Stryker NEEDS help badly

R

Revz

New member
Stryker is one of my "main 4" along with Kano, Mileena and Liu Kang, I chose 4 to focus on cause I prefer tag and have fun mixing and matching these 4. So please don't think I just picked him up yesterday and on here crying cause I got owned. I have about 300 matches played with him online and can beat the ladder on expert without losing a round with him.

So on to the point. I have had moderate to good success with him online and I think THE only reason that is so is because I use him fairly well and he's extremely underused so people are unfamiliar with him. Those that are familiar I have to really struggle to beat...

The following are some glaring problems with him, that in conjunction is most likely the reason he is so underused and bottom tier:

Many of his strings are unsafe on block or too slow - his B1,2,2 and 2,3,2 and 1,1,4 are easily countered on block. His B3, 2 is a great mixup but it's 20 frame start up (exaggerated... maybe) is incredibly too slow, not saying it should be as fast as Quan Chi's similar low->overhead mixup but it should be faster on startup, it's also easily countered on block. His B2, F2 is also easily countered on block with a fast poke/special

His zoning is weak - Stryker seems like he would be a good zoner but I often get beat at it because of the slow startup on all of his projectile options. His grenades only really seem useful against people who jump alot, spam Kitana's air dash or are ducking your gunshot. You can't combo with em really, too slow on startup. I understand you can trick people into getting caught by his roll but... see next

Both his roll and baton sweep have low priority - On wakeup both are punishable by a fast string (especially Cage's F3,3etc string) even the EX versions. Many attacks win versus the roll and sweep; like Mileena's roll and Reptile's dashes for example. It also doesn't go under some projectiles I think it should, Like Reptile's forceball. His roll is also useless versus low projectiles unless you time an EX roll right before it hits you, and by then they can usually just block

I think 4 things would help him IMMENSELY: 1) his roll given the armor frames of the current EX, the EX gets some more armor frames 2) his grenades given a faster startup 3) make his strings safer on block or a faster startup 4) give him a low gunshot.... I was originally thinking it would be cool for his roll to hit low but it would make his baton sweep useless

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this if you did.

Please don't comment if you aren't going to add anything constructive. Thanks! :)
 
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I main Sindel and she is in a worse position than stryker, yet I just have to tough it out and keep on playing with her. Sorry to say I dont pity you too much, if you dont want to have a hard time winning, dont play as bottom tier characters. I wouldnt mind if they made some of his strings safe, but anything else would need other characters to get some buffs, and that causes a huge mess. Also his EX gun has a very fast startup, so you just have to save some meter, not that bad. Nah, I personally like where the game is at atm, although I do think honestly think Kung Lao and Cyrax do need a bit of a nerf.
 
I'd rather see them buff other characters instead of nerfing the ones that play well already. At least Sindel has one mode of play that works well, she is a fantastic zoner and she also has fast strings... so how is she in as bad shape? I actually see people use her, quite a bit actually.

Crap even Sheeva is used more

that has to mean something...

Also, according to your logic you need meter for his seemingly intended mode of play (zoning) to be good? How is that not broken?
 
Sindel doesnt have that fast strings bro, yeah her zoning game is better than strykers but stryker has better mixups imo. They are both pretty bad, but the whole idea is if you want to play these characters your going to have to work. Right now im maining Sindel and Baraka and learning Sheeva, maybe Stryker. I love low tier characters, but they are way harder to use than Kung lao or Raiden. I have seen some pretty good strykers, and his zoning is still good.
 
Zoidberg747 said:
Sindel doesnt have that fast strings bro, yeah her zoning game is better than strykers but stryker has better mixups imo. They are both pretty bad, but the whole idea is if you want to play these characters your going to have to work. Right now im maining Sindel and Baraka and learning Sheeva, maybe Stryker. I love low tier characters, but they are way harder to use than Kung lao or Raiden. I have seen some pretty good strykers, and his zoning is still good.
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Yeah I understand they need more work to use well, it's one of the reasons I like him also. I would just like to see all characters in the game to be tournament viable

So I guess it's OK for characters to be unbalanced in MK9. We shouldn't buff anyone! There should be glaringly huge gaps between the lower tier to higher tier characters. We should just start online petitions on how Kung Lao and Cyrax need to be nerfed and use them as examples to derail other buff request/discussion threads. I understand, I'll shut up now
 
Stryker's zoning is fine, I don't see where that comes from. His specials are good too. I didn't think he was as bad as your making him out to be. I'm with the other guy.. play as Sindel and you'll see the difference.
 
his zoning is fine, and you can just abuse the roll, being its safe on block unlike alot of moves in its catagory.

but definately not a low shoot.. that would be too much for him.
but i agree his strings should have a slightly faster start up/safe on block.
 
I just had someone roll and shoot the pistol the whole match, and the roll is very safe on the block...his combo game needs to be tweaked a bit it's hard to pull off his combos
 
Hmm.

I have a fondness for low tier characters. I use Sheeva, Sindel and now Baraka. I used to main Jade a lot (often seen as the weaker female ninja) and Nightwolf, who is considered powerful, but seems overshadowed/over-looked by fanboys gushing over Cyrax, Derp Lao and Raiden.

I don't use Stryker...yet. But the few people that i've seen that use him, are pretty damn good.
 
Stryker is also getting a TON of buffs in the new patch, where as Sindel is getting Armor on EX step up, so yeah, still dont pity you
 
Sindels weakness is she gets easily overwhelmed when being rushed, so that ex cartwheel could be very good for her.

I dunno, right now i'm waiting to see what they do with Sheeva. Baraka is getting his B3, 1 corner loops removed. Really want to see Ex lunge go full screen but I guess we'll have to wait and see what our low tier guys are getting.

