Welcome to the Yumiko Update! In Patch 2.59 we’re introducing Yumiko, a Bow and Hammer wielding Kitsune who is ready to fight! We’ve also graduated and removed some test features, continued our animation improvements, and added a bunch of balance improvements in this patch. We hope you enjoy the new patch, and good luck out there in all of your Brawlhalla matches!

New Legend – Yumiko!

• Yumiko the Kitsune is now available to play in Brawlhalla!
• Weapons: Bow & Hammer
• Stats: 4/7/4/7

Three Yumiko Skins are available.

• Lil’ Yumiko – Totes Adorbs.
• Tokyo Yumiko – An urban legend.
• Cursed Mask Yumiko – You forget to cleanse ONE little mask.

Mallhalla

• Bonus login gold to celebrate PS4 Closed Beta has ended! You can still sign up for the PS4 Closed Beta at beta.brawlhalla.com
• The Cosmic Chest is now available with chest exclusive skins General Vraxx, Apex Predator Asuri, and Infinite Wu Shang.   
• The Imperial Chest has departed.

Brawl Of The Week

A game of quick alliances, and sudden betrayals.  

• 3 Player FFA
• 3 Minutes Timed

Test Features

Graduated from Test Features

We’ll be keeping a close eye on Wall Slip to see if it needs more adjustment to avoid false positives or prevent ease of reset once it sees ranked play. Offstage stalling continues to be a frustration point for many players, so we’re hoping this pushes the skill floor for the behavior to an ELO where players are more familiar with their tools for combatting it.

Wall Slip

• After performing any combination of 15 air jumps, wall jumps, or Recovery powers without landing on the ground, the player will immediately Wall Slip.
• Aerial jumps, Recovery, and Dodge are disabled while in a Wall Slip state.
• If Wall Slip has not been reached, its counter will be fully reset if the player hits or is hit by another player.
• Gadgets and thrown weapons do not count for the purposes of resetting Wall Slip.
• Warnings will trigger from the 9th jump onward, with warnings as 9, 12, and all 15 jumps have been consumed. (They will appear as “!”, “!!”, and “!!!” respectively)

Removed/Added Test Features

There were some valid concerns brought up with the proposed version of Stale Move Negation, so we attempted to test versions that just accounted for missing. Unfortunately, this felt like it could punish an aggressive player and lead to weird side effects like stalling to reset your queue. Given that most of the feedback was also pretty negative, we decided to scrap the feature entirely.

Stale Move Negation

• Removed.

However, the one thing that did get brought up was how it encouraged play at the highest tier to mix things up for optimal play. We decided to explore that aspect a little more and are testing a new system to encourage that variety without penalizing repeated move use. We’d love to get your feedback on whether or not a Move Variety Bonus accomplishes the goal of encouraging more varied play without feeling punishing to the player when a situation requires a specific response.

Move Variety Bonus

• When hitting with an attack, if it was not one of the last six attacks that hit, it will deal an extra 5% Damage and Force.
• If the hit is with a weapon (including unarmed) that was not used in the last six attacks, this is a 10% bonus instead.

Netcode

• Updated netcode algorithm slightly to dial back what seemed like excessive penalties for players in the 40-60ms ping range.
• New update also take average frame time into account.

Gamepad Support

• PC support for the Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad.

Animations / Art

• Improved performance on Rocket Lance animations
• Minor fix to the recovery in Spear Side Light’s animation. Faded the second swing’s effects so that it highlights the hit area better
• Small tweaks to Spear Down Light’s animation accompanied by balance changes (see balance notes). Smoothed the ending of the on hit animation.
• Reduced how much the spear would go through the stage if Orion’s Neutral Spear landed on the ground.  Snapped the ending in place so that he wouldn’t be moving while the animation was planted. Fixed a bug that would cause hitboxes not to appear on the frame before the landing impact.
• Gnash Spear Down now snaps to the ground a few pixel sooner to increase the impact feeling.
• Shifted Blaster’s Recover animation to be closer to the center so that it would not go into walls. Made animation smoother as well
• Darkened muzzle flash effects on base Blaster moves to help highlight threat areas.
• Minor tweaks on Blaster’s Side Air to smooth the recovery animation.
• Updated the animation on Cassidy Down Blasters to better display the individual blasts.
• Updated the line work on a few Legend’s hands.

