Nobushi needs work (after Closed, Open, Launch, and other Nerfs) | Forums

[Claudius_Katt]

i really love Nobushi's playstyle and up until a month ago I'd considered her my main but she just feels like she has too many negatives at the moment so I've put her to the side for now until she finally gets tweaked a little,
I really like the ideas on this thread though and I'd love to see some of the things being said here taken into consideration,
Especially in regards to hidden stance and the kick.

[Draghmar]

did u tried? coz i failed in every attempt

Yes, many times. But I had to learn it first because you need to know when to start your dodge.

PS, it would be nice if the Forum Moderator could do something with this thread, it's rather civil and with good suggestions and feedback.

This not the first thread about Nobushi and even things mentioned here were posted before. From what I understand Ubi knows about all of those issues.

[Weird_Eagle]

When i remeber right Roman said on the last Warriors den that we should give feedback for Nobushi.
For orochi and kensai they found many feedback to improve the class, but they wish to hear what we think about Nobushi, so go on folks!!!


Yesterday i fought against Shinobi and after my death against a Valk in Dominion.
Both spammed lights on me. after that i fought against a Centurion.
I avoided the most attacks like the kick, heavy or somthing else.
But he finished me with his ZA cause i cant block it. The time to swap the Blockstance is tooooo long.
Thats the thing that realy sucks on her.
all other things mentioned here are good to improve her, but the slow Guardstance is the most thing that realy sucks and let you lose a fight.
You know you can block or parry the light from this fast spammy classes, as an example, with my Orochi or my Shinobi i deflect the lights from Valk with ease, but on Nobushi you cant do realy much against it.
When they start the spam and you miss the first hit to block or parry you can only try to roll back.
but in the most situations you eat the full combo and can only concentrate to avoid the sweep.
You try to hidden stance one and counterattack with a light? They spamm and cause your lights are so slow they continue with spamm.
Only option i have is to roll back, in the most situations.
btw i only play dominion in for Honor.

Nobushi is strong in Dominion, but when you get a situation, where you defend a base and a Spammy char like valk, pk or somthing arrives, then you get a massive problem.
Same problem against a turtle char like warlord or lawbringer. when they only defend and try to parry you, you cant open them.
if the kick is faster or canceable that you can open them? i dont know
But when you do the feint play you have massive staminaproblems.
you are faster oos than the defender and against classes like Shinobi you cant realy feint that much cause they drain your stamina too with the attacks


an other problem is her massive Staminausage.

[Anarnam]

Guard change speed would be nice.

However I think Nobushi needs improvement on her hidden stance - it should be working faster (to be able to avoid gb) and negate all effects for a tiny bit longer time. Honestly I can live with the insanely slow attack speed that is blockable by every character in the game without any problems, and the guard change if her hidden stance is tiny bit better.

[Knight_Raime]

If lights are your main tool no wonder you're being pummeled. Bushi's game isn't in lights. it's in heavies (since most can't punish you on a parried heavy) not to mention the beefy damage you get from them. And her other game is mix ups. bushi and shinobi are the only 2 heros that can cancel as much of their kit as they do. You seriously need to look into some of her redic feint game combos people have found.

The one I use against a turtle is soft feinting her light into a hard feinted heavy into a GB. if pulled off fast enough the opponent literally has no clue what you did.
My other nice one is hard feinting a heavy in either the same direction as the zone or the opposite and then zone cancel. mixing it up between the 2 to keep people on their toes.
The last one I use the most is off of a GB. Top heavy into light soft feint into dash heavy into dash heavy.
There are other combos people have.

the only 2 buffs she NEEDS is a faster switch speed (which is happening) and less stam consumption on her hidden stance. (maaaaaybe make it slightly faster.)

[LordKracen]

Rep 27 Nobushi (almost 28) here to throw in my thoughts:
I love Nobushi, I love her play style and in general her design (Plus the Nanigata is my favourite weeb weapon to) but she desperately needs to work to make her viable.

