Tekken 8 heat system: what to know to play better

What is the heat system?

The Heat System is one of the most important new additions in Tekken 8. It powers up your character for a short period, giving you access to new or stronger moves. Visually, it’s a small bar located below your health bar.

It’s a special mode that can be activated once per round.

Entering Heat gives you access to:

• Powered-up moves
• The ability to use Heat Smash
• More pressure on your opponent
• Some characters have exclusive actions in Heat, such as special parries or other effects

How do you activate it?

There are two ways to activate the Heat system:

• Heat Engager: certain specific moves put your character into Heat automatically on impact (e.g. a certain medium attack hits and puts your character into Heat).
• Heat Burst: a universal manual move (2+3, i.e. Triangle + X) that puts your character into Heat immediately, whether it lands or is blocked.

Heat Engager, if it lands, triggers a brief animation that puts your character in front of the opponent with an advantage of +9 frames, and starts the Heat bar, which from that moment on will slowly drain until it runs out.

Heat Burst is instead a universal command, the same for every character, which any character can use at any time, as long as they’re not already in Heat. It’s used to manually activate the Heat state without needing to land an Engager; however, it won’t fill the whole Heat bar, but will sacrifice about a quarter of the bar, with the rest then slowly draining until the state ends.

What happens once the bar is activated?

Universal changes:

• Every attack, even if blocked, deals a bit of chip damage (chip damage)
• Most attacks that already caused chip damage outside of Heat get amplified, dealing even more chip damage.
• The ability to use Heat Dash and Heat Smash

Character-specific changes:

Beyond the universal changes, some characters in Heat get exclusive actions, new moves, changed rewards on certain moves, or full-on special parries.

Heat Dash and Heat Smash: what are they?

Heat Dash

Heat Dash is a dash cancel that you can only perform after a Heat Engager. It’s used to close the distance quickly on your opponent and keep up the pressure, or to extend a combo.

All (and only) Heat Engagers can start Heat Dash while the Heat bar is active.

If Heat Dash is blocked, you get an advantage of +5. When it comes to on-hit rewards, though, things get more complicated.

AS A GENERAL RULE, not every Heat Dash guarantees a combo. It depends on the move used to trigger the Dash.

Some Heat Engagers leave the opponent stunned long enough to allow a combo, others don’t.

Either way, Heat Dash keeps your advantage and puts you right next to your opponent: you can keep up the pressure even without a direct combo.

This reward needs to be studied in training mode for every character!

However: if you use Heat Burst in a combo and immediately follow it with Heat Dash, the Heat Dash won’t let you continue the full combo, only guaranteed hits.

Heat Smash

Heat Smash uses the same command as Heat Burst, but only while you’re in Heat mode (while the bar is slowly draining), same as Heat Dash.

It’s a pretty powerful super move that immediately consumes your entire Heat state, dealing heavy damage and often launching the opponent into the air or creating an advantageous situation.

Careful: Heat Burst is used to enter Heat. Heat Smash, on the other hand, is used once you’re already in Heat, and fully drains the Heat state, dealing heavy damage and/or getting you an advantage (a strategic edge).

Every character has a unique Heat Smash, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.