well my veimw on this is on he is not. there are others out there with powers that are more useful such as: sub zero; he can freeze people from the other side of the arena keepin him out of trouble and givein him a free shot. radien;as much as i hate to sat it radien is also better he can fire energy balls and use lighting to attack. retile; he also has a range attack he can spit acid balls at a distance to keep his enemies at bay. scorpion; he can use his spear to drag his ememy towards him and stun them giving him time to get in a free attack. so u see range attacks are the best way to go.

Well Shang Tsung has the flaming skulls wich he can do up to 3 at a time. Plus he can morph into any one and use their abilities.

I don't know the MK2 tiers very well, but I think he was considered decent in that. His fireballs were nice and quick.

In MK3, he is close to the bottom of the list, same with UMK3 and MKT. His moves themselves are just not very good. His projectiles cannot lock people down very well because there's a run button for avoiding them. Morphing can be handy, but its not something to rely on because you really need to get the morph into another character mid combo or something to make sure its safe, and you don't control when you morph back.

Overall, bottom tier character.

tier lists, meh.

any character is deadly in the right hands.

There are mathematics involved to judge which characters are good or not. This is why tiers exist.

Characters who win the most tournaments, characters who are used the most, characters with the biggest easiest combos, characters with the most broken moves, characters with the least risk and most reward, characters with high priority attacks, characters with the most effective tactics.

I agree, there are people who master certain characters and make them a force ie: Julian Robinson's Unmasked Sub-zero who can beat the cheesiest Kabals, and VDO's Shang Tsung who can beat my Human Smoke. In the end though, it comes down to science, and mathematics. Shang Tsung played at the very best he can be stands little to no chance against Human Smoke played even haphazzed.

A common misconception with the "in the right hands" deal is, just because a few people might be amazing with one, doesn't make that character efficient, or top tier. If one person master's Cyrax, but can barely beat 10 Kabal players of average skill, Kabal is still a better character than Cyrax due to Kabal having virtually every advantage I listed above.

Tiers exist for a reason, they will never go away, however they can change when new things are found. Sub-zero will never be top tier because he cannot do the damage needed when it is available to him. If you are lucky you might be able to get a 50% mid screen juggle on Kabal, but even then you would have to glitch cancel an aaHP into a freeze on top of connecting an air freeze or aaHP to freeze to start, making it not worth the trouble. Sub and Shang are fun characters, but unfortunately, not top tier.

Shang's best strats can be found on www.ultimatemk.com under the character guides section if you want to check them out 187, you know they are there, use them.

Shang in MK2 is a mid tier character. Some new found combo abilities could possibly make him upper mid, but it is doubtful. He is a small character and difficult to juggle (as he is in MK3/U/T as well). His jump kick is hard to counter. He has low hitting LP's that make kara jabbing his strong suit like female ninjas in MK2. His sweep is short, but very fast. His throw sets up a nice wake up game. A great HK for anti air, and a decent uppercut.

He is top 5 in MKDA due to his speed.

Couldn't he side step like 3 times between an attack?

Ok wow. You very wise. I sacrifice goats in your name.

rofl. i dont know why that was funny to me, but it was.

I find it funny when I can own a Kabal player useing Sektor! They always are like, "wtf?" lol! Mainly cuz they try to just be offensive the entire time wich makes them lose against my Sektor lol. Sektor is in no way one of the best characters in UMK3, but since that guy brought Kabal up, it just reminded me of the good memories I got useing Sektor against Kabal players lol. (Plus Kabal players are kinda easy any ways once you have played them hundreds of times and know what they are gonna do since most of them do the exact same thing over and over lol)

Yeah, since Kabal is top tier I assume there are a lot of people trying (but failing) to apply cookie cutter tactics. Its very similar to characters like V-Sakura in SFA3. I've seen great V-Dan players take out cookie cutter (but still successful in tournament) V-Sakura players. Its just a matter of applying the tactics without understanding why they work.