We all know the history of Nobushi, how she was originally claimed to be the most OP simply because she is an effective noob killer, and she still is, if you're new to the game a Nobushi will dictate the fight and will simply run circles around you... However, the moment you get used to reacting quickly enough to block, Nobushi can no longer play aggressive versus anyone because you're then just wasting stamina hitting their guard, the issue with this is because we have no sure fire way to deal damage with the exception of a landed kick and lets be honest here, if you get hit by a Nobushi kick, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Nobushi is also one of the easiest to parry classes, her light attack, though reasonably fast is extremely telegraphed, predictable and is very clear what is happening for your opponent (Unlike say a PK light and heavy looking almost identical and an Orochi top light and heavy also looking practically the same)
Now for specific match ups; There are certain classes in which Nobushi simply has no chance against a player who is even just somewhat clued up about the game, the reason for this is because of their ability to punish a Nobushi heavy attack.
Orochi can top light double tap.
LB can do his parry counter.
Shinobi can ranged GB.
Centurion can do his parry counter into a free light.
I'm probably missing a few, but someone playing one of these characters, can punish a Nobushi no matter what forcing the Nobushi to play purely defensive in a hope of a successful parry or hidden stance dodge into light.

Nobushi's overarching problem stems from no real opener, though other classes suffer from this issue as well (Kensei) effectively making random pokes from lights a lot of our damage sometimes. We can't kick because its far too easily dodged and in some cases you just get hit out of it, against some players who are too eager to parry we can 'Light - HS cancel - Light - Light' (though this doesn't work against Centurion due to his Heavy attack speed and Warlord because of his hyper armour on heavies.) However most people figure this out pretty quickly and will just start blocking the first light and if we go for the HS second light, just parry that instead and get the free heavy. Then we as Nobushi's go Light - HS Cancel - Heavy to throw them off, if it doesn't hit and just blocked we can then go for the sudden kick and if that lands we get the light bleed but to do that we had to use 80% of our stamina for that single hit... This ends up being a vast amount of my matches where I play aggressively.

Now there are places of course where Nobushi is very effective, against Centurions and Shinobi's for example we are uniquely qualified to deal with this, just Hidden stance the kick and double light, though any good Shiniobi and Centurion will catch on pretty quickly and just stop doing it, and which point we're back to square one.
We also have our zone attack it has tech (Though I never use it) and is hard hitting and pretty quick, its our only surprise move and even due to its high stamina cost is worth throwing out. (It can also be used to punish heavy parries from LB and Kensei for those unaware (as long as the parry didn't come from the right side)).

So what does Nobushi need? Well frankly I am a firm believer in uniqueness amongst characters, as we are all aware, every character has hero specific abilities to them that define their character (Nobushi HS, Shugoki Hyper Armour, Warden Shoulder Bash, Warlord Headbutt, Raider Heavy cancels, Valkyrie sweeps...etc etc) and these should be the core in which we build and play these characters. So to me, Nobushi needs to all about the hidden stance, a Nanigata wielder is meant to be swift and deadly, so what this would need is a few things or an assortment of them;
1. Hidden stance needs to cost less stamina.
2. Hidden stance needs to be quicker (In fact if you look at the advanced how to play video, you'll see the hidden stance displayed is much quicker than it actually is) The alternative to this would be to make it so attacks out of hidden stance are quicker or both.
3. Kick should either be quicker or have hyper armour (Unlike the Shinobi kick we actually have something to balance ourselves on when doing it unlike Shinobi who does it freely) or both.
3b. Preferably have it so kick can be cancelled into something else.
4. Guard change speed need to be quicker so we can actually be unpredictable with our attacks as well as be able to block properly.
5. Dodge speed and distance needs to be increased.
6. Cobra Strike (Dodge and light) specifically from the sides need to dodge further in order to make it an actual dodging punish.
7. Swift Recoil should have some form of follow up or simply cost less or even no stamina.

