Why Luke is the best at everything 

Thanks Mr F. Was really trying to just get my boy Sagat buffed, but alas they nerfed Luke. I think I should work on a " How powerful is Dhalsim" video next ....

"We can only wish that every sf6 character is as strong as luke" 😞

The weird thing about Luke is that the type of character he is feels like he shouldn’t even have a fireball. If he was a character with good anti airs, damage, buttons, but no fireball, at least that’d be something, and he’d still be able to supplement neutral with his forward moving buttons. It definitely feels like they gave him a fireball because “easy to play” characters need to have a fireball at Capcom

a year later and luke wasn't broken, he was just a sf6 character in sf5

Never realized that so many of Luke's moves send him hurtling forward. He's like they migrated a DBFZ character to SFV in that regard

on ps, 5% of the players got the "win a ranked match" trophy. there's a higher percentage of elden ring players who got ALL trophies. people mash. and people dont like street fighter because you feel like a doofus when you mash. mashing in tekken and mk is hella fun

seeing content creators continually run up against commenters/chatters who perpetually dont understand what a casual player is always so funny. it was downright cathartic for brian to bust out a calculator to demonstrate that the vast, vast majority of purchasers for FGs dont have the slightest idea that there is more to learn than what they see at face value

Luke's Fireball is like old Nash's dash. The startup doesn't matter because the reactable motion is so late and quick. It's why they ended up nerfing his dash.

"limitations aren't necessary a bad thing" 100% agree .. one of the major fun factors comes from these limitations and how we work within it ..

They said they wanted Luke to be representative of the future of SF. I think this is why he lunged forward with his normals and why his VTs gain meter with damage. I think Luke is an example of the system for SF6 being shoehorned into SFV, and it does not balance well.

Would just say that TotalSagat’s content is a must-watch EDIT: and that even with the changes last night, most of that video is still very relevant

I've learned so much from total sagat. From fundamentals, defense, fireball game,, footsies etc. He's by far one of the most underrated youtubers in the FGC glad you showed him some love brian.

I feel like Luke was an experiment in how necessary it actually is to make execution easier. Because of how his Flash Knuckle combos work, he has plenty of routes that you can’t buffer, and I think Capcom was basically trying to test “In the modern era of fighting games, is player execution outside of bottom level so bad that those combos are a balancing factor, or are we pushing execution to be too unimportant in the name of accessibility that isn’t actually achieved?” If I’m right about this, then I actually really like what Luke implies for SF6. I do think it’s funny though how if you take Luke’s fireball away completely, he suddenly becomes a completely balanced character since he still has the best of almost every tool but he can’t deal with fireball pressure outside of VT.

100% agree with.Tekken being a more casual friendly game same with the soul series can just mash and do cool stuff haha. But both def crazy hard to get really good at

"I tried Tekken as a beginner and I couldn't understand anything" Yah but that criticism can be applied to virtually any fighting game. It isn't an accident that Tekken 7 is absurdly popular compared to other fighting games.

He also didn't talk about Luke's throw game.

Luke in SFV sounds very similar to the first edition of Leroy in T7 in that he’s a “Jack of all trades” that really just makes other characters obsolete

When Luke was revealed as being this ranged fireball monster, I was seriously surprised. I thought we were going to get Abel v.2 out of him, with his MMA background and literal grappling stance in some of his idle animations, but he turned out to be "Better Ryu" in basically every way. While I think he's a neat character, I also think this seriously limits his creativity and makes him much less interesting than he would be if my initial expectation had been correct. I definitely would've preferred a hybrid grappler than... well, _this._

"LUKE GOT NERFED" Luke went from top 1 to top 2 lmao this video will still be 95% relevant and accurate to the way he is now.

Brian F strikes again explaining something that I did not know I needed to know at 5:04. SF5 Diff looks like an amazing tool but I did not question what was going on in the video. Thanks for posting!

