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How many of us actually use the custom variations?

Do you use kustoms?

  • Yes. Exclusively. I only use my character the way I tailored them.

  • Nope. Tournament Variations only. They're not tourney legal so I don't even bother.

  • Bit of both. I have my Tournament main, but I have my kustoms too.


Results are only viewable after voting.

1man3letters

Alpha Tarkatan - Moderator
Moderator
Me and friends messes with them few months ago and started again recently when everyone else talking about them recently

With so many online tournies recently about been using them less again.

Baraka lunge/kabob or gutted/blade charge
Sindel hair kut/low fireball <3
Shang hellsparks/launching corpse drop

Scorpions demon dash is baraka spike levels of good for a AA btw lol
 

Thingy

Retired account
Is anyone as weird as me and use tournament variations in Kasual Matches? I only play Kasual and stay far away from KL, and ranked in general in past MK games. I find it interesting playing against all of the random variations, but I only use tournment legal loadouts against them.
 
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mrapchem

Noob
I exclusively use custom variations, because that seems to be the way the game was originally designed all the way from the beta; the tournament variations appear to be shoe-horned in at the very last minute. For my characters, my variations are as follows:

Sub-Zero:
Kold-Blooded: Rising Ice, Air Axe, Creeping Ice
Trap Or Die: Rising Ice, Arctic Trap
Frost Killer: Rising Ice, Ground Ice

Johnny Cage:
I Beat Shinnok: Low Fireball, Rising Star, Pissed Off
Kandid Kamera: Say Cheese, Pissed Off

Sonya Blade:
Not Mrs. Cage: Krushing Kounters, K.A.T. Turret Drop, Ops Drop
Kerri Hoskins: Marching Orders, K.A.T. Turret Drop, Ops Drop

Noob Saibot
Vile Wraith: Sickle Snag, Spirit Ball, Shadow Portals
I Am Not Bi-Han: Sickle Snag, Shadow Slide, Shadow Portals
 
As for Raiden though, I don't play him at all, but that hover looks pretty good?
He sadly also suffers from bad customs, some of which even made it into his 3rd variation. Thing is, I believe discounting customs because currently some moves are imbalanced is foolish. It's not like further balancing isn't possible when and if they allow customs (rebalancing would be required for this anyways), NRS just really dropped the ball on that patch when it came to V3 in a lot of areas.

As for the hover, it's an incomplete move. I've mentioned this on the Raiden board but I think hover is what should actually be part of Raiden's V3 and Jo Push reduced to a 1-slot move. I think it would have synergy with the lightning rod idea if it could be allowed to use the downward air bolts to interact with said lightning rod ability much like his grounded bf1 and df2 does, etc.
I really wanted to use the hover before the game launched only to find out it does pretty much nothing in its current state that other moves don't do a lot better.
 

Art Lean

Noob
I exclusively use custom variations, because that seems to be the way the game was originally designed all the way from the beta; the tournament variations appear to be shoe-horned in at the very last minute. For my characters, my variations are as follows:

Sub-Zero:
Kold-Blooded: Rising Ice, Air Axe, Creeping Ice
Trap Or Die: Rising Ice, Arctic Trap
Frost Killer: Rising Ice, Ground Ice

Johnny Cage:
I Beat Shinnok: Low Fireball, Rising Star, Pissed Off
Kandid Kamera: Say Cheese, Pissed Off

Sonya Blade:
Not Mrs. Cage: Krushing Kounters, K.A.T. Turret Drop, Ops Drop
Kerri Hoskins: Marching Orders, K.A.T. Turret Drop, Ops Drop

Noob Saibot
Vile Wraith: Sickle Snag, Spirit Ball, Shadow Portals
I Am Not Bi-Han: Sickle Snag, Shadow Slide, Shadow Portals
Also part of the fun for me comes from naming custom variations tied to skins with names of your choice and on occasion even a perfectly fitting variation icon adds the cherry on top. You can make them silly, make them personal, or as I do, make them tied to various parts of Asian folklore or old MK lore/spin-offs that for me have a lovely feeling of franchise adoration (have my burgundy hooded variant of Jade named 'House of Qali' after Kitana's best friend and the very similar looking character Qali in Conquest who theoretically could have been an ancestor to Jade, whilst have my default D'vorah is 'Kreeya's Heir' after the similar - though far more attractive - insect women also in Conquest).

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I've changed the names of pretty much every variation I've given my characters to something often involving the "extended universe" of Mortal Kombat to embrace the wider lore or something from Shinto or Japanese legend for the Asian characters, often based simply around skins they're using; I literally have no idea what the default variations are even called anymore haha (and quite honestly have no idea what pretty much every variation you all talk about refers to because of that!).

