I am curious whether this is intentional design by Ubisoft or a bug in Gladiator's reflex block mechanic.
Yesterday, I did some testing in a custom match against a peacekeeper. As a gladiator, I attempted to block peacekeeper light attacks and found that I could not block any of them unless I guessed which direction the attack would come from and began the block before the peacekeeper initiated the attack. This was true even if my opponent told me the direction the attack would come from and I initiated the block with the right thumb stick the moment the peacekeeper's arm began to move.
As I watched the block indicator on my gladiator, I saw that the white indicator showing that my block was up was delayed in appearing after I moved the thumb stick. For example, there was a short period of time where the thumb stick was pushed all the way to the left, but the guard was still dark (not up). This short window of time was enough for the light attack to hit me.
To be clear, I am not discussing the documented problem that a character with reactive block cannot block the second light attack if the first light attack connects. That is a problem too, but not the one I am concerned with in this post.
My conclusion is that Gladiator cannot block the fastest light attacks. This means that some of the characters (PK, Shinobi, etc...) can successfully spam light attacks at the Gladiator.
I found a 7 month old reddit thread at the link below discussing a similar issue with Orochi. The author provides .gif images demonstrating that the Orochi suffers from this delay in block activating, but the warden does not.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitive...yth_or_actual/
As for what to do in light of this issue, I have read posts stating that while the Gladiator does suffer from this blocking problem, the fast light attacks can be parried. I have not tested this. It also occurred to me to dodge light attacks thrown by the fastest assassins, but that leaves you open to guard breaks. Not a good solution.