Nobody is talking about Kimberlys biggest buff which is whenever she does level 3 it's even more jarring to hear the music change now that we have the jukebox

Akuma exists now, I'd say that's probably the biggest buff

Hiding Akuma as the number 1 legend ranked character was very good content, content man. I hope you're content with this content.

Capybara with boxing gloves pretty goated in season 2 ngl

Gief drags you down into the burnout state then beats you with experience.

One day. One day, the capybara in the intro will punch. I know it.

The first Gief I saw in a Tournament match after the patch was at Combo Breaker. The first thing he did was hit the Tundra Storm against a Juri. Being that confident ... he had to be buffed.

The real winner is Ed no question, that crouching LP change really shot him up to top 5 status

Another potential mitigating factor, which ties in with the legacy character status, is that he’s a character that has historically been much easier to play effectively than to beat (air fireball, dflip,) so the consistent counter strategies for these tactics have likely just not had time to develop. Much easier to throw an air fireball than to DP one every time.

It's worth mentioning that Akuma is also just an extremely popular character, which contributes to being all over high ranked and tournaments. He's definitely strong and probably top 5, but idt he's #1 like the data suggests, at least for now.

12:57 Just wanted to point out that the Ryu hurtbox you presented was from the Beta. The current hurtbox does not look like that anymore. Akuma's is still better but the difference isn't as huge as what was presented

I do feel like, although with absolutely no evidence to back it up, that Akuma is currently just converging the player base of all the other shotos, so the chart should look like a lot of the other shotos disappeared

Having just gone into ranked with Zangief for the first time ever in season 2, I found out that people play so scared against this dude. I main Kimberly and it’s so hard to get space fishing for a medium kick to start her corner game, but as Gief people just walk back all match and corner themselves. I placed plat never having played Zangief! It was crazy how easy it was.

Another potential mitigating factor with Akuma's Legend placement is the sheer popularity of the character. He's being played way more than any other DLC character was on launch and there's been a ton of people (including top players) that have been saying they're just waiting for Akuma to be their main since SF6's launch. He's been by far the most popular character since the patch so it's not super surprising there's a lot of him even at Legend rank. That said, it's hard to argue that he's not a top tier character

I think the nature of SF6 is a big part of why Akuma is so strong. Akuma has a million options, which is fine in a lower damage SF because you get to see more interact ions and adapt to each option or combination of options. However, in SF6, you could easily go a whole BO3 without even seeing all of Akumas options. His damage being higher than everyone else's just makes games even faster for him, so opponents have even less time when he represents a new option. How damage being higher than everyone else's does alot to offset his health deficit, as his higher damage means he and his opponent will have the same amount of touches to kill each other. That makes any non Akuma mirror just a normal season one match, Akuma with Season 1 damage, and everyone with season 2 damage against a squishier character, except Akuma gets more options than even the best season 1 characters.

My ears won the season 2 update because I can finally listen to Alpha 3 and 3rd strike music instead of Home Depot theme songs

The secret winner is secretly rashid cuz he got basically no nerfs

I’m in James Chen’s camp that, at this point in the games lifespan, having a DP is pretty much necessary to being TOP-top tier, but it’s very nice to see a character like A.K.I flourish. I think she’s in about as good a place as we can ask for without hurling a true reversal on her

AKI's crouch medium kick is so nice. There's just normals, or even specials like Vega Light Spin Edge in V, in fighting games that hit late in their active frames and such and it just always feels good to me. Something about getting just a few more frames to think is wonderful.

He's also new so he still has the new character + legacy character syndrome so it makes sense that people are playing him

This was a great video, thanks for the content brother

I've just accepted that Akuma either blows you up or you blow him up. And I play Manon. Landing a 5 medal CA on that demon makes a huge difference compared to others.

Akuma is shaping up to top one and at the very least he’s infested ranked like crazy

the gief changes are so slobberingly good. the drive gauge damage is absolutely insane. it's what he needed, I think. make people feel scared to block but also make them scared to not block. headbutt easily confirms into 3mp lariat. then there's the backthrow change (universal apparently?) which now puts you at *perfect* light spd range. you can't contest spd if he backthrows you. you gotta jump or backdash. it feels SO good. Lariat is still lariat but now it feels like a god honest trade-off worth taking. drive gauge mangling and horrifying strike/throw but really lacking anti airs.

the real winner is the community by having fun playing the videogame :)

KInda funny that Ed just completley got dropped as soon as Akuma dropped.

