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Evo is set to take place July 15-17 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Evo’s Pokkén Tournament competition is shaping up to be hotly contested. It’s the most entered non-SF and non-Smash game with over 1000 entrants registered from across the globe, and the meta is new and flexible enough that anything can happen. It’s incredibly risky to guess or gamble on this game, but let’s look through some data to try and make sense of what we’ll see at Evo.
The Current Character Meta
We now have enough majors under our belts that, even without a proper tier list, we can definitely say which characters are most commonly seen. Burnside has put together some excellent graphs of character usage at Pokkén Nationals and CEO, for example, and we can see some trends.
Regardless of where you are in the brackets, you’re going to see a lot of Mewtwos, Shadow Mewtwos, Chandelures, Sceptiles, and Suicunes. The matchups of these characters tend to really be shaping the tournament landscape right now.
The Two MewTwos
Though nerfed in the most recent patch, Mewtwo and Edgy Mewtwo sit comfortably on the throne of Pokkén character selection. These high-damage, option-heavy characters fear very little and have a tonsof representation. Shadow Mewtwo’s numbers may drop off come Evo time, however–not only was this glass cannon hit a lot harder with a nerf than his sturdier brother, but his place at the top has been getting more and more exposed in some recent high-profile tourney matches.
Chandelure and Suicune
These two are the primary zoners in tournaments, and probably the two most common non-Mewtwo(s) selections you will see. If you can’t get around a fireball in Street Fighter, you’re probably not getting around a laser in Pokkén, and that fact alone will shave at least a handful of the 1000+ entrants out of the race for the top. It doesn’t hurt that two of the best players in the business–newly-crowned US Champ Suicune Master and Chandelure expert CatFight–are repping these characters.
Sceptile
Sceptile can be simply explained as a trap character, zipping in and out of battle, playing footsies, and scattering stun-causing, health-sapping plants across the field. Though he’s probably seen less than some of the others from the top overall (mostly bolstered by representation from BIM? And TeeJay), he can easily steamroll over players that still haven’t figured out the way he controls the pace of the match. His skill cap on his techy combos probably prevents him from having the same representation as those listed above, but with a mega-evolution that grants him some of the strongest throws and combos in the game, don’t sleep on him in any matchup.
Wild Cards
Lately, there’s been some heat in the brackets from the fire starters in the game. Blaziken’s simple, safe, matchup-defining Flare Blitz has started to wreak havoc in tournaments recently, as seen with BadIntent’s defeat of TLoc at WNF. Charizard, thanks to representation from Cyberman65 primarily, has started to place better and better as well. Both characters seem to have favorable matchups to the recently-nerfed Shadow Mewtwo, which certainly doesn’t hurt their chances of success.
Japan’s best players also play wildly underrepresented characters here in the states–the space-consuming Braixen and the Gief-style grappler Machamp. Their matches in particular will be exciting to see versus American players.
Though Pokkén is generally seen as being an incredibly balanced game with no weak characters thus far, there is certainly an established character meta. Pay close attention to anyone not playing one of the characters above, and see if they reveal any tricks that shift the paradigm.
A Quick Support Guide
Assists make up a fundamental part of the meta in Pokkén, so it helps to have a brief look at some of what you’ll be seeing.
Croagunk and Sylveon: This set went from rarely seen to meta-defining literally overnight. Croagunk received a massive buff in the latest patch that causes his attack to remove recoverable health on block. Given its versatility and ability to setup a perimeter for its user, Croagunk alone makes the set worth picking. The defense debuff is nice, too. Suicune Master has started repping this set, but he’s certainly not alone. Teejay and BIM? also have been using this set in tourney, and surely, many others will too, if CEO is any indication.
Mismagius and Ninetails: Mismagius’s lingering attack hitbox allows for amazing lockdown and unblockable setups, and the invincibile, attack debuffing Ninetails is arguably the ultimate get-off-me option in Pokkén. This set gives Charizard users nearly broken amounts of unblockables on wakeup with their air-grabbing command grab, and Cat Fight has been known to use Mismagius in Chandelure’s zoning.
