Community Manager
Hello everyone,
Season 7 brought with it a rework for the Warden. In anticipation of your feedback, please use this thread to leave your thoughts and comments on the current reworks. this will allow us to better organize and share your comments with the fight team.
If you would like to leave feedback regarding Valkyrie, please do so here.
Thanks and enjoy the battlefields!
Member
THANK YOU!! as a warden main. This has been long over due. I asked for a dash attack... Got a dash attack.... Asked for an unblockable... Got an unblockable... The new chain and options do a great job mixing things up but dont feel OP. I think the side light nerf was unnecessary but with the new options its a more then fair trade
Member
Only thing I could possibly say needs adjustment is the range/tracking on the dashing heavy. It makes sense for what its purpose is, but when it's being overused for purposes besides roll catching (see: hitting someone in a teamfight from very far off screen for 20 damage) it needs a slight adjustment.
I say let it keep the tracking, but reduce its forward movement range to about 2/3 or even 1/2 of what it currently is. That way, if someone is rolling away it will track them further and still hit them but if they are simply far away it won't just rush you forward 30 yards in half a second to slap them.
Also, and this is purely cosmetic and a personal opinion, the dashing heavy's animation looks a bit off. It looks a little too silly. If you get someone on that, it'd be awesome.
Junior Member
Senior Member
Finally made an account after this rework - rep 51 warden & just wanted to say I feel the rework is underwhelming - there was nothing added that I couldn't get the character to do before and a few negatives. In summary he is now overall easier to play at a higher level with, however if you are a high level player he feels like hes been over simplified to the point you are constantly running into the low skill ceiling.
Sorry for the wall of text but I feel I cant just make a statement like the above without explanation
Main issues & Suggestions - I'm not calling for 'lets do everything I want and make my main OP', just want to put my thoughts forwards
Side lights & heavies - nerfed the lights but the heavies feel unchanged, the second side heavy in a wardens chain was always underwhelming and more for feinting than anything else. Something special would have been nice here such as hyper armour on the second (side heavy) or even just a special amplified chip damage. The change to lights was unnecessary, especially considering the change to the shoulderbash- you could previously count out 1 light and press bash - now its televised to your opponent and extremely easy to observe/counter. I'd say here that the older version being harder to pull off & harder to stop has turned into easier to pull off and easier to stop. Side light startup is also not fast enough to justify the nerf (i.e the nerf to Orochi's lights was justified by the improvements to his combo's and side lights).
Dash forward attack - spammed at lower level game-play & useless at higher level game-play. This move is only for chasing down opponents, absolutely terrible engage. That would be fine if it wasnt on the heavy/feint button but be an unfeintable move. I find this move gets in the way & makes turtles harder to crack. Previously dash forward could turn into - light/shoulder/heavy/feint. Now its a sped up predictable move. If a warden dashes forward any assassin/deflect char simply has to dash forwards. If the warden attacks = deflect. If he doesn't & goes into shoulder either dodge again or throw a quick light. This move has a 100% fail against a smart player and so you now have to shuffle forwards slower than ever to get within range. Make it feintable, put it on the light attack so you have the option of heavies/feints again, allow it to soft feint into a regular side heavy or even just let it be charged to vary its timing slightly. This move feels like prerework orochi storm rush - unable to change his direction means its countered to often to be worth throwing out. Using the highlander buff as an example, they added a feint option to celtic curse because even hyper armour & direction change wasn't enough to make the move function properly against a determined & skilled opponent.
Unblockable/top heavy - doesn't soft feint into anything & is in essence as useful as kensei's pre-rework unblockable. This move feels more I 'hope this works' style of letting it go than a thought out plan. Good players are already treating it like the old kensei and simply wait out for dodge/punish, counter guard break, or simply throwing a light attack (kensei even had a soft feint but it was so slow you could stand there and just watch him to punish accordingly with no risk, hence the rework). Moves of a similar nature (raider zone, kensei top combo) were given soft feints because of their low practicable use without them. Being unblockable rarely matters - when the opponent gets hit, its due a mistake (i.e. dodging incorrectly or going for a gb) where the unblockable side of things doesn't matter. Anyone who stands their ground against it will out play it like pre-rework raider/kensei. Only real use? Unblockable spamming in dominion (yay?). This move would feel more practical if it had hyper armour LATE into the attack, at the moment its very easy to accidentally beat this move with even a badly timed light attack just due to how slow it is - people interrupt highlander using lights, what chance does this move have?