Nobushi needs work, and I think any one of these would be a step in the right direction... I refuse to class change, so I will just wait patiently until Ubisoft makes her viable.

[Knight_Raime]

Rep 27 Nobushi (almost 28) here to throw in my thoughts:
I love Nobushi, I love her play style and in general her design (Plus the Nanigata is my favourite weeb weapon to) but she desperately needs to work to make her viable.

We all know the history of Nobushi, how she was originally claimed to be the most OP simply because she is an effective noob killer, and she still is, if you're new to the game a Nobushi will dictate the fight and will simply run circles around you... However, the moment you get used to reacting quickly enough to block, Nobushi can no longer play aggressive versus anyone because you're then just wasting stamina hitting their guard, the issue with this is because we have no sure fire way to deal damage with the exception of a landed kick and lets be honest here, if you get hit by a Nobushi kick, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Nobushi is also one of the easiest to parry classes, her light attack, though reasonably fast is extremely telegraphed, predictable and is very clear what is happening for your opponent (Unlike say a PK light and heavy looking almost identical and an Orochi top light and heavy also looking practically the same)
Now for specific match ups; There are certain classes in which Nobushi simply has no chance against a player who is even just somewhat clued up about the game, the reason for this is because of their ability to punish a Nobushi heavy attack.
Orochi can top light double tap.
LB can do his parry counter.
Shinobi can ranged GB.
Centurion can do his parry counter into a free light.
I'm probably missing a few, but someone playing one of these characters, can punish a Nobushi no matter what forcing the Nobushi to play purely defensive in a hope of a successful parry or hidden stance dodge into light.

Nobushi's overarching problem stems from no real opener, though other classes suffer from this issue as well (Kensei) effectively making random pokes from lights a lot of our damage sometimes. We can't kick because its far too easily dodged and in some cases you just get hit out of it, against some players who are too eager to parry we can 'Light - HS cancel - Light - Light' (though this doesn't work against Centurion due to his Heavy attack speed and Warlord because of his hyper armour on heavies.) However most people figure this out pretty quickly and will just start blocking the first light and if we go for the HS second light, just parry that instead and get the free heavy. Then we as Nobushi's go Light - HS Cancel - Heavy to throw them off, if it doesn't hit and just blocked we can then go for the sudden kick and if that lands we get the light bleed but to do that we had to use 80% of our stamina for that single hit... This ends up being a vast amount of my matches where I play aggressively.

Now there are places of course where Nobushi is very effective, against Centurions and Shinobi's for example we are uniquely qualified to deal with this, just Hidden stance the kick and double light, though any good Shiniobi and Centurion will catch on pretty quickly and just stop doing it, and which point we're back to square one.
We also have our zone attack it has tech (Though I never use it) and is hard hitting and pretty quick, its our only surprise move and even due to its high stamina cost is worth throwing out. (It can also be used to punish heavy parries from LB and Kensei for those unaware (as long as the parry didn't come from the right side)).

So what does Nobushi need? Well frankly I am a firm believer in uniqueness amongst characters, as we are all aware, every character has hero specific abilities to them that define their character (Nobushi HS, Shugoki Hyper Armour, Warden Shoulder Bash, Warlord Headbutt, Raider Heavy cancels, Valkyrie sweeps...etc etc) and these should be the core in which we build and play these characters. So to me, Nobushi needs to all about the hidden stance, a Nanigata wielder is meant to be swift and deadly, so what this would need is a few things or an assortment of them;
1. Hidden stance needs to cost less stamina.
2. Hidden stance needs to be quicker (In fact if you look at the advanced how to play video, you'll see the hidden stance displayed is much quicker than it actually is) The alternative to this would be to make it so attacks out of hidden stance are quicker or both.
3. Kick should either be quicker or have hyper armour (Unlike the Shinobi kick we actually have something to balance ourselves on when doing it unlike Shinobi who does it freely) or both.
3b. Preferably have it so kick can be cancelled into something else.
4. Guard change speed need to be quicker so we can actually be unpredictable with our attacks as well as be able to block properly.
5. Dodge speed and distance needs to be increased.
6. Cobra Strike (Dodge and light) specifically from the sides need to dodge further in order to make it an actual dodging punish.
7. Swift Recoil should have some form of follow up or simply cost less or even no stamina.

