Rivals of Aether Balance Patch 2.1.6.0

As we near our first RCS event of Season 8, we’ve got a fresh new balance patch to shake up the start of the competitive season! This patch focuses primarily on our four newest characters, while taking a brief pass at some of our original cast. As RCS Season 8 progresses, we will be paying close attention to how things are progressing in the meta and how our newest characters are fitting in with their classmates. Now, let’s dive in:

• Hitboxes with Priority 0 (meaning they only hit projectiles) will now appear gray when hitboxes are visible.
• Bug Fix: Fixed the D-pad being unable to perform certain actions when set to Walk instead of Run
• Bug Fix: Fixed a bug that turned characters invisible if killed while armored crystallization is active on them.
• Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where the game would not track the color players would hover/select on the newest four characters.
• Workshop: Added function: get_color_profile_slot_range(slot, hsv).
• Workshop: Added support for `wallcling.png` sprites. If this isn’t found, it’ll use `walljump.png` and the `wall_frames` variable for the duration of wallcling.
• Workshop: Fixed palette 31 for custom characters being sent as negative when online.

Mollo is getting more and more attuned to the Rivals world with every patch. This time we focused on once again toning down his wackiness while taking a swing at his stalling capabilities and his Finisher bomb usage. We’ve also given some love to his bomb interactions, up air, and up strong.

• Up Throw: Reduced window that can cause landing lag, 12 > 6 frames
  • This should make landing during aerial up throws feel less awkward for Mollo.
• Up Air: Second hit KB Scaling increased, 0.7 > 0.8.
  • This is halfway between the strength of launch Mollo Up Air 2 and last patch. Mollo should now be able to net kills at more reasonable percents.
• Neutral Special: Pulling a bomb no longer affects falling speeds, removing frequent aerial stalls.
  • Pulling bombs in the air has been a key tactic for Mollos to slow down the game and frustrate opponents. This change will affect his offstage stalling as well, forcing Mollo players to be more decisive in their recoveries. Players could try utilizing the new right stick bomb angles to throw bombs straight down during his Up Special to achieve a vertical boost while having full range of Mollo’s motion with the left stick.
• Up Strong: Hits 2 and 3 have been extended forward and downward by 10 pixels to help the move connect into itself more consistently.
• Forward Strong: Projectile-only hitboxes have been added near the ground to hit bombs easier.
• Down Special: Projectile-only hitboxes have been added near the ground to hit bombs easier.
• Bomb Throws: You can now angle bomb throws during strong inputs and Up Special with the right stick (this input overrides the left stick).
• Bug Fix: Getting hit while holding a flashing Finisher bomb no longer resets its countdown once it has already started.
  • This bug fix was a main focus of Mollo’s portion of the patch, aiming to make Finisher a harder commitment than the current meta of using it as his main option.
• Bug Fix: Down Throw (Air): Landing while charging now immediately ends the charge instead of having Mollo slide across the ground in specific situations.
  • This fixes what the community knows as “the cha-cha slide.”
• Bug Fix: Forward Throw: Fixed bombs being thrown too early, which caused them to warp in front of Mollo.
• Bug Fix: Bombs: Fixed a bug where getting hit when holding a partially-detonated firecracker interrupts the rest of the detonations.
• Bug Fix: Bombs: Fixed a duplication bug involving buffering a throw and wavelanding to spawn extra bombs.
• Bug Fix: Bombs: Fixed bonk hitboxes being destroyed too soon, meaning they will consistently destroy solid articles like Kragg pillars.
• Bug Fix: Bombs: Bombs now explode properly when bonking against a ceiling.
• Bug Fix: Bombs: Fixed grounded bombs being stuck as an active projectile.
• Bug Fix: Dash Attack: Fixed grabbed bombs acting as if they’re on the ground, which caused some odd platform interactions.
• Bug Fix: Dash Attack: Fixed thrown bombs appearing to teleport upwards for one frame.
• Bug Fix: Dash Attack: Grabbing bombs now uses a projectile only hitbox for greater consistency.

Dan told us to stop changing Olympia but we could help giving her some more fine tuning as we tackle a few semi-niche interactions and redistribute some power on her strong attacks.

