Centurion isn't busted | Forums

[Knight_Raime]

This is real talk. If you're not willing to accept some fault of your struggle against him is on you or the tech you currently use don't bother to post. I'm 100% fine with him being nerfed. So please don't take this as a cent main trying to "excuse his opness." For those of you who don't know me i'm an xbox player. Probably above average statistically. I duel 90% of the time. brawl the other 10%. Since I had an open dialogue with someone else about centurion's specific issues in 4v4 I am aware of how he is there. And I agree he's a problem there. But i'm not going to debate that today. Today is all about his design as a character. And dispelling/dismantling some claims or arguments against him.

Centurion is an in your face brawl style hero. He's meant to apply a lot of pressure. He's meant to by super punishing if you let him get in. But most of all he's all about getting you into OOS. This is all very obvious if you step back and look at what he has. He's got low damage per attack. His heavies themselves are the weakest in the game if I remember correctly. Charging them up only adds something like 5 damage. (you have to charge fully.) and his lights are on par with valks. and hers are low damage as well.
His combo's/ punishes are where his damage becomes good. and your stamina drains massively. It's because of these 2 things that we understand what kind of character he's meant to be.

We can debate here forever on how much he should be punishing you for one mistake. I personally believe we need heros that have this sharp of a curve for punishment. Though i'm always for games that have harsh learning curves. As being slapped once or twice isn't as strong of a motivator as having lost a lot of progress as an example. Part of the reason the defensive meta is hated so much, at least in my opinion, is because it's very safe, very forgiving play. if the centurion lacked anyway to punish someone decently he'd end up just as bad as most other B tier heros. Him being stronger as a turtle isn't his fault. it's the current game design. which is being addressed hopefully very soon.

So enough beating around the bush. Centurion frankly lacks in 1v1 play. A good turtle is stupidly difficult to open. A majority of what people complain about with him not only hardly applies in a 1v1 situation against a competent player. But specifically against a smart turtle. You've got no way to open him. Kick will be dodged from neutral. A heavy thrown after a kick will be parried/deflected. same with a light. Your heavy soft feint gb mix up will not work from neutral. You either let the heavy go and it's parried. or you cancel and GB and it gets teched. The timing vairation doesn't help neutral in the slightest.
This frankly leaves the centurion with one thing. Parry punishing. Basically the centurion against a good player only has parry punishing and wall splat combos. Good luck trying to do either of those against a smart turtle.

His lights are basically useless because they are too telegraphed. He's not PK where it's a stab. he's flailing it around like he's never picked up a sword before. His zone can't be canceled. and thus is easy parry bait. The GB after any light is double useless since lights are hard to confirm in the first place. and beyond that it's super easy to tech. And uncharged jab is only good for wall splats. But you can get that splat easier from other sources.
I understand how annoying it is to sit in the "20 second cutscene" of his combo. But the combo needs to stay. We can tweak the values. And by combo I mean the pin into charged jab into pounce. I'm fine with the light parry punish being nerfed so long as his kit as a whole gets brought up to compensate.

So lets get into these insane claims people are making:

~"centurion has infinite release possibilities with his charged attacks." No. While you could in theory do this there are only 4 prominent release times for the heavy. uncharged, slight charged, half charged, and fully charged. Uncharged and fully charged will be something you can and should be getting down consistently already. slight charged is the same as his hard feinted heavy. It's only going to get people who attempt to parry every attack. The half charge one is you need to look for. since it's where I and many other cents will either go all the way or soft feint into GB. If you soft feint earlier than that it IMO feels like a normal GB attempt from neutral. and it gets teched more often because of that. It basically just comes down to knowing animations. Something an average or less than average player would struggle with. but not a decent player.

~"heavies faster than most lights." This is true. But this is his thing. Just as with Nobushi your lights are just extra. her game is around soft feinting and heavies. If his uncharged heavies hit as hard as some of the other really damaging heavies I could see this as a valid complaint. But really. and I hate to say it. If you're already not getting the hang of parrying/reacting to 600/500ms attacks you're simply just not skilled. And don't bring up something like "pk/valk light spam." their attacks are not hard to deal with because of the speed. their attacks are difficult because they are not telegraphed very well. Point in case centurion lights are 500ms but they get parried very often by most people.

~"centurion is a close ranged character but his heavies have insane range." Close range still rings true. his range on his standard lights and heavies are very short. But that doesn't make him exempt from gap closers. Zerker also is close range. but the jumping attack can be extended quite a bit. Further more the farther away he is from you the more time you're given to react. Again. If you're being hit by an attack from him at max range that's your fault. It's not like shinobi where you have noticeably less time to react.

