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Kombat Kast Recap 6/5/19

After a billion years, we have a new Kombat Kast! A real one! Talking about MK11! This time around, we have a breakdown for Shang Tsung, the next DLC character coming out sometime in the near future.

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Once we got started, the full crew of Derek, Tyler and Stephanie opened up with some Combo Breaker talk. Nothing crazy, just a "what did you like from the event?" and "how about Sonic Fox not breaking the Combo Breaker curse?". After the first Stephanie's Lore Minute (apparently this is a modern Shang, he was revived as part of Kronika's time shenanigans, but not drafted to her guard) we got into it with our look at the first boss of the Mortal Kombat franchise:

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On a quick aesthetics note, you can see that Sub-Zero has his classic costume and Shang is fighting in his old-school "snake stance". Something unique to the character, his forward throw gets him health back, in exchange for doing less damage than a normal throw. He has some flashy strings with some solid mids and a real easy KB. Getting to his base specials, he gets his flaming skull projectiles, which he can shoot out or throw downwards. Something we saw in the trailer, we have confirmation that he gets his opponents krushing blows upon stealing their soul. So his krushing blow pool will be absurdly high, but the stolen krushing blows do less damage than they normally would.

Moving to variation moves, we got an explanation on something else we saw in the trailer: he can turn into various characters across the series to use their specials. 16 Bit showed off Shang using Smoke's shake parry and Rain's roundhouse kick. Something fun but not ninja based, he can switch spots with the opponent on the stage for better positioning.

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Along with getting the Old Man Shang skin, you can get moves that use the flaming skulls in different ways, like the ground skull summon thing that extends combos.

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Some other moves he gets is Reptile's slide (which also KBs are full-screen) and he can summon up a fire wall that does DoT and can be amplified to move it to a better spot on the map.

After the showcase, the crew played some matches. Stephanie got some games in with Shang against Derek, which went about as well as you'd expect for Derek. Tyler came in to avenge him, but that also went about as well as you'd expect. Closing the show out, we did get acknowledgement that the Kombat League (the thing that you see whenever you go to play online) does exist, but they can't talk about it yet. There were 100+ birthdays Derek covered, and the belt battle ended with Tyler winning 2-1. Which would have been a 2-0 if he didn't throw out a Mercy at the end of game 2 that resulted in his loss.

So that's it for this Kombat Kast. We didn't get information on anything else, but we have promises of things happening soon. So lookout for that and get back to playing MK11 in the meantime.
 

Comments

Shang looks awesome if:

- ground skulls cost 1 bar instead of two bars. It shouldn't cost 2 bars for 27℅.
And
- doing a krushing blow after soulsteal takes the opponents krushing blow away for the match. It already does only 50% of normal damage so I hope it steals their KB's.

Other than those two things I absolutely love shang and think he looks amazing. I'm curious what his rushdown has for mix?
Is it number of hit, staggers, wiff punishing only, true 50/50's or just zoning into Kombos?
 
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Shang looks amazing. I love how they went all in with the movie. But.. not a single word about that sweet kombat league????? The online department is craaaaving for something better!!
Oh, there were words about it: Kombat League is koming but we can't talk about it yet. That's my favorite part whenever I hear it: they CAN'T talk about it. WTF does that mean? Is Boon outside with a sawed off shotgun and blast their heads off if they do or what? Say WON'T instead of can't and I'll believe you. They promised us a better matchmaking system saying they want a more equal battlefield for all skill levels. We're in June already with the same old frustrating Ranked where you paired up with a dude with 27 matches then your next opponent has over 200. And we still don't even know whether the Kombat League is that overhauled Ranked mode or not.

No problem, we can always go and play Towers of Time until the fun starts. Oh, wait...
 
I really want to be excited for shang, i mean its fucking cary tagawa. But knowing i cant roundhouse kick people with rain in competitive mode because nrs is ass with their design decisions brings down the hype.
 
Oh, there were words about it: Kombat League is koming but we can't talk about it yet. That's my favorite part whenever I hear it: they CAN'T talk about it. WTF does that mean? Is Boon outside with a sawed off shotgun and blast their heads off if they do or what? Say WON'T instead of can't and I'll believe you. They promised us a better matchmaking system saying they want a more equal battlefield for all skill levels. We're in June already with the same old frustrating Ranked where you paired up with a dude with 27 matches then your next opponent has over 200. And we still don't even know whether the Kombat League is that overhauled Ranked mode or not.

