Rayman (Super Smash Flash 2)

Rayman is a newcomer unlockable character in Super Smash Flash 2. His reveal was shown during the Day 3 livestream at Super Smash Con 2018. His appearance is based on his design in the game Rayman Origins. His moveset consists of moves from the games , Rayman 2: The Great Escape, and Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc.

Rayman is currently placed at 38th of C tier on the current tier list. Rayman has strong KO moves in his long-ranged smash attacks and many of his aerial attacks, as well as his potentially strong Plum and Vortex, along with his tether grab, LockJaw. Due to his high air speed and slow falling speed, he has an amazing air game, along with fast and high priority aerial attacks that provide good spacing and edgeguarding tools, with his able meteor smash if landed on the initial hitbox on opponents at higher damages. His relatively slow falling speed allows him to break out of juggles, and combined with Helicopter, he has one of the best horizontal recoveries in the game, along with Plum, one of the best vertical recoveries in the game. Since forward aerial and neutral aerial has good and slightly disjointed range and has slow falling speed, this helps in Rayman's great edgeguarding tactic in the wall of pain.

Attributes
Rayman is a speedy, yet floaty medium-lightweight character who counts as a combo-oriented character, most likely counted as nearly a middleweight character. He has a fast dashing speed and air speed, while his falling and walking speeds are slow to compensate.

Rayman is a very unusual character with his limbs and head levitating around his body. Due to being limbless, Rayman's hitboxes are fairly disjointed, in a similar style of. This trait gives Rayman his staple asset: an extremely long melee range both in the ground and in the air. His jab's range, for example, is arguably one of the longest in the game, even outspacing 's infinite hit finisher. He also has very fast frame data with his tilts, jab, up special, and aerials. His down aerial sends a flurry of punches to knock opponents downward, making it a very frustrating combo move for opponents to deal with. These traits grant him a naturally strong combo game and strong spacing abilities.

He has a decent grab and throw game, along with LockJaw as his tether grab, with a combo throw in his up throw, and back throw, and his forward and back throws setting up edgeguards (with forward throw having slight combo potential at low percents.) However, while he has kill throws to charcters at the highest damage or otherwise lightweight, with forward throw, his strongest throw, not killing well beyond 200%, and while his grab does have a long range, is also laggy. His up throw and down throw are more stronger, killing opponents who are off-stage or at higher damages, reliably under 150% of damage. Back throw is good for setting up edge guards. If up smash and forward smash is charged up, Rayman's fist grows bigger, causing more damage (also even causing more shield damage, leading to the point of the shield breaking) and has a large hitbox, where if forward smash is already used and an opponent touches the front of his fist even if he misses the opponents, it will still cause damage and a knockback.

Rayman has good kill-power in his smash attacks and aerials, with his aerials also being fast for their decent power. Rayman also has a great neutral game, with his down special, the plum, and his side special, Vortex, a tornado projectile, being able to trap opponents in, allowing Rayman followup potential and buy him some time to use one of his smash attacks for KOing opponents. His up aerial and neutral aerial are the strongest aerials to kill opponents off-stage or otherwise at higher damages, but back aerial has a small initial hitbox.

His edgeguarding game is among the best in the game, in a similar vein of Mr. Game & Watch and. Due to his sheer melee range, all his aerials, tilts, and even his jab combo can all be used to safely edgeguard the opponent on stage or off-stage. His forward air, back air, down air, and neutral air are notable for having lingering hitboxes, while also being somewhat powerful. Furthermore, his side special and standard special, though laggy, can be used to set traps or launch an aerial throw to follow up with any aerial move. Rayman's down aerial is notorious for quickly launching a flurry of punches downwards, sending the opponents down the abyss. This move, when used for edgeguarding, is very difficult to punish and is used to score early KOs, and are therefore strong on shields, resulting in potential shield damage to the point of the opponent's shield breaking.

One of his unique moves is his down special, Plum, which grants him a giant plum. The giant plum acts as a projectile and a platform. Rayman can stand on it, attack it with tilts or smash attacks, and the platform moves. This can be used for a great recovery, because Rayman can be able to punch it upwards with his up smash. These properties make the giant plum a very useful tool in a number of situations. The plum can act as a stage control tool and an advanced combo tool. More skilled players can even send the plum off-stage with Rayman standing on it, and finish the opponents off with it! Furthermore, the plum can be used as an emergency platform off-stage. This is handy as a recovery move since the plum grants Rayman back his midair jump.

Rayman does, however, have some noticeable weaknesses. Many of his moves have blindspots, as they stretch out his hands with no hitboxes in between the hands and body. This leads to situations where his hitboxes have awkward placements. For example, his forward aerial will miss if Rayman tries to use it on a small opponent right next to him.

Another notable weakness is his lack of disjointed hitboxes. Because most of his moves involve stretching his limbs and levitating them away from his body, in a similar vein to Luffy, this means, with a few exceptions, that every time Rayman attacks, his hurtboxes also extend. This makes him very vulnerable to characters with projectile-heavy playstyles, such as, , and , and somewhat vulnerable to characters with disjointed hitboxes like , , and.

A third weakness is his recovery. In theory, he has an infinite vertical and horizontal recovery due to his plum. However, should Rayman lose his Plum, his recovery options are limited to his midair jump and his up special, which grants negligible vertical height; such traits make his recovery very easy to gimp. Additionally, the plum can be used against him. When an opponent attacks the plum, the plum now has hurtboxes used against Rayman, in addition to sending him away from the stage. As such, Rayman players need to take precautions in order to maximize his recovery.

Overall, Rayman is a very unusual and unorthodox character with great potential against much of the cast. Players must be mindful of his spacing game, his blind spots, (particularly when dealing with projectile campers), and his exploitable recovery in order to mitigate his weaknesses and maximize his potential. Rayman is described as a "bait and punish", which is a character that possesses a potent offense, and can deal a lot of damage. Mainly, he can forcibly punish lightweight characters, since most of his attacks are fairly powerful and has lots of great combos due to his levitating limbs.

Trivia

 * At Super Smash Con 2018, Rayman had a different winning pose. He would strike a pose and make a peace sign while smiling at the camera. It was later updated to striking the pose from the first game of the Rayman franchise, when the player clears a level. The scrapped animation was later used for his side taunt.
 * That being said, he also had a different losing pose, where he looks directly at the screen while clapping for the winner. It was later updated to him looking upwards instead of looking at the screen.
 * Prior to Super Smash Con 2019, Rayman's costumes were still simple filters due to the palette system not having been implemented at the time.
 * Rayman's artwork is based on this pose he makes in the opening cutscene of Rayman Origins.
 * Rayman's Ball version is a reference to the bubble form he enters if he dies in Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends.
 * Rayman, along with, Yoshi, , , , , and , are the only characters so far who do not go into a helpless state under normal circumstances.

External link

 * Rayman's reveal video