Strategy - Scorpion Slips' Scorpion Assesement

Zaphie · Aug 12, 2015

I'm agree with most of your opinion.
But overall of inferno is being too generous IMO.
Inferno's overall almost equal to hellfire?
I don't think so.
Inferno's footsie tools are terrible.
Can he stop opponents from running/jumping in?
Probably he can't.
When opponents jumping in, Inferno's only option is D2.
Minions are too slow and super punishable, so he can't use them in close range.
Therefore, he can not punish running opponent easily, either.
Of course it's inferno's characteristic.
But inferno has weak point in close range, so he has to some better advantages than other variations.
Is he has anything better than hellfire?
I don't think so...
Zoning? His zoning easily beaten by running. And very risky. Spear can punish running opponent, but it's not safe either.
Combo damage? He had the best meterless combo damage before the patch, but not now.
Anti Zoning? Probably yes. His low Demon is good. But not perfect.
So, I think inferno needs some buff.
But, maybe it will not happen.
Many people still hate scorpion, especially inferno.

Slips said:
I wish f4 was faster in Inferno and Hellfire, but highly unlikely that would happen. Maybe f2 will do more damage and be safer in patches, but again, who knows.

I agree with that.
He doesn't have good mixed up now.
He has a good throw, but it's not enough.
F4 must be faster.
Even if only 3 frame faster, it can be helpful.

P.S. I'm not a native speaker. I'm sorry for my terrible sentence.

Slips · Aug 12, 2015

Rip Torn said:
I don't think throw can replace f2. f2 has more range and crushes lows while beating neutral ducking. It's also safe.

And what about hellfire (the special), fireballs and minions. Surely zoning has some value in the offensive category?

f2 is vulnerable to people mashing d1 since he can get float juggled. It might beat d3's and d4's but there's a price for that. At least with throw if you get knocked out by a poke you aren't juggled.

hellfire and minions were accounted for in the zoning categories.

1man3letters · Aug 12, 2015

great write up slips, no up playing or down playing.
just straight up information,
good stuff

UsedForGlue said:
I think scorpion doesn't need much to make Ninjitsu threatening.

If his normal spear could be enhanced to max out his damage better without first using the MB version, and having MB spear armoured and mid, that would sort the character out big time.

Takedown shouldn't have that weird knockdown animation, it should be more like any other low tackle or slide in the MKX, it should allow scorpion to do his thing once it hits.

214 (I believe it's 214?) shouldn't be negative, it should be 0 or -3 with pushback, allowing for the F2/B2 game to exist in an instant.

He has it there, but I feel one final buff session from NRS could really make him excellent, also Hell fire should be a move for Ninjitsu, (Just like Ice Blast in Grandmaster and Cryo) making the opponent more edgy, or feel the need to jump and maybe not turtle so much would play right into the variation.

He is so close to being perfect.

totally agree with the MB spear suggestion.

adding hellfire to ninjitsu would be a god send and i would def use that variation more if that happened,
switching from hellfire i dont like that my only option to do damage on a full screen opponent is random spear or telle

Matix218 · Aug 12, 2015

Gito666 said:
Great write-up, Slips! I could see ninjitsu being his best variation now, but i still feel more comfortable with Hellfire. The unblockable hellfire is great for catching people off guard, then getting them annoyed, leading to more jumping on their part, which scorp can obviously take advantage of with jump 3 and teleport.

Also, in the neutral while at full screen, i tend to fbc to backdash, just to build a bit of meter. Between that, hellfires, flame auras, and blockstrings, i feel like hellfire builds meter MUCH better than ninjitsu.

Just my opinions and playstyle!

I know I'm a nobody, but I'll be using scorpion exclusively at Summer Jam

Ill be rooting for you man! Good luck

Matix218 · Aug 12, 2015

Zaphie said:
I'm agree with most of your opinion.
But overall of inferno is being too generous IMO.
Inferno's overall almost equal to hellfire?
I don't think so.
Inferno's footsie tools are terrible.
Can he stop opponents from running/jumping in?
Probably he can't.
When opponents jumping in, Inferno's only option is D2.
Minions are too slow and super punishable, so he can't use them in close range.
Therefore, he can not punish running opponent easily, either.
Of course it's inferno's characteristic.
But inferno has weak point in close range, so he has to some better advantages than other variations.
Is he has anything better than hellfire?
I don't think so...
Zoning? His zoning easily beaten by running. And very risky. Spear can punish running opponent, but it's not safe either.
Combo damage? He had the best meterless combo damage before the patch, but not now.
Anti Zoning? Probably yes. His low Demon is good. But not perfect.
So, I think inferno needs some buff.
But, maybe it will not happen.
Many people still hate scorpion, especially inferno.

