UE 4.21 Launch on Z axis, is sliding away in air

I have an actor that’s running with it’s own Anim BP and AI, my other player character can launch this into the air with an attack. When I do so I apply a timeline with vectors, I made certain that they are 0 (by locking the vector lines in the timeline to 0), and I even broke the vector result and made a new one to zero out everything again, except z. But when the actor is then launched into the air it’s slowly falling away, separating from the player.

Any idea what might be causing this? how to fix it? and things I can look for? I know launch sets the actor to be in a state of falling. And I looked at the CharacterMovement component to tweak the falling parameters, but nothing seems to work.

Any help appreciated,
thanks!