• Gem: You can now perform jump cancels out of Forward Special and Down Special startup in an opponent’s gem field.
  • Everyone else gets to have fun in the mirror, why not Olympia?
• Down Strong: Startup reduced, 24 > 18
  • Down Strong is often overlooked despite its unique crystal spawning capabilities. We’ll be keeping an eye on this move as the meta continues to shape.
• Forward Special: The active dash window can now go off ledges during its first 3 frames.
  • We’ve heard some complaints from players that charging the move midair could result in Olympia getting stuck on a ledge/platform if released slightly too late. This change should allow Olympia players to utilize her burst more consistently in ledge scenarios.
• Down Special: Dash cancel no longer has invulnerability frames.
  • The few frames of invulnerability during her dash often caused some weird interactions and missed attacks by opponents. If you want to avoid an attack, try absorbing the hit before dashing!
• Up Special: Increased multi-hit hitstun to avoid situations where crystallized opponents would pop out of crystal before the final kick, 1.0 > 1.2
• Up Strong: Decreased final hit KB scaling, 1.2 > 1.15
• Up Tilt 1: Damage increased, 5% > 7%
• Neutral Special: Her projectile now creates a gem when it hits a wall instead of disappearing.
• Bug Fix: Crystalize: The pop hitbox now only lasts 1 frame, which should fix frame-perfect hits getting overridden by it. This should remove interactions causing lost kills and shortened combos.
• Bug Fix: Fixed Down Special removing respawn invulnerability early.
• Bug Fix: Fixed Forward Special dash not moving up ledges if started against a ledge.

Pomme is once again getting a magnifying glass brought to her special moves and stalling capabilities. We are once again reducing her ability to stall offstage while making sure she still sports one of the strongest recoveries in the game. We hope that these changes along with some balance changes and bug fixes for our favorite bodyguard, Vince, will make Pomme just as fun to fight against as she is to play.

• Up Strong: Evened out damages of sourspot and sweetspot, 10% and 14% > 12.
• Up Strong: Increased sourspot BKB to match sweetspot, 7 > 9.
• Up Strong: Evened out base hitpause of sourspot and sweetspot, 10 and 18 > 14.
  • These changes mean that there are no longer sourspot or sweetspot hitboxes. Both pre-existing hitboxes are now the same strength with the same overall properties, which should help balance out a previously underpowered Up Strong.
• Forward Air: Back hitbox now ignores projectiles.
  • This should make Pomme’s reverse Forward Air burst recovery less safe against most of the cast.
• Forward Air: Reduced width of front hitboxes, 50 and 70 > 42 and 62.
• Forward Air: Pushed out front hitboxes to account for the reduced width.
  • These changes should make Pomme’s Forward Air less of a guessing game between sweetspot and back hitbox to both players when an opponent is hit near the center of Pomme. Pomme’s Forward Air still reaches the same distance in front of her as before.
    
• Neutral Special: Added a visual for Pomme’s notes getting knocked off of her.
  • This visual has been on the Switch build since Pomme’s release, but has been bugged on PC due to visuals affected by rollback coding.
• Forward Special: Moved Vince’s grab hitbox up by 8 pixels to avoid grabbing wall clinging opponents.
• Forward Special: Vince now displays a super armor effect when fully charged.
• Forward Special: Vince stops blocking attacks once he starts fading out.
  • Updates to Vince this should help him feel more consistent and less gimmicky to all players.
• Up Special: Early hits have shockwaves and galaxy effects disabled to avoid repeated vfx playing when near blastzones.
• Up Special: Holding Dodge during the first six frames of startup allows you to cancel into the dive variant.
• Up Special: The dive variant now interrupts horizontal momentum for consistency.
• Down Special: Can now only be used once per airtime.
• Down Special: Using Up Special to restore your float now reduces the songfield’s timer to 1 second. This will reduce Dspecial’s cooldown to a maximum of 5 seconds.
  • Using the stage dive variant will not restore float or consume field.
• Down Special: Added a UI element showing if Down Special can be used.
  • Float and repeated Down Special abuse offstage has been a key offender resulting in some of the less approachable ways to play against Pomme. The rework to her Down Special and addition of stage dive variant on-command should keep Pomme’s recovery strong while introducing completely new mixups and removing the painful offstage stalling.
• Bug Fix: Forward Special: Vince no longer teleports through pillars or rocks.
• Bug Fix: Forward Special: Vince’s grab hitbox is now only destroyed by successfully grabbing players, not just hitting articles.
• Bug Fix: Forward Special: Hitting Vince should now trigger every on-hit interaction as other solid articles.

Hodan is getting a lighter but still important cleanup of kit. We’re focusing on moves connecting better and bringing some re-balancing of his more oppressive and less frequently used attacks.

