The Complete Killer Instinct Guide by Infil

Updates

• August 29, 2023: Gfycat, the service that has hosted all my infil.net videos since the site's launch, will shut down on September 1, 2023. As a result, I've found another solution for hosting the videos and switched everything over. The site should still work the same way it did before this update.


• February 12, 2021: I added a page talking about the MS Store and Steam versions of KI, so you can learn the similarities and differences in case you aren't sure which version you want to buy.


• February 6, 2021: Made a page explaining Combo Assist Mode, including how it works and whether or not you should use it.


• April 13, 2020: Added each character's Ultra Combo input to their individual move list, and added all Ultra commands to the Ultra Combo page.


• October 16, 2019: There's a new entry in the Fightin' Words blog series! I do a thorough investigation of how rollback netcode works and why it's a better choice than other online implementations.


• May 10, 2018: At long last, we have completely verified by hand all the frame data for Killer Instinct!


• October 12, 2017: The three post-Season 3 DLC characters have finally been added! Check out Kilgore, Shin Hisako, and Eagle.


• September 17, 2017: Changed the layout of the individual character pages! Added a "Play If/Avoid If" segment, and made the pages much cleaner and easier to read.


• September 8, 2017: Updated the History of Season 3 page with Patches 3.8 and 3.9, and updated the various character pages as necessary to reflect the changes. My guide should now be fully up to date not counting the three post-S3 characters.


• June 7, 2017: Started a new blog called Fightin' Words! The goal is to have long-form discussions about fun and important fighting game topics. The first entry, called Stop Bugging Me, talks about a wide assortment of important bugs in fighting games and how they shaped the games they were in.


• April 29, 2017: Updated relevant pages for the recent Patch 3.7, including the History of Season 3 page, as well as various characters that were changed in this patch (such as Jago). For those wondering if I will do a character page for Kilgore, Shin Hisako, and the other unannounced post-Season 3 character, there is probably about a 50% chance. I'm still undecided if (and when) I would try to do that.


• January 16, 2017: Finished updating some character pages that were not fully up to date because of recent patches, such as Sadira (flipout addition), Sabrewulf (new counter breaker combos), and Fulgore (new instinct mode). Also updated the combo breaker page to reflect the new potential damage changes from Patch 3.6.


• November 28, 2016: Eyedol's character page is finished, and with that wraps up the complete Season 3 roster! My guide is now fully up to date! Patch 3.5 also came out today, so the patch notes and a brief discussion has been added.


• October 22, 2016: It's been a long time coming, but Rash's character page is finished!


• September 23, 2016: Patch 3.4's notes have been added, and the character pages will be updated where necessary to reflect these changes in the coming days.


• September 8, 2016: In order to preserve the history of this game, I have put all the patch notes from all the seasons in the new Patch Notes section! Check out Season 1, Season 2, and Season 3.


• August 20, 2016: General RAAM's character page is finished!


• August 1, 2016: I've been updating small pieces of the guide here and there since May, but I finally have a major update to talk about. Gargos's character page is complete!


• May 18, 2016: It's maybe a little overdue since Season 3's launch back in late March, but Kim Wu's character page is done!


• May 18, 2016: Mira's character page is now complete!


• May 6, 2016: Since I launched my Season 3 page, I've been slowly updating all the old S1 and S2 characters so that they are up to date with their Season 3 changes, and now that work is complete! There should be no more incorrect information in my guide, and I will continue to work on the missing Season 3 character pages this month until all pages are finished.


• March 29, 2016: The first version of my guide for Season 3 is now live! Virtually every page has seen serious changes to match the Season 3 rebalance, and I've launched with Tusk and Arbiter character pages, with Kim Wu and Rash to come soon. There are some pages that are still out of date (mostly the S1 and S2 characters), so please bear with me as I keep working over the next few weeks. Please enjoy the revised guide!


• January 28, 2016: I changed the title of this guide from "A Killer Instinct Guide for SFIV Players" to "The Complete Killer Instinct Guide". As my guide progressed, the old title became less and less relevant and potentially scared away new readers, so a change was in order. I also created a new donate page. The site will always be free, and donating is entirely optional, but the option exists if you are interested in chipping in with the upkeep of the site in any capacity!


• January 3, 2016: Each character page now has a move list! I give a brief description of each command normal and special move and their required inputs in a table at the top of each page.


• December 14, 2015: Shadow Jago's character page is complete! The last character page I wrote was for ARIA back in June, so it's been quite a break since I've had to write one of these! I've also created a few new pages due to some new mechanics in the Shadow Jago update. There's now a page on stagger state, I updated the Ultra combo section to talk about how Shadow Jago's ultimate combo works, and I've added a History of Season 3 page which will be filled out as the new season progresses.


