Simple question; how the hell can i dodge that ****. I play highlander and its imposible to dodge that. Am i supposed to close my eyes and wait for warden to say ''miserum'', am i supposed to predict wether hes going to fully charge it, medium charge or cancelle it into a gb? Should i roll away whenever he vortexs? What if im out of stamina? I really need help. Thanks
There is no counter, it's overpowered and most of the community agrees.
Warden has 4 options:
1. full charge shoulder bash into top heavy (maximum damage)
2. no charge shoulder bash into double light (hard to react)
3. feint shoulder bash and wait for reaction. Guard break if dodge, parry if dodge attack, forward dodge attack if you roll away.
(This option is not as good as #1, but it is literally zero risk and does the same amount of damage if the opponent doesn't dodge.)
Basically when you see him start shoulder bash you just have to decide whether to dodge or not. If you dodge, you risk maximum damage (30 to 40 damage). If you don't dodge, you risk only 18 damage (but shoulder bash can chain into basically more damage)
Your odds of guessing right are 50%. If you are decent at reading the opponent, maybe 65% at best (because they are reading you back). Statistically, you will take about 25 damage for every shoulder bash.
It doesn't sound terrible, but the problem is that warden doesn't really risk much for using shoulder bash.
If you dodge a full charge, often he will be out of range for a counter attack. Even if you guess right and get a guard break, you will generally do less damage to the warden than the warden would do to you.
You can choose to roll away every time, but the warden will catch on and feint. You also lose a lot of stamina.
Having no stamina will doom you, because warden can spam all he wants with no risk.
If you fail to avoid damage from the mixup you pretty much lose about 1/3 of your health depending on the mixup.
Getting hit by 2 mixups means you are pretty much dead. The remaining 1/3 health is easy for warden to wittle down safely using a few of his really fast attacks: lights, zone attacks, or dodge top heavy attack.
The only other mixups on the game that is about as overpowered as warden's is the highlander's offensive stance kick/grab mixup. It does maximum damage every time. The highlander makes up for it by having it available only during offensive stance. It also costs a lot of stamina.
The warden has access to his mixup all the time and it has a 100% safe option rather than having to be commited to, and it costs little stamina.
Those are the facts. Here is my opinion:
Warden's vortex is overpowered because it is very low risk, very high damage, and low stamina cost.
My opinion on how to fix it:
- Remove the ability to do a full charged shoulder bash. It does too much damage for the stamina cost and low risk. The ability to cancel it into neutral is good enough already, especially since the warden can just watch the opponent's reaction to do a parry, guard break, or dodge attack. Warden would stilll be able to do maximum damage by parrying a light dodge attack. At that point he earned it. I wouldn't say a warden earned the right to deal maximum damage just by winning a guessing game.
I also think that his dodge attack is overpowered. It's very fast, long range, low risk, low stamina usage, and high damage. It's almost unreactable to block. He already got faster light attacks from all directions. They should make it a tad slower so that it is only effective when used unexpectedly, but still works against opponents that roll away.
Honestly, I think it's really stupid how a swordman's fighting style revolves so much around shoulder bashing instead of using his sword.
SB Charge Time: 700ms. If you see him charge - throw a 500ms Light and you will always beat him out of it.
If you are too far to hit him with a Light - just wait for him to release the SB and dodge it on reaction, not preemptively.
Most people dodge too early (myself included sometimes). And no, I am not a Warden Main but I played him alot before and after his Rework.