As an intermediate Tekken player, I think you're mostly right. I still occasionally lose to players who are worse than me at neutral, punishment, pressure, and movement because they drop knowledge checks and the ways to pass them are obfuscated without serious labbing. Luke seems more like Fahk/Leroy/Lidia in that his tools are just overtuned and lack good counterplay.

I know the video review was the main point but I loved the after-discussion Brian did. It's literally Critical Thinking with Prof. Brian.

TotalSagat is one of my favorite sf creators. Really listens to the community, always looking to spread the wisdom

I totally understand what Brian is talking about Tekken and fighting games and stuff, when I first started watching competitive play I was blown away that fighting games could be played at that level

11:25 - I have a feeling that he's being buffed ALOT now so people play and talk about him before the SF6 release. It's strategic, almost like a boss character. I really don't think he'll be this OP in SF6. Probably just a promotional tool

Loved the analysis.

You need to review the emergency patch. Luke got some major nerfs. Tokido might go back to Akuma after the last two updates.

Top tier thumbnail. Honestly don't even have to watch the video because the thumbnail explains most of what you need to know.

Your video format has improved greatly

Love the way you broke this down

This stream happens then Luke gets nerfed. Conclusion: BrianF saved Street Fighter 5

They did this with the twins in Super SF4 with the twins and how they were made to be top tier. We can come to expect this now

To your point at the end, “they don’t know that there’s anything beyond that.” In regards to mashing buttons like a beat ‘em up. I’ve played street fighter since the early 90s on home console with friends only. I was oblivious to the competing scene or how to play beyond mashing buttons. I’m 38 now and only learned there was more to fighting games 4 years ago. It sucks being this old and getting it bc I’m too old to play like I used to but fuck thanks to your channel and a handful of others I’ve truly learned to appreciate fighting games on a whole new level and have been able to put into practice these concepts and have them work for me. The level of enjoyment I get when I’m getting better and winning is better than any other games I’ve sunk so many hours into. So thank you!

11:25 Seems like a weird thing to say to me. Considering different Street Fighters play different from each other, there's no guarantee that Luke will be as good in SF6 as he is in SFV. Or that SFV Luke would be good with whatever SF6's mechanics will be.

Great context!

The "buff don't nerf" idea has had a wild arc. I feel like today, the argument is mostly rejected (which is nice cause it sucks), but I really wonder how the hell did it even manage to get so many people behind it. I remember the first time I heard it in a very "critical" kinda of way was in A core gaming's video,. If you think about it from a game design perspective then yeah, buffing sounds good. But if you look at it from a user's experience point of view then hell no. Brian said it, not every fighting game should be marvel vs capcom, and there's a reason why not every fighting game IS marvel vs capcom.

I think the biggest thing to hammer home about Luke, the thing that makes him most problematic, isn't that he has great tools, it isn't that he has best-in-class tools in *every* class, it's not that he's the easiest character to play this side of Strive's Ramlethal, it's not even his stupid linguini hair, it's what all that says about him as a character. He wasn't designed. All of these problems tell me that he was *engineered,* in a fucking test tube by some assholes in marketing, purpose built to move units. That makes me really worried for SF6.

Luke got that Susano'o type fireball

Dude I completely agree with you Brian and share the same approach competitively when it comes to this video. Been a fan of your channel since the meaty stomp necalli vid thanks bud

Reminds me of the whole discussion of Tremor from MKX. One of the things that makes him so ridiculously strong is that his moveset has massive forward movement, so he doesn't really poke so much as constantly advance with active frames, which makes retaliating on him super risky because he can effortlessly whiff punish anything.

good timing brian! 😄

Really good video. When broken down with facts you cant argue.

11:28 I'm in the same camp of not wanting to buff to parity, every character being strong with few weaknesses in their gameplay is why I don't play much Tekken anymore. Character flaws and asymmetrical gameplay give you a meta game to play around on top of the base game and makes winning feel more rewarding. It also gives you an opportunity to experiment with new characters to cover all your bases for tournament play.