~"centurion has insane tracking." So does every hero that has any kind of charge/jump attack. Lock on is the cause of this. You're dodging early so the game corrects before the attack comes out. Other cases are mainly latency issues. Lets put it this way. Most don't like being locked into his combo. Yet people also don't like that they can dodge incorrectly and still be hit. How is the centurion supposed to do anything if he can't get consistent damage with a combo? how is a charged heavy ever supposed to land if a parry doesn't give one? Or if you could dodge wrong and it never corrects itself?

~"centurion does too much stamina damage." No. As explained prior. It's VERY hard for him to get any confirmable damage. OOS is the only place centurion can actual excel in what he does. Because the player is forced to either dodge everything or parry him to stop the onslaught.

~"centurion denies feints." Yes he does. And there is nothing wrong with that. If you could feint and parry his heavy easily that would just further make it so centurion has an even harder time getting in. Further more just because the centurion can do something another hero can't doesn't mean it should be nerfed/removed. It makes them unique. That being said I as a centurion have been feint baited before. so it's still a viable option. Just not for every hero. And this is also fine. Because in fighting games bad match ups exist.

That's all i'm going to write up about that stuff for now. Unless someone challenges me with something else in the replies. Now lets get onto changes about the centurion. As I said from the beginning i'm not against him being nerfed. If it's a 4v4 nerf I don't want it heavily impacting his 1v1 game. If he's going to be nerfed in his 1v1/2v2 game he needs to be compensated for it else where. So 4v4 nerfs. Well they are already going to give an escape window after pins so you can't be pinned endlessly. But from what I talked about with someone else his other big issue really just lies in being able to overlap his moves with another centurion. My suggested solution (aside from hero limits) would be to add a system like smash brothers. Where using the same move repeatedly with in a short window of time would cause deminishing returns. In smash this results in less damage and less knock back. Though this would require a lot of tweaking for this game as it's mechanically more complex than smash.

In terms of 1v1. I hear a lot of people want 2 things. A removal of the pin combo. and a removal of his light parry punish. I'd be fine with removing the light parry punish if we buffed elsewhere. This is what i'm thinking. Reduce his dodge recover. he's not a heavy. this would allow him to punish things like a whiffed headbutt. Allow him to cancel his zone after the first hit. This would buff his kick. And force the opponent to rest guard in one side. making his other directional attacks more useful. Make uncharged jab safe. It honestly doesn't see much use. if it was safe people would at least try using it in situations where jabs are not guarenteed. make the grab after a light faster and harder to tech. This just plain needs to happen. It will give him more mix up options. Add superior block during start up of the charged heavies.
Makes it easier for him to use his charged heavies from neutral and adding a skill element to letting go at the right time to counter an attack. Lastly add a light into heavy combo. This would make his combat flow a lot more evenly. and give more use to his light attacks whilst not taking away the use of his heavies.

So basically all the stuff said here would nerf him in 4v4. slightly nerf him in 1v1/2v2 (by removing the light parry punish) but also buff him a good bit in that area without becoming stronger in 4v4. Anyway this is probably the last i'll comment on the centurion outside of the devs making statements or changes to him. I'm quite tired of defending this guy especially when a majority of the people who are complaining about him just plain don't understand him and would rather blame him over their own mistakes. I get that not everyone is great at the game and there isn't anything wrong with being frustrated over a hero. I just don't enjoy when people take the easy route and place blame elsewhere. (this doesn't apply to people who complain about multiple centurions in 4v4.)

[The_B0G_]

I agree with you that in 1v1 MOST, not all Centurions are not a big threat, you do however get Cents that feint constantly that you just can't kerp up with.

I've seen one feint about 6 time in 5 seconds, when a player is skilled enough to do this it makes the Cent extremely hard to read, and this is possible because he feints cost him barely any stamina.

The only real issue I have in 1v1 with him that doesn't tie directly to the skill of the player using him is his tracking, I know you touched on this and I know what your saying in some of his moves, but once both his feet are in the air and you dodge, he shouldn't be able to do a 180 in mid air and land his stab. You can't argue that fact.

Also when you dodge backwards when you already have a pretty good distance seperating you he glides above the ground for 5 or 6 feet after coming short in his attack before finishing his 15-20 foot standing jump at you.

You have a lot of good points, but you can't say his tracking is fine.

[Knight_Raime]

I agree with you that in 1v1 MOST, not all Centurions are not a big threat, you do however get Cents that feint constantly that you just can't kerp up with.

I've seen one feint about 6 time in 5 seconds, when a player is skilled enough to do this it makes the Cent extremely hard to read, and this is possible because he feints cost him barely any stamina.

The only real issue I have in 1v1 with him that doesn't tie directly to the skill of the player using him is his tracking, I know you touched on this and I know what your saying in some of his moves, but once both his feet are in the air and you dodge, he shouldn't be able to do a 180 in mid air and land his stab. You can't argue that fact.

Also when you dodge backwards when you already have a pretty good distance seperating you he glides above the ground for 5 or 6 feet after coming short in his attack before finishing his 15-20 foot standing jump at you.