What I like about using these kinda guys, is that there will always be attempts to buff them, make them better. Use a high tier character, and you can be sure nerfs will come, which can mess up your whole game.

CriticalLimit once said that the difference between the characters in MK 9 on the tier lists is very small, compared to other games and I think he is right. Derp Lao has 1 billion tools, BUT a good Sindel, Sheeva, Baraka or Stryker can beat him.
 
nomad said:
his zoning is fine, and you can just abuse the roll, being its safe on block unlike alot of moves in its catagory.

but definately not a low shoot.. that would be too much for him.
but i agree his strings should have a slightly faster start up/safe on block.
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Do you actually use Stryker? His roll loses in alot of exchanges and can't be abused versus many characters, its also not safe on block vs a fast special/poke. Such as a D1 or Kano's upball for example

Keepin at it and hoping he gets a buff this patch. How do you guys get info on upcoming patches??

Also, wondering if any of you guys have a good Stryker, I'd love to see one better than mine. All the ones I've played just spam gunshot and don't know any combos. PSN player here
 
let me sum up this thread.

i play x...buff it!

there shouldnt even BE any safe strings, all should be unsafe...but whatever...
 
Revz said:
Please don't comment if you aren't going to add anything constructive. Thanks! :)
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just quoting part of my original post and thinking why people like aedanwolfe make me think these forums aren't much better than the in-game lobbies anymore. Only a small handful of people even make these forums worth reading anymore (looking at you Critical-Limit).

Thanks for your post aedan, it was totally necessary.

Did you even read it? Have you even played Stryker? Dam near all of his strings and specials aren't safe and his roll loses in most exchanges (some high attacks stop it) and doesn't go under some not low projectiles like they should, and his zoning isn't very good for the amount of options he has. Mileena can out-zone him and she has 1 projectile. He's horribly under-represented but it must be a popularity thing and not that he could use a buff or anything.

Not one person who even uses Stryker seriously even replied to this thread. Mostly comparisons to Sindel? So are her strings slower than Stryker's?? Is her zoning worse than his? Does she not have better wake-up options and an actually useful X-ray? (something I forgot to mention earlier) Ok I guess I'll just agree with you guys then and just ignore what I see when I play against her.

Last time I start a thread on TRMK unless it's about Kung Lao, that seems to be the hip thing to do.

Peace
 
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Venth said:
No medium attacks.

No specials that incapacitate allowing him to perform a combo. SubZero for example has 3 alone in Clone, iceball and puddle.

No teleport. When losing on damage no way to safely get to a zoning or turtling opponent if he has to except for using a random roll which can be risky or dash/block cancelling. (try getting to a Liu Kang for example across the screen when youre behind and need to rush. Or get to a turtling sub zero. Or another favorite, a player good a net/bomb combos with teleportng cyrax.)

No specials or attacks of any kind which work when airborne except for standard jump kick or punch.
Most of his moves are slower than average except for D3. Good poke. Fast. Gonna need it.

No parry style move.

No damage resets or exploitable combos. Sub zero has both 2,2,2 and a reset, LK abuse of 2,1,3 I believe cyrax has a damage reset. The list goes on.

I both laughed and cried when i beat some random dude with stryker and he accused me of 'gun spam'. I even saw or heard Tom Brady mention that sub zero needed chip damage on his iceball. Players of all levels are a bit out of touch I think. The gun spam nerd obviously doesnt know whats what. And I think Tom Brady is just considering what would give an edge to beat his top level adversaries in tournaments, not the balance of the game as a whole. Chip damage may help pull out a victory vs kung lao for example but would be like godmode vs a Styker and lopside that match to the point of no return.

Again only 2 unique fighting style moves which are garbage. The baton twirl actually serves as a damage penalty in any extended combo.
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A user from TYM (and plenty of others) have LOTS of notes on why stryker needs the buff.
 
Zoidberg747 said:
I main Sindel and she is in a worse position than stryker, yet I just have to tough it out and keep on playing with her. Sorry to say I dont pity you too much, if you dont want to have a hard time winning, dont play as bottom tier characters. I wouldnt mind if they made some of his strings safe, but anything else would need other characters to get some buffs, and that causes a huge mess. Also his EX gun has a very fast startup, so you just have to save some meter, not that bad. Nah, I personally like where the game is at atm, although I do think honestly think Kung Lao and Cyrax do need a bit of a nerf.
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Lol Stryker is WAY worse than Sindel is. His zoning is pretty crap u can duck gunshot and block grenades. At least Sindel doesnt trade with projectiles when she uses low fireball due to her small hitbox. Sindel's step up move is pretty safe. She has a 50/50 between stepup and low fireball. A high hitbox uppercut. Sindel has way more going for her in terms of character viability. Stryker is just plain awful. She has WAY better mixups than Stryker as well. Stryker's only overhead is from a crappy, slow, telegraphed b32 string which is easy to read and block. Hell you might even be able to poke between the 2 hits. Her wakeup game is also better. The only things stryker has defensively is a fast uppercut. His strings are so slow and unsafe that 1 mistake and he gets raped badly.

I even believe Sheeva is more viable than Stryker, at least some tourney players main Sheeva like Digimon and recently CD Jr. Nopony mains Stryker. Honestly if you main Stryker, kudos to you.
 
Okay seriously what Sindel mixups are you guys talking about? She has like one.

And like I said earlier Stryker is getting tons of buffs in this new patch, and Sindel is getting armor on her EX step up. AGAIN I have no sympathy. Maybe check out Vulcan Hades guide on TYM? Might help you a little bit.
 
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