Duck King overview & gameplay guide
Character specification
Character story
Get down on it with South Town's resident dancing king!
Duck is South Town to the core; after all, he not only has a friendly rivalry with its hero Terry Bogard (after losing to him in his youth), but also a deep love for iconic hangout Pao Pao Café. Indeed, Pao Pao is where you'll mostly find this old-school breaker, living it up like only he knows how: with fights, festivities, and tons of dance floor fever. When rhythmic royalty hits the stage, nothing can stay away or stop him—not even time itself!
Difficulty
MEDIUM
star star
Fighting Style
Martial arts
Season 3
Duck King Gameplay Trailer
PDF Command List
Gameplay Overview
Duck King is a mix-up oriented rushdown character with lots of tricks up his sleeves and a focus on meter management with his Hype State mechanic, buffing his mix-up potential, safety, combo options and movement speed. When Duck closes the gap and gets his pressure going, he can constantly keep you guessing.
Along with his mix, Duck has several strong unique options such as meterless (and sometimes REVless) HKD situations due to being able to combo into his command grab (214P~4/6B) with enough time to set up his next mix-up. He's also exceptionally strong on defense with an invincible and anti-air DP on 623K, good GCs with 214B and his command grab super having massive range and punishing anything thats -2 and above.
Duck's main issue lies in his lack of larger pokes most characters in this game have, mainly having to rely on far C and 236A to close the gap in neutral. Several of his ways to get in are pretty risky on whiff and/or reactable so he has to be smart with his approach. On top of this, Duck can struggle to secure KOs due to his lower than average damage, especially with his mix-up starters. It is also vital that you manage your resources well, since he loses more options in Overheat compared to the rest of the cast.
There's a lot of room for creativity with Duck King, a player who utilizes his wide variety of tools can make even the most defensively sound player sweat. While it can be difficult to get the party started, Duck will keep it going all night when he does!
Pros & Cons
thumb_up PROS
- Strong Pressure and Mix: Beat Rush Breakin' (214P) has everything you would need to open someone up. Not only can he do high low and throw from his rekka, all of the non-throw follow-ups are safe in Hype and Duck can catch mash attempts by delaying the mid or low (Both with decent conversions on counter-hit). He also has a variety set ups with his 66B/D, giving him left/rights and a + meaty low along with other meaty options from a bad 236236B ender in corner. All of this combined with a frame 1 command grab makes Duck hard to consistently defend against.
- Amazing Defense: A meterless reversal, a multi-hitting anti-air DP break, fast GCs with good counter-hit launches along with his command grab super for punishes give Duck a lot of options on defense which most characters could only dream of having.
- Light Confirms: Duck has it all when it comes to confirming lights, good range, reliable enders and the ability to confirm into heavy and EX DP. On top of this, while Duck is in Hype, he is the only character in the entire game to get meterless and REVless HKD from his lights by going into 214A~4/6B.
- Tricky Movement: Along with great movement speed in Hype state, Duck has a plethora of approach tools and ways to mix up his movement. His slide can close the gap as an advancing low, his ball specials are relatively safe to throw out with solid reward on hit or counter hit and he has his j.C as a very active and hard to check jump-in option.
thumb_down CONS
- Awkward Neutral: Lacking the larger pokes a lot of characters get by with, Duck has to be a bit more creative with getting his gameplan started. Far C is decent but is fairly slow, his best pokes besides that being the stubbier far A, far B and far D. While he does have other options like 236P and his slides, they can be pretty risky to go for due to their high whiff recovery or lack of safety on block. Duck also lacks a traditional backdash which limits his ability to gain space quickly.
- Low Damage: Due to the nature of his archetype, Duck is often landing lower damaging hits with his mix-ups. On their own the damage is pitiful and still isn't that threatening with meter usage. His higher damage starters don't usually go above 50% either, especially noticeable when dealing with an opponent in Final Ratio.
- High REV Dependence: Duck needs to constantly keep his REV gauge in a higher range to be at his most effective. This is made an even greater issue due to Overheat removing most of Ducks strong tools.
- Guard Cancel Prone: While Duck's EX rekka is an amazing mix-up tool, against more experienced opponents he can struggle to fully take advantage of it. Because Duck needs to do the first 2 hits of the rekka before his follow-ups, the opponent can consistently JD if its done from a far normal due to the gap or do a rather lenient HD on the 2nd hit. Duck still has amazing pressure despite this, but it is something the Duck player needs to account for.