New Bundle: Baker Olympia
Olympia is baking up sweet treats in our latest bundle that includes the Baker Olympia skin, emote, icon, platform, plus 25,000 coins and 250 Aether bucks. This Epic level skin also features brand new custom themed sound effects, visual effects, and victory voicelines!
Live Events: "GOML: Forever - Canadian Fighting Game Championships" is up next!
Fresh off CEO 2025 this last weekend, we have our eyes fixed on the next big LAN event of the Rivals 2 Championship Series! GOML: Forever takes Rivals II to Toronto, Canada with some of the biggest names in Rivals looking to duke it out for the crown.
This patch, we're introducing a new sports-themed skin to go with our other loosely "esports skins" that normally get palettes. Introducing Baseball Clairen! Rep the event and show your support with the brand new GOML: Forever themed palette for the all-new skin. This skin includes custom sound effects. Keep an eye out for this skin to make its return with another palette later in July.
Special Note: This palette is FREE for all players attending GOML: Forever and sports custom SFX along with all “E-Sport” skins gaining a cheer SFX in their intro. Attendees will have the skin emailed to them after registration closes.
You can still register for GOML until June 24th, and if your curious how the first ever R2CS season is shaping up, you can check out upcoming & past events and the North American (European coming soon!) leaderboard on our official league page.
New Feature: Practice While in Queue
New to this patch is a long requested feature from players! Now you can enter a solo training room while waiting in an online queue. Simply select "enter training" while actively searching for a match to get the pre-game hand warmers rolling early.
New Animations for the Whole Cast
We have a series of new animations for each Rival! These were a ton of work for the animation team to go through both sets for every character, and we think they add a lot of cool personality:
Rivals will now have a unique animation when jumping backward, both on the ground and in the air.
Rivals will now have a unique teeter animation for when they're standing at a ledge.
Stage Blastzone Updates
This is our first time adjusting stages since release. We don't expect to do this often, but we've been listening to feedback, watching games, and playing ourselves to land on a couple adjustments as shown below.
Fire Capital side blastzone reduced: 2824 > 2680
KOing opponents on this stage could often be frustratingly difficult, especially with the stage size making it hard to catch some characters in the first place. With this change, it is still the widest blastzone in the game, but should be less polarizing.
Godai Delta top blastzone height reduced: 2230 > 2030
When looking at the starter stages as a whole, the top blastzones were all relatively high, with Godai Delta standing out as having both the highest top blastzone and the widest side blastzones. This combination made KOing opponents in the corners especially difficult. This change makes this stage have the lowest top blastzone of all the starter stages, changing its functionality significantly.
New Shop Items
Coming to the Buck and Coin Shop with today’s patch are three new palettes and six new icons:
Diet Cola Orcane Palette
Purple Leon Clairen Palette
Yellow Wrastor Parrot Palette
Avatar Icon line additions - Etalus, Forsburn, Absa, Maypul, Ruffpuff, Torcharus
The June Mid Month patch is one of our biggest and most ambitious yet. We have decided to slow down the patch cycles to allow balance changes to simmer a bit before adjusting further, but today’s patch sees some massive overhauls to general gameplay mechanics and some long anticipated changes to characters like Zetterburn, Ranno, and Wrastor.
We encourage players to read through what they can and give us your feedback on our new Nolt Board after trying them out!
Tumble threshold: 27 > 26
This means that attacks will start knocking down slightly earlier, making floorhugging less effective across the board.
Floorhugging no longer requires a timed input.
One of our design philosophies is to make difficult options more accessible, while adding depth in their use cases. Having a timed press requirement meant that a lot of players were unable to use floorhugging, even at higher levels due to the speed of attacks and lower hitpause. We want to ensure that this mechanic is accessible while also focusing on making other options in the game quick and strong instead of constantly toning them down. We have decided to remove the timed input in order to make using floorhugging more accessible and to be able to strengthen other options into the game. We have also added several new counterplay options to encourage a greater risk/reward now that the action is easier to perform. We also feel the consistency of the option will allow us to balance it better than the timed input variant, since the actual strength of floorhugging will be easier to see and dissect at all levels.