You have a lot of good points, but you can't say his tracking is fine.

Are you referring to his hard feint? I haven't bothered paying attention to it's stamina cost because I honestly don't use it. the timing on it is too weird for any practical use at the moment imo.
When you say both of his feet in the air are you referring to his jump attack? They could nerf the tracking on that. I'm mainly referring to the tracking on his charged heavies.
Dodging backwords is never a good thing to do unless you're the PK or the shinobi. No one else that i'm aware of has enough distance gained from a back dodge to reliably escape things. Side dodges should be what most people use for most heros.

[The_B0G_]

Are you referring to his hard feint? I haven't bothered paying attention to it's stamina cost because I honestly don't use it. the timing on it is too weird for any practical use at the moment imo.
When you say both of his feet in the air are you referring to his jump attack? They could nerf the tracking on that. I'm mainly referring to the tracking on his charged heavies.
Dodging backwords is never a good thing to do unless you're the PK or the shinobi. No one else that i'm aware of has enough distance gained from a back dodge to reliably escape things. Side dodges should be what most people use for most heros.

Yes I'm referring to his jump attack. I use back dodge sometimes because I play 95% dominion, dodging to the sides still leaves me open to attacks from other players on his team.

Like I said, there is already quite a bit of distance between us when I use back dodge to begin with, he justs seems to sometimes glide above the ground for the last 5 feet to get to me sometimes.

[Shakti.]

OOOh yhea man. SO if Centurion sucks so much why you play him? YOu like big guys screaming stupid latin phrases all day long? No you like it because you win a lot with it at expence of every other class. COme on. Let's defend the undefendable. A good Centutions Dominates the opponent 4 out of 5 times. If u think Cent isn t dtrong you are not good with him.

[Knight_Raime]

Yes I'm referring to his jump attack. I use back dodge sometimes because I play 95% dominion, dodging to the sides still leaves me open to attacks from other players on his team.

Like I said, there is already quite a bit of distance between us when I use back dodge to begin with, he justs seems to sometimes glide above the ground for the last 5 feet to get to me sometimes.

Well as I said they can nerf the tracking on his jump attack. I'd be fine with that. as for your statement i've really only noticed that in games with connection issues. maybe that's the cause?

[Knight_Raime]

OOOh yhea man. SO if Centurion sucks so much why you play him? YOu like big guys screaming stupid latin phrases all day long? No you like it because you win a lot with it at expence of every other class. COme on. Let's defend the undefendable. A good Centutions Dominates the opponent 4 out of 5 times. If u think Cent isn t dtrong you are not good with him.

1) I didn't say he sucked. Me saying his 1v1 game isn't good/amazing doesn't mean he's bad.
2) I play the centurion (besides loving roman stuff) Because I like his style. He punches and kicks people.
3) Centurion isn't strong in 1v1. I'm not the only person who thinks this. Players that are recognized to be some of the best in the community also believe this.
He's at the top of B tier. which if you want to be technical still means he's rather good. But he's not better than anyone in A tier or above. That being PK, conq, warden, warlord, and shinobi.
I could go get people to vouch for my skill. But. I don't really think it's worth the effort. if all you can do to "counter" my detailed post is tell me i'm bad then I really need not waste time in responding to you. So unless you can actually counter anything i've said you won't be receiving any more replies from me.

And if you next reply is more of the same or worse you'll be muted like every other person who can't have a decent respectful discussion.

[A4einboy]

everyone that dosent like him is just upset that they cant turtle anymore and in 1v1 hes not that good so i cant see a nerf anytime soon

[Herbstlicht]

To be blunt: I think you are wrong.
Why?
First if all, cent makes a incredible turtle with the biggest punishing options.
Second: people on console will never ever be able to perfectly react on all 500ms lights. Never. Sometimes, it does seem rather easy. I guess that is when you have host status. Other times, the indicator appears together with the damage taken from the second hit. When it comes to reactability, he is not worse or better then shin or pk (shin getting kick to 600ms nerf soon) - but he definatly is one of the better turtle openers. Despite his swiftness, he is a feint king. Why?
Combine the fastest heavys that force reactions with fast lights and the player almost always near the dodge key... is there another class with that much stamina that can so reliably feint for free parrys or gb's? You truly underestimate your class.

So in my opinion, centurion is so much more broken then any other class in this game. Even in 1on1. But his true nature geta revealed in 4on4, scaring possibly thousands of players away from the game. You want to keep this guy the way it is? Play without people like me that like control of their character and would like some resemblance of balance. My most played heroes btw: Nobushi, Kensei, Orochi.

[Knight_Raime]

everyone that dosent like him is just upset that they cant turtle anymore and in 1v1 hes not that good so i cant see a nerf anytime soon

Except centurion doesn't do anything to good turtles though?
Centurion doesn't have any reliable openers.