Espeon and Umbreon: A different Chandelure, Abadango, reps this set. Espeon is a get-off-me wake up similar to Ninetails, but trades the attack debuff for synergy absorption. More importantly, Espeon cures debuffs, effectively giving Chandelure a semi-free Overheat.
Snivy and Lapras: Snivy hits anti-air and has armor, Lapras is anti-horizontal and absorbs projectiles. DreamHack Summer winner Bolimar has used the latter fairly effectively to chase down zoners.
Emolga and Fennekin: Emolga is the anti-counter attack set with its nearly full-screen armor piercing bolt, and coupled with a speed debuff, it’s a valuable and common anti-zoner set. Fennekin was a popular invincible wake up attack at one point in time, but has dropped somewhat out of the meta since more players have discovered how to effectively bait and punish it. Coach Steve uses Emolga on reaction as a get in method with his rushdown Garchomp.
Reshiram and Cresselia: Prior to their nerfs, this was the best set in the game. Reshiram does tons of guard damage and punishes most full-screen actions on reaction for lots of damage, and Cresselia provides a huge synergy burst. While still used by many players, perhaps most notably Yeah It Do!, Reshiram lost some damage and Cresselia lost some random invincibile frames that it perhaps should have never had in the first place. These nerfs, particularly the Cresselia nerf, almost completely killed its spot in the meta.
Jirachi and Whimsicott: A curious set that’s worth noting purely as the set of choice for JP Machamp star Azazel. Whimsicott gives the player temporary projectile armor against weak projectiles, obviously making it a lot easier for Azazel’s grappler ‘mon to get in. Jirachi is also useful for its ability to make synergy mode stronger.
The Players To Look For
SuicuneMaster, BIM?, Swillo
South Florida could make the claim they are the strongest players in the world, and considering how well-traveled they are, it would be hard to argue. BIM? and Suicune Master are both major tournament winners (DreamHack Austin and Seattle for BIM?, CEO for Suicune Master), Swillo consistently places in the top of any tournament he enters, and Suicune Master himself was just recently crowned the US Champ. Though these are the biggest names from their scene, they didn’t get this good in a bubble–ZERK, Omagma, Kino and many more all play regularly at VSGC, and the competition is always high-level.
CatFight and Coach Steve
These New Yorkers have proven to be among the best not just in the north, but in the world. Apex Champion CatFight is one of Pokkén’s most recognizable faces, seemingly present at every event and working hard continually to improve his cerebal zoning style. By contrast, Street Fighter and Marvel vet Coach Steve has been rushing down the competition with brutal, split second 50/50s, bringing his vortex knowledge from other games into the forefront. Both have served as gatekeepers to Japanese players at CEO, and both have been kept just shy of the gold by South Florida players.
T-Loc and BadIntent
T-Loc and BadIntent, SoCal and NorCal respectively, have been incredibly strong players repping their individual scenes across the country. T-Loc has run and won most Wednesday Night Fight events, until recently when BadIntent’s Blaziken burned him up in a 6-0 comeback in grand finals. There’s been murmurs that Shadow Mewtwo just isn’t the top tier king anymore, but T-Loc seems intent to see him through to Evo… for now.
Obscure
Obscure has been anything but–the man has been placing top 8 at basically every single Pokkén event he’s entered since the game came out, including the day-after-release of Final Round. Given his 3rd place finish at CEO, it doesn’t seem like he’s going to be going away anytime soon. Originally a Mewtwo main, he’s recently added Suicune to his roster and comfortably alternates between each in tourney. He was the first person to dominate Abadango at CEO, and given how well-traveled he is, it’s hard to think of many other people more ready for the new playstyles coming over to the states at Evo.
Teejay
An up-and-coming dominating Sceptile, Teejay has also shown a penchant for using a variety of support sets, seemingly ready to adapt to any player or character he may be up against. He won Momocon and got 2nd at CEO, and if his most recent interview at PokkénArena is any indication, he’s hungry for more. Some are making the argument that he’s the best Sceptile around now, post-CEO, but with competition like BIM? and with a prize as handsome as Evo’s, the truest test is still on the horizon.
