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Highlander cannot guarantee any directional heavy from a grab. That is f**ked up.
Highlander cannot grab from a parry, so he can't even take advantage of a grab to shove someone into a wall since he can't heavy from a grab. That is f**ked up.
If you parry into offensive stance, the kick is not guaranteed, so you have to 50/50 with a Caber Toss (which doesn't have steamlined timings) and hope they dodge into it, just to land an Offensive Stance heavy. Which does less damage than a DEFENSIVE stance heavy overhead. That is f**ked up.
Highlander's Stamina costs need to be reduced. These costs are nuts. Especially in offensive stance. Since I have to cancel into it out of a parry, then do a minimum of 3 moves just to hope I confirm some damage, I am at severe risk of being OOS for playing BETTER? What?
This character has no double light specials, so why are there so many situations you only allow a light attack confirmation?
Also, on the subject of lights, the previous feedback from Kweassa and that other guy are on point. Swapping the Offensive and Defensive stance Light Attack properties makes a lot more sense in execution. Frankly, even if you don't, the range of offensive stance lights are way too short - even after a parry, especially on slanted ground, I can't even land an Offensive LIGHT attack because it won't reach or the attack goes through their body and doesn't hit. That and the huge stamina costs, I can't take advantage of the properties the light attack gives because I risk OOS or can't finish the combo because of stamina.
Zone attack needs super armor, the very people you need it against are the ones most able to interrupt it with faster attacks. If you gave it hard stagger on normal block that would be nice, you say yourself it's one of the heaviest weapon's in combat history, the claymore. Currently it's free parry fodder after the first swing, heavy stagger on normal block would reduce this versus multiple people and make considering the second or third swings being canceled or not for chip damage a valid choice rather than suicide.
Offensive Stance overhead should be a premiere killing attack, like berzerker's, kensei's, and raider's combo zone. It does less damage than a defensive stance overhead. Please fix that. When I land a kick I should drop a dome cleaving meaty overhead claymore chop both players feel. Currently it's just a whack.
Really though, overall I have to say props. I love this character's intended design. It just needs some polish to work effectively in the game. Highlander is very cool, but some things definitely seem off or completely overlooked. Please investigate.
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To follow up politely, please spend a good 5 minutes in the reddit for competitive for honor, where they provide frame data and testing among the best that shows all my worst concerns and fears about Highlander are basically confirmed. While Gladiator seems to be at an okay starting point, Highlander, absolutely, is not. Poor damage, poor health, but is supposed to trade with super armor, and the super armor is slower than warlord or shugoki? The only thing confirmable off a LIGHT parry is the first hit of zone, same for grabs...and his lights are so slow people can parry them. Eventually people will feint a heavy to trick him into doing his light to counter it, then parry his light for their best punish, meanwhile he has literally no followup from a normal parry, and his "best" confirm from the best kind of parry (a light one) is a huge portion of his stamina to do only 25 damage that also can't execute. The more I learn and test and share with other Highlander players the worse and worse it gets. Who playtested this character before release? People are already saying he's worse off than Kensei with frame data to back it up. Offense stance is a joke for damage and his two mixups, kick with caber toss, and celtic curse crossups are both easily learned to avoid and will be downloaded in shorter time than Kensei overhead ender.
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Senior Member
The gaping irony is that the HL isn't too bad at all IF WE SUPPOSE THE META-FIX WAS INCLUDED WITH SEASON3 -- because under that standards, the HL would just have a slightly weaker parry punish than most, but have better post-parry mix-up tactics than most.
As it is, the HL is basically playing under the rules of the meta-fix by himself.
Senior Member
As for the parry regime I think I've got it figured out.
vs. heavy attacks
- no reason to use parry
- use supblock light for immediate counter attack - OF(offense form)- mix-up
- if for any reason you've parried a heavy, parry-OF-light- mix-up
vs. light attacks
- use parries vs. light attacks only
- parry-OF-heavy
- parry-OF-kcik-heavy
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Managed to get Highlander to rep 1 lv 15 today, and I've got a fair bit of experience against all the other heroes with him.
The fact that his guard break range is so short is only made worse by the lack of any real punish unless there's a wall nearby (his throw range is surprisingly large). Even so, it feels awkward to only deal 40 damage with a top heavy since it seems like such a powerful move from the animation, sound effect, and everything else. Overall, that particular move is very much the standard by which the rest of Highlander's damage numbers are judged, and since this is less than even a warden's top heavy (which is confirmed off of a light parry as well as a wallsplat) does more damage and a berzerker's top heavy does 55 damage (15 more) for nearly the exact same attack speed. I feel like this doesn't really make sense in practice.
