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Now that the flurry of events from the Rivals Online Championship Series has concluded, we’re taking the opportunity to make some changes across the cast.

• Added angle flipper 10. This sends in the direction that the player is moving.
• When set to “Run” the training mode AI will now turn around when hitting a wall.
• Extended parry stun minimum value increased from 50 frames > 60 frames. Maximum value is still 100 frames.
  • Dan: This change is to avoid situations where you parry a projectile that has extended parry lag point blank and opponents are able to act faster than either player anticipates. The number change only increased the minimum value and not the maximum value.

STAGES

• Spirit Tree side blastzones expanded by 32px.
  • Dan: This change is to decrease the extremely early KOs we are seeing off the side platforms.
• Spirit Tree top blastzone expanded by 8px.
  • Dan: This change is to bring Spirit Tree’s ceiling closer to other stages so it is not as contentious of a counter-pick.
• Bug Fix: Aether Rock Wall pillars will no longer move while the game is paused.

• Charged Nspecial knockback scaling increased from 0.2 > 0.4.
  • Dan: This change is to give Charged Nspecial some more use since we hardly see it except for the extended disjoint that it has over a standard Nspecial.
• Uspecial final hit now has angle flipper 10 which is a new angle flipper that sends in the direction the player is moving.
  • Dan: This change is to remove janky and accidental KOs with Uspecial and also remove super safe KOs when near the edges. Zetterburn players will have to commit to off stage KOs which could result in their own deaths if aimed away from the wall. This change also makes using it at the end of a combo to KO off the top more consistent.

• Bubbles now have extended parry stun.
  • Dan: Long have we suffered from bubble spam. We have protected our prized water creature for long enough. Bubbles had standard parry stun before this patch but now with the new Extended Parry length, players will be able to punish Orcane similar to other projectile parries.
• Bug Fix: Puddle Dstrong reaches 1px higher to avoid strange interactions with opponents on Spirit Tree’s platforms.

• Nair endlag increased from 8 > 12 on hit (12 > 18 on whiff).
  • Dan: With how floaty Wrastor is, he was able to whiff a Nair off stage and still be in a good position to intercept a recovery with a different option. This change makes it harder for Wrastor to whiff and still get his punish. It also makes comboing with 2nd hit Nair less potent while off stage.
• Ustrong hurtbox now includes Wrastor’s head.
  • Dan: Wrastor Ustrong was a little too disjointed when missing his head from both the startup and especially the charged frames. Now you can hit him in the head!
• Bug Fix: Ustrong sweetspot moved slightly to match the art (1px forward, 3px down).
• Bug Fix: Uspecial sweetspot visual moved slightly to match the hitbox (6px forward).

• Initial dash speed increased from 5.75 > 6.25.
  • Dan: Kragg slow. We make Kragg faster.
• Bug Fix: Jab 3 reaches 1px higher to avoid strange interactions with opponents on Spirit Tree’s platforms.

• Ftilt linking hits damage increased from 2 > 3, final hit damage increased from 4 > 5 (total damage: 8 > 11).
  • Dan: While it creates smoke, Ftilt is Forsburn’s least interesting tilt to hit an opponent with. It doesn’t combo as well as his other tilts and dealt the least damage. (9 for the others) By bumping up it’s damage, we will hopefully see it mixed into more Forsburn’s combo games. 
• The first time you teleport into smoke, your double jump is restored.
  • Dan: Forsburn has struggled off stage now that top players are used to his smoke and clone antics. This change gives Forsburn players a more reliable use of neutral special off stage while still keeping a counter since other players can challenge his smoke by attacking off stage or throwing projectiles.
• Super clone now performs a weaker combust when exploding. Sourspot has 6 base knockback, 0.7 Scaling. Sweetspot has 7 base knockback, 0.9 scaling.
  • Dan: This change is to bring some more use to super clone since we rarely see it at a high level. The new combust is the same size as Forburn’s combust which is much larger than the standard clone combust.
• Bug Fix: When the real Forsburn is hit by bubbles, his clone will be destroyed.

• Fair base knockback decreased from 6 > 5.5 and knockback scaling increased from 0.5 > 0.65.
  • Dan: This change is to allow Maypul to close stocks with Forward Air more reliably when her opponent is above 100% while not changing the combo flow of Forward Air below 100% too much.
• Uspecial can now break projectiles.
  • Dan: Some Uspecials like the start of Zetterburns cannot destroy projectiles intentionally. Maypul’s Uppercut had this property but since the hitbox is only above her and not blocking the front of her body, she does not require it.

