Fatal Blow mechanic.

[El mofongo]

So in case you didn't know if you press X/Square during Fatal Blows you can increase or decrease its damage (up to 10 damage I believe). An icon of a shield will appear if you successfully reduced its damage while you're getting hit by the Fatal Blow and a skull will appear vice versa. Now the timing is key because if you press the button with perfect timing you get a different icon suggesting you got maximum damage increase or negation. In my experience just mashing the button gets you this result frequently enough where attempting single precise presses is not as beneficial.

My main point is that this mechanic can sometimes (not always) decide life and death. It's omission from the tutorial is odd and I feel kinda scrubby for mashing on the pad trying to get the effect. You guys master this yet without mashing?

 

[Cheesus]

I wonder how this works with a turbo controller. Ya I hate that it was not in the tutorial. Seems very few people know about it.

 

[GhosT]

I need a button to take a few % off my health bar. Its tiresome getting a lifelead only to give my opponent the advantage and more options lol. Gonna try the thing your talking about and see how much damage it takes off

 

[El mofongo]

So I went into practice mode. As Sub-Zero I can get 360 off my Fatal Blow if I try real hard to time it perfectly with the hits. This is an increase of 20 damage which is good. When I mash on the button I get like 342 to 343 on average. I plugged in my fight stick and switched on the turbo and its worse than mashing.

 

[JINNOCIDE]

This mechanic saved my round a couple times. It seems each icon has 3 versions.

The defense is just the shield, the shield with an aura around it and the shield with 3 bars around it.

The offensive is just a red skull I believe and each version is the skull torn in a half further and further.