Valkyrie changed incomming | Forums

[xx007iam]

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I was going to write a whole long post about things valk can do but, honestly i think most of it is either known about or underutilized.

However she does have a few tricks people don't often use. A parry into GB followed by ramshead(uncharged) exhausts and knocksdown the opponent(at least in duels where no gear applies not sure how stamina gear might affect this since i can't be sure what gear my opponents have.) the knockdown occurs AFTER the stagger animation from the ramshead hit so you have plenty of time to do whatever you want as a punish.

Her shield tackle, is underutilized by many, the all guard properties take effect pretty much immediately as in, before she even hits the ground from the backhop, so it can be done as a reactionary defense and the tackle is pretty much guaranteed if you release right after a blocked hit.

Her light chain is actually the 3rd or fourth strongest in the game but the dmg spread is different from other chars, her first light is weaker than the second, the third hit dmg depends on whether you did side or top, side is only 10 dmg but stuns, top is 20 dmg. so she totalls 40-50dmg off her chain, which is only beaten by kensei(60) and nobushi(36+garunteed25bleed) Knowing that though you can do things like intentionally whiff the first strike to get the 18 dmg hit in and then mixup by either going for top to get 38 dmg total or sweeping (because many people forget valk can sweep instead of finishing a chain) or go side for 28dmg+ a stun that can setup people to get caught by a gb they didn't see startup or another quick poke and stop into a gb or whatever.

You basicaly have to pace yourself and not get greedy trying to force the chains in. Like a few other chars she has some revenge mode cheese that can basically garuntee a kill but i'm not going into that and she has an optionselect, her dashguard can be optionselected by hitting both light and heavy and she'll do the bleed if it blocks or the hunter strike if she passes through the attack either way you get a punish unless you mistimed the dodge entirely and got hit.

I generally use hunters pounce as a punish. If someone whiffs, or i know they're about to push a button i jump in their face and smack them for it. it's not something you should be using from neutral you can....but you probably shouldn't though with the buff it should be safe now as the recovery time is down to 600ms after a block. So there shouldn't be anymore 'free' gb's off it. they might still try but they should be techable now. Which means it's going to be much harder to punish Valk. I've been doing some duels today and she feels good. It's as if pre-patch valk was fighting with shackles on and now they're off.

Her shield crush being a chain into her light string means she now starts with the 18dmg poke after a crush instead of the 12, and can has the option to either, go straight into sweep,poke into sweep, or poke and finish the chain. or just stop at any point and throw a gb trying to catch someone stepping. It's nice, really nice. Pre patch I had to do things like fake heavy into shieldcrush poke once and gb or just go for the sweep straight after crush, now I have legit options since the second poke in her chain is also faster than before.

Prepatch tactics were entirely mindgames, feints, random sweeps, gb's where sweeps should be, fake shield tackles canceled by dashing forward into gb, fake heavys into shieldcrush after hunter pounce to bait parry's and shove people where i wanted them while draining stam and lots of heavies off gb's. finding ways to make people look for one thing and do another was the crux of my offense if i wasn't parrying into ramhead for the forced exhaustion.

The speed increase is going to be a big deal, because it means that almost 'free' parry people used to get if you tried to do the second hit of her chain is gone now, it's significantly faster and while it can still be blocked I don't expect to see too many people (if any) getting parries. Her faster recoveries also mean she can do more, and will be able to parry or utilize her light counter in more situations where she's being pressured. similar to how orochi can dash and get deflect practically free mid chain vs some characters. Though I'll need to spend more time testing and figuring out her new speeds to be sure her defense options should be a lot better now.


Hmn....this post ended up being long anyway.

Awesome post, sir! Thanks for the in depth strats!

[DesignerHuman]

I switched over from Nobushi to Valk because I really liked her movement style. The damage wasn't there, but I figured that as long as I enjoyed the movement, then I could deal with the weakness and adapt strategies to get around it. Valkyrie has the largest mishmash of tools of any character in this game. Some may be difficult to pull off, but you have the option if you can develop the skill. If the buffs continue, then she will be overpowered as she can answer most tactics with a counter due to the size of this toolset.

Just wanted to share something that may get overlooked due to the overall bad connotations - dodge guard. It's not an move that should be used against every character, but it shines against Shugoki. Parries are not too effective as his range prevents the GB, but dodge guard his slow attacks (he does not have a good variety of moves) and you'll be in on him to bleed and Ram/GB. I haven't been able to test dodge guard against a Kensei, but when the parries push you out of range, give dodge bleed a shot - it will get you where you want to be.

I will say that I did not have good luck using it against Nobushi. She is too fast and has a wider variety of attacks to come at you with from range so it is more difficult to time.

[SethUnleashed]

I will say that I did not have good luck using it against Nobushi. She is too fast and has a wider variety of attacks to come at you with from range so it is more difficult to time.

shoulder-pin (aka deflect) and light-parry DONT work against nobushi's light attacks as her recovery is so fast that she will auto-block those two counters.

i'd say this is a bug and should be fixed because getting autoblocked on tight-timing moves that are supposed to be counter-attacks is plain wrong.

[Chaos_Model]

OMG I am so glad others have seen this first hand, I've been stating that she takes damage from blocks (especially over hand attacks) that were clearly blocked, of course telling this to a WL or Orochi player falls on deaf ears with the assanine reply of "get gud". LIke I said in another post, I love Valk, she has so much friggin potential to be an amazing class but Ubi for whatever reason continues to ignore the glaring issues she's strapped with. After two patches you think they would get it right at this point. I'll just be playing Witcher 3 and keep up with things with. my fingers crossed.