I dont think its a coincidence that damage was nearly universally decreased on the same patch Akuma came out lol

I find Akuma's air fireball to be less oppressive than a lot of other versions of Akuma (it may even be bad) mostly due to the fact that it dissipates if you hit Akuma. I've been able to actually punish a lot of air fireballs with lower profile moves like Guile cr. MK or Sweep despite the fireball being pixels away because it will vanish. I've even won rounds on sweep target combo > flash kick > level 1. Akuma's old air fireballs were not so risky. That being said Akuma is top 1 in my early opinion. His ground game is insane and his fireball speed is nuts. I play Guile and it's noticeably faster than my HP booms. Comparison below: Prior to Akuma's release I was convinced that Guile wins every conventional fireball (not JP) war in the game. Some are tricky, like Ryu with Denjin charge, some are very tricky like Dee Jay's H air slasher, but Guile wins them all assuming no "trump card" ODs or supers. I've heard people say Dee Jay beats Guile, but I will explain how this is incorrect. Against Dee Jay I have to spam L sonic blade into HP boom and as I do that the fireball clashes slowly move closer to Dee Jay until I get enough space to use H sonic blade into HP boom at which point I start throwing 3 hits of projectile into Dee Jay to his 2 hits back and it only gets worse for Dee Jay from there. If I misjudge the distance on the first attempt at H sonic blade I might get hit due to the long start up but at least in concept Guile should always win. Dee Jay's longer recovery also means even if he has enough charge he physically can not fire them off fast enough to win as the projectile clashes approach him. I'm not sure this is true of Akuma and the reason is frequently overlooked: projectile speed. Because you are limited by the system (with few exceptions) to only having one projectile on screen at a time Akuma's fireball speed and fast recovery means he can actually fire off more fireballs due to them clashing sooner and farther from him to cancel even my H sonic blade into boom without backing up (often the first hits my blade before I can even release it due to long start up on H sonic blade and the incredible projectile speed). To top it all off because there's no hurtbox on Akuma's hands he can be very late on the last one and still not get counter hit out of the startup. Then Akuma can very easily charge his fireballs to counter my multi-hit options and I even lose. If I can't use projectiles to force opponent's to come to me as Guile then I have to go in and up close Akuma's tools are way better than mine. In short the Akuma match feels very bad for me, it might have replaced JP as Guile's worst match and, if not, it's definitely his second worst (though I haven't played against a JP post S2 patch since everyone is playing Akuma). The other shotos have some good options but Ken (and Luke) generally felt like a 5:5 at worst and in S1 at least I felt Guile beats Ryu.

Probably the biggest thing I noticed with this patch aside from Ryu now being good was Gief's meter damage. Was wondering why I was always close to burning out like 10 seconds into rounds.

Low health is not a way to balance a character when he does enough damage and has enough tools to make you die even faster than he does

This was prophesied in all the S1 tier lists, we joked he was top 1, now look at us (I am playing him too)

Gief i saw coming a mile away right during the lcq exhibition.

Two of the Akuma's in Dreamhack Dallas chart were secondary (e.g. MenaRD). They barely used the character and switched back to their mains like Blanka.

10:59 woah there someone likes NL

Obviously, I'm the biggest winner with the jukebox.

The Street Fighter website has frame data in it's character pages now so you can just look there if you want :D. There seems to some discrepancies between the site you used and what's on their website though. Akuma fireball says 0 oH whereas fullmeter said -1oH

Akuma's fireball is obnoxious af

@ 12:45 Showing the hitbox comparisons is best, of course. Akuma privilege, etc. Although if you were to scroll down on those FAT pages to the notes, I've already detailed exactly how the hurtboxes on shoto fireballs are, which mentions this difference as well. Just wanted to throw that out there for those that aren't aware and might be reading this. I'm pretty sure 95% of FAT users don't read my notes, despite them taking up a lot of time to do compared to the other data fields. Although we do want to just have hitboxes built into FAT. That's a future plan, if we can ever figure out a good and compact way of achieving it for PC and Android/iOS.

I knew number 1 was akuma because he was in the thumbnail.

not related to the subject matter really but i've gotta say that you are probably the best sf6 content creator on youtube right now thumbs up smile emoji

I fell on that chart mixup with hidden Akuma HAHAHAHA nice

Before watching the video I'm gonna say Aki. Her outfit 3 is incredible and shes so hard to play against now. It's definitely Aki. Now let me get my popcorn and watch the vid

Broski will the Aki guide be coming out anytime soon? 👀

Been a gief main on day 1 and it's funny seeing everyone fearing the gief lmao as they should :3

You also have to add, that Akuma being a new character is an unfamiliar matchup, and also with Akuma being one of the most popular characters in SF it could be that really good players are picking Akuma for fun.

