Spend thirty seconds in a discussion about what needs to change when Capcom updates Street Fighter 6 and you’ll undoubtedly hear Drive Rush come up at least three times. That’s for good reason as the mechanic is clearly causing as much frustration as it is fun, but as easy as it is to say “Drive Rush is overpowered” or “Drive Rush is too fast,” remedies to the perceived problem are surprisingly hard to come by.
In an interesting new video The Cool Kid lists off a handful of his Season 2 wish list changes and we’d like to hone specifically in on his proposed fix for Drive Rush as it may finally be an acceptable answer for this perplexing mechanic.
Let’s first briefly lay out the problem so many have with DR: it’s a way of pouncing forward with enhanced offensive potential that feels like it carries too much reward and not enough risk (at least for some characters).
Drive Rush allows for harder hitting combos on hit and better pressure strings on block, and some characters have such fast Drive Rushes (namely Juri and Dee Jay) that it feels like you cannot react to them even when you’re prepared.
Other characters benefit hard from DR and the conversation about needing to nerf it surely extends beyond the confines of just Juri and Dee Jay, they just happen to be the most egregious offenders when it comes to speed.
It’s easy to quickly come up with means of nerfing DR: increase the Drive Gauge cost, decrease frame advantage bonus, or reduce the speed or distance traveled.
The problem with these, however, comes from the fact that Street Fighter 6 is such an intricately-woven game that other consequences rapidly emerge in a “plug one hole only to have two more sprout leaks” kind of dance.
Drive Rush is heavily tied to established combos thus altering any of the aspects mentioned above would likely mean bread and butter sequences no longer working for certain characters, and already our jar of worms is more open than we’d like it to be.
Cool Kid’s proposal does not affect the utility or cost of DR in any way, but instead focuses on adding some risk to it. He suggests characters be put in Punish Counter state if and when they’re interrupted while performing DR. This would still put the onus on the defender to react in time, but the reward for doing so may be substantial enough to justify it.
He shows us what this would look like by cleverly heading into SF6’s training room to turn on continual Punish Counter state:
Man just imagine if this was real Season 2 wishlist link down below pic.twitter.com/lXirrmCMQO
— THE COOL KID93 (@THE_COOL_KID93) January 29, 2024
We’d love to hear your thoughts on just this one aspect of Cool Kid’s proposal for change, but we also recommend you check out his full video below to see what all he’d do to make the game better.