Strong Attacks will now always send into knockdown when floorhugged
This is a brand new, direct counterplay to floorhugging that can work at any percent. Opponents will get knocked down at percents when they would normally go into the floorhug state, making it impossible to be counterhit after a floorhug. This should give alternatives to beating floorhug with grab, especially at lower percents when a lot of moves won’t knock opponents down.
There are some exceptions to this change due to their nature as outliers, such as Forsburn's cape hits on Forward/Up Strong and the late hit of Fleet's Forward Strong.
Floorhugging will cause you to take extra damage at the end of hitpause.
Combined with the tumble threshold decrease, this significantly decreases the percentages where non-tumble floorhugging is possible. The damage dealt is one fourth of the damage of the attack. This also helps take characters out of the tumble threshold faster, even on a successful floorhug, meaning that the game state will evolve quicker on every stock.
This change further distinguishes floorhug from other defensive tools such as shield and spotdodge with the punishment for its use being damage from the hit plus a new additional amount of damage if you stay on the ground.
Waveland duration: 10 > 8
Wavelands will now put grabs on a 2 frame cooldown
This increases the utility of wavedash as an offensive and out-of-shield option. Grab is excluded from this to retain the previous effectiveness of waveland grabs against opponents shielding on platforms.
Holding the joystick downward after someone hits your shield will no longer buffer a shield drop if you haven't released down yet.
Previously, it was too easy to accidentally buffer a shield drop after an opponent hit your shield.
Shield dropping will no longer cap your horizontal speed.
This allows for full-momentum platdrops out of the Run state. Normal platdrops will still cap your horizontal speed at your Max Air Horizontal Speed + 4.
Performing a grounded attack on the last frame before leaving a platform will now perform a runoff aerial instead.
Previously, if you input a runoff aerial 1 frame too early, you would get stuck on the platform. This change should improve gamefeel in these scenarios, since the player is often intending to perform a runoff aerial.
Babydash will now lose half of its speed when canceling into shield.
This prevents babydash shield grabs from bypassing the speed limitations of normal babydash grabs.
Many walljump vertical speeds have been adjusted
After calculating the height gain for every character's walljump, we noticed that there were some outliers, so we adjusted them to be a bit more normalized. Individual changes are listed in each character's section.
Airdodges will now start falling 2 frames earlier.
This reduces their potency as vertical recovery tools while also making them worse at grabbing ledge. This will make recoveries across the board slightly weaker overall.
Sliding off a ledge backward while shielding will now only put you into the 25 frame Ledge Slip if you were previously in shield stun.
This prevents certain slippery characters from putting themselves in a bad position when shielding after hitting an opponent's shield.
Gravity will no longer ease in during the early knockback frames.
This mechanic was originally added to make characters spend more time in the air before landing. Now that we have dynamic ECBs, this happens naturally, so this mechanic is no longer needed.
Downward-sending moves will now adjust the tumble threshold to a minimum of 0.75x its original value.
Because downward-sending attacks are generally weaker for offstage balance reasons, they often don’t send opponents into tumble until fairly high percents. This change should make them feel more natural when sending into knockdown.
This also affects the critical hit threshold, so downward-sending moves will activate the purple K.O. effect more often.
Attacks that send away from the character (Zetterburn Neutral Special, Forsburn Down Special, etc) will now deal more knockback when sending the opponent upward, with a maximum of x1.11 knockback when sending straight up.
These attacks felt very weak when sending opponents upward, which made them feel inconsistent. For example, Forsburn's Down Special would be extremely strong when sending the opponent downward or horizontally, but feel much weaker when sending the opponent upward. Knockback angles lower than 60 degrees are unchanged.
This change should also help make Zetterburn’s Neutral Special change feel less oppressive when performed below an opponent since they will now get launched further from Zetterburn.
Attacks with variable knockback angles (Zetterburn Neutral Special, Zetterburn Up Special, etc) will now send opponents into tumble at a consistent percent, regardless of the angle they send the opponent.
