The current meta of Street Fighter 6 is very interesting. Since the Season 2 set of balance changes that was introduced back in late May, we have seen some pretty notable shake ups on the tier list.
Characters like JP who were dominant in Season 1 have since dropped in many people’s opinions after the nerfs, and the previous #1 in the game, Luke, is also seeing less activity right now. According to Evo Japan 2024 champion for Street Fighter 6 and former Capcom Cup champion for Street Fighter 5, Falcons|MenaRD, the series’ new poster boy simply no longer has what it takes to hang consistently at the highest levels of play.
Here in Season 2, Mena has been playing the same mains we saw from him back in Season 1. He still rocks Luke as a main, with Blanka as a back up for any match ups he made need the wild beast for.
From the sounds of it, though, Mena has been searching around for a new character to main in tournament. While Luke is still considered to be quite strong here in Season 2, it appears as though the champ has now revealed why he might be looking to make a change.
Responding to a tweet from Boltstrike about how Luke players are the least loyal players to their main, Mena shared some insight into how he currently feels about the young world warrior. According to Mena, Luke is not a character that can “survive” in the current meta at top levels of play.
“[Luke] doesn’t survive as a main in this meta,” Mena began. “He is viable if by viable you mean playing ranked/chilling with the boys.
“World level competition, he’s cooked,” MenaRD concluded.
You been using low tiers for so long everything will look perfectly viable to you my bro.
Character doesn’t survive as a main in this meta. He is viable if by viable you mean playing ranked/chilling with the boys.
World lvl competition he’s cooked. https://t.co/URSZg3vFPD
— Falcons MenaRD(最強) (@_MenaRD__) August 6, 2024
Whether or not this is an accurate assessment of Luke’s strength in Street Fighter 6 Season 2 is, naturally, up for debate. However, we do know a few things for certain.
For one thing, Luke did see one of his most egregious sins in Street Fighter 6 nerfed when Season 2 rolled around in his crouching medium punch, which saw a reduction to its forward attack hitbox (which lowers its effective range) and an addition of 15% scaling to any combo that begins with the attack. He received a handful of other nerfs too, but also got some buffs to other maneuvers as a means of making them more useful and making his tool kit more varied.
That having been said, Luke still saw very strong usage at Evo 2024 this year with there being 14 Luke players among the top 256 of Street Fighter 6’s event. To put that into perspective, of the 23 playable characters currently on the roster only five of them had better representation than Luke in the top 256, with Ken topping the usage charts at 22 players.
Mena’s quest for a new main has certainly been an interesting one. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Luke and Blanka player took to Twitter to announce that he’d be learning Lily and had some early talks about how good of a character she is.
Four days later, Mena shared that he was now the #1 Zangief player on CFN with a super impressive 2,308 MR and Legend status.
Though Zangief is definitely a better character than he was back in Season 1, I’m not sure if he has the consistency at the highest levels that Mena seeks. We’ll just have to wait and see if Mena sticks with the big grappler in tournaments going forward.
In my own Street Fighter 6 Season 2 tier list, I placed Luke as 9th overall in terms of strength as I feel he is still a well-rounded character with great tools.
What do you think about Luke here in Season 2? Does what Mena said about him ring true or do you feel like Luke is still viable at the highest levels? Let us know in the comments.