Every Characters Best and Worst Stage in Rivals 2

[@tempesttries]

Clairen loves Lox so much that she went back in time to see him sooner

[@laststock1]

Lowkey inspiring

[@Marisu_Prada]

You don't know how much I would've *loved* to have a resource like this for Rivals 1, I spent my entire life in that game just banning whatever stage I didn't feel like going to that day, so having something like this now will really be a game changer, thank you for putting this together, I'll be sure to use it thouroughly

[@laststock1]

Glad it can help!

[@SwingRipper]

I respect the engagement bait at 7:30 so much that I had to subscribe

[@laststock1]

YEAAA IT WORKED

[@Hh-oj3bx]

Kragg player here. I personally don't mind the longer stages as much in certain matchups because of the strength of rock. Having the space to be able to actually pull rock more often can make certain rushdown characters feel pretty bad, and can help a ton in the campy matchups too.

[@karutiger2569]

As a Clairen player, Aetherian Forest is one of my favourite stages because Clairen is really strong on the ground, having a really good jab, dtilt, and an uptilt to catch air approaches. Her huge aerials also cover a huge chunk of space, which makes her natural stage control really shine on this stage. The side blast zones are also just close enough that some of her kill setups off fstrong kill just that much sooner.

[@curse5697]

10:48 Ranno does NOT have fast air speed

[@alfonshedstrom9859]

Technically it's fast vertically... not horizontally, thats for sure

[@Noopilicious]

@@alfonshedstrom9859air speed almost always refers to horizontal. For example jigglypuff has very fast air speed while still being an extremely slow faller and jumper

[@laststock1]

I meant his movement options in the air like his jumps and tether! His ground speed + huge jump lets him shark under platforms super well!

[@micahrobbins8353]

​@@laststock1 Like you weren't TECHNICALLY wrong, but it feels so.. so wrong lmao

[@legionssb]

​@@micahrobbins8353Air speed always refers to horizontal air speed. The term was misused, but I think we all got the point.

[@spaceace9103]

Lox and Claire Bear are besties

[@micahrobbins8353]

Claire bear lmao

[@cyprienramis1304]

For Zetter on the fact that he has troubles recovering on air armada and hyperborean, I feel like that's true but nearly not as much as other characters, and it's mostly due to the platforms going slightly further than the ledge (tho not on air armada), his recovery is arguably better on hyperborean than on half the stages, and when you add to that how early up strong kills and how far the platform allows him to go offstage to edgeguard with shine, you get one of his best stages imo.

[@matthew8150]

the orcane in the first part of the video is lowkey cooking

[@ryanames4168]

9:47 u def had this zetterburn tilted not him tbagging you lmaoooo

[@laststock1]

Me and my oomfie filmed the gameplay last night and he tried to get a t bag in every clip 😭

[@162Gio]

Just found your channel trying to get better at rivals hope to keep watching. I needed this video thanks

[@laststock1]

Glad it could help!!!

[@prinnydadnope5768]

Congrats on your 1k sub as expected!

[@Maggotbone]

Would love if you put pictures of the stages on-screen past the beginning section when you talked about them individually. Besides the charts at the end of individual character sections, this video's visual part was super underutilized, consisting mostly of B-roll footage. May as well be a podcast or a blog post. Also, you mentioned having spoken to high-level players of each character at the beginning, but never mentioned who, and a lot of the script says "I think". Whose opinion am I listening to at any given point of the video?

[@laststock1]

All the info is sourced from high level reps or character cords!

[@BlackHero20]

Wrastor player here! I actually find that aetherian forest is one of his better picks due to the short stage and smaller amount of platfroms. Dont get me wrong, wrastor loves platfroms. But against some matchups like ranno or zetter, it can give them ways around wrastor's offense that can be kinda problematic. So i would say aetherian forest is good for wrastor and hodojo is matchup dependent. I tend to ban hodojo alot and ive noticed alot of other wrastors that are way better than me tend to do so as well. Everything else seems pretty accurate though, for wrastor at least

[@jatinmarcob2128]

I've also found a lot of success as Wrastor on Rock Wall. Its one of m favorites in general though, so maybe I just know what I'm getting myself into.

[@BlackHero20]

@jatinmarcob2128 rock wall aint awful for him. Great platform layouts and the side blastzones can be just as much a boon as they are a curse. Though ya Its usually one of my bans most of the time. I think there are situations where you can really use it to good effect but ive gotten robbed out of my stocks on this stage a couple times too many lmao.

