A guide to comprehensive Lawbringer Fixes | Forums

[Brammimond]

From the reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitive...awbringer_fix/

TLDR:

STAMINA

ATTACK SPEED AND STANCE CHANGE SPEED

GUARANTEED COUNTERHITS AND KIT REWORKING

(read the midsection of the post for elaboration)



My reasoning for making this post was to give my thoughts, as a main, on the Lawbringer debacle. Most of the "high-level" players are acknowledging that the Lawbringer is broken right now: he can't confirm any decent damage, his parry abilities are unusable, he's too slow to get combos off etc. And many Lawbringer mains recognize this too: Block->Shove->GB->Side Heavy/Wall Throw->Side Heavy is just about his only viable tactic to get damage right now and it's entirely dependent on GB counter being broken. As soon as Ubisoft returns it to the Open Beta timing Lawbringer will be broken, he's already barely viable but that will take away his only string for damage right now. It's possible to win with him in casual duels and 4v4 (My win% with him in both is around 80%) but as anyone paying attention to the forums and what talented players are saying, this is owing to opponents being bad. Once people parry the majority of attacks and the meta shifts to feints and parry-baits Lawbringer is unviable, unlike every other hero who can guarantee at least some damage (Raider is the lowest of the "viable" heroes for the same reasons).
Through getting the Lawbringer to Rep 1-something, reading EVERY post about the current state of the Lawbringer for inspiration, watching high-level players desperately try in vain to make him work and engaging several people in discussion and theory crafting I've put together what I believe to be the best fix for our favorite derpy iron-clad hero.
Counter Attacker, Disabler. The Lawbringer has two intended functions of his kit: punishing off parries and manhandling the opponent to control the fight tempo. The pieces for this are there in his kit, they just aren't working right. He's got some really interesting options off parries but they don't land, and Shove is absolutely amazing with its speed, ability to come off a block, and most of all the ability to substitute for a combo starter. Unfortunately he just gets parried on the 2nd hit of any string.
The way I see it fixing the Lawbringer has to accomplish two things: give him usable options off a parry to cement his status as Parry King, and allow him an easier opportunity to get combos off to cement his "bullying" playstyle. Here's what I recommend to achieve both:
1) Increase his attack speed slightly. His lights are fairly quick already and don't need too much tweaking. His heavies need a lot of work however. This will allow him to actually have a chance of getting the 2nd or 3rd hits out of his combos. But that's just some optional damage for him and isn't his bread-and-butter. With a higher attack speed things like Long-Arm->Light->Heavy Combo have a chance at getting off rather than being parried right away which would be great and incentivize its use. But the way I see it, Lawbringer shouldn't be living and dying by his combos. Which leads us to...
2) Stamina. Bump his stamina up just a bit. Enough that he can get a full combo off and not be wheezing, but really I think he's fine for the most part. Glaring exception being blocked or worse parried for charging, that needs to be lowered ASAP. Again he doesn't need to be dealing tons of damage through his combos, which is why I believe his damage output is fine where it is. He just needs to be able to confirm more attacks so he can actually output his damage numbers.
3) Half of the Lawbringer's kit is useless and the other half is barely functioning. We've addressed how to get Shove->Combo and some of his other moves and now we can get to the even more exciting half: the parry fix. I think that this would be the best solution: giving him a guaranteed charge, giving him a guaranteed Long Arm off a parry, and speeding up (but not guaranteeing) the overhead unblockable. Allow me to explain:
