Junior Member
Let me start off with how much i love orochi as he is. I love the orochi, he's a good balanced character that works very well off of being quick and dodging. He has, in my opinion, the best deflect in the game.
However, In comparison to the other assassins in the game he is lacking greatly. He compares more to a vanguard except for the reflex guard and the deflect capabilites. There are complaints about his over hand heavy dealing too much damage, this is nonsense. He deals a little over a bar of health which is the same or less than most other characters, this doesn't need changed. His light attacks are slow. They are sooooo slow. I parry him with such ease it's ridiculous. He uses a single katana. His style of fighting should use two hands for increased speed on his lights rather than swining wildly with one hand. He should have a faster light attack to be on the same level as a peacekeeper or a shinobi. The beserker has the best feint and also has hyper armor and tracking that follows you through riptide strike. Peacekeeper has one of the fastest light attacks as does the shinobi both with scary tracking.
I think storm rush should be harder to block, i think his lights to should be faster, i think riptide strike should have a larger window, typically i will accidentally parry people instead of using it. Crashing wave has no pursing capability in my opinion, maybe increase it's speed or switch it for a storm rush looking thing so it chases better. Berserker pk and shinobi all chase very well.
Missing attacks with him is extremely punishable. Lightning strikes twice leaves you useless for a very long time i feel this should be shortened. He also has a shockingly low number of combos for a "hard" to play character. I would suggest allowing him to have a heavy light heavy combo as well as a light heavy light and a light heavy heavy(couldn't do it out of double top light of course)
Senior Member
So I am mostly fine as an orochi vs most classes and players since I try to utilize his speed and versitle moveset to constantly pressure and lure and counter my opponents. However, at higher level play the orochi struggles with turtles as we know so what he needs is more possibilities to open up opponents by breaking through their guard or lure them into attacking themselves.
I kind of agree that the sidelights could be a notch faster (although they are pretty fast already, yet too easily interrupted by a simple block or even a parry which can be easily done even if you focus on shutting down / guarding top stance.
I also like the idea that he should have more combo/mix up abilities but I am not certain if the devs see this character see the Orochi as someone that should be able to do lots of long lasting attack combinations but more swift precise and deadly strikes.
Since he is a counter attacker believe the key to a successful and substainable rework would be to approach his abilities to lure opponents into acting. If you could ensure that then I think we are on the right path as for now this is really his strong suit and his core theme.
So what have we got?
Riptide Strike for example can be followed up by a light on a whiff blow which is not commonly known by many players as normaly the recovery after that move is quite long for other actions so this is sometimes a nice way to get some damage in from getting an interrupting light in as the opponents throws an attack (in most cases heavies) as a reaction to that whiff.
We have the feints but I guess as for now side feints are mostly useless and top feints, well since everybody knows that in most cases the orochi tends to attack top or via zone it is tricky to fool somebody into throwing a parry since their best move is wait and block or go for a parry attempt for the second attack since feinting also has quite the drain on stamina and the orochi has not the luxary to feint like 3 times or more in a row without getting out of stamina. Also, you would not want that since he is squishy and basically should feint 1-2 approaches at most and then go for the opening. And here is the catch I think. As of now, changing directions of your attack and attacking that said opening costs to much time. I suggest to make this more quickly. So it is either tune down the recovery time from feinting or increasing the speed of the lights, maybe best to adjust both.
In general I feel that the orochi could use a little bit more of mobility as well. His forward lunge approach is quite limited to just Lightning Strike or stopping and to neutral and GB or going with the other standard choices in neutral. So if you have to cover some distance it is quite clear what the orochi is going to do. Either it is Lightning Strike or you have to he stops to stand right in your face. Unfortunately also his running attack comes from top and is not really fast so there is no alternative here.
I also like to feint a heavy on approach but again, a decent turtle would just wait and block incoming attacks if he notices you trying to lure him into a parry while keeping himself ready to tech that GB attempt any time. The only way to approach from neutral atm is switching between zone and top lights, maybe occasionally throwing in a side light but well that is really risky since it can be easily parried and also since there are classes that get sth out of a simple block. Maybe it would be interesting for the orochi to be able to go on with a combo chain on block, which I believe should also be available for other classes too (not for all, I think Valk and PK are probably good with their attacking speed already).
Of course the best way to open up a turtle is by having a quick unblockable (bash> than attack) to stagger and remove temporairly the guard. However I am not sure if we really want this since in the end it would come down to that every character in the game basically would need this kind of mechanic. It is either that, really quick attacks or tools to relyably fool the opponent and force them into action. I believe a softfeinting GB-attempt would help a lot here since a turtle would have to counter it with a GB.
We have Storm Rush which can be delayed to see if the opponent throws an attack to counter an immedite attack but well, against turtles this will not happen. I however read that in the open beta Storm Rush could be canceled into GB anytime. I believe that could be interesting to have as well since right now even if I try to use it after canceling the Storm Rush after a few steps in most cases I am just too far away from my opponent so I really would have to pull it off from a very close point.
Also additionally or instead I think it would be nice to be able to cancel it a little bit later, that would make the cancel then dash into GB in the current game a little bit more usable and perhaps also fair since it can be seen, but then again we would need additionally better leap options for a cancel into a dash attack (Lightning Strike).
Further thoughts:
I read somewhere that somebody suggested to add hyperarmor on Riptide Strike. Would be a nice to have, but I only see that as an addition and nothing that would change anything drastically for the orochi (and by all means not help him addressing his main problems).
His recovery after being hit or wallstunned to dodge is also way worse than his ability to parry. I think this might be a point that could be addressed too. I am however not certain if this would not lead big balance problems as some slower classes get some of their hits in this way. Concering the Cents Infinite (cornered + heavy + jab combo) again it would be interesting to have a way to escape it since the attacks can by no means be blocked as an assassin. Perhaps adding the possibility to deflect and GB only when out of stamina (OOS) to switch positions or push the opponent away would be a nice solution.
So these are my thoughts at this point. Please note that not everything together has to be taken as a full package as these are soley single suggestions and thoughts for possible enhancements from my perspective. Of course certain changes and additions to this class also means that most certainly others have to be reworked as well. I think at some point this is what needs to be done anyways since as of now every character seems to offer only very limited toolkits with not much room for different playstyles or mixups.
