@microwave sorry man, this is an abandoned project. Obviously I still use steam and will talk about it, but I no longer am going to work on this character. I very highly suggest making your own balance for him though. It's really not too hard! You just have to find his files in your steam files (which can be a little hard, but I believe in you), and then use that as a base for a new character. All you'll need to do is edit some variables that control startup time and endlag of moves, and any other variables you want to change. It'll be a bit of work, but it'd be fun and I fully encourage anyone to do that. If anyone uploads a balance patch as a new character I'll link it in the bio of this character

@Nauraim I know this might be to much to ask and its fair if you just ignore but as a suggestion i was wondering if you could balance the character so I could actually use him competitively against other players and my friend

@Nauriam Don't worry about it. It's a cool character. Just too strong to be played in a fair match.

@azathoth those are all good points. I wasn't really designing Ephraim with the intention of making him balanced in any way. When he was made, it was popular to make slightly overpowered characters so I tried to roughly match the power level of other popular characters I liked (also I am not good at game design or balance anyway). This was just a small passion project of mine, and if anyone wants to make a re-balance using my assets that's totally fine with me. I know that having a character overpowered makes it so its less fun to play with them, so sorry that you're experiencing that.

cool character, but incredibly overpowered. a frame 2-3 counter that you can do anywhere is just a tad absurd. that and most of their moves are faster than sai-m's moves (utterly busted), with some range and power behind them also. projectiles are mostly fine, except for the spear throw. its also really strong.

@Grapes Much appreciated!

@Cabbage-san I used a stage called FE Battle for the images. It's been around for forever. Here's a link: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1907241819&searchtext=fire+emblem

Can't find the stage depicted anywhere, but I would love to download it. Have a version of Final Destination that is just the FE battle screen? Count me in!

ok i understand that trust me
I would use a version of jab for his chrouch and DStrong, let him thrust forward and, "pro"-tipp, just reverse the animation and let him thrust backwards with the blund end of the stick
and same goes for BAir as well
don't force him to use the pointi end

i think DStrong suffers a lot from the huge arch it has to travel while you try to reverse it.
Same goes for Bair, it has practically no reach despite being a thrust-attack with an lance

and as for FStrong I'd use l an edited version of FSpecial for the startup so that it doesn't look like DStrong

just some ideas

Yeah, that's because I am completely new to pixelart and animation, so I'm simply not skilled enough to make nice animations. Down smash is one of the roughest of the bunch

Amazing concept
however i still feel like some of his moves look straight weird cause they lack inbeweens in their animations (DStron for example)

It's explained at 0:17 in the video but I can explain in more detail.

It increases the value of his walk speed, sprint speed, jump height, double jump height, and air dodge distance. The increase is small but it stacks, so after two or three uses there is a very noticeable difference. Try using it around ten times and your speed will be insane. Once you die all the values reset, and your speed is back to normal

Can someone explain what the third item does?

The fourth neutral special heals 10%.
Thanks for the report on the glitch, I forgot to test that after I made the move effect the double jump and air dodge. I'll release a hotfix in a bit

same with air dodge

also when you die the feather for the first jump is reset but not the double jump

nevermind i figured out the third one, still dont know what the fourth does when in special fall from down B his model is set downwards from the nametag.

what does the third and fourth neutral B do?

Turns out the 7th and 11th color pallet crash the game when they set someone on fire no matter what. Apparently it's been a bug for a very long time. For the time being do not use the demon king skin. I'm going to take a look into making a workaround, but it would require me to make my own fire effect, which would take some time. Thanks for finding this bug!

hitting the torch with the black alt crashes the game

I added alt colors! They're all inspired from characters from FE8: check the change notes for this update to see who inspired each color option.

Also, I changed nair again. It is now just a weak neutral option, but does not punish you for using it after a shorthop. Let me know how you think about these changes.

Here was my thought process with the Nair: Ephraim's shorthop nair doesn't have the final hitbox which launches, because he lands before the move ends. After adding lots of landing lag, shorthop nair is no longer a viable option, and it will result in getting punished. However, if the move finishes its animation in air, there will be no landing lag. This makes nair a tool to catch aerial opponents. It has a large hitbox, lasts a long time, and with its final hit, it can be a passable high edgeguard, or a simple anti-air. Nair lost a lot of utility in neutral, but became a tool in other aspects.

This nuance isn't incredibly intuitive for a character, so I understand if this change seems kinda dumb/un-fun. It can also get kinda dumb with platforms, if you land on one when you don't intend to causing the landing lag. Ephraim already has a very strong neutral game, so the loss of nair from neutral is not a problem, but if the move is un-fun to use I'll consider changing it again.