Japan
Team Japan is slated to come out in full force, and thanks to the publicity of FujiONE’s televised event and the efforts of Shi_Gaming, we don’t have to guess too much on who will be showing up and what their capabilities are. In fact, we really don’t have to guess at all. Thanks to PokkénArena Mod Milin’s efforts in Twitter hunting and communicating with famed Japanese Gengar Sasahune, we have a working list of some exciting names:
殿様 Tonosama: The winner of FujiONE’s televised event and argubly Japan’s premiere talent. He is best known for his highly streamlined and smart Braixen–a character that America has, for whatever reason, largely ignored. Given his reputation and footage, there is a certain air that Evo is his event to lose.
Azazel: If there is a player that is most likely to shred through all of the US’s defenses, it’s Azazel. He is frequently in Japan’s grand finals and he plays Machamp, a Zangeif-style grappler that almost no one in the world has good matchup experience against.
小路KOG: This is the famous SFII T-Hawk player!
あばだんご: Abadango, currently wrecking in Smash 4, has also made a name for himself by recently making top 8 in the states with Chandelure.
こもりきり: Komorikiri, another one of Japan’s Smash 4 Gods–turns out he plays Pokkén too!
GO1: It’s GO1. SFV and Pokkén players know him quite well at this point. He won Final Round, but was kept out of top 16 at CEO. He is likely looking to get revenge versus CatFight and Cyberman65.
And, of course, this is just what’s known. With 1000+ entrants, a developing meta, and a wildly new way of playing fighting games, Pokkén could very well be the most unpredictable game at Evo. Which trainer do you think will take it?
So, Tekken 7 isn’t so far away anymore. Akuma’s in and I bet a handful of you are chomping at the bit to play as him.
If you’ve made it to SRK, I feel somewhat risk free in saying this: You’re not a complete scrub in 2D games. You know your way around them enough to talk with others. That’s awesome! More importantly, though, you know this wasn’t always the case.
Very likely, one of the first things you heard in your larval stage in the FGC is to “stop jumping.” The odds are that the game (we’ll use Street Fighter IV as a broad, easy example) you were playing had lots of people in lower levels that jumped all the time, convinced it was the One True Way to get across the screen. You agreed at first. A few too many c.HPs and Shoryus to your face later, you started considering that perhaps jumping was not doing what you needed it to do.
Someday, some FGC guy probably tried to help you. I hope!
The actual advice you got will vary, but I imagine it went something like this. Please, non-descript FGC commentator, tell us why Jumping Is Really Bad:
“Look. Jumping is slow. Look how long ‘Gief takes to jump. Look at how long Chun takes to jump. You can react to those! Here. I’ll just jump at you randomly, press [whatever beginner anti-air button] when I jump. Easy, right?”
And I bet it was at first, wasn’t it?
So you hit the ranks and you c.HP’d (or equivalent) your way through mashers and hoppers. You focused hard on this very bad habit you, and apparently everyone, has.
As you got better, maybe you started looking for more things. You started reacting to fireballs. You noticed patterns in your opponents. You made reads. Jumpers beware! You were unstoppable.
Except, of course, when it didn’t work. Sometimes you didn’t react. Sometimes players you thought were really good still jumped at you, and it worked, and you weren’t sure why. “Jumping is always bad, but this guy totally jumped in on me like 3 times this round, why didn’t I see it?”
Fighting games are never as solvable as that, of course, and I imagine you know that by now. James Chen has a pretty amusing and accurate analogy of how fighting games test multiple skills all at the same time, comparing it to literally playing three different mini games at once. I like that, and I see no reason to expand further when he’s already done such a good job. Just check it out, man.
James Chen.
Boiled down, we understand that jumping is just a tool. A very easy to react to tool when abused, but a powerful one that eliminates and punishes many horizontal grounded options your opponent wants to use. This is the tug of war of horizontal vs. vertical in the 2D field. This is the ‘theory’ of many 2D games. They all have their slightly different ways of approaching this, but that’s the general substance.
I imagine you know this, and perhaps by now you’re annoyed that I’ve really dug into this basic concept, but it’s important. If you want to play Akuma in Tekken, that is.
