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Still waiting on some evaluations, so I figured I might as well clean up some internal scaling for the Netherrealm side of Mortal Kombat.
Revision 1: Lightning vs Bullets
Much like with the Midway timeline, there isn't really any indication of characters' combat speeds being greater than one another. Raiden is already scaled to lightning blocking (thanks to Shinnok), who has fought lower tiers like Sonya, Shang Tsung all of the revenants multiple times, Sonya and Cage together could keep up with Shinnok (with Cage actually landing hits) and Sonya herself could defeat Bi-Han, which his profile acknowledges that Mythologies: Sub-Zero is still considered canon where he could outmaneuver Shinnok. As accepted, Liu Kang could fight Raiden (in every timeline apparently), and Sheeva had a prolonged fight with Kang. There are more instances of this, of course.
It's clear that there isn't a hard distinction between tier of speed. I personally think this is grounds for upgrading all the characters to Shinnok's lightning blocking. But for transparency, I will acknowledge the antifeats, chiefly regarding bullets:
A vast majority of fight scenes involving bullets consist of villains with "stormtrooper aim", without clear indications of if the bullets would blitz them otherwise. We do see bullets blitz fodder grunts that are easily killed by main characters, but we do have numerous instances of characters rather easily blocking or dodging bullets, two of them have calcs actually. The biggest source of antifeats is Sonya's chapter in MK11, although Erron's guns blitzing Johnny can be chalked up to him being too wounded and tired to dodge, Kano's minigun does heavily blitz Cassie. Earlier, in Cage's chapter, a young Cage is blitzed by a glancing shot (although it's possible that he didn't notice that specific bullet given his inexperience in fire fights and his sunglasses).
Ultimately, bullets aren't usually depicted as blitzing main characters, the ambiguity with the "stormtrooper aim" doesn't make for consistent anti-feats against lightning dodging.
Revision 2: Gotcha a Scan For Jax's Arms
The link for the "twice as strong" statement is defunct, luckily it's on the Wayback Machine. I propose we slightly revise it's application, Jax without his cyber arms showed relativity to the rest of the cast, and to avoid circular scaling, the "twice as strong" should only apply to his arms and not his physicality in general. As to acknowledge that his arms are stronger than himself, but to also explain why other characters can still fight him well after the upgrade.
It'll read "9-A physically, 9-A+ with cyber arms", since he'd be twice as strong as Scorpion's 0.0867 ton teleport, or 0.174 tons of TNT, which is greater than the (0.25 + 0.05)/2 = 0.15 tons of TNT baseline for 9-A+.
Revision 3: Twindel, Fraud Kahn, and Liu Kang
This one's more complicated, let's start with Liu Kang as he's the key to all of this:
Currently, he's scales directly to Raiden, which is find as he's fought him consistently. The problem is that he only fights him when enraged, sometimes with his fire-engulfed fist, and he doesn't demonstrate quite so much superiority to the rest of the cast when not enraged. As seen above, he has an prolonged fight with Sheeva, Kitana still believed she could beat him after witnessing his fight with Ermac (implying he didn't overwhelmingly win against him), Raiden implies that Kang could conceivably lose to Goro and Tsung clearly believes that to be the case. We see later than an enraged Liu Kang left Shao Kahn beaten and bloodied without a scratch on him (which the game does bother to depict when warranted). MK11 depicts Liu Kang as much less overwhelmingly superior to Kahn in their brief scuffle after the timequake, and in Aftermath Kahn manages to defeat an non-enraged Kang. This clearly shows that the pumped-up, angry Liu Kang that fights Raiden and runs through Kahn like paper isn't the same Liu Kang that's level headed and normal. Keep in mind, I'm not saying he's not superior to most of the cast normally, I am saying that it's not overwhelmingly so unlike when enraged. Much like hisinfinitely cooler Midway counterpart, he should be granted a separate rating for his enraged self than his normal self.
Regarding his Fire God self, he should be similarly revised. We see directly that Liu Kang struggled against Kronika's White Revenants, nearly losing to them, until he tapped into Earthrealm's Jinsei. Afterwards, he manages to defeat them despite trying to persuade them not to fight, indicating previously absent superiority. So what's the revision? Simple, he'll be stronger than Fujin's "High 8-C+" rating as the god (while amped by the Crown) was drained in performing a feat Kang performed casually while only channeling fire without the Jinsei effects , and recieve the "8-A" rating with the Jinsei's power. He performs the 8-A feat while visually channeling his lightning powers in an identical way he does later when channeling the Jinsei. (Kronika remains unchanged)
With that out of the way, let's talk about Shao Kahn and """"""""Sindel"""""""": obviously Kahn's scaling must be addressed with the Liu Kang revision, and Sindel's profile was never revised since the MKX comics were deemed non-canon.
Starting with Sindel, her profile is split into a "Base/Revenant" and "Soul-Amped" key, however we've never seen a base Sindel in the Netherrealm timeline, Shang Tsung confirms that she actually retained her strength that killed most of Earthrealm's heroes as a revenant. Therefore, a more accurate listing of keys would be "Human" and "Revenant", where the revenant key will have the same established variable power level as the other revenants. As her human self, she should massively upscale from Jax's 9-A+ from above because she directly stopped punches from his cyber arms and easily overpowered the other heroes. This would also be reflected as an upgrade for Nightwolf's sacrificial move, for killing this Sindel.
