Throughout the entirety of Street Fighter 6’s first season there was little debate (save for some Ken players) about the game’s top three characters: Ken, Luke, and JP.
We’re now well into the latter half of Season 2, and while an evident top three may exist (as we’ll examine below) things certainly aren’t as cemented as they were last year. We thought we’d take a look at notable player tier lists and character performance to get a more solid idea of where things are currently at.
Capcom was sure to nerf JP and Luke heavily and they’ve both dropped to somewhere around the middle of the pack, according to general public opinion. Ken remains one of the top contenders, but he seems to be placed outside the top five here in Season 2 more often than not.
Street Fighter 6 developers have rolled out a handful of substantial balance patches this year, and so things have potentially shifted a few times and thus it’s relatively difficult to hammer characters down.
Had developers not made so many tweaks during September’s Terry patch, we would have a larger sample of tier list opinions (a number of which placed Zangief at number 1) but only a handful of brave community members have come forward with updated tier lists since Terry.
The character opinions we’ve covered during this recent period include top 5 lists from Saishunkan|Nemo, VARREL|Mago, MuscleNoob, Broski, and Angry and Big Bird.
From these, three characters do pop up on every single tier list: Cammy, Rashid, and Ed. M. Bison is the next most prevalent name as he’s included on four lists, and is followed by a tie between Akuma, Zangief, and Ken, each of whom pop up twice.
It’s important to note that not everyone has ordered their top five, and those who have do not necessarily rank Cammy, Ed, and Rashid as the top three, but they are the most prevalent names by a good margin in this sample.
While the input of notable players can surely point us in a general direction, having more concrete numbers helps up clarify the picture from a different angle.
About three weeks back (so it does not include the results of DreamHack Atlanta nor East Coast Throwdown) we documented the results of 25 offline major SF6 tournaments, specifically counting how many times each character placed in the top 8 as well as top 1.
Ken, Ed, Rashid, and Cammy all placed in the top 5 when it came to top 8’s while Ed, Ken, and Cammy boast top five when it comes to first place finishes. You can see the results below; we’ve added updated totals from both ECT and DHA in parentheses.
Ken – 20 (+1)
Ed – 16
Luke – 16 (+1)
Rashid – 16 (+3)
Cammy – 15 (+1)
Juri – 12 (+1)
Guile – 11 (+1)
M. Bison – 10 (+1)
Chun-Li – 9 (+2)
JP – 9
Akuma – 8 (+1)
Blanka – 8
Zangief – 8 (+1)
Kimberly – 7
A.K.I. – 6 (+1)
Manon – 5 (+2)
Marisa – 5
Dee Jay – 4
Lily – 4
Ryu – 4
Jamie – 3
Dhalsim – 2
E. Honda – 1
Ed – 4
Blanka – 3
Guile – 3
Ken – 3
Cammy – 2 (+1)
Luke – 2
Rashid – 2
Zangief – 2 (+1)
Juri – 1
Lily – 1
M. Bison – 1
Ryu – 1
With all this information in front of you, who do you think make up the top three in Street Fighter 6’s second season? Continue the conversation by sharing your opinions in the comments section below.