Previously, these attacks would send opponents into tumble much later when sending opponents downward, which felt inconsistent.
Minimum joystick deadzone setting: 50% > 10%
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug that caused buffered wavedashes off a ledge to retain their vertical velocity.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug that caused characters to snap onto the stage when using a recovery move into the wall near the ledge
Bug Fix: Getting spiked immediately after dropping through a platform will no longer cause you to fall through platforms for a few frames.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug that would cause characters to fall through platforms at extremely precise spacings.
Bug fix: Wall techs performed during hitpause will no longer give you 1 less intangibility frame than normal wall techs.
Zetterburn has been at the top of the pecking order for a bit now, and while we’ve been working on some changes to tone down some of his more oppressive strengths, we weren’t quite happy with what we were testing previously. After taking time to not rush some changes out the door we are presenting some adjustments to his aerial combo game, his effectiveness of his shine, his strength of his recovery, and the counterplay to his confirms.
Max Horizontal Jump Speed: 17 > 15
Max Double Jump Horizontal Speed: 15 > 13.5
These changes reduce the horizontal distance Zetterburn can cover with his jumps, making it harder for him to catch opponents who DI his vertical combo moves away.
This particularly makes combos into his Forward Air less consistent on DI away.
Air Acceleration: 0.9 > 0.8
This impacts his ability to adjust his position in the air, making spacing for his sweetspots slightly more precise and reducing the effectiveness of retreating after throwing out aerials.
Walljump vertical speed: 30.2 > 27.2
This reduces his overall walljump height gain from 341cm to 278cm
Uncharged Neutral Special hitbox radius: 85 > 75
This makes Zetterburn need to be more precise to use this powerful option. The hitbox was also moved forward and downward to mostly preserve the forward and downward range.
Uncharged Neutral Special hitstun multiplier: 0.9 > 0.8
This makes using this move directly underneath an opponent have the same number of hitstun frames as before, due to the increased knockback of upward-launching omnidirectional moves. It also decreases Zetterburn's advantage when using this move in other situations, such as repeated wavedash Neutral Specials or spiking opponents into the ground.
Up Special Starting Travel Speed: 34 > 45
Up Special will now decelerate by 1.05 cm/frame during the Travel Active window
Up Special speed multiplier when entering the Recovery window: 0.2 > 0.3
This decreases the distance he travels by around 35cm. The deceleration makes it a little easier to punish toward the end of the movement, while also making it feel more natural overall.
Up Special can no longer fall through platforms during the Recovery window
This makes it function the same as most other characters. He can still fall through platforms once he's in the Special Fall window.
Aerial Down Special can no longer hit projectiles while diving.
This makes it more feasible to intercept his recovery with projectiles.
Down Special's double jump refresh/cancel window will be delayed by 5 frames for each use per airtime.
This makes his recovery weaker each time he gets intercepted offstage, since he will have to dive further before being able to jump cancel this move.
Down Special Cancel animation raised slightly upward.
This makes the ledge grab box less disjointed while not affecting the spacings where Zetterburn will grab the ledge after starting the Down Special. The bottom of the ledge grab box was also raised to prevent it from reaching below his ECB bottom.
Zetterburn's tail is now vulnerable during the first 21 frames of Down Special Cancel
Along with the previous animation change, this makes this move significantly more forgiving to intercept.
Down Special Cancel grounded recovery: 24 > 28
Because this recovery window is accompanied by movement, it can be harder to punish than the frame data would suggest, so we're adding a few frames to increase the risk of using this move without ledge canceling it.
Down Special Cancel ground friction increased
This causes Zetterburn to cover less distance when landing after a Down Special, making it slightly more strict to ledge cancel and easier to punish.
Forward Tilt recovery: 18 > 21
This reduces the combo potential and increases the risk of this attack.
All Neutral Air hitboxes shrunk.
This move was a little too large for our liking given its utility.
Neutral Air multihits ASDI modifier against grounded opponents: 0.5 > 1.0
This allows opponents to floorhug the attack when Zetterburn is rising.
Forward Air recovery: 18 > 20
This makes comboing the sour and the sweetspots of Forward Air into itself or another aerial more difficult.
