If you ask the majority of Street Fighter 6 players (outside the apparent cabal of high level Ken players, at least) whom the best characters in the game are you’ll most consistently hear three names: Ken, Luke, and JP.
With that in mind, the January stats for online Street Fighter 6 play are in and we thought it’d be interesting to see which characters tend to fare the best against these top tiers. We’ve nabbed the three biggest thwarts for each of the game’s golden boys, and note some very interesting takeaways.
Capcom offers us very detailed breakdowns each and every month, and before we dig too far into our venture here we’ll note that we’re looking at the data with a few important filters on.
First of all, these numbers are solely taken from interactions between Master rank players. Things definitely change the moment you look at Diamond rank or below, (E. Honda reigns supreme as the most frequent winner across most lower ranks) but Master is the highest ranked title users can achieve and features the most learned players.
This data also includes both Modern and Classic controls though Capcom does offer the option to view how the Modern and Classic versions of each character specifically fare.
Here at Master level, JP has the highest win rate of the entire roster as he won 5.117 of every 10 matches he was used in during the month of January. His worst win rates were against Dhalsim (4.034), Kimberly (4.538), and Cammy (4.732), though it’s worth noting that his win rate against Juri (4.739) is only a smidge better than against Cammy.
Luke actually clocks in at fifth overall (somewhat surprising) with an average win rate of 5.071 for every 10 matches he was used in. His worst match ups were against Lily (4.817), Dhalsim (4.829), and Chun-Li (4.857).
Ken (who has a fairly unimpressive, sixth from the bottom average win rate of 4.979) finds his worst match ups were against Guile (4.589), Chun-Li (4.829), and then a near tie between JP (4.854) and Dee Jay (4.858).
These are surely interesting statistics that do have some implications, but before we get ahead of ourselves we should consider some relevant factors.
First off, Ken is easily the most popular character in the game and thus his numbers are going to be pulled down a bit by the relatively high number of greener players using him. At the same time most players have more experience facing off against Mr. Masters because of how often he appears, meaning Ken users are going to get away with a little less in the way of gimmicks and knowledge checks.
Conversely, Lily is one of the least popular characters in the game, so the list of players getting her up into Master rank is somewhat shorter than most others. Fewer Lily sightings also imply less anti-Lily knowledge, so on this front she’s likely getting away with a few extra wins than her more popular counterparts.
There are a few additional notable findings from the chart. Dhalsim has both of the game’s most lopsided match ups as he defeats Zangief an incredible 6.593 times out of 10 and loses to E. Honda in 6.112 of 10 matches. The yoga master is complicated to learn, but we did just establish that he fares especially well against two of the game’s apparent best.
Thirteen of the game’s 20 available fighters have a win rate above 50% while the bottom 7 (which, again, includes Ken) win about 49% of the time.
You can view the full comparison chart by clicking the thumbnail here. Give the data a look over and let us know in the comments what kinds of takeaways you noticed.
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