kensei | Forums

[Awlkara]

I think I may be confusing his lights. One of them I can easily parry and one is so fast that I can barely see it coming.

I'm pretty sure it's his W+Spacebar that's the unreasonable one. 500ms is fine but my main point is that Kensei doesn't need to be as fast and overtooled as he is for how much he already has going for him.

If he becomes the standard then fine, I'd much rather characters like PK. LB, WL,Shugo and a few others to be buffed to his level.

[Arekonator]

They are both same speed except the helmspliter is further telegraphed by the dash.
What i am trying to explain his speed is on the lower side of average and his tools arent excessive. And yes, as far as i know he is considered sort of benchmark devs try to aim for. Vith various sucess.

[Knight_Raime]

Kensei needs a nerf all around. He should lose his HA, and his side dodge attacks. Hes a vanguard, not an assassin so why does he get a better attack than assassin's? He's not a heavy yet he has hyper armor.
The warden doesn't have a dodge attack, he doesn't even get a dodge gb, he gets hyper armor on a charged shoulder bash which usually get punished anyways.
The raider doesn't get any hyperarmor if my memory is correct, though he gets a dodge gb and you could argue the stunning tap is a type of dodge attack (I myself don't consider it a dodge attack.)
The Kensei also needs to lose his chilling stare feat. He's a vanguard not assassin's why does he get a debuff feat that targets and lingers on the enemy AND affects his allies with the debuff feat as well. The unblockable feats needs to go too, it basically god mode for the duration of then feat.

This kind of argument is tiring. Classes have little impact on kits. Kensei had armor before his rework. His rework only added it to light finishers. Dodge attacks have never been exclusive to assassins either. Shaolin is the up and coming hybrid. He'll have a reflex guard despite not being an assassin.

Kensei has a good matchup against EVERYBODY including zerk.

If you deflect (suprblock) his chain is interrupted, and if you get a clean dodge you can trade uninterruptibles (not ideal). This means dodges are fully viable (unlike most assassins vs zerk).

Since you can safely dodge, you never have to parry to punish his aggression, which means he cant punish your defense with feintGB (unless you dodge too late to string the attack). He has to dial back the aggression and try to bait your dodges for parries.

Kensei can delay his dodge attack so long that you never have to commit to a bait if youre paying attention, and you can still string the dodge attack in reaction to a GB attempt.

Now youre back at neutral, and kenseis neutral kit is miles and leagues ahead.

ez game

"kensei has a good matchup against everybody." Sorry but no. The win loss data they gained from the top 2.5% players in season 5 shows Kensei has some poor match ups. I should technically just bow out here since you clearly don't know match ups. But i'll add a little more.

"If you superior block his chain is interrupted..." Side superior block doesn't guarantee anything in normal situations. Which leaves his forward superior dodge. Which you have to bait into. Trying to dodge forward on reaction doesn't often work against fast attacks. Besides that zerk has the ability to do certain feint sequences to delay his attacks. Meaning raw dodging forward into his combo isn't really going to work out.

"since you can safely dodge..." If your auto response to any player let alone zerk is to dodge you can be baited. Kensei's dodge is super obvious and has a fair bit of vulnerability once he starts the dodge/dodge attack.

"Kensei can delay his dodge attack..." So can any assassin. (only 2 assassins with poor dodge delaying are pk and glad) Nothing about his dodge attack is better than other assassins. His dodge attack is slow especially if you delay it. Meaning delaying to punish is a lot more difficult. You wouldn't be able to punish a quick attack by doing that. Where as Orochi can punish conq's entire forward bash timing mix up because of how quick his dodge attack is. kensei's dodge can't. So I really doubt you can actually punish anything the zerker does on dodge sans maybe his unblockable finishers.

The only thing kensei holds over zerker is an unblockable bash. Zerk has better speed and the ability to trade constantly. You clearly don't know zerks kit strengths and what makes him the best duelist in the game. And the fact that you think Dodge happy kensei is as strong as you're making it means you probably suck with kensei and only fight low skill players. Kensei's dodge attack is great against some mix ups. Like highlanders kick toss mix up. But it's realatively poor against most bait based mix ups. And superior block dodge while amazing is only great from forward dodge. And it's something you have to use on prediction. Very few kensei's even use it. It's not a tool that gets used often because of how niche it is and how difficult it is to use against a competent player. Hell even Kensei's armor is basically useless in duels outside people who commit to parry too often or are just stupidly aggressive for no reason.

Kensei is good. But he's not S tier at least in duels.