SFL: Stats Show that Even Top Players Struggle With Drive Impact

The regular season of Street Fighter League Japan 2023 is now over with playoffs sett to take place in the middle of December to decide who will play in the Grand Final in January 2024. 

While we have been blessed with great performances and the like, we also got some intriguing insights thanks to some  statistics that have been made available. 

A Twitter user, Tujikarori, posted some screenshots showing the percentages for anti-airs and Drive Impact reactions. 

Drive Impact is one of the new mechanics introduced into Street Fighter 6 and many have complained about it as they feel it is very difficult to react to. However, we have seen a lot of pros do it successfully. What the stats showed though was that even the best pros weren't always able to react to Drive Impact. 

According to the post, Nauman was the best to reacting to Drive Impacts as he reacted to 50% of the DIs he faced with second place being Momochi who reacted to 10 DIs at a 37.04% rate. 

It must be noted that at the highest levels, DIs are seldom random and usually are performed in a checkmate situation with the opponent in burnout in the middle of a pressure string making it impossible to react to. However, we still saw a lot of raw DIs and how they caught opponents.

The fact that the most successful player was only able to react 50% of the time tells a tale of how difficult Drive Impact can be to counter. 

At the bottom of thhe list was Dogura who didn't react to a single DI, making him one of the worst performers in the second stage of the season.