Now for Kahn, his profile's second "Amped by Souls" key is wrong, since Nightwolf explicitly prevented the Soulnado from reaching the potency Raiden foresaw. The key should actually be called "Merging Earthrealm", since that's what is increasing his power. Now, for his tier, he's obviously superior to anyone in Outworld during MK9 (MK11 Kitana blinding him not withstanding), and Aftermath displays both him and Sindel being able to fight the same combatants with similar ease. But most importantly, both of them demonstrated superiority to the individual White Revenants, which would allow them to scale to "non-Jinsei" Fire God Liu Kang's High 8-C+ rating... if MK9 didn't exist. As demonstrated in Liu Kang's section, and enraged Liu Kang is superior to base Shao Kahn but is mostly equal to Raiden, and Fujin's profile acknowledges him being comparable to Raiden without the Crown.
So it's a contradiction for Kahn and Sindel to be this strong, but the anti-feats are about as consistent as the feats, so I propose both base Kahn and Sindel be rated as "at least 9-A+, possibly High 8-C+" via upscaling Jax (Kahn should for relativity to Sindel) and potentially upscaling Fujin. Nightwolf's sacrificial move should get the same treatment.
For "Merging Earthrealm" Kahn, he should upscale individual Elder Gods, as the combined might of them took time to wear him down and kill him. This is where Cetrion comes in. Firstly, her bridge creation feat isn't really a feat of strength, at least not for GPE, as the strain on Cetrion is her keeping the bridge in existence, not lifting it up. It's a limit to creation magic, not really attack potency or lifting strength. I bring this up because Cetrion should scale to a Jinsei Fire God Liu Kang, as despite the temporal Armageddon weakening all the Elder Gods, she explicitly matched Liu Kang "step-for-step" despite neither wanting to fight the other. Therefore, Cetrion should be upgraded to 8-A and this amped Shao Kahn should scale to the same.
One last thing: since Aftermath Shang Tsung clearly gains in strength overtime the more power he absorbs from titans, gods and wannabe emperors/empresses alike, he should get "at least High 8-C+, up to 8-A with soul absorption" tiering to reflect his power growth, since even in his initial state with the Crown he was able to easily fight Raiden.
That is all.
Edit: Can't believe I almost forgot this, since the Jinsei's power allows for Liu Kang's 8-A feat, Corrupted Shinnok should be 8-A too for absorbing the power of the Jinsei, and Cassie Cage should scale with her green power thing.
Revision 1: Lightning vs Bullets
Much like with the Midway timeline, there isn't really any indication of characters' combat speeds being greater than one another. Raiden is already scaled to lightning blocking (thanks to Shinnok), who has fought lower tiers like Sonya, Shang Tsung all of the revenants multiple times, Sonya and Cage together could keep up with Shinnok (with Cage actually landing hits) and Sonya herself could defeat Bi-Han, which his profile acknowledges that Mythologies: Sub-Zero is still considered canon where he could outmaneuver Shinnok. As accepted, Liu Kang could fight Raiden (in every timeline apparently), and Sheeva had a prolonged fight with Kang. There are more instances of this, of course.
It's clear that there isn't a hard distinction between tier of speed. I personally think this is grounds for upgrading all the characters to Shinnok's lightning blocking. But for transparency, I will acknowledge the antifeats, chiefly regarding bullets:
A vast majority of fight scenes involving bullets consist of villains with "stormtrooper aim", without clear indications of if the bullets would blitz them otherwise. We do see bullets blitz fodder grunts that are easily killed by main characters, but we do have numerous instances of characters rather easily blocking or dodging bullets, two of them have calcs actually. The biggest source of antifeats is Sonya's chapter in MK11, although Erron's guns blitzing Johnny can be chalked up to him being too wounded and tired to dodge, Kano's minigun does heavily blitz Cassie. Earlier, in Cage's chapter, a young Cage is blitzed by a glancing shot (although it's possible that he didn't notice that specific bullet given his inexperience in fire fights and his sunglasses).
Ultimately, bullets aren't usually depicted as blitzing main characters, the ambiguity with the "stormtrooper aim" doesn't make for consistent anti-feats against lightning dodging.
Revision 2: Gotcha a Scan For Jax's Arms
The link for the "twice as strong" statement is defunct, luckily it's on the Wayback Machine. I propose we slightly revise it's application, Jax without his cyber arms showed relativity to the rest of the cast, and to avoid circular scaling, the "twice as strong" should only apply to his arms and not his physicality in general. As to acknowledge that his arms are stronger than himself, but to also explain why other characters can still fight him well after the upgrade.
It'll read "9-A physically, 9-A+ with cyber arms", since he'd be twice as strong as Scorpion's 0.0867 ton teleport, or 0.174 tons of TNT, which is greater than the (0.25 + 0.05)/2 = 0.15 tons of TNT baseline for 9-A+.
