Dark Empress Kitana Review (Revisited)

Beautiful, but deadly.. The Edenian princess is now an empress... A Dark Empress.. Shall we dare to test Dark Empress Kitana 's skills?

Stats(Basic/Maxed)
Attack:              1050/45,644
Health:               850/75,072

Toughness:     1150/43,470

Recovery:        1300/49,140

Power Gen         100%

Passive: Revenant Servant

After defeating an opponent, Kitana enslaves the victim to fight for her, once per match. The enslaved does not possess a passive ability  or equipment. Bosses are immune.

DEK's attack is pretty good, still the highest attack among Kitana's variations. Her health is too low and health boost is necessary for her.  Lets take a close look to her passive.

Lets keep some notes:

1. Kitana will always enslave the first opponent she kills.
2. DEK immediately tags out when she enslaves an opponent.
3. Enslaved opponents revive on your side with 30% of their max health. They can deliver only Besic and Special one damage, equipment, since passive and the rest specials attacks are disabled. Also it seems that they do not benefit from TT or team's passive effects.
4. T agging out an enslaved opponent does not count as a death, but they will not be able to be tagged in again.
5. If the servant is KOed, DEK enters the match with 0 cooldown, meaning you can tag her out immediately if you want.

So whom should I enslave?

Choosing which opponent to enslave is essential. Since they lack passives and equipment, the main attributes that you should be thinking of are: stats (check before fight!), combo chaining, and their SP1 effect. There are other things to take into account as well. You can also use the servant as meat shield to avoid a possible fatal blow (if timed well), or suiciding a slave against TQC to use up his skulls. Finally, DEK will give you the fun bonus to allow you to play as any character.

Basic Combos

DEK combos smoothly in comparison to any other Kitana but still it is not smooth enough in order to solo fights on her own in a ordinary basis.

Combo 1: Kitana jabs twice the opponent and gives them a fan hit before she (possibly) continues for her combo ender. Then she performs a double flash slice and a flip kick, knocking down the opponent. Even if no combo ender appears or the opponent blocks, there is no problem because DEK has pushed with the first three hits in a safe distance in order to chain well her second combo (not so good chain with a special though).

Combo 2: DEK's starts her second combo with a backhand slap, and continues with two mid-height string hits. The combo ender consists of three high left kicks (the last one spinning) that knocks down again the opponent.This combo is kinda problematic, since it is unsafe if no ender appears, due to Kitana's slow recovery.

Special Attacks

SP1 : Vortex.

Unlike the Kombat pack variations, the challenge versions of Kitana don't have uplift as their SP1 and unfortunately no Power Drain. DEK stands on her knee to create a (similar to uplift) vortex that will knock down the opponent. The debuff is weaken, which may not be PD, but it works well for her low health, and it can also KO an opponent, so it fits also with her passive. Recall that weaken r educes opponent's basic damage by 75% and special & X-Ray damage by 50%. Minigame is quick tapping on a circle.

SP2 : Fan Toss.

Kitana performs a spin kick to push the opponent away and then throws them her two bladed fans from long range.

Damage is pretty good and hopefully it will KO the opponent. Otherwise, the special's effect is Fear, so the opponent will be Forced Out (if theyare not blocking) and if Revenant or Boneshield is not triggered then this is something that we don't want to happen. This could lead to a major blow to DEK's strategy. We are pretty sure that if instead of Fear, we had Snare here then DEK would be a powerhouse. Minigame is timing on the stripe.

Xray : Slice and Dice.

The standard X-ray for Kitana. Kitana uses her fans to slice the opponent before lifting them to the air with an Uplift, throws her fans into their throat, grabs them by the head and slams them down. Then she pulls out her fans, which propels the opponent forward, and proceeds to knee the opponent in the head, shattering part of their skull. Effect is Blind for the whole opponent's team. In general we can say that DEK leans heavily on her specials, so we won't have many chances to use het X-ray.

Equipment.

Weapon: Bladed Fans. Kitana's signature equipment is a must for her. Unblockable chance, chance for health recovery in Special 1, and chance to reflect 100% special damage. Note that the two last attributes combine well, since Kitana has chance to recover health from a reflected special 1.

Armor: Shao Kahn's Helmet. DEK seeks desperately for helath boost.  A maxed SKH can do miracles for her, since apart from health, she provides her the only thing that Fans cannot give her. Critical Chance! Until you max it, you can go with the rest health boost options (eg. MV or SA).

Accessory: Bloody Voodoo Armor. As usually we want a card here that grants her power generation boost. Since her SP2 is not a clear winner among her specials, we do not see any reasonto go for SP2 reduced power cost. BVD can help her spam SP1 with relative ease.

Teammates:

DEK is not a support character, but her low health limits her soloer skills. We suggest two NR teams for her, where she is another attacking menace for the opponent.

1. KSC-DEK-WQC . This team is well balanced and works well with DEK's strategy. KSC's SP1 can bring back an opponent that has been forced out by Kitana's SP2. Just be ready after the spear to bring her back in, in order to enslave the opponent you want. WQC will both cards a second chance and can come late in the game with his Cripple powers. A good idea would be also to change WQC with TQC for the Vampirism bonus.

2. DELK-DEK-RKL . DELK and DEK are living happily ever after in Netherrealm and Liu Kang has brought his Shaolin friend along with  to trat everybody to power bars. DEK's seems at first sight that she has a secondary role in this team, but this is far from true. There are plenty of times that DEK saved the day, by just KOing the right opponent.

Talent tree:

TT has created some problems to DEK, especially the two notorious talents; Revenant and Boneshield. For her benefit, probably Precision would be the best advice for her, since she is vulnerable when the second combo ender doesn't appear. Spec Ops tactics seems also a good idea, because Kitana needs to tag-in/out a lot.

To sum up DEK seems somewhere between not so powerful and underpowered character, but her passive has potential to make her rise again. Underestimate her and her blades will soften your tone! Noone can cage this kitty anymore..