Normal moves are considerably less controlling when you close ground on your opponent in the latest title
Street Fighter 5 has become infamous in the fighting game community for its extreme swings in momentum, and one of the aspects that made this consistently possible is being changed in Street Fighter 6, specifically the advantage on block for the character’s normal attacks.
Below you’ll find an image table of all 8 playable character’s standard normal attacks and their advantage or disadvantage on block. In the cases of Guile, Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Luke and Juri, their Street Fighter 5 frame data is included, along with the difference between games. Jamie and Kimberly do not have prior frame data to compare.
Note that the image below only shows frame data for a normal attack’s advantage or disadvantage on block.
Click images for larger versions
The main thing that should jump out to most people is that Street Fighter 6’s normals are consistently less advantaged on block. This is a major change Capcom has made fairly heavily across the board.
A common tactic in Street Fighter 5 was to hit the opponent with a medium attack, go into another medium attack and cancel into another move to form a core bread and butter combo. About half of the characters in the closed beta can still do this in Street Fighter 6 as well, but the main difference comes in when factoring in these moves on block.
Ryu’s Standing Medium Punch for example was +2 on block in Street Fighter 5, and that meant if someone tried to interrupt him with a normal if he did another Standing Medium Punch after the first was blocked, they’d be counter hit and their life drained a good bit for their trouble.
In Street Fighter 6, it no longer works this way, because of the change to these normal’s frame data. As such, it’s far more difficult in this game to string together a series of attacks and give your opponent little to no room to launch a counter.
If Ryu tries to do a Standing Medium Punch into Crouching Medium Punch in Street Fighter 6, he can easily be interrupted and counter-hit by a light attack. Now trying to spam away with Medium normals in the new game will generally put you at a heavy disadvantage, where in Street Fighter 5, it was one of the preferred spots to be in, as you could confirm into a combo, frame trap or mix up someone with a throw due to the heavy advantage a number of blocked normals offered.
The average for a character’s standard 6 standing and crouching normals is about -4 on block per character in Street Fighter 6, while in Street Fighter 5, these same normals were about -2 per character — that’s about double the disadvantage that was previously given for a blocked normal.
How this manifests while actually playing the game is “turns” where one player is in heavy control of the match end far faster than they did in Street Fighter 5. It’s vastly easier to get your own attack out when you’re on the defensive now, after you block a normal. This results in the tactic of being up close and personal and spamming away with normals being far less effective than it was previously, and neutral being more important to the gameplay — so far.
It’s still very early and we don’t know what dominant tactics will emerge in the meta as Street Fighter 6 progresses. However, we do know that this extremely common and powerful tactic that was dominant throughout Street Fighter 5’s lifespan is severely diminished in the new title currently.