Welcome to Patch 2.44! We’ve added new skins, game balance improvements, map adjustments, animation improvements,quality of life goodness, and a swath of new test features! We’re looking forward to your feedback on everything new and hope you have another fantastic week of brawling.

New Legend Skins in Mallhalla

• Star Guardian Ember – “Shooting stars… and asteroids… and anything posing a threat.”
• Slasher Barraza – “Even nightmares have nightmares.”

Brawlhalla Winter Championship Avatar

Show your support for Brawlhalla Esports with a brand new animated avatar in honor of the Brawlhalla Winter Championship coming up on February 4th & 5th.  

• Brawlhalla Winter Championship Avatar is now available in Mallhalla.

Map Adjustments

• Shipwreck Falls has one of the largest killboxes in the game, but the ceiling was pushed too far, making it exceedingly difficult to kill off the top. The distance above the camera bounds to kill off the top has been lowered from 900 to 700. For reference, Small Thundergard Stadium has the same camera bounds and main platform location as Shipwreck Falls, and its distance-to-kill above the camera bounds is 500. The ceiling on Shipwreck Falls should still feel high, just not so extraordinarily high.

Quality of Life Improvements

• In training mode, changing the bot’s damage or changing what item a character is holding will now automatically go into effect without pressing the update hotkey. You can still use the hotkey to set damage or give an item without having to change the value.
• You can now set a default Sidekick in the inventory screen that will be used when a legend does not have a Sidekick preset. In the interest of making this change easier to understand, all Sidekick presets have been reset. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Test Features

The Experimental Queue has gotten cluttered over time. As many players requested, we’ve pulled some of the older tests for now to focus on new ones. This doesn’t mean that the removed features are gone forever, it just means we want to test new things!

These new changes attempt to increase the pace of gameplay, position signatures as a way to counter chain-dodge approaches, and add a cost to certain playstyles. We want to see if these changes have a positive impact on the current meta, and are looking forward to your feedback.

Added to Test Features

• Introduced a 6 frame delay to attacking or dodging when turning around.
• Increased run and fall speeds by 15%.
• Invulnerability from Chain Dodges no longer prevents hits from Signatures.

Removed From Test Features

• Upward Chase Dodge: Can now Chase Dodge upwards after a hit or with the upward momentum from a jump. Canceling an upward Chase Dodge into a downward attack does not apply the standard post-chase-dodge invulnerability frames.
• Signature Jumping: allows you to hit the jump button while charging a signature for an aerial Signature attack.
• Instead of Cooldowns preventing a power from being used again, the Cooldown Time will be added to the startup of the repeated power. (All power-specific cooldown reductions have been removed with this test feature)

Animation Improvements

• Scythe recovery animation start up posing adjustments.
• Added extra animation frames to Scythe Dair startup animation for visual clarity.
• Adjusted posing for Scythe Recovery animation for visual clarity.

New Legend Rotation

This week’s new free Legend Rotation features Cassidy, Cross, Ember, Gnash, Jhala, and Orion.

Balance

We have a number of changes this week, primarily on Axe and Spear as they have been overperforming expectations and have been a hot topic of discussion. With Scythe finishing out its first week in the wild, these changes should shake up the landscape even further.

Quick Definition of Variable vs. Fixed Force.

Since there are quite a number of changes related to Variable and Fixed Force in this balance pass. We thought it’d be helpful to clarify their definitions and applications for everyone.

Fixed Force: Not affected by damage, strength, or charge time. Fixed Force is what is essentially responsible for the base knockback of attacks at white.

Variable Force: Affected by damage, strength, and charge time. Variable Force Scales with those conditions and is generally responsible for what makes something a good KO attack.

With this being said, a balance change of 2 Variable Force is meaningful because of the scaling, whereas a change of 2 Fixed Force makes far far less of a difference.

Katars

The Katars have received improvements to a few different string routes for tearing up nearby opponents. Strings after a Down Light will see more reliability with the Increased Stun, while the Side Air is a bit faster for directed aerial approaches and improved use in aerial strings.

• Katar Down Light: Increased Stun from 22 to 24.
• Katar Side Air: Decreased Time to Hit from 11 to 10.

Sword

The Sword has long had a very threatening Down Air that proved to be more desirable than its Ground Pound in most every situation. We have shuffled the Force from the Down Air into the Ground Pound for stronger spiking potential on that heavy attack, while also reducing the threat of the versatile Down Air.

