Very good thread bro, I like.

Influence on Tier or damage properties has no real affect on me as a fighting game fan. It just so happens that some of the characters from certain fighting games I end up liking have more of an advantage then other characters present.

If, and when Martian Manhunter is announced officially that will be my main no questions asked. I even talked to casselman on occasion saying that if he's announced and playable he will be all I use for 3 months straight. I will not pick up any other character until I have mastered him and know I can be a force with him. Regardless of his tier, if he's top great, if he's bottom, even better. Gives me more reason to push myself and motivate that much more to bring him to a level of prowess and superior skill based tactics. Even if he is somehow over shadowed by other characters in game. I will work endlessly because of my love for him. With me and characters, it's not the most popular or trendy characters people like that inspire me to become good with them. It's the love for the actual character himself that keeps me indulged.

So, the question is will it influence me? No, I'm not worried about MM's Achilles heel. However he may turn out in this game will have no affect on his placement as my Main. He will be #1 period.

I just hope he's confirmed and an in game playable. At this point, that's all that runs through my mind. Outfits wise, just an added bonus.

I admire you for being honest on the whole "winning" thing. I consider myself an average player. These people that run the tourney's and what not are extraordinary. I wish I had 1/2 their skill level. I'm better at being a fan of things, then I am in game. I try to read people and find myself coming off as repetitive at times. I repeat moves I know people predict and I end up losing quite a bit. However, Injustice will be different for me. As I said above 3 months with just J'onn alone. This way I'm not sidetracked and forget my knowledge I built with him. I feel this game, I will be better then I ever have, simply because of my mindset going into this game. One thing I can honestly say that probably would greater my chances at winning, would be reading frames, frame traps, frame damage etc. This is stuff I should be more technical in, but simply just never do. I've always valued myself as the player who taught himself every game he's played. And as funny as this sounds, I do consider myself a glutton for punishment. But at the very least, an honest one at that.

Speaking of Tournament. Do you have any gameplay videos of you participating in any qualifying, casuals or grand final matches Temp?

I'l do what I did with MK9.

Play through the Story Mode and pick my favourite character from it! Which was Jonny Cage in MK9!

I'l never be good enough at fighting games to really worry about things like tiers and matchups, its liberating really.

Yea, where I live not a lot of people like fighting games here. And we have no landmarks for tourneys at all. I live in Milwaukee, WI. It's pretty crushing to say the least.

Thanks, man.


This sounds very close to my sentiments on Smoke. Thank heavens Smoke is a good character. My devotion doesn't quite compare to yours, as I'll admit, I probably would have a secondary if Smoke was bottom 5. I also think you have the right idea using MM 3 months exclusively. A lot of piers of mine juggle multiple mains, and (IMO) they don't really learn their match-ups because of that. At least not as much as they need to.


Though I'm sure he's in, I hope he's not DLC. Having to wait till June-August to play as a character who is widely considered a staple is kind of... dumb. DLC should be for obscure fan favorites, like Lobo or Swamp Thing.


A lot of it has to do with having a scene. I was okay at MK before moving to San Antonio, but the SA scene has really improved my game. I wouldn't say I'm a great player, but I'm definitely a smarter player now.


This is half the battle right here. Fighting game proficiency is 90% commitment. People think I'm joking when I say learning a fighting game at high level is as difficult as learning a musical instrument, but it's true (wonder if Casselman would agree with that?). Once applied effort begins, learning guitar is just time+knowledge.

As for frame data, it's only as important as its conclusions. You can know Smoke's D+1 beats Nightwolf's D+3 without knowing Smoke's D+1 has 6 frame startup. Honestly, individual character communities will do all the hard work for us.


Yep. They're a bit outdated, and I consider myself substantially better now, but I do have my Evo vids. I did won a couple of locals, but there's no footage unfortunately. And if it looks like I was flailing around aimlessly against Cyber Sub, it's because I had no idea what to do in that match-up, lol. The first set ends prematurely, but Fill-Pops ultimately won.

Set 1: Fill Pops vs. Temp
Set 2 Pt. 1: Temp vs. ???
Set 2 Pt. 2: Temp vs. ???
Set 3 Pt. 1: ??? vs. Temp
Set 3 Pt. 2: ??? vs. Temp

Some great stuff man, with MK9's seriously messed up Netcode. I really wished I'd of have LAN friends that played this game. I forfeited playing this game on MP the whole time because none of the friends I knew bought mk9 and had DSL. I gave up with MK9's online to many issues and latency with combos. Since Hector said MP is gonna be a key thing their looking to fix this game, I will definitely punish myself to get as good as I can mentally. Thanks again bud!

Gotta agree with you on the reasons for who you main.Scorpion's always been my favorite,i always main him,i sub cyrax and kabal because i like their stories(In MK9).I'm going to probably main Batman,or Nightwing.Unless i absolutely cannot use them (like reptile,who i don't care much for anyway) then i'll be using them.I won't lie if i say that winning doesn't matter,because once i go online,it matters.But i have a horrible record(50 something wins to like 200 losses) but that's because i can't play the game offline higher than normal because of my rage,i'd just rage quit anywhere higher than normal after a couple of fights. Sorry for the long post that turned into a rant....I'M BATMAN!