I agree with that.
He doesn't have good mixed up now.
He has a good throw, but it's not enough.
F4 must be faster.
Even if only 3 frame faster, it can be helpful.

P.S. I'm not a native speaker. I'm sorry for my terrible sentence.

Inferno can stop people from running in if he has meter, ex low minion catches people running. But I dont disagree with your other points

Scoot Magee · Aug 12, 2015

@Slips I've been messing with F3 xx flame aura and F3 FBC as a way to give incentive to not poke out of FBC pressure. I feel this really helps Scorpions offense in Hellfire when mixed with grabs b3, f4 and chip damage. The reason I stress F3 is because it leaves good enough advantage that it allows you to press offense with they don't poke out at the earliest moment, if they do poke out at the earliest moment they risk eating flame aura. Armor is the only option that covers both scenarios.

Do you think this is viable and is a valid reason to think hellfire's offense could be slightly better than ninjitsu's? I know Ninjitsu has great footsies and a ton of setups for f2 but offense pretty much ends when a f2 is blocked.

STRYKIE · Aug 12, 2015

I like this assessment. I would personally notch Hellfire's whiff punishment up a point though due to the presence of Flame Aura. Yes it's usually preemptive and you only have access to it every 7 seconds barring being hit, but it does make people mighty apprehensive about running in and checking with an advancing string, because it they do, that's a damn long time that they lack the stamina to break and will most likely be dealing with Hellfire's pressure afterwards.

But yeah, it's safe to say by now that, if you're not brushing up on Ninjutsu, you're falling behind.

UsedForGlue said:
I think scorpion doesn't need much to make Ninjitsu threatening.

If his normal spear could be enhanced to max out his damage better without first using the MB version, and having MB spear armoured and mid, that would sort the character out big time.

Takedown shouldn't have that weird knockdown animation, it should be more like any other low tackle or slide in the MKX, it should allow scorpion to do his thing once it hits.

214 (I believe it's 214?) shouldn't be negative, it should be 0 or -3 with pushback, allowing for the F2/B2 game to exist in an instant.

He has it there, but I feel one final buff session from NRS could really make him excellent, also Hell fire should be a move for Ninjitsu, (Just like Ice Blast in Grandmaster and Cryo) making the opponent more edgy, or feel the need to jump and maybe not turtle so much would play right into the variation.

He is so close to being perfect.

About the 214 thing in Ninjutsu, you can somewhat cover that base with standing 4, same startup, better forward hitbox, knocks back quite a bit and it's plus 2 on block. Besides, reducing the negativity of 214 might inadvertently give him true blockstrings in Hellfire again lol.

I agree with the flaming spear MB option potentially being made a bit more of an independent move, we could give the armor to that instead of having to sacrifice the safety of regular EX Spear and leaving Inferno with no safe mixup options. I doubt NRS would be bothered to go through with it though.

PunkMafia83 · Aug 12, 2015

@JTB123

Juggs · Aug 12, 2015

How good Scorpion is depends on the match-ups, just like any other character. So, what are his bad MU's?

Matix218 · Aug 12, 2015

I think in general scorpion struggles against high pressure rushdown characters like lao, cassie, etc. He does not have any solid "get off me" armor move that is reliable like sub zeros ex db1 against hi pressure characters. Even though ninjitsu is his strongest variation IMO he has an even harder time keeping ultra rushdown characters out due to lack of projectiles or hell fire so basically you are relegated to utilizing perfect spacing for f2 or they essentially get in almost for free. The upside is that scorpion gets hella momentum in ninjitsu off of any hit because you can restand or go for hard knockdown which means they have to respect his strong armor breaking oki with f2 and b4

Given how effective cassies flip kick is on wakeup and her pressure I would guess that she may be a bad matchup for scorp. I may be wrong though I have limited offline experience against cassie

Scoot Magee · Aug 12, 2015

@UsedForGlue Scorpions takedown is advantage on hit unlike what the frame data says. I think it's around +5 as apposed to -5. You're free to press the advantage as long as you are wary of wake ups. Being left right on top of them helps the situation.

Eddy Wang · Aug 12, 2015

Juggs said:
How good Scorpion is depends on the match-ups, just like any other character. So, what are his bad MU's?

