*Disclaimer -- I primarily play brawl due to an unrivaled hatred for gear stats and the further unbalancing that they cause.
I will try to type this with as little bias as possible.

  1. Unbalanced Characters
    • While For Honor is a relatively new game, there has been a few tournaments. Every tournament has been vastly populated with the same 4 characters and almost every tournament has been won by 2 of them.
    • Warlord
      Warlord's strength is primarily from his virtually perfect defense.
    • Peacekeeper
      PK's strength comes from so many different factors but stem from her frames. She's just too damn fast.

      PeaceKeeper
      T L = 31 Frames
      S(R) L = 31 Frames
      S(L) L = 31 Frames
      T H = 49 Frames
      S(R) H = 48 Frames
      S(L) H = 48 Frames
      ZA = 18 frames
      Above are the frame data for PK's attacks from this article. Originally I had typed more on this but bias was starting to impede my judgement. So I'll just leave the frame data there.

  2. Defense Meta
    It's very clear, offense loses to defense every single time. This promotes staring battles which definitely does NOT promote fun game play. Excluding specific character match ups there is no penalty to playing a strictly defensive/reactive game. The way this game is structured actually rewards inactive styles of game play.
  3. P2P Connection
    I'm just going to ignore this cause it's not going to change.


Alright so how can we fix or start to counter these "issues" (If people agree these are issues) in a minimalistic way and in the least invasive way possible?

  • Peacekeeper
    In the 1.03 patch an issue was resolved for zerker and conq in which their light attacks were unsafe on block and granted a guaranteed guard break. Give Peacekeeper that issue. With the characters speed (both movement & attacks) her ability to mix up attacks is greater than any other in the game including zerker which is designed to combo (What a joke XD). Throw in P2P related issues and PK just gets to be more of a problem.

    Berserker & Conqueror

    Light Attack recoveries decreased to prevent free Guardbreak on Block. This was never the intended behavior.
    Berserker's Light Attacks and chained Light Attacks recoveries on Block reduced from 900 ms to 700 ms
    Conqueror's Light Attacks and chained Light Attacks recoveries on Block reduced from 900 ms to 700 ms
    Above was copied directly from the 1.03 patch notes on this forum. Make PK's light attack recovery time be 900ms instead of the 700ms that I'd bet they are. That one move would essentially turn PK into the glass cannon high risk/high reward character she appears to have been designed as.
  • Defense Meta
    I have a few ideas but I'm not really certain which would be the least invasive to other parts/characters in the game.
    • Increase the virtually non-existant chip damage.
      Have any of you actually noticed that there is chip damage in this game? Probably not, point made. If someone blocks a heavy it should do something heavy like take a small chunk out of hp out. Especially since most heavy attacks are extremely easy to parry. It'd be great if lights did some chip damage too but you can usually poke with lights.
    • Add a Shield Degradation System (I think this is the better idea but sounds difficult to implement)
      Shields have their own stamina meter or counter where after you take a certain number of consecutive guards without doing anything else (parry/dodging/attacking), then the next blocked attack results in a full stamina drain which fully opens the person up to an average side heavy or some sort of GB damage equivalent. To keep viability in game modes like dominion for conq and warlord their full block stances would count as actions to reset their block counters. If a shield break was to occur every 3 guarded attacks or something like that it would definitely mix up the meta and add a lot of pressure to playing overly defensive.


  • Warlord & Conqueror
    If any of the recommended changes under the defense meta section are implemented it should adequately balance out the defense meta and encourage a wider range of play again. In theory solving the problem of defense >>>>>>> attack should make warlord & conqueror's much more reasonable.


So I hope this came out coherent enough and I look forward to seeing what the community thinks about this. I doubt anything will ever come to this though so here's to wishful thinking.

One last thing, this post is discussing game mechanics, not player skill. Please try to keep player skill out of your mind when you consider the changes that I have proposed. In any situations regarding balance player skill should not be a factor. Skill should be assumed to be equal and the skills required to experience some of these woes is very high; hence tournament level issues. I add this in hopes to minimize a mass of "git gud" replies in favor for actual constructive criticism or support in this matter.

Thank you