Thats a tough balancing act.

Noob, I think more needs to be changed for his disabler. The move is too broken completely. I say, slow it down a little, make it more punishable if missed, make it unblockable, make it not last as long, and make it so it only disables Block. That way it would be forcing your opponent to get aggressive, and would teach a turtle a lesson.
I agree that the clone needs to do something more useful. Right now he sucks. If they are going to keep him, they should get creative. Like you throw the clone and if he catches you your character turns all black and can't do special moves or something like that. It'd get a theme of disabling going. But, at the same time, make it so hitting the clone with certain types of moves would cause the clone and Noob to react the same, so if he runs at you and you fire a projectile, they both sell it and Noob takes the damage.

MK2 Kung Lao needs to do less damage. I'm thinking make him regular MK3 damage, and cut a few hits out of his autocombos. That, plus disabling of the dash kick would be interesting.

Baraka, what you said.

Rain, alter the roundhouse to make it pop them up, but pop them away at an angle to limit what can be done afterwards. Something so that after a roundhouse, if you have full run, you can catch them and get a few hits. So long as damage protection was there.

The lightning is worthless as is, so make that more like N64 as suggested. Put some better disabling in place on the rain ball.

Kabal, what you said.

Excellent, what about reasonably powering up other characters to get them back into the action? Something like giving Sub back partial properties to the MK3 iceclone. Perhaps make it so if you start a combo with a freeze, you can get one iceclone in a combo after that within range, but only have it clone at close range if it's inbetween comboable hits, limit one per customer even if the normal time limit has been exceeded as is possible to do in MK3 to get infinite iceclones in combos. This would expand his comboability and making him more dangerous if you catch a freeze in air. Not having the abuse of any where any time and weekend minutes with icecloning on top of the person would still prevent him him from being too broken, but it would be disasterous to give it back completely.

I think the tweaks to the really broken characters would level them out more with characters like Ermac Jax and Reptile who are top ten, but towards the bottom, but overall making the whole top tier tighter.

Lots of other characters folks.

Matt

Well I'm sure you will agree that the Smoke issue needs to be addressed. Each version of Smoke ends up rendering another character useless... Sektor and Scorpion end up getting the shaft. I suppose they could weaken the Smokes, but I'd rather just see Sektor and Scorpion get beefed up a little.

Well I wouldn't want Scorpion to have a pop-up combo, that would just make him play EXACTLY like Smoke. I'd prefer a more creative solution. Giving Scorp the forward telport punch was a great start. Maybe they should reduce the damage protection on it so it ends up being more useful in practice. That way he get some really nice damage when he incorporates both teleport punches into a combo. Hey, if you want Rain to lose his crazy roundhouse, maybe they could give that to Scorpion. There would be some sick combos there, and it would REALLY differentiate him from Smoke. I think he also deserves to have a higher-priority air throw... there's no reason why Smoke should get the more powerful version.

Now Sektor needs something. They definitely need to improve the homing missile. It should ALWAYS do damage if it isn't blocked... I never understood the particulars but I know it wouldn't do damage if it hit during certain attack frames, or something like that. Now Sektor does have his pop-up combo, but it never really opened up many good combo possibilities. I say let him do a teleport uppercut after a pop-up combo. As long as they limit its use, it won't get out of hand. Since he doesn't have a containment move I think this is reasonable. In the "fixed" MK Gold (lol, an all-time favorite of you guys, I know) Sektor was allowed to do three teleUppercuts in a row, and that was pretty fun. Maybe he could have similar leeway in MKT. Newbs would abuse that like crazy, but as long as proper damage protection is in place it wouldn't be much of a problem.

Oh and to bring up MK Gold again (heh heh), they actually had a good idea for Saibot's disabler. First of all, it was harder to do, I believe the command was b,b,f,f+HK. Then if the disabler was blocked, Noob would take FOREVER to recover. So there was huge punishment potential off of a block.

I'm at work now so I'd better get to it, but I'll chime in here and there if I think of anything. Great thread... maxing out the true potential of MKT is a dream indeed!

Make Shang Tsung,s Fireballs bigger and give them a greater hitzone, or give Shang a pop-up combo, or booth.

Noob Saibot,s disabler should only disable the Block from the opponent, not the attacking ability.