Nobushi needs work, and I think any one of these would be a step in the right direction... I refuse to class change, so I will just wait patiently until Ubisoft makes her viable.

The bushi I fought never threw straight lights unless he knew it was going to interrupt whatever action I did. since I was aggressive this was semi frequent. he had good feint and mix up game.
Bushi is capable of destroying both the cent and shin. but only if she keeps them on the defense and out of her bubble.

As for your buffs I agree with all sans the dodge speed/ distance/range buffs. Don't really see a point in doing that since if her hidden stance becomes more available she's got an escape that allows great counterplay.

[Claudius_Katt]

Rep 27 Nobushi (almost 28) here to throw in my thoughts:
I love Nobushi, I love her play style and in general her design (Plus the Nanigata is my favourite weeb weapon to) but she desperately needs to work to make her viable.

We all know the history of Nobushi, how she was originally claimed to be the most OP simply because she is an effective noob killer, and she still is, if you're new to the game a Nobushi will dictate the fight and will simply run circles around you... However, the moment you get used to reacting quickly enough to block, Nobushi can no longer play aggressive versus anyone because you're then just wasting stamina hitting their guard, the issue with this is because we have no sure fire way to deal damage with the exception of a landed kick and lets be honest here, if you get hit by a Nobushi kick, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Nobushi is also one of the easiest to parry classes, her light attack, though reasonably fast is extremely telegraphed, predictable and is very clear what is happening for your opponent (Unlike say a PK light and heavy looking almost identical and an Orochi top light and heavy also looking practically the same)
Now for specific match ups; There are certain classes in which Nobushi simply has no chance against a player who is even just somewhat clued up about the game, the reason for this is because of their ability to punish a Nobushi heavy attack.
Orochi can top light double tap.
LB can do his parry counter.
Shinobi can ranged GB.
Centurion can do his parry counter into a free light.
I'm probably missing a few, but someone playing one of these characters, can punish a Nobushi no matter what forcing the Nobushi to play purely defensive in a hope of a successful parry or hidden stance dodge into light.

Nobushi's overarching problem stems from no real opener, though other classes suffer from this issue as well (Kensei) effectively making random pokes from lights a lot of our damage sometimes. We can't kick because its far too easily dodged and in some cases you just get hit out of it, against some players who are too eager to parry we can 'Light - HS cancel - Light - Light' (though this doesn't work against Centurion due to his Heavy attack speed and Warlord because of his hyper armour on heavies.) However most people figure this out pretty quickly and will just start blocking the first light and if we go for the HS second light, just parry that instead and get the free heavy. Then we as Nobushi's go Light - HS Cancel - Heavy to throw them off, if it doesn't hit and just blocked we can then go for the sudden kick and if that lands we get the light bleed but to do that we had to use 80% of our stamina for that single hit... This ends up being a vast amount of my matches where I play aggressively.

