Hiya!

A while back, I did a review of Ed, Street Fighter 6’s newest character. Capcom adding Ed to the roster wasn’t the only thing they did to the game, though. Along with the new character, Street Fighter 6 got kind of a mini-balance patch to go along with it. Not everyone got the buffs and nerfs they deserved and some just got some bug fixes.

However, this week, I only like to focus on the characters who got hit with nerfs. This is because Street Fighter 6 has been dominated by 3 characters: Luke, JP and Ken. It just so happens that these were the ones who Capcom hit with the nerf hammer. So, let’s go check and see if they were hit hard enough or not enough.

Luke

There are a few reasons why Luke has been called one of the best characters in Street Fighter 6. One of them being his crouching medium punch. The move is just oppressive in neutral as it has good range, is plus on block and can combo into itself on counterhit or can cancel into Drive Rush for a damaging combo. Capcom didn’t nerf this move to the ground but they did make it harder to use safely in neutral. After the patch, Luke’s crouching medium punch has 4 additional frames of recovery and its hitbox hangs out longer if it doesn’t connect, making it easier to whiff punish on reaction.

Luke also lost his ability to escape the corner with is uncharged Air Flash Knuckle as it has more recovery on landing and he doesn’t move as far out anymore. His Level 1 Super, Vulcan Blast, now has a more extended hitbox, making it so it can be stuffed by projectiles if done too late.

I don’t think this is enough to take Luke down from his current top tier status. He does feel a little less braindead as Luke players can’t just spam the crouching medium punch button with reckless abandon, which was why he was so dominant in the neutral game. I do think he needs some more tweaks to make him more in-line with the rest of the roster.

JP

JP is another top-tier problematic character as he really doesn’t have any weaknesses before. He has a really good keepaway game and he could do massive damage with his juggle combos. He can still do all of that but with some caveats now. Any combo from his Amnesia counter has a lot of damage scaling. If the move is parried, the opponent gets a lot of Drive Meter back. This also goes for his Departure mines.

While this is well and good, Capcom went a step further by limiting how good his grounded heavy punches are. JP’s standing heavy punch lingers out longer and extends further, making it much easier to counterhit on whiff. His crouching heavy punch doesn’t have upper body invincibility anymore. This doesn’t make it worthless as an anti-air but it now trades if he does it too late or it gets snuffed if done too early.

I’m kind of surprised Capcom went this hard on JP. The changes to his heavy punch normals seemed fair but the damage scaling to his Amnesia does seem a little much. They could give JP a happy medium to where it was before the patch and what it is now. I don’t think this will hurt JP that much as his zoning is still really good as none of his projectiles lost any of their inherent properties which made them good.

Ken

Out of all the top-tier characters who were getting away with highway robbery in Street Fighter 6, Ken came out of the mini-balance patch relatively unscathed. In fact, it oddly creates a new mixup for him. This is all about Ken’s corner throw loops. Before, Ken could throw an opponent in a corner and he would be right on top of his opponent. This allowed him to just do crazy mixups with a meaty throw or attack or even a shimmy.

Now, Ken’s forward throw has more pushback, meaning Ken would have to dash in if he wanted to do a throw loop. If he does dash in, Ken is just +1, which would allow the downed opponent to try to mash out his fastest light attack to counter the throw attempt. However, his throw loop is still there but just harder to perform flawlessly. The weird thing is the pushback actually gives Ken new setups, like a meaty OD Hadoken or a simple crouching medium kick during the opponent’s wakeup!

Capcom also fiddled with his standing light punch by making some frames easier to punish. This feels kind of useless as no one really tries to counterhit a whiffed standing light punch as they’re too fast by themselves, especially during a Drive Rush! The only real significant nerf Ken got was to his aerial OD Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku as he can’t use it to escape the corner anymore. Like with Luke’s jumping Flash Knuckle, it has more landing recovery frames now.

Nice try, Capcom. However, Ken still doesn’t really feel unchanged as all you did was replace his old dominant setups for newer versions! If they wanted to really make Ken more in line with the other characters, they should have focused more on things like his crouching medium kick being more easily whiff punishable like what they did with Luke’s crouching medium punch. Maybe they could have made his standing heavy kick not do too much pushback on block, making Ken lose his turn if he throws out that move too close to his opponent. As it stands right now, Ken is still going to be a pain to face off against online.

Now that we’ve got the nerfs out of the way, I’ll be talking about the buffs some of Street Fighter 6’s roster got! See you then!

Byee!

What do you think of the nerfs Luke, JP and Ken got so far? Let me know in the comments section below!