With Luke getting nerfed yesterday, specifically the buttons you're mentioning St. MK and St. LP a saying from some time ago comes to mind in regards to people who want everyone to be broken. "Developers can generally be relied upon to try to change games in ways that will ensure the health of the game for years to come. Players can generally be relied upon to suggest changes that will have two thirds of the players quit by tomorrow if they can win today." Developers will correct missteps, players will not.

14:34 This whole discussion piece here. When Brian is talking about a fighting game baby and them wanting to have mashing do things, I completely remember this feeling. First 1v1 fighting game I played was Dead or Alive 3. Mash X and the character’s punches lead into each other. Didn’t know how to throw or block. Just focusing on attacking more than my friend. It was fun. Then later as a teen i bought myself Tatsunoko vs capcom for the Wii so I could play as Zero on the cover. No fighting game knowledge except for DoA3. I mashed a punch button as Ryu and… it didn’t lead to a string of punches. Just a dinky little punch that was weak. The command list was confusing too with all these weird arrows to do super moves. I did not have a good time. I like capcom fighting games now of course, after many years, but it’s very valid to assume there are people that buy these games that have literally ZERO concept of a learning curve being present.

> using Vanessa's theme while talking about a character with insane conversion I see you editor

brian tapping the table out of anger is so funny lmao

100% agree on Tekken. I’ll be honest, Tekken was The One fighting game among me and my cousins growing up because it was just fun to press buttons and get hype. I didn’t hear about how hard it is to learn until I started paying attention to the FGC

total_sagat is godlike! He's like the primary reason I mained the King for a while.

sajam ur videos are so informational

I like bad matchups on most days. Being the underdog and striving to overcome can be a very rewarding component of fighting games. You don’t want a character to be TOO bad or good, but a few unbalanced matchups here and there is just part of the fun.

Luke being the best at everything makes sense as a character who resembles Mixed Martial Arts

Yeah, I've always been a casual when it comes to fighters. I watch videos like this because I'm really curious about this sort of game design discussion, but I never intend to put any of it into practice myself. I've been playing fighters since Champion Edition in the 90s, but the height of my skill was learning basic moves and then just throwing them out whenever it felt right, rather than learning any sorts of specific combos with them. I definitely enjoyed the feeling of having interesting looking things happen on screen, rather than getting any sort of mastery relative to my opponents. I was definitely playing checkers rather than chess. ;)

st.lp might have been adressed in todays patch. They increased the blockstop on it so it might be easier to assess the situation after blocking it.

Fantastic thumbnail!

The Oro grey damage was beautiful, btw.

of all days, it had to be today you upload this video

FYI the 2k number is concurrent active players in SFV (on Steam), not total active, but the point still stands.

capcom said 80% of their sales are a casual group that play maybe for a year.

15:55 - Very real-talk, most casuals really don't see the depth in fighting games, that was definitely my experience. I've played fighting games all my life, but knew nothing of frame advantage, push-back, throw-techs, that certain buttons are specifically anti-airs, etc. Literally the only things I picked up intuitively were that sweeps are punishable and to try stay out of range of grapplers. It was only like 7-8 years ago, when I started watching pro matches with commentary, that I started to see it.

Love the Awsumsaus vid chilling in the intro

the tekken comparison was spot on.

Saw the patch notes and they finally changed the hit/block stop on LP, now maybe we can actually react to a move that should be punishable

I'm impressed how people have a problem with basic interpretation, like the people in the STREAM comments, answering things that weren't what he said because they can't understand the point. They're so focused on their opinion, they don't realize he's not contradicting them. He said about people who literally just enter the game and mash, which is the massive majority and not.. is not even people you encounter online cause this people just play some games offline with friends sometimes... that IS most of players. Funny the guy saying "you underestimate FGC" xD... he is not even talk about this guys, is the same guys who just play Fifa after some street fighter games with friends.. and that where street fighter """fails"""". technically advanced and difficult to learn. Mash in Street Fighter is not fun, you can mash and have fun in marvel, tekken etc, but no Street Fighter, yes... Tekken IS technically advanced and difficult to learn. But we are not talking about learn... we talk about play with a friend without know anything or even want to learn anything.