Back Air inner hit knockback: 5 + 0.4 @ 60 > 5 + 0.55 @ 55
Back Air tipper knockback: 5 + 0.4 @ 50 > 5 + 0.55 @ 45
Back Air comboed a bit too well into Up Strong for our liking given that it also burns opponents, so we're increasing the scaling and lowering the knockback angle so that DI away is more effective.
Up Air chest hitbox radius: 50 > 30, hitbox moved 20cm upward.
Up Air active frames: 4 > 3, recovery adjusted to retain the previous IASA frame.
This reduces the downward range of this attack significantly, making it less of an omnidirectional aerial.
Bug fix: Up Special bounce window will now freeze his ECB bottom.
The addition of dynamic ECBs made it so Zetterburn could act before landing after Up Special bounced off the ground, which was unintended.
We’ve been keeping an eye on Ranno for a while now, recognizing that a few of his options were a bit more oppressive than we would like. We’ve reduced some of his slipperiness and defensive capabilities, while also adding extra commitment to his aerial needle usage and a few other overcentralizing attacks.
Radius increased on most of his hurtboxes.
His thin frame and visually accurate hurtboxes led to some awkward situations where moves would whiff due to small pose changes. His hutboxes are now slightly thicker, making him a bit easier to hit.
Run speed: 21.25 > 19.25
This reduces Ranno's ability to quickly cover large distances on the ground. This does not apply to his initial dash, so his short-range burst movement is mostly unaffected. Despite this reduction, his run speed is still the 3rd fastest in the game, so this does not make him slow by any means.
Walljump vertical speed: 30 > 25.5
This reduces his overall walljump height gain from 366cm to 266cm.
Ranno can no longer fastfall during Neutral Special.
The ability to land cancel this move from any height using a fastfall made this move too safe and reliable for our liking. Now, Ranno will need to start the move from the right height to make it safe.
Forward Special can no longer jump-cancel if it gets parried.
Up Special rising hitbox moved downward
This reduces the upward disjoint so opponents can intercept it with well-timed. moves.
Up Special Recovery window air friction: 0.5 > 1.0
This reduces the horizontal distance he can cover with his Up Special, making offstage recovery range a bit more strict.
Ranno can now only spawn one Poison Bubble per airtime.
Attempting to spawn a bubble when it is not available will perform the version of Down Special that happens when you already have a bubble out, so Ranno will not just plummet to his death. This reduces Ranno's ability to loop recoveries after his first attempt is intercepted.
Poison Bubbles can no longer capture players for 30 frames after being hit
This allows opponents to hit Ranno when he is near his bubble without knocking him into it, which would often be advantageous to him instead of detrimental. This lockout shares the same timer as the lockout for Ranno controlling his bubble's movement. This lockout is not applied when Ranno hits his own bubble.
Up Tilt sweetspot knockback: 7 + 0.65 @ 95 > 6 + 0.8 @ 92
The angle change makes DI out less punishing, while the knockback changes make the move more unique across percents.
Up Tilt recovery: 23 > 25
This move was a little overloaded in terms of the reward it consistently gave, so we're making it less rewarding on hit and more punishable on whiff/shield.
Up Strong recovery: 30 > 33
This allows for a slightly larger punish window when Ranno throws out this fast and powerful move.
Bug Fix: Hitting a bubbled player will no longer make the bubble hurtbox intangible.
This patch sees a pretty large rework of Wrastor, addressing community and developer sentiment alike that he needed some changes. This patch addresses the disparity of his top level strength while being pretty weak at lower levels, the general feel of bland gameplay, and the amount of interaction his slipstream mechanic encourages from all players.
This rework takes a lot of inspiration from his Rivals of Aether 1 design, with faster aerials and the re-introduction of jump-cancelable tilts on hit. We have also increased the leniency of his core confirms while reducing their strength overall, allowing for more consistent K.O.s while not ending stocks very early when the sweetspots land. To offset some of his new strengths, we have reduced his aerial mobility and have shifted his grounded speed strength from his initial dash to his overall run speed.
