While balance updates are pretty common and frequent for active fighting games, they're usually in service to addressing short-term or character-specific changes. Rarely are balance patches wide-sweeping and substantial unless they're part of a new release version, or marketed significantly beforehand. Guilty Gear Strive's lastest update is almost the exception to the rule, but recently, Arc System Works has been hyping up all of the major changes coming to its latest 2D anime fighter. Rightfully so, the changes coming in version 1.10 of Guilty Gear Strive are taking a consistent and all-encompassing approach to game and character balance that deserves praise.
Excellent rollback netcode and aesthetic design were just some of the reasons why the latest Guilty Gear game was praised on release, but the actual competitive balance was more contentious among fans. Several characters were often considered overtuned at launch, especially examples like Sol and May. Significant changes have come and gone to many of these characters, but even more are coming with the character-specific and universal changes in Guilty Gear Strive version 1.10. Across the board, major changes to projectiles, air game, throws, damage scaling, Roman Cancels, and Faultless Defense all culminate in a ton of beneficial changes to the game's meta.
Universal Mechanical Changes in Guilty Gear Strive 1.10
Among all the adjustments, universal changes to the game's mechanics are the bulk of this patch's changes. Most of the mechanical adjustments seem to be in effort to strengthening and improving different option selects in the neutral game, all through adjusting "the overall functions of projectile special moves, aerial attacks, and anti-airs." Paired with changes to Roman Cancel damage scaling, Faultless Defense blockstun and pushback, as well as throw and reversal timing, defensive and offensive characteristics of Guilty Gear Strive may become even less disparate as they are in the current meta.
Projectile and anti-air buffs go hand in hand with the aerial attack buffs, according to Arc System Works. Several grounded projectiles have less recovery and are therefore more valuable tools for use in neutral. Anti-air attacks, specifically the universal 6P, have also all been adjusted to be special-cancellable for every character. However, aerial attacks have been reworked to account for this: Slash, Heavy Slash, and Dust attacks in the air all trigger Counter hit, can be jump-cancelled, and all have gatling routes into aerial Dust.
Dedicated defensive changes will also be largely beneficial for players as well, in some very surprising ways. For blocking, specifically in Faultless Defense, FD'ing no longer increases the blockstun from an opponent's attack compared to standard blocking. Alongside this, Faultless Defense blocking now employs a set distance of knockback between opponents and players, making it a far more potent usage of meter in disadvantage. Before 1.10, the benefits of Faultless Defense varied between characters and moves, such as Potemkin's Garuda guard crush attack. Now, a set distance means players can FD most attacks with a more equalized defense.
In that same vein, the increasing of the Psych Burst hitbox means some "Burst bait" combos may not be as effective or common as before, as the hitbox is significantly larger.
Beyond these changes are the smaller (but still important) adjustments like higher input buffer, a larger window for throw-teching, faster normals to counter meaty/wake-up offense, as well as certain adjustments to damage scaling for specials and counter hits. Overall, these changes cast a wide net over Guilty Gear Strive's meta at this point
How Version 1.10 Shapes Guilty Gear Strive's New Meta
There are several character-specific changes in Guilty Gear Strive's latest update, and while it's worth looking over the patch notes for all characters, there are some pretty distinct highlights that are mostly buffs across the whole cast.
Strive's Sol Badguy has received a similarly "one step backward, two steps forward" approach to changes; his 6P wallbounce combos are no longer possible, but the new counter-hit changes and adjustment to his Bandit Revolver special make his corner combos just as potent. Ramlethal Valentine has received a ton of changes, particularly in the specials category, like her target combo becoming special-cancellable adding more depth to her combos. Axl Low benefits greatly from the universal changes to aerial attacks. Anji Mito received several important buffs to his Fuujin rekka combos, as well as his Shitsu butterfly projectile, making his offense even more dangerous.
There's a whole lot more character-specific changes that aid basically every character, meaning version 1.10 is chock full of buffs for the whole cast. The most important adjustments in Guilty Gear Strive's upcoming patch are the defensive changes, which should improve the options players can utilize in disadvantage to gain the upper hand. However, the compensated aerial move buffs do seem particularly strong for basically every character, increasing the potential of aerial mix-ups and vertical offensive pressure like cross-ups. Strive's balance adjustments seem to be enhancing defense without compromising its distinctly offensive-oriented meta currently.
The coming weeks will be interesting in terms of what players will discover about their existing Guilty Gear Strive mains. As with any fighting game balance patch, it's impossible to tell how the meta will truly shake out until after players have had a decent amount of time labbing all the changes. However, all of the buffs in Strive's 1.10 patch largely paint a positive picture, and it'll be interesting to see how the meta shakes out over time.
Guilty Gear Strive is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Arc System Works