I didn’t see this thread in the first 3 pages so sorry if it already exists. If it does, then you should pin it imo.
Ok so this thread is about discussing tiers in mortal kombat. Who do you think is godtier? Who is high, mid, low and bottom?
Do you agree with this list? Why? Feel free to make your own tier list or top 10.
Discuss.
well, its still a little early for this. i would have waited till after power up this weekend at least, but whatever.
my personal pick for a top tier character is liu kang because he has safe launcher strings from highs or lows that lead to 40% very easily. he has really good practical damage
Yeah I know it’s early. Discussing tiers when there are no major tournament results yet is a bit silly and prematured. Still, in the mean time we can discuss character potential and bad matchups.
So far from what I heard Smoke, Ermac and Kung Lao are really strong in this game. Their damage output is crazy and they have really good offense/defense tools.
I disagree about Cyrax, Noob and Baraka being so low though.
yeah, i doubt anyone is going to have a good handle on good and bad matches for characters yet. we can at least take the opportunity to talk about various strengths and weaknesses
I don’t have the patience right now to go into detail, but the low tier seems a bit off to me. I’m not sure about Jax, but I can’t see how Jade, Cyrax, Noob and Sektor are down there. I’ve played around with them, Sektor especially (he’s my main, so bias may come into play here) and none of them have that inherent low tier feel. This may be a shitty example, and it’s a different game all together but when you’re playing someone like Makoto in Super, they just feel bad. Those characters I listed seem to be able to hold their own quite nicely. Personally, I’d put Mileena in low and Liu Kang in high.
Raiden has to be top tier.
Cyrax is top tier easy.
Liu Kang isn’t cheap enough to be top tier and simply is good against people who can’t block well. At first glance he looks amazing cause he has tons of safe pressure. The problem is that pressure in a normal sense doesn’t really translate to god tier in mk. Especially when Raiden can just teleport behind you or smash you with superman fly.
Agreed, there’s absolutely no way Jade is low tier.
Why would you put Mileena in low? Honestly I feel she’s the best of the females. She actually has speed + an overhead that can lead to 35% meterless damage. Not to mention her mobility, mix ups and evasion/teleport tools. That’s something a lot of characters don’t have in this game. It’s true I don’t know much about Jade though.
Kung Lao deals so much damage with so little effort its ridiculous.
Personally I think there’s too much division between the tiers.
I’m thinking there will be characters that really stand out, those currently being Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Cyrax, Raiden, Ermac, Smoke.
Then there will be the midtier characters which require a bit more work but are still really good. Examples such as Jade, Mileena, Kitana and Reptile fit here.
Finally there’s characters that take a lot of work and you won’t see much, if at all.
Baraka, Sheeva, Kratos, thus far.
Characters not mentioned I honestly haven’t seen enough of to say where they stand.
Feel free to disagree/rearrange/discuss :karate:
EDIT: I’m just going by tourney streams thus far, not going to elaborate on reasons why until sample size is larger.
Mileena is very unsafe, imo. I know a good player doesn’t go around spamming specials, but that’s where most of her mobility options stem from. It also seems like you’d need a fair amount of conditioning to land that overhead, setting them up for it rather than throwing it out when they’re crouch blocking. It’s really nice how it bounces them off the ground for combos, though. I’ll give her that. I don’t know see how she’s fast, either but alas I haven’t played her enough to really commentate. I’d like to say Kitana is better, but I’m still experimenting on how to open the opponent up with her. Her overhead option isn’t exactly great. Aside from that though, I think Kitana is one of, if not the best whiff punisher in the game. Her starter for combos, f2 into launch sends her forward a little to hit things just out of reach which lead into disgusting combos. You’re very much on your toes around Kitana. I’m still in two minds about her mix-up options, though.
I think we can have a deeper discussion once the entire community has settled into the game a little more, taking extra consideration into how characters perform against each other in tournaments.
Tom Brady’s list> This crap
Could you post that list? I can’t find it.
I don’t even think the tournaments are going to show tiers yet as the game still just came out and most of the “tourney” players don’t even know MK like that as it’s a different system all together. Not saying people won’t figure out characters, I’m just saying, it’s still too early to tell as the game mechanics are way different from other games that people are used to. Just my opinion though. It’s a good time in my opinion, people still figuring out characters is the best time for a game. 
