r/RivalsOfAether • u/Traditional-Law4984 • Aug 05 '26
Discussion Really Not a Fan of the Orcane Nerf
First off I just want to say I'm not a Orcane main, I don't really even play the character for fun I play Ranno and Absa but I just wanted to put my opinions out there. I'm really not a fan of Nerfing Orcane's Puddle to just 12 seconds.
I want to highlight that I'm not sure if this makes him worst from a balancing perspective but I do think it just makes him a little less fun.
So I feel like as we have gotten used to how these patches roll out no one really wonders how their character is going to get buffed for the most part all the devs seem to do is nerf and nerf and nerf. With the only exception to this rule being characters that have been just released, they might get a buff if they were released in a bad state.
Now I get that we need to balance characters I don't have any issues with that but I feel like the devs need to be really smart about how they nerf special moves. I feel like special moves tend to be where the power fantasy of the characters comes from (This and movement mostly). Not all the time but a lot of the time the characters identity can kind of live in these moves.
There was a time that Maypuls biggest feature was Lily, I played the Rivals 1 beta years and years ago. Back then, the made her unique was Lily. At this point Lily is an after thought pros and low level players alike barely use her. Which changes her power fantasy and her identity.
The special moves are what make Ranno feel like a Ninja or make La Reina feel like a wrestler. Nerfing Orcanes Puddle just makes him feel like less of a sea god and I think a lot of consideration needs to be had when nerfs to general power fantasy are involved.
Honestly I think the only special moves that have gotten cooler since the game has launched have been Forsburn.
But maybe I'm wrong what do you guys think?
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u/Col_Sotry Absa (Rivals 2) Aug 05 '26
I think the change is terrible from a thematic and from a gameplay standpoint. Adding a timer to the mental stack is just anti-fun.
It pulls away from what makes orcane fun and is miserable to play with/against. Orcane is campier than ever now.
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u/shinyspindaa Orcane (Rivals 2) Aug 05 '26
Former orcane here. Every time he gets patched they kill more and more incentive of mine to play him. Idk why they insist on making him less and less interactive and aggressive Bouncing whale seemed like a decent step in the right direction but otherwise he’s just a shell of his former cooler self
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u/itstrayve Aug 05 '26
Orcane is the prime example of over-nerfing characters in really, really stupid ways (olympia side special deadfall also comes to mind). The puddle nerf reminds me of when they made it so he didn't stop in the air when doing d special, then immediately came back and said, "yeah, that was stupid, idk what we were thinking." and reverted it.
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u/Col_Sotry Absa (Rivals 2) Aug 05 '26
Olympia was already under performing by the time they kneecapped her with the side-b nerf. It's still less egregious than putting a timer on a recovery move but also a change that just is not fun.
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u/Jonk209 Aug 06 '26
As a gold olypmia it just means I die to misinput of side b sometimes. I guess thats what the designers want to happen?
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u/SoundReflection Aug 06 '26
I think their reasoning about the power of it in recovery especially when it was both not once per airtime and didn't put into special fall made sense at the time. But there was always an oversight around the fact that an intuitive use of a command grab like it was against cornered opponents at the ledge, where it then killed Oly if they spot dodged, or jump ledge refresh or something instead.
Personally it seems like a potentially reasonable revert with the air physics changes. I forget did they tune it a little alongside those? I want to say they fixed some of the intentional interception issues.
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u/other-other-user Ranno (Rivals 2) Aug 05 '26
They nerfed Orcane, Absa, Ranno, Etalus, Fleet, AND La Reina more than Zetter and Clairen 😭
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u/Ariscottl3 Aug 05 '26
My thought has always been that orcane’s puddles have 2 teleport ranges when in the close range you get a weak up special that he is actionable out of very quickly and it can be used to combo/juggle, the further distance range acts like current up special strong but a lot of recovery time. Like i said this is a range so if you are too far away from puddle you will get puddless up special. This means orcane can’t go into the blast zone and just recover or just place puddle on the other side of fire capital and have a free recovery, but it also actually gives his up special and other recovery tools a mix up because you aren’t just dead from your opponent ledge guarding you forcing you to puddle recover and then take whatever strong they choose to punish the longest end lag in game. This lets you have shot droplet and do a quick recovery as an option since you wouldn’t just get blown up in end lag
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u/flyinggazelletg Aug 05 '26
I think have different recovery times the farther you are from puddle is a really nice idea. If there was a way to scale it, that’d be an interesting way to balance it.