User Interface

• The Corner Menu has a whole new look!
• Corner menu has been consolidated and moved to the top left hand corner of the screen.
• User inventory has been moved to its own button
• Brawlhalla ID is now listed inside of your inventory screen
• Replays have been moved to the options menu
• Better feedback on multiple menu items
• Less intrusive notification markers
• Fixed several bugs regarding the delegation of parent-child screen focus
• Consolidated notifications and missions tabs into one larger tabs
• Improved level up fanfare
• More changes coming soon!

Balance

This balance pass is targeted at opening up counterplay options against some of the currently oppressive weapons, as well as increasing utility or reward for a number of the more difficult to land attacks.

Wall Slip

• Wall Slip has been graduated from test mechanics and is now live in all game modes. Please refer to the Test Features section above for a full description.

Unarmed

We have shifted some power from the Side Air into the Recovery, as the Side Air previously served as a combo tool at early health, and a strong knockout attack at later health.

• Unarmed Side Air: Decreased Force from a range of 52 Variable~44 Variable/45 Fixed to a range of 44 Variable~40 Variable/45 Fixed; Decreased Stun from 22 to 19.
• Unarmed Recovery: Increased Force from 43 Variable/53 Fixed to 46 Variable/53 Fixed.

Sword

The Sword has undergone a number of adjustments this time around. We have reined in some of the generous mobility afforded in its aerial kit, and split the Side Light to have different recovery time based on hit or miss. The recovery time on hit has been altered to have less of an effect from high end Dexterity, opening a dodge window before followup attacks.

• Sword Side Light: Split Recovery to be different on hit/miss; On hit Recovery is now 16 Variable/1 Fixed, while on miss Recovery is now 21 Variable/3 Fixed.
• Sword Down Light: Increased Damage from 8 to 9.
• Sword Recovery: Horizontal acceleration reduced by 25% during the power; Decreased Damage from 21 to 19.
• Sword Side Air: Horizontal acceleration reduced by 20% during the power.

Hammer

As Hammer’s main ground approach option, the Side Light did not have enough potential reward given its modest damage and string potential. We have slightly increased the overall damage, with a gentler decrease later in the attack.

• Hammer Side Light: Increased Damage from a range of 15~10 to 16~12.

Blasters

The Blasters can be played with an over-reliance on the Down Air’s relatively quick Time to Hit when coupled with using a jump as an aerial retreat. We have increased the Time to Hit to open up more time to challenge or avoid the attack, but we have also increased the reward for a successful strike.

• Blasters Down Air: Increased Time to Hit from 11 to 13; Increased Force from 35 Variable/40 Fixed to 38 Variable/40 Fixed.

Spear

We have a rather large change for Spear in this patch. The Down Light is now a dedicated anti-air and does not strike grounded opponents. We have extended the pole vault and kick to better fit this role.

• Spear Neutral Light: Decreased Damage from 17 to 15.
• Spear Down Light: This attack no longer hits grounded opponents, but has slightly increased vertical coverage for clear use as an anti-air attack.

Lance

The Lance Down Light can be an overly safe move when used defensively, so we are shifting some power away from it into the Lance Recovery.

• Lance Down Light: Increased Time to Hit from 8 to 9.
• Lance Recovery: Decreased Recovery from 17 Variable/1 Fixed to 17 Variable/0 Fixed.

Axe

We have shifted power from the Axe’s Ground Pound into some of the low damage attacks within the kit to better smooth out its desired areas of play.

• Axe Side Light: Increased Damage from 12 to 13.
• Axe Neutral Air: Increased Damage of the soft hit from 14 to 15.
• Axe Ground Pound: Decreased Damage from a range of 22~16 to a range of 20~15.

