A guide to the factions system in Street Fighter: Duel.
Street Fighter: Duel has been out for almost a week, and the meta is starting to settle. One of the game's core team-building mechanics is the use of factions.
Factions are the elements of each character that make up a team. There are five Factions in total, Fire Wind, Thunder, Master, and Infernal. Fire, Wind, and Thunder are the more common factions encountered. Master and Infernal are rare.
The way these factions benefit a team is simple, the more characters of one same faction that you have on a team, the more you will benefit. If there are two fighters from the same faction, the attack bonus is +15%. If there are three fighters of the same faction there is a 15% attack and a 15% HP bonus. Four Fighters see the benefits increase to 20% for attack and HP.
It's good to know which factions are the best and what each faction does, so let's get into it!
Pros And Cons
Factions in Street Fighter: Duel are relatively simple. Each primary faction mechanically is the same besides one small difference: weaknesses and advantages.
The advanced factions, Infernal and Master, behave a bit differently. Infernal fighters do not contribute to faction bonuses but instead grant buffs to all friendly fighters according to the number of Infernals used. Masters are Chameleons and will become any faction that is the majority of their team.
| Faction | Weak to | Strong Against |
| Fire | Thunder | Wind |
| Thunder | Wind | Fire |
| Wind | Fire | Lightning |
| Master | Master and Infernal | Master and Infernal |
| Infernal | Master and Infernal | Master and Infernal |
Right now, the Infernal faction is useless because there are only two characters of that type in the game. That makes them extremely rare, and even then, they can't live up to their full potential because there are only two of them.
Master is in the same boat because there are only two of them but both of the characters, Rose and Gen, aren't that good at the end of the day. Meaning, no reason to use them over some characters in the base units you're going to be trying to build.
Thunder
This faction is widely considered to be the best in the game because of the number of characters that are part of it.
Elena, Poison, Combat Guile, Mad Ryu, and Makoto are a group of characters who can easily carry you through the first nine chapters of the game. Elena functions as the healer, Poison and Guile deal AoE damage, Mad Ryu is a devastatingly strong single-target attacker, and Makoto is an AoE tank.
On paper, there is no other faction that comes close to having this amount of utility in the majority of its characters. On top of all of that, the Thunder faction has its own banner going right now, so you have more opportunity to get some of the prior listed characters.
As the game is updated, we hope there's an increasing depth to the faction system. Currently, as it stands, the system is fun but shallow. As more characters and variants get added, we hope they also make building a synergized team more rewarding than it currently is.
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