As the main character and one of the absolute top tiers of Street Fighter 6 during its first year after launch, Luke was easily one of the most commonly used fighters across all of Season 1. He was probably the best character in the game, was relatively straightforward to use, and was even promoted by Capcom as he alone was given the push that comes with being the sole character on the game’s box art.
Season 2 rolled around a few months ago, however, and suddenly Luke’s popularity started plummeting as he went from a regular in the top 3 monthly usage stats to fighting to stay in the top 10. Why are so many dropping him so quickly? According to MC Mura, there are a few reasons.
If you played online you ran into a lot of Lukes. If you watched tournaments, you watched a lot of Lukes. This character was all over Street Fighter 6 as his ability to take efficient advantage of the game’s most powerful tools (Drive Rush, corner carry, damaging combos) paired together perfectly.
This may have been fun for Luke players but the rest of us had more than a few complaints about how obviously over-tuned he was, and when Capcom evolved Street Fighter 6 with the major Season 2 patch in May, they were sure to hit Luke with the nerf bat.
While these nerfs were notable, they didn’t appear to be enough to threaten the character’s overall competitive viability very much, and the community widely figured he’d remain around the top of the pack while feeling a little fairer to fight against.
The nerfs hit a good bit harder than expected, however, as many players quickly found that Luke could no longer get the job done in a satisfactory manner. This sentiment was echoed by one of the absolute best in the world as Falcons|MenaRD publicly proclaimed that Luke was no longer viable in the current meta as a main character, though he would come out with a statement just under a week later saying that he may have spoken too soon.
Mura discusses the specifics of the nerfs Luke received in the video and shows how they likely impacted him harder than we expected they would, but he brings up an additional reason people have stopped playing Luke that also popped up back in May.