Kensei design flaw
Kensei seems to have a design flaw.
What it's supposed to be:
A slow swinging harder hitting character that can make use of it's long range with a decent mixup off of it's chains
What it's forced to be by the game:
Low mobility counter-attacker with mixups after a parry
Why doesn't it's range matter?
It's attacks are all too slow and predictable until they are easy to parry. Your only answer then is to not throw them out or to feint them, both of which means your not filling the area around you with attacks and means the enemy is always free to just walk up to you while paying attention to defense and get right in your face negating your supposed advantage.
Why does it's speed cripple it?
The only fast attacks a Kensei has is it's top light, dashing top light, dashing forward GB and the second light of it's light chain. The top and dashing top lights means anyone with any knowledge knows to just leave their stance blocking top vs a Kensei, this means all they have to react to now are slow dash up GB attempts or even slower side light/heavies (Kensei side lights are almost as slow as most other classes heavies, easy parry on them).
Just feint?
So you would think that someone with such slow attacks and a hard hitting unblockable could get by with feints, which it can at around medium skilled opponents. Too low skilled and feints just don't work cause the enemy is busy attacking, your better off just parrying them and smacking them. Mid skilled is where they actually react to your feints with parry attempts you can then parry yourself and punish as they struggle to deal with your GB unblockable mixup. High skilled opponents is where everything falls apart and your mixup fails.
Why it's an uphill battle vs skilled opponents?
So with your slow attacks and predictable initiation options, your basically forced to play a defensive feint/parry game against anyone with good defenses, your attacks are just asking to be parried by them. This normally means your feints do better because they are tossing out more parries, but here is the issue vs really good defensive players, you can't actually punish them for it.
Say I toss out a side heavy feint and a good defensive player had bet on it being an easy parry and tossed it out, I then get the parry myself and go into a GB off of it. Now for a Kensei the best option is to toss them into a wall and then do a free unblockable top heavy, though Kensei throw range isn't that great so walls are generally not close enough. This means the next best option is a free side heavy chained into an unblockable top heavy which is generally canceled into the uninterruptible side heavy to catch top parries as well as most dodges (well times dodges always work but those aren't the easiest to do). The issue with this is that the free side heavy is considered the second part of the heavy chain (it's how the Kensei GB works, basically the GB is considered attack one and if you throw them from it it's considered attack two) and the second heavy in the Kensei heavy chain is very low damage, just a tiny more than a side light for them and that's the ONLY and best guaranteed damage they have off of a parry.
So you get the free side heavy and go into the upper unblockable. Most medium skilled players start falling apart defensively here, they may try to parry the top and get smacked by the side you canceled from the top. Then next time they may ignore the top while readying themselves for the side, only for you to let the top rip into them, it turns into a nice mindgame vs these players. The issue is against skilled opponents they can cover every option of your mixup. The top heavy cancel into side is actually your fastest attacks in the mixup, so all the skilled player does is leave their stance at top and watch to see if the red top icon goes left or right, if it does go left/right then the attack coming is slower than most classes heavy attack and easily parried. Now if 1/2 second into the top heavy unblockable the icons never switched left/right, it means the top has to come out and your stance is already up, so all you have to do is hit heavy attack just before your hit.
I've started running into more and more skilled players that can parry both options 100%, I've even talked with them a bit and they say it took them a few rounds to get the timing but after that they didn't care if I parried them away from walls because they could parry all my mixup options.
This led to me eventually start canceling the top heavy with a dash forward GB attempt, which worked a few times until they started canceling that 100% too without it messing with the parries any. They just saw if the icons vanished from me canceling with a dash my only option was a GB, so they basically had a full dash PLUS the normal GB reaction time to realize it was a GB and cancel it.
It got so bad vs these good defensive players that I started throwing in random side heavies after the first side heavy in the Kensei GB combo, hoping going straight into the uninterruptible would mess with them. But no, it was just too slow that they could react to it without worrying about any kind of mind game.
So generally I would win the first couple matches as they learned to fight the Kensei and then a few full matches in they'd get the mixup defensive options down and with no other way to do damage I could no longer get anymore games.
Why not just feint the mixup?
I've tried it, and it actually works with one huge problem. I no longer have any stamina. Remember earlier I said that trying to get in attacks with Kensei is difficult and you end up having to feint them to be able to parry and get in damage? Well all that takes stamina. Heavy>Feint>Parry(takes same startup heavy stamina)>Side Heavy>Unblockable Top Heavy>Feint>Parry>GB is basically what it looks like if I try to feint something in the Kensei unblockable mixup and at that point I'm actually at 0 stamina, I no longer have the stamina to even attack them from that last GB to continue into anything. Also it's just one big loop. Since from that last GB I'd go back into a side heavy and into the upper unblockable and put me right back where a good defensive player can cover all the mixups options easily and my only option is to not throw anything out/feint again.
So in the end trying to feint the mixup leaves me out of stamina and only having gotten in one guaranteed hit from the GB side heavy (which as I said above only does little more than light attack damage). So vs a good opponent happening to fall for a feint? I get a light attacks worth of damage and use up all my stamina at best or get parried if I try the mixup into whatever they can do off the free GB at worst.
What could fix it?
For the initial problem that caused it all of the Kensei being forced into a counter-attacker because of too easily parried attacks with a few predictable fast ones, I think somehow giving it the ability to threaten side attacks quickly at range so it can actually play the long range game it's supposed to be able to would help. This could come in the form of a fast side zone attack (Warden basically gets this to go along with it's fast top attack that's just like the Kensei's fast top but better cause it counters. Warden of course also has faster side attacks and an unblockable shoulder from any lights while having higher guaranteed damage from a GB).
Another solution instead of changing the ZA or adding any kind of new animation/swing would to be give Kensei a new hero specific passive. Basically something that lets it cancel it's first top heavy into a side light in either direction, much how it's top heavy unblockable can cancel into a heavy or light in either direction. This wouldn't make the Kensei any faster like a side hitting ZA would, but it would force people to respect attacks from all angles and not just be able to block top and react to sides.The possibility of some of these top attacks your expecting to turn into side attacks forces you to spend some of your focus on sides as well, which makes just the normal good top attacks have a chance of working as well. All of it would lead to the Kensei being able to actually make use of it's range and confound someone with far reach mixups until they can get in.
What to do about the Kensei Unblockable Mixup?
This I'm not really sure, it's killer vs low and medium skilled opponents while a waste of stamina/leading to you taking more damage than the enemy off of them getting parried than they did against high skilled opponents. The timing of the attacks are too different until if you handle it in 3 different steps you can 100% parry/GB. First step is the first half of the upper unblockable, just see if it continues to come out or not. If they cancel it into anything it has to be then and will either be a side heavy or a dash forward. Second step is when the side heavies/GB would hit, so if they went into the side heavy you have an easy side parry to do and if they dashed forward you have an easy GB to do. Third step is if nothing happened in the first two steps, just hit heavy attack and enjoy your parried unblockable punish.
It's not something that will get better with time, as people play and the average defensive ability goes up it'll get harder and harder to land. I mean I'm running into people that can handle all options of it in the open beta! Give it a month and I wouldn't be surprised if the above average player gets it down 100%.
My suggestion for this would be to somehow make the attacks hit at the same time, which basically means speeding up the unblockable. It can only be done from a GB or 3 attack chain so it's not like it can be spammed. With the attacks all hitting around the same time it'd be much harder to choose which side you want to block.
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