Now there are places of course where Nobushi is very effective, against Centurions and Shinobi's for example we are uniquely qualified to deal with this, just Hidden stance the kick and double light, though any good Shiniobi and Centurion will catch on pretty quickly and just stop doing it, and which point we're back to square one.
We also have our zone attack it has tech (Though I never use it) and is hard hitting and pretty quick, its our only surprise move and even due to its high stamina cost is worth throwing out. (It can also be used to punish heavy parries from LB and Kensei for those unaware (as long as the parry didn't come from the right

So what does Nobushi need? Well frankly I am a firm believer in uniqueness amongst characters, as we are all aware, every character has hero specific abilities to them that define their character (Nobushi HS, Shugoki Hyper Armour, Warden Shoulder Bash, Warlord Headbutt, Raider Heavy cancels, Valkyrie sweeps...etc etc) and these should be the core in which we build and play these characters. So to me, Nobushi needs to all about the hidden stance, a Nanigata wielder is meant to be swift and deadly, so what this would need is a few things or an assortment of them;
1. Hidden stance needs to cost less stamina.
2. Hidden stance needs to be quicker (In fact if you look at the advanced how to play video, you'll see the hidden stance displayed is much quicker than it actually is) The alternative to this would be to make it so attacks out of hidden stance are quicker or both.
3. Kick should either be quicker or have hyper armour (Unlike the Shinobi kick we actually have something to balance ourselves on when doing it unlike Shinobi who does it freely) or both.
3b. Preferably have it so kick can be cancelled into something else.
4. Guard change speed need to be quicker so we can actually be unpredictable with our attacks as well as be able to block properly.
5. Dodge speed and distance needs to be increased.
6. Cobra Strike (Dodge and light) specifically from the sides need to dodge further in order to make it an actual dodging punish.
7. Swift Recoil should have some form of follow up or simply cost less or even no stamina.

Nobushi needs work, and I think any one of these would be a step in the right direction... I refuse to class change, so I will just wait patiently until Ubisoft makes her viable.

These are probably the best suggestions so far and I think they'd bring Nobushi up to a good competetive level, I hope one of the mods sees this thread and passes along those suggestions,

I'd love to hear more from high rep Nobushi mains in here,
I've only got her to Rep 5 myself so Im still learning her intricacies but from what you've suggested I'd have to agree wholeheartedly,
Those seven points are her biggest and most glaring downfalls.

[Draghmar]

[...]So much text[...]

Great insight. I don't agree on making dodge attacks actually dodge. Even though it would be great I'm afraid that it would be too much and could be considered OP.

As a addition to speed - there's a great impact on hidden stance reliability and it's called latency and lag. For Honor's engine seeds up attacks to compensate for lags so it's sometimes really hard to make it in time. For example Conq's charged attack - when fighting with bot I have 100% effectiveness in using hidden stance against this attack. But when fighting against players I estimate my effectiveness on max 50% and it looks like I have push the button a little bit to slow...And I even don't do that on indicator but on animation.

I'd like to also remember what someone has posted here some time ago about guard change and hidden stance - if you want to invoke hidden stance while changing direction of your guard, hidden stance won't come up until guard finishes it's changing. That's probably why sometimes it feels sluggish. So I'd add to the fix list.

[Y_Shrewditch]

Thanks for the well-thought-out write up, it's nice to hear from a Nobushi in her late 20s, I'm still only a pre-teen

For me, the hardest matchups are:

- Peacekeepers; I can't deal with lightspam and I don't think it's only guardchange speed but also the stagger from a hit preventing to be able to block the next one.
- Orochis;Toplights are very hard to counter, and keeping my guard up means opening up to the zone and being very predictable in my attacks
- Berzerkers; Feint-for-days and their lights go through before mine do.

My best counter is to force them to keep distance.

- Lawbringers; They just excel at light-parries and have an amazing kit for punish, distance doesn't matter with these guys, on parry they get an automatic gap-closer that connects. And for lumbering giants, they're faster than me.

I tend to do well against Shinobi's. as long as I can keep them from lightspamming. Against Centurions it's still a 50/50, and not in my favor. I need to do so much work to get them down, and they only need to capitalize on one or two mistakes and I'm done. I think though this is Centurion issue, not so much a Nobushi-only.

