I know balance is a tricky tight rope to walk and you’ve all done an amazing job. The game is in its most balanced state ever right now. That said, Olympia feels like she’s in a very weak spot compared to the rest of the cast.
Olympia has gone from being the best character in the game to arguably the worst and seems to have completely disapeared from the tournament scene. Her current version seems increadibly difficult to balance, as extreme volatility is inately polarizing. She either blows people up and comes off as overpowered or she blows up and feels unviable as a solo character. It seems as though she’s become too unforgiving for newer players and not a lot of fun/viable for top level players. The main reason for the latest round of nerfs seem intended to remove her oppressive offense in favor of making her more fun to fight. However, this has left her feeling more like a punching bag character that’s not a lot of fun to play as when compared to other rush down characters that don’t have all her weaknesses.
I feel like she needs a slight reworking to make her more fun and forgiving to play as while keeping her offense roughly where it currently is. If she was made more durable through a weight increase, or some other method, she wouldn’t be as ultra fragile and would still keep her offense in this much more tonned down / difficult to pull off fashion. If you wanted to boost her damage in some way, I could even see her run speed slightly toned down to make her feel more like her old R1 self again with a bigger focus on her burst movement.
I’m no game dev, but I feel like Oly could use some changes to make her fun to play as and play against while also keeping her a viable character to solo.
I think the 1.5.5 changes really damaged Olympia’s identity. For reference, this was the big patch where her air speed, dtilt, utilt, up special, nair, and dair were all simultaneously nerfed. I think she’s suffering from a lot of pain points:
1.) Olympia’s weight and weak disadvantage state no longer feel counterbalanced by her strengths.
2.) Olympia’s base attributes, hitboxes, and frame data necessitate approaching, but she isn’t rewarded for approaching; more often than not, she’s punished, and punished disproportionately relative to the rest of the cast due to her aforementioned disadvantage state. The air speed, nair, and dair nerfs really deteriorated her neutral. Not only is neutral frustrating for Olympia players, it’s equally frustrating for opponents because the Olympia is incentivized to play a more passive, defensive neutral that punishes them for approaching her.
3.) Olympia’s inability to tech chase on tech away is a signififcant pain point, and exacerbates the above two.
4.) dtilt was over-nerfed. It is, without exaggeration, one of the worst moves in the game. It is so inconsistent, so unrewarding that it doesn’t even deserve the time it would take to think of a simile that properly represents what it’s like to be standing balls-to-balls with your opponent and watch dtilt whiff. There is only one reason to ever rely on dtilt for anything, and that reason is you’re Plup and a viewer requests you play Olympia for the first time in months.
Pre-nerf dtilt was a consistent kill confirm and decent in a scrap. Its effectiveness was counterbalanced by its small hitboxes, with the outer sour spot hitbox acting as a form of insurance if you whiffed the inner. Although dtilt is unsafe on shield and susceptible to being shield-grabbed, the sour spot at least hit opponents who weren’t shielding at close range.
You get where I’m going with this: post-nerf dtilt does not hit. This move does not fucking hit anything. It isn’t as consistent a kill confirm and it is piss useless in a scrap. There is no reason to press this button. Press utilt, press jab (dtilt is going to get floorhugged for 3/4ths of every stock even if it hits, so jab is just as effective), grab, jump, but do not press dtilt. It will whiff, and you will be left with your dick in your hand wondering how you were tempted by the sweet, sweet reward of getting fucking nothing off of dtilt sour spot if it didn’t.
In short, the risk:reward ratio of dtilt is really bad, and the issue is the outer sour spot hitbox. I don’t know whether reverting it to its prior reach is the correct choice, but it needs some range considering the position Olympia is forced to put herself in to press dtilt at all.
If you disagree with any of the above, I implore you to open training mode and play around with Olympia’s dtilt and La Reina’ dtilt.
5.) Hit 1 of nair needs to consistently connect into hit 2, especifically if its hitboxes aren’t un-nerfed. Her nair is Ranno ftilt 2.0.
Broadly speaking, Olympia feels unreliable - and not in the way that other characters do due to polarizing MUs. It isn’t MUs, it’s Olympia herself. It isn’t that she isn’t good, or doesn’t have the characteristics of a good character; it’s that she dies at 80%, doesn’t kill significantly earlier than other characters, and has to essentially hurl herself into a wood chipper to approach. If Olympia has momentum, she wins. If Olympia’s momentum is broken - and it tends to be be broken because of the pain points above - she loses. That’s the Olympia.