I just want to start by saying that Annoying Dog is one of my favorite characters on the workshop. All of their moves feel like they fit, making a kit that not only makes sense for the character, but also a kit full of really fun options. In terms of balance, though, they're really strong because of their specials and Ucharged

I love the flinch effect that Nspecial has against grounded opponents (it makes Mollo drop their bomb mid-charge without stopping the charge), but having it apply in the air can lead to situations where the opponent gets stuck taking 18 damage while trying to recover. I think that it could be fixed by giving the Nspecial two hitboxes. A hitbox that only hits grounded opponents and does the flinch effect, and a hitbox that only hits airborne opponents and acts as a polite hitbox (meaning it doesn't do hitstun).

Fspecial is a super strong option for neutral because of it being able to jump cancel on a dime, making a wall with the car's disjoint. If it was made so the move could only jump-cancel after it hits the opponent, it would keep the followup potential while making the move punishable. Also, the move could definitely use more endlag, making it more of a commitment.

The two hitboxes on Uspecial are super cool, I love that you can time the airdodge out of it so the second hit is more reliable. The first one is okay with how strong it is, but it should come out later (maybe frame 7-8 instead of 3). The second one is easier to hit, so it should do less damage than the main one.

Dspecial has a good function as a hard read, but the massive hitbox gives it a worrisome edge-guarding potential. I'd recommend lowering the startup slightly, but making the hitbox match the explosion more closely and lowering the damage/knockback it does.

Ustrong is really interesting with how the bone goes in an arc, but it's currently very spammable (and the dog artifacts can kill super early). I'd suggest keeping the current startup, but heavily increasing the endlag to make it harder to spam in neutral. I'm okay with the dog artifact RNG, but I think it should just have more hitstun and slightly more damage than a normal bone, it killing much earlier than the normal bones feels really bad to play against.

A lot of their moves come out much faster than other comparable moves. Mainly, frame 3 jab, frame 4 utilt, frame 5 dtilt, frame 3 dair, and most of all frame 2 nair. However, a few of their multihits (nair, dair) have trouble connecting. It could help to look at other multihit moves as reference to make them more consistent.

I'd like to invite you to a discord that has a lot of other workshop developers in it. It's a friendly chat where we're trying to get the workshop scene to a state where characters can be balanced with the base cast if they'd want to be usable in a competitive setting. https://discord.gg/NRhG9T

Originally posted by The Slugger:

I just want to start by saying that Annoying Dog is one of my favorite characters on the workshop. All of their moves feel like they fit, making a kit that not only makes sense for the character, but also a kit full of really fun options. In terms of balance, though, they're really strong because of their specials and Ucharged

I love the flinch effect that Nspecial has against grounded opponents (it makes Mollo drop their bomb mid-charge without stopping the charge), but having it apply in the air can lead to situations where the opponent gets stuck taking 18 damage while trying to recover. I think that it could be fixed by giving the Nspecial two hitboxes. A hitbox that only hits grounded opponents and does the flinch effect, and a hitbox that only hits airborne opponents and acts as a polite hitbox (meaning it doesn't do hitstun).

Fspecial is a super strong option for neutral because of it being able to jump cancel on a dime, making a wall with the car's disjoint. If it was made so the move could only jump-cancel after it hits the opponent, it would keep the followup potential while making the move punishable. Also, the move could definitely use more endlag, making it more of a commitment.

The two hitboxes on Uspecial are super cool, I love that you can time the airdodge out of it so the second hit is more reliable. The first one is okay with how strong it is, but it should come out later (maybe frame 7-8 instead of 3). The second one is easier to hit, so it should do less damage than the main one.

Dspecial has a good function as a hard read, but the massive hitbox gives it a worrisome edge-guarding potential. I'd recommend lowering the startup slightly, but making the hitbox match the explosion more closely and lowering the damage/knockback it does.

Ustrong is really interesting with how the bone goes in an arc, but it's currently very spammable (and the dog artifacts can kill super early). I'd suggest keeping the current startup, but heavily increasing the endlag to make it harder to spam in neutral. I'm okay with the dog artifact RNG, but I think it should just have more hitstun and slightly more damage than a normal bone, it killing much earlier than the normal bones feels really bad to play against.

A lot of their moves come out much faster than other comparable moves. Mainly, frame 3 jab, frame 4 utilt, frame 5 dtilt, frame 3 dair, and most of all frame 2 nair. However, a few of their multihits (nair, dair) have trouble connecting. It could help to look at other multihit moves as reference to make them more consistent.

I'd like to invite you to a discord that has a lot of other workshop developers in it. It's a friendly chat where we're trying to get the workshop scene to a state where characters can be balanced with the base cast if they'd want to be usable in a competitive setting. https://discord.gg/NRhG9T

Well I guess I have a reason to update now. But anyways, I'm glad that you like the character. My goal with the kit was to make it wacky and fun, kinda like undertale but that's besides the point. I'm not a very skilled rivals player so when it came to balancing the character it was hard for me to visualize what was actually a busted move and what was fine and didn't need something that I added/removed. It also adds into me not knowing what shouldn't be nerfed or buffed in fear of ruining something.

For NSpecial, my idea was basically just Falco lasers. Reworking it to not do knockback for opponents in the air I think would kinda defeat the purpose of the stun all together as the opponent would just jump to avoid it entirely. I get the purpose of helping people recover against it, but for that I could probably just slow the move down a bit or make it do less damage.

Haha yeah fspecial... I've been wanting to rework it, my actual idea was to have it not jump-cancel after/before hitting a opponent, but I had no idea how to make it work... Fspecial to me is a move that I always have known to be busted, but I think I'll get around to implementing that startup animation I wanted to do like month ago soon.

For USpecial, I suppose the first hitbox probably does actually come out a bit too soon. Although I made the first hitbox to be led from UAirs or something similar for a actual kill confirm which may or may not have worked? But ironically in most of my testing I could barely get the bird to land at all so I wanted to make it rewarding if it actually hit. But I suppose with enough effort it would be easy to land, will work on it...

DSpecial, honestly yeah I'll just make it how you described because admittedly I ended up finding the move to be not the best. I'll fix it up...

UStrong, I could possibly add in more cooldown to it but I would've actually have liked to be that only one can be out at a time, which I didn't have a clue how to do... but for the artifact I wanted it to be reeally powerful like luigi misfire but I suppose it could do a bit less cause it is easy to land.

For the other moves I guess it is inconsistent in some areas. I did have trouble making multihits work in general so it can always be improved. My intentions were always to make the character balanced for some sort of competitiveness, so I'll always work on making it happen. Anyways, I'll join the server and maybe I can make the character balanced for actual use one day. Thanks for all the suggestions, I'm probably wrong about some of the things I said and will probably change certain things regardless but I'll try and make it a bit more balanced.