• October 3, 2015: I added the startup frames of each character's shadow counter to the appropriate page. Also, there was a new patch for Killer Instinct this week, so the History of Season 2 page was updated.


• August 10, 2015: Season 3 of Killer Instinct has been announced, and along with it came a surprise; Rash, the first guest character in Season 3, is playable in-game for a month! Along with it came a patch, the details of which I outline on the History of Season 2 page.


• July 15, 2015: Perhaps the coolest addition to my guide; I transformed the shadow linker visualization page into a fully featured shadow linker break trainer that you can use in your browser! Simply load the linker of your choice with the Play button and try to break by hitting the B key or clicking a region on the page, and then adjust your break timing with the feedback. Performance is best in Chrome. I hope this addition will make all of you better KI players, and even provide entertainment for people who don't own the game!


• July 3, 2015: A really great addition today; I extracted all the data for the break windows on each shadow linker in the game and put them in a huge shadow linker visualization! In addition to this, each character page has the visualization for their linkers embedded in the "Linkers" section, with added strategy on how to break them. If you're struggling with breaking a particular shadow linker, check the character pages to learn a trick or two to help you out.


• June 7, 2015: I wrote a section on human reaction times and how they apply to Killer Instinct, so check that out if you're curious what you can and can't be reasonably expected to react to. And the big news is ARIA's page is now complete, and with that, the Season 2 roster is all done! The Characters page and History of Season 2 page have also been updated. Even though the roster is fully complete, I have some more ideas for expanding the guide in the near future, so keep your eye on the page. Plus, Shadow Jago is coming sometime this year, and perhaps a Season 3 of Killer Instinct is around the corner, so the guide will see new content soon!


• May 19, 2015: I added each character's maximum damage combos off a counter breaker to the Character pages. If you've managed to find a better combo than the ones I listed (after following the rules in the "Damage Calculation Notes" footnote), please contact me and I'll fix it!


• May 16, 2015: Cinder's page is complete! As always, check out the visualizations on the Characters page and details on the gameplay changes introduced in Cinder's patch on the History of Season 2 page.


• May 1, 2015: Cinder's page has been temporarily updated to discuss his burnout enders, as they have caused some confusion among the community. I'm working on the rest of his character page and will post it soon, so stay tuned!


• April 16, 2015: Hisako's page is now done! Like other characters, it's accompanied with visualizations on the Characters page, and details on Patch 2.5 on the History of Season 2 page.


• March 15, 2015: The Aganos page is complete! His statistics have also been added to the visualizations on the Characters page, as well as information about the balance changes in Patch 2.4 that accompanied him on the History of Season 2 page.


• February 25, 2015: I did a meaty update to the graphs on the Characters page. I added 4 new categories (Mobility, Ease of Use, ability to fight Meterless, and Mixups), I added descriptions for all categories as hovering tooltips, you can now view custom subsets of the graph showing only the categories you're interested in, I added a "Total" category to show the average across all stats, and I also added a "Rank mode" where I give ratings in each category from "# of characters" (best) down to 1 (worst), which makes for some really interesting graphs.


• February 22, 2015: I had some fun with this update. I revamped the Characters page to have two cool interactive visualizations! You can explore how the characters compare against each other in six unique categories: Rushdown, Zoning, Damage, Footsies, Instinct, and Defense. I also added each character's polygon graph to their individual character pages.


• February 16, 2015: Omen's character page is finished, and it has some nice videos this time! It takes a lot longer to make character pages with video, but hopefully I can manage more of them in the future. I also added a neat resource to the bottom of Kan-Ra's page. I'm targeting early to mid-March for the next update, after Aganos is released, so stay tuned!


• February 9, 2015: A few additions today. I've begun to archive the History of Killer Instinct so that information on how the game has progressed with its various patches is not lost. If you're new to KI and curious how older versions of the game played, or you're just interested in tracking the Xbox One game's evolution over time, this resource will help. There have also been some small additions on other pages; some of the character pages now have "Further Resources" at the bottom. Links to Vertigo's excellent PDF Sadira guide on the Sadira page and Banemobius's Spinal run cancel guide on the Spinal page have been added (check the pages for the most up-to-date links).
  
  I've also created an ask.fm page (which is linked in the footer of every page, under the purple "next page" bar) as an added resource for people who have questions about Killer Instinct or fighting games in general. I'll answer all fighting game questions posted there, no matter how basic or obvious you may think the answer is, and you can post anonymously. Feel free to use it to clarify any concept in this guide or ask any other question about KI. The guide has also been prepped for the Omen character page by adding his enders, combo traits, etc to the rest of the guide. Hopefully I can release the Omen page this week!


• January 2, 2015: Riptor's character page is complete! Also added some questions to the FAQ page and fixed numerous typos and small factual errors with the help from several readers.


• December 20, 2014: The site launches!