Bow

The Bow has become increasingly popular with its ability for some strong strings and punishes. We have modified the risk/reward on one of the most used attacks, while shifting some of that power into other areas of the Bow’s ground game.

• Bow Side Light: Increased Recovery on miss from 17 Variable/1 Fixed to 17 Variable/3 Fixed; Decreased Damage from 18 to 16.
• Bow Neutral Light: Increased Damage from 15 to 16.

Gauntlets

The Gauntlets have received some increased risk to be better in line with the potential reward of a Neutral Air, as well as toning down the reward on hit of the Side Air to better match its utility and range.

• Gauntlets Neutral Air: Increased Recovery on miss from 20 Variable/3 Fixed to 20 Variable/4 Fixed.
• Gauntlets Side Air: Decreased Stun from 22 to 20.

Scythe

We have shuffled some Damage around from attacks with higher utility and string potential into a few attacks that are more difficult to land. This should slow Scythe’s speed of building damage in general play while rewarding diverse use of the weapon’s whole kit.

• Scythe Down Light: Increased Damage of the normal version from 14 to 15.
• Scythe Neutral Air: Decreased Damage from 15 to 14.
• Scythe Side Air: Decreased Damage from 16 to 15.
• Scythe Ground Pound: Increased Damage from 17 to 18.

Katars

As one of Katars main approach options, we have slightly increased the reward for landing a Down Air, while slightly reducing the attached risk on miss to be better in line, given the current state of movement options in the game.

• Katar Down Air: Increased Damage of final hit on ground from 2 to 4, resulting in 11 total damage on average against a grounded opponent; Katar Down Air: Decreased Recovery on miss for the ground version from 14 Variable/3 Fixed to 14 Variable/2 Fixed.

Dodge Cancel Invulnerability

With this patch, we are beginning to alter the invulnerability granted by canceling a speed dodge on a move by move basis. While many attacks maintain the previous standard of ending three frames before the first hitbox comes out, we have changed a number of key attacks. We believe that these new values will provide a better baseline to continue balancing from.

The following values indicate which frame of start up for each attack the dodge cancel invulnerability period will end.

• Katar Neutral Light: 4, previously 3.
• Katar Side Light: 6, previously 4.
• Katar Down Light: 5, previously 2.
• Sword Neutral Light: 1, previously 2.
• Sword Side Light: 4, previously 7.
• Sword Down Light: 4, previously 5.
• Lance Neutral Light: 4, previously 5.
• Lance Side Light: 5, previously 7.
• Hammer Side Light: 6, previously 8.
• Hammer Down Light: 4, previously 5.
• Blasters Down Light: 5, previously 7.
• Spear Neutral Light: 1, previously 2.
• Spear Side Light: 6, previously 9.
• Axe Neutral Light: 4, previously 6.
• Axe Side Light: 7, previously 8.
• Axe Down Light: 4, previously 5.
• Bow Side Light: 6, previously 10.
• Bow Down Light: 8, previously 10.
• Gauntlets Side Light: 3, previously 5.
• Gauntlets Down Light: 5, previously 8.
• Scythe Side Light: 2, previously 4.

Hurtbox Adjustments

• Ada Down Blasters: Updated hurtboxing to better follow the animation.

Free Legend Rotation

This week’s new Legend Rotation features Asuri, Azoth, Cassidy, Nix, Sir Roland, and Wu Shang.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug where default duration of Brawlball and Dodgebomb tried to start at 20 minutes which is now an invalid duration.
• Fixed a bug that could cause jump animations to play incorrectly when leaving a wall.
• Fixed bug causing account level animation to play more than once during the rewards screen after a match
• Fixed bug where a “bounce” sound was playing at a miniscule volume. Should improve performance with the removal.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the special effects in Ada and Cassidy’s Down Blaster animations to play even if interrupted
• Fixed a rare bug that could cause a player’s animation and position to play incorrectly when hit immediately after a dodge.
• Fixed bug causing corner menu to not display after leaving a training match