Thanks for sharing, this updated list from the previous one is much more indicative of what the tournaments have been consisting of it seems.

I can't believe Jade has 11 or more bad match ups, but her lack of mix ups and her inability to combo off of one of her only actual mix ups has something to do with it, not to mention a lot of her normals are extremely punishalble, almost all of them were before the last patch.. I'm going to definitely be rocking Jade much more now, I love bottom of the tier characters.


I've also seen an influx of Sub-Zero online and my goodness his space control capabilities are so ridiculous, every fight I had with several Subbies led to a time up almost every single time.

There's also been a major increase in Kitana online(not suprising).


Jax I've fought more in the past week than I've fought since the game came out.

There's a suprisingly good amount of people in the S and +A area, so that's good to know we'll have some tournament diversity, thankfully.

Yeah, I love the balance in this game. Cyrax, Kabal, and Kitana to me are the best characters in the game, followed closely by Mileena.

The problem with Jade aside from the lack of mixups and unsafeness, is that she is a meter hog. The only way Jade can combo from her low is using a meter for EX staff overhead. She also needs that meter for EX dodging shadows which leaves her without breaker. Against Jade you can block low all day without any consequence.

WOW!


Smoke and Mileena are S-tier?! Interesting.

It's nice to see Sektor so high without being changed much, if at all, from the early days when he was considered low tier.

LOL @ Nightwolf being so low. But I'm not surprised really. I don't think I've seen any impressive Nightwolf stuff out there to be honest. I know ClassySasquatch plays him, but he's Kung Lao primarily.

Poor Jade. They need to shorten the recovery on her projectiles so that she can at least stay far away and zone while glowing green all the time and when someone comes in she should have meter to glow purple or break if caught. Just some random thoughts...

As for Kitana. Well, apparently Crazy Dominican discovered some new tech with her that's super secret at the moment and will show it off at NEC on Dec. 3rd/4th. There are rumors that it makes her the best character in the game and then some others (who also know about the tech) think people are overestimating it. Without the tech, I'd say she has more than 2 bad match-ups [Reptile, Mileena, Kabal, Kenshi(?), Raiden (?)], but maybe the new tech helps in some of those.


As of now, I have Kabal and Raiden as the best two, but I'm an amateur really.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

Kung Lao and Nightwolf(maybe) are lower than smoke.



This list is instantly invalid.

I don't know much about Smoke, but I've seen some insane Smoke resets. Almost like Cyrax stuff, only harder to pull off.

I'm not sure about Kung Lao, I believe he is still really really good.


As for Nightwolf, I don't think he has a single low/mid mix-up option? His whiffed lightning and reflect have eternal recovery, his normal shoulder charge can be ducked. His projectile is shitty. I really don't see why he should be any higher? Not to mention his enh. hatchet sometimes whiffs with the 2nd hit on wake-up and that sucks a lot since it burns your meter for nothing pretty much. What are his strengths anyway? Big damage combos, is that all?

I for sure agree with this list A LOT more than their last one. I agree with Nephrite on Sektor, i love that he has worked his way up the tier list without any buffs. Also agree that Nightwolf is nothing special, never thought he was in the first place. And finally Quan is on the higher end of the teir list!! I've been saying that for awhile now and still think he should be A+ tier. The rune trap is brutal and with all three bars can take away over half your health ON BLOCK and is inescapable.

As for smoke I'm still a bit lost on why he's considered S tier now?? I've seen online tony's combo video which, although fucking ballin, still seemed a bit on the impractable side (too ME at least ). I realize he negates zoning and has godlike pokes, but he had that stuff back when he was considered shitty. Was he just underestimated?

And finally I still think Kung Lao and Reptile should be placed S tier. I know I'm probably alone on this, but i honestly think they deserve to be there more than Raiden. IMHO Raiden merely makes it so no character can play their game against him, like all characters must be played differently and often times opposite to how they're normally used and that is what throws people off and makes them think he's S tier. My problem with that tho is that Raiden, even with his godlike teleport, still has a pretty shitty mix up game and incredibly slow normals and a slow projectile. If you played as him without his teleport you straight up would not be able to compete against most of the characters. However this being said I realize I am heavily biased from my online experience (95% of the raidens i come across are scrubs) so I wouldn't be too surprised if i was way off here, but until then I do not see Raiden winning any tournaments in the future.

Well with Raiden, it's not just the teleport.

You always need to fear his superman, not the 10% damage it does, but the fact that he corners you with it. I don't think anyone else can so easily put the opponent in the corner and and the same time escape from it as easily as he can (dat teleport). Plus, his enh. superman goes through projectiles without him losing health.

Another thing I was really impressed with. At Devastation, B Wizz used his superman to get in. He would do a full screen superman which would whiff (Raiden would stop just before the opponent) and this surprised the opponent AND it got them stuck in the corner all of the sudden. Also, I liked B Wizz's enhanced teleport usage- he was really messing up other people's game.