Charge is a no-brainer. He gets the upper light for free; Charge also does barely any damage and should be free as well. It's one of the best disabling options in his kit, acting as a reset to get the opponent away for some breathing room, letting you set the tempo, and is perfect in that role.
Long Arm: it does no health damage and only confirms a light, but does solid stamina damage and very clearly shuts the opponent down. Allowing that for free off a parry is an easy green-light too. And if his heavies have been sped up ever-so-slightly he might even be able to get a combo off of that confirmed light, but it won't be guaranteed, which is fine because...
Speeding up the overhead and giving him true mix-ups. Here's where I think the genius lies and would allow the Lawbringer's entire kit to really shine I'm his role. Speed up the unblockable overhead just like the rest of his moves, so it isn't brain-dead easy to parry but can still be done by a good player anticipating it. Because we've made his other parry options viable and given him a chance at actually getting off his combos with a stamina bump the Lawbringer player won't have to rely on this move which is what gives it actual mix-up potential. The way I see it happening is that the Lawbringer lands several parries and uses his safe options first, then he actually goes for the overhead. Because it's an unblockable your opponent has to respect it, either by dodging (fine) or going for the parry. If it was guaranteed what's the point of making it an unblockable? I think this might've been there intention: allow the Lawbringer the ability to feint the unblockable, and then either A) land his own counter parry off the bait, or B) because it's faster he'll could cancel into a now safe charge or Long Arm. This would give the Lawbringer an actual mix-up off his parries, if the enemy doesn't respect the unblockable they're about to eat a **** load of damage, and if they do try to react to it the Lawbringer player gets to punish their opponent without doing crazy damage but by utterly demoralizing and disabling them repeatedly. Which finally would give us a Lawbringer that could do what he's supposed to do and fix him without changing his intended playstyle or make him overpowered via his damage potential.
If he successfully lands a combo the opponent messed up because his 2nd & 3rd hits weren't guaranteed, just fast enough to be viable. If he lands a parry he's indisputably the hero with the best riposte mix-up and potential off a parry (because you can still go for GB->Side Heavy for raw damage as another mix-up). And he'll actually be solid in his role at disabling the opponent without being overpowered in his damage potential, such as with Valkyrie and all of her unblockables which only net 1-2 hits.
I believe all of the above would be the best potential fix for the Lawbringer. It'd finally make him shine in his two roles as Parry King and a bully without making him overpowered, and it would actually make him fun to play as, and frustratingly enjoyable to play against. Right now spamming shove and throwing people into a wall for a heavy is only so much fun...I'd love to actually be rewarded for parrying and thus focus on it as the primary part of my kit, with Shove bully combos being icing on the cake.
Feel free to comment, and please offer suggestions or critiques. I'd love to hear what anyone has to say, unless you're just going to comment and tell me we "haven't had enough time to get used to him or figure him out". His playstyle and toolkit is self-evident, he just can't actually do it right now and anybody who actually knows the game mechanics knows he's in a really bad spot now. This is just what I think offers the best balance of buffs for the Lawbringer without changing his intended playstyle to dealing big damage off heavies etc. He's meant to counter attack and disable and I think he'd be ridiculously fun to play if he was able to do that properly.
Thanks and see you all on the battlefield!
[Edit 1: I realized you could also feint the unblockable into a top light interrupt if they buy it and try to start a combo with his now presumably faster heavies.]