I'll do what I did with MK9 and play my favorite characters and those I find fun to use. The fact they turned out to be solid characters was pretty neat, and I hope the same happens in Injustice....

But in addition to be fun to use, I have to like the character and his/her design. That's extremely important. It's only reason I don't use Sonya or Reptile in MK9.

I always just pick the character based on my favorite, not based on potential. I'm not a high level competitive gamer though, other than fun competition amongst friends, I just play for fun. Do my best, but I wouldn't even look into character tiers or any of that stuff. So regardless of how good they are etc., I'll be using the likes of Batman, Nightwing, Joker etc. The ones I like.

Same here, I can honestly say to anyone "I SUCK at fighting games!"
But I still play them. Even though fighting is in my bottom list of genres I usually plays superhero fight games and Mortal Kombat. (MK3 was my 1st ever MK/fight game when I was 5) and though I suck, I still have fun 'trying' to play lol

For Injustice chances are I'll play with everyone but my particular favorite I would 'try' to be good with is Nightwing.

In the new MK I pick any fighter and just try to fight and just somewhat learn what they can do. To this day Im still not good but I feel like I can play well with Sub Zero, Jade and Scorpion. Oh yeah and a lil bit of Nightwolf :)

I've been playing as Sektor since MK3 but for MK9 I played alot as Cyrax and Nightwolf because they felt very different from past games and both seemed much faster in MK9.

For Injustice, I'm gonna play as Deathstroke or Green Arrow because they both seem like there going to have some great combos in this game so I'll play as those two as well as Batman.



See I live in St. Louis and there are a few tourneys at the local GameStops and Walmarts for fighting games and other games. I go to the GameStop tournaments but I stopped going to the Walmart tournaments because they have a problem with cheating, I entered into the MK9 midnight release 360 tourney and everybody that entered had ever played the games before because the game just came out and the 360 didn't get a demo. So I made it to the finals and lost but then the guy who I was fighting against used Scorpion's Nether Gate fatality which you have to unlock in the krypt and he knew it by heart, which I thought was pretty weird but I over looked it. I found out a couple of days later that the guy I lost to worked at that Walmart lol

I'm so far removed from stuff like that it's hilarious. Tiers and stuff like that practically mean nothing to me. Although I usually play alone so that may be why. I never really compete with games and in general I'm not competitive so it has no bearing on who I pick to play as.

When I'm playing a game like this or MK I know the characters so I just pick who I love. In newer games/franchises I play around until I find a character that kind of suits my style.

I'm not a "tier whore" like Justin Wong.

I play a character based on design, move sets, and story. It helps if I know the background of a character so I've been researching a lot of dc comic characters as I'm a marvel guy. I've even read a few sweet batman comics in the last month. Having done that I look forward to playing Night wing, Bane, and Black Adam if he's in but chances are I will go through the entire roster eventually to see if anyone really surprises me.

I am competitive but only when it comes to playing online and with friends. The only time I won't play as a character is if they just flat out can't compete with the rest of the roster. There's a difference between having the skill to be good with a character like that and knowing when it's just a high risk low reward situation.

I just hope when I hope online that it won't be filled with nothing but vs. Batman/vs Superman battles. That gets old cause for any fighting game to be successful in the long run there needs to be diversity.

Not sure if you've read these, but Batman The Long Halloween, Dark Victory (The followup to Long Halloween), Dark Knight Returns, and Hush are my recommendations for some awesome stories featuring lots of characters. You can find them all pretty cheap on Amazon, for usually around $10-$15 each.

I'm not really tier based either. I don't hardly know the tier levels, save for Kung Lao being on top. I mained Ermac and Kano because I liked their moves, and the fluidity in which I could execute their combo's. I also like Cyrax, though I know hardly any combo's with him.

It's more about how a character plays to me than how they are perceived to play, I guess. Plus I like the characters. Same will probably happen with Injustice, I'll main my favorite heroes/villains:

Black Adam
Green Lantern
Captain Marvel
Martian Manhunter (if in game)

Hush was the first batman comic I read! It was awesome. I haven't read the others but I'll look into them.

If you're referring to MK2011 then Kabal is considered a clear #1. Kung Lao is up there though- Top5, possibly Top3.


Will character match-ups/viability influence who you main?

Likely not, although am no where near as passionate about DC characters as I am about MK characters (so my character loyalty probably won't be as strong). For MK2011, there was no doubt who was going to be my main even before the game came out- my favorite of all the characters available (Kitana). Eventually I learned other (almost all characters) to a decent level, simply because I feel it's a shame to have the game with many characters and only play as one.