I'm not trying to nit-pick your arguments here, just attempting to write-up a clean response:

1. Hidden stance needs to cost less stamina.
2. Hidden stance needs to be quicker (In fact if you look at the advanced how to play video, you'll see the hidden stance displayed is much quicker than it actually is) The alternative to this would be to make it so attacks out of hidden stance are quicker or both.

I've been doing Eliminations recently to test out my new stamina gear. I've been using both the maxed-out versions as well as the balanced ones, and I must say, it plays so much better. The biggest drains are HS and the kick, which I feel with the gear on is much more practical to use.

So I fully agree, toning down the stamina cost, HS especially but the kick too if possible, and not regen-pause, or perhaps only a pause when it's not followed up with an attack, making the first attack out of HS 'free'. and yes, attacks from HS should be faster.

I think if HS activates quicker, it also means it dodges sooner and may not offer an escape from the attack, so longer dodge-frames may be required. But in that case, it means a longer vulnerability for a free GB. Maybe a few frames of hyper-armor at initiation could work. I don't know, but I fully agree that it should be faster, more reliable and cost less.

3. Kick should either be quicker or have hyper armour (Unlike the Shinobi kick we actually have something to balance ourselves on when doing it unlike Shinobi who does it freely) or both.
3b. Preferably have it so kick can be cancelled into something else.

I've been thinking about that too. If I had to choose, I'd prefer hyper-armor on HS in stead of the kick. The kick is easily dodge-able, but because it can chain into Cobra-strike it doesn't automatically open you up for a free GB. And it offers a few frames right after the kick where a GB attempt fails anyway. Hyper-armor would prevent getting the kick prevented on hit, but perhaps would also make it as abusive as Shinobi's kick.
I think if it's just a tad faster it would already help out a lot, especially if it costs just a bit less stamina.

4. Guard change speed need to be quicker so we can actually be unpredictable with our attacks as well as be able to block properly.

Guard change speed will be addressed in a coming patch, which is good. I just hope it also means we don't have to wait for the change to complete before we can initiate another action.
Sidelights seem more or less fine, my main issue is the toplight. Judging from forum-posts, people can deal with Nobushi's lights just fine, and I think it's because they are telegraphed so obviously. So either a small increase in speed or (my preference) less advertising the move.

And a little FYI for those that didn't yet know; even though the guard change may be too slow to block, you can still get a parry.

5. Dodge speed and distance needs to be increased.
6. Cobra Strike (Dodge and light) specifically from the sides need to dodge further in order to make it an actual dodging punish.

I agree with nr5. I also think it's a (unwanted) game-mechanic that makes the dodge wait for guardchange to finish before actually dodging. But since Nobushi's chains rely on dodging so much, I'd like to see it a bit faster and further too.

However, I don't think Cobra Strike should become a real dodge, it could make it too slow as an attack and we already have Side Winder as a (semi)-dodge attack. I would like Cobra Strike to be more chainable into other attacks and like Side Winder, not stop after a block.

7. Swift Recoil should have some form of follow up or simply cost less or even no stamina.

I actually hardly use this because it seems to have a very small window, it feels more dangerous to use than a parry-attempt. If the window would increase I'd use it more, and I like your idea of it costing no stamina. Perhaps it could even recover some stamina, seeing how the opponent does all the work.

Nobushi needs work, and I think any one of these would be a step in the right direction... I refuse to class change, so I will just wait patiently until Ubisoft makes her viable.

Well.. I cheated on her a little and went back to Valkyrie to get her to rep7 and a new wardrobe. One of the things I like about Valk is how she can chain her combo's so fluently. That's something I'd like Nobushi to excel at. She's suppose to flow but there are big stop-gaps (as I mentioned in an earlier post).

I found this flowchart for her.

I think if Viper's Retreat would be part of the chain instead of a finisher, and Cobra Strike continue the chain even when blocked, it would go a long way to get her a more fluent attackstyle.

Again, thanks for the write-up, it's good stuff for the discussion.
Y