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5 tips for becoming a character specialist in Street Fighter V
It’s tough to deviate from what you know in Fighting Games, but if you want to switch character archetypes and specialize, we’ve got tips from one of Canada’s best F.A.N.G players, Mortsy.
After years of updates, Street Fighter V has a large roster of characters for players to explore and experiment with. Currently sitting at 40 characters (but going up to 45 once Season V concludes), there are tons of matchups to learn and experiences to have, although you wouldn’t know it if you just tune into top 8s of tournaments. You may want to gravitate towards the likes of Akuma, G, or Urien as a main (along with some solid counter-picks for your troublesome matchups), specializing in just one character has its own rewards.
When a player is known as a character specialist, they either manage to become synonymous with a character, like Louffy playing Rose or Bonchan playing Sagat, or they become known as the person who unlocked a character’s potential, like Xian with Gen in Ultra Street Fighter IV. Watching character specialists do their thing is really exciting, and has given birth to tournaments like The Connoisseur’s Clash, an invitational where some of the best character specialists in Street Fighter V competed to show off their unique takes on characters.
One of these players, Vancouver’s (by way of Ottawa) Mortsy, is regarded as one of the best F.A.N.G players in North America. He made top 4 at ConClash with an impressive F.A.N.G that has been staple of Vancouver ‘s Street Fighter scene, which he is keeping in top condition for the Capcom Pro Tour Online. F.A.N.G is a very weird character and one of the most unpopular picks in the game, but Mortsy has dedicated himself to specializing in the poison throwing Shadaloo Number 2 and had a lot of fun along the way. We reached out to him to ask for help on specializing in an unpopular character, so here are 5 Tips for becoming a character specialist in Street Fighter V.
1. Know what you’re getting into
If you’re going to specialize in an unpopular character, the first hurdle you have to get over is why nobody picks them. Strong characters in Street Fighter V are easy to pick up and start learning, and fall into age old character archetypes competitors have been playing for generations. There’s a reason Ryu is the most picked character for online play (despite the character’s tournament results being kind of lacklustre). He has one of the most recognizable movesets and provides a great starting point for people beginning their journey into fighting games. Why should you pick a character like F.A.N.G who plays like no one else, when good old reliable Ryu is still there?
“F.A.N.G is a very strange character to play. His rhythms and his kit are very strange. In the state he’s in now, there’s lower reward in the character itself. He's already unpopular and his damage is low, relative to a majority of the cast. The poison mechanic he has is unique, but the damage you get from it is generally pretty low,” says Mortsy, who used to main a very strong character in Rashid but, since moving to Vancouver in 2018, wanted to try something new and switched to F.A.N.G to compete out there.
If you’re going to try specializing in a character, you have to look at what skills you’ve got that can transfer. However, if they’re unique enough that they require a specialist mindset, you might find yourself starting from scratch. That’s okay though, don’t expect overnight success with your new main, be willing to re-learn a lot, and the results will come.
“You have to invest a lot of time. It's not like you’re playing Ryu, and want to play Akuma where you can transfer skills. It's a very similar thing with F.A.N.G where he doesn't play like anyone else in the cast.”
2. Be prepared to lab a lot of bad matchups
Unpopular characters tend to be low tier because their toolkits don’t give them their win condition against a large swath of the cast. This problem compounds itself because, if a character doesn’t have enough good matchups, they aren’t picked a lot, and that contributes to a lack of data on how to overcome tough situations. It’s easy to just pick a top tier who many talented players have found success with, since there’s an abundance of footage and information you can use to prepare for whoever you face. If you’re going to specialize, you’ll need to study.
I think a character specialist is someone who knows the matchups of their character inside and out.
“They're pulling out tech that other people have never really seen or they're using their character in such a way that only a specialist would be able to. F.A.N.G really lends himself to that kind of thing because he has a kit that lets him abuse stuff. Whether it's Coward Crouch being able to low profile so many things, using his V-Reversal in such a way to punish fireballs or using the fly as a gimmick, the ceiling is very high with the character if you can play optimally.”
A big obstacle for glossed over characters, when it comes to bad matchups, is how often you’ll run into them. Many of the bad matchups will be from popular top-tiers which means, in any typical tournament situation, you’ll face several of your demons right out of the gate. At Combo Breaker 2019, where Mortsy came 49th in SFV, he was placed in a pool where he fought four bad matchups for F.A.N.G: Ed, Laura, Akuma and Rashid. It’s not like a late bracket sleeper pick, if you’re playing a unique character, your losing matchups will be in your face immediately.
You can use this to your advantage though. They’re popular and you run into them all the time, but they probably don’t play against your character, let alone someone who plays them like you do, a lot. This is where the specialist shines, as the burden of knowledge is a powerful ally.
“Gimmicks do not work against players who know them. That's the whole point of a gimmick. F.A.N.G is the least popular character and, to this day, I'm running into people that don’t know the day one gimmicks of this character. He’s been in the game for over four years and people still do not understand how to play against him,” says Mortsy.
“I can burden of knowledge people by not actually doing anything. I don't have to really play the game mentally and they'll crumble because I'm just doing things. F.A.N.G, in particular, is very powerful when it comes to burden of knowledge, because his pressure only stops if you, as the opponent, stop it.”