[@NoirePkmn]

Yeah, Wrastor player here too. Hodojo ain't it. It's actually a frequent ban, not what we tend to go for.

[@jatinmarcob2128]

@NoirePkmn Crazy, I love going for forest and rock wall. It can be rough, but I always tend to find it worth unless it's characters like Kragg or Fleet I'm going up against

[@Redblastiboi]

Great video! Didn't think hyperborean harbor and air armada would have some use cases for maypul so I'll have to look into that

[@oojclops7257]

Great vid! Earned urself a sub. Maypul player here at 1200 elo if that means anything, i just wanted to shed some more light on our raccoon friend. For those unaware, Maypul isnt a rush down character and shouldnt be treated like one - she has no real answers to CC, is a low damage character who sets up kills via traps or tech chases, and her speed is used to he evasive and defensive, not aggressive. At high level, Maypul is a campy character who gets most of her kills off the side (or from a random up air). Personally, i think Maypul struggles a lot on smaller stages and air Armada (against kragg ranno and wrastor), and she cant ban them all, making her feel useless if she wins game 1 in some scenarios. Tempest is so small that she cant tech chase, which is most of her low percent game, and Aetherian Forest is both small and doesn't have consistent platforms. I think these are her worst stages. Julesvale is a pretty good pick, but it is a little claustrophobic. I think its big enough for her, though. Godai Delta is fine, but other chars definitely use it better than her so be careful. Another stage id like to bring up is Air Armada. The plats are fantastic for Maypul and its decently big so you can run around and set lily up. The moving plats are easy to throw floaties into lily on, allowing for easy 50% kills if set up right. But yeah, the lack of wall is a huge issue for her, and it should probably be banned. I choose it against lox, zetter, and fors mostly. Merchant Port and Fire Capital are really big making timeouts and camping easier. Id have to give her best staye either to MP, Capital, or Harbor. MP is just big and its easy to waveland around, Capital is just nice and spacious, and Harbor allows Maypul to shark on ledge which is really good for punishing impatient characters, and alongside her up air, Maypul is usually safe. it also gives uer down tilt/up throw into up b kill windows that she normally doesn't have access to. its also big. However, its super high risk as getting hit without a jump off stage probably means death. So, yeah! Great video, and I mostly agree on everyrhing you said! Thank you for doing your research, too!

[@laststock1]

Yoo these notes help sm! Thanks bunches

[@murgatroidsp]

I’ve been playing Loxodont and I think Hyperborean Harbor is quite good for him in most matchups. While it doesn’t help his recovery, it also makes it much harder for your opponent to recover in most cases. Meanwhile, I think the platform layout is awesome for him, especially the low middle plat. It’s the stage I most often go to when my opponent bans Tempest Peak and Hodojo

[@laststock1]

I can see it for sure

[@punkypony5165]

Thank you so much for these.

[@LazarNaskov]

As a Lox main since the first Kickstarter beta: I think Lox actually really likes Harbor against anyone not named Kragg, Wrastor, Orcane, or Ranno. Lox with magma has a surprisingly good recovery and the sheer distance means he can go crazy deep for edgeguards with his huge moves like fair and nair. Max magma eruption gives your double jump back, which can lead to some nasty situations where you can boop someone with nair an unfair distance from stage and still make it back comfortably. On top of all that, Lox also loves killing off the top with Tusks and Ustrong, so he benefits a ton from the short ceilings. It definitely should be yellow, but there's a lot of potential there. Other than that, I'd probably demote Rock Wall to a yellow, since playing it against Fleet and especially Kragg feels terrible. It's just so big and we get camped so bad; plus it always feels like we die off the side earlier than we kill off the side. The high plats also give people more options to escape our juggles, and while you can do some silly stuff on them generally I'd say they hurt us more than they help us. I'd also consider demoting Forest to a yellow just because of how much we rely on platforms for our kill confirms and extending our strings. Uthrow is insanely important to us as a combo tool, and having a platform people can DI to that'll carry them away from us is just brutal. Lox does benefit from it's small size and focus on ground game, but other characters (Zetter, Maypul, Clairen, Orcane) benefit way more.

[@Awesomeness-iz3dh]

Underappreciated detail is how the classic triplat and biplat stage layouts, arguably the most neutral stages in the game, are themed after all four elements coming together.

