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Guide The Smoke Main's Tournament Pick Guide

RiBBz22

TYM's Confirmed Prophet/Time-Traveler
First off, it's not as if GGA happened magically. Chicago has that scene because the players there built it up. Dizzy and I aren't brothers, it's not luck we are roommaes. You live in Ohio, you meet up with 2 EVO finalists every few weeks. You have a better opportunity than most of the community.

Secondly, this plan sucks. You don't have time to level up Smoke so you're going to invest in alts? How are you going to learn those MU? If you're playing a Cage in tourney that's good enough you can't outplay him with your main you have no chance of beating them in the mirror. Also what happens when they counter your counter? You go to the Cage mirror to beat their Cage in game 2. Now they go to Kabal or Kenshi. Good luck with that.
I play Cage as an alt and I don't find the MU vs Kabal to be anywhere near as bad as it is with Smoke.
 

16 Bit

Mash d+1~Cat Claws
Premium Supporter
NetherRealm Studios
Then there's something wrong. Either with the way you play the MU as Smoke or the way your Kabal plays JC. Because that is ridiculous.

Regardless, the point is it makes no sense to invest in these pocket characters if you can't even invest in leveling up Smoke. I mean, what's the goal here? To get 25th or something? Your pocket Cage isn't going to beat a top Kabal. The top Cage's can barely hang with the top Kabal's. If you're serious about doing better in tournament then be serious and stop looking for a simple solution.
 
Then there's something wrong. Either with the way you play the MU as Smoke or the way your Kabal plays JC. Because that is ridiculous.

Regardless, the point is it makes no sense to invest in these pocket characters if you can't even invest in leveling up Smoke. I mean, what's the goal here? To get 25th or something? Your pocket Cage isn't going to beat a top Kabal. The top Cage's can barely hang with the top Kabal's. If you're serious about doing better in tournament then be serious and stop looking for a simple solution.
I am serious but Ohio isn't. Dave is known for dodging games with Ribbz and I because we are Smoke players. I have actually never even played him once because he does not want to work on the matchup. King is willing to grind, but he's not always around and since he usually goes all the way to grand finals there's not a whole lot of time to get casuals in at CoCo.

Regardless, I'll be playing and training with PL in the next few weeks. I'm obviously being proactive about doing better in tournament, but I still feel that no matter how much work I or anyone else puts into this character (and has done for 1.5 years), he still will not win a tournament. He will make a few top 8's, but not alone. He will be assisted by a pocket character in tournament without a doubt.

@ everyone, Enough with this constant accusing of the Smoke community for consistent downplaying. This is absolutely false. The rest of the MK community needs to stop up-playing Smoke. You think he's underrated? You pick him up. Think his 100% 2-bar resets are easy mode and that you should be able to beat anyone in the world just because you have that threat in your back pocket? You play smoke. Prove to all of us that, after all our work, we are all terrible players and that it's 100% our fault and not even 10% the character's fault for why he's just not good enough by himself. Because by telling us that we are all down playing, you are telling us that we are all also bad players and cannot figure out how to play him after 1.5 YEARS, and it's absolutely insulting to everyone that spends their time and money to play and support this game in the tournament scene.
 

Zoidberg747

My blades will find your heart
I am serious but Ohio isn't. Dave is known for dodging games with Ribbz and I because we are Smoke players. I have actually never even played him once because he does not want to work on the matchup. King is willing to grind, but he's not always around and since he usually goes all the way to grand finals there's not a whole lot of time to get casuals in at CoCo.

Regardless, I'll be playing and training with PL in the next few weeks. I'm obviously being proactive about doing better in tournament, but I still feel that no matter how much work I or anyone else puts into this character (and has done for 1.5 years), he still will not win a tournament. He will make a few top 8's, but not alone. He will be assisted by a pocket character in tournament without a doubt.

@ everyone, Enough with this constant accusing of the Smoke community for consistent downplaying. This is absolutely false. The rest of the MK community needs to stop up-playing Smoke. You think he's underrated? You pick him up. Think his 100% 2-bar resets are easy mode and that you should be able to beat anyone in the world just because you have that threat in your back pocket? You play smoke. Prove to all of us that, after all our work, we are all terrible players and that it's 100% our fault and not even 10% the character's fault for why he's just not good enough by himself. Because by telling us that we are all down playing, you are telling us that we are all also bad players and cannot figure out how to play him after 1.5 YEARS, and it's absolutely insulting to everyone that spends their time and money to play and support this game in the tournament scene.
A lot of us dont have any sympathy.

Some of us play bottom tiers and dont counter-pick. When you compare Smoke to the other characters below top 10, he is damn good. You cannot be a character specialist and do well unless you face your bad matchups. GGA Dizzy still plays Pig's kenshi with cage no matter what. He has won tournaments using only Cage, who is just as good as Smoke is. But other than him, what character specialist do you see placing consistently? EVERYONE has a pocket character, including REO who plays the best character in the game.

So yeah, you have a point. But seriously, does the fact that Kabal players need some counterpicks mean that we should feel pity? You want me to feel bad because you have 100% resets, great anti airs, and great meter building? Smoke is good, top 10 at the very least. Yeah you need some counters, but stop acting like your entitled and you have it rough.
 
Zoidberg747 And I have no sympathy for your being a masochist. You will never place highly in tournament using Baraka. And that's OK, I'm not out to go win majors either. But we both deserve characters that at least have a CHANCE, because currently, yours has none, and Smoke's is so far fetched that it might as well be a D+ to your character's F.

I don't care that Smoke is decent, I don't care that he beats 80% of the cast. The fact of the matter is that no matter how many of them he beats, he cannot compete with (mainly) Sonya, Kabal, and Kung Lao. Wafflez is the exception rather than the rule; if anyone is going to prove me wrong it's him. But just see my point of view: It's taken him 1.5 years to get to the point of being able to THREATEN the top Kabal and Kung Lao players in matchups that far out of his favor. Other people see great success with other characters in as little as 6 months. Is that really the players' fault, or could it MAYBE be the shortcomings of the character?

Sure. Smoke's got a lot of great stuff, but he has glaring issues that prevent him from competing with two of the most popular tournament characters out there. No Smoke player but Wafflez has proven he can hang with them.

What I'm saying is that, for Smoke mains that ARE NOT OMEGA WAFFLEZ, something needs to be done. We've broken down our matchups, we know what we must do to win. We can overcome them just like everyone else. But there's no sense in doing it alone. That's why I've suggested the most reasonable alternate characters we can work on so we can reliably cover our bad matches. This isn't about winning tournaments, it's about putting yourself in the best possible position to win as many games as possible. The objective is simply to win your next game, do that well enough and you win the tournament, If not, who cares, you've broadened your horizons and given yourself a better shot at going farther. That's what this thread is about.

Still, I fail to understand how the Sub Zero community is 100% allowed to discuss alternate characters to help them with hard matches, but as soon as Smoke is involved suddenly we're a bunch of assholes just because we have resets. Unbelievable.
 
I am changing the Jax matchup to stick with Smoke, with a preferred alt being Cage. There is a lot of dissension among the Smoke Community about this matchup, and many feel it to be 5-5 or 4.5-5.5. This is acceptable to me and I am inclined to agree now that I have put more thought into it.
 

16 Bit

Mash d+1~Cat Claws
Premium Supporter
NetherRealm Studios
Threads like this is why the Smoke community gets blown up. These bad MU are not far out of his favor. You can compete. They're not 0-10 MU. They're not any worse than the bad MU everyone else(except Kabal players lol) regularly overcome.

Let's be serious here. Wafflez is my boy but he wasn't leveling up at the same pace for a year and a half. The Tommy of 2011 was losing because he wasn't good yet not because of Smoke's bad MU. It's only relatively recently, when he's truly become great at the game, that Smoke's issues have become his main problem in tournament.
 

RiBBz22

TYM's Confirmed Prophet/Time-Traveler
Threads like this is why the Smoke community gets blown up. These bad MU are not far out of his favor. You can compete. They're not 0-10 MU. They're not any worse than the bad MU everyone else(except Kabal players lol) regularly overcome.

Let's be serious here. Wafflez is my boy but he wasn't leveling up at the same pace for a year and a half. The Tommy of 2011 was losing because he wasn't good yet not because of Smoke's bad MU. It's only relatively recently, when he's truly become great at the game, that Smoke's issues have become his main problem in tournament.
No you and some others are pretty much the reason why the Smoke community gets blown up. We are trying to have honest discussions about the character and you run into the forum and scream at the top of your lungs DOWNPLAYERS every single chance you get.
 

KingHippo

Alternative-Fact Checker
I mean, if you want the answer to your own question, you just compared Smoke to Sub-Zero.

Look, no one thinks you guys are assholes for debating that Smoke has a bad matchup or two. The problem is now it's extrapolating to Smoke CANNOT COMPETE in a tournament without a counterpick. Going back to Zero, he has legitimate 8-2 matchups that are only overcome with extreme difficulty, and then you bring in Smoke who has a couple that he MIGHT lose slightly and two that are difficult? What?

It just sounds like a hilariously overdone amount of crying for a character that has probably the best high/low mixup in the game period and some of the highest damage. If Cyrax's bad matchups can be overcome because you have to guess wrong once, why can't Smoke's? I mean, you have a 15 frame (That's basically what a human at max potential can react to) overhead that leads to like 80+% and we should feel bad that you have to deal with Kabal like everyone else?

And plus, is it not just possible that no one aside from Wafflez and RMxxSmoke are any good? Or just don't have enough experience to accurately say these matchups are unwinnable? Wafflez is probably the most tourney experienced Smoke, and he's almost alone in that fact since a lot of the other Smoke players don't travel. I'll give you that it's hard to work out matchups at the highest level when you only have on real representative, but there is NO excuse for the downplaying. None.

So in the end, no, you guys aren't bad guys at all for thinking Smoke might have a disadvantageous matchup or two, in fact it's almost reasonable. But the ARROGANCE to compare your guys' situation to a Sub player who literally has nigh unwinnable matchups at the highest level is like...what are you, a dick?
 

Rude

You will serve me in The Netherrealm
So yeah, if you guys think playing smoke is terrible and bad....try being a Quan Chi main.

Really. Try it. The Quan community doesn't really complain about our bad match-ups, rather we try and find a way to gimmick and math our way through them
 

RiBBz22

TYM's Confirmed Prophet/Time-Traveler
So yeah, if you guys think playing smoke is terrible and bad....try being a Quan Chi main.

Really. Try it. The Quan community doesn't really complain about our bad match-ups, rather we try and find a way to gimmick and math our way through them
Just because 16 bit comes into every thread shouting downplayer every chance he gets as the sheriff of downplaying, doesn't mean we are complaining about the MU's. If the community thinks a match is 7-3 6-4 or whatever, how about we discuss it and maybe come to some agreement after we have had a chance to break it down proper...rather than seeing post after post that just says something along the lines of HE DOES A LOT OF DAMAGE SO HE DOESN'T LOSE THE MU.
 

RiBBz22

TYM's Confirmed Prophet/Time-Traveler
I mean, if you want the answer to your own question, you just compared Smoke to Sub-Zero. SNIP
I totally hear what you are saying regarding other chars like Sub, but I think the difference is that we are trying to explore and discuss Smoke's MU's against the top tier while the general conception of the community is that Smoke has a ton of tools that should make him closer to the top than he currently is (although no armor really hurts him at times). I don't think we as a community think characters like Sub (and other similar chars) are tournament viable so as a result those communities are not getting blown up in the same way.

I actually agree that as a whole, Smoke players (including myself) need to level up in these MU's...but I also feel right now that Smoke can not compete at the highest level of play against KL and Kabal. Maybe we need to explore the MU more in depth, but that is now impossible because every time the attempt is made the thread gets blown up.
 

smokey

EX Ovi should launch
As far as i am concerned, there is a way to beat the harder matchups that smoke plays, and it can come down to the simple matter of MANAGING YOUR METER, and having CONSISTENT EXECUTION.

If you have the health to take a combo or two while a kung lao player is throwing EX hats at you to get a few % more combo damage, or kabal is using his EX Dash to blow up your pressure, LET THEM, it will only come back to haunt them when they are struggling for breakers and losing to your "clutch" combo of death.

This doesnt matter to you if you are dropping resets left right and centre and just giving the match away, you were never going to win in the first place if you cant land the combos in your hour of need, so get them down or pick up a character with easier execution if you cant.

And for people downplaying smoke;

People who complain about Kabal a lot don't always respect the execution level to play him in such a way that he is considered "broken" (bs) but then go out in to a match, drop a combo which would have won the match and then go home and write salty posts when REO gets paid again.

People complaining about Cyrax resets should appreciate that the combos are harder to execute than most, and take a bit of practice, but yeah the damage is still high and if you are managing meter well enough and executing that every time you land a net, Cyrax is a scary mother fucker.

The same is true for Smoke, theres just not enough people truly representing it. If every time you touch an opponent you are hitting them for ~40% into an air throw, using the day 1 teleport side swap and then getting blown up by an EX Dash on wakeup and having to break, your'e doing it wrong.

If your opponent just spunked his meter on a combo which you didn't have to break, gets caught by a smoke bomb, and your'e dropping it at 20% and thinking that smoke is bad, WRONG AGAIN!

Once Smoke players are going out into tournaments and constistantly abusing his comeback factor with solid execution, 60-100% combos every time, you wont be whining about how bad he is.
 

16 Bit

Mash d+1~Cat Claws
Premium Supporter
NetherRealm Studios
You guys aren't exploring the MU, this thread is literally about giving up and saying Smoke can't compete.

Saying Smoke can't compete with Kabal is obnoxious. We're all working overtime in that MU. I get 2~NDC is a problem but you guys have one of the best solutions to IAGB and the damage does matter. Nobody beats Kabal. We all must beat Kabal players and at least in your case when you exploit weaknesses you get hella damage. The fact that Kitana does so much damage is how I overcome her bad MU, you do even more.

I don't want to hear any more downplaying about Cage either. Smoke's tools for beating Cage aren't much different than what I use. Someone explain to me how that is so bad you can't compete and need to go to the Cage mirror.


The sheriff has spoken.
 

smokey

EX Ovi should launch
You guys aren't exploring the MU, this thread is literally about giving up and saying Smoke can't compete.

Saying Smoke can't compete with Kabal is obnoxious. We're all working overtime in that MU. I get 2~NDC is a problem but you guys have one of the best solutions to IAGB and the damage does matter. Nobody beats Kabal. We all must beat Kabal players and at least in your case when you exploit weaknesses you get hella damage. The fact that Kitana does so much damage is how I overcome her bad MU, you do even more.

I don't want to hear any more downplaying about Cage either. Smoke's tools for beating Cage aren't much different than what I use. Someone explain to me how that is so bad you can't compete and need to go to the Cage mirror.


The sherrif has spoken.
Only thing i dislike about this post is that kitana can keep cage out slightly better with fans than smoke does with bombs.
 

RiBBz22

TYM's Confirmed Prophet/Time-Traveler
You guys aren't exploring the MU, this thread is literally about giving up and saying Smoke can't compete.

Saying Smoke can't compete with Kabal is obnoxious. We're all working overtime in that MU. I get 2~NDC is a problem but you guys have one of the best solutions to IAGB and the damage does matter. Nobody beats Kabal. We all must beat Kabal players and at least in your case when you exploit weaknesses you get hella damage. The fact that Kitana does so much damage is how I overcome her bad MU, you do even more.

I don't want to hear any more downplaying about Cage either. Smoke's tools for beating Cage aren't much different than what I use. Someone explain to me how that is so bad you can't compete and need to go to the Cage mirror.


The sheriff has spoken.
I don't mind the Cage MU, I don't think the community is complaining about this one. I think it is slight advantage Cage (I play both characters) but probably not enough to shift it anywhere from 5-5 at this point. Worst case it is a very very winnable 6-4 Cage.

My opinions regarding exploring the MU's with the top tier are not solely focused on this thread. I was meaning in general within this character forum where legit discussions are blown up. Plus, there are plenty of examples where we debate that Smoke shouldn't be at disadvantage like when I argued with MIT to change the Smoke Liu Kang MU back to 5-5 because he had Liu winning 6-4.