He is probably the one with the most even MUs, nothing way too overwhelming or way too underpowered.

In order to play Scorpion at the highest level, you have to dominate his neutral, which is the strongest point of scorpion, if you have a good neutral with him, you're basically set to go.

STRYKIE · Aug 12, 2015

Scoot Magee said:
@UsedForGlue Scorpions takedown is advantage on hit unlike what the frame data says. I think it's around +5 as apposed to -5. You're free to press the advantage as long as you are wary of wake ups. Being left right on top of them helps the situation.

That's why it says it's negative on hit though, they can still wake up before you recover. Albeit there's nothing that can directly punish you anymore.

I also tested this with Erron's command grab, they can wake up 2 frames before you can recover. If they don't then you're at slight advantage.

Matix218 said:
I think in general scorpion struggles against high pressure rushdown characters like lao, cassie, etc. He does not have any solid "get off me" armor move that is reliable like sub zeros ex db1 against hi pressure characters. Even though ninjitsu is his strongest variation IMO he has an even harder time keeping ultra rushdown characters out due to lack of projectiles or hell fire so basically you are relegated to utilizing perfect spacing for f2 or they essentially get in almost for free. The upside is that scorpion gets hella momentum in ninjitsu off of any hit because you can restand or go for hard knockdown which means they have to respect his strong armor breaking oki with f2 and b4

Given how effective cassies flip kick is on wakeup and her pressure I would guess that she may be a bad matchup for scorp. I may be wrong though I have limited offline experience against cassie

This isn't a prisoner of the moment reaction to my loss to Aixy at VSF but yeah, I think we all agree Cassie is bad for Scorp. Ninjutsu just helps to simmer rather than rectify the problems in the matchup.

UsedForGlue · Aug 12, 2015

Scoot Magee said:
@UsedForGlue Scorpions takedown is advantage on hit unlike what the frame data says. I think it's around +5 as apposed to -5. You're free to press the advantage as long as you are wary of wake ups. Being left right on top of them helps the situation.

Yea, but its fucking weird. Why don't you get a traditional knockdown situation, it has this strange instant recovery animation...

Its already unsafe, so the reward should be big. He should have way more advantage and visibly have the opponent on the ground, like Sub Zero, or Erron Black.

OutworldKeith · Aug 12, 2015

Juggs said:
What are his bad MU's?

Jax, Cassie, KL off the top of my head.

Ze Dingo · Aug 12, 2015

Juggs said:
How good Scorpion is depends on the match-ups, just like any other character. So, what are his bad MU's?

I think his bad MUs are Kung Lao, Cassie, Jax, Erron Black and maybe even Liu Kang.

Matix218 · Aug 12, 2015

Ze Dingo said:
I think his bad MUs are Kung Lao, Cassie, Jax, Erron Black and maybe even Liu Kang.

Yeah I could see liu being a 4-6. I agree with cassie, kung lao and jax as well. Why do you find erron black to be a bad matchup? I personally have never played a good erron black offline so I cannot comment on it, just curious as to why he gives scorp issues.

Krabman · Aug 12, 2015

I love Ninjitsu I think it's really good. Like someone else posted you really have to utilize throws because once you excel at spacing and keeping opponents wary of your f2 and b2 it's throw city. His knockdown string always catches people off guard after his standing reset when you mix grab and f4, but I usually go for hard knock down because his f2 and b4 is so good on wake up I'm usually never concerned about armor.

Slips · Aug 12, 2015

Scoot Magee said:
@Slips I've been messing with F3 xx flame aura and F3 FBC as a way to give incentive to not poke out of FBC pressure. I feel this really helps Scorpions offense in Hellfire when mixed with grabs b3, f4 and chip damage. The reason I stress F3 is because it leaves good enough advantage that it allows you to press offense with they don't poke out at the earliest moment, if they do poke out at the earliest moment they risk eating flame aura. Armor is the only option that covers both scenarios.

Do you think this is viable and is a valid reason to think hellfire's offense could be slightly better than ninjitsu's? I know Ninjitsu has great footsies and a ton of setups for f2 but offense pretty much ends when a f2 is blocked.

I don't know, sounds like a lot of risk for fighting for a few percent of damage. Flame Aura is punishable on block, and if you go for pressure they can poke out or armor. The risk/reward doesn't add up to me. However, I could see using it if they don't have a bar for armor maybe.