Brian F has really been jamming out to the Melty Blood Actress Again soundtrack

Ayye bumping that "the Moon and the Prince" from Katamari 🔥

With your lv of intellect you simply simplify the aspect of understanding.... Being non biased on playing lv or intentions u generally hit the nail on the head🔨 thx 4 ur insight 💡 #Brian-F 💣 em all with wisdom 🕵🏿👊🏿 #FGC

I agree that Tekken is very casual friendly because the barrier of entry is very low. It's the only game that my family friends play because it's easy for them to understand.

It's funny to me that all the current fighting games had these very strong characters all drop pretty much around the same time.

I want Ryu and Ken to be old asf in Sfv lol

Total Sagat is my Sagat Senpai, love his videos.

15:25 "Mash kick to kick a lot." - Core A gaming (Showing tekken 7)

The new balance update changed his crouching MK and standing Jab, but it seems like they ignored almost all this other stuff XD

Best part of the video was seeing brian get petty with chat

Luke's HP DP is invincible to airborne strikes on frames 1-4 (effectively frames 1-10 if you include the following strike/proj invinc on frames 5-10). Compare that to Sagat's LP DP which is invincible to airborne strikes on frames 1-12 and HP DP is invincible frames 1-16. But yes, it would be nice of more characters had higher juggle limits on their non-EX DPs though, I do agree with that. It feels good ending juggles with a DP. That Sagat stHK vs Luke b+HK comparison is a bit questionable. Sagat's stHK has further range, it just hits higher (the footage he shows with Sagat isn't even properly timed, but Sagat stHK hitbox goes over Akuma's hand hurtboxes during his Gadoken). Luke's b+HK has a lower hitbox (and is a much worse anti-air than Sagat's HK) and thus it connects to Akuma's extended hand hurtboxes. And again with the stMK comparisons, Sagat's is quite a bit further range. But Luke's is still really strong because it has great priority (hitbox past hurtbox) and plenty of active frames which is great for pokes to have. Chun-Li's stMK is pretty much identical to Luke's for comparison. However, Sagat's stMK is also very strong not just because of the range, but the fact it has no hurtbox extensions whatsoever ever during start-up. That's really the strongest feature to have on a poke, since it makes you far less suspect to being counter-hit poked, and makes you far more likely to counter-hit poke the other pokes (for example Sagat stMK will always CH poke Luke's stMK, but Luke can't CH poke Sagat's stMK from the same range since Sagat's has no hurtbox extension during start-up). And it also makes Sagat's MK much more reliable to get past projectiles and trade more consistently with such moves since there's no hurtbox extension until the active frames begin. So yes, you're right, Sagat's stMK is still a top tier poke that should not be downplayed / misrepresented like this. Both their MKs have their own strengths, but I would value Sagat's over Luke's, especially now after the nerf to Luke's stMK hurtboxes and VT cancels. The rest seems about right, though. Luke's fireballs are top tier, his crLP has the furthest 3F range in the game after Chun's crLK iirc. And his stLP is crazy of course, although it is a bit worse now after the hitstop nerf, since you have more time to react to it on block now. And yes, he has easy built-in forward moving whiff punishes with his Target Combos and his standing punches, but I feel that's core to his design, and something we can probably expect to see more characters doing in SF6.

If I were to balance Luke(From a casual player view), I would make him a juggle friendly character who has many ways to start combo, but the down side is that his normals are unsafe and when they are safe, he would need to confirm the move early to get the damage. I feel like Luke was supposed to be character with precise moves and good for people who have fast reactions.

Lukes fireball is more like he is just hitting you with a disjointed smear frame punch

Love totalSagat !!

