SFV Season 2 changes:

Capcom Unity

2017 Adjustments Site

System Adjustments

Many adjustments have been made to invincible moves that don’t use meter. Since there was a big difference between characters who had invincible moves and those who didn’t, such as a Shoryuken, many changes have been made to moves that were invincible with no cost.

This is probably the most controversial change for Season 2. In Season 1 of SFV, 4 out of the 22 characters had meterless frame 1 invincible reversals: Ryu, Ken, Cammy, and Necalli. Instead of going the path of “Weaken those 4 characters in other ways to balance it out” or “Give more characters meterless reversals to balance it out,” Capcom decided to remove meterless reversals altogether. Now, nobody in the cast has a meterless frame 1 invincible reversal (special cases are Cammy in VTrigger and Akuma in VTrigger).

A lot of players are saying that this change isn’t “Street Fighter,” in the sense that every Street Fighter before SFV had meterless reversals and they didn’t worry about who had meterless reversals and who didn’t. It is an odd change to say the least and I do understand where they were going with it (in regards to maintaining good balance) but we will have to see if they stick with this controversial change. You could see early signs that Capcom was headed in this direction if you look at the Season 1 DLC characters (Guile, Ibuki, Juri, and Urien all have to spend 1 bar for a frame 1 invincible reversal).

Parameters and hit situations for all normal throws have been adjusted. Changes have been made to characters who can loop throws at the edge of the screen. Even after the adjustments, there will be some characters who can loop throws, as those parameters have been adjusted less compared to other characters.

This change makes it seem like Capcom wanted to adjust characters based on complaints about “throw loops.” Throw loops are essentially situations where after a normal throw, you can setup a situation where you’re in position to throw your opponent again immediately on wakeup (The throw has to hit frame 3 of their wakeup because the first 2 frames of wakeup are throw invulnerable in SFV. The throw would beat out any wakeup normal and had to be avoided by teching/jumping/backdashing/doing some sort of invincible reversal).

However, Capcom only really removed Ryu’s forward throw loop, Laura’s back throw loop, and I’m probably missing someone else. They still kept so many throw loops (Ken, Karin, Rashid, Guile, etc. all kept their throw loops). I’m not sure what Capcom was thinking when they decided to only remove SOME throw loops and keep so many intact. This change really hurts Ryu the most because now, he gets absolutely nothing from both of his throws while the rest of the cast still get strong pressure after landing normal throws.

Due to changes to the game, some general attacks have been adjusted for each character. Along with changes 1 and 2, and the other changes to the game, characters who were able to attack more often and had a long reach became significantly stronger. Due to this, regardless of the strength of the character, general attacks for all characters have been adjusted.

This was Capcom’s reasoning for adjusting the speeds of certain long range limbs (Most notably a lot of Ken’s normals, Alex’s normals, and F.A.N.G’s normals were all slowed down by 1F). I’m guessing they must have playtested a build where they kept the speed of those normals the same and noticed how strong they were after all the other changes were applied. Or that’s just what they want to use as an explanation as to why they slowed down the speed of some normals.

Recoverable damage – Changed recovery speed from once every 4F to once every 8F

Essentially, white/gray life (damage that comes from blocking attacks in SFV) recovers 2x slower than it did in Season 1. This means that as you accumulate white/gray life in Season 2, it will take much longer for it to fully recover if you aren’t hit by any attacks. A lot of players believe that this change discourages blocking because as a player, you don’t want to keep blocking attacks (which leads to more white/gray life being stacked on) so instead, you should be proactive and avoid blocking as much as possible.

This change is actually something Daigo Umehara wanted the developers to do for SFV. At ECT 2016, there was a Q/A session held where Daigo was asked what changes he would want for SFV. He touched upon white/gray life: 1, 2, and 3. While Daigo did not say that he wanted slower white/gray life regeneration specifically, he did say that he wanted normals to do more white/gray life (ex: Daigo wanted Ryu’s cr.MP to do 15 pixels of white/gray life instead of 10 pixels). He believed that players would get too overzealous when they see white/gray life accumulating, which led to them making mistakes on offense rather than actually getting the hit to remove the white/gray life. With increased white/gray life damage (or slower regeneration in Season 2’s case), players have more time to think about their offense and how they’re going to go about removing the accrued white/gray life.

