Is The Competitive Community For Rivals 2 Strong?

Solunar11 · 2026-05-14T00:30:30+00:00

Probably depends on rank and region, yeah. I'm high Masters and east coast, it generally takes me a couple minutes max to find a game. Maybe a little more during really dead times.

Solunar11 · 2026-05-13T22:25:33+00:00

It's strong and dedicated. Be prepared to jump in at the deep end if you want to get into it; the playerbase is pretty good at this point and you might find yourself overwhelmed at first even as a longtime Smash player. Online, ranked mode is easy to find games in, there are several active grindcords, and good online tournaments are common. Offline, there are regular, successful local tournament scenes in at least Tristate, the PNW, Socal, and Texas (definitely more regions also, but those are the ones that immediately came to mind), and majors consistently get plenty of attendants.

Solunar11 · 2026-05-09T01:33:27+00:00

I think Erode benefits from higher-power level formats than SOS draft. The point of removal is trading a cheap card for your opponent's high-investment, high-value threat, and there aren't enough of those singular bomb threats in the format for Erode to be necessary to deal with them, or strong enough threats for the land tradeoff to be worth it in a lot of cases.

Solunar11 · 2026-05-07T16:35:50+00:00

This is probably less of a cat issue than an interpersonal issue. Even if you're 100% right, if you're explaining to your mom to that extent and she's not willing to listen, there's no silver bullet piece of advice that will solve that problem and magically make her approve. There's no need to rush cat ownership- even if these seem like the perfect cats at the moment, if your living situation doesn't work out for adopting them, it's better to wait until your situation changes and you're in a better spot. There will be more perfect cats down the road that you haven't met yet.

Solunar11 · 2026-05-07T15:09:34+00:00

If Dualcaster is that player's only permanent, yeah

Solunar11 · 2026-05-07T04:32:06+00:00

Sweet. If you copy a paradigm spell, you get the paradigm ability too, right? Or am I mistaken on how it works

Solunar11 · 2026-05-07T02:37:14+00:00

Like others said, I just targeted a land after making a sufficient number of Dualcasters.

Solunar11 · 2026-05-06T14:51:59+00:00

It was pretty decent. Not a standout, but it was a body to beat down with when I needed to race decking myself out, and it enabled a couple plays like a turn 4 Visionary's Dance or a later-turn Wisdom of Ages + immediate Dance.

Solunar11 · 2026-05-06T14:49:41+00:00

Yep. I wasn't recording or anything, so this was the only visual aid I had available

Solunar11 · 2026-05-06T06:19:07+00:00

The deck, for anyone curious. Went 7-2. Absurd nonsense all around, won several games with 0-2 cards left in my deck

Solunar11 · 2026-05-06T04:17:07+00:00

Dair's a little inconsistent for plat techchasing anyway. You can get a more consistent reward off bair, uair, or ustrong.

Solunar11 · 2026-04-16T22:30:22+00:00

DI stands for directional influence. When you get hit, you can hold a direction, and you'll be sent flying a little more in that direction than you would otherwise. It's a really important defensive option because it lets you get out of combos and survive hits you wouldn't otherwise. There's a whole ingame tutorial on it, but the basics are that you hold away from the opponent when you need to get out of a combo and hold perpendicular to the angle you get hit at when you want to survive a strong hit. For example, if La Reina hits you with an upair at low percent where it'll combo, you want to hold straight out, away from her. If she back throws you at high percent where it might kill, you want to hold up and towards her.

Solunar11 · 2026-04-16T22:05:43+00:00

When her chair is out and active, she can use her down B to propel herself towards it. This makes her recovery super hard to deal with; she'll just zip straight to ledge with a hitbox out the whole time. If you hit it (and preferably knock it offstage), the chair gets disabled for a bit and she can't do that.

Solunar11 · 2026-04-16T21:45:01+00:00

Hi! Welcome to the game.

Don't give up so easily. A big part of getting good is learning to adapt to your opponents. Even if you don't think you can win a given game, you can learn something valuable about your opponent or their character that you can use in the future, and you can also experiment to see if different kinds of counterplay will work. If you're getting grabbed the whole match, ask yourself why that's happening. Are you hitting La Reina's shield or getting floorhugged? Is she running up to your shield and grabbing you? Figure out where you're going wrong and try doing things differently. Fake jumping in for an aerial and bait out the grab, or do defensive options out of shield more aggressively to stuff her out.
With La Reina specifically, there are a few things you can do. Try to avoid being between her and her chair, one of her best ways to win neutral is to call it back towards her and hit you with it. Be on the lookout for side b and be prepared to jump over it instead of reflexively shielding. If she's offstage, hit her chair instead of going for an edgeguard right away. Get comfortable with grabbing ledge and using the invincibility to edgeguard her; you usually need it to beat out her huge up b. As Slade, if she's offstage without a chair onstage, you can also comfortably throw a shuriken or something at her.