Thanks for taking my nair suggestions, but I think you went a little far. The landing lag on nair is way too long. It severely limits Ephraim's neutral game. His other options are still very strong so he's not a weak character, but it feels like his nair puts him in more lag that any smash attack he has. Remember that when an aerial whiffs and lands it takes 1.5x landing lag

The big balancing update has dropped. Check the Change Notes on this steam page to see what all has changed. Also please play him and let me know what parts of his kit can still use some tweaking. The advice that went into this change was incredibly useful, and more advice is very welcome.

I'm thinking about working on different color palettes next. Since Ephraim uses lots of different colors, it may be very difficult, but we'll see. (I plan to make the blue in his armor, blue and red in his cape, and blue hair change. All other colors will stay the same). If you have suggestions of a color palette you want to see, comment away with all your suggestions!

nair comboes into itself until at least 120% where you can just fsmash since it goes far and is easy to hit. nair needs to have either more knockback or more end lag so it doesnt combo into itself forever. It probably needs both and lowered damage honestly. Seems like a pretty fun character otherwise!

I'll keep all of these things in mind. I love the idea of Ephraim being a lance user archetype, where he has disjointed hitboxes and zoning tools, but can be weak and slow if played poorly.

Funny you mentioned Byleth, the entire creation of Ephraim happened before her/his announcement; my creation of his moveset had very little inspiration from any one characters. It came simply from theory crafting on how Ephraim would actually fight in a platform fighter.

Once the next patch drops, I hope to have made Ephraim a much more unique and balanced character. I want to make it so no move he has is worse than any other in any given situation, while him being fun to play against too.

I get what you're going for with this character but he needs a more notable archetype. Don't have moves that go as absurdly far as Forward-Smash or at least make moves like that noticeably more sluggish to make it so Ephraim requires more commitments. It will make the character overall a lot more fun to play against and a lot more nuanced to play as rather than just kind of picking and choosing whatever you want to do as a psuedo-rushdown marth-like character with Byleth Range and a super good projectile game. Just kind of take the suggestions I suggested previously and this post as sort of an idea on how to rebalance Ephraim.

He can willingly choose to camp out with Side-B at all times while still having more than capable zoning with neutral-b. While it's a fine option to have both projectiles, they should be slow and limited in range. The frame data on neutral-b is fine but the projectile goes unnaturally fast and in general the character can choose to either play like a zoner or just play at midrange at all times. Ephraim is fast enough and has good enough frame data on all of his mid range moves (Some of them have the same frame data on close range rushdown characters for NO reason like Down-Tilt) where he can play rushdown with huge projectiles in a game without shielding.

You are welcome! In general I just think that Ephraim is designed a bit too much like Byleth in a way but you kind of forget about the fact that Rivals is a game without shielding. This means that these LARGE hitboxes need to be compensated by having really easy to parry frame data while not having a ton of active frames to constantly cover landings. Ephraim has way too many moves that have unintentionally way too many active frames and he isn't slow enough in both mobility and frame data to make it so the moves he throws out are a commitment.

Thanks for the feedback FruitLoops. The next patch will be a big balancing one, and it will hopefully make Ephraim more valid for competitive fighting with friends. All of this information is really well informed, and I like the suggestions you made. I'll take all of this into consideration as I work on the next update.

My end goal is to be somewhere near the workshop Lyn in terms of strength; maybe a bit weaker. This puts Ephraim above lots of the cast in terms of strength, but he should be fun when playing with other workshop characters at that level, which is my end goal.

Thanks for the wonderful critique, it's incredibly useful

Up-Aerial has a mega disjointed hitbox for no reason alongside its additional abillity to kill, it ironically outranges Ephraim's DOWN-Aerial and I suggest to make the hitbox work mmore like the visuals. Up-Tilt should have its hitbox slightly increased in exchange.

Down-Tilt needs a little more endlag as its a bit too spammable and it's really good at clanking with every projectile in the game while still having amazing combo properties.

Neutral-Special could be a little faster and Ephraim could be a little slower in terms of mobility but in terms of that he'll be ok with these changes.

Forward-Smash may be a bit too powerful in some areas and having a move with absurdly great range with ABSURDLY good active frames (It lasts for too long even after Ephraim stops lunging so it should be reduced in that regard) and killing at 40% on all hits with absurdly good range in a game with only parrying is not really the best design.

Also Ephraim's counter does not scale to most of the opponent's move's power and it often can kill the opponent at around 20-30 or even at 0 thanks to its steep base knockback and AMAZING angle. It should send opponents more upwards and have less base knockback and potentially have a scaling effect.

Honestly my biggest complaint actually ironically comes from the fact that a few of his moves may actually accidentally make Ephraim overpowered NOT underpowered.

Side-Special is a projectile with absurdly great range and with minimal endlag meaning that it can constantly control space no matter what at all distances making it obnoxious to fight and forcing the player to play the game of parrying to take a guess or else they'll lose stage control.

