Kitana is not just about d+1 spam. She has other tools at mid range, namely f+2,1 and 2,1. f+2,1 has a lot of range and leads to 45% combos. 2,1 has a 10F start up, can be hit-confirmed into EX fan toss, and leads to half life combos. Kitana vs. Noob is a very difficult match up for Noob precisely because of Kitana's footsies. If you throw tackles / slides at mid range, you can get jumped on and lose half of your life.
Konqrr believes this match up is 7:3 in Kitana's favor.
Anybody who thinks Noob is any good in this game is either delusional or a mere fanboy.
As the game evolves noobs mu's change and tbh they change for the worse. Noob Saibot was day 1 S tier and within 2 months moved to mid tier. After some time he was shit and moved up a few spots with the overhead shadow. I listed his problems and what needs to be fixed to make him completely SOLID. There is a difference between being solid and being viable though.
Noobs Bad Mu's outweigh his good ones. He may cripple a few characters in the game but Mu's you think would be in his favor are either even or at beast .5 in his favor. Jax vs Noob is 5-5, Cage vs Noob is 4.5-5.5, Sonya vs Noob is 5.5-4.5. The only 6-4 in noobs favor that is of a melee character is Liu Kang b/c he is free on crossups. The matches in Noob favor are either with unplayable characters or non tournament viable characters. He goes even with a good amount of the cast but the rest of the cast aren't in his favor and those characters are the ones we see at high level play.
Noob isn't shit imho but he isnt great. He is just ok and NRS did botch this character. Its sad to see this is the only game that Noob Saibot is terrible in. He has always been God like yet now hes a joke. I love the character to death and even with he new discovery I made with noob he still cant compete with all the tournament characters. I may have fallen off skill wise with noob but my knowledge is sharp as ever. I don't fully blame my faults as a FG player for loosing as much as I do with noob but rather the characters faults and the games bugs as well. I always tend to resort to autopilot play whenever I get flustered or even mad when playing. This happens as soon as I get input but or I get a standing 3 when I input upknee or wtf-ever. Point I'm trying to make here is that as knowledgeable I am with this character the BIGGEST thing holding him back is his lack of damage.
Someone mentioned before saying he doesn't need damage b/c he consistently do 18-20% whenever he rushes down. Instead of face-palming and starting a flame war to whoever typed this on TYM I will just lay some knowledge on you. Okay sure noob can get a good amount of chip on his block strings (212 upknee) and build decent meter but his rushdown game is kinda gimmicky. Noobs normals and rushdown style isn't built like cage, lao, jax, reptile, or sonya. He uses pokes and block strings as a way to put your opponent in a situation where he has to guess whats coming next or hell eat a projectile.
EX: A blocked 212 xx upknee is +4 on block advantage. From here you should pause and see how your opponent guesses. If he jumps you get a free upknee into slide if you time it right. If he lets go of block and does anything you can shadow charge.
You can also decide to dash in d3 into another blocked upknee if you think their gonna continue block. The thing is though this onslaught of block strings only works for so long b4 your opponent figures out how to stop it. Now this block string isn't useless at all its actually his main one but THATS ALL HE RLLY HAS AS RUSHDOWN! He can d3 into throw or d4 in throw. He can d4 and jail 212 upknee in d4 hits. He can 12, d3, upknee/throw. The thing is though this right here is standard mixups that EVERY character has and the higher tier characters have their own form of mixup no one else has so in the end Noobs rushdown/mixup gameplay is just the over use of standard mixup. Thats it... There is nothing special to it. It just levaes the opponent at a guessing situation but so are you.
J360 said this once but the reason noob is designed poorly is b/c he has to guess right the ENTIRE fight in order to be victorious. Every time you guess right you get anywhere from 8-18% or in the corner 39%. Anytime you guess wrong the ENTIRE CAST gets anywhere between 34-40% MIDSCREEN!
Noob from the start is fighting an uphill battle but its at a slow pace. Its only truly an uphill battle when it comes to his bad Mu's
The point for this entire post is to support
m2dave and that Noob isnt all that great. All I have been seeing is people supporting noob recently which is good but not to put anyone on blast but a majority of you are Online players. I know that online players have been topping in tournament play and I'm not saying your all scrubs but what I'm getting at is Noob online is much better than he is irl. Online hes actually pretty good b/c your rushdown and zoning game work more often then irl and trust me when I say this. I do appreciate the support towards Noob Saibot b/c he is my favorite MK character and seeing people play him and talk about him excites me so much but seriously guys are dreaming while being outside a state of REM
If they really truly want to make noob great again hes gonna need a slight make over in MK10. I have no idea if a patch truly is coming out but I hope they implement the changes I have in the first post b/c he will be solid enough to place well at tournaments with. Idk how long I will play this game for. This game can't go 2 weeks without some sort of bug or discovery that affects the game. I loved this game in the beginning and I still do but the more bugs we find the less I become interested. Ill be real with you guys...I haven't TRULY practiced for this game since APEX 2012 and thats when i got 9th with noob. This games problems turn me off as a FG player and stress me out... a lot. Some of you found out that I picked up kenshi which I did and I can play him rather well atm but in the end I don't enjoy playing him. My philosophy as a FG player since the days of Guilty gear is play someone you enjoy to play with rather than getting the W. If you enjoy getting the W then whore the tier list. No one is stopping you but never let your characters tier placement be the deciding factor whether you wanna main him/her or not. Unless there completed unplayable and have No good Mu's. If you can't play the character you enjoy and don't have anyone else then don't play the game. Just leave and never return.
Ive been a character loyalist as long as I can remember and that will never change. MK9 almost broke my philosophy as a FG player but I bounced back and main noob again but like I said idk how long ill be playing MK9. My goal in MK9 was to top at a Major with noob by being in a good bracket. If I topped and my bracket leading to top 8 was free then It wouldn't be good enough for me. I wanted to earn that fair and square. This game is to Mu heavy to main noob alone. He needs help in a lot of areas and you need other characters to cover his faults. Its gotten to a point where myself, Altaire, Flawedzilla, have dropped noob as our tournament character, although me and Altaire are using him again and Flawedzilla still uses him but not as his main anymore, and used someone else to replace him. Even though I'm using noob again if it gets to the point where I can't use him at all then I wont be playing MK9 anymore and that's a promise I wont break. I can't force myself to play a game I don't want to.
...Well theres my rant on noob