Personally, I think this change is a welcome change to SFV because it allows for chars that don’t have command throws/overheads to build up damage. For example, characters like M. Bison and F.A.N.G are able to build up a lot of white/gray life because they’re constantly making their opponents block their attacks/specials.

Hold button moves – Changed so certain special moves that activate when the button is released can be used as a buffer

A buff to characters that used hold button special moves (Birdie, Balrog, Ibuki?). SFV has lenient input buffers for special moves (so it’s easier to make them come out on the first possible frame). Hold button moves didn’t have this leniency so this change makes it so it’s easier for your hold button move to come out on the first possible frame (reversal timing).

Input latency – Shortened the inactive frames on input confirm from 12F to 6F after the last key for a charge attack has been input

This change makes some charge combos and pre-charging techniques more difficult but it also allows for less mistakes when punishing with a charge character (ex: Guile players getting a sonic boom instead of f.HP when they block a DP). I also believe that it makes it easier for charge characters to Jump Tech OS because there’s less chance that they’ll get a reversal down, up charge move rather than their jump tech.

Strong Anti-Air Light Attacks

Capcom did nerf a lot of strong anti-air light attacks but in the end, they’re still prevelant when used properly (you can’t just mindlessly use them in every situation I guess).

Character Adjustments

There’s too many character adjustments to go over in one blog post so I will just state what I think will happen to the SFV meta.

S1 Top Tier that will drop to Mid (or lower) Tier

Ryu, R. Mika, Nash

S1 Top Tier that stayed mostly the same

Cammy, Ken, Chun Li, Karin, Necalli

Every other character pretty much got buffed but some characters were also nerfed for whatever reason (F.A.N.G and Alex specifically).

My Personal List of Top Characters in SFV Season 2

Urien, Guile, Cammy, Karin, Necalli, Ken, Chun Li, Rashid, Balrog, Laura

Nemo’s List of Characters to watch for in SFV Season 2

Nemo: "2017 will be the year of Zangief" While Guile, Urien, Ibuki and Rashid seem strong, he thinks that Zangief is the strongest https://t.co/HvowihUJSD — HiFight (@HiFightTH) December 28, 2016

Daigo’s List of Characters to watch for in SFV Season 2

PVP Live Article

Top Tier list from his BeasTV stream

Ken, Chun Li, Karin, Dhalsim, Guile, Zangief, Laura, Urien, Rashid, Balrog

Akuma + 5 “New” DLC Characters for SFV Season 2

I’ve been playing a lot of Akuma on the side since his release and I will say that although he is a strong character and has a lot of untouched potential, he’s not as overwhelming as people thought he would be when he was first released. I don’t have him in my Top 5 but he does have a moveset that would put him anywhere around 6-15. Also, I’m part of the group of people that actually welcomes 5 “new” characters for DLC in Season 2. I love the existing Street Fighter cast and all but I’m always down to try out new characters. I hope they bring along new styles to play in SFV (preferably defensive styles to add more variety to the existing SFV cast).

Final Notes

I welcome all the small things Capcom FINALLY added for Season 2 (Direct Input controller support for PC, Background Music Select, Fighter Profile Radar Charts, Improved Rage Quit system). I just hope that in the near future, Capcom will look at more things that people have been complaining about since release (like Arcade mode, Input Delay, Saving Training Mode settings, Improved Tutorial mode, Improved netcode, etc.). I personally do not care if they add Arcade Mode or not but it really cannot be that hard to put the mode into the game to appease people after all this time. The input delay is still ~6 frames and I still wonder if the added delay is intentional (to make offline/online play similar). I wish Capcom would make an official announcement about that but I doubt they will. Also, it is absolutely absurd that after all this time, only Player 1 can confirm a rematch in Versus Mode. Come on, Capcom.

TL;DR: SFV Season 2 is pretty much the same package as Season 1. If you didn’t like SFV Season 1, then you most likely will not like SFV Season 2 (unless your favorite character(s) got buffed and your most hated matchups got nerfed ^_^). I HOPE there’s another patch before the CPT season starts but I’m also content with what we got for Season 2. I just hope that Capcom continues to improve on the details that the community have constantly hounded them about. It would make for a better playing experience for everyone (casual audience and hardcore audience).

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