Rivals of Aether 2 – Things You Should to Know

Helpful Things

Some General Advice

The number one thing to do is learn the movement mechanics. Get comfortable stopping your run with crouch so you can get a tilt/smash attack instead of dash attack. Learn how to dash dance so you can trick opponents with your movement.

Start learning how to wavedash so you can do tilts/jabs/smash attacks with momentum and do them out of the initial part of your dash where the crouch interupt thing doesn’t work. Get used to dropping through and sliding off platforms with momentum because it lets you get tricky with your aerials.

Also, this isn’t necessarily tech, but I’d start getting used gatlings and parries if you haven’t already. Gatlings are a mechanic where you can interrupt your jab string with any of your tilts, it helps a lot of characters get better reward off their jabs.

Parries aren’t going to be as prominent here as they were in rivals 1, but they’re a good counter for a lot of options that are otherwise hard to beat, like Kragg’s rock throw.

Bonus Tip: The “+20% coins earned” from the Starter Pack lasts FOREVER!

How to Stand Up Fast and Get Control of a Character

Regarding getting control of your character, you need to get a feel for how long your opponent is in hitstun (unable to control their character, typically while flying through the air) & use moves that will connect quickly enough to do so before their hitstun ends. Character guides will usually help with this, at it will tell you when to use which moves.

If you miss your tech, you’re obviously in dis advantage, but you have a few options:

1. Pressing Up on the left stick will neutral getup (you just stand up) & is the fastest option.
2. Left or Right will make you roll in that direction.
3. Pressing the attack button will make you do a getup attack, which is unsafe but a good callout when someone is trying to hit you while you’re downed.
4. Pressing Special attack, similar to #3 but typically less safe with a higher reward.

How to More Precisely Short Hop/Full Hop

The jumpsquat in Rivals 2 is shorter than R1 by one frame (it was 5 frames in rivals 1, and now 4 frames in rivals 2). You have less time to release the button before you fullhop now.

So it’s not placebo, this is a real thing. It’s also very unlikely to change since it’s been this way since the earliest builds of the game. You’ll just have to be faster.

If you want tips on short hopping consistently, keep your finger on the edge of the button before you press it. Once you do, you can flick your finger off the button instead of pressing and releasing it like normal.

If you play on a keyboard, you might also want to check your keyboard’s polling rate. Some really bad keyboards have too poor of a polling rate to short hop consistently.

How to Moonwalk

Dash in one direction, then quickly do a half-circle with your joystick in the other horizontal direction.

For example:

• Dash right
• Roll joystick right -> up
• Roll joystick up -> left
• Hold left

Down works too, but you can accidentally crouch that way sometimes. It can be useful, but you’d need to experiment with your own character’s moonwalk capabilities to discover how useful it is. In general, it’s better the faster your character is and the lower ground friction your character has (Orcane is a good example).

How to Kill as Fleet

Fleet has a lot of good kill options & setups, even outside of edgeguarding!

Back air & up air are strong moves for killing & at higher percents. Down strong is a pretty good move to cover grounded options & tech chases for killing. Up special is also really strong & you can ledge cancel it as well.

Things of course depend on the situation & on how the opponent DIs but there’s stuff like nair into reverse bair, down special into up air, of course if you ever land the tornado part of your side special there’s a bunch of diff kill options you can go for. Also try to get follow ups off the time bomb from enhanced arrows, there’s multiple ways to apply it.

Just gotta be aware of what’s going on & which tool is right for the job.

Fighting Loxodont

• Zetter has an easier time just ledge trapping, to be honest.
• If you can force Lox to side special, you have a chance to interrupt him there with dair.
• And parry is good indeed. He gets no ledge invincibility when parried, so an instant d-strong can hit if you have time. He can let go of ledge instantly to get away from this, but if you read that, you can go offstage with your parry invulnerability and attack him.
• He can also roll onstage, but I’m not sure how safe that is. It’s worked a couple of times for me.
• Also, if you ledge hog right when he has to up special to ledge, you can hit him out of it with a quick ledge invincible aerial, like Ranno bair.
• Lox definitely has mixups with down special, either with stalling or using it to just recover.
• Another mixup is b-reversed neutral special.
• That’s why it’s good to confirm into hits.
• Ranno especially has ways to go DEEP offstage
• with advanced techniques like needledrops, and even intermediate stuff with tongue boost stuff.
• But also Ranno’s single needles are really good.
• In neutral, if you can get in, you should not let him get out of pressure.
• Zetter has a lot of tools for this with shine into anything.
• Ranno’s insane ground speed lets him close distance instantly. It takes some practice, but it’s also very possible to be quite safe on shield with his approaches.
• When Lox throws f-tilt, it’s a commitment, and if you floorhug that, he gets a little nervous because his combos out of the tilt are no longer as effective.
• Lox is always scared to swing because if he gets whiff punished, he’s going to eat a huge combo.
• If you can force him to throw an aerial onto your shield, especially if it’s not spaced well,
• then you can punish that with something out of shield.
• Grab will beat floorhug, but also dropping shield in this game is kinda quick, only 10 frames.
• I’ve hit Clairens on shield before and they up-tilt out of shield. It’s painful as Lox.
• But remember, if you are in shield too often, he can grab or side special you. Neutral has to be a little nuanced.

Ranked Mode Thresholds

• 0 – 499 = Stone
• 500 – 699 = Bronze
• 700 – 899 = Silver
• 900 – 1099 = Gold
• 1100 – 1299 = Plat
• 1300 – 1499 = Diamond
• 1500+ = Master