Clairen in 1 versus 2#428

Might be something the dev team is already aware of, but I went back and played R1 recently, and I noticed something pretty jarring about Clairen specifically. Compared to R2, she feels extremely sluggish and limited in her mobility, and that seems like it was done to compensate her ridiculous advantage and range. R2 has kept that ridiculous advantage and range, but has done away with the sluggish movement and attacks that kept it in check.

Specific points I want to bring up:

• Whiffed normals are very slow
• Aerial landing lag is a lot higher if she misses them across the board
• Movement speed is generally slower, which makes her floaty jump actually make sense
• Up and side specials go basically nowhere compared to R2–I know this is mitigated by the ability to universally wall jump, but carrying this forward would make her recovery far more contestable

i think they have huge issues designing characters with disjoints. they somehow want them to be fast and reactive but its simply not fair to do that. If characters can throw out hitboxes three times the size of the char itself that go basically 360 degress around them, everyone without a bigger disjoint attack (since attacks also block projectiles, which is a major problem for dealing with chars that have disjoints) needs to respeect that move. so since you cannot directly challenge that move there needs to be much more endlag and consequence for whiffing such a move.

I just want to share when you are curious about this kind of stuff, you can compare the games directly instead of going by feel.

Rivals 1 Frame Data for Clairen can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/19UtK7xG2c-ehxdlhCFKMpM4_IHSG-EXFgXLJaunE79I/htmlview?pli=1#gid=2051893116

Rivals 2 Frame Data for Clairen can be found here:
https://dragdown.wiki/wiki/RoA2/Clairen#Normal_Moves

The movement properties are obviously going to feel different in a new engine but frame data can be compared directly to see if what you’re feeling matches the reality.

For example on just comparing the first two of Clairen’s aerials on those pages:

Nair:
R1 Aerial Whiff Lag: 11
R1 Landing Whiff Lag: 9
R2 Aerial Lag: 17
R2 Landing Lag: 10

Fair:
R1 Aerial Whiff Lag: 21
R1 Landing Whiff Lag: 12
R2 Aerial Lag: 24
R2 Landing Lag: 12

So while she might feel slower and laggier in Rivals 1, there is more going on here and it’s a combination of a lot of factors including animation, aerial drift, friction and control. Some of the up specials did have a lot less drift early into Rivals 2 betas but you run into issues when you give a recovery move both long landing lag and low drift. Especially in Rivals 2 vs Rivals 1, where opponents can use ledge to force characters like Fleet and Clairen to have to land on stage.

As for the comment that “the devs have huge issues designing characters with disjoints,” I think we’ve seen that both high disjoint (Stango’s Loxodont) and low disjoint (Stango’s Olympia) can be dominant in the same engine.

i would argue we saw that Stango ca be dominant in the same engine ;-)
also, because a low disjoint char was dominant at some point (and has been heavily nerfed since) does not mean the disjoint ones can’t be broken. the one does not affect the other.
I think one big issue with comparing those values is the addition of shield. Its frame one and and can keep you safe from the fast punish options that actually might have a bit of reach. In R1 you would have to parry which is much riskier.

I think they just don’t like making figters slow at all.
Look at Kragg, he’s a tank but they gave him more mobility than most fighters for a long time.
Basically everyone in this game is fast

For some reason whenever Clairen’s absurd speed gets brought up the devs always seem to ignore that point.

“The movement properties are obviously going to feel different in a new engine.” This is a really odd way of bringing up the OP’s point of “Movement speed is generally slower, which makes her floaty jump actually make sense” without actually addressing anything and instead giving a very vauge, general statement.

Her movement feels different between games because in R1 she actually had a reasonable ground speed stat compared to the rest of the cast.
Looking at the patch notes history on Dragdown in v1.0.3 (2024-12-03) she had her run speed increased from 18.4 -> 20.1 which is where it is currently. I honestly didn’t know they ever increased her run speed

As of now Clairen has the 2nd fastest dash speed and the 2nd fastest run speed (3rd run speed if you count Wrastor in slip stream) while only being slower than Maypul in both. If you revert her run speed back to 18.4 that would put her at 4th fastest run speed only putting her behind Orcane and Ranno which would feel more than reasonable.
Especially considering Ranno used to be faster than Clairen until in 1.2.5 (2025-06-17) they nerfed his run speed from 21.25 -> 19.25 which is slower than Clairen’s and honestly it feels insulting to Ranno it’s still like this almost a year later. Her dash speed should also be nerfed slightly, I think she has no business being number 2 in that stat as well.

Clairen’s overall speed feels even more egregious compared to Slade and how comically slow he is in comparison.

@Dan Fornace Thank you for the numbers. I agree with the other replies that raw numbers tend to mask context, though.

Something that already got pinged in a previous patch is down strong, where it seemed the belief among the dev team was that the two games had roughly the same range for it, but the reality was that R2 had a ridiculously larger disjoint in comparison. Considering that, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if other moves that are “more sluggish” on paper end up being more oppressive in practice due to her higher speed values, greater disjoints, better offense options (grab), and better defense options like shield and floorhug, both of which can mask lag by mitigating punish options.