I kind of like Raiden being S-tier, he's a god after all. It just seems right.

The three of them are beasts. I agree on them being in the top 3, interestingly, I feel like Kung Lao has been dethroned, finally in my eyes. Kitana is so overwhelming up close and far away and the same goes for Kabal, up close or afar they're going to raise hell.

In regards to Jade, so true on her meter use, I honestly rarely use enhanced glow, I hate using meter on moves that don't deal damage on their own, too big of a risk for me.

I usually try to set up some type of trap with her enhanced boomerangs, but the problem is that she takes forever to throw them, she telegraphs so bad that trying to set up a low boomerang and staff overhead trap isn't feasible, even on intermediate people.

I'm not asking for her projectiles to be as fast as Kano's or anything, but I just think it's a bit unfitting for Jade to not be super stellar up close and yet her zoning isn't that hard to deal with as I've noticed when I play Jade players, by the tme she winds up, I have no problem getting in or jumping over or dunking under her boomerang and when I use her, it's a similar result.

Not to mention them nerfing her vault kick(like she needed it). Now her feet still hit the opponent, but they go right through them, which looks silly to me.

Jade is a ton of fun though, I'm going to use her a lot whether they buff her again or not though because I've always liked her.




lol I looked at that again and I was like....wait Smoke's better than Kung Lao? I'm just not convinced by that at all, I'm really not. Smoke has zero mix ups, you can block all of his combos high and his pressure game isn't too daunting to me. His zoning isn't special, I mean you can block his smoke cloud forever and take zero chip damage too. He has three great anti-zoning tools, his shake parry, smoke evades and his teleport punch. Maybe it has to do with his resets or something because I don't see anything else that would lead me to believe he's S tier, maybe mid-tier, but S-tier? I just don't believe it.







I can believe Mileena is S-tier though I was surprised that she was considered that high, I thought she was lower than that, but Smoke? I don't believe it, reasons posted above

Sektor was balanced pretty well for this game, a great thing to not have to worry about changes so much.

I agree, Nightwolf doesn't really have the means to have people pressed, I haven't used him much, aside from at the beginning, so I haven't really delved into him as a character.


I didn't wanna believe Jade was possibly bottom tier, but the more I think about it, she really isn't working with a whole lot, for her to not be super good up close, her projectiles can't really have people on the ropes and worried unless she puts meter on them and that's not a realistic scenario, breakers are highly important and especially for Jade as she has a truly difficult time getting people off of her.

And up close, like half of her combos are super punishable, prior to the patch with the exception of one combo I think, all others were higlhy punishable too, like her Pole cat combo for example.


I like low tier characters, but it would really be great if she got some help in the projectile department like you were saying and improvement on her one and only mix up, making it either safer on block or make it to where she can juggle off of it, I would prefer for it to be a juggle combo though because the only way she can set up juggles now is her staff overhead and her back 2, but both are highly unsafe and easy to evade,m especially her staff overhead.

Her other combos essentially all end after the preset hits, which leaves her options in that area reduced too.

Sorry, Jade rant over

Poor Nightwolf. I was always under the impression that he was considered to be pretty close to top tier, I guess not. Maybe it's because he doesn't have any low starters.

Honestly, I think his best use is the utter destruction of scrubs lol. Put another way, capitalizing on the opponent's mistakes.

Notice that aside from Kabal none of the top tier have low starters. In fact, Cyrax, Kitana, Smoke, and Raiden can be blocked high all day, especially Smoke and Raiden. Mileena can confuse with her low attacks and D4 but her main tool for combos is her U4 which hits medium.

Edit: I just realized that Mileena does have a low starter, damn.

Mileena's tricky ass would, love her though

Doesn't Kung Lao have that easy 3,3 something combo that starts low or does it hit high? I dunno what it's called cause I don't use him or the inputs though.

jade..bottom tier....i call bs

Jade confirmed for garbage tier right from the start. She sucks dude. If you use her well then stick with her but she will never compete consistently at a high level.


What is news to me is that Nightwolf is all of a sudden considered crap. When did that happen?

I can't imagine why, I mean Jade's cool and all, easily one of my favorites, but she's really not that great to be honest.

Her mix up game is poor and for her to only have one low mix up, it's really unsafe, ineffective, and can't be comboed into anything else, even though it sends people into the air.


Most of her combo strings like pole cat and 1,2,2 combo, and several others end after the preset hits, meaning that majority of her combo strings aren't effective for achieving damage that's too much higher than 13-20%.


From a zoning standpoint, the only time she's super threatening is with meter and if the only way a character's zoning is threatening is if they have meter than their zoning isn't particularly effective. Jade takes way to long to throw and recover from her boomerang toss. The medium, high, and low versions are nice, maybe if they were quicker, like Noob's shadows, she might be onto something, but at present meh.

I mean you would think since she's not super good up close that her projectile game would be better, but not really.


Her shadow flash is pretty good anti-zoning, probably the second best thing she has, but her lacking in all other areas makes it nice to have, but not super effective.


