Some things to think about to improve your skills

Aso, you say fan is too fast? it might be too fast if you try to freeze after you take a HIT. because of hit lag. But if you block then immediately retaliate with a ice ball. it should trade if she throws another(Depending on how far away you are). Then if she learns her lesson and changes it up. you need to adapt accordingly too. If she starts getting scared of trades she will want to block your ice ball first before throwing a fan. Which will give you an edge. Once you get X-ray. she should be scared to throw projectiles, which will give you even MORE options on approaching her.

I like princ-e tips as well. didn't think of air clone for her square jump looking move where she hits you with her butt.

Sorry i don't know enough about skarlet yet. When I get the chance to fight one I always apply REALLY aggressive pressure on her lol. So i have like no time to really learn anything.
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lol that already guy just couldn't get it lol. I never said cheap moves are good to use "over and oveR" "STRONG MOVES" repeated over and over is only a good idea if it happens to be the counter to what your opponent is spamming if he's doing such a thing lol.
 
on here or on psn cuse i didn't get either.

it says i have u as a friend on trmk so do mean psn
 
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Mortal Kombat

Playing to Win

Accept the Game for what it is:
If you want to get good, you must first accept that there are extremely boring strategies out there you will have to face, and also you'll have to accept them as part of the game.

I see a lot of people complaining about special move spamming (this should be the least of your worries, because they are all easily stopped with 1 strategy) Everything in this game has a counter. Some are more unfair/fair than others. You must first accept any unfair/fair aspects as part of the game. If the game gets patched do not have a scrubby mindset and think "Oh I'm quitting this character until they fix it." sometimes what one person perceives as imbalance, could be perceived as balance to someone else. besides if you quit your character and "Wait" for balance. you're only taking away the experience you could have been gathering playing that character while it was considered not good.

Characters weaknesses
If you're going to main a character know what they are, accept that they have them. Use trial and error to figure out ways to minimize exposing your weaknesses. For instance, Scorpions stun after he does his teleport punch is really long, and when blocked you give your opponent a free combo. the weakness to his move is obviously block. how do you avoid/minimize the weakness of the move? well for 1 don't throw it out when they are able to block. You'll want to use it as a counter to projectiles while they are locked in attack lag. Or if your opponent wiffs his string combo you can get behind him before he finishes it. If your opponent is in the air they cannot block. So... what did we learn? you should only use scorpions teleport punch when they are...
1.) in the air
2.) used a projectile
3.) are in the middle of doing a laggy attack.
4.) combo into it.

all 4 of these are ways to make sure they don't ever block your teleport punch. Thus reducing the weakness of your attack.

Character Strengths:
Same for weakness. Know what they are and how you can abuse them w/o being predictable.
For example, Noob saibot is really good at keeping people off of him. He's a Zone character that plays pretty much keep away. So lets look at one of his moves, his anti-block projectile for instance.

You know it makes it so they can't block, your opponent if they are any good knows this too. So they will attempt to stay away from you by jumping/attacking/dashing away. this is your chance to be aggressive, and exploit their new behavior when they can't block. Throw a black hole when they jump away, dash back to avoid their attacks, then come back in with your own combo when they miss. you should mix up approaching them, with behind aimed black holes. If they are newbies that are playing so random you can't get them to behave like they "SHOULD" be, you should just attack the crap out of them. You can't used mind games on someone who doesn't think.

Honor?

As far as I'm concerned the only "honor" you should practice is shaking hands and congratulating your opponent when they win, or shaking hands and telling your opponent "Good games." when you win. Other than that, if you're playing to win you should abuse everything in your arsenal no matter how cheap someone might think it to be. If you got a 50% combo you can do w/o any meter, do it twice and feel no remorse or guilt. If your opponent misses up his button inputs don't feel bad for them and let them get a free hit or something stupid. That's HIS FAULT for not having good execution.

Mistakes/Losing:
If you truly want to get better, you will value LOSING over WINNING. And I don't mean lose on purpose. What I mean is you should prioritize fighting someone who's better than you over someone you destroy. For example.