Lily did really well in the patch getting two reliable defensive options while getting a few smaller buffs to her buttons that reinforced her gameplan. Medium windstock leaving her +2 up close helps her snowball a lot better and the jab buff improves her frame traps.

Is there a single character that wouldn’t trade any move in their kit for Akuma’ air fireball? It’s the hardest to answer move in the game and requires you to spend bar to attempt to answer (often at a very hard timing execution) or simply lose the interaction by having to move backwards or take the plus frame and resulting mixup. My win rate against Akuma comes down to “does my opponent understand how broken air fireball is”. Obviously it’s at least partially a skill issue on my end but it’s also the only move in the game I’ve ever felt I know is about to happen at a specific timing, and not been able to punish consistently.

Mr pay-to-win poster child, SF6 Akuma.

Unlike SF4 and SF5, SF6 doesn't have a stun bar. Akuma was made ro be low hp low stun. The OD bar is the same for all so overall his balance is messed up a bit cause he technically takes less damage due to jo threath of big stun damage

Who were the biggest LOSERS of the Season 2 update, if any?

not only did Gouki/Akuma take Ryu's better frame data on fireballs, he also took the extra damage (700 vs 600). this was the opposite in SFV!! (and the damage in SF4 too). it really feels like he encroaches on both Ryu and Ken's niches in SF6, I expected them to go in more of an Oni direction with him this time...

AKI and Ken (downplayers), and Ryu with his insane dmg and pressure F. HP. I jabbed an Akuma out of a Raging Demon yesterday, it was hilarious - I try to upload it some time 🤣. Thanks for all the quality content Broski! You gonna win a major with AKI, i just know it! 🎉🎉🎉

Akuma is only slightly over tuned imo. He doesn't need a lot of nerfs but introducing hit boxes in areas that other shotos have would be a nice change. As with everyone else changing the scaling of his ex-palm strike among other moves would make him in line with other characters.

I mean, is anybody surprised that Akuma; a character that's been top tier in every game he's been featured in, is top tier in SF6? Akuma went to Tekken and was still OP 😂

I have a question for Gief mains. How did it feel switching to another character that wasn't a grappler? .

Thanks 🎉

THANK YOU! Broski said exactly what I've been saying. And people been saying that I don't know what I am talking about and I am a scrub. No, Broski is saying the same thing. Right now, Akuma is TOO OP. If you lose using Akuma it's only because the person that beaten you had a better understanding of the CORE game at that moment. The problem with Akuma is once you know how to properly use him you'll find that many of his enders are WAY too safe. He has cover shields for cover sheilds, he can treat operating form the edge of sweep range no different as operating on close up which shuts down quite a number of character especially Ryu. He has tools for absolutely every thing for all situations, and the number of options he has are pretty absurd. He even more or less has Ryu's SF2 tatsu, which is a move that should have been given to Ryu in the Balance patch (Capcom must give Ryu his Super SF2 air tatsu because the current one is atrocious, and they must give him his SF2 Turbo DP and ground Tatsu properties, which will help him considerably). Akuma also has Luke's S1 2MP, which beats quite a number of players when challenged. I said it before Broski uploaded this video and I'll say it again.... Akuma is the S2 of S1 Luke and the stats prove it. Anyway. Let's see as the weeks' progress but if I were Capcom, I'd try to work further on balancing the game to get all characters equal as each other as much as possible. I would be headstrong on not to repeat the tiers that has been long-standing since S1. Let's all battles be determined on the experience, knowledge and skills of the player, not heavily based on the tiers of the characters. Do that and include actual High, Med and Low definitions and we'll have a more beautiful game. Thanks again, Broski.

Out of curiosity, has Capcom used the term 'season 2' themselves? I keep seeing people throw that around, but I thought the new season didn't start until the season pass became available.

Venomous fang going through the Rashid level 2, is that new? Saved my bum a couple time already!

Is a hotfix possible? Or we'll suffer for 6 to 12 months?

broski quoting northernlion was not on my bingo card today

I hope that thanks to the voting pool we get Sagat, Mika, Q and Dudley

Who is the 1st worst mU of akuma ?

The biggest nerf to Ryu is adding Akuma

the akuma representation is also doubled up because a lot of people switched back to their mains when they lost one set with akuma

Exactly 20 min, 1/60 random chance. Is it though?

How many Akumas are in top 8 in both major tournaments? also 9k hp 🙂

I’m not good enough to gauge whether he’s the best but he’s gotta be the most popular, which may influence his placement. Like 75% of my matches lately are against Akuma

Hey Broski why don't you do 5HK after a 5MP Drive Rush Cancel? I see you go straight to 5MK, but you can fit a 5HK in there and then do 5MK, 5MP! It's a nice chunk of damage :)

Let Akuma live! (I'm an Akuma player btw)

Well whenever a new character comes out there are a bunch of people who do road to master's, and since akuma is a legacy character some people may go even further, especially if they already play a shoto.