No problem, we can always go and play Towers of Time until the fun starts. Oh, wait...
Well, well see in like 4 days.. unless they mess up the date again lol. Maybe something for E3?
 
I will be using smoke KB 360 DPS lol and zone people with fire torando . Rain varation is wasted slot imo.. Ermac and reptile are decent but you really want to zone with him.
I think Ermacs TKL could end up more than decent. If he can cancel into it he basically has a launcher of off any hit up to half a screen away. I bet it wull be great for customs.

Was kinda surprised that every ninja got a Krushing Blow except for Ermac. I honestly expected it to be the other way around.
Shang looks absolutely insane and I can't wait.
Ermac has a launcher which i like better than a KB.
 
After analyzing all the footage on shang tsung I think he may be very good A Tier minimum.
  • I hope his Soulsteal allows him to steal their KB's by using them. Otherwise I don't see many practical applications to using their Krushing blow and doing only half the damage(Jax KB would only get Shang 14%) I'd rather use Shanks KB'S or optimal Kombos instead.
  • Soulsteal being base is beyond awesome and very powerful for frame advantage and making bad match-ups more even.
  • Side switch TP looks mad good doing damage and Gaining position as well as corner escape. Wonder if it can be blocked?
  • Smoke Shake Parry looks great and works on projectiles. Oh baby.
  • Throw doing 10% and giving Shang 4% back is so fucking awesome and I believe its very strong. Move aside Scarlet we got life steal to rivel yours off one of the strongest moves and mix in the game.
  • I wonder how many frames his Mid low is on startup it looks like a good advancing move and 37℅ KB!
  • That low starter looks Like it low crushes but need to see frame data first.
  • His forward skull looks mad fast and very strong and ground skull going into Kombo is easily one of the best projectile in the game.
  • Body slam being an overhead to low fullscreen is definitely good and we know now that even slow projectiles can be very strong (Cetrion Rocks).
  • Reptile slide, better than subscribe slide. Sign me up.
  • Most of his normals look good and I think they said he has a 13f mid? If so that's awesome.
I can't wait to use him and I'm gonna use Movie Skin and Young Shang skins unless there are better ones. Black and purple would be dope.
 
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What happened, i see no chats. Some fool being antagonistic?
That Scheme Kan't dude got tilted for me calling him/her out on always saying shit about LGBTQ+. It's like they only made an account here to argue and talk shit about it whenever it was possible.

The comment was deleted and he/she was permabanned. It was a pretty vile and unnecessary response, but I'm glad they made it so I could rid our forums of shit like that.
 
I remember the dude, he was likely deliberately trolling and just being a nuisance. Glad you slapped him unmercifully with the banhammer.
 
On the zoning aspect, to the dude who said all NRS guys think "sitting back and pew pew is zoning" that's not the case, I love to zone and I don't think that at all. Though to be fair, there are many SF players I've seen sit back and do hadokens often...just saying but that all being said, there's a difference between mindless spamming and tactical zoning, knowing the spacing, footsies, safe distance, not safe distance etc. A typical spammer won't know this and most likely be hounded by the other guy in no time as long as they know what they're doing with dash cancelling, proper teleport use(if they have one)

I love how his looks literally have a mix of the classic MK's, 3D MK's, the Movie and modern MK.
 
That Scheme Kan't dude got tilted for me calling him/her out on always saying shit about LGBTQ+. It's like they only made an account here to argue and talk shit about it whenever it was possible.

The comment was deleted and he/she was permabanned. It was a pretty vile and unnecessary response, but I'm glad they made it so I could rid our forums of shit like that.
I wouldn't wanna live a life with that much hate inside. Thanks for taking care of that.
 
I'm excited to play as Shang Tsung I hope the ninjas have more than one move but it's still awesome that they are kinda in the game.

Both Fatalities are awesome I look forward to seeing more of his Brutalities

NRS PLEASE ADD STAGE FATALITIES!!!
 
On the topic of stage fatalities, i know there's 1 confirmed stage brutality in the game, anyone find any others? Seems a bit silly to just have 1. I imagine Cyber Lin Kuei assembly, Shinnok's bone temple, Black Dragon Fight Klub and Lost Hive of the Kytinn MUST have at least 1 amongst them based on the interactibles available in the stage.