Gladiator rework feedback
As a gladiator main, playing testing grounds with him was an experience of a lifetime. I can't begin to describe how excited I was to play him in real matches after the end of testing grounds, but all that excitement was swept away when they started to announce nerfs for him. Being able to chain to my heavies from anything is cool and all but it barely even works in high level play. Most of the time people simply light you out of it which beats the whole purpose not to mention the terrible tracking of the skewer which almost everyone knows of and easily abuse. It was understandable that they removed the stun from his shield bash but taking away the stamina drain was very much overkill. Now the bash has absolutely no purpose but a way to quickly access your very much predictable and easily avoidable skewer. The changes to his bash were overkill because it incentivized a reckless playstyle from your opponent because they know that your punishes are abysmal thus making their high risk high reward move set a low risk high reward move set. Furthermore, they removed his unique oos punish which contributed to his personality. Now I understand the amount of damage a gladiator can get against you when you are oos is crazy but that doesn't mean they should give up on the move set as a whole.
Solutions:
1. All finisher heavies are now faster (to avoid being light attacked out of it) and undodgeable excluding the skewer. This gives glad more offensive pressure instead of relying on his predictable abysmal tracking skewer.
2. His punch guarantees a light OR it reduces as much stamina as it used to without the stun. This will make the opponent's attacks high risk high reward. So instead of sending a flurry of attacks knowing glad can only counter with a deflect or a dodge light, people will actually start to think more about their attacks.
3. His toe stab unbalance oos punish will now return full stamina to both combatants. (Similar to centurion's fully charged punch combo). This way, glad won't just delete the opponent's entire health bar the second they run out of stam but instead has just enough pressure to make his opponents think twice before going oos.
- With these changes, glad will partially keep his oos pressure and will have a more offensive and rewarding kit while also having viable punishes to reckless attacks made by the opponent.