Revision 3: Twindel, Fraud Kahn, and Liu Kang
This one's more complicated, let's start with Liu Kang as he's the key to all of this:
Currently, he's scales directly to Raiden, which is find as he's fought him consistently. The problem is that he only fights him when enraged, sometimes with his fire-engulfed fist, and he doesn't demonstrate quite so much superiority to the rest of the cast when not enraged. As seen above, he has an prolonged fight with Sheeva, Kitana still believed she could beat him after witnessing his fight with Ermac (implying he didn't overwhelmingly win against him), Raiden implies that Kang could conceivably lose to Goro and Tsung clearly believes that to be the case. We see later than an enraged Liu Kang left Shao Kahn beaten and bloodied without a scratch on him (which the game does bother to depict when warranted). MK11 depicts Liu Kang as much less overwhelmingly superior to Kahn in their brief scuffle after the timequake, and in Aftermath Kahn manages to defeat an non-enraged Kang. This clearly shows that the pumped-up, angry Liu Kang that fights Raiden and runs through Kahn like paper isn't the same Liu Kang that's level headed and normal. Keep in mind, I'm not saying he's not superior to most of the cast normally, I am saying that it's not overwhelmingly so unlike when enraged. Much like his
Regarding his Fire God self, he should be similarly revised. We see directly that Liu Kang struggled against Kronika's White Revenants, nearly losing to them, until he tapped into Earthrealm's Jinsei. Afterwards, he manages to defeat them despite trying to persuade them not to fight, indicating previously absent superiority. So what's the revision? Simple, he'll be stronger than Fujin's "High 8-C+" rating as the god (while amped by the Crown) was drained in performing a feat Kang performed casually while only channeling fire without the Jinsei effects , and recieve the "8-A" rating with the Jinsei's power. He performs the 8-A feat while visually channeling his lightning powers in an identical way he does later when channeling the Jinsei. (Kronika remains unchanged)
With that out of the way, let's talk about Shao Kahn and """"""""Sindel"""""""": obviously Kahn's scaling must be addressed with the Liu Kang revision, and Sindel's profile was never revised since the MKX comics were deemed non-canon.
Starting with Sindel, her profile is split into a "Base/Revenant" and "Soul-Amped" key, however we've never seen a base Sindel in the Netherrealm timeline, Shang Tsung confirms that she actually retained her strength that killed most of Earthrealm's heroes as a revenant. Therefore, a more accurate listing of keys would be "Human" and "Revenant", where the revenant key will have the same established variable power level as the other revenants. As her human self, she should massively upscale from Jax's 9-A+ from above because she directly stopped punches from his cyber arms and easily overpowered the other heroes. This would also be reflected as an upgrade for Nightwolf's sacrificial move, for killing this Sindel.
Now for Kahn, his profile's second "Amped by Souls" key is wrong, since Nightwolf explicitly prevented the Soulnado from reaching the potency Raiden foresaw. The key should actually be called "Merging Earthrealm", since that's what is increasing his power. Now, for his tier, he's obviously superior to anyone in Outworld during MK9 (MK11 Kitana blinding him not withstanding), and Aftermath displays both him and Sindel being able to fight the same combatants with similar ease. But most importantly, both of them demonstrated superiority to the individual White Revenants, which would allow them to scale to "non-Jinsei" Fire God Liu Kang's High 8-C+ rating... if MK9 didn't exist. As demonstrated in Liu Kang's section, and enraged Liu Kang is superior to base Shao Kahn but is mostly equal to Raiden, and Fujin's profile acknowledges him being comparable to Raiden without the Crown.
So it's a contradiction for Kahn and Sindel to be this strong, but the anti-feats are about as consistent as the feats, so I propose both base Kahn and Sindel be rated as "at least 9-A+, possibly High 8-C+" via upscaling Jax (Kahn should for relativity to Sindel) and potentially upscaling Fujin. Nightwolf's sacrificial move should get the same treatment.
For "Merging Earthrealm" Kahn, he should upscale individual Elder Gods, as the combined might of them took time to wear him down and kill him. This is where Cetrion comes in. Firstly, her bridge creation feat isn't really a feat of strength, at least not for GPE, as the strain on Cetrion is her keeping the bridge in existence, not lifting it up. It's a limit to creation magic, not really attack potency or lifting strength. I bring this up because Cetrion should scale to a Jinsei Fire God Liu Kang, as despite the temporal Armageddon weakening all the Elder Gods, she explicitly matched Liu Kang "step-for-step" despite neither wanting to fight the other. Therefore, Cetrion should be upgraded to 8-A and this amped Shao Kahn should scale to the same.
One last thing: since Aftermath Shang Tsung clearly gains in strength overtime the more power he absorbs from titans, gods and wannabe emperors/empresses alike, he should get "at least High 8-C+, up to 8-A with soul absorption" tiering to reflect his power growth, since even in his initial state with the Crown he was able to easily fight Raiden.
That is all.
Edit: Can't believe I almost forgot this, since the Jinsei's power allows for Liu Kang's 8-A feat, Corrupted Shinnok should be 8-A too for absorbing the power of the Jinsei, and Cassie Cage should scale with her green power thing.
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