Kabal is top tier because he can overpower the other characters through insane rushdown that, if done right, leaves very few openings to counter. Other characters, especially robots, have very little chance because he can run jab safely, if you let go of away a lot of times you end up thrown, he can throw in a lk that, if not blocked, leads to a combo and on a robot that leads to a not-very-difficult relaunch (because they are so much easier to combo). And he can always throw out the spin if there's the detection of a move happening since it has zero startup.

But then you get cookie cutter players. They'll rush down in a regular pattern and not be able to adapt. And they get pwned, even by weaker characters.

Shang Tsung was the complete best in 2and3 especialy if you made it your business like i did to memorize every character's move list in the game to the point where its second nature to you. same goes for trilogy too including brutalities

liu Kang 187, watch these matches and tell me how you would beat this Kabal:

http://www.ultimatemk.com/matchvids/eccxi/julian_v_bill/julian-sektor_v_bill-kabal1.wmv

http://www.ultimatemk.com/matchvids/eccxi/julian_v_bill/julian-sektor_v_bill-kabal2.wmv

Remember Julian Robinson is a professional and has a very good Sektor, probably one of the best considering he isn't used much at all in tournaments. Does your Sektor look anything like this, and have you ever played a Kabal player like this?

The fun part of Shang in UMK3T is when your opponent morphs and you can wait out the morph back and take advantage of the big opening it leaves

Four throws in a row? Please tell me that was the joystick.

Links not working.... Anyways I still got a decent Sektor, though I don't think the best. Still doesn't make what I said any less true that I can own Kabal players useing him. Ofcourse not the top experts I don't believe. But yeah I got a pretty good Sektor myself. He is like one of the worse characters in the game I believe, so considdering that.... Yeah I think I do aiight for Sektor considdering. I play with Reptile, Liu Kang, Sub-Zero, and Kano more. Some Jax and Nightwolf some times. I haven't been playing the game for a while now though actually.... My left hand is fucked up, so makes it difficult to play UMK3 useing keyboard. Oh and considdering I use a keyboard.... Yeah I'd say I'm pretty good at UMK3 overall. Not one of the best though or an expert, but still real good.

Sorry, I guess it only works for cool people. Seriously Matt I must know why Julian allowed himself to get thrown FOUR times in a row!


Using what seems like random characters is cool, I don't like when people have to always pick their best.

The stick he was on has a tough to find sweet spot for D+B because I think it's slightly off on the sensors, which is why you might notice I hold back, then shift to duck in my matches a lot, you should be doing that anyway.

I use keyboard mostly, but I can adjust to sticks within a couple matches. When sticks are busted sometimes you have to slam them pretty hard to get response out of them so just do that if anyone experiences that. They are already broken so it's no big deal. Might as well completely break them to get them replaced.

I play Ermac on standard sticks about 90% full ability, on jap sticks 100%, and on keyboard 150%.

LiuKang187, try those links again, just copy one, open a new browser and paste, or cut the file off the link and go to the dir. You need to see these matches to know why I'm asking you these questions.

Shang can be good if you know how to use him.But then again so can everyother umk3 character.His main attractions to me are his randper style combos done by different characters during his morphs.Pretty much everyone has a character their good with, vdo from eccxi had a good shang,dreemernj has a good sindel,shock has a good human smoke, ermac, and rep,and I have a good nightwolf, and kano.I myself am not too good with shang I always go for the fireball eruption then morph into nightwolf to get 4 hatchets.

And as far as julian vs bill is concerned,matt told me julian let bill win so matt could play him in the finals.In my opinion bill has an extremely cheap kabal,abusing lp and throws.I cant help but laugh everytime I see this video http://www.darktemplarz.com/umk3matchvids/mklvslex_9.avi Guy on the left is bill and the guy on the right is Lex from chicago.Lex totally owns bills kabal.