Ephraim's Nair's multihits when dragged down will always true combo into itself alongside when ephraim lands a nair meaning that he can do up to 80% free off of only Neutral-Air making it significantly stronger than Palutena in that regard.

As good as i feel a character of this style can be,
i wouldn't expect a traditional FE character using sprites and moves from the actual games to work, but it definitely does

Patrician, you're probably right about how many percentages from moves don't make sense. I didn't spend much time thinking about them as I was making the character. In later revisions of Ephraim, I will definitely go back and re-balance the percentages of his moves.

There are other balancing issues I will tackle as well. Nair is very good, and should have more end lag and launch on the last hit. upB to uAir is way too strong. the side B javelin is too spammable. I'll fix all these eventually.

As for the outline ElPanda, I just left the outline as it was from the original spritesheet. I may go back and redraw his outline on every sprite if I'm especially bored sometime; no promises.

Thank you all for you kind comments and suggestions!

I really enjoy this character. Took a while and then he just clicked. Feels a lot like a mix of Pit and Cloud oddly enough. But I do have a few questions about damage percentages - some of them feel a bit off. Nair does 16% and combos into itself reacting to sdi. That feels a little too much, the move is honestly good enough to do only half the percent. Some of the tilts and bair feel like they don't give the reward for their slowness.

I really really love Ephraim, very good character, i just have some thoughts on him
You could repaint his outline to completely black for him to blend better with the rivals cast, also forward special is way to spamable and strong.

thank you very much

i was going t make the hoes mad joke also nice character

Thanks for the feedback Merol, here are my thoughts on your suggestions.

When creating Ephraim, I used Lyn by Kazun as a base, to make it easier as Ephraim is my first character. Lots of the stats pertaining to his speed are just left over from that.
That being said, I do care about balancing, and I think your critiques are on point. For updates to him, I'll keep your suggestions in consideration, and definitely slow him down a bit.

Also, I intended the torch to be a projectile that does relatively small knockback, and has less of a range than Ephraim's side-B but can wrack up damage with the fire bonus, or come out faster in a tough situation (I think the torch frame data is better than side-B?).
I might consider making the mines only go off if the enemy is on fire (like zet's smash attacks) and make them slightly more powerful, which would force use of the torch, and make the mines way more situational. If anyone's got thoughts on that lmk, it wouldn't be a difficult change.

Now I just have to get the shitty axe character

honestly great and really fun, especially with the neutral B mechanic, but, he feels a bit too fast? Not the moves, at the time of playing him I'm assuming the lag time on the moves was reduced, but I mean his movement. Ephraim's got good range on his attacks and he's already got a method for speed-up, so giving the player extra incentive to use it at every chance to overwhelm faster characters sounds like a solid balancing to me, instead of his speed already being on par with most characters.
And if I could nitpick another thing, not really asking for it to be changed but wouldn't be bad if done, if the Burn effect is from the Mines. Considering both the torch and mines can burn, I tend to keep dropping mines and ignore the torches since he already has another projectile move that covers more ground.
Aside from that, Ephraim is just a fun straightforward spear fighter, will almost definitely keep playing as him even though I'm not a huge fan of the character himself lol

Ok thank you for the response. i am gonna try to play with the speedwing more and test other moves. I think D strong is fine. It is maybe a bit slow but you can set up some traps with it. Though maybe it should be up strong instead since it goes around the character. Dont actually have an Id

Very epic.Thanks for taking the time to make this.

Good job i feel like some moves are a tad bit laggy but good job

Thanks for the feedback IronSpider2999! I am open to any and all feedback, and yours was incredibly helpful.

This character was made over a long span of time, and hasn't gone through tons of playtesting, so lots of the moves are kinda mishmashed together. After playing some I agree with you. I think ftilt and utilt are a bit slow as well. I may change dstrong, but I don't think it's too bad. if anything I would make the different hits chain into eachother better (which is a huge pain)

The neutral B is definitely a bit slow, and I should speed it up. The speedwing is incredibly difficult to get to, and the elixer is basically impossible save rare cases. The mine even takes too long in my opinion, so I'll change that pretty soon in an update.

The speedwing specifically raises the value for max dash speed, walk speed, jump power, and max air speed. if you use it tons of times in a stock, you'll more easily be able to see the effect.

I love this character moveset. If you dont mind I would like to ask for a bit of improvement. If you are willing to make them. These are my opinions and mine alone. For the most part Ephriham moves fine. however a few of his attacks feel kinda slow. For example:

Neutral b. Maybe cycling through the items just a tad bit faster would be much better.
The speed feather increases your movement on the ground early not while in air (I could be wrong since I only used it once)

Down smash feels a ;little laggy but not awful

Forward tilt feels the same (If I recall correctly)

and a couple of other moves feel a bit laggy. But that is my only complaint for this character. The moveset is very creative and very well done.