Haven't been playing much, no local comp, no reason to play in general. A bunch of people ruin the offline experience of this game on top of that, not worth it. I'd rather sit at the sidelines and make sure things run smoothy and teach others at this point, it's what i enjoy atm. Come Injustice (assuming it's a decent game) i will be back on my grind though lmao.
I'll sum up my rant quickly:
MK9 players think too much about damage, not offense or defense. Yes, there's a HUGE difference between offense and damage lmao. If your character cannot easily hit the opponent your damage is useless. See that green guy nobody plays? Ermac, yeah him. He does 50% 1 bar consistently but because he cannot reliably hit his opponent it's meaningless in some match ups lol. Smoke does no chip, has no traditional mix ups outside of the universal D4 and B2 overhead, and can drop the reset quite easily. For me to hit you I'm going to do about 35% no bar, unless its some jip that will rarely happen for obvious reasons, nothing too special.
Yes i can zone but the projectile you throw doesn't control space well enough and it does no chip. Your risking 35%+ life everytime you throw one. If you read an attack and try to turtle / space they're in and your in pressure. Smoke has ass defensive options. Offense in this game is prevalent, the only viable zoners are Kabal in some match-ups, Kenshi and Freddy, two out of those 3 can win without zoning anyways lol. Fact is, armor is huge, you NEED to have it or some other form of defensive options such as a small hitbox or decent special to link off of a poke (i.e. cutter). Every time you waste that meter when dropping the resets you bury yourself even more, because now you have no meter to break when you get hit due to your shitty defense lol. Your stuck in a pressure vortex where on hit you get +3, and 0.5% damage. What can you do? pressure and try to get them to block low so you can slap them with a B2 or run and hope they're stupid enough to get hit with a smoke ball lol.
Think of it this way, smoke hits you hard when he does hit you (hard to do at times), but you hit him just as hard once your in with chip, standing resets, and you build mad meter to break in time for my reset anyways. My common method of doing damage only builds meter i do no chip. Chip accounts for like 10%+ damage in a match. Think of armor as "defensive resets" if you have to lmao. Ex Kartwheel >>>>>>> Resets, that's a fact lmao.
Call me a downplayer, the character simply doesn't have defensive options. You will never be top 3 unless you have a small hitbox, armor, advantage pokes, or some ridiculously broken thing like an easy infinite loop lol. These so called "defensive resets" (armor) are often better than traditional damage resets, the only possible exception is Cyrax because he CAN drain your meter to get free resets, and he can throw unblockable bombs, but even then he has weak defensive options lol. Jax? He does little damage mid screen, any other character would do that corner reset damage mid screen over the course of the match.
Resets should have been patched to ensure for proper balancing and to make the game less stupid, simple as that.
TL;DR Good armor > resets, his defense is ass, too many losing match ups, without 100% on point resetting he gets completely bodied in some match ups lol.