3. Find your character’s community
If you’re new to a character, usually your first stop is either Twitter or YouTube to check out what sort of tech is floating around. That’s great if you want to see G delete a lifebar with max resources in the corner off a single guess, but where do you go to figure out how to preserve advantage after punishing a blocked DP with your low tier?
Finding where the people with the answers hang out is going to be extremely important to your enjoyment of your new character. Depending on the game, character specific Discords can be extremely useful and focused or, sometimes, they just become a dumping ground for memes and complaints. A well moderated character Discord will put you in contact with the best players of your character in the world, allowing you to all grow and flesh out the character but, due to their potentially chaotic nature, shouldn’t be the only place you search.
“Being a part of a community is huge. More often than not, you are not the only person playing your character. There are fantastic resources but their value varies. If you go to the Street Fighter Reddit, there are links to every single character discord. I can't speak for the other ones but, if I'm speaking from the perspective of the F.A.N.G Discord, they are some fantastic teachers. We have every single notable F.A.N.G main, including the Japanese players,” says Mortsy.
You’ll start off by finding some combos and, hopefully, you’ll be able to find a fleshed out character guide listing pros and cons. What you’ll have is a way to do damage, and some information to look out for, but you won’t have a way to implement it. Squeezing out max damage is all well and good, but how do you actually hit your opponent with any of it?
Asking people in your community and online for relevant tech hashtags helps as well. Knowing which tags to do a search for on Twitter will give you a whole bunch of (unsorted) results, and are a great starting point. Once you’ve learned the basics and need to move on towards niche stuff, asking questions will be important. If you don’t happen to have a Street Fighter scientist in your local FGC, hopping into relevant Discords and Twitter Hashtags with questions is a great starting point for succeeding in difficult situations.
4. Prepare for salt
This is a weird reality you’re going to have to get used to. If you’re playing a strong character, and someone complains about your simplistic game plan, you can respond with the old adage, “Just pick a top tier”. But what about when your character has mostly 4-6 and 3-7 matchups against the cast, lacks the strong tools of others, and posts very few notable tourney results? Unfortunately, that doesn’t make you safe from salty exchanges where your opponent blames everyone but themselves for not knowing the matchup they should have won.
“No one likes playing against this character. They’ll win and still be pissed off,” says Mortsy who feels that, as a launch character, most players have had ample time to learn about F.A.N.G. “People just don’t know this character. It’s been so long that I have zero sympathy for anyone I play against who doesn’t know because, at this point, it’s their fault. If they ask questions though, I'm more than happy to help them learn the matchup.”
The burden of knowledge is so powerful, and it's really interesting because it's not something that I have any control over.
You’ll hear things like “Your character is broken” or “It’s so easy to play them,” but you can’t let it get to you. If any of that was true, then Capcom Cup Top 8 would be flooded with Coward Crouching F.A.N.G mains. If you are a specialist, they don’t know what you know about your character.
“The burden of knowledge is so powerful, and it's really interesting because it's not something that I have any control over. I'm able to abuse it but, at the same time, I can't start the match abusing it. I have to figure out what my opponent knows. In tournaments, that’s pretty tough because I basically put myself into risks based on the burden of knowledge and, using that, I’m able to say, ‘Okay, what can I get away with?’” says Mortsy.
Don’t feel bad about using that against them to clutch out a set. They could do the same hard work and research you did to develop your tech, but they didn’t. They can be as salty as they want, but they still need to get good. You did, after all.
5. Don’t throw the book at yourself
Even with a small player base for your character, the pool of knowledge can be huge if you’re playing a game as established as Street Fighter V. It can be overwhelming, for sure, but you need to be focused in your learning and try not to drown yourself. You’ve learned lots of characters before, but you haven’t learned this one. This could take unlearning some habits, or even coming up with new ways to take in information and implement it if you’re going for a wild divergence in pay style.
“Take your time and learn. Give yourself the opportunity to learn. Don't put expectations on yourself. High expectations are what elicit emotional responses and that's when you're going to get pissed off. If you're going, ‘I've been playing this character for 10 minutes. Why am I not diamond?’ or ‘I've been playing Akuma for 10 minutes. Why haven't I won Capcom Cup? You gotta set proper expectations and go into it with an open mind,” says Mortsy.
When you choose to specialize, you’re choosing to go up against all types of adversity. Often, specialists choose to solo main their character, eschewing the need for counter-picks against opponents they struggle against. It’ll be really tough in the early goings but you’ll begin to see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together and, eventually, those insurmountable opponents will become tough but beatable. A huge key to maintaining this progress is to not be too hard on yourself.
“You'll surprise yourself with what you can do. If you go into a tournament thinking you're gonna win and you go to 2-2, that's not bad. If you were hoping to win, then you're gonna get pissed and have a really sad time, because you fell short of your goal when, in reality, you didn't actually do badly. If you go 2-2, you're still in the top quarter of the entire tournament [depending on the bracket],” says Mortsy.
With the announcement of Street Fighter V’s 5th season, there’s still a lot of life left in the title. The developers have been updating the game with new characters each year, offering many chances to specialize. Taking up a new character, who is unlike anyone you’ve played before, is as daunting as it is rewarding. You don’t have to pick the same character as all the pros to get that sweet feeling of victory. Just work hard and impress yourself.