Because, man, if there’s one thing you’re not going to be doing in Tekken, it’s jumping.
Pick up any version of Tekken from 3 onward. Pick up Soul Calibur. Virtua Fighter. Jumping is going to be a very different feeling beast from what you are used to in 2D games. You’re still getting hit by pretty much every mid and high in the game, there’s little height and often times little horizontal distance covered. Your moves from jumping state usually aren’t very good, either.
The idea of movement in the field is fundamentally very different in the 3D world, and at first I considered introducing you to side stepping first. And I will! Eventually. Stepping and movement are unbelievably important in 3D games and often times the largest thing that indicates skill gap between players.
But that ignores what jump does for you in 2D games, the very thing you are likely most attuned to from your genre. It would be a mistake to compare jumping vs. stepping, in that light.
Jumping forces a test. It tests your opponent’s reactions and decision making simultaneously. It punishes commitments and forces the opponent to think about both what you and they did in that situation. Its use shapes the entire match. The decision when and how you jump is the core of the majority of your interactions in 2D.
And, in the generic 3D fighter world, that’s what lows do. The tug of war in 3D meta is almost always shaped by your default defensive habits:
High Guard
Blocks Highs and Mids, Loses to Lows/Unblockables, Must Break Throws
Low Guard
Ducks Highs and Throws, Blocks Lows, Loses to Mids, Unblockables and Low Throws (rare).
Jump
Loses to Highs and Mids, Jumps Lows and Throws.
When you first start out in a 3D game, you will be tempted to duck. A lot. This isn’t just because you’re a 2D player and it’s what you’re used to, although I’m sure that’s part of it.
You’ll be tempted to because it’s good, on paper. You win versus the listed options above, and in Tekken, you also get access to a wide variety of powerful launchers for a lot of characters. Its weakness, of course, is that you get wrecked by mids, which are often your opponent’s launchers.
But scrubs online drop combos! The game is new! This guy just grabs/does lows all the time!
No.
Stop.
You’re jumping too much.
Ducking stops your movement and hands your opponent the opportunity to do exactly what they want: land a launcher, take control of the match, and likely score a mixup on you as you get up off the ground. “Just ducking” vs. an opponent is the same as “Just blocking” a jump-in: it’s passive. It relinquishes control. It’s weak.
Standing guard is something you can do more often while moving around (particularly in Tekken, with its backdash cancels. More on that in the future), it opens you up a lot less to your opponent’s actions, and most importantly, it gives you the opportunity to block lows on reaction.
Tokido playing Tekken 7. This could be you!
Reaction. Blocking on reaction. Doesn’t sound like jumps, but…
Back to Street Fighter for a second. You know how scary Dudley and Ibuki’s overheads are, yeah? They both lead to full combos. But, man, are people a lot more scared of Dudley’s.
Ibuki’s, though, people block that on reaction because it’s slow. You may have been hit by it the first time you saw it, but over time it slows down from seeing it so much. In high-level of play, it’s not usually hitting because it’s a overhead. It’s hitting because the opponent committed to a low/throw, or got outspaced, or sometimes even it hits as an anti-air.
Jump-ins don’t hit just because you have to stand block them, but they still will hit even the best players for X reasons.
It’s the same thing as lows and ducking. And unlike in Street Fighter, everyone in 3D games has lows that you need to learn to block on reaction, just like how you anti-air jumps on reaction. If you default block stand guard, and only block slow lows (which are the bulk of lows in all 3D fighters) on reaction, you become a wall that your opponent has incredibly reduced options to break through.
Depending on the game this is really brutal–in Calibur, for example, you can guard and throw break at the same time without a move coming out. You eliminate nearly everything your opponent can do with one option. That’s the true power of the guard button. (And it’s also why SC2’s positive frames on shin kicks made it the best game ever… but I digress.)
If you can pick the right anti-air in a 2D game, you can low block and punish common sweeps and lows in 3D games. Every time you block big, slow lows in most 3D fighters, especially Tekken, you get big, fat punishes off of them. This is also why difficult (or impossible) to block on reaction lows tend to result in very, very strong characters in 3D. It’s the Namco equivalent of a divekick.
