Rivals of Aether

Rivals of Aether

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Nerfed Vlad
   
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2 Jan, 2021 @ 6:20pm
2 Jan, 2021 @ 7:55pm
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Nerfed Vlad

Description
Nerfed Vlad to be a little more balanced. All credit for the original Vlad goes to George Seinfeld. Pretty cool dude. Pretty swell guy. Pretty epic man.
I really like the original Vlad, but he feels a little unfair to use against most of the original cast and balanced workshop characters. This edit exists to hopefully make those matchups a little more even.

I'll detail changes first and my reasoning for them immediately after. Feel free to suggest changes in the comments.

Changes to Character Stats:
- Removed third air jump. Vlad's jumps are extremely good already, so removing the third means that it's now only difficult to edgeguard him rather than near impossible
- Slight reduction in wavedash speed and increase in wavedash friction. This isn't really very noticeable tbh, mostly it just makes the different between wavedashing and running less extreme

Changes to Moves:

Forward Tilt:
- Doubled blood cost
- Reduced projectile lifespan by 20 frames
- Angle of final hit is a couple degrees higher
The original blood cost was pretty negligible, you almost always had enough to use ftilt and using it didn't set you back very far. For how strong of a combo and edgeguarding tool it is the cost was too low. Now it's less spammable, but still very strong. I reduced the lifespan because it was a little annoying to get caught in the projectile for almost a second and a half, now it only lasts a second. You can still get at least two guaranteed attacks off of a hit, so it's still quite strong for combos. The angle was very slightly adjusted to make it less frustrating to recover against.

Up Air:
- Shortened the move by three hits
- Now costs a small amount of blood (on hit it evens out to zero blood gain/loss)
+ Changed final hit angle flipper to 7
Like Ftilt, it was annoying to get stuck in this move for so long so I reduced its total time. I added the blood cost so you might choose to use other moves in a combo if you're going for blood gain, hopefully this adds an interesting decision to combos sometimes. Also I just thought it worked thematically since it uses blood in the animation. Note that the move can be used even at zero blood, it only drains blood if you have some available. The angle flipper change makes it more consistent to get a followup after up air, and opponents are less likely to be sent at a weird angle.

Down Smash:
- Now requires and uses 20 blood. A little janky right now, will fix later.
Dsmash is huge and strong, so I felt like adding a blood cost would reduce spammability. It's slightly bugged in that it drains more blood if you hit. I'll try to fix that in the next version

Side B, Neutral B Punch, Forward Smash:
- All of these got nerfs to knockback growth and slight angle adjustments.
Considering how much damage Vlad can output and how strong his edgeguarding is I felt he didn't need to have quite such extreme kill power. Since his blood cancel is so good at setting up kills he can still kill very well, but won't kill at 100 off a stray hit as often.


My hope with these changes is that blood management will be more interesting because more things rely on it and you have more ways to lose it. I was going to make Down B gain more blood, but encountered some weird bugs. In the future Down B blood gain will be buffed to incentivise its use more. As he is now, I think Nerfed Vlad is actually still a little too strong. I will be making some other changes in the future to hopefully make him as fun to fight against as he is to fight as.

Thanks to George Seinfeld for making this great character, and for giving permission to post my version on the workshop. If you haven't played the original Vlad you can check him out here: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2300889473
9 Comments
Tacomonster83 21 Mar, 2021 @ 11:11am 
personally i think the only things that should be changed from this character are making side B and down B actually put you in parry stun, because for some reason you can immediately act out of it if they parry, with no reprucussions.
Den Gröna Jordätaren 10 Jan, 2021 @ 12:15am 
actually i tried and like no combos can be started with dattack so maybe it shouldnt be nerfed, and since i was wrong about that maybe dont listen to the other things then i guess?
Klaadum  [author] 9 Jan, 2021 @ 12:07pm 
I think you're right about ftilt and dattack. I also originally thought dair was weird to hit with, but after playing him more I found it just takes a while to get used to. I might make it swoop, but I think it's probably fine as it is. I'll be making another pass through the character to balance a little more in the future
Den Gröna Jordätaren 8 Jan, 2021 @ 9:20am 
also maybe just slightly reduce cost of f-tilt, maybe also make dair swoop down? would be easier to start stuff with it then, and maybe increase endlag of dattack by like a little? just maybe
Klaadum  [author] 8 Jan, 2021 @ 9:16am 
I might increase the damage per hit a little to make up for the shorter length.
Den Gröna Jordätaren 8 Jan, 2021 @ 12:19am 
its really good but the nerfs to up air was not needed since it can only be used once every few seconds
Paco 3 Jan, 2021 @ 9:50am 
hell yeah dude
Succ 2 Jan, 2021 @ 6:46pm 
Really hope you got permission for this
Klaadum  [author] 2 Jan, 2021 @ 6:28pm 
Will change the cover photo and add some more details later, can't at the moment