MK1 Competitive Play Discussion Thread

[CrimsonShadow]

So I thought it'd be a good idea to have a thread to keep track of the general competitive circuit for MK1. I'll start it off by mentioning ECT, which is this weekend.

So far, there's good news: the biggest MK11 tournament at ECT was the year of release, 2019, with 197 entrants. This year, there are nearly 300 entrants for MK1, and ECT, which had around 500 people in 2018 and 470 the year before, has grown to an 1000-player event.

Imo that's a pretty good sign for the growth of the scene as a whole.

This year's event, being on the Kombat Pro Tour (along with Combo Breaker 2024), is pretty stacked, with Ninjakilla, Sonic Fox, Rewind Kombat, F0xy Grampa, and a ton of other good players signing up.

Here's the bracket for ECT 2023:

East Coast Throwdown 2023

The best place for East Coast Throwdown 2023 brackets, streams, standings and schedules all in one place!

www.start.gg

Here's the Pro Kompetition homepage:

1

www.mortalkombat.com

 

[Juggs]

Excited to watch the first real Major for MK1. I REALLY like this game. And even though I haven’t gotten to play it anywhere near as much as I’d like, I’m not in a super rush like I have been with previous NRS titles. But I’ve been watching a bunch of sets and tournaments.

Curious to see if SonicFox is going to stick with his new main, Rain, or go back to his original one in Kenshi. Or of course any of the other characters he has learned.

I actually haven’t seen TOO much of NinjaKilla’s gameplay, just a few sets. With him of course using Liu Kang but also characters like Raiden.

F0xy’s content has been hilarious and he also has been using several characters. I assume he’s gonna go with Shang, but he also could use Kitana, Li Mei or others.

Xombat and pretty much every top player seem to have been using several different characters. Very few have I seen just been sticking to a single character. Only people like K7 with Kenshi, JustNasty with Smoke, HoneyBee and ChrisG with Reptile, A Virk with Scorpion, Tweedy with Geras at first but now almost 100% Baraka.

Looking at these brackets… yeah this is an absolutely insanely stacked tournament.

Notable players:

Bracket/Pool A3
-Pulse
-Bdogg
-iGRUESOME
-Fierce

Bracket/Pool A4
-TheMightyUnjust
-King Raj
-Alcatraz
-Ragnarok Tyr

Bracket/Pool B3
-Titaniumtigerzz
-facelessMan
-Jer
-Infinitii
-Scar

Bracket/Pool B4
-KingGambler
-Kompetitor
-Grr
-BigDaddyG

Bracket/Pool C3
-Splash
-NerdJosh
-CoRzz
-UnbearableSkill

Bracket/Pool C4
-TurkeySucks
-Matr!x
-Kevo
-Shujinkydink

Bracket/Pool D3
-WiZEGEMiNi
-Youphemism
-Mikemetroid
-Blackburry
-Kitana Prime

Bracket/Pool D4
-K7 Showoff
-GuamoKun
-Pluralmite
-Aztec

Bracket/Pool E3
-Rewind
-sooneo
-Semiij
-Cossner

Bracket/Pool E4
-ELCucuyFGC
-Michaelangelo
-Pure

Bracket/Pool F3
-NinjaKilla
-2eZ
-BigBirdMD
-Kxng Murdock

Bracket/Pool F4
-SonicFox
-Patient Impulse
-Skeezer
-Dyloch

Bracket/Pool G3
-Bluelinkys
-ReBeL
-Zyphox

Bracket/Pool G4
-Xombat
-Bdon
-Coach Steve
-Professor KO

Bracket/Pool H3
-VideoGamezYo
-Ludi
-oDittle

Bracket/Pool H4
-Zintai
-Destroyer
-MsMeseeks
-A F0xy Grampa
-CrazyFingers
-Stabs

^^
There’s probably more players that I missed. But that was a lot of players to go through. So if you’re going to ECT and in this tournament and I didn’t mention you, it’s most likely because I just didn’t read your name.

Anyway, this is gonna be one HELL of a tournament!

 

[Juggs]

Maybe we should edit the title each time there’s a major and at the end say “(Major X Discussion Thread)”. So for this one, you’d do something like “(ECT discussion thread)”. I’m honestly surprised there’s not more comments in here but then I realized the title says nothing about ECT. Or maybe a separate thread? “MK1 @ ECT, The Most Stacked NRS Tournament! 300+ Entrants!”. Gotta get that clickbait down @CrimsonShadow !!

 

[Eji1700]

I think it's crazy just how many characters feel like they might make top 8 or better, especially for a launch NRS title. There's a few "safe" bets who probably aren't making it, but I'm really curious to see how well JustNasty/Smoke, HoneyBee and ChrisG/Reptile, AVirk/Scorpion and Tweedy/Geras do, along with SF's/Rain.

Smoke, Reptile, and Rain have all been called hopeless at a few points, and I think i've seen people saying scorp is eh. While it could turn out that way (there are some weaknesses that take longer to show than others), this tournament will be one of the first big showings to really show the health (or lack there of) of the meta.

Geras is especially interesting because I think he's somewhat of a sleeper. Everyone is sure he's "good" but i'm not seeing him mentioned with raiden and the like yet. His kit is weird and he's got a TON of nonsense, so I think this will be what gets him on everyone's radar finally.

My two main predictions at this point though are:

1. An extreme majority of Lao/Cyrax kameo. Sky is blue and all that. Game is still better than any other NRS launch, but kameo's feel weird when lao hat recovers faster than sarena single projectile, and cyrax does basically everything.