[@chocomilkfps1264]

good info but this video would have really benefited from some simple graphics or even just more screen time for pics of the stages when they are being talked about, rather than just some random match going on.

[@Shadowserpant00]

yeah idk what any of these stages are called lol

[@dogboyton3166]

7:29 “Clairen’s best friend” …no. Just no. That aside, great video! This kind of thing would usually take months for me to figure out on my own so this was nice to see pop up. Curious to see how this might evolve as the game and meta do though

[@laststock1]

I’ll def update it (and other videos I’ve made) as the meta develops and more characters get added

[@punkypony5165]

@6:02 Clairen is Forsburn's grandaughter.

[@SiliassOmega]

Big agree on Loxodont, tech-chasing is what helps me win most of my matches, otherwise I just really have to play patient as a punching bag until I get that opening lol

[@GiGiTheCatjoy]

As a Clairen player, I audibly cheered when you mentioned Rock Wall.

[@wondliii9046]

So glad to have this resource now! I've been googling "what stage to ban vs x" for the past two weeks and finding nothing. Thanks!

[@legionssb]

One nice thing about rivals is that stages don't matter a whole lot. There's variation, but stage size is relatively standard, and every stage has walls and plats in some form. The most important thing is blastzones for most matches unless you're playing/playing against a character with a bad recovery.

[@Rayan_BB]

This is so helpful! As a Clairen player who knows next to nothing about picking stages, it feels really good to know my intuition about Aetherian Forest and Hodojo has been right. Then again, I’ve just kinda been assuming that Hodojo is everybody’s best stage lol

[@Hirokal72]

I like the concept. Please do a video on every characters best and worst matchups 🙏

[@laststock1]

Workin with players for those characters on those! We have orcane already done on the channel!

[@slenderMax28]

This just confirms my bias that Air Armada is the worst stage

[@bensomeone]

as an orcane player I kinda disagree with this - he gets SO much off plat drop aerials, so stages with large platforms can be very good. Tempest isn’t that bad for him because of that, I honestly don’t think he has any terrible stages (except maybe rock wall)

[@laststock1]

He def does! But his low air speed means he gets juggled crazy style and plats refresh jumps, extending juggles, def a mu dependent risk!

[@LooseToots]

Orcy is so heavy I feel like rockwall might be his best stage ngl. Bair kills centre stage so early and backthrow near the side is curtains for someone!

[@alfonshedstrom9859]

I usually avoid Rock Wall as Fleet because she's so absurdly light and can get cheesed and die at 60%. Dont get grabbed by Clairen and spummeled, you will die

[@LooseToots]

Consider the opposite though, any move offstage as fleet kills on rockwall, nair, uair, or bair kill me as kragg at 40 on rockwall all the time off stage :(

[@alfonshedstrom9859]

@LooseToots Rock Wall: For when you want the game to be over quick, in anyones favor

[@Masque1419]

As a Maypul player, I can say that while tether in theory makes her not have to worry about walls, in practice that’s not always an option, so Hyperborean Harbor and Air Armada feel frickin baaad to play on sometimes

[@tekwizwa]

personally i always ban fire capital against Loxodont and kragg mfs just refuse to die on that stage.

[@bleach_7424]

Me and gang all HATE air armada

[@SadePotatoman]

Tbh I love aetherian forest on Maypull and dimply owning ALL of the stage because I can travel to anywhere on it in a second.

[@laststock1]

I can see it

[@user-wb8iu1hl6i]

I needed this, thanks

[@Mirage_Arcane]

Fleet's best stage by FAR is Aetherian Forest and she tends to dislike Fire Capital. Fleet's biggest strength is killing early off the side with float bair, and stages that let her do that more easily tend to be king. Hodojo, Fire Capital, and Rock Wall tend to be the most common bans I've seen and struck in most MUs, the last one mostly for characters that kill very early off the top. She can utilize platforms well with her up-b ledge cancels, but the triplats on Hodojo tend to be pretty restrictive for her to get things like float dair confirms and lets characters chase her when she recovers high with float.

[@Zwylo]

7:32 Loxodont’s huge what? 😂 i heard somethin else the first time

[@melephs_cap]

For anyone who plays a very edgeguardy Fleet, Julesvale and to a lesser extent Air Armada are mixed bags, because the moving platforms can block down air while the opponent is trying to recover.