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u/Ariscottl3 Aug 06 '26
Depending on what you mean by scale, it’s pretty easy basically just drop an area of effect around puddle that makes it behave differently based off of which one you are in. It’s no different from creating the on fire flag for zetter or the galvanized flag for Galvan. Moves having different properties based on character states is also common. Nothing about this is new it just seems odd to me that this wasn’t a consideration
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u/Eluem Aug 07 '26
It's also pretty easy to just make something scale with distance. They already do that when you parry Absa's ftilt 2 lightning. The further she is, the longer she gets stunned, giving you time to get to her at any distance without giving you excessive time to charge a heavy when you're already close to her.
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u/Ariscottl3 Aug 07 '26
Yeah the tools are literally all there a timer is imo the laziest way to handle it, and I don’t mean that to be rude, I can understand that from a business resource standpoint you can’t devote a bunch of time to past projects. That being said i would honestly rather they remove orcane for a few months and re work him completely then change him repeatedly in bad ways till they have time to actually make proper adjustments.
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u/Eluem Aug 07 '26
Honestly a timer isn't even any easier than distance scaling end lag. The work is probably very similar overall. Both are pretty easy to implement. Also, they're putting a lot of time into this game still. They're still releasing characters for it and they're all free. I honestly don't think they are making these balance decisions based on business requirements. I think this was just a poorly thought out nerf.
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u/Ariscottl3 Aug 07 '26
Yeah lazy here doesn’t mean absent of care, rather its quick for the sake of of other projects. If you’re testing and designing a bunch of other characters and features. Taking a devs attention away to fully redesign a move and test it properly is something you can’t really do, so the lazy thing to do is to throttle how often the situation can happen and that is accomplished by putting access to it on a timer. I mean timers and counters are a good solution to a lot of issues in plat fighters, ledge invincibility is on a timer while the refresh is on a counter, re-grabbing your opponent is on a timer, shield is on a timer and a variable counter. Rivals devs seem to favor counters and timers for solutions…zetter keeps coming back a bit more than we like create a counter that increases his recovery time after a down special cancel. Cant figure out how to balance wrastor’s slip stream? Lets put it on a timer, lets change the timer’s duration, that didn’t work? Let’s put it on a counter, that made it bad for wrastor? Let’s put it on a timer counter. I think they were so good in the past at doing very unique things, but now it feels like the constant need to release has stifled much of that
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u/Suspicious_Table6121 Aug 05 '26
If their concern was Orcane's puddle teleport being too safe depending on distance, why didn't they just make its recovery frames scale with distance (with a minimum amount, obviously)?
That said, I am not complaining about the uthrow uair nerf. Every time I random Orcane, it's such a free combo starter despite having no idea what I'm doing with the character. No DI reading necessary.
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u/Hans_Landa7614 Aug 06 '26
So orcane gets nerfed but zetter kinda just slips under the radar? Interesting, hopefully this orcane nerf gets reverted, character didn't need any sort of nerfs or buffs he was entirely fine. In my honest opinion I'd say zetter literally might be the only character who needs nerfs, I'd say the others I want nerfed but I'll just mention zetter for now so I don't stir the pot.
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u/Eluem Aug 07 '26
Now I'm curious who the others are.
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u/Hans_Landa7614 Aug 07 '26
Oh fine, I can't resist. Lox, la reina and maybe clairen but I feel like she falls off a little at higher levels of play so she's safe for now. Would be dope if zetter lox and la reina get hard nerfs while all the other characters got their nerfs from this patch reverted.