Tom Brady (from my memory…so it may not be 100% accurate, and I’m using MK lingo here)
Elder Gods:
1.Sub-Zero (yay, my favorite since MK1…lol, my name stemmed from it…used to go by Sub-Zedox)
2.Raiden
3. or 4. Nightwolf/Cage
Gods:
(Fill in as I forgot)
Mortals:
(Fill in as I forgot)
Netherrealm beings:
Sheeva
Baraka
He didn’t post a full list, but he gave top 4:
Remember that Tom Brady has been playing MK9 for much longer than anyone else (way before release). So, he knows tricks that we have no idea about.
I disagree with this part dog. Kitana is far from mid-tier. As for Jade, let’s just say that the EX Boomerang reset really helps her.
I’m okay with the game having a fairly large midtier list, which seems to be the case already. I definitely see Kung Lao, Raiden, and Smoke being at the top with characters like Nightwolf, Ermac, and Cyrax being just below. I haven’t done or seen much from Sub Zero so I have no idea how he will place, but Brady knows his shit. We will just have to see how the game develops.
Not that many players (besides myself) play as Sub-Zero. The ones that I’ve seen online (streams) don’t use him correctly. Well correctly in my opinion that is. I don’t think Kung Lao as being top only because alot of his moves are punishable. Dive kick especially. DK and his spin are punishable hard and a lot of players I see fall for them. If you don’t fall for those, he’s then an ok fighter (unless the user uses him differently but from what I see, just because of his specials people are putting him up there…I don’t).
Same with Smoke. Smoke is good and once you learn how to block his combo that people use for that 40+ damage, you’re good. Don’t try to throw attacks from far away since he can punish with teleport. I’ve fought good Smokes (since alot of people use him), but if you can block his teleports and smoke bombs, the only real threat is his combo which goes low then medium (overhead) then high. His enhanced invisibilty is more problematic (which I RARELY see people use, besides my one friend who’s good with him) because you can’t really tell when he’s doing a teleport.
The problem that I see with people tiering right now is more that they are tiering on the special move options alone. The special moves are all just setups (obviously) but I look at who’s good by how easy is it to take away those options. Smoke is pretty easy to take away options of his specials once you learn some patterns. Kung Lao is below Smoke in my opinion because his specials are highly punishable.
Of course these are all my opinions. I would like to hear others though.
Yes I agree.
One thing I hear a lot these days and don’t like is how crappy Baraka and Sindel are just because of their poor combos or damage output (they can barely do 25-28% mid screen). What I keep telling those people is that this game is not only about big flashy combos and teleports, it’s much deeper than that. Characters with great mixups, overhead and reversal options will have more success than just autopilot combo characters that do 40-50% dmg imo.
I agree. MK is more than combo outputs. Those characters still need to set those up to get those combos. I play as Subby and I can tell you, everytime I play someone that I feel knows those combos I think very hard on what they have available as their specials, spacing, and all that stuff. When I play a johnny cage, I keep some distance with clone but not too far because he can hit me with his far fireball. But Subby vs. Johnny is “hard” for johnny, until I see someone use his fireballs correctly (aka use the fireballs as a distraction to use the shadow kick to get closer).
I try to look at strategies that other characters can make against me but unfortunately people don’t even use it (like th Johnny one that I stated, have yet to see it used). It will be a while before people know how deep MK actually is. People are just going to rely on the flashiness now…they’ll see later that specials should only be used (for certain characters) to get close. That’s why the damage in the game is really high for combos…because it shouldn’t be easy to get close to your opponent.
imo raiden, kano and mileena are underrated by most.
personally i feel that raiden is god tier. teleport is insane, fly is rediculous and almost any command combo will cancel into it. he has a seemingly endless string of attacks to keep the pressure on and meat out juggle combos.
kano has insane damage (special does more than jax’s) and cannonball is even better than raiden’s fly. but his command combo’s are not as good. however, his damage is so high that he only needs to land a few command combo into specials before you have no hp left.
mileena is insanely fast, has probably the best launchers in the game and most of her command combo’s are impossible to punish and also cancel into specials/xray.
not necessarily the top 3, but they’re the characters that i’ve been playing with the most and they just feel a lot better than their suggested position in the tier list.
i also think that some characters are up there only because one a single move - for example ermac and his annoying super-hard-to-punish telekinesis launcher - which works as an amazing anti-air or punisher with great range.