She's also one of the characters who has both of their starters for high damage combos that is totally unsafe, highly unsafe at that.

Her staff throw finally got better to where it's more useful.


Her shadow kick is also pretty respectable and nice combo ender, one of her most effective specials, fairly quick and does a respectable amount of damage.


They would need to improve her ability to combo off of her one low starter combo, speed up her projectile recovery so she can keep up with faster zoners and keep out people like Johnny Cage, who dominate her up close and make one of her high damage starter combos safe on block, several other characters have that i.e. (Stryker and Sonya) it's definitely a big help and would move her up from the bottom.

Our current Jade is way better than original Jade, but that's not saying a whole lot.


I use Jade all the time now, some improvements just as simple as increasing projectile speed and improving her one high low, high mix up would go a long way to improving her immensely.

I agree with the list mostly...BUT: I would lower Smoke to B tier (he is fast yeah but he has NO mix ups, basically you can block all day and punish whenever you get the chance), I would put Sheeva and Jax in the same category with the first being slighty better since she is a liittle slower but has way more damaging moves and combos. Plus Sheeva's mind game works better since she can control the whole arena with her teleport (can even land on jumpers if you guess right) and her ground pound hits the whole arena unlike Jax. Imo top 4 right now are Kabal, Mileena, Cyrax, Kitana with Raiden close behind.

^ I think Jax has a much better ground pound than Sheeva. His ground pound pops-up, but he can also cancel it and then catch you with his dash punch and corner you, once he corners you you're doomed. Sheeva is forced to commit to her ground pound and it's not really fast, so she can get punished badly. Just look what CD Jr. does with Jax. Plus, his low starter is faster than Sheeva's and he's got better frame traps if I'm not wrong.

I think Smoke is up there because of his sick resets. I think his pokes are really good too, his d+3 is super fast and if he baits you into blocking low then he can catch you with his b+2 starter which hits mid and then you're stuck dealing with his resets. Also, he's very mobile and has good anti-jumping tools.


@Espio: Kung Lao's string that starts with b+3 does hits low, but he's no longer in top tier. :p

So now Smoke and Johnny Cage has been moved down one tier.

I was of the impression lately that Sonya is slightly better than Cage. She deals more damage, has better mix-up options, her normal projectile is better and her wake-up enh. cartwheel is probably better than any option Cage has on wake-up. She also has that infamous d+4 lol. Cage has better frame traps (I think) and a much more useful X-ray. Both have sick resets.

I'm not sure she'll let him take her out for dinner after all. What do you guys think?

EN Cartwheel is safe and has armor, I think it's slightly better than Cage's standard Flip Kick because it bounces, but costs meter.

Both characters have excellent normals, Sonya having better mixups than Cage I think. Sonya has better combos but Johnny can use his Nut Punch to prevent wake ups and can pressure you big time with frame traps.

Sonya's projectile is better, but Cage's EN projectile on block leaves him with advantage, at the cost of a meter.

Don't know which X-Ray is better. Sonya's have hyper armor but is kind of slow, Johnny's can counter almost anything except for some projectiles but if he misses he eats a full combo.

Then there's the D4 lol.

Sonya's 1, 1, 2 string and the kiss also prevent wake-ups. Then she can go into her Military Stance mix-ups.

She's been climbing up the tier list with every update. I can't wait for that tourney in Brazil in January of 2012 to see Poto2222's Sonya vs Brady's Sub-Zero or Kano or Kung Lao or whoever he'll be "maining" at that time.

Gonna be a good fight if it happens. I do think that Sub has the advantage against Sonya.

I don't know anymore. I'm slightly worried about Subby not being that good.

Tier list has changed again and now matchups were added. What do you think guys?

I for one disagree that Mileena is a bad matchup for Cyber Sub.

I don't play with Cyber Sub-Zero, but I suppose Mileena is a bad match up for him since you can't jump against her so she takes away his dive kicks. She can hit him with a sai and then roll, or she can hit him with the teleport kick and then cancel into sai and roll.

I see that Kitana, Kabal and Liu Kang are also listed as bad match ups for him and all of them have instant air projectiles.


I'm surprised that Reptile isn't listed as a bad match up for Kitana. I wonder what changed there. On the other side, I'm also surprised Kitana isn't listed as a bad match up for Sub-Zero. I know Brady has a plan to beat Kitana with d+4, clone and ducking the fans and wait for the clock to run out, but I doubt that'll work. But hey, that's just me...


So basically, by this list Kabal is #1 and Mileena is #2. So can we expect to see some Mileenas in tournaments soon? It'd be nice to see that biatch in top 8, it's been a while since Evo.

Also, who's better: a character that has two bad match ups but both are 4-6, or a character that has one bad match up but it's 3-7?

I don't know if it's worth it to go into any deep discussions though, I'm pretty sure there'll be at least one more patch? Isn't there a 1.05 hotfix also pending?



LOL @ me asking billion questions.