Major Mortal Kombat Revision, Part I

[DarkDragonMedeus]

As far as fatalities are concerned, would Sub-Zero's spine ripping feat still be legit? But anyway, I still think base Cassie and Sonya being 9-A via that steel breaking calc seems fine. Baraka and other fodder enemies can also just be 9-B perhaps.

 

[Antvasima]

Have you reached any consensus conclusions here yet?

 

[Hellbeast]

As far as fatalities are concerned, would Sub-Zero's spine ripping feat still be legit? But anyway, I still think base Cassie and Sonya being 9-A via that steel breaking calc seems fine. Baraka and other fodder enemies can also just be 9-B perhaps.

Yep

Sub canonically gets his spine torn by Scorp and I recall him doing it a few times

 

[MrKingOfNegativity]

The reboot timeline has an absurd amount of inconsistent power levels, retconned backstories, and incoherent storytelling (ex. sometimes hurting the past self hurts the future self, sometimes it doesn't. Whatever is convenient for the plot).

Backstories are wishy-washy. MK11 has the Crown of Jerrod in the Krypt stating that Shao Kahn beheaded Jerrod, D'Vorah claims to have killed Jerrod in an intro dialogue with Kitana, and Sindel was retconned into being the one who killed Jerrod in the DLC. Kabal's backstory in MK9 where he gained his super speed as a result of being healed in Outworld after being burned as a cop was obliterated in MK11, as it shows that a young Kabal already had super speed as a Black Dragon goon. So the broad strokes of the comic storyline should still be valid.

The difference here is that Aftermath nullifies pretty much the entirety of the MKX comics' events by declaring Havik alive. The entire plot of the comics centers around his machinations which ultimately lead to his death, so him being alive is basically a giant "No" to all of that.

Plus, the writer of the MKX comic confirms that it is canon as of MK11.

You may have missed it, but I addressed this earlier.

Cianciolo's statement is extremely recent, having come out within this exact month. Boon's statement is much older, and at the time of that statement, it was clear that they intended for the comics to be canon. (They were outright marketed as such back when they were still in production) These things can change over time. It's likely that they realized the comics introduce massive plot-holes when taken alongside the MKX and MK11 stories (though admittedly, those holes aren't that much worse than the ones Boon & Friends have introduced themselves) and decided they were better off just ignoring the comic series entirely.

And unfortunately, as much as I'd like to take Kittelsen's word, his statement is also much older (it's from last year), and his word has no real priority when compared to the lead story director for the studio.

Kittelsen's statement is from 2019. Cianciolo's statement is from this exact month, and comes after the above-mentioned change in which Havik is now alive. They've either changed their minds about the comics entirely, or they've chosen to damage-control the shit they've overwritten from that series. Either way, "Comics aren't canon" is our most recent statement on the matter by far.

I believe the best solution is to consider the high-end feats from gods and such to be environmental destruction that does not scale to their durability or physical strength.
Otherwise, we can try to make some vague and flawed tier list, and dismiss plenty of events/fights as outlier (such as Stryker, a NY cop who never heard of magic and other realms, beating up Kintaro who is more powerful than the undefeated Goro).

We already do the latter. (Or at least, we should be doing it)

It's not a perfect solution for how messy the NetherRealm canon's Story Modes are, but we have to remain aware of the fact that many of the player-controlled Story Mode fights really are the definition of PIS. Characters frequently beat people they shouldn't when the player is controlling them, then lose to people they shouldn't whenever the player is controlling someone else. By contrast, the cutscenes are (usually...) much more consistent with how each character is portrayed, so that's what should serve as our primary basis when it comes to our ratings.

Mind you, this is a case-by-case thing. Moments that are justified by the narrative (like Jax requiring the crown to fight Cetrion and Shang Tsung beating everyone other than Fire God Liu while wearing it) should be fine to use, as the story goes out of its way to explain why those moments happen the way they do.

I agree that arcade endings and intro dialogues are useless for power scaling, but they can reveal legit backstories and lore, such as Titans beside Kronika being teased.

This is also something I addressed before.

