Lawbringer's place in duel is very unhealthy right now. He is designed to be a defensive fortress of a character that relies on strong parry options, the ability to initiate mixups off of blocked attacks, a hyper armored bash attack that is excellent for trading (with attacks specifically, more on this later) and a large health pool, meaning that he will win protracted battles of attrition. So what is the problem? The data even shows that he was among the top performing classes in Season 4, despite many feeling that he was too weak. Proceeding, I will analyze the Lawbringer's tools and describe the impact that I see on the game, what things I think may be contributing to poor duel health and what I think should change to turn the Lawbringer into a fun character to play and to play against without fundamentally changing his identity as a counterattacker and a defensive powerhouse.
First, the shove. Shove is in an interesting place in the game (I could write an entire post just talking about the nuances and finnicky nature of the shove.) When it hits, it temporarily disables your opponent's ability to guard (and parry) attacks, but not to dodge, roll or deflect. This means that when shoved, the opponent is put into a mixup situation. They can either attempt to dodge the attack, which is vulnerable to a guard break (in theory,) or they can wait if they read a guard break to avoid potentially scarier mixup options. Against certain characters, this is a somewhat clean 50/50. Against others, it starts to break down. Additionally, for whatever reason, the hyper armor DOES NOT armor through bash attacks. This combined with its slow startup means that in clashes with bashes, it will lose the majority of the time. Changes to the shove will be at the center of my vision for Lawbringer, but before that, we have to talk about the elephant in the room.
Guard cancel shove, also known as shove on guard or shove on block. This feature is absolutely vital to Lawbringer's identity in dominion as a defender, and is probably the sole reason for his anomalous win rate in duels. This tool is absurdly powerful, basically turning any blocked attack into a mixup for the Lawbringer. This has the extremely unfortunate side effect of making it pretty much entirely undesirable to ever throw an attack at the Lawbringer, with most people opting to either spam bashes or repeatedly feint into guard break. Seeing as how some of Lawbringer's coolest tools originate from parries, this is pretty undesirable for both Lawbringers and their opponents. As Lawbringer, you WANT your opponents to attack into you.
With this in mind, I feel like there's really only one solution. Guard cancel shove has to be removed. It simply injures the risk reward of throwing attacks into Lawbringer too much, and prevents other changes which Lawbringer desperately needs from being made. Seeing as how its fairly crucial to Lawbringer's identity in dominion, I think that it could be added back in as a feat, but I don't think it has a place in duel. So, change #1, remove guard cancel shove. Put your pitchforks down Lawbringer mains, because I promise that by the end of this post, this change will pay off.
Alright, with guard cancel shove gone, the incentive is starting to come back to throw regular attacks into Lawbringer, but Lawbringer's lackluster ability to punish bashes means that there's still no real incentive against abusing them. Currently, against bash attacks, Lawbringer can do pretty much one thing, which is dodge into shove. However, since the light attack followup is not guaranteed, this is a pretty lackluster punish. Additionally, certain characters such as Conqueror have bash attacks with a fast enough startup that they can dodge the light attack followup AND initiate their bash fast enough that the guard break meant to punish this dodge will rebound. This means that for certain characters, landing a shove actually threatens the Lawbringer more than the person who was shoved.
In order for bash attacks to work as a concept, there needs to be a pronounced risk involved. Against Lawbringer, this risk is extremely flimsy. However, I think that the mixup off the shove (rather than simply a guaranteed attack like Conqueror has) is one of Lawbringer's more interesting traits and deserves to stay. Therefore, instead of improving Lawbringer's ability to dodge and punish bashes, I think it would be an interesting idea to improve Lawbringer's capacity to pre-emptively stuff bashes. Change #2: improve the armor on Lawbringer's shove to begin slightly earlier, and so that it absorbs bash type attacks. And, in addition to that Change #3: when Lawbringer's shove hits an opponent during the startup or activity (not recovery) of a bash type attack, it drains additional stamina.
The goal of changes #2 and #3 are to give Lawbringer something to do in neutral against characters who can comfortably rely on bashes as a primary means of attack. The ability to armor through bashes and drain stamina means that opponents must use these moves more judiciously, and that those who attempt multiple bash type attacks in a row without waiting for stamina to recover put themselves at risk of exhaustion. I think that this change will improve Lawbringer's feel and identity as a tank as well, by giving him a more proactive defense against bashes and allow him to crush offense in the same way that guard cancel shove used to.
Guard cancel shove leaving means that Lawbringer is now down one of his major sources of damage. Many people feel that Lawbringer's ability to be proactive is far too weak. This is likely by design, as Lawbringer was meant to be a primarily defensive character and counterattacker. However, I think that most players are in agreement that being a "defensive character" cannot simply mean that you must always wait for your opponent to initiate in order to get damage. You need to have the ability to be proactive and to create openings in your opponents defense. It's not fun to play against someone who only waits for you to initiate and then punishes you, and it's not fun as a defensive character to play against someone who is unwilling to attack.
Here is my proposal for a change to make Lawbringer proactive: change #4: Lawbringer's "Shove Mixup" can now be initiated even if the heavy attack is blocked (but not on whiff.) The idea behind this change is simple: it makes Lawbringer's heavy attacks threatening. This change increases the incentive to parry or dodge Lawbringer's heavy attacks, which means that mixups involving feints are now viable. For the sake of not turning Lawbringer into a terrifying monster against out of stamina opponents, this shove should be slower when the opponent is exhausted (a precedent set by the Gladiator's toe stab.)
Finally, some quality of life changes. Small changes that improve the consistency and overall risk/reward of the character without making fundamental structural changes to the character's design.
-Improve the consistency of feint into guard break catching backdodges. Feint into guard break should always catch dodges, simply put. Oftentimes after a shove, or when using the Judge, Jury, Executioner chain, the opponent will be put far enough away that they can simply dodge backwards to avoid feint into guard break.
-Reduce the recovery time of the light attack in Lawbringer's "Swift Justice" chain. Currently, dodging this attack gives many characters a free guard break unless the final heavy attack is thrown. This often means that if the Lawbringer's light attack after shove is dodged, he is susceptible to many characters' strongest punishes. The risk of a light attack should not be that steep.
-Improve the consistency of the heavy attack in the Book, Chapter, Verse chain to catch dodges. Currently, a few characters (Conqueror, Raider) possess defensive options which negate both Shove > Light Attack and Shove > Guard Break. Against these characters, Shove > Heavy Attack will sometimes catch dodges, but it is extremely inconsistent
Questions, opinions are greatly appreciated, especially from highly experienced Lawbringer mains.