• Up Strong: Removed KB scaling from the initial upwards hits.
• Up Strong: Increased BKB of initial hits, 7 and 8 > 8 and 9.
• Up Strong: Slamming grabbed opponents should now work more reliably when solid blocks are above Hodan.
  • Up Strong should now connect with itself more consistently and slam opponents more reliably.
• Forward Tilt: Sourspot KB adjusted, 9 + 0.2 > 8 + 0.3
• Forward Tilt: Startup reduced, 17 > 14
  • Forward Tilt has been one of Hodan’s least used moves. Giving it some adjusted KB values and speeding it up should help it find a home in his kit.
• Forward Air: Added 10 frames of hit lockout.
  • The extra hit lockout should make it less common for sweatwhirls to interrupt kills.
• Up Air: Increased landing lag, 4 > 7.
• Up Air: Increased hit two KB scaling, 0.5 > 0.7
  • Up Air loops have been one of Hodan’s most devastating tools. The extra landing lag and KB scaling should allow for opponents to escape the blender much quicker, while still keeping the move as a powerful tool in his kit.
• Down Air: Increased spike hitbox height, 10 > 30
  • The spike hitbox previously sat in the middle of a sour hitbox, making it difficult at times to predict whether or not the spike will connect.
• Down Air: Increased sweetspot hitpause, 8 + 0.65 > 11 + 0.75
• Up Special: Throwing a sweatwhirl no longer puts Forward Special on cooldown.
  • The cooldown was originally added when Hodan could use Up Special into sweat spirits more than once. We’ve removed the cooldown since his previous recovery routes have been changed in a recent patch.
• Up Special: Increased hit lockout, 6 > 10
  • The extra hit lockout should make it less common for sweatwhirls to interrupt kills.
• Down Special: Removed hurtbox from of his hands at the point of impact.
  • This should help with some strange looking trades resulting from Hodan drastically extending his hurtbox as he lands.
• Sweatwhirls: On hit, sweatwhirls now reset their vertical speed and reduce their horizontal speed, making multihits more consistent.
  • This change should help his third level sweatwhirls, gained by throwing a side special through two active spirits, connect more reliably.
• Down Special: Mud wave hitboxes now start closer to Hodan, reducing blindspots.
• Down Special: Parrying a mud wave now reflects it, causing Hodan to be buried if it returns to him.
• Down Special: Mud wave hitboxes now check a much larger area to spawn on, helping niche scenarios at ledge where they would not appear.
• Bug Fix: Up Air: Fixed whifflag not applying properly to endlag.
• Bug Fix: Bury: Fixed buried characters still being counted as grounded for 1 frame when jumping out of it.
• Bug Fix: Down Special: Mud slam VFX no longer tries to snap to ledges.

Forsburn is getting a touch-up to his combust damage and a slight rework to his Neutral Special to address smoke camping capabilities.

• Neutral Special: Smoke clouds now become active and vulnerable 30 frames after initially spawning, or when Forsburn ends Neutral Special – whichever happens first. Previously all clouds only became active and vulnerable at once when Neutral Special ended.
  • We’ve been keeping an eye on Forsburn’s smoke camping and the versatility of Neutral Special to spawn invulnerable smoke with no intention of interacting with opponents. This change allows for smoke to be spread in a more natural manner while still keeping his three most recent clouds safe for recovery mixups. We’re excited to see how this change shakes out since opponents will now be able to clear smoke easier, but Forsburn will be able to utilize active clouds sooner as well.
    
• Down Special Combust: Damage increased, 10% > 14%
  • We are increasing the reward on landing a Combust in those very rare cases where it doesn’t K.O.

Clairen’s in a great spot right now but we’ve found a few more Down Special bugs to clean up this patch.

• Bug Fix: Down Special: A grounded counter over Etalus Down Special ice exploding now activates the move.
• Bug Fix: Down Special now ends respawn invincibility early, allowing for the move to activate properly.

Zetterburn, The Fire’s Roar!

• The golden skin coupled with the Zetterburn plush now has a darker fire outline to help with visuals on lighter stages.
• Down Tilt: Hitbox size increased by 2 pixels downward, which allows for break cancels when standing on rocks.
  • BREAK CANCELS! YES!

Legend has it, Wrastor’s slipstream had a very brief stint where it lost to all projectiles in the game. We’ve discovered new technology that has allowed us a middle-ground between the fabled patch and his latest anti-projectile behaviors.

• Forward Special: Projectile hitbox no longer breaks projectiles.
  • Wrastor’s Forward Special is a strong tool for interrupting moves and comes off of cooldown every five seconds. We wanted to take away some of its abilities to shut down opponent projectiles on command while still allowing Wrastor to utilize the speed boost as it passes.

