Another Evolution has come and gone, and what a tournament it was! This was the first time that the finals were held in an arena, separate from the main venue. As this is the second year that Guilty Gear Xrd was at Evo, the amount of foreign participants increased so competition was fiercer than ever. By now, you have probably already seen the Guilty Gear tournament footage, but if not, then logichole streamed pools. The finals were streamed on the usual srkevo1 channel, but I would actually advise against watching the main English stream. The reason is that the audio balancing was all sorts of terrible during the GG top8. I would actually recommend watching the Japanese version of the Top8, which was streamed on TopangaTV with commentary from DIE-chan, Jonio, and Dogura. Howard Roark also mirrored the Topanga archives on Youtube right here. Normally I would not support unofficial reuploads of a major tourney like this, but it is very unlikely that TopangaTV will ever put this up on their Youtube channel so I will make an exception.
1st – Machaboo(Sin)
2nd – Omito(Johnny)
3th – Rion(Ky)
4th – Nakamura(Millia)
5th – Ogawa(Zato)
5th – Kazunoko(Raven)
7th – MarlinPie(Zato)
7th – TopGaren(Zato)

This year was another milestone for Guilty Gear at Evo because of Arc System Works! While this is not the first time that they have been at Evolution, this is definitely the first time that they have made an official announcement on finals day. With impeccable timing, they announced several upcoming updates to the console version of Revelator, 2 of which were effective almost right away. Version 1.03 is out which rebalances all of the characters and re-introduces the long awaited Dizzy as a playable character. The complete patch notes are available on the official Japanese Revelator website, and they have been translated into English right here. Other than that, the patch also added 14 new music tracks including Heavy Day! In the fall, the game will update to Version 1.04, which includes a new Digital Figure mode. It is basically an in-game character model viewer.

As expected, Xrd Revelator Dizzy is closer to #Reload/Slash than her Accent Core incarnations. Fishes are now back to a single input and spears can no longer be held. She gained back some of her old gatlings, like 5h2d and got some new ones like j.kh! She has a number of changed normals, including a completely different far slash(which is just a 1 hit long ranged poke), 4s(which is her old far slash), and a 1-hit 6h that knocks down on air hit. Her specials have changed A LOT, and I imagine that this was done for flavor. Many of her specials now have two versions, an ice(undine) and fire(necro) variation. This means that some of the inputs have changed. The old bubble is now j.236p, and the new fire bubble is j.236k. Icespike is now 236s, and the fire analogue is 236h. Spear is still 421s, and the new fire spear is 421h. And so on. It is a very interesting change that will unfortunately be very awkward for oldschool players because of all the input differences.

As 1.03 is out now, many Japanese players including the Evolution grand finalists made a final tier list of the 1.02 meta. Very interesting to note the differences here, though it seems like the most consistent placement is Johnny, Sin, and Elphelt in S.

Omito
S Johnny Sin Elphelt
A+ Millia Bedman Zato Jack-O
A Sol Ky Chipp Leo Faust
B Everyone else
C Potemkin Jam Venom(could be in B)

Machabo
S Johnny Sin Zato Elphelt Millia
A Ky Bedman Sol Chipp May Axl Faust I-No Jack-O Raven
B Venom Leo Ramlethal Slayer Jam Kum
C Potemkin

Dogura
S Johnny
A+ Sin Elphelt Bedman Zato
A Millia Chipp
B Everyone else
B- Venom Potemkin

Ogawa
S Johnny Sin Elphelt Millia
A+ Jack-O Bedman
A Sol Ky May Zato I-No Chipp Axl
B Everyone else

En
S Johnny Sin
A Zato Elphelt Millia Bedman Jack-O
B Sol Chipp Axl Faust Ky Leo Venom
C Ramlethal Slayer Jam May I-No Potemkin