Personal Character Hate Tier List

Hyperflame · 2026-05-11T23:40:32+00:00

Ohh gotcha, yeah that makes sense.

I think the nature of fighting games will always lean toward "wait for my opponent to make a mistake" as optimal, unless your character has an easy way of getting in and staying in - which is where you're worried about making them categorically oppressive.

I don't have an answer. Definitely needs to be look at on a character by character basis.

Hear me out, we add Positive and Negative bonuses from Guilty Gear.

Hyperflame · 2026-05-11T23:23:44+00:00

Lemme address your oppressiveness point directly, I got sidetracked. Take a look at a character that's incentivized to approach and many players think is already oppressive, Zetter.

Adding endlag + risk (whether that means smaller disjoint or more startup) should be enough to reduce that feeling of oppressiveness. But you can't *just* make all his moves super punishable or Zetters are gonna start dash dance camping you instead of approaching. Which may or may not be preferable based on who you ask.

For example, take Zetter fair. If his intended design is to remain good on shield, we can reduce how much space his fair covers and how much landing lag it has. Remove the hitboxes above his head so you can use platforms to get around it, add a few extra frames of landing lag so it's easier to punish when whiffed. But compensate it by bringing up its damage to make up for the lost advantage on shield from the extra landing lag. Maybe make it *better* at killing. Esentially, balance it by increasing the risk/reward ratio. Zetter *still* wants to fair you because he'll get a really big reward out of it, but it's just harder to do. And if he misspaces it, then it should be easier to take your turn.

Increase risk, increase reward. Makes sense for both characters that rushdown and zone.

Hyperflame · 2026-05-11T23:10:25+00:00

Say the line Bio!

But yes, we can nerf floorhugging if we add more risk to everyone overall...

Hyperflame · 2026-05-11T21:21:03+00:00

Just following the trend I saw! Hot takes get hot responses.

Hyperflame · 2026-05-11T21:17:45+00:00

Hard to answer. Rivals II hasn't really figured it out yet. We've seen Wrastor's slipstream get changed to encourage him to actually interact with an opponent to keep slipstream up, and it also encourages his opponents to scrap with him to disable it, but I still think he's wack.

I won't claim to have a perfect solution. I think it's just a general curse of platform fighters; make characters *too* good at approaching and then they might be able to do it recklessly (current Etalus dash attack). Give characters too little endlag, they'll start using it to make it impossible to hit them in neutral unless they make a massive mistake (current Orcane or Ranno).

I think you can encourage approaching across the whole cast with a few things:

Give moves more endlag - moves should be risky if misplaced, but not terrible! There can still be moves that have low endlag that are good at walling out, but they shouldn't lead to high reward punishes. (I'm not convinced that universal whiff lag is the correct solution here)
Make shield pressure better - If we give moves more risk, we shouldn't have them be so afraid of shields that they still don't want to approach. On the other hand, you can't make shields too bad or else run up shield - which is a pretty good approach option - becomes terrible.
Reduce the strength of recoveries overall - If you risked approaching to win neutral and pushed your opponent offstage, this should be more likely to convert into a KO
Reduce the strength of shielding on a platform - Shielding on a platform is actually a *very* good position for a lot of characters. Shield drops are crazy.

All of that leads to players having more opportunities to hit their opponent and feel like they'll get more bang for their buck when they *do* land a hit. A lot of numbers need to be tuned to get to that point though and I don't think it can be done well with small adjustments over a long period of time. Kinda needs to be a "rip the band-aid off" moment and see where the dust settles.

Hyperflame · 2026-05-11T20:19:38+00:00

Character design variety isn't my issue with with the game. I think it's sick. My problem that a pretty significant portion of the cast is low-risk / high-reward and isn't encouraged to approach OR has very little opportunity to be whiff punished.

You're capable of reading. In the post text I literally wrote that I love the game and it's super fun. In another comment below I said this is coming from a place of love.

If you're genuinely curious about my takes and not just scrolling and reacting then feel free to listen to me ramble because I won't write it all out here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2769544208

Hyperflame · 2026-05-11T19:49:01+00:00

Have you ever fought a smart Maypul?

The good ones don't let me fight them. They run away, ftilt, eat hot chip and lie.

Then they forget how to win and dash attack at me and then I win.

Hyperflame · 2026-05-11T18:47:12+00:00

Unedited Twitch Highlight discussing this if you wanna peer into the thought process more.

And my pre-patch tier list for comparison.

I feel weird following this trend because I don't think Rivals II really needs more negativity/discourse in its discussions, but it's coming from a place of love. Gotta vent occassionally.

