Yesterday’s Winter Update blew the Street Fighter 5 community away as Capcom brought a bunch of exciting changes to the shelves for the fifth and final season of the game, but there’s one new addition that grabs our attention with an undoubtedly stronger hold. if all the characters displayed: -Move.
Fans have been asking for years for a defensive mechanic to shake up the overly offensive Street Fighter 5, and V-Shift wants to tick the exact box … and maybe then.
We’ve learned a lot about what this new mechanic is, but we still have a lot of questions, because the devil is so often in the details with these things. It is impossible to say exactly how much V-Shift will change the flow and feel of SF5 until the FGC gets its hands on it directly, but there is good reason to speculate that the meta after February 22 may become almost unrecognizable.
Given the footage we have, let’s take a look at the more likely and significant changes that this hybrid of Street Fighter 3’s parry and Street Fighter 4’s invincible backstory will cause in Street Fighter 5.
What is V-Shift?
If you use a V-Shift in SF5, your character will flicker blue and move backwards quickly at the expense of one size V-Gauge. Your character will be invincible to throws, projectiles and strikes during this movement, and if you take time for your Shift to take place just as the incoming attack of an enemy is about to strike (except for normal throws, it turns out ), you will receive a half refund V-Gauge bar and go into a slow motion mode where you get great benefits.
By seeing the presence of your opponent in slow motion, you can respond with the best punishment for the situation, and this can be done with any of the techniques of your character that can be achieved in time. or via a V-Shift Break: a forward attack that falls and can only be executed after a successful V-Shift.
Incoming attacks with quick recovery are unlikely to be too susceptible to Shift penalty, as we should have seen a character V-Shift from an opponent’s break during the display, but larger attacks with more recovery are likely to be less and further between this time update is implemented.
General changes
Since Shift V-Gauge costs and can be executed at any time during the game, we will obviously see less V-Trigger usage, as players tend to use their partner to escape difficult situations.
We have to wait to see how common the mechanic is during the game, but there is certainly a scenario in which the meta of the game is greatly shifted to use around this new tool.
V-Shift seems like a strong opponent for obvious attacks in the neutral, and will likely cause players to hesitate and think a lot more before throwing out big buttons or clear offers.
Indeed, SF5 is notorious for being able to use cavalier powerful tools because it involves too little risk, and it can dynamically change the nature of the overall risk and reward.
Changes to neutral
Somewhat similar to SF3’s pairing, it will add a universal option based on players ‘abilities to predict and respond to their enemies’ moves. Instead of waiting and holding on to unavoidable intrusive heavy buttons or quick special attacks that can be safely and advantageously canceled for V-Trigger activation, we have a more useful answer to these scenarios.
We saw in the moving window that V-Shift has an interesting effect on incoming attacks that can be specially canceled on the block. Ryu sticks out a bent medium kick technical swing like Rashid V-Shift it, but Ryu is still able to cancel in his fireball, which means that buffers in the neutral will be somewhat confused by this.
Necalli, for example, likes to buffer his stairs behind some of his normal ones as it is relatively safe. If he does and his opposition moves one of the normal, however, the bump will still come out in slow motion and they will have the whole time in the world to see it and punish it.
In addition, slow-moving projectiles like Laura’s Thunderclap, Dhalsim’s Critical Art, Ed’s V-Trigger 1 or Guile’s light Sonic Boom can be moved, which means that some of the traps that create such attacks must be very good. It also seems to offer a new escape route for unavoidable but not block-stunned situations as with G’s Critical Art.
Changes to skirmishes
V-Shift seems to have some direct implications for how the extremely common close interactions in SF5 push.
It essentially adds a new and very viable option to the mix, as defenders can use it to stop frame traps, and much of Street Fighter 5’s meta has always revolved around the great benefits of a frame advantage in your enemy. to have.
Frame traps, which at this point are almost stuck in the muscle memory of many players, can now be combated with V-Shift.
We’ve seen it escape three frame gaps during the Winter Update stream, and it’s all big, but if it works the same way for two or one frame gaps, SF5’s print game might be turned upside down .
Delaying questions
As already indicated, we are really interested in finding out exactly how quickly the invincibility starts when V-Shift is activated. It will greatly affect its usefulness, and honestly we are a little worried that it has the potential to make the game too defensive if it is too versatile.
Can it be used at wake to evade virtually all options? It looks like it’s gonna break the game quickly if it’s true, or at least get rid of awakening pressure terribly.
We also need to ask ourselves what types of counters will be possible if players sniff out when an opponent chooses to move. Can you bait it and get more reward than the opponent’s loss of yards? After all, players can still get the reward of escaping pressure, even if they do not get the slow motion effect and potential punishment.
Maybe jump ahead or streak V-shifts can hunt, though it doesn’t seem like the maneuver has recovered enough to be punished very harshly in the footage we’ve seen so far.
We also do not know what the inputs for Shift and Break are, nor do we know whether a successful Break will suffer real or gray damage.
Final thoughts
There is still a ton to be answered and unpacked for this mechanic, but it seems almost certain that the way SF5 is played will change drastically.
We’ll probably see a lot more strategic throws and jabs, as V-Shift adds the risk to very large moves that desperately needed it, and it could be that we’ll actually pass a sigh of relief if opponents activate V-Trigger simply because it takes this option off the table.
Many members of the community are already speculating that it will be an incredibly powerful tool in the hands of zoning signs like Dhalsim or grapplers with a weak defense. In theory, this could get rid of a major weakness that is based on strategies against such characters.
That said, we’re talking about a game that’s about to re-introduce with a bunch of new variables. How the variables affect things in a vacuum is different from how it will behave in tandem, so it is almost impossible to know how things will shake until we have had enough time to experiment directly.
One thing is for sure at this point, and that is that Capcom has brought new potential and a lot of intrigue in the final chapters of Street Fighter 5. Hopefully it adds the kind of balance and nuances we had hoped for in SF5 and gives it a big momentum in the Street Fighter 6.