v2.10
Emergency Genesis Hotfix

- On death, the last hit players' mark is removed

- Totem and Boomerang now share the same "one uspecial cancel per airtime" limit

- Player marks have their own "one uspecial per airtime" limit

- Extended parry stun added to boomerang

Basically, this character had a sick air wobble but it was super degenerate so we removed it lol

v2.9
i hit the fucking wrong button when trying to back out of the menu lmfaooooo

v2.9
Air friction 0.005 -> 0.02
Uspecial now allows the user to go down through platforms

Valkyrie has been confirmed for Genesis 7! The highest placing Valk will be earning a permanent skin of their choosing. Good luck!

v2.8
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

BUFFS
-Jab startup 8 -> 5
I thought jab startup was 4 frames this whole time due to a window error. 5 frames is my compromise, frame 9 is WAY too slow for a jab.

NERFS
- Uspecial bkb 8 -> 5
I unfairly fragged Slime a few times by cheesing him out with this weirdly powerful Uspecial. It really didn't need that much kill potential when close to the blastzone.
- Valkyrie's Fspecial is now destroyed when parried

MISC
-Added even more warning labels to the Golden Valkyrie skin.
-Valkyrie has FULL Rune Buddy support!
-New pratfall frame added
-Jab now properly cancels when parried
- AI is now only aggressive when set to "FIGHT" in practice mode.
- AI favours Fspecial less
- AI evasion/dodge skills improved
- Genesis 7 skin added (pictures linked below)
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/476368883461259284/656986373487722509/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/476368883461259284/656989115467694080/unknown.png

v2.7
TCO card hotfix

v2.6
MISC:
-New, holdable taunt
-TCO card added
-Pratfall's hurtbox has been changed to match her normal hurtbox, due to ridiculous hurtbox extension when cancelling pratfall with a walljump.

BUFFS:
-After 20 frames, Fspecial's angle becomes 110, essentially always knocking opponents in the direction of travel

Bumble suggested this little tidbit to me. The reasoning is that Fspecial can only hit once, so this only comes into effect with prior planning from Valkyrie. This is a little experimental, but could potentially lead to some interesting setups that contribute to the skill ceiling a little more.

REWORKS:
-New nair animation, hitboxes have been updated to match.
-Nair2 angle 70 -> 80
-Nair3 angle 100 -> 90 (reversion)
-Nair1 bkb 12 -> 10 (reversion)
-Nair1 and Nair2 knockback scaling 0.2 -> 0.4
-Nair startup 15 -> 10 (reversion)
-Nair landing lag 10 -> 8 (previously 7)
-Nair endlag 12 -> 10 (previously 8)

The most recent nair nerfs have been positively received in the direction of balance, but overall I feel it makes the character less fun to play. The philosophy of balancing a broken attribute (range and combo potential) with several worse attributes (speed) is technically fine, but oftentimes results in something that feels out of place.

After some long thinking in a dark room, my decision was ultimately to standardize Nair's attributes so that it retains its original purpose within Valkyrie's kit without being as overcentralizing as before. I've done this by returning some of the old frame data, but creating an animation that doesn't have as much ludicrous range. Additionally, I've increased the scaling on Nair in an attempt to decrease its window of effectiveness as a combo starter. This of course has the side effect of creating different setups as the game progresses, which I think is much more interesting than its previous autocombos.

v2.5

-Bair lifetime 6 -> 4
-Bair damage 9 -> 7
I could see Bair becoming a potential problem in the future, so I shot it down now just in case.

-Nair startup 10 -> 15
-Nair1 height 110 -> 90
-Nair1 width 88 -> 78
-Nair2 height 68 -> 58
-Nair2 width 112 -> 100
-Nair2 Y position 8 -> 0
-Nair3 Height 86 -> 76
-Nair3 width 72 -> 62
-Nair3 X position -22 -> -16
-Nair4 has been removed entirely.
-Nair5 height 80 -> 60
-Nair5 Y position -72 -> -68
-Nair endlag 8 -> 12
-Nair landing lag 7 -> 10
-Nair1 bkb 10 -> 12
-Nair3 angle 90 -> 100
-Nair hitboxes no longer have base knockback that reduces over time.
After Sparx showed me that Nair was a mid tier character by itself, I had to produce that list of scary numbers to take it down a couple of pegs. This reduces its range, makes it less safe against projectiles/trades, and generally it's just all around a move that doesn't do EVERYTHING for you automatically anymore. I'm not sure this iteration of Nair FEELS great? But it's better than having it be broken, so this will be the substitute for the time being.

Oh, and i added a Trummel Codec.

v2.4
MISC/FIXES:
-Pratfall animation is less bulky.
-Fixed Jab not correctly going to the idle state on parry (technically a buff)
-Fixed Walljump animation offset
-Updated/Fixed CSS portrait (last one was too big)
-The total amount of healing Valk sustained during a game is now displayed underneath her at the end of the round.
It would be on the HUD, but draw_hud stops after the game ends...

-Added "dont use this in tournament" text to Golden Valk.
-Removed Golden Valk's ability to skip the countdown timer.

BUFFS:
-Reduced friction on all strong attacks
-Dspecial has gained a delayed strong cancel, similar to the delayed jump and attack cancels it already had.

NERFS:
-Cooldown added to Dspecial on hit, this is just to stop degenerate Dspecial -> Jump -> Dspecial chains.

-Uspecial startup 15 -> 18
-Uspecial hitbox has been moved to the centre of Valkyrie, as opposed to the back
-Uspecial centre of rotation has been adjusted so that she doesn't clip into the ground as much, making her more vulnerable when diving straight downwards.
-Uspecial speed 13 -> 12
Uspecial had some jank hurtbox cheese which has hopefully been resolved here. I also decided to slow it down a touch.

