Balance Notes: Beta v 1.18.0

Sword

The Sword's air game has been adjusted to push similar moves farther apart from each other. The Ground Pound is now faster, weaker, and more precise, while the Down Air is slightly less reliable for following up. On Down Air the angle of your attack will affect the the direction of impulse meaning that you’ll have to be a bit more precise to put Down Air to good use. Both attacks have increased cooldown to reward use of them together rather than relying on a single attack. Recovery has gotten stronger for building damage in a best-case scenario, but requires more precision.

• AdjustedSword RecoverySlightly decreased Hitbox size; Slightly increased Damage; Damage is spread more evenly across the power instead of having a stronger final hit.
• AdjustedSword Down AirIncreased Cooldown Time; Increased how much the angle the target is hit at affects the direction of Force.
• AdjustedSword Ground PoundIncreased Cooldown Time; Decreased Hitbox Size; Decreased Time to Hit; Greatly decreased Recovery Time on Hit; Decreased Force; Increased Stun.
• AdjustedSword Side LightSlightly decreased Hitbox size behind self.

Lance

We're mostly leaving Lance alone for the time being while letting 1.17's rework fully settle into the meta. However, the Down Air stood out as being especially low-risk and too easily chained into itself. We’ve tweaked its recovery time on hit and whiff to reward players who use the move with more precision.

• AdjustedLance Down AirIncreased Recover Time on Miss; Decreased Recovery Time on Hit; Increased Cooldown Time.

Blasters

Although we’ve seen the effectiveness of Blasters decrease since 1.17’s dodge changes, we want to give Blasters a little more time before making any big changes. We’re fully aware of how easy it is for Blasters to become over powered or irrelevant. The road of Lord Vraxx’s Valhalla take over is filled with peaks and valleys and it’s challenging to get him and other legends with Blasters on the straight and balanced. We’ll be keeping an eye on Blasters, but for now we’ve made two small adjustments to their grounded play.

• AdjustedBlasters Side LightSlightly increased Damage.
• AdjustedBlasters Down LightSlightly decreased Hitbox size on the first shot to cover less area behind the user.

Spear

We've trimmed the edges on a few Spear air attacks that were a little more generous than the animation, and shifted some damage from faster to slower attacks. The Down Air has been tweaked slightly to offer more time to react to repeated use, and to reward following up with other attacks instead of committing to a Pogo Stick mini-game.

• AdjustedSpear Neutral AirSlightly reduced Hitbox size; Slightly increased Time to Hit; Slightly Increased Damage.
• AdjustedSpear Down AirSlightly reduced Hitbox size; Slightly increased downwards movement during stab; Added a short Cooldown; Slightly Decreased Damage; Slightly increased Stun Time; Increased Recover Time on Miss; Decreased Recover Time on Hit.
• AdjustedSpear Down LightDecreased Damage.

Katar

Katars are receiving a pair of quality of life adjustments. We noticed Katar Side Light had very low priority and could easily be beaten out by other attacks, so we’ve changed it up to allow it to close in a little faster. The Ground Pound offered very little Stun and could be put at a disadvantage by hitting an enemy at white health.

• AdjustedKatar Side LightIncreased movement speed at beginning of power and slowed down more quickly into the roll.
• AdjustedKatar Ground PoundSlightly increased Stun Time.

Axe

While we