If you are winning 15 games to say 2 losses vs someone. It's time to find a new opponent. Sure give yourself a pat on the back for being better than that guy, But you aren't learning anything beating someone who is worse. Unless of course this person you are beating is your friend you're trying to help improve. Then it's ok to keep playing because your friend needs to play against someone better even if that person is you.
PLEASE NOTE: If you're losing TOO much this can hurt your self confidence, so sometimes for your mind it could be good to beat up some newbie for a few rounds before finding someone better. besides newbies make good combo dummies.

If you find an opponent who goes even with you, this is a good opportunity to practice your mind tricks. when you're playing against a newb, they don't think well and fall into things that a pro would not fall for. On the other end of the spectrum, If you're fighting someone so good all you do is spend time getting combo'd and using combo breakers you're not learning how to use your mind against another mind. So that is why finding someone of equal skill is important.

Playing against someone WAY better. Now although you may not get as many opportunities to practice combos, or do mind games, because this player is always 2 steps ahead of you. These fights are necessary to play so you can learn what you thought "works" You find out it does not work. For instance, Lets say you always teleport punch a certain move and it worked on your evenly matched opponent. A Pro is way less forgiving and better at execution. That evenly matched player might have just been 4 frames off from doing the correct input each time and gave up trying that input thinking it doesn't work. A Pro will make it work every time. Playing a pro is the best way to teach you what works/doesn't work. a Pro will also make your habits/patterns painfully obvious. You may not realize you jump too much fighting against evenly matched people or newbs. but if you get countered 6 times when you jump the pro is TEACHING you that your jumping is predictable and you need to try something else. Or when you do a getup special attack EVERYTIME you're knocked down. A Pro will call you out on it and read your patterns, and start blocking when you get knocked down.

Execution:
Perfect all of your characters timings/ spacing/ learn all the combos and when they hit high/mid/low. So that when you play a match you don't have to "think" about your combos. Your muscle memory will do it automatically when you want to do it. that way you can spend all your time thinking about what your opponent is doing and what they will do next.

TrainingvsPressure
although you want to perfect your combos in training mode and learn how far moves can reach or when they end ect. But sometimes even though you can combo in training mode doesn't mean you can do it in a match. What i mean by this isn't that it doesn't work. More like, when you do the combo in training mode... that is your entire focus so you are ready for it. When you play a human who is pressuring you. When you get that first hit of the move off, many people who can do it 10/10 times in training will mess up once they finally get a hit because their mind is now having to think about a lot of other things. Don't freak out if this is the case with you, it just means you need to practice against live human beings now, and should leave training mode behind you so you can get use to combo'ing under pressure.

Conditioning
Definition: To condition your opponent to behave a specific way so that other opportunities can be opened up.

For example, you have this really nice combo with Jade but it starts with her overhead special attack. It's easily blockable as it starts up just a little slow. to land this, you need to condition your opponent to block low. And how do you do that? you attack low 1-3 times. once you get him scared of low attacks, you can now land your overhead special by scaring him into thinking another low attack is coming

This isn't simply mixing up your strategy. You are ON PURPOSE creating habits to FORCE a habit type response to your habit. So that you can open up the door to the counter you want to land, which in Jade's case was the overhead special attack.

Reaction to being blocked.
Some strings when blocked are safe and unsafe. some start off with the same string.

for instance:
Ermac's: <1, 2, 1>, combo when blocked doesn't even go to the third hit. the 2nd hit has to land for the 3rd hit to come out. so this is very unsafe to go for when blocked as Ermac is RIGHT next to his opponent after 2. however...
If you realize that <1, was blocked. by the time you get to hitting 2. You should now instead CHANGE your string to his <1, 1, 4 string. this adds a kick after 2 that pushes them back out of punish range while they are blocking.

Learn how to change strings mid combo accordingly.

I'll add some more food for thought later.

Thoughts? anyone learn anything? anything you want to add? Anything you disagree with? lets talk ;d

Probably the most I've ever learned from a guide.
 
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