• Sword Down Air: Decreased Force of first active frame from 40 Variable/65 Fixed to 38 Variable/60 Fixed; Decreased Force of later active frames from 34 Variable/52 Fixed to 32 Variable/52 Fixed; Increased Stun from 14 to 15.
• Sword Ground Pound: Increased Force from 32 Variable/50 Fixed to 40 Variable/50 Fixed.

Axe

With the addition of Chain Dodging, the Axe’s ground kit proves too flexible in its attack rotation for the amount of power in its strikes. We have increased the recovery time across the ground kit to afford more room for counterplay.

• Axe Down Light: Increased Recovery from 12 Variable/0 Fixed to 12 Variable/2 Fixed.
• Axe Side Light: Decreased Stun from 31 to 30; Increased Recovery on miss from 8 Variable/3 Fixed to 10 Variable/3 Fixed.
• Axe Neutral Light: Increased Recovery on miss from 9 Variable/0 Fixed to 9 Variable/2 Fixed.

Spear

The Spear is receiving adjustments to allow a greater window to punish missed aerial heavy attacks, as well as more time to approach a missed Neutral Light attack.

• Spear Neutral Light: Increased Recovery from 16 Variable/1 Fixed to 16 Variable/3 Fixed; Increased Stun of final hit from 16 to 17.
• Spear Recovery: Applied dampening to backwards movement during the attack, similar to most Side Air powers.
• Spear Ground Pound: Decreased Force from 45 Variable/52 to 42 Variable/52 Fixed; Increased Recovery on release from 28 Variable/0 Fixed to 28 Variable/2 Fixed; Increased Recovery on contact with ground from 27 Variable/0 Fixed to 28 Variable/2 Fixed.

Rocket Lance

Frequent usage of the Rocket Lance Down Air affords a great deal of mobility, so we have increased the recovery time to allow for more consistent punishment on miss.

• Rocket Lance Down Air: Increased Recovery on miss from 22 Variable/0 Fixed to 22 Variable/1 Fixed; Increased Recovery on miss when contacting with ground from 21 Variable/0 Fixed to 22 Variable/1 Fixed.
• Rocket Lance Neutral Light: Increased Recovery on miss from 9 Variable/1 Fixed to 10 Variable/2 Fixed.

Blasters

The Blasters Neutral Air affords great coverage from threats above the user and has incredible speed. Due to its extreme utility, we have increased the time to hit to make it slightly less safe of an attack. We have also improved string opportunities from the Neutral Light by increasing its stun time.

• Blasters Neutral Light: Increased Stun of final hit from 16 to 18.
• Blasters Neutral Air: Increased Time to Hit from 6 to 8.

Bow

The Bow tends to perform best in the air and when edge-guarding the opponent. We have increased the force on the side light to help push the fight where the Bow wants to be.

• Bow Side Light: Increased Force from 28 Variable/39 Fixed to 30 Variable/39 Fixed.

Gauntlets

Similar to other lengthy attacks in the past, we have sped up the total duration of the Gauntlets Down Air for a faster rate of play. We have also increased its force for a slightly higher reward on hit.

• Gauntlets Down Air: Decreased time between the hits, resulting in a 4 frame decrease in total duration; Increased Force from 22 Variable/45 Fixed to 25 Variable/45 Fixed.

Teros

We have reduced the force on Teros’ Neutral Hammer given its excellent utility and angle of knockback. This should allow the target a chance at recovering and should also not be as threatening at mid-range health.

• Teros Neutral Hammer: Decreased Force from 49 Variable/69 Fixed to 46 Variable/69 Fixed.

Ragnir

We have increased the minimum charge on Ragnir’s Side Katars to be closer to other similar Signature attacks. It still covers a great deal of ground quickly, but there is more time for the audio and visual cues to play before it is active.

• Ragnir Side Katars: Increased Minimum Charge from 4 to 7.

Mirage

Mirage’s Down Signature attacks were on the higher side of damage ranges, but we have decreased their damage values slightly to be in line with their utility and coverage.

• Mirage Down Scythe: Decreased Damage from 30 to 27.
• Mirage Down Spear: Decreased Damage from 26 to 25.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused some of Mirage’s parts to her sig animations to not show up while playing online.
• Fixed a bug where Mirage Side Spear would not scale Damage and Force when charged. (Credit: LUCKERD0G)
• Fixed a bug that caused the “launch” animation to rewind incorrectly.
• Fixed a bug that caused throws to not take released direction inputs into account when launching the item.
• Ember Neutral Bow: Fixed some cases where target could be dropped by failing to fall through a soft platform.(Credit _Flamethrower_)
• Scythe Down Light: Changed to stricter line of sight checking around corners.