Just to add to this though, lore information presented in endings should be fine to use. Things like Shinnok being sealed for millions of years, the gods warring with each other, the Zaterrans being wiped out, et cetera are well-documented, so I'm not suggesting we throw all of that out.

I don't think we should toss out lore that is established in character endings, not unless it's contradicted elsewhere. My suggestion revolves around us not drawing feats and scaling from them, because that is one of our current problems.

While some fatalities can be exaggerated as a joke or cool factor; case in point: Smoke blowing up planet Earth with his bombs, almost all of the fatalities are reasonable. So I am not sure about categorically dismissing them.

Which is why I'm only suggesting that we dismiss the ones not reflected in the Story Modes. Though I wouldn't say that "almost all" of the Fatalities are reasonable; a very large number of them have the characters displaying powers or capabilities they never demonstrate elsewhere.

The elephant in the room would be Cetrion growing to the size of a planet:

Should this be dismissed or not?
Raiden is weaker inside Netherrealm since Earthrealm is where he belongs, and the Netherrealm is somewhere Cetrion shouldn't be in which might explain why she struggled with creating the bridge.

It doesn't work scaling-wise. Cetrion is beaten by either Jax or Jacqui (you get to choose which) while the latter is wearing Kronika's crown, which is something the plot explicitly spells out to us as being the only reason they had the power to do so. Fujin while wearing the crown was left drained after blasting open the gates to Kronika's Keep, a feat which (while impressive) is decidedly far below planetary.

Being weakened in the Netherrealm (which Fujin would be, under normal circumstances) wouldn't apply to someone fueled by the power of Kronika's crown, seeing as it's designed specifically to boost the wearer's might. Even if we assume Fujin was weakened beforehand, putting on the crown would make him at least as strong as Jax/Jacqui was while wearing it.

All of the above is on top of the fact that Cetrion never displays any planetary capabilities in the story itself, and the fact that Shinnok (who should be her equal) never does so either.

EDIT: I also don't recall a single instance of the story saying Cetrion is outright weaker in the Netherrealm. The latter being a place she "shouldn't be in" doesn't necessarily equate to that.

As far as fatalities are concerned, would Sub-Zero's spine ripping feat still be legit?

Yes, considering the Fatality itself is performed in-story at least once.

But anyway, I still think base Cassie and Sonya being 9-A via that steel breaking calc seems fine. Baraka and other fodder enemies can also just be 9-B perhaps.

1. What steel-breaking calc do we have from the series that's 9-A? Last I recall, the only calculated 9-A feat from MK involved old-school Test Your Might allowing you to smash diamond.
2. I would like to have someone calc the feats we see in the Story Modes before we go slapping new 9-B ratings onto everyone's profiles. I want to make sure we end up with something we can be positive on, and we're not going to get that by ballparking.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

The diamond calc may have been the feat I was thinking of; though Diamond destruction calcs are kinda iffy even if fiction doesn't realize how brittle they are IRL.

 

[ShadowWhoWalks]

Don't see how Havik being alive nullifies the entirety of the comics. Havik attained Type 2 immortality by being able to speak while decapitated; it is not far fetched for him to be later resurrected inside Chaosrealm.
Fujin is an immortal who was blown to pieces in Mythologies: Sub-Zero, but he returns alive and reformed.

---

Missed the reply about the tweet, though I found a follow-up tweet by Dominic where he confirms that some elements of the comics are still canon, specifically those that got referenced (ex. Kotal Kahn fighting Goro, intro dialogue about Skarlet getting her legs chopped off by Milenna, intro dialogue about Frost getting defeated by Cassie).



So considering the broad strokes as canon is viable even with Dominic's statement.

---

So how should the top-tiers get scaled in the Current Timeline? We should probably list the feats that are above Tier 9. There is:

• Cetrion creating a bridge in Netherrealm.
• Cetrion creating a fissure on the ground against Jacqui.
• The comics has Raiden creating a storm.
• The comics shows Tremor's earthquakes and it is stated that they can eventually destroy a city (though he later gets injured and defeated by a shotgun).
• The comics have a couple of explosions calc'd at 8-C.

---

Firearms are effective against fodder, so 9-B is too much. Most named characters getting 9-A is possible if we can identify something to calc.

