The Brawlout Community Balance Update (2.5.61)

Greetings, Exemplars!

For a while now, Brawlout has had a "Community Balance" beta branch on Steam for the players in our discord server hosting tournaments. Now, with events like the Undead Championship Series that are happening this weekend, we're bringing all the changes over for everyone to enjoy!

This likely final patch is a labor of love, dedicated to the fantastic people who have kept the game alive these last few years. We want to thank the following players in particular for their feedback, assistance and playtesting of this patch and for their contributions to the game's community:

• Ashla - For being one of the most reliable and proactive TOs we've ever met and for organizing feedback.

• Leescano13 - A fantastic lab monster who discovered genuinely hilarious Paco tech we never even dreamed of.

• Puglord - Good lord that is a scary Condor X you got there

• BlueShadow - For organizing the Jungle League for our console players.

• TheStarmanX - For what the events they've done for the platform fighter scene as a whole.

PATCH NOTES

Under the hood:

The game’s engine has been upgraded from Unity 2017 to Unity 2021 LTS. This is mostly behind-the-scenes stuff. If you see anything broken, let us know on our Discord server!

Menus and Settings

• Added a new option in the Gameplay Settings menu to remove the Seek Bar from replays. Streamers rejoice! You can now wiggle your cursor as much as you want without giving away how much time is left in the replay.

• Removed stages that are not tournament-legal from the stage list when in Competitive Mode

• Default online match settings for Timed Stock have been adjusted to be the tournament standard

Controls

• Native support for the Sony Dualsense (PS5 controller) and Xbox Series controllers.

• Slightly increased the size of the joystick dead zones.

General Movement

• Meteor cancels are now available after frame 30 instead of 17. We want players to have to use burst at some point, and to know when they can meteor cancel instead of bursting to save meter. Players were surviving too many dunks at high percents for free.

• Ledge attacks can now be activated with any attack button

Dodges

The invulnerability flash has been modified to be slightly more pronounced. This should make things like Ledge Invulnerability a bit more obvious when it expires.

Character Changes

Olaf and Variants

• Jab special has greater stun/knockback during the multihit portion of the attack to allow it to connect more reliably. Should help reduce the chance that Olaf will pass through low percent opponents.

Chief Feathers

Feathers needed some help. Not because the character was bad, but because he was outclassed by his Variants.

• Featherflame total knockback and knockback growth has been slightly reduced

• Featherflame knockback angle has been changed to be more horizontal

• Featherflame now sets enemies on fire, dealing 7 damage over 2 seconds.

• Up Air - Minor buff to knockback growth.

King Apu & Variants

Players in our tournaments generally agreed that the Apus were the strongest characters in the game by a wide margin, and so we’ve made tweaks to their most abusable attacks to discourage spamming them.

• Grounded Side Special animation length increased by 4f (16 -> 20)

• Endlag on whiffed Side Special grab increased (20f -> 30f)

• Reduced hitbox size of Side Special’s grab by 40%

• Up