Tekken 8 players furious as patch 1.02.01 buffs the most “broken” fighter

Tekken 8’s second balance patch hasn’t gone over too well with the community in some ways, with one of the biggest complaints being that King, a top-tier fighter, has had one of his key stances buffed despite already being incredibly strong.

King stands out from the rest of the roster as Tekken 8‘s premiere grappler. While a select few other characters have multi-stage grabs, no one throws people around like King does. As a result, he can feel very difficult to play against.

Between fairly ambiguous throws that require you to guess the break input, a ton of damage, some deadly lows, and a ton of pressure that’ll take you to the wall almost instantly on some stages, there’s a reason why King is feared.

It should come as no surprise that players were hoping for some nerfs to King, considering how strong he is. However, patch 1.02.01 did the polar opposite and buffed his Jaguar Sprint.

While there’s a bugfix that reads somewhat like a nerf when it comes to one of his Armored moves, he’s much better in this patch than he was before it. Much to the chagrin of most Tekken 8 players.

King’s Tekken 8 reign of terror continues

So, what exactly makes this King buff such a big deal? The only thing they did was make him able to cancel his Jaguar Sprint, a sort of stance that has him running forward while giving him access to some new moves.

One of the options from Jaguar Sprint is an unbreakable throw that, if it lands in the right part of a stage, can lead to a combo that deals over 100 damage.

The only reliable solution to King Jaguar Sprinting at you was to hit him out of it and punish. Going for this move was high-risk, high-reward; if you were able to identify the run and punish it, this move’s vulnerability provided a great window to punish King’s aggression.

That window has now vanished on patch 1.02.01 with him being able to block during Jaguar Sprint, and everyone (other than King players) has been left scratching their heads as to why they’d so heavily buff a character that was already good.

Even on the day of the patch, players are already putting this new block window to work to win rounds.

Tekken pro Ghirlanda didn’t mince words on this one, saying the buff was a “big L” and claiming that this patch did nothing to fix his “broken” state as a character.

Esteemed Tekken pro and coach PhiDX also isn’t sure what players should be expected to consistently do in order to counter King, and he’s the one who made a 26-minute video on how to break his grabs.

Ultimately, while Tekken 8 players seem to appreciate the frequent balance updates post-launch, they aren’t very happy with the fact that King’s getting buffed despite being so strong already.