Damage output is often a tad over-tuned in the initial releases of fighting games, and that seems to increasingly be the case for Street Fighter 6 as Wolfgang, one of the most prominent American Blanka players, recently revealed a sequence showing how the character can KO in just two touches.
The first question that usually comes to mind when processing touch of death or other extremely high damage scenarios is, “is this practical enough to happen in a real match?” We’re somewhat scared to report that while there are a few requirements to be met, this two touch of death mix up is extremely practical.
Blanka has to have a full three Super bars stocked, a full Drive Gauge, and needs to corner his opponent in order to pull this off. He also has to have two of his three Blanka-chan dolls available, as of course this beat down has a Blanka-chan doll corner mix up baked in.
The attack begins with a standing heavy punch cancelled into Blanka’s Super 2, which leads into a fairly routine mix up after just five hits. The good news is that the doll is not electrified at this point, so it’s not part of the mix up, but a wake up throw tech will spell the end for the defender here:
Nah.#SF6_Blanka pic.twitter.com/XUxO00laxL
— 愛WOLFGANG (@WolfgangXO) October 26, 2023
This means Blanka joins the likes of Marisa, JP, and technically A.K.I. (though hers is not all that practical) in the two-touch SF6 club. Things get a little interesting here as damage output obviously factors into a characters’ overall strength and tier placement, but many would argue that they’d want their Street Fighter 6 rounds to be determined by more than just two interactions… especially if one follows the other in a disadvantageous oki situation.
We actually addressed this directly on a recent episode of Talk and Block. In it we dig into general player expectations for how Street Fighter rounds should be determined, and how Capcom might change things around in such a way that a character like Marisa, whose advantage is directly embedded in her relatively higher damage output, could still hit harder than everyone else without watering down the overall experience.
Do you think Blanka (or anyone) should be able to KO in two hits, or should general damage be reduced so that players have to outplay each other just a little more in order to win a round? Sound off in the comments below.