 

[DMUA]

I mean if he's immortal he wouldn't have died in the first place

Unless him dying in the comics was just falling into an infinite pit or something equally ambiguous on the matter of him dying

 

[ShadowWhoWalks]

Basicly this:

Supposedly Shinnok can return from this, and Mythologies has Fujin among other gods exploding after their defeat.

Very little is known about Chaosrealm; as long as Havik is resurrected there is no conflict as MK11 only stated that Havik is alive, not that he didn't die.

 

[MrKingOfNegativity]

Don't see how Havik being alive nullifies the entirety of the comics. Havik attained Type 2 immortality by being able to speak while decapitated; it is not far fetched for him to be later resurrected inside Chaosrealm.

Quan Chi outright crushed his head under his boot, and the comics make no reference to Havik having regenerative or resurrective powers on that level.

Fujin is an immortal who was blown to pieces in Mythologies: Sub-Zero, but he returns alive and reformed.

Fujin is a demigod in the same vein as Raiden, and in that timeline, demigods could explicitly reform/regenerate themselves over time. We learn that much in Deception.

Missed the reply about the tweet, though I found a follow-up tweet by Dominic where he confirms that some elements of the comics are still canon, specifically those that got referenced (ex. Kotal Kahn fighting Goro, intro dialogue about Skarlet getting her legs chopped off by Milenna, intro dialogue about Frost getting defeated by Cassie).



So considering the broad strokes as canon is viable even with Dominic's statement.

This is my first time seeing this one, but his specific words here are "Elements from the comics which got included in Story Mode", which implies the intro dialogue references don't count.

Considering he follows this up with "That doesn't make the entirety of the comics canon.", I think it's safe to say that we only get to use whatever gets referenced in Story Mode. Which, if you ask me, is really annoying. But that's what we're dealing with, it seems.

So how should the top-tiers get scaled in the Current Timeline? We should probably list the feats that are above Tier 9. There is:

• Cetrion creating a bridge in Netherrealm.
• Cetrion creating a fissure on the ground against Jacqui.
• The comics has Raiden creating a storm.
• The comics shows Tremor's earthquakes and it is stated that they can eventually destroy a city (though he later gets injured and defeated by a shotgun).
• The comics have a couple of explosions calc'd at 8-C.

I personally think that Raiden's storm feats should be listed as Environmental Destruction. Not only does he never go around obliterating people with City level attacks normally, being able to generate thunderstorms in the comics is most likely just a byproduct of being a Thunder God, meaning it's not likely to be something anyone else can do.

Though again, what we can draw from the comics appears to be limited to what gets referenced in Story Mode, so that's moot anyway.

There are other feats which I can be used to gauge the absolute high-end, though. Fire God Liu creates an explosion that wipes out an army and melts Kronika's gate into almost nothing with a single blast, and Fujin amped by the crown blasts open the gate to Kronika's keep. These can serve as our highest ends to help regulate weaker characters' ratings, since it's made fairly clear to us that people like Raiden, Cassie, Jax, Sub-Zero, etc. aren't capable of outputting those levels of power normally.

Shinnok would obviously scale to Cetrion's feats, as would anyone else who's Elder God level or higher. Raiden and Fujin are much weaker (being demigods rather than full Elder Gods), but I can be convinced that the two of them scale as well if there's a good enough argument for that.

If Raiden and Fujin don't scale to Cetrion, then Raiden has his own feat of flying through a bridge, and Revenant Liu Kang has a feat of collapsing the ceiling that ended up incapacitating and nearly killing Sonya.

Most of the named characters (barring the absolute weakest ones) would scale to either Shang Tsung in base, Jacqui Briggs and her gauntlets, or similar.

Firearms are effective against fodder, so 9-B is too much. Most named characters getting 9-A is possible if we can identify something to calc.

I wouldn't say firearms affecting fodder means 9-B is too high for them. As mentioned before, it's been clarified semi-recently that piercing damage can mitigate a target's differences in durability to a degree against flesh targets, with guns being able to harm and kill real-life animals that are that strong/durable. I don't think it's likely that fodders will end up any higher than 9-B, though.