Such a good point that a lot of beginners think fighting games are beat em ups Brian. Whenever I try to teach my gf any type of SF (she plays literally everything on the most casual level, usually what I enjoy) I gotta remind her not to mash just any button, that there are inputs, that blocking is very important lol.

started trying to understand fighting games playing mortal kombat X, then XI and soul caliber VI it takes time to actually understand how moves really work and understanding what your opponent is trying to do with the character they chose and how your character can beat then if you execute properly

I agree. Buffing all characters to be OP isn't a good idea unless the game is complex enough that it's virtually impossible to master the execution of all the power at your fingertips.

8:44 still here reminding brian that s.lp is a 5-framer. ah, he caught himself. good man :)

Violent Ken for SF6

11:46 oh look he perfectly described Maximilian Dood

Funny this comes out after the sneak update last night.

Absolutely agree on nerfing over buffing in this situation. Players asking for buffs so that everyone is broken very likely saw Core-A Gaming's video on buffs vs nerfs. Unfortunately they took the wrong message away and aren't looking at it with context as mentioned.

crazy that luke has been top tier two games back to back

the gap between casuals and competitors is crazy. they view the came so differently.

If Luke is a sneak peak into 6 then I do hope that all the characters get that buff. I want it to go more back into something like the Ex series.

Capcom learned that if you want to push a character as someone who is important to the overall franchise, you have to make them not hot garbage. I'd say they learned their lesson after making Alex and realizing just how pitifully bad he was in SF3. For the alleged main character of the game, he somehow managed to have the worst lineup of super arts compared to everybody else.

Luke is fun to fight against, after the match you feel warmed up for most matchups

I’ll give an example of people not mowing more when I was younger me and my dad would play mortal combat and just mash and have fun that’s it neither of us tried to get better or anything because we didn’t even think to

tekken is one of the best pick up and play game all i tell my buddie that trys it out i just say each button is a arm or leg and if try a direction and a button at the same time you get something new and they start mashing and kinda figure some moves out lol its awesome lol

Oh the timing

Tekken was the Game where ive stick the most as a kid. Just hammer that buttons with your head and you are doing crazy shit. Then you pick up slowly the buttons you must to press and the mash continues but controlled

The problem with Luke's fireball at the start goes beyond just how fast the projectile moves. Every other fireball it's compared with has a telegraph of the fireball that forms in the hands for a good half second before the fireball starts moving. Luke's animation not only has no fireball in hand to help differentiate between another move and a fireball, it also has the quickest travel time from when fireball appears on screen to when fireball touches your hitbox. His startup animation for the fireball is long, but it's also easy to mistake it for other animations in the heat of the moment, and if you do you have very little time from when you realize the mistake until you get hit to adjust. If he's going to have a fast travel time of fireball, shouldn't the balance trade-off be that it has "more" windup, not less, or a "more" obvious telegraph, not less.

Just something i want to add for tekken is that what he says only applies to certain characters like hwoarang, eddy or katarina. If you play mishimas for exemple it's hard to feel like you're doing cool stuff while mashing buttons. A lot of the new characters do fall in the first category though but i feel like it's happening with most fighting at that point....

Everytime I see Luke explanations and gameplay after more SF6 footage has been shown, I see more of why they said Luke represents SF6(besides the fact that he's the literal main character), the way his V trigger works represents the drive gauge, having good buttons were present for all characters in the builds players got to try in SF6, and im now realizing that his fast fireball is another example, most players that tried and watched footage of SF6 said everyone with a Fireball had a very fast fireball. Im all for this stuff, I was never a fan of SFV's "ghost normals" as I like to call them, where my characters foot would not exist hitbox wise so it would just go through my opponent, Luke representing the next game just shows so many positives imo

11:30 is the exact reason why i dont like DND Duel, but i couldnt put into words what it was that rubbed me the wrong way about that game.

They should've made him the top glass cannon.