[Thilly.Gooth]

Eye filled with blood.
The sun doesn't rise above this wall.
tl:dr

[Brammimond]

Eye filled with blood.
The sun doesn't rise above this wall.
tl:dr

Haha I'll add a TLDR

[Shinimas]

Here are my problems with the class:

The lack of dodge punish. LB's dash can only be chained into a Shove which does nothing. This is devastating against classes such as Warlord and Conqueror. They use their body slams on you, which are guaranteed to connect into damage, you read them, dodge and... nada. This shouldn't be the case. How to correct this? See below.

Light attacks after shove need to be a lot faster. They're among the lowest damaging in the game and will practically never connect. If they're made faster, Lawbringer's offense will get a much needed boost and his Shove becomes more dangerous.

Guard change speed needs to be increased. Absolutely no reason for LB to have low block change pace.

A bit more stamina, speed and damage would be nice. Not sure if it's needed.

[nyrue]

I think his "make way" move is bugged I've tried vigorously to get this move to come out with different timings it doesn't work, and I don't think anyone has noticed because its very similar to his regular zone attack which comes out instead, if you watch the tutorial vids you can clearly see a difference between whats done in the video and what his zone attack does, this bugs me because I have no idea how effective this move is because I cant do it

[SlayreHesh]

Absolutely agree with everything. I think I could add a little more to it though. As an optional thing if they want to tweak the shove to be faster on startup, they can also get a hold down function that can make it knock people down and/or stun them. Not only is this very viable for this character, the person wielding him won't necessarily just ditch the gb chains and stuff right after but, we can utilize the abnormality of one's unique pace and runthrough, to throw the enemy off. Even if this does help with environmental, we have to keep in mind that in general his side step shove is somewhat useless and it can be kind of selective or one sided in terms of how far LB reaches out to actually shove the guy. I'm pretty sure no one has really memorized the range on that but also as well, most people can't just keep on block shoving forever because that's simply not how it works. Even if we are trying to take their stamina down, I would like to be able to take it all down in one foul swoop, or atleast a good chunk of it. Of course there are drawbacks since if you just do it out of random, even if you are uninterruptible and have hyper armor, you will still take damage. So it's not abusable, but it's definitely a nice tool to have, a simple tweak to what once was already there, and it is punishable so long as it was being used loosely by a newer player and didn't actually work for what he was trying to do. Also, it's sort of a counter to hyper armor, or atleast that would be nice if that were the case and it were aloud.

I also think that we should be able to replace long arm with an alternative piking maneuver that we could use by pressing heavy attack during long arm and switching to the impaling animation and using the piking animation from soldier kills, also that's another thing, it's way too difficult to kill soldiers and be safe about it, because the animation is often detrimental to that and your zone takes away half your stamina. And there is simply no hyper armor to help with this. Which leads me to another point, his zone attack is pretty useless. The way it's animated, is very satisfyingly hefty but, it really doesn't do anything. It doesn't move your opponent if he blocks it and it doesn't mean anything in battle, as it is. If we could have it so that it is only slightly faster or the same but could knock people to the side for blocking or just dealing more damage than usual despite them blocking, or perhaps when it makes contact it actually lunges people a small distance. Which would be nicer for ganking since he is a character that takes up a lot of space and I'm only comfortable with, that way. And in the first place, for a character that already has a large stamina pool, if he's gonna do a move that takes away half of it away, it better be worth something. And if he isn't able to make space for himself in ganks, atleast give some rewards for parrying everyone at once. If they are just mindlessly attacking you and you parry them all and go for the side heavy after parry, and you could perform an instant execution from the leg sweep execution, that would be absolutely amazing.

EDIT: I also mean piking as a way to close distance if someone misteps their dodge so that you can punish them for it. Of course, it should be as small of a window as it is with feinting so they can't just do it if someone was out of range and dodges last second or dodges last second and gets them to miss. You'd also be pretty suscesptible to guardbreaks, as far as I can tell.

Of course it isn't viable to do on the first person you were locked onto since he will probably be too far away for the animation to perform properly but in general if you just try it on one guy while you're surrounded, you could easily be guardbreaked and stopped, and probably heavy attacked and interrupted as well. Of course that does seem overpowered for one character but in general, you guys at Ubi, need to work on revenge. It can't just be one single state and only for one situation when there's multiple situations to be had with it. And plus I think that revenge isn't very helpful for some other characters as it is on certain ones. You could probably have revenge as a whole nother game mechanic and not just a little feature that varies among the classes but, if we could have revenge be more easily utilized and fair in terms of how many players you're actually trying to use it on and if you have a revenge build on or not, atleast it wouldn't be a pain in the ***. Perhaps there could be a perk that gives you a higher chance of getting revenge when someone else has it, you know? That would be interesting. Also in revenge mode, lawbringer should probably be able to inflict bleeds upon impaling people. Perhaps if someone is running away for buffs. Another thing for revamping the revenge feature is if we could actually have a perk or something like that, that lets us get revenge (to an extent) as someone is trying to run away from us. If someone locks off of you and starts sprinting in the other direction you should be able to initiate revenge as you're running and be able to punish him for it. Of course this all ties in with game changes and whether we can get the game to be better with connections and stuff like that and all the other problems but, it's still nice to think about it. And it would mean a lot in game if it weren't just something that's a pain in the *** for everybody.