I am very tired of how time and time again Clairen gets away with not being balanced in the same impartiality as other characters. I don’t get how another balance patch has went by and nothing about her was changed to make her feel like a logically balanced character.
This patch every other character had more than 1 of their hurtboxes increased. Which I appreciate for ones like Kragg, La Reina and Galvan since they actually match their models now. Somehow once again, Clairen coincidentally only had her lower body hurtbox increased in size. It feels comical looking at Ranno’s next to Clairen with how much bigger his limb hurtboxes are compared to his actual model. Especially since Ranno already had his hurtboxes increased previously.
Similarily I noticed in the Gooie update when majority of standing grabs were nerfed. All of the adjusted ones do a good job of actually being infront of the character, and match where they are actually grabbing. But Clairen’s for some reason covers her entire torso behind her, when no other character’s shown was like that.
By far my biggest problem with Clairen is her speed. I do not understand how it’s been so long and nothing has been done about how fast she is on the ground. I heard a commentator during hitfall this last weekend talk about how they were “surprised at how fast she feels in this game” (something along those lines). The other commentator seemed uncertain if she really was that much faster in this game compared to Rivals 1 (she is).
I’m surprised people still don’t know that Clairen is the 2nd fastest character on the ground in Rivals 2. It has been this way for well over a year and it is very frustrating. She is slower only behind Maypul on the ground (and slip stream Wrastor). It makes no sense why she is tied with Ranno’s dash speed, runs faster than Ranno, is far faster in the air and gets to be a disjointed swordie. All of this while having a mechanic that freezes their opponent in place. The fact that you guys previously buffed Clairens run speed and then nerfed Ranno’s runspeed to what they are now is a joke.
Honestly I still feel like the runspeed nerf for Ranno was completely undeserved. His whole philosphy is fast on the ground, slow in the air. He has the slowest air speed in the game. But is only the 4th fastest character on the ground. Ranno is not slow by any means overall. But when he’s getting out ran by a swordie that doesn’t feel right, I don’t see the logic for having him slower than Clairen and Orcane. Fox and Sheik aren’t getting out ran by Marth.
From looking at both of their run animations, Ranno looks like he runs akwardly slow, meanwhile Clairen looks like she runs oddly fast. Both from a visual and game feel perspective.
What would make sense to me is:
Buff Ranno’s run speed from 19.25 -> 20.5 (still slower than pre-nerf) so he actually follows his philosphy and is only getting outran by Maypul who is supposed to be the fastest character. Which feels logical to me.
Nerf Clairen’s speed from 20.1 -> 18.5 which makes her just faster than Wrastor. That feel like a much more sensible placement for her.
Another continuing problem is her Up-Air hitbox, I can’t believe this has existed in it’s current state for so long. Countless times I have seen this sweetspot when her opponent is below and to the sides of her. The fact countless other hitboxes has been adjusted meanwhile this coincidentally has slipped by patch after patch is extremely frustrating. The hitbox makes sense in Rivals 1 (hitboxes in general are more accurate to the visual in Rivals 1 and I wish this game followed the same design) so it’s really baffling how the same move in Rivals 2 became so egregious.
It’s sad the amount of times I’ve read people bring up various egregious pain points on Clairen and nothing about her seems to meaningful change ever. Not to say she has never been nerfed or anything. But the effectiveness of her nerfs have overall been far less severe than what any other character would recieve. A surprising amount of times I’ve also read people say they don’t like playing her in this game because she’s too easy which makes her boring. Despite said people maining her in Rivals 1. In the same vain I’ve also read countless times people randomly picking Clairen and doing way better with her than their main because of how easy she has it in this game.
There are other characters and aspects about this game that make me question the teams balancing decisions. But Clairen being how she has been for so long frustrates me greatly and is a big reason why I don’t play this game much these days. With how common she is online I would rather do something else than deal with her. I say this as someone who played Marth in Melee. Marth has very clear weaknesses and disadvantages while being a very good character when used by a skilled player, Clairen does not follow this same design.