Quick Special Style might offer a nice consistency boost
For decades now, the Electric Wind God Fist has been one of the most difficult singular special moves to consistently pull off in fighting games, but now maybe not as much in certain regards.
Tekken 8 players have started to experiment more with using the game’s Special Style controls to bust out only certain skills without relying on it entirely.
Dylnyan recently shared some interesting tech showing how you can plink into Special Style and attack and then toggle it back off again.
This is shown as being useful for getting consistent Electric Wind God Fists with the Mishimas as well as other strong moves like Dragunov’s while running 2 big punch.
im gonna love watching this little menu pop up in tournaments when people find out they can do 1 button electrics and wr moves by plinking special style into button #tekken8 pic.twitter.com/VVPqJffMze
— dyl& (@dylnyan) February 3, 2024
Rooflemonger also took an interest in this technique and did some more digging to see if fast switching between Special and standard controls is actually worth it to do.
Unlike some other games, there is no damage or frame advantage penalty to using the Special Style input attacks, so EWGF is still +5 on block for essentially only hitting two buttons.
The “downside” comes in the speed of the move since Rooflemonger found the Special EWGF has 18 frames total startup (despite the data display saying 11) while doing it manually would leave you with like 13–17 frames trying to input the directions as fast as possible.
ok mathed it out
special style from the frame you hit the button takes 18f to connect, it basically gives you a slow crouch dashversus 11f to connect from button press on regular, but who knows your timing on the dash
— Rooflemonger (@Rooflemonger) February 3, 2024
Plinking into Special Style will add at least 1 frame to that as well, so you’re looking at a consistent 19-frame EWGF that’ll come out every time.
This way it does seem to make EWGF not a good tool for punishes, but still good for combos and neutral play — and again, you can get the electric version without fear of mistiming the just-frame input.
The available moves and some properties are going to change depending on the character being used, but it does seem worth experimenting with, especially when learning a fighter and figuring them out.
You could view this as an “easy mode” that takes away some of the technical skill of Tekken though at the same time, you’re also just taking advantage of the tools being given to you, which you aren’t forced to use.
It’s also doubtful this is going to become a popular tech for tournament players either to keep them in constant full control of their character, but who knows, maybe they’ll find some more interesting applications for it.
Players can also get easier Electrics in Tekken 8 already too since in Heat mode, Wind God Fists automatically get bumped to their higher status at the cost of some meter.
You can check out Rooflemonger’s new video below for more info and details regarding Special Style switching.