“But how do I get in??” you may ask. “This is like blocking overheads! This is not the same as jumping!”
Well, yes and no. This is going to be your biggest hurdle, my 2D friends. It’s a good thing Tekken’s always had good training modes to practice against the entire movelist–there’s very little other than playing other people, and spending a little time in practice mode keeping you from doing this.
I remember one of the very best all-around gamers I’ve ever met, XCTU (who I last remember going by HeartNana in BlazBlue, for all you animeheads!), being asked this same question about the short-ranged Talim in SC2. His response was to shoot a sarcastic grin to the questioner (Was it me? I cannot remember. I hope it wasn’t me.) and hold forward on the stick wordlessly. Talim zipped forward and was in throw range instantly.
That probably seems crazy to you grounded 2Ders, but it’s the truth; you’re almost always in footsie range in 3D games. There aren’t fireballs, and your characters are huge in terms of screen real estate. Jumping isn’t the same in these style of games because it doesn’t make sense for any of their engines. Even when jumping was really good in random 3D games, it wasn’t for the reasons you might think. Look at this curious example of high-level SC2, also featuring XCTU, not-coincidentally.
Pay very particular attention to the following:
How often DTN and XCTU blindly duck guard vs. stand guard. (Almost never.)
How often DTN jumps, and more specifically when and why he jumps. (Always vs. very particular mixup situations.)
How many tiny, fast lows DTN and XCTU eat and STILL don’t duck randomly.
Jumping in SC2 (and in Calibur in particular) is stronger than any other 3D game because when you get hit in the air in Calibur, you have control over the direction your airborne body flies–very similar to Smash’s DI, in fact. This, combined with the fact that you take scaled damage while hit in the air, means that sometimes it was better to just take a air hit than to risk guessing wrong on a coin flip launcher/low.
You won’t be doing this in Tekken, obviously, because all air hits result in juggle opportunities, but let that be a lesson to how very subtle details in defensive options change everything. It’s also a lesson on how threatening and meta-defining low/mid mixups are in 3D games in general. Every time DTN jumps, he is blatantly saying “I would rather take this damage than the potential damage of your mixup.”
By now I’ve probably made it clear, but just in case it bears repeating: how you deliberately deal with lows will determine your long-term success in basically all 3D FGC environments. A fast, not reactable low, like a quick 2K shin kick, may do little damage and offer no frame advantage on hit, but they add up overtime. Your opponent has pelted you with 3 of them, dancing in and out of your range. He’s moving back in. Do you block low for a 4th one and risk getting opened up for a launcher? Do you preemptively do a move to try and keep him from coming in, and risk him backdashing out and getting whiff punished? Do you risk mashing out a crouching jab type move?
This is 3D meta in its broadest strokes.
One last, probably boring, personal anecdote before I wrap this up. You can skip to the end, but I thought it was connected enough to warrant noting. Forgive me, SRK, if you fall asleep.
I went to a alright sized Detroit weekly for SC4 many, many moons ago. I’m not shy about saying this: my Calibur game is good. I was always a favorite to do well in any Michigan weekly, if not outright win most of the time. Of the 16 or so people that showed up to this thing, there was a new face there, a really young kid compared to the rest of us. I played maybe one or two casuals with him prior to it and wrote him off as being someone who probably would go 0-2, maybe 1-2 at best. His character wasn’t tremendously good in that game (that is, not Hilde-tier) and I was already getting a feel for his rhythm in attacking.
My assumption of how he’d do in the tournament was incredibly unfair, and that’s the kind of funny thing about tournaments. Here’s a big dose of “Just My Opinion”: At a certain point, players are not just good or bad, because people are usually not that simple. Players are good or bad versus other types of players and play-styles. I met him in winners finals. I was pretty shocked. How did this happen?
As I began to play him, it became clear to me.
This kid.
Stand blocked.
