The big news in the world of fighting games right now has to be the Season 2 Patch for Street Fighter 6 as each and every roster member has received balance alterations on both the individual and global levels.
The game has changed mechanically, the characters have changed individually, and the dust is now settling around what will surely be an all new Street Fighter 6 experience. DreamKing and I researched all the changes and sat down for a Talk and Block discussion to hash out the biggest winners and losers of this latest update.
We’ll start with the caveat that this is all day one analysis and speculation, and seeing changes on paper is not the same as experiencing, feeling, and grasping the game along with the community as we all get hands on time. That said, we can definitely reason through how some of these changes will likely resonate.
We don’t talk about each and every roster member, but instead highlight ones we feel have the most notable updates as well as those the community is likely most widely interested in. We kick off the discussion with the big three from Season 1: Luke, Ken, and JP.
Though there’s been some debate, these three stuck out as the most globally accepted top tiers and so many are eager to find out if they’ve been regulated down to be less oppressive here in Season 2.
One of them certainly has, as JP not only received a ton of nerfs back in February, but also this time around. Capcom has hit the franchise’s latest villain in just about every category as he’s been nerfed in neutral, damage output, defense, Super effectiveness and meter manipulation.
They did give him a buff to his standing medium kick (it’s got a smaller hurtbox now) and his OD cane spin, but he’s sure to fall down the tier list a decent bit as it seems he’s a character Capcom (as well as the community) clearly don’t want being amid the best of the bunch.
That brings us to Ken, who received buffs to one of his most oppressive techniques: heavy Jinrai kicks. He’s also got more utility in his run maneuver as he can more effectively combo with it, and his OD Tatsu does more damage and has better juggle properties.
Ken’s go to target combo did get nerfed as players can no longer vary the time between the first and second hit, and his OD fireball scales more. He may not have gotten the most buffs of the cast, but he’s a big winner in the sense that he was expected to be nerfed a good bit, and widely got out unscathed.
Luke is the middle of the road of big three from Season 1, getting nerfs to the moves people had the most problems with (crouching medium punch, jumping normals, other normals, combo routes) but Capcom was sure to give him a handful of buffs as well.
While his back heavy kick was nerfed so that he can no longer perform one of his hardest-hitting DRC sequences, players have already found other ways of netting similar damage from the same situation, so it’s more of a lateral change, it seems.
Outside of the big three, we’re seeing characters like Ryu and A.K.I. threaten to shoot up the tiers while Dee Jay seems like he’ll be having a much rougher time here in the game’s second year.
E. Honda may or may not be moving too much (it’s hard to tell right now) but he’s definitely changing from the fairly unidimensional approach he’s had. It’s good to see Capcom paying attention to cases like this as Honda was becoming a character who was overly simple in a widely unengaging way.
You can give our full discussion a watch via the embed below, and we’ve included timestamps if you’d like to skip around to various portions of it to hear about the characters you’re most interested in first.
Again, we don’t speak to the changes of every character, so our apologies if your favorites aren’t included this time around.
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Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro
02:08 – Luke
08:41 – Ken
16:17 – JP
27:38 – Ryu
33:46 – Dee Jay
38:27 – A.K.I.
44:38 – Lily
53:11 – Zangief
57:30 – Honda
1:01:11 – Blanka
1:05:22 – Honorable Mentions
