Ranking ELeague's Street Fighter V Invitational groups

ELeague recently announced the groups for its $250,000 Street Fighter V Invitational. Each group is stacked and would make a formidable top 8 in any major tournament. But remember, these groups will be pared down to just two players for the ELeague finals on May 27.

So which groups are the toughest, and who might survive each one? Let’s break them down from weakest to scariest.

4. Group D

Du “NuckleDu” Dang
Zeng “Xiao Hai” Zhuojun
Arman “Phenom” Hanjani
Olivier “Luffy” Hay
Chris Tatarian
Ryan Hart
Joe “LI Joe” Ciaramelli
Long “LPN” Nguyen

Should we just pencil NuckleDu in for one of the two finals spots from this group? He’s shown very little signs of slowdown in Season 2. He’s won a few tournaments since Capcom Cup 2016 (DouyuTV U-League 3 and Frosty Faustings IX) and was dominant in the recent exhibition against Ricki Ortiz and Filipino Champ at the Lupe Fiasco event.

NuckleDu is the reason Group D ranks fourth. He’s too good and pretty much a lock for the finals.

The rest of the group is so unpredictable, it’s hard to gauge how any of them will fare in the regular season and the playoffs. Xiao Hai and Phenom are world class players, but Xiao Hai has looked awful against NuckleDu in the past and it’s still a little unclear how Phenom’s character Necalli fits in the Season 2 meta. He’s remained largely the same as Season 1, minus the invincible meterless reversal.

One curious note: why did ELeague put all of the European competitors in this group? Perhaps it was an oversight, but it’s rather unfortunate that Luffy, Ryan Hart, and Phenom are going to have to kill each other off in order to make the finals.

Hart, LI Joe, LPN, and Chris Tatarian have their work cut out for them. They’re great players but they’re in a group full of proven CPT Premier Event winners. It’s going to be a rough series for these guys. But nobody counted on LI Joe making top 8 at Evo so anything could happen.

The finalists: NuckleDu and Phenom

Dark horse: LI Joe

3. Group B

Justin Wong
Bruce “GamerBee” Hsiang
Daigo Umehara
Hiroyuki “Eita” Nagata
Eduardo “PR Balrog” Perez
Darryl “Snake Eyez” Lewis
Alex Valle
Leah “Gllty” Hayes

The standout players in this group are Eita and PR Balrog.

Eita had a great CPT 2016, so it’s obvious why he’s a favorite here, but I like PR Balrog because Balrog (the character) has skyrocketed into the top tier in Season 2 and PR Balrog appears to be having fun with the game again. That’s dangerous for the competition.

Justin Wong had arguably the strongest year in North America and he’s proven he can beat the best players in the world on any given day. Last year, he beat Daigo at Evo 2016 and GamerBee at Manila Cup 2016. But when it came to the biggest events, he faltered. Three straight years he’s gone 0-2 at Capcom Cup. He even admitted he choked at NorCal Regionals 2016 against Tokido.

Daigo has not looked great with Ryu, who is currently not a great character (I’m a Ryu player and I think he’s terrible.) The struggles with Ryu may force Alex Valle into sticking with Rashid as his main in Season 2.

It will be interesting to see how GamerBee and Snake Eyez perform. Like Phenom, GamerBee benefits from Necalli staying largely the same and Zangief looking a bit stronger in Season 2. That said, Snake Eyez has been playing Akuma as a secondary, so it’s possible he could finally make the move away from the Russian Cyclone that he’s dominated with for so many years.

Gllty spent extended time in Asia in 2016 leveling up her game. She is a very strong, aggressive Dhalsim player. She’s likely to encounter more success if she combines that with the experiences gained from 2016.

The finalists: Eita and PR Balrog

Dark horse: Gllty

2. Group A

Lee “Infiltration” Seon-woo
Julio Fuentes
Yusuke Momochi
Thomas “Brolynho” Proenca
Ricki Ortiz
Victor “Punk” Woodley
Martin “Marn” Phan
Bryant “Smug” Huggins

It seems like a lifetime ago, Infiltration jumped out of the Street Fighter V gate and asserted his dominance on the competitive world. He was unbeatable. He won Final Round, NorCal Regionals, Red Bull Kumite, and Evo 2016. He was a lock to win Capcom Cup 2016.

