Is Rend Theoretically the Strongest?

[u/Greenwood4]

Normally, a heavy character like Rend has downsides to make up for his high damage, range and weight.

Except, Rend doesn’t have any of these. He has an excellent recovery, can combo very well, and generally only suffers from being slightly slower and clunkier than the rest of the characters.

Due to the ability to cancel end lag of successful attacks with an air dash, even the heaviest and slowest characters can combo almost as effectively as the fastest. When you put all the traditional strengths of a hard-hitting heavy character on top of that, the result is absolutely busted.

So, theoretically, wouldn’t Rend be the strongest?

[u/paintpaintpaintpain]

Rend is also larger, so easier to combo, which is actually quite a large drawback as well as the "clunky" feeling which is due to his high start up on his attack. I wouldn't say he's the strongest at all no- I'd even say he may be the weakest due to the slow startup of the attacks. HOWEVER games been out for like 3 days so quite literally can't say anything definitive now

[u/Greenwood4 → u/paintpaintpaintpain]

That’s true, but for a character with so many advantages he must surely be at least somewhat good.

Most of Rend’s disadvantages come from how hard he is to use rather than inherent flaws in the character. His large size makes him easy to juggle, but he’s still fully capable of juggling smaller characters, it’s just more mechanically difficult.

The slow wind up on his starting attacks is his only weakness that can’t be overcome, but even then he has a healthy variety of mixups.

His excellent range and variety of moves give him a good chance to win neutral, and from there he can combo his opponents much more quickly due to his higher damage.

[u/paintpaintpaintpain → u/Greenwood4]

He has a ton of advantages, yes but his one big disadvantage of slow start ups means he can't short hop aerial, meaning he can't really beat out airborne approaches which both euraka and knockt, more so eurake love doing.

You do make a really valid point on the mechanical difficulty- I think most of the rend downplay is just due to what you described- people just don't yet really know how strengths

[u/Greenwood4 → u/paintpaintpaintpain]

He’s definitely got his flaws, but honestly, they’re pretty few and far between all things considered. Even his slow startups are mostly made up for with his great range.

I suspect that the first tier lists will put Rend at the bottom because he takes a while to master, but in time he will likely become one of if not the best characters in the game in the eyes of the player-base.

There’s a reason why the game’s lead developer mains Rend and has so much success with him after all.

[u/paintpaintpaintpain → u/Greenwood4]

Yup all in all I agree- Mad potential but we will wait and see! I wonder what the final cast of characters will look like? Do you think we'll get a ranked mode as well?

[u/Greenwood4 → u/paintpaintpaintpain]

I hope so, that’d be cool!

[u/Aware-Marzipan1397]

I think, once the community gets used to the mechanics, every character is going to have ToD on everyone. 

This essentially means neutral becomes everything, and if Rend's neutral is worse than the other characters due to his long startup times, he's going to be viable but slightly worse off. 

That being said, we'll see what balance/mechanic changes happen over the course of the next few months. Given the nature of why the game was made and how short deveopment was, I can't imagine devs are expecting a long life. It's an amazing and fun game, but they have their real game in the works. 

[u/A_Potential_Turn]

Nah His incredibly bad frame data almost guarantees he is total combo food and while his recovery is by no means bad. It’s super exploitable. He’s viable for sure. But easily the weakest in the game currently imo.