Shoulder bash - in a nutshell less intelligent more spammy with the 50/50 being reintroduced via the charged end of the move rather than during shoulderbash startup. I'll take it or leave it - was hoping for this portion of the kit to be weakened & the rest buffed to offset. Easiest way? just make the double light attack after shoulder bash a combo finisher, so you cant reengage shoulderbash again if you take the two hits - you need to go for 1 light to reengage. Why? This means you can buff the lights & overall kit without needing to worry about it exploited with this move.
Apologies again for the wall of text
In a summary this rework feels like the 'hand-me-down' non-practical moves of reworked characters from season1 being given to warden without the lessons learnt as to WHY those characters had to be reworked. This means easier access to mashing buttons, but moves that skilled players are able to counter (i.e. if you know the move, then you beat the player) - this is something every rework/new char has been moving away from with soft-feints, sped up attacks etc. Best example, Pre/Post rework Orochi. No matter how skilled, the moves restricted pre-rework orochi to the point he was utterly predictable & counter-able, even by a much less skilled player.
Member
And all other soft fients should be removed from the game... Lol... Kidding!! but thats how silly this is. (Like the highlanders kick cancel to uber grab is cool though lol) SB has always had a cancel... This isnt new and the SB to GB was removed so its actually a nerf. Just my thought. I like how it is and good players still get away from it.Originally Posted by LordKracen Go to original post
Senior Member
The Warden Rework is a good start and fitting well into the current state of the game, However, there are still things the Warden is lacking.
In order to complete his rework and emphazise his swordmanship more the devs should have given him faster chained side heavies than 800 ms and also incorporated some faster chained lights. A notch faster chained side heavies would do a better job in pressuring the opponent after engaging. And even though they would not be hard to block they definitely would be a bit harder to be parried and hence provide at least some chip damage. Faster chained lights would help to use anything other than top light into shoulder bash or double side light.
A heavy-Light follow-up possibility could also help the Warden out a bit. The fact that he does not have that leaves the Warden in most situations after an engagement (for instance valent breakthrough or running attack into heavy) with a follow-up zone since in most cases the heavies have to be feinted as they are too slow and often easily parried. Of course using the zone in those situations is also quite predictable and where do you go from there? Same thing over and over again. There is always a full stop to neutral there, unless the enemy tends to react to those. But at higher level, that won't happen.
So that leads me also to the topic It is pretty clear that the unblockable top so often leads to a dead end in which the opponents stare at each other parry and counter-hungry. Since Warden cannot really continue without a reaction (side lights get easily blocked or parried due to the guard switch delay while guard breaks, CC or follow-throughs are expected) the situation often ends in weird turtlely situations. So ultimately, there is something missing to this unblockable and it's most likely speed or a softfeint.
Also I was kind of hoping for some kind of stab move in his moveset.
Summary:
- chained side heavies have to be faster (700 ms instead of 800)
- chained lights need to speed up to at least 500 ms instead of 600 ms
- unblockable top heavy has to either speed up or get a softfeint
- heavy- light follow-up to help to open up opponents instead of getting stuck in the unblockable no reaction starring contest over and over
- has no stabby-stab move yet
Junior Member
I said a charged one, not a normal one.... You know the one where you hold down the button and get hyper armour... You didn't used to be able to cancel that, you can now.And all other soft fients should be removed from the game... Lol... Kidding!! but thats how silly this is. (Like the highlanders kick cancel to uber grab is cool though lol) SB has always had a cancel... This isnt new and the SB to GB was removed so its actually a nerf. Just my thought. I like how it is and good players still get away from it.