I do agree that 9-A is possible, but as I said before, I would like to get some solid numbers before we make any assumptions.

 

[Hellbeast]

Also once again

Havik could have been brought back by Kronika

We see the good guys from 9 got brought back as well despite not helping Kronika at all

"But wait, the Voic"

Which is for characters who spurn Kronika's offer. There's no evidence she even offered him anything.

And this ignores the possibility that the character who can survive insanely lethal attacks could survive another insanely lethal attack

 

[MrKingOfNegativity]

We see the good guys from 9 got brought back as well despite not helping Kronika at all

"But wait, the Voic"

Which is for characters who spurn Kronika's offer. There's evidence she even offered him anything.

The fact that she does, indeed, go to everyone else she's brought back (and plenty of others who were already present) regardless of their allegiance beforehand suggests quite strongly that she would have gone to Havik with an offer if she had resurrected him. The only people she never offers anything are those who ally with her enemies before she can get to them.

Point blank, if she had resurrected him, she would have made him an offer in order to get him on her side, because that's what she does. And if she'd made him an offer, there would only be two possible places he could end up; in Kronika's army after accepting the offer, or in the Void after rejecting it. He appears in neither.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

A 9-C handgun can pierce damage anyone up to 9-B, and a sniper rifle can pierce damage human sized characters up to 9-A. Piercing is also more likely to happen the bigger than target is, but any human sized character 8-C or above getting hurt by bullets is just plain bad writing. Basically the summary of it. But Mr King makes sense mostly.

 

[Ecstasy_Amphetamine]

I made a list of stuff related to this thread

 

[Eficiente]

I would love to go over that (I seem to agree with 90% of it, idk) but we should finish the stuff here first, including separating the profiles with the Original and 2011 timelines.

 

[Ecstasy_Amphetamine]

Tbh I don't know where to start, so I just made that list instead

 

[Eficiente]

About the separation of profiles by the timelines, I compare to Star Wars in the following way; There should be somewhat of a focus to not get this pushed for later, as that would give more work, and it actually doesn't matter to have the profiles all have an accurate, full list of their abilities, that bit can be dealt with later. Keeping this in mind I believe will help a lot.

 

[MrKingOfNegativity]

We can probably start by converting the profiles we currently have into Current Timeline/NetherRealm canon profiles. We'll have to delete and/or replace the outdated information and images from them while doing so, but from there, we can make our other necessary changes much more easily. This should be the part of the revision where we purge the profiles of character ending feats and all of that "Restricted/Unrestricted" nonsense, both of which are changes we seem to universally agree on.

After that comes the rescaling and tiering adjustments. I'll be collecting all of the feats I can remember later tonight and sending them to a certain calc member, so that the process of rewriting the characters' statistics will simply be a matter of applying his new calcs to the pages. We can probably add new powers/abilities shortly after.

Once all of the above is done, we can make new profiles for the Original/Midway Timeline. That most likely will require a different revision though, since the Midway canon comes with its own set of...well, a lot of things. It's definitely going to need a lot of separate attention and care, that's for sure.

 

[Hellbeast]

Oh definitely

I know Matt has big upgrades in mind

@Ecstasy_Amphetamine Noob’s thing would just be BFR

Fire God Liu night also have Acausality since he seemed unfazed by his previous self having broken legs (which affected Revenant Liu)

 

[DMUA]

And it's stayed in his mind for like, over a year so I'd just burn that bridge when it actually arrives

 

[Hellbeast]

Oh I know lol (TBH I have issues with his plans)

@Ecstasy_Amphetamine Do we have a height for Raiden canonically? I'm hearing 7 foot but he doesn't seem that tall in the NRS timeline

 

[Ecstasy_Amphetamine]

Oh I know lol (TBH I have issues with his plans)

@Ecstasy_Amphetamine Do we have a height for Raiden canonically? I'm hearing 7 foot but he doesn't seem that tall in the NRS timeline

Actually the NRS timeline is the only one where we actually see Raiden being taller than most characters, except in MK9. In MKX he was just as tall as the Predator.