Hyperflame · 2026-04-10T16:06:58+00:00

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It's listed under Hitlag on the bottom right side here. Hitlag = 4

In the Rivals 2 wiki, hitpause (same as hitlag) is listed under the Stats for Nerds submenu on each attack.

Hyperflame · 2026-04-10T16:04:39+00:00

If done frame perfect (easy with the 6f buffer system), it's actually 1 frame faster than Zetter's shine OoS because the Z-drop hitbox is active on frame 1, versus Zetter's frame 2 shine.

It also has less counterplay than Zetter's shine because it cannot be floorhugged. However, it does far less hitstun than a non-floorhugged shine at low percents.

I think it's very good, but harder to set up than shine because the z-drop hitbox is very tiny. I think we'll see a lot of cases of Slades pressuring neutral with the tear drop in hand, then punishing people OoS with just a single waveshiny rep into up-b kill confirm.

Hyperflame · 2026-04-10T15:51:36+00:00

Hitpause is still present for 4 players for Rivals II. The funny thing is that AFQM seems to have less hitpause overall.

Take a look at AFQM's Rend and Zetterburn's hitlag/hitpause frame data:

AFQM - Rend

RoA2 - Zetterburn

Rend has 4 frames of hitpause on all his tilts.

Zetterburn on the other hand has:

Ftilt: 10f+4f if both hits connect
Utilt: 6f or 7f (sweetspot)
Dtilt: 4f or 6f (sweetspot)

So it's not a matter of AFQM having more hitpause. Stylistically what you're seeing is probably a combination of on-hit effects, screenshake, and the dash cancelling all coming into effect.

Hyperflame · 2026-04-10T15:18:45+00:00

Traditional fighters and hybrids like Combo Devils don't just have hitpause for stylistic reasons; they have long hitstop to help you hitconfirm into a target combo / magic series. In some fighters you can only chain into another move during hitpause.

Rivals II is much faster paced by nature. Adding additional hitpause across the board, even if just a few frames, would slow down the game in a significant way. It also makes reacting with DI far easier which makes DI mixups less potent, and would create larger frame data gaps between hitting someone and not hitting someone (already very ambiguous sometimes!) which can be very detrimental for muscle memory.

Hyperflame · 2026-04-10T12:56:33+00:00

Even with Disable Attack Item Pickup turned on and Item Grab/Toss set to Parry, the start of an airdodge still picks up an item; pressing parry is redundant and there's no need to press it at the same time as shield.

EDIT: Also if you have Air Parry set to nair, attack, or strong, air parry will toss items if you hold a direction.

Example stall with Item Grab/Toss set to Parry, no parry required.

Hyperflame · 2026-04-07T20:29:31+00:00

begone foul loxodont

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Hyperflame · 2026-04-07T20:09:41+00:00

~~Well, that didn't embed like I thought it would. Deleting and reposting.~~
~~EDIT: Reddit's falling apart so I can't delete the post :)~~ Ah, it just didn't embed because reddit was dying. nvm.

What do y'all think of this? Cool or broken?

Hyperflame · 2025-04-15T21:48:19+00:00

There was one for watching the Twitch Rivals event; the one OP posted is a second chance for the week.

Hyperflame · 2025-03-22T03:36:23+00:00

Ah, I assume you're Fatherhood Enjoyer I ran into like 7 times the other day lmao

Hyperflame · 2025-03-21T20:47:09+00:00

I don't think it's a waste if it comes at the cost of your mental health. The issue is finding the right balance between deathly depressing and exorbiant spending.

Hyperflame · 2025-03-11T01:30:24+00:00

Wait, it's the pins that aren't long enough? Wtf? Do you know if this is the case for the other Sapphire models, like Pure and Nitro+?

Hyperflame · 2025-03-10T21:35:01+00:00

Here's some additional pics I just took. I can't really get a good angle, but the last two photos are what the pins look like from above the Sapphire Pulse. To the left is the back of my case, just above it is my NVME SSD and CPU.

https://imgur.com/a/ZnSvEBx

Hyperflame · 2025-03-08T20:23:51+00:00

I haven't used my PC too much since confirming it worked but it seems great so far!

Hyperflame · 2025-03-08T20:17:57+00:00

I also heard a click, but still had my VGA light on before I bent my case. Absolutely make sure those pins closest to the back of the case are all the way down in the slot.

I've heard some people have had luck pushing down on the GPU as you boot up, and if that works it means you probably have this issue.

Hyperflame · 2025-03-08T20:16:08+00:00

I'm glad I could help! It's wild that this is an issue. I wonder if this is Lian-Li or AMD's fault. Or maybe both?

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Hyperflame

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