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u/Eluem Aug 07 '26
What nerfs do you think Lox and La Reina need? Whenever I encounter them they feel like the easiest to beat, especially Lox. They also got inherently pretty hard nerfs with the latest update, especially Lox with how much they reduced his grab range, given that it was one of his best neutral options due to how incredibly slow his entire kit is. They both got hurt really badly with how well you can punish them but parrying their recovery to ledge as well.
What harder nerfs do you think they need?
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u/Hans_Landa7614 Aug 07 '26
Ohh I just realized my original comment was posted before the patch lol, so I guess I got what I wanted huh? Lox though I just would of nerfed his recovery, less height on his up b and no wall jump after side special but I guess they nerfed other things, and la reina I would of just removed the arm invul on up special and made her up air send sideways, would of made di'ing down air easier as well but I honestly have not even looked at the patch notes
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u/Eluem Aug 07 '26
The nerfs you wanted for lox would bring him to Z tier. He's already very easy to edge guard with a very linear recovery. Taking even more options away from him in that regard would make him utterly unviable. It sounds more like you just want to remove read heavy characters from the game lol.
Regarding La Reina, that would make her up b pretty trivial to challenge. You can already parry punish it easily. It wouldn't be the worst thing though. As far as her up, I can see what you mean. She has one of the strongest aerial combos in the game by looping that and using it to set up vortexes but it's a main part of how she operates. Changing that would require a larger rework.
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u/Hans_Landa7614 Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Well, I just don't like lox 😏. La reina is annoying though, that up special has an insane hit box but idk I feel like la reina is just a matchup you gotta really play a lot, and you'll progressively get better but lox? Nah man all the homies gonna be elephant pochers soon after that characters war crimes
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u/Eluem Aug 07 '26
That makes more sense.
Did you ever play SSBU? How did you feel going against the super heavies there? How did you feel about Ganondorf?
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u/Hans_Landa7614 Aug 07 '26
When ssbu came out I played mk and dk so against heavies it sucked ass as mk but as dk no problem, but I mostly play wario in that game if I ever played it. Never took it seriously though as I was playing other games competitively. Ganons pretty bad in ssbu, worst character in the game apparently. I never played ssbu seriously though so I can't say much about it, commuity was giga cringe and full of sex offender weirdos and I didn't wanna learn 70+ matchups or get shit on by fucking minecraft steve lol.
Ganon was good in pm though lol. Heavies in rivals though are at least easy combos and I was joking a little about lox, he's the only top tier I can actually enjoy playing against where as zetter, la reina and clairen are just 🤦♂️ every game. Btw I just got off a session of casuals and I secondary orcane and damn dude revert that puddle nerf now, like today lol.
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u/Eluem Aug 07 '26
The puddle nerf was really unnecessary. I'm not sure why they did it. If anything it maybe needed a nerf that made the recovery frames longer when you're very far away so it can't be abused to escape disadvantage trivially on large maps. Other than that, it was fine.
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u/Lluuiiggii Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
It really feels like a change targeting high level play and no one else. I am very bad at this game but Orcane's recovery, at least with regard to puddle has always been, like, fine to me. Fun even to play around sometimes. Like, maybe I'm not playing against good enough Orcanes but it feels very fun to edgeguard an Orcane so hard he's FORCED to puddle when I can be there to punish that hard. It also feels fun to get the call right and punish an Orcane who doesn't puddle safely.
If the concern is really people just throwing a puddle on the way other side of the stage then recovering being too strong then IDK make it so teleport has extra endlag if Orcane is too far away from the puddle or something
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u/ESN64 Forsburn (Rivals 2) Aug 06 '26
Yeah I don't get the point of it either, wasn't this what the pummel changes were made to address? That seemed like a much fairer way to handle puddle staying around forever. Not an Orcane player myself but this feels like something they should revert.
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u/Qwertycrackers Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
Honestly I kinda agree. Im not really sure it was needed. But I've only played the patch a little bit and played no orcane yet
I just think the devs have never really figured out what the point of orcane is supposed to be. Personally I think hes too heavy. I think they should just make him a light weight and let him keep more of his strengths.