Everything
It’s actually that simple. Players fell to him, some of them good players that had played much longer in tournament Calibur, because he held guard and option selected throw breaks. No amount of high-level conditioning, fakes, or lows would sway him from his “never gonna duck” strat. He punished unsafe mids and tried to play spacing just enough to where that mattered more than his (non-existent) reaction to lows. It worked up until he hit winners finals. His refusal to adjust was what caused him to lose to me as I relentlessly disrespected his stand guard.
Does this seem crazy to you?
I am sure it seemed crazy to KnuckleDu when he couldn’t get Marn to stop jumping. Or to FSP when he lost to Gandhi.
Jump-ins in 2Ds and lows in 3D. They shape the game in simple, profound ways that we can easily lose track of.
I like to give tl;dr summaries because this is the sort of muddy, theoretical area that we sometimes, as gamers, want to learn intuitively rather then through study.
Standing guard is the strong, fundamental default defense of 3D games. Every time you duck in a 3D game, just like every time you jump in a 2D game, you give a bit of information away on everything you know about the game’s meta and your opponent.
If you have this down, this is a significant chunk of getting into 3D games. The other chunk? The infinitely more complicated monster that is movement. Whew. When’s Tekken 7 coming out again?
Do you like upsets? Because there were plenty to go around this year at the entry capped CEO Pokkén Tournament event. Before we get into that, let’s back up a bit.
The first time Japanese players touched down on American shores to play Pokkén, there was absolutely no reason to think anyone other then GO-1 would take Final Round. The game had just seen its console release and Japan had had a lengthy amount of time with the Arcade version. Go-1 would indeed walk away from Final Round victorious, but not without dropping rounds and games to PokkénArena mod AppleBoom in grand finals. Those losses, it seems, would be a premonition of things to come.
All the same, he returned to the states this past weekend as the “champion.” Though he has switched to Shadow Mewtwo now (after previously representing Suicune), once again, there was no reason to believe GO-1 wouldn’t make at least top 8. American players, for all their improvements, simply haven’t had the chance to test their game versus Japanese talent. Sponsored by HailMary, GO-1 is known and respected enough in Japan to have been invited to FujiONE’s televised Pokkén invitational. There’s also that little fact that he was, upon arrival, undefeated in the US.
So when he lost a decisive 0-2 to InC|Cyberman65’s Charizard in pools, there had to be the smallest fear that maybe he wouldn’t even make it out of pools. He dropped games to PG|ESAM along the way, but despite the rocky start, he did manage to claw his way out to top 32 losers side. He didn’t get much further–Circa|Cat Fight, still reeling from his own recent upset to South Flordia’s Kino, stood in front of him. In a emotional and close match, Cat Fight’s Chandelure threw everything at the Shadow Mewtwo in front of him, seemingly always one step behind the JP Vet, but never out. In the nail-biting finish, one unbelievably smart Overheat sealed GO-1’s fate.
GO-1 was out in 17th.
Abadango, the Japanese scene’s last hope, entered top 8 winners with a lot more momentum than his fellow countryman. The legendary Smash player is no stranger to playing Pokémon in fighting games, but here in Pokkén he opts for the zoning-heavy Chandelure. That momentum he was building, with notable wins over Milin and a tight 2-1 vs. Teejay, came to a screeching halt the moment he entered top 8. NG|Obscure’s Suicune wrecked him in a brutally fast 2-0. Obscure played in such a profoundly smart, aggressive, and disrespectful way that one must wonder if he was watching Abadango’s matches all tournament, taking notes on his habits. Every Blizzard, every Counter, every J.X connected like a raw read. It wasn’t close.
That’s just one loss, of course, and Abadango still wasn’t out. One more American awaited him: Coach Steve’s Garchomp. It was a perfect storm; Coach Steve is wildly smart, plays an underused character in the meta, and was already off the high of eliminating one of America’s best sponsored Pokkén players, Cat Fight. You can make the argument that maybe Abadango was caught off guard by Obscure’s aggressive style with a zoning character, but it should be understood by now that Coach Steve’s vortex heavy gameplay was the very definition of “aggressive.” Abadango wasn’t ready for it. Steve bulldozed him in a confident 2-0, ensuring that Japan would not crack into top 4.
