It’s only been a few days since Mai Shiranui first launched in Street Fighter 6, and the fighting game community certainly has some strong opinions on the new Fatal Fury guest already.
But one player in particular reached number one rank in the world after the reset with Mai, and he did so with Modern controls too.
NYChrisG managed to top the Legend ranks with Mai and keep that spot for more than a day as of reporting as players are grinding out the early season.
After reaching the number one rank, the prior Marvel vs. Capcom Evo champion put together an early match up chart for Mai that has some very interesting placements.
For Mai’s best pairs, ChrisG has her beating up Jamie and E. Honda in a 7-3 setup though that’s not exactly the most impressive thing in the current meta.
What is more intriguing is he has Mai ahead of Zangief, Juri, A.K.I., JP and even Dhalsim despite the latter’s strong ability to interrupt her fan game with his long limbs.
Although we do have to question the list itself when ChrisG has the Mai mirror match listed as a 6-4, so perhaps these placings aren’t to be taken overly seriously — but that’s a bit to be expected in general with a day-two list.
As for her even affairs, he has Mai 5-5 up against the likes of Ken and Rashid as well as Luke and Terry, which would put her in a decent spot against some of the strongest characters in the game.
But she’s got some big losses against the top tiers too.
Cammy, Akuma, M. Bison and Ed are all among her losing match ups with four of them in total being ranked as 3-7 against the kunoichi.
From looking at some of his footage, it seems ChrisG is taking heavy advantage of Mai’s one-button reversal and Supers, however, that’s something that can be done with much of the cast already.
Where the Fatal Fury heroine stands out a bit more favorably is her corner carry and fan-toss mixups where ChrisG has great positioning to threaten throw, overhead or a low kick.
And he can react and punish the opponent if they try and force their way out with Modern’s input advantages even if she is missing a few of her tools overall.
We’ve seen players do well in SF6 tournaments with Modern controls in the past like with Haitani, but perhaps it’s something that should be explored more by existing strong players, especially when trying to do work with a new character like this.
It’s still very early in the season, however, so these rankings are going to change up a lot in the coming months.
But Chris’ 92.23% win rate with 273 victories using Modern Mai in ranked also does not lie.
You can check out ChrisG’s full match up chart for Mai below.
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Source: Event Hubs