Absa’s new Up Air hitboxes are getting a slight damage adjustment and she’s getting a small bugfix in the Clairen matchup.

• Up Air: Sourspot damage decreased, 12% > 10%.
  • Absa’s sourspots were doing the same damage as her main up air hitboxes and we wanted to have the damage lower to mirror the weaker nature of their KB.
• Down Special: Fixed the hitbox not working properly if activated while Absa is inside Clairen’s plasma field.

Ranno is getting a mix of few quality of life and balance changes this patch. On the balance end, we’ve focused on taking some strength from his multi-hit confirms.

• Up Air: Hitstun multiplier on hit one reduced, 1.3 > 1.1
• Down Air: Landing lag increased, 6 > 8
• Down Air: Reduced hitstun multiplier of hits 1 and 2: 1.0 > 0.8
  • The collective changes to Ranno’s aerials should make hitfall confirms into moves such as up strong more difficult to pull off.
    
• Neutral Special: Getting hit while charging Neutral Special now creates the same needle lost VFX as getting parried.
• Forward Special: Ranno can now grab an active Olympia gem with his tongue similar to interactions with rock and pillar.
• Bug Fix: Down Air: Hitfalling once now applies to every hit, removing weird situations where momentum would stall when down air 2 or 3 started following a hitfall.

Kragg was upset our cool new rock animations got removed from the game and he threatened to “turn us into his rock” if we didn’t make it right. We aren’t sure what that means but we knew he meant business.

• Changed how rock is drawn while Kragg carries it, allowing for skins like Genesis Kragg that change rock sprites to show properly at all times.
• Bug Fix: Fixed pratfall while holding a rock using the wrong animation.

Someone on Twitter, sorry I mean X, said that Maypul is too easy to play. So we removed an old mechanic and now you actually need a small amount of skill to edge cancel her Forward Special.

• Forward Special: Removed a mechanic where horizontal speed is doubled when landing from pratfall after using Forward Special.
  • This mechanic was a relic from a time before Maypul’s recovery buffs. We feel that the extra slide has made ledge cancels on aerial recoveries a little too forgiving. This change will still allow for safe high recoveries, just with tighter spacing.

Ori is getting a few bug fixes this patch along with a change to address Sein charge storage abuse.

• Sein: Increased cooldown when charge is cancelled via parrying to match the cooldown of a used charged spirit flame.
  • Since the change causing Sein to go on cooldown during a parry, players have been using a parry in neutral to avoid a missed Sein explosion, resulting in Sein becoming active sooner. We wanted to tie off this exploit by making a missed parry just as punishing as a missed Sein explosion.
• Bug Fix: Landing a successful parry while charging Sein no longer puts Sein on cooldown, but it does reset Sein Charge.
• Bug Fix: Fixed Kragg pillar getting destroyed during bash’s hitpause.
• Bug Fix: Fixed armored characters going through normal hitpause while being held by bash.

Sylvanos is sitting on some really nice grass right now.. We just have one change to his petal wave to allow for more consistency.

• Petal Wave (Jab 2 > Special): Petal wave now spawns 1 frame earlier and 10 pixels inwards.
  • Petal wave travels 10 pixels each frame so this move will function nearly identical to previous patches, with the exception of niche situations where characters would dodge his tail hitbox and the petal wave would spawn past them.

In this patch, we are addressing both one of her oldest complaints about Elliana’s missiles being too good when she’s in hitstun and one of her newest complaints about mines lacking counterplay now that sticking them is easier thanks to the last patch.

• Forward Special: Missiles now turn at half speed while in hitstun.
  • Since Elliana was added to the game, we have heard complaints about her ability to break combos with her missile. This design was intended because we believed that opting for missile control instead of DI would be a worthwhile tradeoff. However, now that the game has been optimized more, the combo break is much stronger than any DI could be. Since Dan didn’t want to remove his prized mechanic entirely, we opted for giving Elliana less missile control during hitstun. It’s still possible to combo break but you’ll need to get hit with the missile in a good spot already.
• Forward Special: Missiles are now destroyed if Elliana is put into parry stun.
• Down Special: Mines now fall off of opponents if they hit Elliana with a launching melee attack.
  • Elliana has recently received more ways to attach mine to her opponents without any new ways for opponents to remove them. A common theme we have seen in Elliana matches is reversals from offstage using missiles she controls during hitstun/parrystun bailing her out, or finished combos that would normally reset to neutral where the Elliana in disadvantage comes out in a more favorable position than her opponent thanks to the threat of mine. These changes should make Elliana players more fearful of disadvantage state and more conscious of mine and counterplay available to their opponents.