Mortal Kombat 1/General Shao/Introduction

General Shao is a stance character with strong mobility, primarily built around playing neutral and pouncing on opportunities. By default he stays in Axe Stance, patrolling neutral with a suite of long-reaching, disjoint normals. Once he finds an opening, he plants the axe with Power Strike (DF4) to enter Unarmed Stance, losing reach but temporarily gaining far superior speed, safety, mixups, and damage output. The General Shao player must be aware to operate within his current stance's strengths, as the two stances have limited overlap and major deficiencies on their own.

Strengths

Weaknesses

Exceptional Health: At 1100 base HP, General Shao is tied with Havik as the highest HP characters in the game. This health value can be used to make -50 HP kameos less of a problem, or it can be combined with an HP boosting kameo for even more durability. Supreme Reach: In his default Axe stance, many of General Shao's normals boast excellent reach with generous disjoints. Foremost among them are 22, a "jab"string with absurdly large coverage for its 8-frame startup, B1, a safe advancing disjoint mid with a natural overhead followup, and J2, a downward axe swipe with an enormous sweeping hitbox. Dangerous Mix: General Shao has numerous overhead options in both stances, with the Unarmed stance boasting the best overhead in the game in F2 (on top of a command grab that ticks from D1 and D3). His low options aren't as solid but he still gets B3, a combo starting low in both stances. Peculiar Speed: Like his MK11 predecessor, General Shao has unusually quick speed for his size. His blockdashing is among the best in the game, allowing him to close the gap and threaten mixups from a surprising distance. Mano a Mano: Few characters can scrap like an unarmed Shao, where he is free to apply a massive suite of mixups and plus frames. His specials in particular gain an enormous boost, with three out of the five available specials gaining armor on EX and giving him an armored combo starter (with caveats), an armored command grab, and an armored plus mid. Air Control: General Shao can easily antiair with Devastator (DB3), and his exceptional height makes his jabs excellent at antiairing. If all else fails, his highly vertical and disjoint D2 will work.

Devastatingly Frustrating: Shao relies on Devastator (DB3) for both combo extensions and armored reversals, and it is a highly flawed move for both purposes. The high hitbox and leaping animation make it trivial to low profile - even accidentally, and with non-crouching moves. This will even happen mid-blockstring, such as the gap in Raiden's F434. Easy low profile combined with its limited horizontal reach also greatly weakens its threat as a wakeup option. While the favorable leap angle makes it an excellent antiair by itself, the small hitbox makes it oddly difficult to use for antiair conversions from normals, where Shao risks getting punished on drop. Though it is the only explicit armored launcher in the game by itself, armoring a move in both stance versions will disallow combo pickups under most circumstances. Safety Third: Shao's options for offense in Axe stance are defined by two outcomes: his gapless options are unsafe, and his safe options leave a gap. Most of the string enders for his crucial Axe normals leave a gap (F122 being the worst offender, being -13 on block with a gap at the same time) and his Power Strike (DF4) is easily anticipated and punished on flawless block, on top of creating a gap with nearly every cancel option. Even in Unarmed stance, he sometimes must swing with an unsafe move to complete a frametrap. The Wrong Tool for the Job: While his Axe stance has excellent space control and his Unarmed stance can brawl up close, being forced to play outside of the stance's strength can have disastrous results. Among other issues, his Axe stance entirely lacks a confirmable mid without kameos (the closest being his 26 frame B2), and the Unarmed stance surrenders all of his disjoints. Kameo Dependent: General Shao is highly dependent on his kameos to gain safety and maximize the reward from his tools, such as covering the gap in a Power Strike (DF4) cancel on block, being able to combo from Axe F2, or turning a midscreen confirm into an axe buff. Kameo reversals are also important as an alternative to Devastator.