2. It should be fun as hell to watch. It's been forever since I bothered to tune in for an MK tournament and i'm so so happy that even if we've got an "S" tier, it's still at least 4 characters. There's so much wacky bullshit in this game I'm really excited to see it on display at the top level.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

I think it's crazy just how many characters feel like they might make top 8 or better, especially for a launch NRS title. There's a few "safe" bets who probably aren't making it, but I'm really curious to see how well JustNasty/Smoke, HoneyBee and ChrisG/Reptile, AVirk/Scorpion and Tweedy/Geras do, along with SF's/Rain.

It reminds me a lot of the WePlay WUFL era of MK11.

At that time it was predicted that the tournaments would be all Jacqui, but they ended up being Sonic on Joker, Rewind on Kano, Kombat on Cage, ArnKratos on Shang, and MK_Azerbaijan upsetting people with Sonya.

Depending on how things go, I wouldn't be surprised to see this at ECT. Upsets from characters that people said weren't that great, a couple of dark horses, and the top players mostly playing who they like. Maybe Sonic falls back to Kenshi if things really go south, but I agree that it should be a good mix.

 

[M2Dave]

1. An extreme majority of Lao/Cyrax kameo. Sky is blue and all that. Game is still better than any other NRS launch, but kameo's feel weird when lao hat recovers faster than sarena single projectile, and cyrax does basically everything.

I agree. Predicting which kameos the players will use is much easier to predict than which characters they will use. LOL.

Cyrax's helicopter and Kung Lao's low hat must currently be the two best moves of any kind in the game.

All top and high tier characters use Cyrax or Kung Lao. The only exceptions being Ashrah and Reiko who rely on Sareena and Darrius, respectively.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

ECT Stream Schedule is out. Looks like the pools start at 4 PM ET on Friday on NetherRealm’s stream and run all day. Perfect showcase for the game.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1714394011257983110

 

[CrimsonShadow]

Meta observations:

• No surprise here, but Cyrax and Lao are strong in terms of utility. Lao, for example, took Deoxys from a toolset that struggled to open better players up to being somewhat of an offensive threat.
• Much has been made of the ability of Sub kameo to nullify zoning, but players have to choose to lose the offensive potential of other kameos to make that happen. And it lasts for such short periods that it hasn't really stopped anyone from zoning overall. Seems like most players still choose to prioritize addl. offense.
• There aren't a lot of broken mids, whiff punishing is strong, small backdashes and walking are very strong. Ninja gave Sonic trouble by staying out of range range of Rain's best normals and moving in quickly. Sonic really had to tighten up to win
• A lot of players are still struggling with anti-airs. Because, like MK11, a lot of jump-kicks convert for full combo, the mind game of jip vs. jik seems to matter less, which means a lot of jab anti-airs get stuffed if not perfectly-timed. There were a lot of instances at ECT where a player knew a telegraphed jump-in was coming and struggled to AA it.
• Doesn't seem like Cage is able to get much out of his Star Power toolset (or maybe we haven't figured it out yet). It's still an afterthought in most high-level matches. Occastionally you'll see a few nutpunches in a row or something, but it hasn't proven to be a big game-changer yet, and Kombat was content to let it run out rather than take big risks.
• Where's Baraka?
• Nitara and Ashrah's health should probably be switched
• Kenshi is likely not as broke as he was believed to be. Although Sento is still incredibly strong, he was almost a non-factor as ECT reached its latter stages. He currently seems to be a "gatekeeping" character that can give other characters who are weaker than him trouble, but doesn't seem to be something the best players can't deal with. Still early, but we'll see

 

[Juggs]

One observation is an obvious one, but it’s that a certain Kameo can make a character go from not so great, to really good. Everyone should know this. But I’m still seeing people say “oh, Smoke, Nitara and Geras players need to apologize for downplaying”. Firstly, no one downplayed these characters. In this game, no character is “bad”, but there has to be bottom, mid, and top tier characters. What’s important is the gap between the characters and tiers. Secondly, someone finding a Kameo that really elevates a character doesn’t mean people who use that character were downplaying. Unless of course they were downplaying with that specific team. For instance with Smoke, I had heard people mention Sektor as a decent option but all I ever saw were a few wakeup setups. And I never really saw anyone use him with Smoke. TheWayneNumber1’s Smoke+Sektor was amazing and that combo definitely seems really very good. For sure gonna hit the lab with that team. These are bottom to mid tier characters because they have to work harder to win than the top tier characters, or the top tier characters can do what they do, just much better.

It’s interesting that we saw no Scorpion, and also hearing that very recently SonicFox said he believes Scorpion is the worst character in the game. But he echos my and other’s sentiments that there’s no bad characters in this game. And he said while Scorpion is the worst character in his opinion, he doesn’t think Scorpion is bad and that he believes he’s A tier. And that A tier is the lowest tier. After using Scorpion the past 2-3 weeks or so, I definitely understand what he means. Maybe for the first time in NRS history (afaik), Scorpion will actually get buffed instead of nerfed early on. Who knows ¯\(ツ)/¯

 

[Son ov Timett]

I hate to say it, but this may be the first tournament I watched that made me lose interest in a game. There have been tournaments of games idgaf about such as injustice, but MK1 I've been very positive towards. Watching the Cyrax/Lao meta play out became rather nauseous as the tourney went onwards.

It's funny because this is what I was expecting, but I was hoping that someone would bring in some new unexplored angle.

Ahhh well