Mid level player - I feel like Maypul needs a slight buff#1769

Hi,

A little bit of context about me, so you have an idea where I’m coming from. I play a lot of Melee, where I main Pikachu. I rank high gold on Slippi. I immediately fell in love with Maypul in Rivals 1, and again in Rivals 2, because it offers the same high octane gameplay where I get to mix a hit and run strategy with heavy punishes, using a character that is small and tough to hit. I absolutely love Maypul’s design. It’s one of the most fun characters I’ve ever seen in a fighting game.

There is one big issue with the character though, and it is its lack of damage. I have racked up 55 hours of gameplay on Rivals 2 since its release, easily at least 45 of which were on Maypul. I’m starting to understand what the character wants to do, what it’s afraid of and how to play around these threats. Maypul has the speed and the combos, but it lacks a bit in kill setups. Maybe I’m not using Lily enough, but usually I get most kills with strong attacks, either as hard reads or tech chases. In Melee, Pikachu is not hindered too much by the lack of damage or kill setups, because it has very good edgeguarding tools and can gimp most characters at extremely low percent. But in Rivals 2, gimps are way harder to pull off, so I often see my opponents survive upwards of 170% because I simply cannot land a killing blow, while Zetterburn kills me off the top with a reliable bair to up strong setup at 120%. I’m usually a good sport in games, I barely ever rage and I recognize when I’m beat. But in the past few days, my experience has been very frustrating trying to improve with Maypul against my friends.

One mains Zetterburn and rushes me down constantly, and I feel like shield pressure is difficult to handle, but that’s okay. But then even when I get an opening, I need twice the amount of hits he needs to get him at kill percent, while half his moveset puts me on fire on top of hitting harder. I legit felt insulted when Maypul’s seed damage was reduced from 2% to 1% in the last patch. It feels unfair when Zetterburn can deal almost 10% with a single projectile. My other friend mains Ranno, and he plays very passively. He’s always floorhugging, abuses jabs and walls me out with aerials. It is difficult to get in because all his moves have both better range and better frame data than Maypul’s. I actually feel like he needs to have a few recovery frames added on a couple of aerials, and maybe a few startup frames added on his nair, but that’s not the point of this post. The problem is that on top of all this, he also hits way harder than Maypul, while not really being slower. Sure, Maypul moves around faster, but in terms of actual duration of their moves, Maypul is the slower one. I know this both from playing the game and from looking at frame data online.

In the previous patch notes, you described your design philosophy as wanting to discourage campy playstyles, but I think you went too far with Maypul. Approaching feels shitty, because either I get stuffed out by bigger hitboxes or I get crouch canceled and then punished for landing a hit. That can be played around, though. I have learned to grab more, I obfuscate my intentions through hazy movement and then punish their options out of CC, I’m always crossing up their shield, etc. But Maypul’s throws don’t lead into that much at low percent, and there is only so much I can do trying to tech chase using moves that have 3-4 active frames. But all of this would be okay, if only the punishes were actually juicy. Whenever I land a sick 5 or 6-move string, I then look at the damage and am disappointed to see a measly 30%, and that turns into a feeling of injustice when Zetterburn clips me with a nair that leads into a 3-move string that puts me on fire and rewards him with the same 30%. And I know I don’t feel that way simply because my friends are better than me, because when we play Melee together, it’s pretty much 50/50. Plus, we all have roughly the same playtime on Rivals 2. So either I’m somehow learning the game a significantly slower pace than they are, which I doubt, or there are discrepancies between Maypul and other characters which feel unfair.