deep talk (with some aramusha talk)
Settle in this is a long post. There will be no TLDR. What started my deep thought session about overall balance was Aramusha. You see he's considered trash by most because he's got no openers. it's entirely possible to block everything he does. This combined with the fact that Aramusha NEEDS to get in to start his combo in the first place and you can perceive the issue people have. A common suggestion (one i've even suggested at first) was to make his heavy finishers unblockables. This would be to force a reaction which creates an opening.
However I feel this change is bad for 2 reasons. One of which will stem into the over arching meta talk. The first reason this isn't a good change is because it actually doesn't change anything in the super top tier of play. His heavies while faster in combo are still slow enough to be parried pretty easily. So letting it fly won't really work out. And you're always wanting to as Aramusha cancel your heavy finishers with deadly feint anyway to continue the damage. Even if those unblockable finishers could reliably land (for argument sake) it would ruin his identity as an infinite chain user. Why would you ever go for more damage when you could reliably and pretty cheaply just let an unblockable fly for easy damage?
The second reason which sparks the meta talk however I think is arguably more important to think about. Lets take a step back for a second though. Why are S tier heros (pk, warlord, shaman, and glad) S tier? Well 2 reasons. first is that they don't have bad matchups. There are heros out there that might have one or 2 things they can use against these heros. But that alone isn't strong enough to make it a bad matchup. Just slightly unfavorable. The other thing is they have an opener (pk is an exception.) Which is generally an unblockable from neutral.
Now why do we covet these unblockables? Because turtling was too easy/too rewarding. Back before we knew the devs were going to make drastic changes to the game, before they were basically going to rewrite it from the ground up this was the solution we as a community came up with. What i'm getting at is the need for unblockable openers isn't actually required now due to the devs changes. It's an outdated solution much like getting free GB's on blocks for certain attacks when not playing Conq.
I can already hear typing though saying something like "but Raime, someone who sits back and never attempts parrying will still actually work without openers!" This is true, even if the developers make the right nerfs/changes to parrying it's still not going to stop someone from being able to play defensive/passive. But the changes have made it far less rewarding. And while it sucks to see or fight against realistically speaking not even half of the community is actually capable of reacting and reading highly consistently. We want defensive play to be less rewarding. But we don't want it to be obsolete. Going full on aggression and hyper punishing defense in the process is just as bad as the defensive meta.
You have to consider what kind of impact your changes will have on lower tiers of play as well. Looking from top tier down is good for identifying problems. But not for the entirety of balance. If the supposed Aramusha change was put in play it would more than likely result in top tier having little to no effect and lower tiers having much more frustration. Also while for honor is not a full fledged fighting game it's still not "bad" to have a handful of amazing characters and mostly good characters.
The launch issue was the fact that defensive play was too rewarding ON TOP OF most heros having poor half done kits. in OG for honor if your hero wasn't terrible it had a gimmick that busted the current game. I'm not saying that Aramusha is perfect. Nor that we shouldn't strive to make the OG heros (and a few dlc ones) better. I'm merely stating that it's not a requirement to have an opener to have a good kit at most skill levels. Which is where Aramusha currently sits. he's playable at majority of skill tiers.
What we should be shooting for (base game mechanic changes aside) is for designing full fledged kits for everyone. Making sure everyone has mix ups.
Every hero can receive some changes or tweaks to be made better as a whole. Wether that be some new moves, some number tweaks, or just a few bug fixes. So that's pretty much the extent of the deep talk. However I do have some Aramusha suggestions that i've been thinking over the past few days while dueling exclusively with Aramusha. (mostly with my sparring partner but a decent amount with randoms.)
I still stand by them fixing being able to be GBed mid light. It's obviously a bug. Then we get to blade blockade. I originally did some testing that stated on reflex heros if you BB a light or heavy Ara's top heavy should always land unless their guard was up top already. And on reflex heros it only seemed guaranteed on heavies. However further playing with him has shown this isn't the case. It's actually depending entirely on what hero you are versing.
That's just too situational. However even if they nerfed the damage on the top heavy after BB it would still be a bit too good if it was always guaranteed. I feel like the BB choices were meant for specific situations. In the case of top heavy I think is meant to be used if you BB a heavy. As from all attacks I tested it felt the most consistent with heavy attacks. So making it so top heavy is guaranteed if you BB any heavy should be the fix here. The light follow up should get a small damage buff from 10 to somewhere between 12-15 damage.
I believe the devs intended for this to be used for light attacks you BBed. However if we only did the first buff for BB people would just drift to using only that and just blocking lights. I don't think it's unreasonable to buff it's damage slightly considering no follow up after is guaranteed. But it still allows for attempted mix ups sort of like raiders zone mix up. Now the side heavies. Currently this is only guaranteed against low recovery attacks. Too situational. This move also gives hyper armor which makes me believe the devs intended this for team fights where Aramusha is surrounded and he uses this to trade with someone. I can't speak to the effectiveness of this in 4v4. However I think it needs a change to be made viable in duels/brawls.
I suggest we make it so you can soft cancel into GB. This means the opponent has to decide if i'm going to let it fly or cancel it. If he looks for the parry I can cancel into maybe a confirmed GB. if he doesn't want to chance and tries to dodge away if I make the read I can soft cancel into a GB and catch him mid dodge. and because it's got hyper armor with good damage of 40 trading likely won't be worth it. Of course like warden he can simply unlock and roll away. But that's fine. Finally we get to the kick. I think it is meant to be used to knock someone into a wall for alright damage (28) or to remove pressure/put someone on the defense due to the good stamina damage you do. You can follow this up with a dodge forward attack that is cancelable if the person attempts to punish your dodge or look to parry your dash. So overall the reward is fine.
However there is a weird delay to the kick in which certain situations makes it not confirmable even if you tap x the moment you BB someone. So this should be fixed. I don't think you need to be able to tech a GB attempt if you're in BB nor do I think the delay after using it should be shortened or removed. it's really not a difficult move to pull off and that is a fine punishment for improperly using it and getting baited. It takes some getting used to for sure but it's not impractical to use in really any match up at all. It's rewards are the issue. Not how it's used.
The last suggestion I currently have involves his zone. I think you should be able to soft cancel the second part into a light. This would technically give Aramusha a more reliable way in if someone gets hit by the first part or you purposefully whiff the first part to bait. And it fits with his kit thematically as having lots of flow. The stamina cost is already pretty heafty to zone cancel so I don't think it would be an issue. But I think to be fair anyway the soft cancel light would always come from top. Makes the most sense because you need to go top anyway in order to do combos without deadly feint. It would make it some what predictable as well.
I don't think he needs any kinds of nerfs. I understand how frustrating it can be to verse on console and or with a reflex guard hero. But it's no where near impossible if you actually understand how his kit works. I won't write out literally everything he can do combo wise (saving that for the actual guide) all I can say is after nearly a week of sparring with my friend and fighting some higher skilled players they've been catching on and being able to stop/escape the combos I use. And I do vary quite often. I'm also aware that with even slightly laggy matches this makes it much harder to deal with.
But I really don't think we should ever make balance changes based on connection issues. Hopefully when the developers add in the new lag compensation system and have dedicated servers this won't be much of an issue. Until then all I can suggest is blocking up top, forget trying to parry mid combo unless you're actually really good at parrying, and learning how to play aramusha yourself. You need to build reflexes against him and that takes time. But understanding his kit via playing it will help. I mean that's why centurion shananagins don't really work on me. I played the dude for a really long time.
Anyway if you made it this far I appreciate you taking the time to read. Have a nice day.
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