[@Ganksy_]

Hard hard hard disagree on forsburns stages. Feels like you got everything wrong tbh. Fors really cant camp, sure your opponent wants to approach because smoke andclone are valuable resources to set up, but that doesnt mean you can camp. Fors is very slow, and the characters he's faster than have fast moving projectiles. Going to a bif stage on fors means your opponent has all the freedom of their movement. Furthermore, Fors recovery is bad bedause its easily exploitable. Not because its short range??? The dude has the furthest recovery in the game, even further than fleet if you include float. Fors is NUTS on hyper harbor and armada because he can acrually edge guard and not be at risk of a reversal

[@Legendary_Honey]

I completely agree with you. His ability to camp is pretty limited compared to other characters who will benefit much more than he will on the larger stages, and his recovery on harbor is really good. He is also great at covering plats on harbor.

[@captainfalco8503]

So what would be forsburns worst 2 stages then?

[@Ganksy_]

Honestly, this may sounds like a cop out but fors stage spread is pretty even. His worst stage is his opponents best stage. It's all about counter picking. I'm sure fors technically has a worst stage, but it isn't bad enough that you'd want to ban it over two stages that are good for tor opponent. ​@@captainfalco8503

[@spaceace9103]

Im assuming harbor and air armada are bad for Lox because of the walls being smaller or further from ledge

[@legionssb]

Yeah, can't side b into the wall, and so he just dies sometimes.

[@littleangrydog8433]

they should add among us imposter to rivals 2. Can you let dan know

[@laststock1]

I’ll get on this right away

[@stllr_]

i'm colourblind and your colouring system doesn't make any sense to me. the colours in the legend don't match the colours you've used to highlight the stages in the video. i can't actually read the graphic at all...

[@captainfalco8503]

I wish there were pictures while you were explaing. I would subscribe if you didn't upload tourney sets. W video though

[@crossptn]

Thanks

[@Xneocake]

Tempest peak my beloved 💞

[@TrixterTheFemboy]

it's hilarious to me that none of the fire rivals actually like Fire Capital

[@decent-videos]

Ya'll notice the Steam achievement sound effect at 4:29?

[@randomguy8107]

I am very surprised by Fire Capital for Fleet. I don’t think I know any Fleet who even likes it. It and Rock Wall are essentially my default bans as Fleet tends to get circle camped on Capital and Rock Wall doesn’t have the offstage space compared to its length for edgeguards to be as effective, not to mention Fleet dying quite early to the side there when she’s usually able to survive a lot of hits in that direction (compared to getting killed off the top)

[@randomguy8107]

14:30 yeah okay I disagree with a lot of takes here. Fire Capital and Rock wall feel often terrible and already did prepatch, while Aether Forest and TPeak are really nice for her because every single hit will lead to a potential kill through edgeguards

[@Jarekthegamingdragon]

I will disagree about fire capitol. I think fire capitol is lox's worst stage. It's an autoban for me.

[@ElionMars]

I'm a Zetter main and I have terrible recovery. I can barely remember how to do the down-b cancel half the time. At Silver rank, I take folks to Air Armada because they struggle with it and I just acknowledge that if I go off stage, I'm probably dead no matter what. If I can't survive going off stage, no one can.

[@cyprienramis1304]

Do you know down b can be jump cancelled after a while, and this even if you have already used your double jump ? I'm asking because that's a thing I didn't know at first and that helped me recover from far off horizontally way better, especially on air armada where I can't just down b cancel -> wall jump.

[@ElionMars]

@cyprienramis1304 I didn't know it can be jump cancelled, but I did know it can be feinted from the top. I'll give that a shot tomorrow.

[@LooseToots]

@@cyprienramis1304 I didnt know that, damn. Ty

[@lukasfaucher]

Honestly with maypul that s kind of really really bad to rely on tether Which majes air armada and hyperborian really bad stages for her to recover, because relying on tether is a death/damage sentance against players that know what they do and her recovery on her own is good, but not as good as a ranno or a kragg, or a fleet making those 2 stages really bad.

