What kinds of change does V-Shift stand to bring to Street Fighter 5? – EventHubs

Yesterday’s Winter Update blew the Street Fighter 5 community away as Capcom showcased a ton of exciting changes en route for the game’s fifth and final season, but there’s one new addition that has our attention with an arguably stronger hold than all the character showcases combined: V-Shift.

Fans have been calling for a defensive mechanic to shake up the overly offense-heavy Street Fighter 5 for years, and V-Shift looks to check that exact box… and maybe then some.

We’ve already learned a lot about what this new mechanic is, but still have many questions as the devil is so often in the details with these things. It’s impossible to say exactly how much V-Shift will change the flow and feel of SF5 until the FGC gets their hands directly on it, but there’s good reason to speculate that the meta may evolve to become nearly unrecognizable after February 22.

Given the footage we’ve got, let’s dive into the more likely and significant alterations this hybrid of Street Fighter 3’s parry and Street Fighter 4’s invincible back dashes will cause in Street Fighter 5.

What is V-Shift?

Using a V-Shift in SF5 will cause your character to flash blue and quickly dash backwards at the cost of one bar of V-Gauge. Your character will be invincible to throws, projectiles, and strikes during this movement, and if you time your Shift to occur just as a foe’s incoming attack is about to hit (save for regular throws, it seems) you’ll be refunded half a bar of V-Gauge and enter into a slow motion state where you gain great advantages.

Seeing your opponent’s whiff in slow motion will allow you to react with the best punish for the situation, and this can be done with any of your character’s techniques that can reach in time or via a V-Shift Break: a forward-lunging attack that knocks down and can only be performed after a successful V-Shift.

Incoming attacks with rapid recovery likely won’t be too susceptible to Shift punishes, as we got to see a character V-Shift an opponent’s Break during the showcase, but bigger attacks with more recovery are likely going to be fewer and farther between once this update is implemented.

General Changes

Given that Shift costs V-Gauge and can be performed at almost any time during the match, we’re naturally going to see less V-Trigger usage as players will be inclined to use their gauge to escape sticky situations.

We’ll have to wait to see just how prevalent the mechanic is during play, but there’s surely a scenario in which the game’s meta shifts heavily to be based around this new tool.

V-Shift looks to serve as a stark counter to obvious attacks in the neutral, and will probably cause players to use a lot more hesitation and thought before throwing out big buttons or obvious specials.

Indeed, SF5 is infamous for allowing the cavalier use of powerful tools because they come with too little risk, and this very well may change up the nature of much of the game’s general risk vs. reward dynamic.

Changes to Neutral

Somewhat similar to SF3’s parry, this will add a universal option based around players’ abilities to predict and react to their foes’ movements. Now instead of waiting for and holding inevitable far-reaching heavy buttons or rapid special attacks that can be safely and advantageously cancelled into V-Trigger activation, we’ll have a more usable answer to these scenarios.

We saw in the showcase that moves that V-Shift has an interesting effect on incoming attacks that can be special cancelled on block. Ryu sticks out a crouching medium kick that technically whiffs as Rashid V-Shifts it, but Ryu is still able to cancel into his fireball, meaning buffers in the neutral are going to be somewhat nerfed by this.

Necalli, for instance, likes to buffer his stomp behind some of his normals since it’s relatively safe on block. If he does this and his opposition Shifts one of those normals, however, the stomp will still come out in slow motion and they’ll have all the time in the world to see and punish it.

What’s more, slow-moving projectiles like Laura’s Thunderclap, Dhalsim’s Critical Art, Ed’s V-Trigger 1, or Guile’s light Sonic Boom can be Shifted, meaning some of the traps such attacks create very well might have to reinvented. It looks to also provide a new route of escape for unavoidable but non-block stun chip out situations such as with G’s Critical Art.

Changes to Close Quarters Skirmishes

V-Shift appears to have some direct implications for how the extremely common close quarters pressure interactions in SF5.

It essentially adds a new and very viable option to the mix as defenders can use it to thwart frame traps, and a major part of Street Fighter 5’s meta has always revolved around the great perks of being at frame advantage in your foe’s face.

Frame traps, which are all but cemented into many players’ muscle memory by this point, now can be countered with V-Shift.

We saw it escape three frame gaps during the Winter Update stream and that’s already huge, but if it works the same way for two or one frame gaps then SF5’s pressure game might be turned completely on its head.

Lingering Questions

As already alluded to, we’re really intrigued to find out exactly how quickly the invincibility sets in when activating V-Shift. This will greatly affect its utility, and honestly, we’re a bit worried it has the potential to make the game too defensive if it’s too versatile.

Can this be used on wake up to evade virtually all options? This would seem to quickly break the game if true, or at least get rid of wake up pressure to a staggering degree.

We also have to wonder what kinds of counters will be possible if players sniff out when an opponent chooses to Shift. Can you bait it and get more of a reward than the opponent’s mere loss of meter? After all, players still stand to gain the reward of escaping pressure even if they don’t garner the slow motion effect and potential punish.

Perhaps forward jumps or dashes will be able to hunt V-Shifts down, though it doesn’t look like the maneuver has enough recovery to be punished very hard in the footage we’ve seen thus far.

We also don’t know what the inputs are for Shift and Break, nor do we know if a successful Break doles out actual or gray damage.

Final Thoughts

There’s a ton yet to be answered and unpacked for this mechanic, but it looks to be almost sure to heavily change the way SF5 is played.

We’ll probably see a lot more strategic throws and jabs as V-Shift adds risk to many big moves that sorely needed it, and it might be that we’ll actually breath some sighs of relief when opponents activate V-Trigger simply because it takes this option off the table.

Many community members are already speculating that this will be an incredibly powerful tool in the hands of zoning characters like Dhalsim or grapplers with weak defense. In theory, it may get rid of a key weakness that strategies against such characters are based around.

That said, we’re talking about a game that’s about to be re-imagined with a ton of new variables. How those variables affect things in a vacuum is different than how they’ll act when in tandem with one another, so it’s almost impossible to know how things will shake out until we’ve had ample time to directly experiment.

One thing is certain at this point in time, and that’s that Capcom has brought new potential and a ton of intrigue to Street Fighter 5’s final chapters. Hopefully this adds the kind of balance and nuance we’ve been hoping to see in SF5 and provides for great momentum going into Street Fighter 6.