Grab Boxes need a balance pass#141

Grab boxes across the cast need a balance pass to better line up with the character animations. For a good chunk of the cast, the grab box extends far beyond the character’s actual animation and into the absurdly large, while others are tiny by comparison, leading to some shenanigans with “will it grab” or “will it whiff”?

Take the attached Fleet grab. The grab extends a good chunk farther than the character animation would otherwise suggest, and it’s able to grab the Absa’s in shield.

By contrast, Absa would not be able to do the same due to the signifciantly smaller grab box.

Similar animation vs grab box disparities across the cast exist, not just these two characters.

Hard agree.

Grabs in this game do it all, they combo, they kill, they can be kill confirms, they can chaingrab under the right circumstances, they beat floorhug, theyre one of the faster out of shield options. It’s not a bad thing that they do all of this, but often times they feel like the ONLY answer. (I remember a post from Dan himself where his coach told him to ONLY grab after maypul forward airs)

Not saying platform fighters and traditional fighters are the same at all, but in most fighting games grabs are super close range and youd have to be basically touching your opponent to connect one.

There is no reason to give almost everyone melee marth grab range and also have them grab behind sometimes, epecially with how good they are in this game.

The fact that shields expand your grab hurtbox, in conjunction with what’s been said, makes grab-beats-shield so extremely powerful when raw grab range for many characters is already so strong. I dunno that the answer is shield not extending the grab box, but certainly characters like Galvan make it clear how ridiculously strong grab is if he’s ever in shield. ‘S like everyone else is the one with chain grab hands haha

shoutout eta/galv grabs missing opponents on top of them while clairen’s is just an actual sword move

^and fors

The other issue with grab ranges extending past the visual is that the hurtbox of the character is tied to the model so you’ll have situations where they will grab through moves with properly matching hitboxes that attaches to feet or fists sometimes.

This hitboxes in this game in general need a pass. There’s a lot of moves that will flyswatt because the hitboxes are just straight up bigger than they need to be. Trying to jump out of shield and over grabs is basically impossible too.

We made some updates to a few of these in 1.4.2 hotfixes, particularly Galvan and Forsburn, and are still discussing others internally for future updates.

My hot take with grabs is that I’m annoyed that I can get grabbed out of attacks. I think if this is rock paper scissor, then if you pick wrong you should be punished. If shield extends the grabrange, then grab should extend the hurtbox range or have no effect when they collide with a hitbox. But this would probably change to much lol

If a grab and a hitbox would trade, the hitbox already wins btw. Both in terms of clanking, which doesn’t exist in Rivals 2, and in terms of “I hit you and you grabbed me on the same frame”.

In melee and P+ grabs win in that scenario (in melee the grab just wins, in P+ the grabber takes damage but wins the interaction).