• Bug Fix: Fstrong final hitbox lowered by 1px to avoid strange interactions with opponents on Spirit Tree’s platforms.

• Bug Fix: Attacks that deal no knockback will no longer destroy Fspecial’s icicles if Fspecial is interrupted.

• Poison stacks now belong to the specific Ranno that applied them. The oldest poison stacks are removed when hitting someone.
  • Dan: This is a big change to the engine that Trevor made that affects normal play very little. If there is only one Ranno in play then nothing changes. If there is more than one Ranno then this allows players to be poisoned by both Rannos with the oldest poison stacks getting removed.
• Dying removes all poison stacks you’ve applied to opponents.
  • Dan: And here we have the reason for the change. We wanted to have Ranno match the other characters where his benefit is removed when he dies. But instead of having it so in a 2v2 or FFA, all poison stacks are removed whenever ANY Ranno dies, we had to make a system where players actually know who poisoned them so only that player’s poison stacks get removed.
• Bug Fix: Bubble’s collision no longer expands when it pops.

• Dspecial now removes burn and poison effects.
  • Dan: Clairen was tired of getting burned.

• Utilt hits 1 and 2 angle flipper adjusted from 4 (horizontal knockback goes toward center of hitbox) > 9 (toward center of hitbox).
• Utilt hits 1 and 2 base knockback increased from 5 > 7.
• Utilt hits 2 and 3 now reach the ground.
  • Dan: These three changes are to reduce the likelihood of people falling out of Sylvanos Utilt without really trying. These changes make the attack much more reliable to finish with the final hit.
• Bair Sweetspot knockback scaling decreased from 1.1 > 1.0.
  • Dan: Now that Bair is much easier to land reliably thanks to our previous changes, it is killing a little too early for our liking.
• Bair can be aimed with the right stick (takes priority over the left stick aiming).
  • Dan: I know some people just want to aim their Bair angle with their right stick. Well now you can!
• Uair frames between hit 1 and 2 reduced from 4 > 3.
  • Dan: This change is to reduce the likelihood of people falling out of Sylvanos Uair without really trying.
• Fspecial endlag increased from 24 > 28.
  • Dan: Fspecial is an incredibly strong burst movement option and does so much for Sylvanos on hit. We needed to make it worse on whiff.
• Fspecial can now cancel off of enemy flowers, Kragg’s rock, Shovel Knight’s rock, Kragg’s pillar, and Ranno’s bubble.
  • Dan: Now Sylvanos can hit more objects and fly around the stage! This change should help reduce the amount of times you are whiffing an Fspecial in certain matchups.
• Grass now dies following the cooldown state after using Dspecial.
  • Dan: This is another big change. We want Sylvanos to be the stage control Rival. He is all about his turf. But we do want him to have to work to get the stage in his favor. This change should hopefully keep Sylvanos players moving around and actively reapplying their grass and flowers to keep the stage in their favor.
• Grass cooldown state duration decreased from 5 seconds > 3 seconds.
  • Dan: Because the grass now goes away, we can shorten the cooldown state so players can start reapplying faster than they would have been able to.
• Bug Fix: All grass is removed on death, including grass that is on cooldown.
• Bug Fix: When Team Attack is off, teammates can no longer attack your flowers.
• Bug Fix: Corrected some attacks that spawned the wrong particles on hit.

• Elliana is now considered to be attacking when outside of her mech.
  • Trevor: Extended parry stun adds 10 frames to non-attacking opponents, so Elliana’s Uspecial would always have +10 parry stun frames without this change.

• Fair hit 2 no longer has tail invincibility.
  • Dan: Ori is not meant to have much disjoint. The character is extremely fast and has great frame data. This change is to remove the disjoint on Fair hit 2.
• Charged Flame startup on release increased from 15 > 19.
  • Dan: With the increased startup, it becomes possible to parry Charged Flame on reaction.
• A whiffed Charged Flame will now disable Sein for 1.5 seconds. Sein will not follow Ori, will not cool down from the Charged Flame, and cannot join Ori for team-up strong attacks during this time.
  • Dan: This is probably the biggest change of the update. The problem was that Ori is a great character alone and Charged Flame was adding too much protection and threat with little risk from the Ori player. There was no reason not to be using it all the time. We started with the question, “What can we do to punish a lazy or poorly used charged flame?” The first part of the change was the increased startup that you see above to make parrying it easier. But the second half is this change which punishes the Ori for whiffing Charged Flame by disabling Sein entirely for a short period. This will hopefully make players think twice before holding neutral special long enough to start a charge.
• Bug Fix: Etalus Fspecial icicles will no longer shatter when you bash them straight horizontally.

