F3, F12, D4>>hair grab did about 43% damage if I remember rightly.

One of the Chile guys, think it was @DoctrineDark released some insane video where he was doing all sorts of levi cancels off all sorts of normals.
Click to expand...
I think the combo was:

Jump Punch > B3F2 > Scream > Jump Punch > B3F2 > B12 > 11 > 111 xx Cartwheel or maybe Hair Grab.
 
Flagg

Flagg

Champion
EGP Wonder_Chef said:
I think the combo was:

Jump Punch > B3F2 > Scream > Jump Punch > B3F2 > B12 > 11 > 111 xx Cartwheel or maybe Hair Grab.
Click to expand...
Yeah, i'm getting that B2F3 string missed up as it was a kick followed by an overhead punch, (B3F2)

She had the best looking normals. Didn't standing F3 put them at full screen on hit??
 
STRYKIE

STRYKIE

Are ya' ready for MK11 kids?!
Well the short answer is, if you valued masochistic execution, you played Kabal or Skarlet. :DOGE

But if we're being realistic, she didn't nearly get the representation/exposure she really needed. I don't mean to put the existing Sindel community on blast but with the exception of the no-brainer bad matchups like Sektor, Kung Lao, Smoke etc. it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of her other bad matchups turned out to be massive bills just because the talent isn't there for her. The matchup police had her down as getting waxed by Freddy and Kenshi and if you ask the mains of those characters, they'll tell you it's anything but straight-forward.

Also, it's almost 2015, the argument that she gets away with gimmicky levi-cancels is weak sauce. Any informed MK9 player should be able to calculate the advantage on her levi-cancel strings by now lol.
 
EGP Wonder_Chef

EGP Wonder_Chef

Official Quan Chi Nerf Demander™
STRYKIE said:
Also, it's almost 2015, the argument that she gets away with gimmicky levi-cancels is weak sauce. Any informed MK9 player should be able to calculate the advantage on her levi-cancel strings by now lol.
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To be fair, they weren't gimmicky.

21 xx Levi Cancel was super plus on block, which gave her a mixup game of 44 or D4 Levi cancel to beat whatever you poked back with, or another 21 xx Levi Cancel if you respect her and press nothing.

Also D4 xx Levi Cancel was really powerful, in the corner you could loop it as many times as it took you to get pushed away, which was like 4 or 5. If they're respecting it, you can dash in and gain more ground to do it more times. Also midscreen, D4 xx Levi Cancel > 44 was as far as I know, a guaranteed blockstring unless they armored through, so d4 xx Levi Cancel > Dash Up 21 xx Levi Cancel could put them into more pressure, or D4 xx Levi Cancel > Dash up Throw was great too.


Levi cancels were good.
 
CanadianBaconX

CanadianBaconX

Let's see how long this lasts...
As someone who has mained Sindel for almost the entirety of MK9... She's not a good character. She's not the worst, she's not underrated, she's just not good.

She loses to a lot of the cast (Kabal, Kung Lao, Kitana, Mileena etc)
Her zoning was good but, wasn't the best.
Her Levi Cancel's while useful to an extent, was limited due to her lack luster normals.
A lot of her 'mix ups' just require blocking low due to her only REAL overhead being Step Up Kick. (The second hit of B3F2 shouldn't hit ANYONE).
Her strings left her at 0 but... Once again didn't have the normals to take advantage of that.
Her big damage only comes off of B3 which you're only hitting off a jump in or maybe a whiff punish.
Her XRay was her only form of armour and her wake up Step Up Kick is easily avoided/dealt with making it tough to get off the ground.

She had a lot of dumb stuff that made no sense too:
Able to charge the last 2 in 212 but, it didn't change ANY PROPERTIES OF THE MOVE
EN Hairwhip giving you an unnoticeable damage boost and didn't switch sides making it actually useless to use.
Her XRay being a low hitting move that Mileena can d4 under (that's more of a Mileena thing tho)
Sometimes doing levi cancel fireball doesn't give you a fire ball, you float into the air like a moron unable to do any fireballs unless you cancel the levi or get hit.

Basically the reason why she wasn't used more often was that she was a lot of work for little to no reward. If you could do well with Sindel you could probably be doing much better with half of the other cast. She lost to most of the popular characters and wasn't a smart choice to put all your time and effort into. Most of the time the people who think she is better than she is made out to be are people who don't exclusively play her or have never touched her.
 
STRYKIE

STRYKIE

Are ya' ready for MK11 kids?!
EGP Wonder_Chef said:
To be fair, they weren't gimmicky.

21 xx Levi Cancel was super plus on block, which gave her a mixup game of 44 or D4 Levi cancel to beat whatever you poked back with, or another 21 xx Levi Cancel if you respect her and press nothing.

Also D4 xx Levi Cancel was really powerful, in the corner you could loop it as many times as it took you to get pushed away, which was like 4 or 5. If they're respecting it, you can dash in and gain more ground to do it more times. Also midscreen, D4 xx Levi Cancel > 44 was as far as I know, a guaranteed blockstring unless they armored through, so d4 xx Levi Cancel > Dash Up 21 xx Levi Cancel could put them into more pressure, or D4 xx Levi Cancel > Dash up Throw was great too.


Levi cancels were good.
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I know, this was the point I was making without elaborating, maybe I badly worded that last line lol. I think if the advantage on her levi-cancelled strings was more well-documented to those who don't know how to read frame data properly she would actually be more respected. being at least +8 on 4 different strings is nothing to shake a leg at. Most probably assume they're just poor mans NDCs.
 
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