Give Cyrax bomb a new command like down, forward, hp/lp and let them drop quicker or make Cyrax airthrow like Smoke,s.

Remove the Low kick combo starter from Nightwolf.

Give Kabal,s Spin Dash a cooldown time like Kitana,s Fan and let the enemy drop on the floor if they get hit in the air with it.

Thats some ideas that I can remember now.

Another Scorpion idea I had...

They could give him some extra moves based on the "spawning" concept used in his lava pit fatality. One move could be a variation of his teleport punch. Instead of actually teleporting, a second Scorpion will appear behind the guy and do the Punch, which knocks the opponent towards the "real" Scorpion, setting up a combo (the fake scorpion would disappear right after the move). During the animation for the move, the player should still have full control over the real scorpion. Maybe he could even input the move while blocking, unless that turns out to be too broken in practice. Between the front teleport punch, back teleport punch, and clone teleport punch, Scorp could put together some insane volleyball combos. No new graphics are need needed for this move, so it would be easy to add!

For Unmasked Sub, maybe the Ice Shower could be an anti-air move when it is on the way up.

I was trying to think of ways to improve Sheeva. Maybe they could add ways to control where her teleport stomp lands? It could be similar to Sub's close and far Ice Showers (d,f,b+HP and d,b,f+HP, respectively). Like maybe inputting f,d,u will make her always land at the far end of the screen, and b,d,u will always land in front of the opponent. This way you could anticipate someone's evasion tactics, and adjust the style of teleport accordingly. For example, say you know the opponent will just run under your teleport. So instead of the auto-tracking d,u move, you input b,d,u, which is programmed to land in front of the opponent. You teleport jump, he runs under like you expected, and since you have lead him perfectly with a FRONT teleport , he runs straight into her path and gets stomped.

MK1 Raiden could use some beefing up, right now he is basically MKII raiden but with less moves. I think it would be cool to screw around with the properties of his superman move. Like, make it unblockable... but as a trade-off, you can ALWAYS crouch under it. That might be cool.

MKII raiden is fleshed out pretty well, I think they should just make his electric grab easier to connect.

That's all for now!

All of these are really great ideas, I would like to hear more.

Matt

Maybe give Scorpion his old Leg Takedown from MK2 back but with more damage and a higher priority.

Give Sheeva a special grab like Kano,s and let it look like the old Goro grab (2 Arms hold the enemy and the other 2 punching him) give that grab a high damage.

Remove the airthrow from Robo Smoke or give it a lower priority.

Maybe for Kabal, make his eyeshot a little bit more smaller so that you can duck under with everyone.

All I can say is remove Kano's Crazyball. That move is so fast and cheap in the N64 version.

I like the idea of powering Sheeva up a bit. I would like to see some changes to her, perhaps make her ground stomp (just the stomp one, not the teleport one) so you can do it out of the air, but make it blockable out of the air. Another option would be for her teleport stomp, make it so that if it doesn't connect, have her stomp the ground then bounce up into the air allowing her an air attack, like Kung Lao's teleport. Just something simple to take away some of the vulnerability afterwards.

I think that Kitana needs some serious help. The fanlift damage protection is a serious issue as she has no other real offensive options. Maybe give her an air fanlift that angles down on her opponent stunning them (with DP of course) making them less likely to try to counter your jump-in.

I agree that Robot Smoke's air throw needs less priority. Should have double DP if it isn't the first hit. So a jump kick, throw combo wouldn't do 40% or whatever it does...only like 20-25%.

It would be interesting if Reptile's force balls could be done like Sakura's fireball. You keep on tapping the punch buttons after you do the slow or fast ball and it gets bigger up to a certain size making it harder to avoid and does more chip damage. Not too big so it won't be too cheap.

NINJA TELEPORTS SHOULD NOT BE A CORNER ESCAPE! This was in MK2 for Scorpion and should have stayed that way for UMK3/T. If you are cornered and you are Scorpion, Ermac, or H.Smoke, your teleport should keep you in the corner...no more easy escaping o_O The teleport should do the same at a full screen distance like MK2 Scorpion.

Give Sonya a handcuff move (with DP) done like Kano's grab and choke move.

Give Jax back his over head stun move (DP)

Nightwolf's Shoulder Dash should be a high move...that bastard is the bane of my existance...