As some people mentioned above, the light attack properties feel backwards, but with the offensive light attacks being so blindingly fast, I can't imagine not interrupting an opponent's attack unless it had hyper armor.
His dashing heavy is one of his primary opening abilities, as it's able to be delayed pretty late, which causes a lot of people to fail in their parry attempts. I feel like it may need an adjustment or two in stamina cost to switch directions with the move, simply because it feels like this is the main move people use as it opens up a lot of combos.
I feel that his parry punish needs to be just a bit more streamlined. As it stands, you get nothing on a heavy parry unless there's a wall involved that holds them close enough for you to guard break them, and you get (at most) a zone attack cancel (which eats up about 60% of your stamina bar alone) from a light parry. This seems like way too much of a price to pay for not much damage. I'd recommend allowing you to switch into offensive stance immediately upon throwing or parrying someone, with a single offensive heavy guaranteed. This reduces his overall stamina cost to do the roughly the same amount of damage (enough to actually beat an opponent with a parry when both are at critical health) as any other character's parry punish.
I'd like some more control over Highlander's zone attack. Right now, it feels like I have no control over where he's spinning and it becomes necessary to cancel after the first hit in order to conserve stamina while trying to clear soldier waves. It feels like a nobushi zone but much more stamina draining and killing less soldiers per swing.
In all, I love playing Highlander. He's a breath of fresh air in a meta that's been so focused on not taking damage and he's a unique character in both his design, sound design, and play style. I love what you guys have done with him and for the most part he's one of the most balanced characters in the game. However, his sheer number of options at any given time is staggering, which can make it a bit difficult to defend against him at all.
Senior Member
Again, the following are guaranteed:Originally Posted by RLTygurr Go to original post
- heavy attack parry (hold button) - OF - light
- light attack parry (hold button) - OF - hvy
Senior Member
Crushing Counterstrike on ALL sides is OP.
Before git gud crowd loses their marbles, just swallow your anger and read below.
Highlander has Crushing Counterstrike on all sides where his light beats incoming attack and deals very high damage, the same skill Warden has on top lights. The way this is put in action is exactly the same way with Valkyrie light superior block game. This is a skill I practiced often with my Valkyrie lights superior block property, instead of parrying incoming attacks I just light into my opponent's incoming attack. Since Valkyrie after parry game is not very strong anyway, I often choose to do so in a safer way that deals with feint games better.
Here is the thing; on Valkyrie this is pretty balanced since her lights do quite low damage. On the other hand Highlander Crushing Counterstrike, just like Warden's, deals a tremendous amount of damage. This means any attempt at going on offensive vs Highlander, even with lights, is extremely lopsided in terms of risk vs reward. If he beats incoming attacks in a 1 in 3 rate he comes on top of that trade.
Highlander toolkit is strong enough with its mixups. I tested his Celtic Curse Top>Side mixup vs Warden Top light with 500ms thrown without changing guard direction (already on top block); and Highlander still beats it in terms of speed. He has UI on his heavies for trading. And those are just defensive bits in his kit without Caber Toss mixups.
When on top of those Highlander has access to crushing counterstrike on all sides he becomes way too dangerous to attempt to on offensive against. This is forcing me to turtle real hard vs him. Last thing we want in this game is another moveset that forces people to turtle real hard due to how heavy it punishes on mistakes. On the Highlander's case, throwing any attack is a mistake.
A move that is so easy to pull off, that punishes any attack will result in making heroes without unblockables to be obsolete vs Highlander. Champs without unblockables already play subpar, and frankly unblockable attacks are not the healthiest thing in the game in the first place. Unless this is addressed gameplay will become even more so bland and boring.
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Unfortunately, his light attacks are slower than a Centurion's heavy. His parry frames do not start until around 300ish ms into the move, so counting guard switch speed and attack start up, it is actually impossible for him to counterstrike anything on reaction besides heavy spam. He cannot reactive counter lights period. Also, the attack is slow enough that you can feint a heavy and parry his light on reaction, giving you the largest punish window in the game. This is especially effective if you are suspicious that he is baiting you. So, unless you are both repeatedly spamming heavies/easily read dodging or jumping attacks with long startup and refusing to feint, there isn't really a situation where he can "spam" crushing counterstrikes.
