- Morty’s Legacy Debut: The August 24, 2022 patch officially integrated Morty Smith into the roster, introducing the game’s first projectile-focused “Plumbus-wielding” bruiser archetype.
- Assassin Meta Shift: Developers slashed the Assassin class’s damage-taken penalty from 14% to 5%, a pivotal step toward the eventual removal of class-based debuffs in the 2024 relaunch.
- Neutral Game Balancing: Significant nerfs to Iron Giant and Velma’s cooldown loops were implemented to curb high-level win-rate dominance during the early Open Beta phase.
The landscape of the platform fighter genre shifted significantly during the summer of 2022, and looking back from the high-fidelity 2026 era of MultiVersus Update 1.03, the 1.01 patch stands as a foundational moment for character balance. This server-side update wasn’t just about adding a new fighter; it was a desperate attempt to stabilize a meta that was rapidly being dominated by heavyweight “cheese” and punishing class passives. For veterans of the FGC, this patch represents the first time Player First Games acknowledged that the “Assassin” tax was far too high for competitive play.
The Arrival of Morty Smith
While the update is officially dated August 24, 2022, the headline act was Morty Smith’s arrival on the 23rd. As the first post-launch character of Season 1, Morty introduced a high-skill ceiling kit revolving around grenades, temporal manipulation, and the now-iconic Plumbus. In today’s Unreal Engine 5 environment, Morty has been refined for better frame data, but the core “Expert” difficulty rating he received in 1.01 remains a testament to his complex neutral game.
Pro-Tip: The 1.01 patch was entirely server-side. This meant that while the math changed online, local “Lab” sessions didn’t reflect the new damage numbers until the subsequent client-side download, a quirk of the game’s early live-service infrastructure.
The Great Assassin Rebalancing
One of the most controversial mechanics in the early days of MultiVersus was the “Assassin Passive.” To compensate for their high mobility and kill potential, characters like Arya Stark, Finn the Human, and Harley Quinn took 14% additional damage from all sources. This made them “glass cannons” that were often shattered too easily in 2v2 scenarios.
In Update 1.01, this was slashed to 5%. This was the first hint that the developers were considering removing the penalty entirely—a move that eventually became standard after the game’s brief hiatus. Parallel to these changes, other fighting games were also seeing massive shifts; for instance, the Tekken 7 Update 5.00 released just a week prior also focused on tightening hitbox interactions and neutral safety.
Character Adjustments & Frame Data Highlights
The 1.01 patch targeted specific “oppressive” loops that were ruining the ladder experience for mid-tier players. Most notably, the Iron Giant/Velma synergy was hit hard to prevent infinite-resource strategies.
| Character | Change Type | Primary Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Finn | Buff | BMO Chop damage increased from 18 to 20; Knockback scaling improved. |
| Iron Giant | Nerf | Neutral Special cooldown increased to 25s; Up-Air hitboxes tightened. |
| Velma | Nerf | “Educated” buff cooldown return reduced from 75% to 50%. |
| Arya | Buff | Massive reduction in damage taken penalty (14% -> 5%). |
Iron Giant: Addressing the Win-Rate Anomaly
At the time of this patch, Iron Giant possessed an “abnormally high win rate at every skill level.” The developers realized that his Neutral Special, when combined with Velma’s cooldown reduction perks, created a window of invulnerability that was nearly impossible to contest. By increasing the cooldown to 25 seconds, they forced Iron Giant players to manage their “Bolts” more carefully, a philosophy that remains central to his playstyle in the current official MultiVersus character balance updates.
General Perks & Bug Fixes
The “Ice To Beat You!” perk received a logic change to prevent infinite stacking on already debuffed enemies, while “I’ll Take That” saw its cooldown refund halved. These changes were necessary to move away from a “spam-heavy” meta and toward the more tactical, neutral-reset-focused gameplay we see in 2026 tournaments. Additionally, a critical bug was crushed where ability cooldowns would fail to trigger if projectiles were spawned too close to the floor—a fix that paved the way for more reliable stage interactions on maps like Cromulons.
“We’re evaluating if the Assassin passive should be removed entirely. We want to take a step towards that while trying to not to go too far too fast.” — Original MultiVersus Dev Note, August 2022.
As we look back, it’s clear that Patch 1.01 was the first real “course correction” for a game that had exploded in popularity faster than its systems could handle. For players today, these legacy notes are a reminder of the game’s evolution from a experimental beta into the polished, Unreal Engine 5-driven powerhouse it is today.