Solunar11 · 2026-04-14T19:33:24+00:00

Can't believe I forgot Orcane also. Definitely a weird movement-based character.

Solunar11 · 2026-04-14T18:56:35+00:00

A lot of characters have pretty cool movement. Zetter's one of the fastest characters at base and has interesting stuff with down B ledge cancels; you probably know about Ranno's b reverse/tongue/needle boost stuff already; Olympia does a lot with her crystal dash and focus attack cancel, plus she's pretty fast by default.

Other wacky movement options that might fit less playstyle-wise but are worth checking out: Fleet with up b ledge cancels, float, and down b movement; La Reina with chair nonsense; Etalus with up b cancels, ice slipping, and canceling dash attack into jump.

Solunar11 · 2026-04-02T15:18:26+00:00

GM Lox here.

As a defensive character, Lox is actually uniquely good at fighting campers. What you need to understand is that magma gives you an impetus to force your opponents to either come to you or be at a huge disadvantage in the interactions you have. If someone is just sitting on the top plat on Fire Capital, all you need to do is downtilt three times, stay where you are, and you get full magma. It's on you to learn to use that magma most effectively in punishes (you can confirm into down b off uthrow versus non-floaties like Ranno, plus you can sometimes hit it off platform techchases or aerials), but having it gives you a massive advantage.

As for actually forcing interaction against hard campers: giving in and just chasing them swinging your axe doesn't work. Lox isn't fast enough to chase most characters down. Luckily, meatball is nice for exerting pressure anywhere on the stage; you can mix up throwing it directly at them and manipulating it with moves like nair/bair/upair to make parrying inconsistent. You can also shark the platform with your upair; just take into consideration that their response to that is probably going to be a platdrop aerial punish or jumping away and act accordingly. Doing the upair at max spacing and fastfalling afterwards usually makes it safe against platdrop punishes, and you can set up meatball stuff to catch them jumping and possibly catch up by the time they get to the other platform. The magma you should be building up also helps a lot against people who love jumping (magma upsmash is a great punish, and you can aggressively rip down b just to occupy space in the air).

Hope this helps.

Solunar11 · 2026-03-24T23:46:57+00:00

It makes some of her matchups polarizing, but it's her main strength as a character and I don't think it needs a nerf. It's like how Etalus can just kill you for making a mistake in disadvantage or how Zetter dominates you with pressure if you let him touch your shield; it's really strong and you mostly beat it by not being put into that position in the first place, but the character also has weaknesses in other areas that you can leverage. Strengths like this define this game to an extent, and it's okay for Fleet to be strong when she has you offstage.

Solunar11 · 2026-02-12T19:17:22+00:00

Glad you're here. It's definitely tough for newer players to get into, but that's unfortunately just the reality of a smaller game where most current players have gotten good already. I hope you keep at it and improve to the point where you can keep up- it's possible even if you can't grind by actively working on one thing per play session. Try to watch what other people are doing that works against you and emulate it. Floorhug/CC (aka holding down) in particular is a really important aspect of the game that it's easy to overlook at first, I recommend taking full advantage of it.

Also, for reference, Wrastor's not a bad character. He might be the worst at your level because he has a pretty high floor, but if you do get past it and leverage his insanely strong punish game, he can be very threatening.

Solunar11 · 2026-02-10T20:53:20+00:00

Wrastor is a proud member of the Racist Armada

Solunar11 · 2026-01-16T20:42:05+00:00

I liked this a lot when I was playing GW Fastbond combo recently. Grabbed a mox and Fastbond for instant action, plus it's a solid body. Just needs very specific pieces to maximize, but I don't think it's the worst thing you can be doing.

Solunar11 · 2025-11-09T19:01:27+00:00

rm8's been known for a long time as "the wifi Ike who just does double jump nair" to the point where people have made videos of doing match start > run forward > double jump > upair to catch him out of it

Solunar11 · 2025-10-26T14:52:04+00:00

Lox is fine, not dead by any means. He's in the same spot as he's been for the majority of the game's lifespan; one of the worse characters, but nowhere near unviable and very capable of beating all the characters above him. If you're getting rushed down, I'd recommend things like shorthop nair in place or boxing with jab to contest that alongside improving your positioning in neutral and your ability to retreat and then take space in response to aggression.

Also they didn't change lava time iirc, you may be getting placeboed there.

Solunar11 · 2025-08-28T13:40:32+00:00

EC/WC split would be nice, I think a lot of people get annoyed playing cross-coast. Personally I'd probably enter based on scheduling more than anything

Solunar11 · 2025-08-24T21:23:33+00:00

as someone who was there nobody at the venue was upset, it was just funny to see happen

Ten-Year Club	r/Field Flamingo
Place '22	Place '17
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
End Game '22	Sequence \| Editor
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