Neither Abadango nor GO-1 faced the eventual tournament winner, Circa|Sui Master. Sui Master has recently shared his own hour long set versus Japan’s Azazel with the world, showing that he is indeed actively preparing for the numerous Japanese players coming to Evo. It’s also no secret that the Florida scene is working to establish itself as the strongest Pokkén scene in the world, evidenced by their repeated appearance at every major tournament in the US. Though Florida represented a sizable chunk of top 32, the losses obtained by Japanese players came from New York, New Jersey, and Georgia. The arcade gap has been closed. We are now, as a scene, strong enough to defend our own tournaments confidently.
The race for the Evo crown, and the World’s crown on Nintendo’s own official tour, just got interesting.
Mikado’s “Street Fighter Carnival” tournament series might have a misleading title to westerners, since Street Fighter itself is not its focus. Those that follow Mikado Arcade’s efforts, however, will know this event plays to all of the arcade’s strengths and includes lots of players playing at a high level across a wide spectrum of gems, complete with hype Japanese commentary.
The official Mikado YouTube page has been uploading videos from the event over the past week, and you can check out the contents below. Everything from Virtua Fighter 3 to Dragoon Might (your favorite game, right?!) shows up, so all FGC tastes should be able to find something interesting!
The official Bandai Namco YouTube page uploaded a video officially advertising an update for Shadow Mewtwo, Braixen and Garchomp to Japanese Arcades. The announcement is innocuous enough–until they slip in an announcement that “New Battle Pokémon are Set to Join!”
The announcement comes hot on the heels of Reddit data miners discovering new files in 1.3 that reference three Pokémon not in the game: Empoleon, Darkrai, and Scizor. You can read more into the data itself here.
While the identity of the future Pokémon may be in the air, this video release certainly does nothing to remove the speculation caused by the data miners. Though this does make one wonder why no announcement surrounding this video made its way to the E3 floor.
In a surprise announcement on Twitter this morning, Pokkén Tournament has been added as an official event at DreamHack Summer 2016, just days before the event goes live. Though DreamHack has been supporting Pokkén Tournament in the states, it was never slated to be at the event in Jönköping, Sweden.
As of the time of this writing, the event has yet to be posted on DreamHack’s official webpage, and signups have not yet opened. There is no word on how or why the event suddenly got added, but it’ll be curious to see the turnout for a major event with only 4 days of notice.
DreamHack Summer 2016 will be held June 18-21 and includes competition in Mortal Kombat XL, Street Fighter V, Smash Bros. Melee, and more.
Japanese Pokkén Tournament players have been enjoying a strong and exciting string of tournaments. Azazel, a dedicated trainer to the wildly unrepresented Machamp, has just recently come off a nail-biting 2nd place finish in FujiONE’s Pokkén invitational.
Suicune Master, the appropriately named South Flordia player, has been enjoying incredibly similar success here in the states. In addition to his strong showing at DreamHack Austin, Suicune Master suffered a narrow defeat to his fellow Floridian player Bim?. Mirroring Azazel, the loss came down to a last match situation–a situation made all the more painful by the fact that Suicune was on the verge of a comeback after a 3-0 bracket reset.
These two were clearly fated to play.
Outside of GO-1’s clinic at Final Round on the eve of game launch, Japanese players (who enjoyed a nearly year-long head start in arcades) have not really had the chance to play much against US players. This set is fascinating for a long list of reasons: it gives us a sneak peak at some of the top play we may see at Evo, it shows how much the gap between these two scenes has closed, and it gives us a case study into the rare, polarized matchup of Machamp vs. Suicune.
Zoning vs. Grappler is never easy in any game, but the Rock-Paper-Scissor system of Pokkén Tournament, combined with the varying phases, gives this matchup a unique flavor. Azazel shows significant matchup experience and optimized play here. If the quickly-adapting Suicune Master didn’t have it before, this extended set with the world’s best has certainly armed him with Machamp knowledge for the future.