One day I'll figure out the stand lk timing, it's so hard for a scrub lol.

I love the gief mirror

My honest guess would be somewhere in the middle, I think they fully intend Akuma to be strong and he is a very popular character with a lot of legacy and shoto skill that transfers over. Those are probably the main reasons for the high representation in master rank. I think hes strong but as S2 develops will not seem as overwhelming as people get used to the counter play and arent losing to the cheese stuff which probably happens a ton in ranked

Another two stats I'd be interested in are player population numbers and win rates categorized by rank. It could be that there are 10 times as many people playing Akuma right now, since his trailer was so dope, which would ultimately lead to more Akumas in Legend rank just through sheer volume. For example what if hypothetically speaking the average win rate of legend rank Akumas are 50% but there's 10 times fewer Zangiefs but the ones that exist are just bolstering their representation in Legend rank with higher win rates. Especially if compared to previous season's win rates it could be a strong argument for who the biggest "winner" was. Like maybe top players on average were winning with Aki 40% of the time in Season 1 and now are like 60% whereas Luke could be from 99% to 95% (obviously just joking but you get my point)

Wait so Japan putting gief in S++ tier is not just them being high? Season of Snake Eyez?

I love the way aki walks

I’m really glad a pro/strong player said it. The SFV Luke comparison is also very apt. It often feels impossible to fight Akuma as Luke because he’s just doing everything the same but better. (Obviously it’s not impossible, I just mean that you can feel that way at times when you just get outdone in every interaction).

Akuma comes out overtuned in a new game? (Shocked Pikachu face)

His loyal fans are pleased.

Yo, forgot to mention that his fireball besides recovery and hitbox. His fireball travels even faster than ryu and guile!

I actually don't mind Akuma the way he is... but I am a Zangief main lol. That being said, this video was quite informative and entertaining. Thank you, Broski.

Akuma's fireballs also deal 700 damage, instead of the standard 600 damage

I had stopped playing SF6 for a long while and my Gief was like silver 3. I come back and easily take him to gold 5 (and I'm not done yet). I don't think that's a coincidence. I guess your video is more focused on high level play, but even at low levels his buffs are really felt.

10:57 the unexpected NL always hits right

did you see the Oro leaks

15:18 Re: explosiveness, I wonder whether that will stabilize into being good or bad for Akuma by making it a game of benchmarks. The more the game centers around "play footsies, get a 3.5k combo if you win"... well, 2 of those is 7k damage and 3 of those is 10.5k damage, so Akuma takes as many touches to kill as anyone else. Obviously this is super simplified but it does seem like seemingly minor adjustments could throw him straight into the dumpster depending on which side of the thresholds he lands on.

Can confim being Ryu refugee into Akuma. His fireball game is just too strong

Oh you can get even more damage off of that Akuma heavy punch buffer lol. I was leaving it a while ago and he can get over 4k meterless and over 6 if he wants to spend super. That's with no extra drive gauge other than EX adamant btw.

I just like to imagine they made him super strong cause of the lore 😂

I was going to disagree with you because Ryu also chunks drive gauge now, but it's more significant for Zangief since he's a grappler

A couple of disagreements despite me thinking Akuma is very strong: 1. He has unreliable single button anti airs and a few stubby normals, which are flaws other than the low health 2. Single tournament results arent the best metric. CEO 2023 had like 4-5 Juris in top 8 counting people using her as a secondary. After that shes never had results this insane. Its possible Akuma could get the same or better results but its also possible theyll stabilize.

Imma quote fchamp on this: "Fair and balanced." "Plays like a Marvel 3 character."

Akuma’s air fireball might genuinely be the most unga bunga special move in Street Fighter history, you just throw it out and 70% of characters can’t do shit about it.

would lowering akumas health further make any difference?

New patch Grappler is doing good? No way.

Going by the thumbnail is it a Teletubby, Barney, Big Bird or Mr Blobby 😂

My first impression was not that Akuma was crazy strong, but I haven't spent much time playing with or against him. I felt like his normals were a little stubby? Once again, what do I know? We'll see how things evolve. However, I do hope he keeps that glass cannon archetype. If he is overtuned, don't make his stuff worse, just take another 1000 HP from him.

I gotta admit, despite the 9k health he seems slightly less squishy than a character like Chipp from Guilty Gear. I wonder if his kit would be able to carry him if his health was that low.

"If you think this is downplay" Lol bro already knows what hes doing. Snitched on yourself