Slipstream is now active for 2 seconds when thrown, and will stay in place for a total of 10 seconds.
Slipstream will stay active for 4 seconds if the projectile hits a player.
Slipstream is reactivated for 2 seconds when Wrastor hits a player.
This can cause the slipstream to last longer than 10 seconds if Wrastor keeps landing hits. This version of slipstream encourages Wrastor to play aggressively regardless of whether his slipstream is active or inactive, since playing passively will quickly make him lose the speed boost.
Slipstream will be deactivated when Wrastor is hit by any attack, not just stronger attacks
Losing slipstream when hit by a stray weak move is now less punishing, since it can be reactivated.
Dash duration: 16 > 10
Dash speed: 18 > 15.6
These two changes reduce the effective range of his dash dance significantly. This applies to Wrastor both in and out of slipstream.
Run speed: 17.6 > 18.25
With the reductions to his dash, this run speed increase makes sure he can still cover horizontal space effectively afterward. After around 25 frames of dash/run, he starts to cover more distance than before.
Min frames between consecutive double jumps: 8 > 12
This reduces how quickly he can chase opponents vertically while comboing them, essentially adding a few frames to his follow-ups when the opponent DIs to end up above Wrastor.
Air friction: 0.28 > 0.36
Max horizontal air speed: 13.2 > 12.6
Max horizontal air speed in slipstream: 17 > 15.6
Air acceleration: 0.9 > 0.8
Air acceleration in slipstream: 1.3 > 1.1
These aerial movement changes are intended to offset the aerial frame data improvements so that good DI can be used to escape Wrastor's aerial combos.
Forward Tilt final hit knockback: 6.5 + 0.7 > 5.5 + 0.8
Up Tilt sweetspot knockback: 7 + 1.0 > 6.5 + 1.0
Up Tilt sourspot knockback: 7 + 0.8 > 6.5 + 0.8
All three Tilts can now be jump canceled 12 frames before their IASA frame if they hit an opponent.
This allows Wrastor to transition to aerial combos more quickly on hit.
All hitboxes Neutral Air hit 1 now send at knockback angle 65 instead of 32
Having two separate knockback angles felt too inconsistent for a linking move, and the lower angle version was too difficult to get value out of in most situations.
Neutral Air hit 2 knockback angle: 40 > 45
Linking the first hit into 2nd hit is much easier now, both due to the hit 1 change and the following aerial changes, so we're raising the knockback angle of the second hit to make it more survivable offstage.
Forward Air startup: 8 > 6
Forward Air recovery: 23 > 20
Back Air recovery: 22 > 19
Up Air recovery: 28 > 21
Up Air landing lag: 11 > 12
These aerial recovery decreases are intended to give Wrastor more freedom in the air.
Forward Strong's front sourspot is now the sweetspot.
Forward Strong sourspot hitbox radius: 45 > 55 and moved 10cm forward.
These changes make the sweetspot much more lenient to hit, but the larger sourspot offsets that slightly.
Forward Strong sweetspot knockback: 7 + 1.0 > 5.5 + 1.0
Forward Strong sourspot knockback: 6 + 0.8 > 5.5 + 0.8
Forward Strong active frames: 4 > 2
In exchange for increased ease of landing the sweetspot, the knockback and active frames have been reduced.
Up Strong sweetspot radius: 20 > 30 and moved downward 10cm.
Up Strong sweetspot knockback: 7 + 1.05 > 6.25 + 1.05
Up Strong active frames: 4 > 2
In exchange for increased ease of landing the sweetspot, the knockback and active frames have been reduced.
Down Strong post-charge startup: 4 > 6
More startup so that it's more difficult to combo into it.
Down Strong travel distance before jump cancel: 10m > 12m
This makes whiffing the move riskier, since Wrastor will have to recover from lower.
Starting a Neutral Special will now cut Wrastor's velocity in half instead of halting it entirely.
This means that the height he gains from the move will depend on his velocity beforehand, making it less valuable of a recovery move if Wrastor is falling.