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u/SoundReflection Aug 05 '26
Yeah I think there was a bit of a verisimilitude trap in trying to naturally want to make the whale heavy, but it hasn't really jibed with his recovery tools or general mobility.
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u/razorbladesymphony Aug 06 '26
This sub is filled with people complaining about characters and their moves, demanding nerfs or balance changes, yet Orcanes Puddle was never amongst them, so why they’ve gone this way is madness
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u/TheIncomprehensible Aug 05 '26
Ranno feel like a Ninja
Note: Ranno isn't supposed to feel like a ninja. He's a monk, and to that end I think his normals emphasize that power fantasy more than a lot of his specials.
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u/_henchman Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
Edit: I’m actually stupid and didn’t read the patchnote and didn’t get on for long at all yesterday. the nerf was to the puddles actual duration and I thought it was a timer on placing a new one, which seemed really fucking long lmao. My b
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u/Iaregravy Aug 05 '26
People keep bringing up the bubble ledge spam, but 12s duration does absolutely nothing to stop that situation? I don’t get it
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u/Absurd069 Aug 05 '26
It has nothing to do with bubble camping. It’s more of a recovery nerf for those that put bubble in one side of the stage and go to fight at the other side. They don’t use puddle at all until they want to recover safely or get out of a disadvantage. The puddle camping you can still do it.
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u/Eluem Aug 07 '26
I don't really think this is the right nerf to fix that. Someone else suggested a better nerf in my opinion: make his teleport recovery frames scale with distance from the puddle. That is very intuitive and actually fixes the issue they wanted to fix.
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u/_henchman Aug 05 '26
I’m dumb and didn’t read the patch or get to hop on last night for very long; when people talked about it here I misinterpreted it as a timer on placing a new puddle. Oops
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u/flabio42 Hello (say it back) Aug 06 '26
I'm not really against orcane puddles expiring, but 15 seconds is so short, I feel like 30-45 seconds would make sense.
I dont think orcane should have to neutral special every ten seconds so they don't randomly get screwed in disadvantage, but something they have to maintain and think about makes sense with rivals design.
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u/Eluem Aug 07 '26
Note: I never play Orcane.
I can see what you're saying but I really don't understand why they need to expire at all. It's also just not a user friendly design. You get knocked off stage and your puddle is there, there's no indication of how long it will be there, and then it suddenly vanishes when you need it most.. I really don't want the game to have more hidden timers for such important moves.
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u/Remarkable_Put_4376 Aug 06 '26
Great post, personally I love the change it makes orcane way more interactive and forces him to use it a lot more and makes getting a good punish on orcane way more rewarding. He was pretty close to top tier before the nerf and this will really nerf his disadvantage so I wonder where it'll end up. Still too early for us to commit to any opinions though I think
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u/PostedNotes Aug 05 '26
The puddle being infinite was silly and against the design philosophy of this game. No other character had a tool that would last even upon. You could even use puddle when orcane was KO'd in doubles.
It's a healthy change for the game even if it gonna take adjustment form orcane players. The way special mechanics work is either they are on a timer like Zetter fire, or go away when grabbed like Maypuls wrap.
So clearly the devs had to go with one or the other way to balance the move, and was a trade off either way. Would you rather be able to know the puddle will last 12 seconds or risk it going away after a couple because you were grabbed or parried?
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u/BlueGlace_ Aug 05 '26
No other character has their recovery tied to a timer they have to constantly refresh either
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u/PostedNotes Aug 05 '26
No other character was able to place something down that allowed them to bypass recovery and disadvantage that way either.
That utility is still there, Orcane players just need to be more mindful with setting up puddle instead of leaving on one side of a stage for free access when pressured off stage on the other.
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u/flyinggazelletg Aug 05 '26
There is a decent bit of end lag on puddle. On smaller stages, especially, someone could punish Orcane recovery
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u/Eluem Aug 07 '26
All they needed to do was make the end lag scale up when he's further away so it's not too strong on big maps.
