Street Fighter 6/Luke/Introduction

Introduction

A contractor for a PMC, Luke uses his elite military background to teach mixed martial arts. His days off are spent eating junk food, playing video games, and fighting, but make no mistake—Luke plays to win.

Luke Sullivan is a shotoclone character with an emphasis on a strong midrange and whiff punishing. Luke has all the standard shoto tools you could want, but puts several unique spins on them to craft his own style. Where Ryu is defensive and neutral-oriented, and Ken is aggression and combo-utility oriented, Luke focuses on crafting a strong midrange game with excellent pressure once he's gotten in.

Luke's signature move is Sand Blast, an exceptionally good fireball. Unlike most fireballs, Sand Blast is incredibly fast and goes nearly fullscreen in the blink of an eye, allowing Luke to snipe out most approach attempts with ease. Outside of Sand Blast, Luke can use his great 2MP, 5MK and 2MK to push opponents back, or lunge forward for punishes with 5LP, 5MP and 5HP. Luke has plenty of Target Combos from these pokes, allowing him to convert even the smallest of pokes into sizeable reward. If he chooses to spend meter on OD or Drive Rush, then Luke becomes capable of dealing monstrous damage and carrying you deep into the corner.

Here, Luke becomes truly terrifying. Luke has an excellent corner game with everything a character needs to keep you blocking. Easy throw loops, a fast and safe overhead, many ways to be plus or even fully reset pressure, and consistent combo enders with great okizeme. Many of Luke's normals lunge him forward, which synergizes with Drive Rush to create hard-to-escape pressure sequences and surprise whiff punish opportunities. On defense Luke excels at well, with his 2LP being a 4f jab with a great hitbox. He has a great DP with Rising Uppercut and a fantastic anti-air in 2HP.

Luke is a character with few meaningful weaknesses, and can perform well at all levels of play. While his jabs tend to be on the slower side outside of 2LP, this is because many of them move him forward for better punishes and thus exist as a tradeoff rather than a weakness. Sand Blast similarly does not travel fullscreen outside of the OD version, but this is another tradeoff for its powerful speed. None of these differences create meaningful weaknesses in Luke, allowing him to craft a strong and reliable gameplan. If you want a shoto with more of a focus on pressure and playing out the midrange, you should hit the streets with Luke.

Pick if you like:

Avoid if you dislike:

An easy to play, well-rounded character that is never at a disadvantage in matchups. Luke has a great fireball, a solid uppercut, oppressive normals, and solid mixup tools. He spends Drive very well regardless of what he chooses to bank it on, and his supers are easy to combo into and deal excellent damage. A great pressure game with throw loops, normals/target combos; and Sand Blast, a fireball that effortlessly combines with his cancelable buttons to close space into pressure and end in a favourable position. Good whiff punishes that easily convert into oki and pressure. 5LP, 5HP, and 2MP are all great at controlling midrange space and punishing the opponent's presses all while maintaining Luke's advantage. High damage combos that scale well regardless of the starter. Luke's optimal BnBs with Perfect Flash Knuckle deal incredible damage off of a good starter, and even his lights can provide him with above-average damage. He can also confirm kills very easily with his OD specials and their follow-ups. Luke has probably the best lvl1 super in the game. Throw and strike invulnerable, 6f startup, very good range, can be used to beat fireballs on reaction (even Guile's), and can punish many moves in the game that normally wouldn't be punished, such as JP's 3HP sweep.

Precise timing on optimal combos. While Luke's combos are very consistent once you get the timing of Perfect Flash Knuckle down and missing the timing still leaves Luke safe from punishes, his optimal routes still have some execution requirement that can serve as a learning curve. Due to the wall bounce of MP Flash Knuckle, some of his routes may also change slightly depending on how close to the corner the opponent is.