East Coast Throwdown 2022 Overview

Over the weekend East Coast Throwdown took place in Stamford Connecticut where a variety of tournaments and intense competition took place. Guilty Gear Strive headlined the event with a total of 220 participants with names such as PG|KizzyKay, RZR|Umisho and STG|Zippy. Umisho, a solo Happy Chaos main, would take the tournament over STG|OneTrueSnorlax in grand finals and continue the narrative that Happy Chaos is the strongest character in the game.

Despite the multiple nerfs that have been given to the character, Happy Chaos continues to dominate not only in online play but in competitive play as well. The general consensus within the community is that his zoning and steady shot are still too powerful of tools for the amount of safety those tools provide.

Despite the underrepresentation among top players, they still place Happy Chaos at the top of their tier lists and I imagine it will stay that way for the foreseeable future. Other tournaments that took place during East Coast Throwdown were DNF Duel, Street Fighter V Champion Edition and Dragon Ball FighterZ. Some of the highlights include Yasha taking Dragon Ball FighterZ with his trademark team of the blue fusions and Android 17.

This win gives him the most amount of points heading toward the world tour finals later in the year as East Coast Throwdown is considered a power event for the tour. iDom, fresh off of his 2^ndplace finish at EVO 2022 showed out at ECT with a tournament win, this time primarily playing Poison instead of Laura. Looking forward I don’t expect to see any significant meta changes for the primary games at ECT, these being Guilty Gear Strive, DNF Duel and Street Fighter V. Happy Chaos will continue his reign as the best character in Strive, DNF Duel just received a major patch before this tournament and Street Fighter V is currently being shown the door by its replacement Street Fighter 6.