-Fspecial cooldown 60 -> 90
This only really affects people who were super spamming Fspecial all the time, and that just wasn't fun to play against.
-Fspecial startup 11 -> 13
This shouldn't affect the overall usage of the move too drastically, but giving people time to react to the sound cue (frame 3) is an important part of the counterplay.

REWORKS:
-New ustrong animation (concept from Trail Mix), hitboxes have been updated to match.
-Ustrong startup 18 -> 20
-Ustrong "swing" frames 6 -> 8
-Ustrong endlag 15 -> 20
Previously, Ustrong just wasn't readable enough. This should add some extra strength to the animation, and also it looks really sick.

FUTURE/TO-DO:
Still gotta make that taunt. I made an entirely new ustrong this patch and redrew the CSS portrait so cut me some slack- I'm kind of 'arted out' at the moment. One thing I'd like to do is buff Dspecial detonations by making the hitbox different from the deadshine hurtbox, but I'm not sure I want to pile on that many changes at once, when she doesn't really need it. Fingers crossed I can stop nerfing Valkyrie soon.

v2.3
MISC/FIXES
-Fixed a bug causing axe attacks to heal an inconsistent/random amount of health. This has been normalised to 6 across the board.
-Added tailfins to the remainder of Valkyrie's animations
-Added partial support for an upcoming third-party buddy
-Added some more stuff to Golden Valk. I'm not documenting Golden Valk, but I'm pretty sure they cheat now or something?
-Valkyrie now spawns crouching automatically. She will wink as long as taunt is held. This will cause her to make look funny if you mash it. Please enjoy.

BUFFS:
-Dspecial's hit-cancel properties now apply when detonating Fspecial or Nspecial.
Nobody is using Dspecial. It should have acted like this in the first place, I'm not sure what the new applications of this are but any more incentive to detonate is appreciated.

-Valkyrie can now destroy her totem when dead by pressing the attack or special buttons. This functions identically to deadshine.
Some people were concerned that the totem just stayed there doing nothing once Valk was dead. This wasn't really high on my priority list, but it's sorted now.

-Added a hitbox to the top of Nair to cover above Valkyrie, this does NOT come out earlier than the front hitbox.
The Nair animation does a large overhead sweep. To most, this implied that there's a hitbox directly above her. I didn't want to change the frame data by essentially making a hitbox come out a frame earlier during the overhead section of the animation, so I improvised a bit by having it come out at the same time as the first hitbox.

-Initial Dash Speed 6 --> 6.5
-Initial Dash Time 10 --> 15
Despite the nerfs to her extended run speed, I decided to make her moonwalk really sick. Guys please look the moonwalk is really sick. https://gfycat.com/aliveanchoreddrever

NERFS:
-Fspecial melee damage 7 -> 5
-Fspecial projectile damage 6 -> 4
-Hitting Valkyrie whilst an Fspecial exists will destroy it.
I want to nip Fspecial in the bud before it becomes another problem like Kirby's. I think it has the potential to be a non-annoying move to play against, but it's really a matter of fiddling around with things until it feels right.

-Hurtbox nerfs all around to stop tail disjoint being a problem.
People felt the hurtboxes were a little off, so we've changed the hurtboxes of her basic movement (not attack hurtboxes) in order to partially alleviate this issue.

-Dash Speed 6 --> 5.75 (same as kragg)
Valkyrie is still a little too fast considering how powerful her Uspecial is. This should help to give her that heavyweight flair.

-Waveland Time 12 --> 10
-Waveland Friction 0.2 --> 0.15
These are just little Wavedash nerfs to keep her stats a little more in line with vanilla Rivals characters, as previously she was right on the upper limits on these values. Wavedashing is faster than running now, so I want to make sure you can't get too much mileage out of it.

POSSIBLE FUTURE CHANGES:
First off, yes, I'm adding a proper taunt. I really hate animating this stuff, you'll just have to trust me.
So, I'm looking at extending the Fspecial cooldown and then reducing it when Valk lands a melee attack. Currently spamming Fspecial in neutral is kind of dumb but in combos it works fine with the current cooldown- we'll have to see how the CC/parry metagame evolves. Also, I might reduce the friction on the startup of Strongs so that she can slide a little more out of a grounded Uspecial cancel, but that might be a little too strong. I'm also looking into changing the CSS portrait to look a little less goofy compared to the base cast. Again, art, I suck, give me time.

I'll end this by saying I'm totally blown away at the amount of positive reception Valkyrie is receiving. Thank you guys. You're really awesome.

v2.2
- Finished tag added
- Custom Hurtboxes added, these should match Valkyrie's animations slightly better than Etalus's.

- Ustrong startup 16 --> 18 (hitbox frame 19)
- Fspecial projectile angle 80 --> 70
Ustrong had a tendency to catch everything because it's huge, quick and immensely powerful. One of these issues has been addressed directly by reducing its speed by a small margin. Part of its power comes from the Fspecial --> Ustrong confirm, which was basically true due to Fspecial's steep vertical angle. Between these two changes, the effectiveness of Fspecial --> Ustrong should be reduced heavily on good DI, but not neutered completely.

- Ftilt endlag 10 --> 12
- Ftilt startup 6 --> 7 (hitbox frame 8)
We felt Ftilt was a little too safe to throw out as a poke in neutral. This should bring it down to a more reasonable level, without removing too much of its potential usage in combos.

- Nair4 x position -22 --> -32
Nair's back hitbox didn't quite match the visual properly, creating a nasty inverse disjoint. This has been fixed.

-Fair sweetspot angle 361 --> 45
Fair was galaxying at a surprisingly early percent against grounded opponents. This change shouldn't affect the aerial kill percent, but fixes the early kills when used against enemies on the ground.