Junior Member
What the Conqueror needs is MOMENTUM.
And by this, I mean a mechanic, called Momentum. Just to note before going forward, this is not intended to propose a huge changes to Conq in terms of moves or mechanics but instead:
- Give incentives for actual viable offense outside of Shield Bash and whatever followups you can achieve from that and parries
- Give the ability for Conq to change up it's gameplay and be less predictable while keeping true to the uniqueness of the class: No true feints and defensively focused.
The Goal of this is to also provide value to Conq's less useful abilities, such as his:
- Area Attack
- Infinite Light Chain
- Charged Heavy
The Conq already has this sort of mechanic built in with his charged heavy. You hold heavy and over time it charges up to do more damage...
My suggestion is that, what if instead, the attack came out MUCH faster,making it more difficult to defend against, and allowing the Conqueror less predictable ways to attack.
Basically we would just take this change and add it to three abilities to add momentum to the Conq's next attack:
- A light/heavy that does not hit or is simply blocked by the enemy (Interactions with the enemy other than blocks however, such as Parries, Deflects, and Confirmed Hits would mean the next attack would be standard speed)
- Area Attack
- Charged Heavy
Momentum could be built the following ways:
- Throwing out an attack and missing/being blocked would add momentum to your next light/heavy attack, thus making his infinite chain a little scarier since every other attack would come out significantly faster. This also gives you an option a la the Valk's famous shield sweep combo to intentionally whiff your first attack to close distance and gain momentum on the next strike, attacking in a different direction at a much higher speed.
- Taking the above into account, the Conq's infinite chain in and of itself could be it's own sort of attack mode, with a slow light, FAST LIGHT, slow light, FAST LIGHT, slow light, FAST HEAVY rhythm with lots of direction changes as you move forward agressively toward an enemy, which is how you would expect a flail to be used. You swing it around and build up momentum, releasing it in a hard, fast blow against an enemy.
- Doing an area attack would add momentum to his next attack, and allow him to mix things up from that sustained Area Attack stance. You could area attack stance to hold an opponent at bay and then cancel it into a momentum-powered attack, sort of like a more stamina-costly hidden stance with no dodge start-up. Ideally the cost of the Area Attack should be reduced by at least 50% since it does very little damage pretty much noone gets hit by it unless they've been GB'd.
- You can also just attack with a charged heavy, which while it actually has a very long reach, is very telgraphed attack with a really weak feint-ish option that is vulnerable to parry and guard break. Making it come out much faster adds actual value to this. Maybe adding the ability to cancel the charged heavy into a momentum-powered light would be a useful mix-up tool as well.
A KEY THING TO NOTE: these additions are NOT SAFE.The attacks are faster but that speed comes in a mechanically fair manner that you can play against. I think these changes would open up a more active play style from the Conqueror which I think we can all agree is needed.
Adding more recovery frames to his basic shield bash would be necessary, to make whiffing that ability more punishing, but I think you would see a lot more offensive play from Conqs with this change and the old dodge into SB quasi-vortex would mostly be relegated to punishing enemies who are out of stamina. It might also be a good idea to significantly lower the endurance cost from his regular non-momentum-powered attacks to add incentive to throw out lots of attacks to charge their next attack.
I also feel like this nails what the class is supposed to be - a mostly defensive character with the ability to do powerful, damaging strikes.
Member
Community Manager
Great ideas for conqueror! Thanks for sharing them with us. We likely won't see significant changes to the conqueror until after the release of the defense meta patch. Because he relies heavily on defensive play, we want to see how his current iteration performs following the defense patch and then make the changes he needs.
