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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

If you morph into someone else and use their krushing blow, is the kb gone for the remainder of the match or does it come back?

Basically, can you legit steal the krushing blow?
 
He looks awesome but I think they dropped the ball with soul steal. Not only do you not get a damage boost but you also have a damage reduction if you land a kB. Then why would you want to morph into a character that your opponent 100% knows better when there is no upside...
 
Welp, I totally called soul steal being base and every ninja being kustom lol.

A bit bummed that one of the tournament variations has no ninjas, that means we're not getting all of them officially (and maybe the other one doesn't have any either...).
 
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.
 
If you morph into someone else and use their krushing blow, is the kb gone for the remainder of the match or does it come back?

Basically, can you legit steal the krushing blow?
I was thinking once you use a KB after a soul steal then that character would lose theirs as well. Gives a better reason to do it, and forces the other character to think about what they're going to do with their KB's because of the risk that they might be used against them.
 
Hyped beyond belief. It's time to hit the lab and get the basics down for the characters I haven't labbed yet.

So is there a damage boost when you morph like in MK9? I know the krushing blows are half of what they would be for the original character but what about their other moves?
 
He looks awesome but I think they dropped the ball with soul steal. Not only do you not get a damage boost but you also have a damage reduction if you land a kB. Then why would you want to morph into a character that your opponent 100% knows better when there is no upside...
For the sake of balance.

You really think they would give him his own KBs, then let him have access to other characters KB just freely?

Imagine Shang vs Geras with your logic lol
 
Character looks AMAZING. As usual, NRS's design team is slaying for me. Unfortunately, the variation system and balance choices still seem a bit doodoo. Specifically:

-Triple skull requiring two bars is overkill. It feels like Lao's orbiting hat requiring one bar of each. The KB is not worth the meter sacrifice, so I'll never use it.

-Soul steal seems ONLY worth it if using your opponent's KB takes it away from them. Otherwise, there'll almost never be a time when using it would increase my victory chances over just staying as my main (Shang).

-STOP MAKING COOL MOVES AND LEAVING THEM OUT OF TOURNAMENT VARIATIONS. I realize this is probably an administrative choice to encourage people to play all the game modes, but it's more than obvious that tourney mode is what players care about, so quit sealing us off from most of every character's moveset. For Shang specifically, all his signature moves (soul steal, up skulls, etc.) and all his transformations should appear across the tourney variations available. If that means making one all-Shang variation and one all-ninja variation, fine. If that means making three variations, fine. But it's messed up as it currently is, and I wish NRS would stop trying to force a flawed and unsatisfying system down our throats.

But other than that, Shang looks absolutely incredible.
 
So...what's up with you quoting the "Stephanie" part and using that face? Is that really why you're here? Might as well come clean now and make my job a whole Hell of a lot easier. Or stop the nonsense entirely. Take your pick.
Just ban him. Or delete the post. Whatever. It's obvious what's going on, and further discussion of it will only derail this thread and require even more work from you.
 
Character looks AMAZING. As usual, NRS's design team is slaying for me. Unfortunately, the variation system and balance choices still seem a bit doodoo. Specifically:

-Triple skull requiring two bars is overkill. It feels like Lao's orbiting hat requiring one bar of each. The KB is not worth the meter sacrifice, so I'll never use it.

-Soul steal seems ONLY worth it if using your opponent's KB takes it away from them. Otherwise, there'll almost never be a time when using it would increase my victory chances over just staying as my main (Shang).

-STOP MAKING COOL MOVES AND LEAVING THEM OUT OF TOURNAMENT VARIATIONS. I realize this is probably an administrative choice to encourage people to play all the game modes, but it's more than obvious that tourney mode is what players care about, so quit sealing us off from most of every character's moveset. For Shang specifically, all his signature moves (soul steal, up skulls, etc.) and all his transformations should appear across the tourney variations available. If that means making one all-Shang variation and one all-ninja variation, fine. If that means making three variations, fine. But it's messed up as it currently is, and I wish NRS would stop trying to force a flawed and unsatisfying system down our throats.

But other than that, Shang looks absolutely incredible.
I agree with the leaving moves out of tourney variations. At least make a third one that has the rest of them. More of a choice that way since most people restrict themselves to one variation per character for partly this reason.

I can’t belive I’m saying this but I’m fine with the double meter on the fireball. Can you imagine the abuse of that combined with the rest? I think most of us love Shang but there has to be a little balance doesn’t there? Lol
 
Didn't expect the movie skin, but it is GLORIOUS!
all those klassic skins but then you can't use them in tournaments :( i really wish NRS would make skins available for tournaments, i'm not really feeling the randomized gear option, because I don't want my scorpion to be green, i don't want my sub zero to be red etc etc.
 
I think his 2nd fatality has sort of his copying moves vibe going on like from other fatalities. The chains are like Noob's, the tearing out of the torso is like Kollector, the face pull is like Baraka's, and the skeleton coming out is like Cassie's I guess.
 
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!!
 
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.