Orochi is broken...
I've now played the game in an alpha event and also in a beta event. I hit prestige 2 during alpha and prestige 1 level 15 in the beta so I've played quite a bit.
In my observation Orochi makes the other characters in the game feel very lackluster.
The main reason for Orochi being ridiculous is that he has way too many safe options to deal damage and control a fight while dealing high damage.
Any single one of them can be guarded against, sure, and some can even be punished. But because Orochi deals such high damage (and a whole kit full of ways to exploit more damage when he does land 1 hit) each time he does catch you off-guard he can punish you heavily. Orochi also has so many options that guessing the right one inherently has losing odds and it's just not possible to be prepared for them all.
Zephyr strike is by far my largest complaint about the character. When combined with Orochi's innate ability to dodge while recovering AND his deflect now being on his dodge as well, this skill allows Orochi to mitigate most of the attacks in the game while simultaneously dealing damage. That's freaking insane and terribad design. IMO Zephyr strike should have a massive stamina cost to limit it's use because it is extremely hard to punish and extremely easy to take advantage of people with.
Storm rush definitely is strong. Not because the skill itself is difficult to counter but because the fact that you can cancel storm rush and go into literally any other attack without any kind of indicator frame is ridiculous. You can so easily bait someone into guarding against storm rush and then take advantage of them because of the utter lack of indicator or ability to react. There NEEDS to be some kind of brief indicator frame to allow people to react against storm rush cancels if you are going to give a character such a swift way to engage and disengage and potentially deal solid harass damage. As of right now storm rush cancel options are just too strong and difficult to counter.
Back step into overhead is such a ridiculously strong tool for Orochi players when he can already keep his opponent so off balance (without much skill required). Orochi's overhead attack is already fast and brutally powerful and it gets free tech in his kit for even more damage. With Orochi's ability to engage and disengage so quickly, the ability to also withdraw and deal massive damage to anyone trying to preemptively strike is insane.
Orochi's attacks in general are extremely fast. His heavy attacks are much faster than most other characters in the game and just as damaging and with his ability to feint guarding against just his attacks can get overwhelming even without his absurd mobility. When everything is linked together he's flat out enraging to try to defend against. Oh yeah... and he gets double damage on overhead light attacks... seems fair...
Orochi seems to do everything Beserker can do, and more, and has longer attack range. Makes me wonder why anyone would ever want to play Beserker.
I'm not saying that Orochi needs nerfs to everything I've mentioned but as of right now having all these tools in addition to deflect makes Orochi risk/reward ratio plainly too high. In comparison to any other character in the game I find him just infuriating to play against.
I find that I can very easily defend against Berserkers, Raiders and Warlords. Conquerors, Peacekeepers, and nobushi get through my defense about equally as often as I get through theirs. I find Kensie very inconsistent, I don't see many decent ones so I haven't gotten much practice against good ones, but I know I need to parry more so when I do lose to one I know why.
But in my experience Orochi is just plain broken. They have him listed as a "counter-attacker" but if that's the truth they need to strip away some of his ability to straight up assault people and force him to rely on his ability to react. If that is really the way they want Orochi to play out then they need to hard nerf his offensive mobility options and the inherent speed of his attacks and force him to make openings off of defensive moves.
Edit: Played a lot more in open beta. For those of you wondering how to deal with Orochi, I found that attacking their stamina bar works nicely. I got significantly better with parrying and was able to end Orochi's aggression much earlier by doing so. If you can confine him into narrow spaces he is also much easier to deal with.
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