Zangief was getting a little too good for Capcom’s preferences in Street Fighter 6’s second season, and so developers took care to nerf the Russian wrestler some two weeks back when the Terry patch and balance update launched.
Gief was only hit with two nerfs that were designed to impact him in very specific ways, but one of them has made for some very peculiar combo results. MC Mura puts this all under the microscope in his latest video.
The nerf in question is to Zangief’s headbutt attack (forward+heavy punch) as Capcom added 25% initial scaling along with an additional 10% more combo scaling. As you might expect, this means that the devastating hit does a good bit less damage when used in combos.
Not only do headbutt combos dole out less damage in general, there are now instances where using weaker moves actually leads to harder hits. As Mura shows in the video, one of Zangief’s go-to combos that traditionally begins with headbutt lops off 3,969 damage, but starting this same sequence with crouching medium punch instead results in 4,412 damage.
This effectively means that, given the option, Zangief players will want to update their standard combo route to begin with a weaker move in order to net more damage. This counter-intuitive truth is peculiar, but Street Fighter 6 has more scaling rules and regulations than other franchise entries, and this kind of thing is the result.
Mura goes on to show that Zangief is not the only character affected in this way, as there are a handful of other fighters whose combos do less damage when you begin them with stronger moves.
Give the full video a watch and then make sure you’re doing optimal sequences. It very well might be the case that starting with a medium instead of a heavy might score you 100-400 more damage every time you perform a given combo, and that’s going to add up.