Junior Member
After playing the beta all weekend, towards the end I've found that at the higher levels of play, where everyone blocks and techs out of guardbreak attempts, there's little/no mindgame since defense is so strong.
Defense is extremely strong because:
-Blocking doesn't drain stamina while attacking does
-There is no chip damage to discourage blocking
-You can train yourself to guard break 100% of the time due to the big red shield icon
-blocking adds to your revenge meter, and revenge in of itself is too strong
-You can also parry/dodge/deflect attacks if you want for guaranteed damage.
It's easy to block everything in this game if you concentrate, you just focus on the arrows, it's also easy to tech guard break attempts if you concentrate, you just look for the red shield.
Once I concentrated enough I found I could block everything 100% and guard break-tech 100%, outside of the rare laggy match. A friend of mine who played a lot also came to this conclusion, he found that if you simply focus on defense you will always be able to block and and get out of guard break attempt. For unblockables, well you can guard break them so just treat them like a guard break and hit throw to interrupt them.
And the more you block the more revenge meter you get. Towards the end of a long 1v1 duel with a lot of blocking I found myself with a full revenge bar, which doesn't usually happen unless you're in a 2v2 or greater match. Obviously having revenge pop in a 1v1 is a huge boon, a 50% damage heal and huge damage buff, along with a free knockdown if they attack you when you pop it, so another defensive option.
At the very highest level of play, say the game becomes a competitive E-sport, you will see 2 turtling players waiting for the other to attack. Because attacking is easy to defend and wastes their stamina while building your revenge bar. It also opens them up to parrys/dodges/deflects that gives you guaranteed damage. If there is money on the line, there is no reason NOT to sit back and defend, waiting for the opponent to waste their stamina while giving you revenge meter, while possibly over extending giving you an opening to parry/dodge/deflect into guaranteed damage.
I think a few things could be done to even the odds between attack and defense.
-Add chip damage. It would have to be significant because something small like 10% would still make attacking not worth the stamina cost and parry/dodge/deflect risk
-Remove revenge bar gain from blocking 1 opponent. Only give it when fighting multiple opponents?
-Make blocking cost stamina. Perhaps only for heavy attacks.
-Allow attackers to feint a guard break attempt. This is what I think would really add to the high level mind game. If you could fake a guard break attempt, say it looks like it's grabbing them and the red shield pops up but at the last frame before contact cancels into a backdash, you could bait the opponent who is looking for a guard break into pressing their guard break button, causing them to whiff you and you get a free light attack. This would be a proper rock-paper-scissors scenario rather than the rock-rock-paper where defense will beat both of offense's options in the current high level meta game.
I want this game to succeed because I found it quite fun for most of the beta, until I found out how easy it was to defend 100% of the time and get revenge meter as my reward. I found the lack of mind game at a high level due to defense being virtually impregnable very disappointing. I hope the Ubisoft can solve this by adding something like feinting guard breaks or adding chip damage.
Senior Member
Thats tottaly true , i find canceling heavy attack going into light is pretty slow, im not sure though if we can cancel light switching fast to an opposite direction with another light , i failed to do that in the beta , the question is can we cancel light attacks ? I tottaly agree with you defence is pretty strongOriginally Posted by Mestizo3 Go to original post
Senior Member
Yup, that's why duel mode is boring in this game. Every attack is a risk at high level cause anyone can parry and it's really not that hard. It's a bit different in dominion as things get more hectic, but I agree as it is right now 1v1 matchups heavily favor defensive tactics. Also there is damage on block, it's very very minimal though. But in all honesty if this game ever does go e-sports it won't be with duel or brawl. Only game mode that would do it is dominion. This game does not offer nearly the complexity and tuning in 1v1 matches as other fighting games and it would get stale and boring quite fast especially as it is now with turtle tactics.
But there-in lies my point. I wouldn't expect the game to be balanced based on duel or brawl game modes. It will be balanced based on dominion as that is the main game mode and you can't balance the game the same way for both modes.
Although more damage on block might be a good idea as long as you can't be killed by block damage. Stamina cost would probably be a bad idea as it would make 2v1, 3v1, 4v1 impossible to fight back in until revenge comes up. Also Revenge should just not be included in duel and brawl, really unsure why it's not completely omitted from these modes. On that note in other game modes like dominion, revenge gain should probably be slowed down/decreased in some way. As it is now it happens too quickly and too often. Maybe a revenge cool down in these situations? Like there's a certain amount of time before you can activate revenge again after you have already activated it.
Junior Member
I never undersood what real high-level play is, untill i saw this video.
These guys don't look like they have any trouble with blocking and counter guardbreaking.
Best part starts when the opponent starts playing orochi, which is his best class , apparently.
Junior Member
This is actually true because you can easily ( if you pay attention ) block all attacks and then counterattack and attack.
I think blocking should use a bit of stamina and heavy attacks should be hard to block!
Junior Member
I completely agree with this. Me and @coma987 talked about this very often too.
Senior Member
I can bet from now the highest level of play will be arround conqueror/warlords unless things change
Member
i never ever watched any kind of for honor video, and it is sad because after watching this video i can assure that in this beta i never really played this game.
this video is what i expect from this game.
now i would like to ASK to everyone complaining about PK, orochi, nobuchi, op, viking op and stuff like that...have u even played this way in your beta experience? because i am pretty sure u didnt.
or we should claim warden OP since he won all duels?
what is the excuse now? he is pro? well, git gud before whining about stuff being OP.no?
anyway, i must report that nowhere in the tutorial, and correct me if im wrong, i was told or teached about canceling attacks and stuff like that other than "u can press this and that to cancel THIS kind of attack only" which is not what i see in the video.
Junior Member
This is completely true, not only for duels but also for dominion.
I mained a raider in the beta and equipped it mostly offensive. Reaching gear rank 50 with the offensive build I was struggling to keep up in dominion. I only finished with around 300-400 points each match. For the last two hours of the beta I fully equipped defensive gear with revenge mode buffs and I destroyed every dominion game. It was so ridiculous. 3-4 blocks and I was in revenge mode killing every assasin character with two hits. I could easily fight and kill 2-3 enemies with this build and came out with 800 points per game.
Also the blocking mechanic for blocking several enemies is easy to exploit, I sometimes locked in an enemy far away, position myself so that the other guys fighting me are all on one side and just keep the block in that direction, it blocks everything coming in. Then in revenge mode 2 raider swings and everything was down around me. Especially with that feat that blocks all grab attempts it feels like god mode.
Surely this is also influenced by gear rank gap and new players, that just keep hitting, but still....
Member
I agree with only one thing. No revenge mode 1v1. icejuicey explained the rest perfectly