“Lipso Saturday Night Fight,” an eSports program in Japan, recently ran an 8-player invitational event for Pokkén Tournament. Airing on the sports/variety station FujiONE, the tournament featured strong players from across Japan, including:
There’s no chaff among these eight (as far as we can see–Saku vs. Tonosama was played off stream before they went live) each fight is an uphill battle for both sides. Of particular note is the down-to-the-wire grand finals, the neck and neck score for which is settled in an explosive finish.
The event, advertised and orchestrated closely with Nintendo as an official event, brought together players and commentators from across the Japanese gaming landscape, including LoL, SFV, and, of course, Pokkén.
Courtesy of a quick translation from Pentao via PokkenArena, we now have an English version of the huge batch of Pokkén Tournament patch notes that dropped last night. If you thought the previously announced changes for the arcade version were somewhat lacking, well, you’ll have a lot to chew on come June 15th.
While the patch notes themselves are rather extensive, here’s some examples of the most significant changes:
Charizard
Burst Mode: Synergy Mode time decreased.
Suicune
jY (Water Gun) now does less blockstun.
Pikachu
Pikachu’s Nuzzle now has longer recovery frames if you whiff.
Chandelure
Charge-Release [X] currently reduces the time you have negative statuses on you. Now it also increases the effect of negative statuses on opponents, too.
Mewtwo
Burst Attack: When you miss with your burst attack, your post-BA invincibility is shorter to make it easier to punish you for failing to grab your opponent.
All Pokémon Attacks: Drain more Synergy when used.
Barrier: Timing to block an opponent’s attack is slower.
Back Y in Field (Fire spin): Timing on canceling fire spin is now slower, must be canceled later.
Homing Attack: The 2nd part of the Homing Attack now has reduced hits. This makes it easier to CA the homing combo. However this nerf does not apply to Burst Mode Mewtwo X.
Counter Attack: Fixed the bug where inputting back + CA would sometimes cause you to lose synergy for some reason.
Shadow Mewtwo
Recover: Recovery time after using recover reduced.
Thunder: You can now combo after hitting thunder on an aerial opponent instead of slamming them with a hard knockdown.
Back Y in Field (Light Pillar): Increased hitstun on aerial opponents. Miracle Eye variant also receives this buff.
Back Step (Field): You can now cancel into an action out of Shadow Mewtwo’s field back dash sooner.
Counter Attack in Burst Mode as Shadow Mewtwo X: Can now combo out of Mega SMX’s counter attack in burst mode if it either criticals, or is fully charged.
Psywave (Vortex): Increases how much life is consumed when fully charged. Damage dealt as chip damage decreased when fully charged.
Earthquake: The gap between attacking and blocking after this move is increased, making it more punishable/less +.
j.Y in Field: Increased recovery when used. Cancel timing altered. More easily loses exchanges with enemy projectiles.
Homing Attack: Same nerf as Mewtwo’s. Also does not apply to Mega SMX.
Time in Burst Mode is reduced.
Supports:
Croagunk: If an opponent blocks Croagunk, Croagunk reduces their recoverable life.
Quagsire: Reduces the outward knockback of mud bomb, making enemies more easily trapped in it.
Diglett: the recovery for summoning Diglett is increased. Diglett’s base damage and damage against guards is reduced.
It is worth nothing that the somewhat universally agreed top tiers, Mewtwo and Shadow Mewtwo, received the largest amount of nerfs. Both still seem strong, however, particularly Shadow Mewtwo, who received some interesting new combo opportunities and a better recover.
PokkenArena’s Lucario Mod Milin points out, the changes address guard breaks across the board. More importantly, perhaps, is it’s timing. He notes:
This patch will drop on the 15th of June, a Wednesday, and also just so happens to the be the Wednesday before the weekend that St. Louis Showdown, a Pokkén Tournament Championship Series Minor Event in Illinois, and APEX, a medium to high profile tournament in New York. Both of these tournaments will each feature a great range of skill and some of the top class of Trainers in the Pokkén Tournament scene. It will be interesting to see how these competitors incorporate the changes at the highest levels, and levels of skill in between!
What do you think of the changes? Do they go far enough, or too far? What about the timing? How do you think tournaments should address the issue with the patch? Leave your comments below!
