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Match-up Discussion Smoke Match-Up Discussion Thread (2012 Post-EVO Update)

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.
some of these things you just said, are why i dnt bother playing smoke seriously as one of my mains, he just has so many issues defensively and always has to worry about cage, kabal, sonya, lao, and etc.
 

HD Smoke

Mortal
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.
Perfect! I agree with all this. Smoke is such a dumb play style design I'd love to know what NRS was thinking when they created his moves and specials. Not very smart and he is good but kinda makes no sense. Also I'd trade resets for ex SB having armor any day of the week :p over a reset
 

HD Smoke

Mortal
Is there any chance Smoke/Kenshi can be 6-4 for Kenshi? considering the Kenshi player rushes down and uses the right reads of when to armor. So many times has that armor blown me up for going for b2 or starting 3d1 pressure
 

WannabePlayer

Apprentice
6-4 vs Freddy Krueger
Okay, so I'm not a great Smoke, but I just got horribly destroyed against a Freddy Krueger with a good internet connection. Any advice against fighting Krueger? Advice against Sonya, Raiden, and Reptile would also be much appreciated :)
 

Peckapowa

Champion
if u block smoke bombs at mid screen can freddy and kenshi retaliate because projectiles are more negative the closer you block them
 
Yeah, I've been saying that same shit for a long time now. Smoke isn't ass but he's about as close to being ass as you can get. If he didn't have his resets, he'd probably be all the way down in the #14 or 15 spot. And, lbsh, no smoke (besides gross allegedly) is 100% consistent with resets. There are just too many variables when juggling to consistently do them, and any setups you do to eliminate these variables introduce different variables in their place (i.e. b23sb 32 32 f4~exsb vs. b23sb 3d12 *wait* f4~exsb). At least with cyrax you have easier resets leading to overall higher damage, better pressure and defensive tools (buzzsaw and AA are absolutely retarded moves), a usable x-ray, and generally more options everywhere on the screen in nearly all situations.

I love this character but man do I hate him.
 

smokey

EX Ovi should launch
Realistically Smoke should need meter for defence more than he does for offence, but he does build it fairly fast if you can make your opponent stay still. You need to control your opponents meter building with good mobility and keep out play, but once they get in and get a breaker it becomes less and less likely that you are going to get a killing combo.

Smart play and meter control (of your own and opponents meter) will keep him up there with the big dogs, but bad defence and poor meter usage and you play the uphill battle game, especially against characters who have solid offence and good meter building from it.
 

RiBBz22

TYM's Confirmed Prophet/Time-Traveler
XSmokeX, wafflez, ribbZ, and frothy where do you guys stand with Smoke at this time? Is he still tournament viable despite what KL, kabal and Sonya do to him? Still consider him top 10?
Is he still top ten, yes I think he is. Is he tournament viable, probably not without a strong 2nd main. When all of your bad MU's happen to be against tournament strong characters (Kabal, Lao, Sonya, Cage, and probably Cyrax although that can be debated), I don't feel like you can consider that character tournament viable on their own.

With that said, I still love Smoke as a character and will never stop playing him as my main. He is a lot of fun to play and I think if you took out/nerfed some of the broken armor moves and pokes that the top characters have along with equaling out every character's hitbox size, Smoke could be right at the top even without the reset.
 

RiBBz22

TYM's Confirmed Prophet/Time-Traveler
Okay, so I'm not a great Smoke, but I just got horribly destroyed against a Freddy Krueger with a good internet connection. Any advice against fighting Krueger? Advice against Sonya, Raiden, and Reptile would also be much appreciated :)
Freddy is a projectile heavy character and smoke bomb trades heavily in Smoke's favor in this match so you should be using them a lot in this MU. Once Freddy approaches you, use D4 to space him out into B2 pressure. As always be careful with your smoke bombs when Freddy gets within jump range. Any time Freddy goes into Nightmare Stance, just punish it with smoke bomb.
 

McNasty

Moist.
you are all downplayers his defense revolves around his movement and wiff punishment. Yeah he has bad match ups in tournament but come on... Resets Hes top 10 without them.

