The long awaited giant Street Fighter 6 patch is here and it brought Street Fighter: Third Strike’s protagonist Alex along with it!
While Alex is the main star of this patch (and it’s been enough time since the release of the patch that there’s been some… interesting implications in his story) the one thing most players were antsy for was the, at this point annual, major balance patch of which you can read the full thing on the Buckler website here, with character breakdowns as well as the general changes to the system.
The system received a few changes, definitely not as big as people were hoping but still some progress at least. Overheads are now universally -3 on block and push opponents too far for Lights and throws, meaning that your failed jumpscare mixup attempt off of a blocked Drive Rush overhead is no longer leads to a strike throw mixup for free. Also added is the ability to hold jump during the slight screen freeze for an opponent’s Drive Rush. Drive Rush ate jump inputs so this is a very welcome change, and should open up some options to counter opposing Drive Rushes, though the applications for this haven’t fully been explored yet.
The big thing people are drawn to are the character changes, if you’ve read my article on the Capcom Cup from this past weekend you’d probably assume that Ed and Mai were first up on the chopping block. Well, that prediction was only half right. Both Ed and Mai came out of this patch pretty unscathed: Ed is easier to whiff punish while Mai lost her auto-neutral fireballs, both welcome changes though the true victim of this patch was, hilariously, Blanka. Considered an S tier character by most people but still maintaining a hilariously low play rate, Blanka’s Blanka-chan mechanic was severely nerfed, with the doll disappearing if Blanka gets hit after activating it, which makes a lot of the midscreen mixups and bad Level 1 decisions much more dangerous for Blanka.
Surprisingly, out of the cast M. Bison and JP received buffs. Bison, well known as a low skill high reward character, and JP, considered by many people to be the best character in the game, receiving buffs is headscratching to say the least. JP’s changes especially, the ability to cancel his Standing Medium Punch and Crouching Medium Kick into Departure Shadows will make Street Fighter’s resident wizard even more oppressive that he previously was.
It’s safe to say that this patch didn’t change nearly as much as people were hoping it would, Street Fighter 6 only gets one major patch a year and this was it, after all. But the entire roster DID receive changes and some system mechanics were addressed. With Ingrid coming out as the final character for this season hopes are pinned on Capcom giving the playerbase a bit more in terms of patches, but we’ll have to see. For now, however tiny it was, this patch was a step in the right direction (barring the JP buffs).