[@LooseToots]

I see clairen picking armada and hyper fairly often around gold. Wider stage, high plat and if someone is bad at stuffing their recovery landing it can be kind of free. Id imagine its terrible vs good players though. Also as a level 70 kragg player, I absolutely will never be going to air armada. Takes forever to kill anyone and no wall jumps make it really hard to get back vs another kragg, clairen, lox, or ranno as they can stuff you out if you always go high. I'm sure its not so bad. But damn, I just won't do it. Air armada and stormswept feel so bad. My go twos are rockwall, aetherian, godai, hodojo, and vs certain characters fire capital+harbour+port because you get to live longer than anyone else on these stages.

[@legionssb]

Armada seems like the stage that nobody wants to play on regardless of the potential benefits. Seems like theres always some issue for every character.

[@cmattss4]

I simply ban Air Armada and Hyperborean Harbor every time because Lox can not recover on them.

[@captainfalco8503]

Great video but I don't think Forsburn can camp except with empowered clone and even then the clone still dies easily

[@dexter-e5i]

Thanks for sharing such valuable information! Could you help me with something unrelated: I have a SafePal wallet with USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). How should I go about transferring them to Binance?

[@tonyg9775]

I wonder if air armada is just a bad stage since so many characters don't like it

[@hotsupidcat]

wait, your chart says tempest peak is orcane’s one bad match up, but you never explain why :/

[@laststock1]

The platforms are good for characters with big disjoints which are problematic to orcane, so he doesn’t love to go there in most mus

[@sheaperry5819]

I think you said Ranno is bad on Aetherian forest but showed it as good in the graphic at the end

[@legionssb]

I don't think he has a bad stage tbh. I like Aetherian, you just have to be willing to scrap. I might not take Zetter there, but most other characters sure. Ranno has a really balanced toolkit, so no stage is awful. As a Ranno player that just means I pick whatever the opponents worst stage is.

[@ccs8847]

i go to atherian forrest and julesvile every time cause i like moving platforms teehee

[@sencrew5293]

What fleet skin is that??

[@thedalekditto15]

Was the loxodont Claire a best friend one a joke. Lox is the villain of Clairens book because he became robot immortal after stealing the throne from zetturburn and ford burn by framing forsburn for murder of their dad, the king

[@bradfjord]

These allegations are completely unfounded. Loxodont did nothing wrong

[@theblackening76]

julesvale ranno is a demon

[@Spider-]

zetters best stage lowkey is harbour

[@thecrispyburrito1575]

Rannos fast air speed ???😂😂

[@atropa4111]

As a Kragg main I'm very much not a fan of Hodojo, because the abundance of platforms can really wreck rock combos as the rock gets stuck all over the place. Quite possibly skill issue but I know Mang0 agrees that Hodojo can be annoying for Kragg players

[@cyprienramis1304]

I'm not a Kragg player but since rock is one of the best tool to controle horizontal space (and Kragg's fair is also a very strong move for that) hodojo and other stages with high platforms are great to force him to do something else.

[@LooseToots]

hodojo lets you up special camp though. If you have problems with the rock try using it from the top platforms and leaving it there for a while, if someone gets sent up you can just double jump and grab it to throw at them or you can up b on it from above to deal 22 dmg with shards and the pillar which you can follow with a nair or up tilt. Rock can be grabbed very generously without facing it and from above and below, so if you leave it somewhere you can grab it really easy on hodojo to use mid combo without having to wait to pull it out Also side b into cargo throw with momentum off stage on hodojo kills ranno at 20, lox at 20, zetter at 20 and fors at 20, they cannot recover from that deep and far under any circumstance

[@M31Andromeda]

I'm a Forsburn main and I really dislike short stages. He can't compete in close range with others like Zetter, Ranno and Maypul.

[@legionssb]

It seems like, for the most part, stage choice in this game is subjective. Aside from Lox and hyper harbor or Maypul and armada, most characters don't have super universal disadvantages on any stages. I play Ranno so all stages work pretty well, but I've played a bit of forsburn and I like him on the short stages more than the longer ones. I really like him on Aetherian especially. I can see him struggling against ranno or zetter in footsies though.

[@M31Andromeda]

@legionssb it also depends on who you're fighting against. You will prefer shorter stages if going against Fleet, for example.

[@legionssb]

@@M31Andromeda I agree. It seems like you just go to whichever stage gives your opponent the least advantage.

[@ninjaboyz333]

i prefer pac world

[@seriousseriousserious]

i do not agree with loxs's stages

[@AprilsBiscuits]

w video

[@josharounder]

Great video but fyi not subbing because don't want spam of random local tourney sets in my feed- conflict of interest there.