So for Injustice (when/if I get the game), after I complete the story mode and a couple of arcade ladders, I'll go to the training mode with Catwoman and study her moves (which are fast/slow, high/mid/low, anti-air useful), play around with combos, maybe try to find some gimmicks/ghetto-resets that I might get away with early on in game's life, etc. First month or so she'll probably be the only character I'll use online, at least for ranked matches. I do like to go for "random select" every now and then in player matches, especially when the other guy is up for it too. Eventually, I'll start messing around with other characters and I'll see. Since I'm not as crazy about Catwoman as I am about Kitana (and Fujin!) there is a chance some other character knocks her off as my new main. Then again, she is probably the only DC character I'm somewhat passionate about lol.

This game provokes such mixed feelings in me lol. It's kind of cool in a way that it won't be at this year's Evo. I feel like the whole community, even the online monsters, is going to take it a bit lighter and have more fun with it rather then obsessing about who's best and who's going to body who...

Interesting times ahead of us!

Thanks for all the replies guys. The responses are unanimous: MKO users do not care about tier. That's totally cool, too. For the most part, I don't either. Tiers are fun to analyze, but it's not the final word on character choice for me.

However, it seems there's little discussion on style. I feel I under emphasized this element, but it's an important sub-topic of the tier discussion. My playing style is pretty consistent across all fighting games. I always play a well-rounded character with lots of mid-range options. I was so blessed Smoke had a good footsie game. Leveling up would have been a drag if he didn't (no matter how high on the tier list he was).

I guess my point is that this ain't MK9. I like Blue Beetle, but I'm not sworn to Blue Beetle like I was to Smoke. Even if Beetle is S-tier, if he ends up being a zoner with no footsie game, I'm throwing him under a steamroller for Aquaman.


So character strength aside, how important is STYLE to you guys?

Oh, it matters. For example, I just can't play as Reptile in MK2011. You know, all that depending on his dash to move around, just not my thing. Kung Lao on the other hand, although a lot more fun, is a bit too wild for me. Then there's Kabal, I never even bothered learning all the NDC stuff. I probably would if he were my fave character, but since I "only like him", I never bothered.

I really liked Kitana's style, footsies and solid game all-around. I think that's the style I like the best, playing footsies and the spacing game (just like you Temp) . Sektor too, has a nice footsie game with his f+2, b+3, b+1 moves and the flamethrower to keep the opponent in check and he's my 2nd most used character in the game.

Between the zoners and the rushdown characters judging by MK2011, I kinda prefer the rushdown type. Cage is so much fun, Sonya too. While I like Subby, I'm afraid I'm just not patient enough for the character. I still enjoy playing as him, but I'm not as successful. Haven't tried the ultimate zoner yet, Freddy, and I don't find Noob Saibot that much fun to use.

Style is very important. Most of my mains in MK9 have nice rushdown games with their pressure and mix-ups. And the fact they are versatile enough to have decent zoning/spacing games makes them more fun for me. (I used Raiden, Kabal, Liu Kang, and Skarlet). I tend rely more on aggressiveness than patience more often than not, no matter the character I use. (Which, in Raiden's case, is not how he should be used, but eh.)

I also like shooting projectiles...

Style is probably why I prefer Ermac like I do. His moves are very aesthetically pleasing, and he juggles fairly well.

Another criteria I have for a character is High - Low or Low - High combo's. Also, good pop-up's are a make or break characteristic.

It's interesting that you say that. Kitana is basically the "Rose" of this game. Both have a cheap pokes, both have a combination of zoning and strong pressure (though Kitana has better zoning I guess), both have great tick-throw setups, and both have shitty wake-up games. If it weren't for sentimental reasons, I probably would have mained either Cyrax, Nightwolf or Kitana. Smoke is a great fit, so I can't complain. Those 70-80% one-meter combos aren't so bad either.


Though I'm kinda alone on this, I think Sub-Zero's rushdown is underrated. His oki game after B+1,2,1 is just so good. I was testing it in the lab, and if timed right, even Mileena has to block each hit of his 2,1 setups. It might just be a bug in training mode, but from what I observed, low-hitbox characters are forced to stand-block the first hit after a B+1,2,1 giving Sub full pressure options. If Kenshi, Freddy, and Kitana dropped out of the game, his match-up score would go WAY up.


I think Raiden can be played well aggressively. Being able to teleport-cancel his chains gives him a lot of interesting offensive options, though for some reason, we're still not seeing Raiden players doing it often in tournament.

And Skarlet... man, the execution on her combos is crazy. Props to you for using her. With her 50/50s, I don't know why that chick is not winning more tournament sets.


Ermac is another underrated character, IMO. He has bad match-ups, but pokes and pressure are really good.

What man doesn't?




That's awesome! They're my fave girls from the two franchises. As a kid I loved Chun-Li best in SF, but with SFIV Rose won me over.

I tend to prefer speedier I guess rushdowny/some-times-pokey characters.
I'll gravitate towards the Cammy/Kitana/Millia/Taokaka/Sophitia kind of characters.