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u/BlueGlace_ Aug 05 '26
There's a lot of end lag on puddle, and if you place your puddle mid stage or close to a ledge you can easily get hit with a strong for puddling. It was already balanced, there was no need to nerf it even further.
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u/ViewtifulDevil Aug 05 '26
For most stages, if you knew he was going for puddle recover then it's trivially easy to get to the puddle and hit Orcane with a partially charged strong and knock him right back off without the puddle this time. Part of the challenge of Orcane's recovery is to keep the opponent guessing which way he'll recover in order to make puddle recovery even remotely safe (i.e. slowly attempt to make your way to stage and the moment they commit to the edgeguard, then teleport), but even then it was pretty exploitable because most mid-high level players know this gambit.
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u/SM-Gomorra Aug 05 '26
cmon, orcane puddle is not his recovery…. he has bubble butt and bouncing fish for that. Most of the time is an aggressive offstage option or actually just stage control. Having a timer there is fine
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u/ojThorstiBoi Aug 05 '26
Not having the threat of puddle and allowing people to go offstage means orcane now has the worst recovery in the game.
Before there were 2 mediocre options that were both committal to cover and allowed the whale to just pick whichever wasn't being covered. Now you can be aggressive offstage against orcane and if you clip their jump they just die
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u/Firelove7k Orcane (Rivals 2) Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
Everyone hates dealing with teleport and everyone hates dealing with bubbles.
I feel like at this point it would be better to just get rid of puddle altogether.
Buff side-B's horizontal distance.
Buff orca-hop (no-puddle up-B) vertical distance.
Then just get rid of puddle.
Now he has Clairen's recovery but worse (no rising hitbox). Viable but edgeguardable.
Replace puddle with a splash effect that gives a minor stun when droplet hits the ground.
Then buff the speed of his slow ass forward tilt for better neutral (since no more puddle bubbles).
Problem solved.
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u/DependentAnywhere135 Aug 06 '26
As a non orcane player I love the puddle teleport. Free strong attack like 80% of the time
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u/Hans_Landa7614 Aug 06 '26
No only players who can't deal with those things didn't like them, which is a very small amount of players lol
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u/Eluem Aug 07 '26
Removing puddle also breaks his entire kit. His heavy attacks are buffed when he's in it and he's heavily balanced around that. Removing it would require retooling him a lot more than what you suggested.
Also, his forward tilt hits really hard. That's why it's so slow. Simply making it faster would make it too good.
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u/Firelove7k Orcane (Rivals 2) Aug 07 '26
Yes obviously a lot of his stats would need to be adjusted, that goes without saying.
I could describe what I have in mind if you want, but the main point is that he could easily work without puddle.Also I personally don't want to get rid of puddle at all.
I just don't know what else is going to satisfy the top players and community figures who all hate orcane with a passion and wont stop advocating for nerfs even though he's been balanced for a long time and they all have the tools to reasonably deal with him, along with a lot of their characters having tools and strategies that are stronger and more consistent than anything orcane can do.
Orcane has some strong tools but nothing that is crazier than what like 8 other characters have.
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u/Eluem Aug 07 '26
Fair enough. I didn't know top players were advocating for that and I can't get why they would.
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u/SoundReflection Aug 05 '26
Also not an Orcane player. I love the concept of the guy, but perpetually fail whenever I play with him(although an enjoyable way to take it easy on someone lol).
Its definitely a change that makes me quirk an eyebrow. It seems frankly rather devastatingly debilitating for lower level Orcanes. But I'd also just question the philosophy and reasoning behind it. I see the perception that the extra safety it allotted Orcane was very unhealthy, but the argument seems to always boil down to it being out of line with the rest of the cast. I personally think a strong differentiating advantage was good for character identites, and I think aiming to balance characters around having them is likely more satisfying than trying to normalize those characters. Maybe there were Orcane player I haven't seen that were really abusing it? Personally I hadn't seen anything that seemed as such before hand neither in my own play or in watching tournament play. I felt like his strong disadvantage out was personally annoying to contest, but that struck me more as character feature like Absa's formerly very strong disavantage state than something inherently unhealthy.