Broken Tanya

So lately, I’ve been playing MKX on my PC a lot more. Why? In a word, Tanya. It’s one of those things where she’s pretty much the only new character I want to learn how to play, and the only way I can play her is to fire up my PC which has the Kombat Pack on it.

But there’s a big problem with that plan. The PC version, to put it like Takeda would, “You kinda suck, dude.”

I’m very tempted to make a youtube video, because of how well my setup can illustrate this point. I have dual monitors side by side. One of them can run the PC and the other can run the PS4 version.

So I pick Tanya and I que for a few ranked matches. Everything seems to be going fine -- until I get to the actual match. Then it’s laggy as hell, and I wind up dropping before we can finish the game. What shit is that? Just to prove that it isn’t the connection, I fire up the PS4 version and play a match straight through, just fine. How fucked up is that?

I’ve ever exited out of the PC version after the netcode is unplayable, fired up StarCraft 2 Legacy of the Void, and played a game of *that* without incident. So for all of you people asking if the PC version is fixed yet. While it largely depends on your hardware and connection, the short answer is that no, it’s not.

But I really hate the idea that to truly play the one new character I’m interested in, I’m  going to have to buy *her* twice.

One of the things that interests me in Tanya in the first place is what Sonic Fox tweeted about her. That she’s so broken. At first I didn’t quite understand. But now that I’ve seen him play a few games with her, I understand. The problem is two fold. It’s her teleport, and it’s her air fireballs.

Because she can throw two trajectories of fireballs while in the air, she’s got a *completely* different timing than any other character. It is an offensive move that can be used for defense. Because if you do a jump and your opponent is about to catch you with a fireball, you can also throw one of your own, which will change the timing on your landing and allow you to not get hit by their projectile while launching one of your own at the same time.

It’s the reason why I was so taken aback when I saw Sonic Fox play with Tonya for the first time. All he did was jump and teleport and shoot fireballs. Tanya may well have replaced Jacqui as the best projectile spammer in the game. True story.

But she also has that teleport. Which means she can similarly teleport through projectiles. Sometimes, if you’re a little too slow in MKX, you can know that you’re about to get hit with a projectile without being able to get out of the way. Not so with Tanya. She can go right through that shit, in the air or on the ground. It’s like she’s the one character who gets to fight in Matrix bullet time, while everyone else has to jump and run like mortals.

But the real reason why Sonic Fox think’s she’s broken, I think, is because of cornering. You know, when you trap your opponent in the corner and are able to hit him with way more combos than if he was able to backdash and escape? Well all Tanya needs is that wake up move, and bam, she just teleported out of the corner -- while putting you in it!

In another fighting game, where the *other* fighters had more variety, I could easily see Tanya fitting in. But with the ability to attack from the air *and* teleport wherever the fuck she wants, she really is  broken in that fighting her is inherently different from fighting *any* one else.

At the time of this writing, Predator has just dropped. Please don’t even get me started on him, because as oOoTrueoOo says, he’s got a mad game of constant pressure that seems to hard counter my main, Kotal Kahn.

And while I’m on the subject of Kotal Kahn, I remember a few people asking about why he gets the Kahn subtitle. Like how does it tie into Shao Kahn? Well I think I have an answer. Maybe the guy who plays Kotal Kahn, as in the RL human being who does the model for Kahn, maybe he’s the reason why the Kahn title exists. Like he’s obviously a big body builder type of dude. Maybe whoever he models for gets the Kahn title. Just a thought I had.