Also, while I appreciate the focus on the highest level of competitive play, I think it’s important to realize that not everyone operates at the highest level of competitive play. There’s a reason why Falco’s lasers or Peach’s down smash are “just another tool” at high level play, but are disgustingly overpowered for everyone else. It’s worth considering that everyone has to deal with the fallout of high level character design, and especially so when those aspects of it are easy to execute. Your casual friend isn’t going to be able to waveshine you with Zetterburn until death, but he will be able to use all of Clairen’s tools.

the more you look into her details, the more busted she becomes. the head hitbox on her downtilt is just crazy as well as all the other things mentioned here.
I know that on dev stream the topic of clairen was once briefly covered and it was talked about how clairen has to play precise. I think this is the main missconception with the char. You don’t need to play precise at all to make her work. Sure if you are very precise, you can take her to the next level and thats what might be needed to compete at the highest level, but you can still have big success in the mid ranks without any precision at all.
the hitboxes are too generous and the random tippers are too strong a tool. I don’t know how you would do it, but there needs to be a way where the clairen player must predict if the next hit will tipper or not to get a follow up. Currently you can just swing and follow up on tipper on reaction. thats why people spam moves all the time. If they already needed to prepare their next step somehow and did not have all the tipper stun to decide what to do, things would be very different and much more balanced. but i currently can’t think of anything that wouldn’t make her horribly to control.
even though its very cool to use, i think the tipper stun is just contrary to what platform fighters stand for. Clairens combos often completely ignore a persons DI because the next follow up happens during the stun. So her combo game often feels like from a trad fighting game. And one of the main aspects about plat fighters is, that you are somewhat actionable when you are getting comboed, its one of the main differences between a trad fighter. tipper stun taking that away is pretty bad if you ask me.

It is nice that in today’s patch Clairen’s Down-Tilt hitboxes actually got cleaned up, so good job on that. I hope her other ridiculous hitboxes get cleaned up as well in a future patch.

Still any nerfs (Like adding 2 frames of end lag on Down-Tilt and Jab) will still not justify her being the 2nd fastest character in the game. Clairen being faster than Orcane and Ranno will continue to make her feel egregious.

Can only hope she gets focused on more in a future balance patch.

@SeriousTranslation888 Agreed, credit where it’s due

Nice! It’s kinda crazy. In a lot of patches, when I look at Clairen’s nerfs, it’s a wall of text with ton of changes, without any of them being significant.
Today it’s just 3 nerfs, but significant and welcome ones. Thank you!

I haven’t read the all patch yet, but it looks really good. (despite no rework of Orcane :cry: )

Yo! My favorite Hitbox Sheriffs! @CandidCrocodile088 @IntelligentNitrogen904 @TemptingActor769 @SeriousTranslation888

Since I see you are being very good at your job! How about you go after Zetterburn’s dtilt since it appears to have the same issue Clairen had just a version ago?

Video Proof: https://fixupx.com/i/status/2051219714538352803

In fact there’s even more jank: https://fixupx.com/Zen_Espy/status/2051220879351177315
Bro has literal magnet side smash that grabs behind him!

Surely you’d also raise awareness of his down aerial having crazy range, right?

@VersuS I think that’s an excellent job for a new nolt post from you

its a good start, but the char still needs a lot of work.
they need to make fighting her be less anoying, which means nerfing her passive game plan a lot. just walling out people by mindlessly swinging in case someone approaches should not be a valid game plan, yet 9/10 clairens play like that.

@VersuS I looked into it. I do think Zetter down tilt hits a little bit too high and covers his own hurtbox too much. Especially 2nd and 3rd active frame.
For his F strong you got unlucky more than anything else. The hitbox on Zetter f strong is fine. It’s just that after your down tilt, your tail went behind you and you got hit the 1st active frame of his f-strong. But the f-strong hitbox itself is perfectly fine.

For the d tilt even tho I think the hitbox could be shrinked a little (but honestly it’s the case for most d-tilts), I overall think it’s fine. His d tilt don’t have the same range as Clairen’s one, and also have more recovery frames. On shield, Clairen’s d-tilt (with tipper) is -13, Zetter is -16. And when you also have less range it makes a lot of difference.

One thing I noticed is a lot of times these weird interactions happens against Orcane Dair. So I looked into Orcane’s dair. The hitbox itself is fine (I mean like most dair hitboxes it hits too high over him, covering his hurtbox, but the downward hitbox if fine for a dair). The problem is each 2 frame of active hitboxes is followed by 2 frames of inactive hitboxes. So half the time during the moment when he is supposed to hit, he doesn’t. It worked the same way in ROA1.
But I was wondering how Fox’s dair worked in Melee. And for him, he also have multiple 2 frame active hitboxes, but they are only followed by 1 frame of inactive hitbox making Fox way less vulnerable.

With Orcane it makes a lot of weird interaction where it looks like you should hit but get hit instead.
In the first clip, if it was only 1 inactive frame you probably would have trade with Zetter at least.
And this is also what happened to me against a Ranno using his dair when I was above him. So I looked into Ranno’s Dair hitbox and it’s indecently huge. The first 3 active hitboxes are okay imo, then the 4th one is perfect. And then it becomes huge, and it’s even bigger if he fast fall, completely covering him above him. That’s kinda disgusting.

If I’ve got time this week I will try to make a complete topic about hitboxes in general.