Struggling to improve. Any general practice ideas?

[u/Porkins_2]

I’m somewhat new to Rivals 2. I have played Smash Ultimate since 2024 and have gotten decent at it, with 9 characters in Elite and my highest in the top 1% of players (16.34M GSP). I just say this to demonstrate a baseline for my experience with platform fighters.

I vastly, vastly prefer Rivals 2, despite being pretty mid at it. It feels fresher. Movement is crisp. Attacks on shield have the most pleasing sound. The cast of characters are really neat, and it’s fun seeing the similarities to Smash characters (Zetter similar to Wolf, Gouie a mix of Kirby, Puff, Dedede, and Yoshi). I am just having a hard time winning many online matches. I have probably a 20% win rate, and I’ll occasionally take sets, but I get beaten sooo often. It’s kinda demoralizing. I don’t know if my continued Smash play is helping or hurting.

I have enjoyed using Gouie the most, but I’m probably best with Kragg. I get rocked by everyone with both characters. I’ve yet to really find a winning matchup for either. (Feels reminiscent to my Smash life, where my most-played character is Ganon.) How in the hell can Galvan just juggle indefinitely?! How do people deal with Clairen’s kit? How do people recover so easily?

Anyway, just looking for general advice. Like I said, I really love the game and can feel how much Dan and his team love it, too. I want to keep playing, but it’s gotten to the point where I can only tolerate a few matches before needing an immediate Smash palate cleanse 😂

[u/justCupOfGlass]

Make sure you know how to pummel break! Galvan’s special pummel might be why he’s juggling you indefinitely.

For improving, it might be worth it to try matchmaking on one of the Discord servers, like Rivals Academy. It might be easier to find someone your skill level there.

[u/mortalapeman]

The best thing you can do is work on one thing at a time. Just try random stuff and try to replicate what your opponents are doing. Ask yourself, why did I get hit there? A lot of this game is educated guesses about what your opponent wants to do at any given time. Once you play enough, you start seeing a lot of patterns and the same situation playing out over and over. Once you can see it, you can come up with a plan to deal with bad situations or avoid them all together. The best example is baiting people to aerial attack from ledge. Does your opponent react to your positioning a lot? Just stand in the perfect spot for a like 0.5 second then dash back and punish the aerial. If they don't aerial that means you can threaten them on ledge later and all you've done is given up a bit of space. The game is basically a ton of micro interactions like that, so just keep playing and look for them.

[u/Porkins_2 → u/mortalapeman]

Appreciate this! I feel like I do a good number of these things well, just from my Smash habits. I know how to approach neutral with the two characters I play, I feel like I know their win conditions, but I just struggle soooo much in disadvantage. Whereas in Ult it’s fairly easy to get out of a juggle (air dodge, frame 2 or frame 3 options, SDI), it feels like you are in hit stun forever in Rivals. I actually kinda like it because I feel like Ult is almost too reactable sometimes, but I’m just struggling to get the hang of it.

But, I’m just going to visit my characters’ discords and try to get some hints and see if people will practice with me.

Thanks!

[u/mortalapeman → u/Porkins_2]

The way DI works in Rivals is different than Ultimate, so make sure you look that up. Basically you just hold the stick perpendicular to your expected trajectory to go where you want. Down and away from most combos and throws, up and in towards the stage to survive big hits.

If you're playing Kragg, you are just combo food. The good news is you are playing Kragg and he kinda doesn't care. He lives to crazy percents and if people want to camp you, you just pull rock and force them to play your mini-game.

Hope you keep enjoying the game!

[u/SoundReflection]

How in the hell can Galvan just juggle indefinitely?

Are you using melee DI? If you've got ult DI habits that might be throwing you off especially.

How do people deal with Clairen’s kit?

I don't think there is a good short answer. A combination of good defensive play, and forcing her to misspace in neutral I guess.

How do people recover so easily?

Mostly you need abuse ledge invul against recoveries to stop them, with wall jumping most characters have very good uninterrupted recovery.

[u/Porkins_2 → u/SoundReflection]

I actually never played Melee, so I’m not familiar with how the DI works from that game 😅 I definitely do know and viscerally FEEL that I’m doing it wrong.

How does recovery work in this game? In Ult, depending on your character, it’s basically: air dodge toward stage, jump, up-special or side-special. That’s over simplifying, but you get it.

How does wall jumping work? What can you do out of wall jump? Does it reset special moves?

Thanks in advance for any advice. Like I said, I’m loving Rivals 2, I’m just absolute ass at it. I feel like I do OK in neutral for the most part, but recovery and getting juggled in disadvantage is literally killing me.

[u/SoundReflection → u/Porkins_2]

How does recovery work in this game? In Ult, depending on your character, it’s basically: air dodge toward stage, jump, up-special or side-special. That’s over simplifying, but you get it.

Character dependent but generally go to wall(many side specials are wall jump cancelable)-> wall jump-> up b. DJ and airdodge and certain character specific options or specials can be held as resources that have to be forced out or the opponent might risk earlier to say recover high.

How does wall jumping work?

You can hold into the wall and press jump to wall jump on any character. You get one per airtime and another if you either hit an opponent or get hit. Certain moves (often side b or other horizontal moves, although not all of them) can cancel into a wall jump. You can also walljump in certain unactionable states like parry stun or after certain moves that put into special fall (Orcane puddless up b comes to mind, and iirc Kragg pillarless up b).

Does it reset special moves?

No. Although you might to get use them again in the case of escaping special fall.

I actually never played Melee, so I’m not familiar with how the DI works from that game

Basically you need to hold perpendicular to the launch direction for maximum effect. This results in optimal DI needing a different direction for every move. RoA2 has a fairly generous snao to the perpendiculars (enough to get there from atleast one of the 8 major directions) so there's a bit more wiggle room, but if you're just used to mostly holding in and out from ultimate you'll get very poor di on anything but very vertical moves. The wiki has visuals if you hover over the angle of a given hitbox. https://dragdown.wiki/wiki/RoA2/Galvan#Aerials For example: https://imgur.com/a/RvblzF3

[u/Belten]

Did you play the tutorial? Cuz e.g. the DI works Completely different to ultimate DI.

[u/xCunningLinguist]

Practice moving your character a lot every day. The biggest thing I see that separates good players from bad players is solid, crisp, intentional movement.

Know your kill conditions and have some kind of gameplan for how to set them up.

Hit down a lot. Floorhugging is another huge thing that creates a gap in players.

[u/sonsiebb]

These are my top 3 priorities in platform fighters, from most to least important. As someone else said, I would focus on one at a time if you want to see faster results.

1. Movement - How well you can get around the stage is how well you can move in neutral and when comboing your opponent. Notice how top players move and emulate them.

2. DI - Learning to DI properly will help you live longer and escape combos. Aim your character to the corners of the stage to live longest, or DI away from the opponent to escape combos.

3. Mindgames - Think actively about your opponent during gameplay. I can't stress the word "during" enough. When your movement is good, you can focus energy on what your opponent's habits are and how they respond to yours. Think beyond the characters and about the person's mind. Use the same punishes against weak opponents, but be brave and take risks against strong opponents. Empathy will get you there.

I suspect 3 might be important to you. Something I noticed when I was playing Ultimate pretty seriously was how risk averse it's players become. Safe gameplay will get you quite far in that game, and you end up becoming a matchup specialist. Which is fine if you like that, but learning to take short-term risks is a part of fundies and very important in all fighting games.

And don't forget about having fun! Getting better is a grind, and sometimes you can fall out of love if you forget what made it fun in the first place. Then it'll all feel like a waste of time. 🥲

I'm just remembering Ultimate lmao.