With Liu Kang dominating Mortal Kombat 11 at Dreamhack Montreal, we can finally say that the chosen one is back and stronger than ever. Jarrad “Ninjakilla” Gooden swept the Grand Finals match against Evo 2019 Champion Dominique "SonicFox" McLean 3-0 with a commanding display of the recently buffed fighter Liu Kang, against an impressive Jax Briggs and D’Vorah, neither of watch could keep up and fight back.
Ninjakilla is no stranger to the Mortal Kombat scene, or to Liu Kang. In Mortal Kombat X he was considered one of the best players to use that fighter, but he also entered the competitive scene relatively late. We may now be seeing the first of many dominations by Ninjakilla thanks to the recent Liu Kang buffs.
As a testament to the power of Liu Kang and the skill of the player, Ninjakilla lost only a single game throughout the entire tournament. That loss came to Dragon, but otherwise we saw only top tier play and domination by Ninjakilla.
While some may complain that Ninjakilla has seemingly jumped onto the Liu Kang bandwagon following the recent balance patch that made him more viable, it is worth nothing that the player has used this character consistently since the launch of the game in April of this year. As a Liu Kang main long before the balance patch, Ninjakilla is primed to be the best player in the world with that character.
Dreamhack has continued to provide a strong testing ground for the shifting meta of fighters since that balance patch. Asides from Liu Kang, we saw strong performances from SonicFox who used D’Voroh mostly, but also gave us a glimpse of Jax. As SonicFox is all but assured a spot in the eventual championship competition for the game following his domination at Evo 2019, he may simply be testing out different fighters. As we wrote here at TheGamer, Jax Briggs has been one of the biggest winners of the balance patch, seeing a massive uptick in matches played and a monster to content with at close range.
With that said, the ban on the newest DLC character to the game, Nightwolf, is now at an end with the conclusion of Dreamhack. That is another fighter who has outstanding competitive potential, and we may be seeing more of him soon.
The rest of the meta fighters seen in the top 8 were largely familiar, consisting of Jax, Cetrion, Geras, Kitana, and to a lesser extent, some Cassie Cage, Erron Black, and Sonya Blade selections. The other competitors to place in the top either are familiar faces.
The next competitive event will be an online tournament with the Online EU on September 14, which as of writing has slightly over 300 competitors registered. Mid October will have the Brasil Game Show in São Paul with a $15,000 prize pool. Over the next month, we will see how Nightwolf shakes up the meta. October 8 will also bring the formal launch of the third DLC character to the game with the Terminator model T-800. Will Skynet take over the competitive scene? That too will take some time to tell, but hopes are high that the third DLC character makes a big impact.
Source: Mortalkombat.com