Up Special early sourspot knockback: 6 + 0.35 > 5 + 0.35
The sourspot was knocking opponents down too early for our liking, making it a little too safe to throw out.
Up Special sweetspot radius: 15 > 10
Up Special sweetspot moved 5cm inward.
Up Special sweetspot knockback angle: 45 > 50
This makes Up Special worse at securing low percent kills offstage, since DI in will be more effective until higher percents when it starts killing off the top
Down Special throw recovery: 6 > 12
This still makes it extremely good on hit, but makes the follow-ups a little tighter.
While Kragg is a heavy character, he also has some strong qualities that aren't usually present on heavies, such as his high air speed and good recovery tools. We're toning these aspects down so that his weaknesses balance out his strengths better. We're increasing the damage on some of his heavier-hitting moves to help lean into his strengths more.
Max jump horizontal speed: 15 > 12.5
Max double jump horizontal speed: 13.5 > 12.5
Air acceleration: 0.85 > 0.75
Kragg's vertical speed is among the fastest in the game, and when combined with his size, his horizontal speed allowed him to quickly control an extremely wide area of the stage. This change aims to make him feel a little more like the heavy character he is, while toning down his horizontal threat ranges.
Leg and waist hurtbox radius expanded slightly.
His thin leg hurtboxes could often make attacks whiff in unexpected situations, considering his otherwise large hurtboxes, so we're making them a bit thicker to make hitting him more consistent.
Up Tilt startup: 7 > 9
Up Tilt hit 1 active frames: 2 > 1
Up Tilt hit 2 hitboxes shrunk horizontally.
This move was too strong in a lot of ways, so we're making it a little bit smaller and slower to start up to increase the risk and precision of its use cases.
Down Strong sweetspot damage: 11 > 14
Down Strong sourspot damage: 10 > 12
Forward Air sweetspot damage: 11 > 12
Up Air sweetspot damage: 11 > 12
Down Air damage: 11 > 12
We're increasing the damage on these moves to make sure Kragg can still output high damage even with the jump speed reduction.
Neutral Air hit 3 knockback: 7 + 0.3 @ 80 > 5.8 + 0.55 @ 75
We're increasing the scaling on this move to make it more unique across percents.
Down Throw recovery: 13 > 17
The follow-ups out of Down Throw were a bit too consistent for our liking, making this throw the go-to throw in almost every situation. It's still a very quick throw, but this should help make the follow-ups afterward more difficult to land.
Rock will now be pushed away from players when landing instead of pushing players out of the way.
Walljump vertical speed: 20 > 22
This increases her overall walljump height gain from 222cm to 268cm.
Walljump vertical speed: 32.5 > 31
This reduces her overall walljump height gain from 357cm to 325cm.
We have a couple of changes to Loxodont’s Forward Throw in preparation for Absa’s arrival. These changes ensure that she, and other characters will properly be struck by the correct hitboxes during the swing action.
Forward Throw now does a more complex trajectory calculation to determine when to swing the axe.
Forward Throw initial toss hitstun multiplier: 1.2 > 1.5
These changes are being made in preparation for Absa's release, since her floaty knockback stats made this throw whiff completely against her.
Bug Fix: Forward Throw center hitbox now has lower priority than the sweetspot
This fixes a bug where Kragg would still get hit by the sourspot even when he DI'd the initial toss forward.
Walljump vertical speed: 28.7 > 26.7
This reduces his overall walljump height gain from 324cm to 281cm.
Walljump vertical speed: 30.2 > 27.2
This reduces his overall walljump height gain from 353cm to 287cm.
Walljump vertical speed: 25.66 > 28
This increases his overall walljump height gain from 224cm to 265cm.
QoL: Up Air can no longer land during the throw windows.
This prevents the throw from being canceled when Etalus grabs someone while he's right above the ground.
Bug Fix: Fixed a bug that caused her Back Air hitboxes to not interpolate when switching from the early hit to the late hit.
These are some big changes that we're sure people will have opinions on, and we encourage that! Our new Nolt Board is live and ready for feedback. We hope you enjoy this patch, and are looking forward to Absa's release in just 2 weeks!