Something that I thought would be cool if it was consistent was during his flame aura (after activation) he can blow up wake-up attacks by letting the flame absorb a hit of armor and then his attack could break it, but it's wildly inconsistent.

Scoot Magee · Aug 12, 2015

Slips said:
I don't know, sounds like a lot of risk for fighting for a few percent of damage. Flame Aura is punishable on block, and if you go for pressure they can poke out or armor. The risk/reward doesn't add up to me. However, I could see using it if they don't have a bar for armor maybe.

Something that I thought would be cool if it was consistent was during his flame aura (after activation) he can blow up wake-up attacks by letting the flame absorb a hit of armor and then his attack could break it, but it's wildly inconsistent.

The thing is the flame aura actually whiffs in the situations I've mentioned so it's a lot harder to punish than you think. On block flame aura gets blown up. I should also note that on stand block there's more push back on strings. If crouch blocking some strings will lead to flame aura being blocked as apposed to whiffing. 214 FBC on crouch block makes it so that if they even let go of block they'll get hit. If they hold block it will whiff most of the time.

As far as blowing up wake up attacks yeah it's totally inconsistent.

Scoot Magee · Aug 12, 2015

Also @Slips at times after 214 flame aura it wont hit on block until the very last moment which leaves it totally safe. If they even let go of block at all they'll eat the flame aura. Obviously this depends on character size, max or close range of string and etc but this has been working for me in a lot of match ups.

Slips · Aug 12, 2015

STRYKIE said:
That's why it says it's negative on hit though, they can still wake up before you recover. Albeit there's nothing that can directly punish you anymore.

I also tested this with Erron's command grab, they can wake up 2 frames before you can recover. If they don't then you're at slight advantage.

Interesting. You might be right about this. I think in Injustice too you could do a wakeup attack to cancel your getup animation and maybe that's why it says Scorp is at negative but when people don't wakeup Scorp feels he's positive.

I'm not sure about bad mu's for Scorp. Hellfire and Inferno cannot fight everyone comfortably for sure. Especially with f2 being so negative on block and b32f2 being punishable by a lot of the cast. Those variations are supposed to amplify his overhead/low 50/50 but in the end it's really not very good so you end up throwing anyway.

It will be even worse if the option selects go away.

But at the same time, like @Scoot Magee said, some characters can punish Scorp's f2 in Ninjitsu as well, but I haven't played anyone that really does this yet. MIT might now be playing Scorp at all for a reason.

RiBBz22 · Aug 12, 2015

Ninjutsu is very good, extremely simple...and effective... but IMO Hellfire still has the most to offer. Canceling into fireball to make things safe and open up a new meta are pretty huge.

Slips · Aug 12, 2015

Scoot Magee said:
The thing is the flame aura actually whiffs in the situations I've mentioned so it's a lot harder to punish than you think. On block flame aura gets blown up. I should also note that on stand block there's more push back on strings. If crouch blocking some strings will lead to flame aura being blocked as apposed to whiffing. 214 FBC on crouch block makes it so that if they even let go of block they'll get hit. If they hold block it will whiff most of the time.

As far as blowing up wake up attacks yeah it's totally inconsistent.

I guess but how much chip damage is Scorpion really doing when Flame Aura isn't active? 214 x3 is 8.25% damage. If your opponent is smart they won't even care about his pressure. f2 does 9% with a knockdown.

Personally, I'd just take my 50/50 then risk 2 opportunity's of getting my pressure armored out of for a few lousy percents of damage. What you're doing makes sense but mathmatically seems more like a shenanigan more than something super solid for Hellfire to fall back on.

Scoot Magee · Aug 12, 2015

Slips said:
I guess but how much chip damage is Scorpion really doing when Flame Aura isn't active? 214 x3 is 8.25% damage. If your opponent is smart they won't even care about his pressure. f2 does 9% with a knockdown.

Personally, I'd just take my 50/50 then risk 2 opportunity's of getting my pressure armored out of for a few lousy percents of damage. What you're doing makes sense but mathmatically seems more like a shenanigan more than something super solid for Hellfire to fall back on.

Yeah it usually comes down to me setting up a throw but it helps to add a little chip and extra meter. Also its kinda safe to just cancel into flame aura at any point ehich can set you at good range for footsies if they dont bite. Also at least a raw d4 can be canceled into flame aura pretty safely to stop any retaliation during footsies.

Strategy - Scorpion Slips' Scorpion Assesement

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