Such silliness as "Let's Dance" Johnny Cage (in his suit of course), "Eternal Life" Raiden (reference to the old Mortal Kombat The Album CD by The Immortals there), "Black Hawk" Sonya and "Cardinal" Jax Briggs (movie references there), "Order of Light" Liu Kang, "White Lotus" Kung Lao, "Wasteland Nomad" Baraka (classic MK2) and even just being able to call Cassie in her workout shorts "Endurance" like in MKX have all long-since replaced whatever the game originally named them and that's all the more enjoyable for me! :)

But hey, that's a great thing about the game, you can just go geeky with MK lore and play for fun, names, icons and costumes, building AI smashing characters with augments or go hardcore tournament and play to more regimented character constructions learning lots about technical sides of the fighting... whilst I just spam uppercuts, sweeps and the special moves I know because I spent more time playing dress-up with my characters than I did playing with them haha (I think I'm honestly playing the game as a mix of Football Manager meets MK action figure customisation... and hey, in that self-analysis, I LOVE that, never even thought that's what I'd be looking for in a game either!).

Considering the game is "just a beat 'em up", I personally feel it's been very very gracious to the casual solo player, especially when living in a world of titles like Star Wars Battlefront 2 that offered so little single player enjoyment, this seems such a rarity especially for a genre that grew out of multiplayer by its very nature. It's why I think I've loved this game more than any other MK game in the past, and I've honestly been there since the beginning. Hell I've got The Journey Begins' soundtrack CD somewhere!!! No... that's probably not a proud thing to boast haha.
 
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mrapchem

Noob
Also part of the fun for me comes from naming custom variations tied to skins with names of your choice and on occasion even a perfectly fitting variation icon adds the cherry on top. You can make them silly, make them personal, or as I do, make them tied to various parts of Asian folklore or old MK lore/spin-offs that for me have a lovely feeling of franchise adoration (have my burgundy hooded variant of Jade named 'House of Qali' after Kitana's best friend and the very similar looking character Qali in Conquest who theoretically could have been an ancestor to Jade, whilst have my default D'vorah is 'Kreeya's Heir' after the similar - though far more attractive - insect women also in Conquest).

View attachment 16810View attachment 16811

I've changed the names of pretty much every variation I've given my characters to something often involving the "extended universe" of Mortal Kombat to embrace the wider lore or something from Shinto or Japanese legend for the Asian characters, often based simply around skins they're using; I literally have no idea what the default variations are even called anymore haha (and literally have no idea what pretty much every variation you all talk about refers to!).

Such silliness as "Let's Dance" Johnny Cage, "Eternal Life" Raiden (reference to the old Mortal Kombat The Album CD by The Immortals there), "Cardinal" Jax Briggs (movie reference there), "White Lotus" Kung Lao and "Wasteland Nomad" Baraka (classic MK2) have all long-since replaced whatever the game originally named them and that's all the more enjoyable for me! :)

But hey, that's a great thing about the game, you can just go geeky with MK lore and play for fun, names, icons and costumes, building AI smashing characters with augments or go hardcore tournament and play to more regimented character constructions learning lots about technical sides of the fighting... whilst I just spam uppercuts, sweeps and the special moves I know because I spent more time playing dress-up with my characters than I did playing with them haha (I think I'm honestly playing the game as a mix of Football Manager meets MK action figure customisation... and hey, in that self-analysis, I LOVE that, never even thought that's what I'd be looking for in a game either!).

Considering the game is "just a beat 'em up", I personally feel it's been very very gracious to the casual solo player, especially when living in a world of titles like Star Wars Battlefront 2 that offered so little single player enjoyment, this seems such a rarity especially for a genre that grew out of multiplayer by its very nature. It's why I think I've loved this game more than any other MK game in the past, and I've honestly been there since the beginning. Hell I've got The Journey Begins' soundtrack CD somewhere!!! No... that's probably not a proud thing to boast haha.

I'm happy that you are finding ways to enjoy this game and have reasons to like it. I whole-heartedly agree with you - I love the fact that you can not only make custom variations, but you can give them names that reflect the personality of the character or your own. Some of my names are meant to be funny, while others are meant to show the characters' thoughts and feelings. And then, there are the names that are merely Easter eggs to some other MK media.

All this is good because it does allow for me to make the characters - and the game - my own.
 

kantboy-2

Ripper
Every character that has combo strings as 'variation moves' should have them as base moves.

That being said;

Kano: Vege-mighty, Manhandled, Lumbar Check
 

Second Saint

A man with too many names.
Every character that has combo strings as 'variation moves' should have them as base moves.

That being said;

Kano: Vege-mighty, Manhandled, Lumbar Check
Personally, I'd go with Chemical Burn over Vege-mighty. It's just such a good special. In an ideal world: Vegemighty, Lumbar Check, and Chemical Burn with Manhandled being base kit.
 

DragonofDadashov24

Let’s see whose fire burns hotter
I tried hellfire Scorp a while ago and God was it awful. His flame breath has no usage Whatsoever. Projectile has poor rich and shit frames, but can be comboed if ampied which is a bad decision to make. The only good move there is his dash. If they change the frames for some of the moves it can really work well.
 
I've only played around with custom variations a handful of times. Otherwise, I'm always using one of the pre-set variations.
 

ArcticTabasco

I wish I knew Kung Fu.
I really only play with tournament variations. I have created a couple of customs for funsies (like, two I think?), but I've only ever used them against the CPU a few times.