And then everything changed. He wasn’t traveling as much. He was playing other characters, like Alex, Rashid and Balrog, none of which were considered top tier for most of Season 1. He went 0-2 at Capcom Cup and it stung. It appears he’s picked up Juri, but it remains to be seen what he can do with her in Season 2.

He’s just not the scariest pick in this group.

At the moment, I would pick Momochi and Punk ahead of Infiltration, with Smug and Ricki Ortiz not far behind. We haven’t seen a lot of Momochi since Season 2 went live but the man is a god and there is no doubt in my mind he’s putting in the work to be prepared for 2017.

Punk and Smug are two of the hottest players in the U.S. Smug has been a fixture in Next Level Battle Circuit weekly finals, while Punk is the current ESL King of the Hill (we never got that dream Punk vs. Smug match-up due to Smug not being able to appear regularly) and has won multiple East Coast tournaments since December 2016. If it weren’t for NuckleDu, Punk might be considered the best player in the U.S.

We’ve seen very little of Julio Fuentes, Ricki Ortiz, Brolynho, and Marn so it’s unclear how well they’ve adapted to the meta of Season 2. Frankly, these could all be considered a dark horse to make the finals.

But I’ll go with Ricki. She was the Capcom Cup 2016 runner-up because she proved she could compete at the highest level. If she had spent more time training the way she did just prior to Capcom Cup, she might have won more events. She has the ability to compete with anyone and for that reason, there’s a chance she could make it out as a finalist.

The finalists: Punk and Momochi

Dark horse: Ricki Ortiz

1. Group C

Hajime “Tokido” Taniguchi
Ai “Fuudo” Keita
Joe “MOV” Egami
Ryan “Filipino Champ” Ramirez
Ho Kun Xian
Kenneth “K-Brad” Bradley
Joshua “Wolfkrone” Philpot
Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez

I’d hate to be in this group.

Four players were in the top 13 on the CPT 2016 Global Leaderboard: Tokido, Fuudo, MOV, and Xian. That’s three former Evo champions (Tokido, Fuudo, and Xian) , and two of them were Evo 2016 top 8 finalists (Fuudo and MOV.) These four alone are some of the greatest fighting game players of all time.

I expect all four to play well, but Xian has the hardest road if he’s going to stick with FANG, which it seems he intends to do. FANG was hit with nerfs in Season 2 that make little sense. Perhaps Capcom felt his pressure was too much and chose to make his normals slower, but he’s incredibly difficult to play and it takes a world class player like Xian to make him viable.

Filipino Champ (a former UMVC3 Evo champion) had a great year in Street Fighter V. He placed 13th at Capcom Cup 2016, a surprise considering Dhalsim is a tough character to win with at the highest level.

K-Brad had an unbelievable finish to the year. Whatever we fed him at Orleans and York during our Food Run worked like a charm, because he shocked everyone by coming in third at SCR 2016 and made top 8 at the North American and Latin American CPT Regional Finals. He’s had a pretty good run in Season 2, spending nine weeks as “King” in ESL’s King of the Hill and making top 8 at KIT 201, Frosty Faustings IX, and Undefeated 2017.

Meanwhile, one of K-Brad’s current nemeses, Wolfkrone, has been equally impressive in Season 2. Everyone was so focused on R. Mika being top tier in Season 1 that they never realized Laura was pretty good all along. Players don’t seem to have a handle on how to beat a good Laura; Japan might be underestimating her as they don’t seem to consider her a top tier character. Wolfkrone might actually surprise some of these Japanese powerhouses.

The finalists: Tokido and Fuudo

Dark horse: Wolfkrone

Michael Martin used a combination of hard data and science to generate these rankings (no he didn’t.) Follow him on Twitter @Bizarro_Mike.