Senior Member
make it unable to cancel the charged shoulder bash later, only at the start, more than that it's not a problem, still it's practically the same character with 2 added moves (top unblockable and dash heavy)
I actually expected you to add more moves and not to become so shoulder bash centric, that's really binary and boring to play, Kensei rework was perfect on this sense, now he has a lot of tools that are individually good and each one can be used on different situations.
Same with valkyrie in the sense of bad rework, you should add more mechanics so people don't need to use the same over and over.
Member
Ok I was playing with him and I have important and interesting suggestions to improve the actual Warden.
(I have almost 500 hours in game)
·Shoulder Bash:
You can not cancel Shoulder Bash if you just press the feint button. Now you must press feint buttom and stop pressing the guard break buttom (needed for shoulder bash) at the same time so this is bad in terms of how it feels. It feels uncomfortable in terms of gameplay. like 2X1 instead of 1. Before pre-rework this was fine but now it feel strange and bad, like clunky.
Do this: If you press feint buttom (only that key) the shoulder bash is cancelled, like before.
·Top heavy unblockeable:
Remove this unblockeable from every single combo except when you do properly a Crushing Counter Strike. You will have these 2 unblockeables,
The top heavy unblockeable only will be after an succesfull Crushing Counter Strike. Against ganking this will be a powerful tool for Warden, besides, It looks very powerful and scary and you need some skill to do it. not like now.
·Remove the second guaranteed top light attack after Crushing Counter Strike:
We are Wardens, not Orochis. Warden only must have his second guaranteed light attack on the sides.
Besides this guaranteed second top light attack has a big problem: you can do an insane combo of three unblockeables right now (2 of them unstoppable = 55dmg) and if you are smart you will do:
*Crushing Counter Strike + Guarantedd Top Light + Unblockeable Top Heavy = 95dmg
or
*Crushing Counter Strike + Guaranteed Top Light + Feint Top Heavy Unblockeable and turn it into another Crushing Counter Strike = 95dmg
This combo deal a lot of easy damage. 40 dmg + 15 dmg + 40 dmg = 95 dmg in total for one combo... It is too much damage in less than 4 seconds.
So that's why the guaranteed second top light must be removed, that's the Orochi attack and it is unnecesary damage for top Warden players. We don't need that.
·Heavy side attacks values: from 30 dmg to 35 dmg. (because 30 is little damage for a two-handed sword, Nobushi have a stick and she can do the same damage, even the shinobi with his two scythes do the same damage, so a little more for Warden)
·Crushing Counter Strike:
Restore the damage value from 40 dmg now to 45 dmg pre+rework (this value was fine, so no change is needed in the 45 dmg value)
·Lights side attacks values:
1st Side Light attack: does 15 damage (like pre - rework, because It was fine).
2nd Side Light: does 7 damage (was 9 in pre- rework and 6 after rework and that's nothing. It's must be 7).
Top light attack: It is fine, 15 damage (current damage, like side attacks, but this one is faster of course so don't touch it)
·Forward Dash + Heavy:
The movement is cool (and annoying as f@c# for the enemy at the same time) but the animation looks clunky, the attack must have less speed (100 or 200 ms slower) and the animation must starts at 200ms in the Dash Forward movement (not 300ms). This little change would be perfect.
Also you must nerf the range of this attack, because it is extremely powerful and annoying when you are alone in front of a whole enemy group and you must flee to find your team. It has like 7 meters long effectiveness range right now and that's too much, even for a long sword, so the perfect range for this attack must be 2 meters at maximum. Besides, with this new attack now Shinobis and Nobushis are completely useless fighting against Wardens... and that is a big problem, and the cause of that is this attack. It is a heavy finisher, (heavy with 20 dmg) but it is extremely fast, and that's unfair because it is a heavy attack (with execution for the enemy) and if you try to move back or if you try to run away if you are surrounded, it is a guaranteed hit.
Warden is right now a cancerous character because the top heavy unblockeable in every single combo and because the Forward Dash + Heavy.
Fix that. Warden players don't need any skill to win now. I can be God with him now without effort, and that is very unfair for other players.
*All these damage values are fine, if you take the calculator it looks good.
*Warden is right now the most "50/50" hero in the game. So please, fix that with this values.
