Gustavo “801 Strider” Romero is easily one of the most cerebral players in competitive Street Fighter. and so when we saw he’d released his early thoughts on Street Fighter 6’s newest DLC character, Ed, we were immediately intrigued.
We’ve certainly seen some interesting potential in the Psycho Powered boxer thus far, but does he have what it takes to be a top tier? Strider seems heavily on the more doubtful side of this question as he goes through a fairly long list of shortcomings that he feels will likely hold the character back, at least for now.
The three time Capcom Cup qualified player doesn’t only go doom and gloom on the newcomer as he does note that Ed has a handful of strong tools. His having an effective throw loop is a great start as we’ve seen the power of such tools in this game, and the same can be said for the fact that he has one of the highly-coveted slow-moving and multi-hitting projectile level 2 Supers.
While Ed’s is certainly useful, Strider argues that it isn’t quite on par with the likes of Rashid or JP’s somewhat similar level 2 Supers.
It looks like Capcom gave Ed some interesting tools that could quite easily be overpowered if over-tuned (level 2 Super, really long normal reach, general neutral control) and were immediately afraid of them being too strong.
The result is that these tools tend to be good in their respective vacuums, but don’t tend to gel together to add up to more than the sum of their parts. At the end of the day if you want to be a top tier in Street Fighter 6, you need your strengths to transition into one another.
When it comes to Drive Rush, one of the most important make or break mechanics in SF6, Strider argues that Ed comes up a little wanting by noting that neither the way he deals with or utilizes the Drive Rush mechanic are very strong.
Give Strider’s video analysis of Ed a watch and let us know what you think of SF6’s newest character in the comments. Do you agree with the severity of the faults pointed out here, or do you think Ed is a bit more promising?