Patch version 1.05 for Tekken 8 was released over a week ago. This ended up being a major update that applied changes, many of which were impactful, to every character.
With that in mind, Only The Best 2024’s Tekken 8 tournament provides us with a good opportunity to gauge how the meta is shaping up after the balance adjustments. Needless to say, looking at the top 32 character usage stats provided us with some interesting insights.
Claudio and Jin ended up being the most successful characters at the event, as they both had four players each representing them. Ultimately, this means that these two fighters together represented a quarter of the fighters used in the top 32 portion of the bracket.
Nina also proved to be relevant in the top 32 as three competitors made it this far with her. It’s also worth noting that Nina and Claudio were the only combatants that each had two representatives in the top 8.
At one point, Feng was considered to be a top tier in Tekken 8. Though it’s unclear if he still is, he was only used one competitor in the top 32, and only as a secondary.
Of the 33 characters currently playable in Tekken 8, 20 of them saw at least some representation in the top 32. However, nobody was able to make it this far as JACK-8, Hwoarang, Law, Lars, Bryan, Kazuya, Victor, Zafina, Leroy, Steve, Leo, Panda, and Xiaoyu — who was especially beginning to become a problem in previous versions of the game.
Check out the character usage stats below:
• Jin – 4
• Claudio – 4
• Nina – 3
• Alisa – 2 (1)
• Jun – 2
• Devil Jin – 2
• Shaheen – 2
• Raven – 2
• Dragunov – 1
• Asuka – 1
• Paul – 1
• Lee – 1
• King – 1
• Yoshimitsu – 1
• Kuma – 1
• Reina – 1
• Azucena – 1
• Lili – 1
• Eddy – 1
• Feng – 0 (1)
• JACK-8 – 0
• Hwoarang – 0
• Law – 0
• Lars – 0
• Bryan – 0
• Kazuya – 0
• Victor – 0
• Zafina – 0
• Leroy – 0
• Steve – 0
• Leo – 0
• Panda – 0
• Xiaoyu – 0