Tier positions 1-12 covered
After actively monitoring tournament results, other tier lists and playing Street Fighter 6 regularly with several characters, I’ve put together my tier list thoughts on where the game stands here in Season 2.
I cover each cast member in the game, with thoughts on each individual fighter. I pull no punches in this tier list, it’s my thoughts on the balance of the game, unfiltered. This is the first part of the list covering spots 1-12. The latter portion of the tier list will surface soon.
Capcom may have made an extremely poor choice by apparently listening to some of the Ken mains who had a vested interest in seeing this character kept as a top tier. They should listen to players like Tokido, who have been honest and candid about how strong of a character Ken is overall in Street Fighter 6.
Ken’s corner carry and ease of use, along with very solid mixups and high utility moves make him the overall best character in the game, and he is often highly represented in top 8s of tournaments, as we saw at both Evo 2024 and the Esports World Cup 2024. Ken was one of the most represented characters, just behind Luke at Capcom Cup X, and yet he was left too heavily intact while the other characters around him got substantial nerfs.
As such, this character is heavily represented in tournaments, and it’s all too often we see a Ken mirror match, or a run of this character throughout an event. Character variety is a very important factor in these games, and highly unbalanced characters hurt that variety. Hopefully Capcom fixes their mistake in the Terry patch coming September 24, 2024 and properly addresses Ken’s abilities far outpacing where he should be at compared to the rest of the cast.
Pound for pound, this is the best character in the entire game, with very few problems when it comes to match ups. Guile is regarded as one of the few characters who give him trouble.
The strongest DLC character we’ve seen released for Street Fighter 6 so far. M. Bison has been out for less than two months, but already he’s become one of the most popular characters in the entire game, and is having a gigantic impact on the tournament scene, where it’s rare for DLC fighters to do so this early and this easily.
Despite being labeled by Capcom as a complicated character to play, his online stats tell a completely different tale, as he’s one of the most popular characters in the game, and has heavy advantages against the rest of the cast based on the ranked match stats Capcom provides.
M. Bison’s Scissor Kicks are extremely easy to use and leave him at too heavy of an advantage against the vast majority of the cast, and as such, most Bison players resort to using them without much thought or care to explore other aspects of his move kit — even pro players.
Capcom clearly wanted this guy to be very strong and shipped him in a state where he has heavy advantages against most of the cast, with many in the community claiming this guy is a “Pay to win” fighter, because of how strong he is, and being locked behind a DLC purchase.
You want your DLC characters to be relevant and viable, but you don’t want them to be so strong that they completely overshadow other members of the cast and dominate the stats. If you ask Kimberly players how they feel about M. Bison, you’ll get a lot of sad looks, because of how irrelevant they’ve made that character in many people’s eyes.
M. Bison is likely someone who will get looked at closely for nerfs in the Fall patch which comes on September 24, 2024.
Rashid has the best super in the entire game, his Level 2, Ysaar. This move has virtually no weaknesses and generally stops the opponent from being able to do much else while it’s on screen, except try and defend against Rashid’s multitude of mix ups.
This is very poor game design, because moves in fighting games should have clear strengths and weaknesses, and some viable counters should exist for this move for the entire cast — yet — they don’t. Even the best players get regularly tagged by this move and quickly run out of viable options for dealing with it.
Rashid’s Level 2 pretty much activates a one player mode in Street Fighter 6, and moves shouldn’t work this way because they suck the fun out of the game for the opposition.
Once this move is given some proper weaknesses, Rashid should be properly normalized, but until then, this attack makes him an incredibly strong character, who’s ridiculously difficult to deal with for the vast majority of the cast.
Rashid is very, very strong in this version of the game and is going to continue to dominant in tournament results as more is discovered about this character.
Ed is a very good example of how to make a strong and viable DLC character. He didn’t explode out of the gate as one of the best characters in the game, but was still played by a number of pro players and others.
With time and as more has been discovered about his move kit, Ed has become a very popular and strong tournament character, getting high end results.
Ed’s range is very good, he has very high damaging combos and generally very good utility in his moves. His anti-air game has quite a bit of startup, along with his OD Reversal, plus his moves tend to be slower to offset his strengths.
This is the happy medium Capcom should be looking for, designing characters with clear strengths and weaknesses so that they don’t release another poorly balanced character like M. Bison.
Akuma finds himself in a good spot. Littered with tons of potential from an offensive standpoint, he has one of the most defining weaknesses in the entire game, with very low health. In Street Fighter 6, with it’s highly explosive damage, this is a big weakness to have. The developers did a good job of balancing him so far.
Akuma is generally regarded as a pretty difficult character to play, so to unlock his true potential, you need to put in quite a bit of lab time. Strong characters who have high execution ceilings are a good way to balance the cast, as factoring in human error and abilities means that reaching the pinnacles of play is very hard to do.
It is possible that Akuma starts to jump too far ahead of the rest of the cast if those around him are nerfed, and he may need some adjustments to keep him inline, but given that he has specifically defined weaknesses and ways to exploit those, I think Capcom did a good job with their approach this time around.
Justin Wong and Kizzie Kay labeled this character as a crayon eater of the highest level, as Zangief is notoriously easy to play in this game and gets extremely good results for the effort required to play him.
A previous developer at Capcom spoke to us in the past about how grapplers generally shouldn’t have too heavy of advantages, or it always feels like the boulder in Indiana Jones chasing you — and you’re always running to keep away from it.
While Gief’s results haven’t been spectacular, this is easily one of the best characters in the game with numerous pros putting him at #1 overall in their tier lists.
I couldn’t put Zangief at #1 personally, but I do feel he’s clearly too strong for the archetype and ease of use. It’s very rare for a grappler character to be super strong and for the community to collectively feel they’re well balanced.