Mileena needs less lag time on her Air Sai attack, like her MK2 counterpart. With the MK3 engine, she still wouldn't be as powerful, and she could become a contender.

Ermac...oy...limit the teleslam to ONE PER COMBO.

Classic-Sub, faster iceball...that's it.

Sektor needs more going for him. The homing missiles should always do some sort of damage, as the explosion is right next to them when they are in hit or low kick animation...splash damage anyone? Having a timer before it explodes if they avoid it long enough would balance that out a bit. More options off the launcher combo. Maybe if the missiles hit, they would be popped up in the air a little so Sektor can run in and HP or telepunch them for a combo (with DP).

Sindel...one scream per combo.

Stryker...one gun per combo.

Cyrax, I agree with the faster bomb placement, and the easier button combo to do them (not that holding LK is hard)

Liu Kang...NO DOUBLE DAMAGE PROTECTION ON HIS LAUNCHER...wtf were they thinking making the MK champ an MK chump?! Less lag on his air fireball, what's the point of using them now? He stays in the air forever.

Shang...man, yellow tights? Anyways, other than the costume...maybe have a dial-a-combo that you can end with a morph that changes shang into that character and ends the combo or launches for a combo depending on the character he morphed into...perhaps he can then morph at will at like 2 second intervals for some interesting combos. The normal move limits would be in effect, of course. So you could do HK, HP, HP, LP, (LP,BLK,HK) to change into Kabal and pop them up, then do his jump kick air fireball. You could then change into someone else after 2 seconds or back to Tsung by doing the same button combo you used for the character you are morphed into (so for Kabal, do LP,BLK,HK again).

I always thought Shang should have anywhere anytime weekend minutes morphing as well. Morph from character to character while being characters, but still have the morph back forcing. If he had a pop up combo that would allow him to morph I think there would need to be a limit on the ground eruption.

Reptile, maybe B-F LP+HP, hold HP or LP then release where you want it to blow up with a good range of splash damage could be interesting. If the move was anything but hitting LP or HP standing straight up, it wouldn't work that well because the move happens so easily due to canceling either LP or HP even if they aren't hit precisely at the same time. So if it was D,D HP+LP he has the chance to uppercut, or using kicks would just not happen right.

I don't think Sindel needs any tweaking because the multiple screaming only let's you do so much. But definitely make the hits in air count as hits always, so she can still do scream, HP, scream, HP scream. But not, HP scream, HP, HP scream, HP, scream, HP scream. It gets crazy.

Ermac's lift should just count as part of the combo like it does in Wavenet UMK3. Even though it does, you can still do 100% combos in the corner lol. It does however limit his midscreen damage greatly, however it's worthy balancing.

For Sonya, maybe just not the quad DP on the leg grab in the autocombo, she's already got some seriously exploitable stuff that no one uses (ducking LK only wins, leg grab to interupt blocked combos etc). If you want a containment, give her the kiss lol, very easy way: Her fatality anitmation, and use Smoke's Smoke and make it pink. Bam, kiss.

Stryker, in Wavenet UMK3, his gun is disabled at 5 hits, so you can get jump punch, 4 hit combo, gun, and then no more, which is balanced.

The teleport punch out of the corner should apply to only Ermac and Human Smoke. By making it so Scorpion can escape (since he had it first and it only makes sense his ability would increase to be able to materilize through walls heh) it would give people a reason to pick him over Smoke, along with the forward teleport, it wouldn't necessarliy inscrease his tier level beyond MKT, but it would be interesting, also, no DP for Scorpion's teleport punch, that might be enough to increase his tier level, and maybe make Smoke's air throw a special move like Cyrax's. It would be nearly useless in gameplay, but you could still have it in his combo, he could just fly up and forward in teleport punch frames and snag, it shouldn't have an activation button though.

A blockable, mid cross drop down for Sheeva would be neat. If you jump over press D+HK or something, she could just drop straight down in her stomp frames, but it should activate punishment mode if blocked (Sheeva has weird juggle properties to it would be hard to brutally punish her), it should also have no recovery if she misses like Kung Lao's dash kick and of course not make the ground shake. If it connects, it should look like it does when you hit Motaro or Shao Kahn, and it should make the character go into their swept animation for a bit of variety.

Keep it coming guys. All of this great to keep in mind if a MUGEN super MKT every happens, at least we'll have something to look back on.

Matt