Tekken 7 Finally Nerfs Leroy Smith

Tekken 7 released Update Version 3.21, which is all about Leroy Smith. Leroy was already nerfed when Update 3.20 was released two weeks ago, but it seems like the changes weren't enough.

Leroy is a relatively new fighter, introduced to the game just last December. This American martial artist was brought to the game as part of the third season pass.

New characters are often welcomed by the community, but Leroy brought a lot of headaches. As a fighter, he had deadly moves coupled with easy execution. Leroy was found to be so overpowered that players started using him and were winning with ease.

While this wasn’t a problem at the start, it became an issue when Evo Japan 2020 rolled in. The very first match of the event saw both competitors choosing Leroy. As the tournament progressed, even veteran players were deciding to forego their usual characters and instead go for Leroy. In fact, six of the last eight participants used Leroy to get wins.

Even though Evo Japan isn’t part of the Tekken World Tour, the community wasn’t satisfied with what had happened.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that Update 3.21 is all about Leroy. A total of his 16 primary and/or combo attacks have been changed. The damage of his attacks have been reduced across the board, ranging from 2 to 10 points. The highest was his cane/staff attack, which originally could deal 25 damage on the third hit. This has been lowered to 15. The effective range of his attacks and moves have been decreased as well.

Hopefully this change will be enough to balance out Leroy and make him competitive again.

With these changes, hopefully Tekken 7 competitions are going to be exciting to watch again. The good thing is that these changes are coming way ahead of the Tokyo Tekken Masters, which is set for April. This event will mark the beginning of the Tekken World Tour 2020.

You can view the changes to Leroy here.

Tekken 7 was released in 2018 for the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The game introduced new gameplay features like Rage Arts and Power Crush. This version also replaced the Bound mechanic with Screw hits. The game has since been a commercial and critical success.