These major changes in Street Fighter 6 will have a huge impact compared to its predecessor

Normal moves are considerably less controlling as you get closer to your opponent in the latest title

Street Fighter 5 has become infamous in the fighting game community for its extreme momentum swings, and one of the aspects that has made this always possible is being changed in Street Fighter 6, specifically the advantage over block for the character’s normal attacks.

Below is an image chart of the standard normal attacks of the 8 playable characters and their advantage or disadvantage when blocked. In the cases of Guile, Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Luke, and Juri, their Street Fighter 5 image data is included, along with the difference between the games. Jamie and Kimberly have no past frame data to compare.

Note that the image below only shows frame data for the advantage or disadvantage of a normal blocking attack.

Click on images for larger versions

The main thing that should jump out at most people is that Street Fighter 6 normals are always less bulk advantaged. This is a major change that Capcom has made quite heavily across the board.

A common tactic in Street Fighter 5 was to hit the opponent with a medium attack, switch to another medium attack, and cancel out another move to form a basic bread and butter combo. About half of the Closed Beta characters can still do this in Street Fighter 6 as well, but the main difference is in the consideration of these block moves.

Ryu’s standing medium punch, for example, was +2 on block in Street Fighter 5, and that meant that if someone tried to interrupt him with a normal if they landed another medium punch standing after the first one was blocked, they would be counter-hit and their life drained quite a bit for their trouble.

In Street Fighter 6 it doesn’t work that way anymore, due to changing the image data of those normals. As such, it’s much harder 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 land a standing medium punch into a crouching medium punch in Street Fighter 6, he can easily be interrupted and counter-hit with a light attack. Now trying to spam with medium normals in the new game will usually put you at a very disadvantageous position, whereas in Street Fighter 5 it was one of the favorite places as you could confirm in a combo, frame trap or a mix. on someone with a pitch due to the big advantage offered by a number of blocked pars.

The average for a standing and crouching character’s standard 6 normals is around -4 on block per character in Street Fighter 6, while in Street Fighter 5 those same normals were around -2 per character – c This is about double the disadvantage that was previously given for a blocked normal.

The way this manifests while playing the game is “towers” where a player heavily controls the end of the match much faster than they did in Street Fighter 5. It’s much easier to throw your own attack when you are on the defensive now, after blocking a normal. This translates into the tactic of being up close and personal and spamming, with normals being far less effective than before, and neutral being more important to gameplay – until now.

It’s still very early days 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 dominated throughout Street Fighter 5’s lifespan is currently heavily reduced in the new title.