One of the more notable moments of my time at NECXI was the time I spent playing MKA with Dan, Check, Jago, Arez, Riu and REO. Not only was it the first time I've had the chance to play MKA casuals with good players, but I learned so much about how the game is offline. It made me want to get back into it somewhat. I want to share some stuff I learned, and hopefully the others who played it with me will decide to share some stuff.
General character talks:
-Sareena's still top tier. No safe FF1 doesn't mean shit...she just has so many tools to take advantage of.
-Sub is not as safe as online, but considering his options after blocked h2h stance 3, it somewhat doesn't matter. It's comparable to blocking Abel's step kick in SSFIV...you get put into a mixup for even blocking it. Jago showed me this during the matches I had vs his Sub.
-Ermac is secretly good. Being able to take hella advantage of tele-slam for punishment is scary now. He already could get a lot of unbreakable damage for landing one of them, so offline this character is definitely solid.
-Kung plays so different offline because stuffs not safe and punishment is actually possible. He loses any safety he had online outside of his good h2h lows, but he gains one of the best punishment tools in the game. He becomes a very zone-based character who can rape projectiles at midscreen by simply blocking them, and his divekick works so many wonders now.
-Noob can still turtle, but he can't rush you down at all. 24...psh, not safe. He's not a top tier by any means, I don't think. That became evident when I used him a few times.
-Sheeva dies to a character who can mixup after lows. Her boss block makes it hard to punish shit you normally could easily do, and she has only 1 mid, and it's in her worst stance. You can just duck her and she has a hard time.
-Cyrax benefits from offline because 4 now punishes way too much.
Matchups:
-Tanya vs Dairou is still bad, but at least Dairou has an opportunity to consistently punish poorly spaced air fireballs...online it was random whether you did or not.
-Smoke vs Kira is surprisingly worse for Kira than I thought. Her kiss is not as effective as Sonya's, and her lack of an option to get around Smoke's cloud, she pretty much struggles quite a lot.
-Kung vs Sareena...hard matchup for Kung since his normal tactic of stay at midscreen and block projectiles doesn't work too well. Of course, dive kick becomes a huge tool when you catch Sareena being greedy with knives.
There's a bunch more stuff that I can't remember...but as soon as the vids come out, I'll definitely update on this stuff as I remember it. I had so much fun with everyone. From Jago's Sub, to Dan's Tanya, to Arez's Sheeva...all the casual matches we had were absolutely fantastic.
Please, anyone who went and played, feel free to comment.
General character talks:
-Sareena's still top tier. No safe FF1 doesn't mean shit...she just has so many tools to take advantage of.
-Sub is not as safe as online, but considering his options after blocked h2h stance 3, it somewhat doesn't matter. It's comparable to blocking Abel's step kick in SSFIV...you get put into a mixup for even blocking it. Jago showed me this during the matches I had vs his Sub.
-Ermac is secretly good. Being able to take hella advantage of tele-slam for punishment is scary now. He already could get a lot of unbreakable damage for landing one of them, so offline this character is definitely solid.
-Kung plays so different offline because stuffs not safe and punishment is actually possible. He loses any safety he had online outside of his good h2h lows, but he gains one of the best punishment tools in the game. He becomes a very zone-based character who can rape projectiles at midscreen by simply blocking them, and his divekick works so many wonders now.
-Noob can still turtle, but he can't rush you down at all. 24...psh, not safe. He's not a top tier by any means, I don't think. That became evident when I used him a few times.
-Sheeva dies to a character who can mixup after lows. Her boss block makes it hard to punish shit you normally could easily do, and she has only 1 mid, and it's in her worst stance. You can just duck her and she has a hard time.
-Cyrax benefits from offline because 4 now punishes way too much.
Matchups:
-Tanya vs Dairou is still bad, but at least Dairou has an opportunity to consistently punish poorly spaced air fireballs...online it was random whether you did or not.
-Smoke vs Kira is surprisingly worse for Kira than I thought. Her kiss is not as effective as Sonya's, and her lack of an option to get around Smoke's cloud, she pretty much struggles quite a lot.
-Kung vs Sareena...hard matchup for Kung since his normal tactic of stay at midscreen and block projectiles doesn't work too well. Of course, dive kick becomes a huge tool when you catch Sareena being greedy with knives.
There's a bunch more stuff that I can't remember...but as soon as the vids come out, I'll definitely update on this stuff as I remember it. I had so much fun with everyone. From Jago's Sub, to Dan's Tanya, to Arez's Sheeva...all the casual matches we had were absolutely fantastic.
Please, anyone who went and played, feel free to comment.