R. Mika and Laura in Street Fighter 5, Zangief in SSF4 Arcade Edition and SF2 Turbo are all classic examples of grapplers being over tuned and later normalized and the collective playerbase being OK with how that turned out.
Grapplers are inherently designed to rob you, by getting in and playing a one player game due to their mixups and okizeme pressure. That’s all by design and totally fine, but where the problems come in is when those characters can too easily and readily get to those positions without having earned those spots on screen.
Zangief in Season 2 is far too easy to play for the rewards that he gets and as such, is one of the strongest overall characters in the game.
This can be a highly frustrating character to deal with for a number of cast members due to how his move set works. The ability to keep people out and play at a distance for long periods of a match lead to Guile often being one of the most hated characters in the entire game.
However, in Street Fighter 6 Season 2, we haven’t seen this character dominate like people feared may happen with the other cast members getting nerfed around him.
While Guile is one of the better characters in the game, he hasn’t placed consistently super high in the results of the top end tournaments, but generally has solid representation.
His zoning and anti-air game are top tier, and present all sorts of problems in terms of approaching the character, but his Medium Kicks tend to be highly susceptible to Drive Impacts and Drive Parries. This keeps Guile on his toes and doesn’t allow to do mindless zoning.
Couple this with fairly high execution on some of his longer combos and the ability to lose a match in short order due to Street Fighter 6’s high volatility, and I feel like Guile is in a solid spot overall.
It’s possible that if Capcom nerfs the rest of the cast around Guile though that he may end up being too strong, but as is, I think he’s in a pretty good spot.
How quickly some people have forgotten about the character who won Uma a million dollars back in February of this year.
This is still a highly capable and very strong character, although she’s been overshadowed in recent times by some of the other cast members who feel stronger overall at rushdown.
If these other characters are normalized, we’re going to see Juri return to being one of the best characters in the game, behind her deadly Standing Medium Punch, incredible Drive Rush and all around great tool set.
There’s very little Juri cannot do in this game at a high level, although being locked behind a stock system to really tap into her true power means she gives up some spacing and okizeme to charge up her gameplan.
With arguably the best Drive Rush in the entire game and the top notch ability to shimmy into gigantic damage, Dee Jay is still a very formidable character — in the right hands.
He received some substantial nerfs to tone down the somewhat mindless gameplay Dee Jay players were notorious for using, but he’s still a capable fighter even at the highest levels of play.
While numerous players had this character more in the top 5 range previously, the nerfs took him down a few spots and the other characters who didn’t receive the proper nerfs ended up taking his previous position.
Regardless, this guy can end you quickly and effectively if you dare to throw tech, coupled with his tremendous jump ins and a very strong all around game.
He can suffer against players who’ve put in quite a bit of lab time due to his stubbier cancellable normals and relatively high level of execution that’s required to get the most out of his damage.
Regardless, this is a tournament tested character who still produces results, even with the nerfs he received.
My new main in Street Fighter 6, Chun-Li has struggled to produce significant results outside of Japan, and with her Season 2 adjustments, we’ve seen a few pro players drop this character in favor of other fighters like Ed and M. Bison.
This is one of the better defensive characters in the game though, with exceptional normals, a bevy of mix ups and a ton of all around utility. However, to unlock all of these things, you need to have exceptional execution and mental awareness, which leads Chun-Li to being one of the more technical characters in the entire game.
Chun-Li’s tool set is outstanding in Street Fighter 6, but how effective it is compared to the other top tiers is the main thing that’s up for debate.
Many other cast members can unlock higher damage and just as much utility with far less effort required. Regardless of that though, Chun-Li has everything she needs to be successful at the highest levels of play, if you can put in the time, effort and keep your head in a good spot.
This character is being heavily over hyped due to Punk’s win at Evo 2024, as a number of pro players who were using her in Season 1 dropped the character because of the substantial nerfs she received in Season 2. Without Punk’s win, there are many players who wouldn’t even have this character in their top 10 tier lists.
She now struggles against projectiles in instances where she didn’t before due to the nerfs to her Quick Spin Knuckle. Her gameplan often tends to be very linear as well, and can lead to overly predictable tactics.
On the other end of things, Cammy can hit you harder and faster than most other cast members, and she’s capable of decimating the competition in short order when she gets a read on her opponent’s timing.
Her Dive Kick and very strong up close normals give her one of the best abilities to rushdown in all of Street Fighter 6.
As such, Cammy can look a bit all of nothing in some of her matches at the highest levels of play. When she’s on point, she can run through the competition in short order, and when she’s off, she can struggle to get in and make much of anything happen.
Oh how the mighty have fallen. Coupling Luke’s nerfs with Ken retaining most of his powers and Akuma being added to the game has meant that this Shoto is no longer the fighter he was just a handful of months ago, but he’s still a strong and capable character.
Arguably the best fighter in the entire game, prior to the Season 2 patch, Capcom specifically targeted Luke’s Crouching Medium Punch and his over the top damage.
What’s left is still a more than capable character, but some of the other cast members are just as busted as he was in Season 1, so he’s fallen off more than he should have.
When proper adjustments are given to the rest of the cast, Luke is very likely going to rise up the tier charts again and take his place as one of the best characters in the game — even if he doesn’t get a single buff in the next patch.
We’ve already seen what this character is capable of in the hands of the pros, getting 2nd at Capcom Cup and being the most used character leading into that tournament.
Capcom did a really strong job adjusting this character, but unfortunately dropped the ball with some of the other fighters, besides Luke, in that process.
Given a bit of time, and adjustments to other fighters, it should only be a bit before Luke is returned to some of his former glory.
Part 2 of this list, covering spots 13 through 23, will be posted in the near future.