You guys are crazy. Ya he isnt umk3 status but come on.
 

smokey

EX Ovi should launch
you are all downplayers his defense revolves around his movement and wiff punishment. Yeah he has bad match ups in tournament but come on... Resets Hes top 10 without them.

You guys are crazy. Ya he isnt umk3 status but come on.
Not having armoured or fast "get out of my face" attack generally means you don't have good defence compared to others in MK9, though spending a bar for an EX Shake is usually all it takes to get yourself some breathing room and cover any errors in YOUR defence, which pretty much just revolves around not letting people build momentum against you.
The rest of his defence comes from knowledge and knowing where you can and cant push buttons, he just doesn't have that all bases covered button that will get you out of pressure for free.

Nobody should be downplaying Smoke, he gets the job done fine.
 

RiBBz22

TYM's Confirmed Prophet/Time-Traveler
you are all downplayers his defense revolves around his movement and wiff punishment. Yeah he has bad match ups in tournament but come on... Resets Hes top 10 without them.

You guys are crazy. Ya he isnt umk3 status but come on.
Did I not say he was top 10?
 

xSMoKEx

Coward Character User
you are all downplayers his defense revolves around his movement and wiff punishment. Yeah he has bad match ups in tournament but come on... Resets Hes top 10 without them.

You guys are crazy. Ya he isnt umk3 status but come on.
That's baiting and playing footsies, not defence. Defence is when you are legitimately being pressured, and need to escape because your eating a lot of chip and/or mix ups.

His ability to run away and whiff punish is great on its own, but that alone only goes so far. Characters like Sonya don't need to run and whiff punish with a chipless projectile, they move in and get riduculously advantageous situations of a 12f low. (not frame adv, just in general, although she does get frame adv -.-) and she has good defense if all goes wrong and shes caught in pressure.

^^ That is the difference that seperates most of the S/A+'s (Top 5) from the rest. They are much more "complete" characters. Only exception would be like Cyrax but he has slight things like unblockable bombs and easier more consistent resets, meter drain special, etc to partially compensate for his lack of gdlk defense.
 

HD Smoke

Mortal
Still to this day don't think Smoke beats sub zero. All in all sub zero is just a better character but in this MU smoke can only run. Subs 2 is better than smokes and he has better footsies. Wafflez basis this off of his MU against soonk and Brady not against Denzel and a rush sub that puts smoke in the corner either beats smoke or it's 5-5. Why do we up play smoke so much???? CD jr will flat out tell you smoke sucks
 

RiBBz22

TYM's Confirmed Prophet/Time-Traveler
Still to this day don't think Smoke beats sub zero. All in all sub zero is just a better character but in this MU smoke can only run. Subs 2 is better than smokes and he has better footsies. Wafflez basis this off of his MU against soonk and Brady not against Denzel and a rush sub that puts smoke in the corner either beats smoke or it's 5-5. Why do we up play smoke so much???? CD jr will flat out tell you smoke sucks
luls...Please don't tell me you are serious
 

xQUANTUMx

Twitter: @xxQUANTUM
While he may "suck" in jr's terms he does not against sub. That is a fucking uphill battle for subzero, esp when the smoke is consistently hitting resets. I much prefer to fight smoke v sub then vice versa
 

RiBBz22

TYM's Confirmed Prophet/Time-Traveler
While he may "suck" in jr's terms he does not against sub. That is a fucking uphill battle for subzero, esp when the smoke is consistently hitting resets. I much prefer to fight smoke v sub then vice versa
Yes, Smoke can use all of his tools and really do anything he wants in that MU whereas sure Sub is great in the corner...but a lot of the stuff he does he does Smoke has good counters for, so he has to take that into account when doing them.

I don't think Sub's footsies are close to Smokes tbh. Maybe there is something I am missing.
 

16 Bit

Mash d+1~Cat Claws
Elder God
NetherRealm Studios
Still to this day don't think Smoke beats sub zero. All in all sub zero is just a better character but in this MU smoke can only run. Subs 2 is better than smokes and he has better footsies. Wafflez basis this off of his MU against soonk and Brady not against Denzel and a rush sub that puts smoke in the corner either beats smoke or it's 5-5. Why do we up play smoke so much???? CD jr will flat out tell you smoke sucks


:rolleyes::confused::mad: