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Question Vanilla Sub-Zero: How good was he?

ThaShiveGeek

Est In Harvey 1989
Though I've been playing Sub-Zero since at least December 2011 / January 2012 I wasn't a day one. He is highly regarded as the worst character in MK9 by many... Top players, and casual forum posters alike. His placing on a tier chart doesn't matter to me personally, but for conversations sake I'd like to know what he was like before the patch(es).

The only footage I remember of him from the beginning stages is a reset involving 212 Ex Ice Ball into Ground freeze. So Sub-Zero Day one mains tell me what made him so powerful to deserve the nerf hammer please.
 
He's definitely not regarded as the worst character. Just bottom 10, I don't even think he's bottom 5. And it was mainly the damage output that killed him for the most part, as well as the reset which did give him more damage potential I'm pretty sure but I wasn't very good when MK9 first came out so I wouldn't know
 

Briyen

Noob
his slide didnt have armor yet too i believe, and didnt go under a lot of projectiles so people could really zone him, but then again the dash nerf didnt happen yet
 

zuurrkk

World's worst GL
I know he ended up being not very good but he was so much fun to play. Going to main him again in mk10
 

Qwark28

Joker waiting room
vanilla subzero was top 3

no armour past his clone

MUCH better damage

b121 mixup gave a free throw because if you ate the 212 youd lose 55% life

insane corner pressure

and we also didnt have the dash nerf which means he got in on zoners much better than he does now.
 

Wemfs

The only morality in a cruel world is chance.
Back in the days where his ice puddle was actually viable... those were the days...

Maybe Brady would like to chime in, but probably not.

TRASH OF TYM
 

Dark_Rob

Noob
Though I've been playing Sub-Zero since at least December 2011 / January 2012 I wasn't a day one. He is highly regarded as the worst character in MK9 by many... Top players, and casual forum posters alike. His placing on a tier chart doesn't matter to me personally, but for conversations sake I'd like to know what he was like before the patch(es).

The only footage I remember of him from the beginning stages is a reset involving 212 Ex Ice Ball into Ground freeze. So Sub-Zero Day one mains tell me what made him so powerful to deserve the nerf hammer please.
Hes not the worst character in the game, but hes down there around bottom 10 or so.

As for what made him so powerful that he deserved to be beat to death with a nerf hammer? In a word, nothing. Pretty much every nerf that happened to him was entirely uncalled for and unnessecary. There is a big difference between something actually being to powerful and something just appearing that way at first because the game is new. That's what happened with Subzero.
When MK9 first came out obviously as we all know Tom Brady was one of a bunch of testers from the community NRS had gathered to take a look at the game before its final form was released to the public. So he had a slight head start on the rest of the community as far as character tech goes. Not as huge amount of a head start as people would like to believe, but a head start nonetheless. Subzero was Tom Bradys main character. He won the first major tournament for MK9 in late April of 2011 which was Powerup convincingly with a lot of good footsies, reads and corner ice clone traps that no one had yet seen. Almost immediately the cries began on the forum and TYM was deluged in a river of tears from people who had only been playing the game for about two weeks since it came out.

Tom made the character look much better then he really was.(This is something Tom never stopped doing despite all the nerfs as there was never a time when he wasn't the top Subzero player out there) So really its all Tom Bradys fault Subzero got nerfed to death( I kid I kid lol)

The fact is that all these things that seemed so powerful,(clone traps,22, GF reset, higher damage, more knockdown advantage after slide etc etc) were later shown to be just average tools as the rest of the game became more developed. But by the time the game was more developed it was to late, most of that stuff was gone and the ice clones use was severely curtailed because NRS handed out armor moves to the rest of the cast like it was candy on Halloween.

So in hindsight really nothing he had was really that great even at the beginning. He was better for sure than he turned out later. Had he been left untouched he still wouldn't be a top 5 character, or maybe even not top 10. He still would have been slaughtered in all the same matchups he gets murdered in now. Kung Lao still would have killed him, Kitana, Cyrax etc etc. Its a classic case of something seeming to good at first and then finding out later it really wasn't that great at all.
R.I.P. Subby.
 
vanilla subzero was top 3

no armour past his clone

MUCH better damage

b121 mixup gave a free throw because if you ate the 212 youd lose 55% life

insane corner pressure

and we also didnt have the dash nerf which means he got in on zoners much better than he does now.

ofcourse he is going to look good if you compare vanilla subzero to the rest of the nerfed cast. but if youre going to look at vanilla version you also better look at the vanilla version of characters such as kung lao, kabal, cyrax, smoke, raiden, ermac. Not too mention kenshi for dlc.
also in vanilla there would be no reason to go for b121mixup because you would just go for the raw guaranteed damage.

I would say he is top 10 but no way he is top 5 if you have

- vanilla kung lao: low hat( top 5 zoning in the game, with divekicks to get away, the hat had better recovery and on hit was like +20 which means hed could either get in or you had to block anoter projectile), spin pushback so a lot of charcters didnt get the best punishment, armor would literally last for 2 dashes if you whiffed the grab1 teleport, above 50% anywere on screen and he he a reset which was patched out before everyone knew about it, 70% corner combos with 1 bar.

- kabal: block infinite, even better gas blasts.

- cyrax: command throw reset and he might have had more.

- raiden: block infinite on non low htibox characters with 2vicinity blast, vicinity blast was like +10 or so on block, his 334/b1 strings were neutral on block, 8 frame superman, teleport with crazy recovery, better damage.

- smoke: even bigger damage even without reset, reset off of jumpkick air throw

- kenshi

imo kung lao, raiden and kabal were top 3 and way above subzero imo.
 

Qwark28

Joker waiting room
ofcourse he is going to look good if you compare vanilla subzero to the rest of the nerfed cast. but if youre going to look at vanilla version you also better look at the vanilla version of characters such as kung lao, kabal, cyrax, smoke, raiden, ermac. Not too mention kenshi for dlc.
also in vanilla there would be no reason to go for b121mixup because you would just go for the raw guaranteed damage.

I would say he is top 10 but no way he is top 5 if you have

- vanilla kung lao: low hat( top 5 zoning in the game, with divekicks to get away, the hat had better recovery and on hit was like +20 which means hed could either get in or you had to block anoter projectile), spin pushback so a lot of charcters didnt get the best punishment, armor would literally last for 2 dashes if you whiffed the grab1 teleport, above 50% anywere on screen and he he a reset which was patched out before everyone knew about it, 70% corner combos with 1 bar.

- kabal: block infinite, even better gas blasts.

- cyrax: command throw reset and he might have had more.

- raiden: block infinite on non low htibox characters with 2vicinity blast, vicinity blast was like +10 or so on block, his 334/b1 strings were neutral on block, 8 frame superman, teleport with crazy recovery, better damage.

- smoke: even bigger damage even without reset, reset off of jumpkick air throw

- kenshi

imo kung lao, raiden and kabal were top 3 and way above subzero imo.
vanilla was the first 2-3 months, noone would allow any infinites raiden/kabal style

kenshi was not in vanilla

if this community wasnt so inexperienced with fighting games we would not have allowed resets