 

[Hellbeast]

Ah I see

Apparently he's 6;7 in MK9

 

[Ecstasy_Amphetamine]

Ah I see

Apparently he's 6;7 in MK9

I'm not sure how you got that but I do recall him being the same height as the male characters in MK9

 

[Hellbeast]

Here

 

[Ecstasy_Amphetamine]

Idk about using that site as info, it's an old website from 2011 with outdated info.

 

[Hellbeast]

That is fair, I guess we could pixel scale?

 

[Ecstasy_Amphetamine]

That is fair, I guess we could pixel scale?

Yes, I think we can do that. Just don't use MK9's characters as a height reference lol

 

[Hellbeast]

Oh lol (We'd have to use average human heights right?)

 

[Ecstasy_Amphetamine]

Maybe? I guess we just have to see when we get an actual height chart or something...

 

[Hellbeast]

Yeah but knowing NRS it will be inconsistent as hell

 

[Ecstasy_Amphetamine]

Yeah but knowing NRS it will be inconsistent as hell

Lol, if there's anything they're actually consistent with, it's the height of the characters since MKX.

 

[Hellbeast]

Eh possibly (KI Spoiled me with the vast range of heights)

That reminds me, am I the only one who thinks we shoukld edit Geras

He has just as many showings of losing to lower tiers as fighting Raiden and co (It doesn't help an amped Geras got clapped by Raiden and Shao Kahn)

 

[MrKingOfNegativity]

Geras is iffy, but I definitely believe he's not as on-par with Raiden & such as he's been hyped up to be. His amped self has a good showing of stopping one of Raiden's attacks and throwing him into a wall, but other than that, cutscenes show him being impaled by a forklift of all things as well as taking injuries from the likes of Shang Tsung and Kung Lao. The only reason he isn't killed long before MK11's endgame can happen is because of his ridiculous regenerative ability.

He should definitely scale a good bit higher than people like Johnny (in base), Sonya or Baraka, but he's not nearly as powerful as his trailers implied he would be.

 

[Antvasima]

I think that MrKing's ideas seem to make sense. Thank you for helping out.

 

[DMUA]

His amped self has a good showing of stopping one of Raiden's attacks and throwing him into a wall, but other than that, cutscenes show him being impaled by a forklift of all things as well as taking injuries from the likes of Shang Tsung and Kung Lao.

I haven't seen aftermath but, wasn't the forklift impalement one of his deaths before he got powered up enough to be on Raiden's level?

 

[MrKingOfNegativity]

I haven't seen aftermath but, wasn't the forklift impalement one of his deaths before he got powered up enough to be on Raiden's level?

The same version of him that was impaled by a forklift is the one who was fighting (and at one point briefly wins against) Fujin and Shang Tsung in a cutscene after being shot through a pillar.

By the same token, the same Geras that caught Raiden in the middle of an attack is the one who was legitimately disabled by having giant chains fall on him.

This is why I said Geras is iffy. He repeatedly ping-pongs between being really weak and being really strong.

 

[ThisThingisReallyBroken]

repeatedly ping-pongs between being really weak and being really strong.

this applies to a lot of characters sadly in MK

 

[MrKingOfNegativity]

this applies to a lot of characters sadly in MK

I am aware, but it applies to him more than most, since this is the case even if you throw out player-driven Story Mode battles.

The reason I say he should be stronger than most is because, for all of his bad showings, most of his appearances still suggest that he's lot stronger than people like Baraka, and that his loss to Sonya is PIS.

On the other hand, I say he's not quite as on-par with Raiden and such as most people were led to believe because he ultimately needed an amp to fight the latter.

 

[Antvasima]

I have to unsubscribe from this thread due to time constraints. You can notify me later via my message wall if you need my help after you have reached a conclusion. Alternately, a staff member can use the @Username notification system.

 

[Hellbeast]

I am aware, but it applies to him more than most, since this is the case even if you throw out player-driven Story Mode battles.

The reason I say he should be stronger than most is because, for all of his bad showings, most of his appearances still suggest that he's lot stronger than people like Baraka, and that his loss to Sonya is PIS.

On the other hand, I say he's not quite as on-par with Raiden and such as most people were led to believe because he ultimately needed an amp to fight the latter.

Also even with said amp he got clapped by Shao or Sindel