• Ftilt hitpause increased from 4 > 6.
• Fair hitpause increased from 4 > 6.
  • Dan: This attack had very low hitpause which made it difficult to DI even if you knew you were about to get hit by it. We are still keeping the hitpause low but increasing it a touch.
• Dair non-spike sweetspot base knockback decreased from 7 > 6.
  • Dan: While we enjoy Shovel Knight being a monster off stage, we want to make sure his options are varied and aren’t just one attack. This change is to peel a little bit of power away from the sweetspot. Now the sourspot and sweetspot have the same KB values, but different angles.
• Dair non-spike sweetspot base hitpause increased from 8 > 10.
  • Dan: The hitpause increase is to give players a bit better chance to DI it and also help distinguish it farther from the sourspot.
• Dair spike hitbox base hitpause increased from 8 > 10.
• Dair spike hitbox hitpause scaling increased from 0.8 > 1.2.
  • Dan: These two changes are the same idea as the previous one. The hitpause increase is to give players a bit better change to DI it and realize they are getting hit by a stronger attack.
• War Horn price decreased from 1200 > 1000.
• Mobile Gear price decreased from 1400 > 1200.
• Ghost Glove price increased from 1000 > 1400.
  • Dan: This is a change that reflects the current meta that we are seeing with many top players preferring Ghost Gloves across most matchups. We do love the laser fantasy of Ghost Gloves and do not want to remove the power spike players get from purchasing them. So instead, we are shifting the purchases to make that power spike later and make the other options more appealing due to cheaper costs. The goal is that in many matchups, the other options might be better upgrades now due to their cheaper costs.
• Shovel Knight can only cancel Fspecial with the dodge button when using Infinidagger.
  • Dan: Shovel Knight being able to cancel regular Fspecial with the dodge button was an unneccesary mixup since he can already jump cancel it. The fact that you couldn’t prepare for any punish after he started it because of the three options led us to removing the dodge button for standard Fspecial but keeping it for a fully charged Fspecial.
• Bug Fix: Chester will no longer follow Shovel Knight if his taunt is interrupted by an attack.

• You can now start training mode with only 1 player.
• If hitpause is interrupted by another hit, your ASDI will happen immediately.
  • ASDI is still checked in the middle of hitpause, so you won’t be able to ASDI if hitpause is interrupted before then.
• Incompatible replays will now show the version number in the replay menu.
• Holding the walk button will now prevent tap jumping with the dpad/keyboard controls.
• Dashing left now behaves identically to dashing right.
  • Previously, dashing left would override dashing right, while pivoting right would override pivoting left, leading to inconsistencies in both empty pivots and pivot babydashes.

• Fstrong and Dstrong fire consume hitboxes angle adjusted from 361 > 45.
  • It already used angle 45 almost all of the time due to the hitpause movement from the normal 2nd hit of both attacks, so this keeps the moves essentially the same aside from a few unpredictable edge cases.
• The burn effect can now be removed by parrying a projectile instead of just by parrying a physical hitbox.

• Ustrong no longer has extended parry stun.
• Ustrong no longer has upper-chest invincibility on startup.

• Clone now spawns on fire if Forsburn is on fire.

• Can now B-reverse Cloud Pop Nspecial.

• Fspecial icicles now have a landing hitbox that lasts 1 frame.
  • Fixes issues like these:

starting stream a little late tonight

in the meantime, enjoy this clip that summarizes the etalus-forsburn matchup pic.twitter.com/h1914xeL1z

— PG | FullStream (@FullStream) May 13, 2020

• Dair no longer goes into the landing lag state after ending on the ground.

• Ustrong no longer has extended parry stun.
• Getting parried now removes his Nspecial charge.

• Fspecial can now ledge cancel.
• Projectiles that spawn inside the plasma field but have the speed to escape the plasma field in 1 frame will now be halted in place so that they get destroyed.
  • Previously, they would escape the plasma field but be unable to hit anything, as the plasma field disables their collision immediately when they’re created, but doesn’t actually destroy the projectile until the next frame.

• Nspecial’s fist no longer detects collision with the ground/platforms on the first frame it is created.
  • This allows it to hit a mine placed on the ground when fired from directly above.
• Nspecial’s fist can no longer pass through platforms.