Senior Member
It might be useful, at least on this forum, to get all the opinions in one place. The general consensus is "Peacekeeper is not in a good spot", and that's a point I agree with, and as I've said, I didn't need a stat-sheet to know that. However, I am not a PK main so my insight into why she's so weak right now is limited. However, I'll still share my impressions.
A) Her bang for buck is atrocious; she burns through stamina and doesn't really get anywhere. B) "Bleed damage" as the foundation of her kit is a mockery to the incentives laced into the For Honor combat system; at it's best, as a mechanic, it just doesn't work very well (Warden has a feat that directly counters it), and at worse (most commonly) no one really wants to use it as their primary source of damage.
To go a little further into that second point; the For Honor gameplay loop is built from a network of connecting mechanics that escalate in effectiveness relative to your skill level--feinting, timing, speed, damage, spacing, etc.--and climax in the execution of your opponent. Peacekeeper deviates from the incentivized path in the name of "bleed damage". It took me two minutes with the rework to see that getting executions with the character was a chore, and on my following visit to the forums this concern was validated by a number of complaints saying exactly the same thing. To which Ubisoft responded with "we're not seeing this as a concern", and that's all sorts of unacceptable but that's a whole other conversation that reaches from finance to game design. Back to Peacekeeper.
I have a few thoughts on what could fix her kit, but first to hear from those with more experience.
EDIT
Summery so far:
- Low physical damage, particularly on heavies.
- Bad chains. Too short and heavies and soft-cancels end chains instead of beginning new ones.
- Dodge attacks are bad. Low damage and easily blocked or dodged, and long recovery makes them vulnerable to guardbreaks.
- Bleed has no utility. Both Shaman and Nobushi get some sort of advantage when their opponent is bleeding.
- Her deflect does nothing useful: doesn't start chains or branch into effective mix-ups.
- Her guardbreak only guarantees bleed damage, i.e. it's hot garbage.
Senior Member
I don't play her but she seems to be like a pre-rework Valk or pre-rework HL, tons of effort, with little damage to show for it. Time to kill with them was much longer than with others, you could outplay others regularly and still lose.
PK was too strong before, but they over did her nerf/rework.
Member
As you have said she relys to heavily on bleed and her damage output without bleed is too low. She needs a personal benefit from bleed if it is going to be her main damage output. Ive seen an idea from someone on the forum that i agree with.
Either have the opponent do reduced damage while bleeding or have it dip into their stamina supply. Maybe even let it cost less stamina for her to attack while the opponent is bleeding.
Her stamina costs are to great for her to do what needs to be done in higher levels.
She needs her damage numbers buffed. Not like they were before but no where near where they are now. I recommend some where around 30-35 heavy damage from neutral. Without the dagger follow up.
Of course if she were to have a benefit from bleed it cant be as easy as it is to bleed an opponent. Remove her triple stab from guardbreak and replace direction a free heavy from any direction.
Now her dagger cancel. I feel that her recovery on a dagger cancel is too long.
An opponent shouldn't get a free GB. Give her enough time to counter a GB but her recover should be long enough to be punished. Just not as severe as a GB.
Senior Member
- Her Chains are short and as soon as you weave in a Heavy - the Chain ends.
- She lacks a decent opener.
- No Hyperarmor
- No Unblockable
- No variable timing on soft-feinted GB's and Dagger cancels.
- Her Light's and Heavy's deal too low damage.
- Her Zone is the weakest hitting in the game while consuming half her Stamina (yeah, it is the fastes, and a very good Option Select, I know).
- Her Dodge-Attacks hit like a wet noodle and are vulnerable to GB's and several mixups (HL Kick/Grab), in comparison to other Dodge-Attacks they are the worst in the game right now. They do not start a Chain either.
- Her recovery after whiffs is insanely high for an Assassin (Conq and Warden in comparison, a Heavy and a Vanguard, have better recoveries...).
One thing about Bleed: when Marching Fire releases the Debuff Reduction will be gone. That is a buff for all Bleed Heroes, but it won't be enough for PK to be competitive again.
I am so disappointed by the Blog Post, not in the mood to suggest something about PK. How they talked about LB being "fine" and they would "closely watch PK" for another half-season upset me too hard. And I don't even play LB. Their attitude, knowledge about the game and pace of balancing disappoints me to the highest possible extent.
Senior Member
Charmzzz summarized most problems, but I link my very long, mostly ignored topic with problems and multiple detailed rework suggestions. Watch it if you'd like.
https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.ph...ent-suggestion
Member
I agree with pretty much all but the hyperarmour. No assassin should have it. It's stupid.Originally Posted by Charmzzz Go to original post
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Senior Member
You misunderstood my post. I dont want PK to have it, it was just a list of why she is in such a bad state compared to others.Originally Posted by GayForShugoki Go to original post
Member
Most reworks added to their heroes, expanding their moveset and capabilities. Not much if anything was taken away from them without being replaced in some way (avoiding the nobushi issue here as idk much of her state atm). All that was given to peacekeeper were slightly better although still extremely react-able soft-feint options and a bleed stack (which does not work for consecutive GB's) This is somehow supposed to be compensation for ALL openers getting slapped with a nerf, bleeds getting a tone down, and the normalization of dodge mechanics which had the most impact on PK. IMO the dodge mechanics were enough of a nerf as in the same way turtles avoided taking damage via blocking and parrying PK could easily out-space and dodge through attacks better than any other hero i think. With mobility removed she only has her lights which are now overtaken by orochi's new moveset and a fast area that does not deal enough damage to warrant that much stamina.
What we want are options. Remove the bleed and give us some chains that dont involve starting with a light, a UB to maybe force a reaction in the same way glad. sham. and bers. can, or maybe just remove the time and direction lock on the heavy feints so that it can finally be as viable of an option as twas originally intended. Kensei can side light, shaman can light in any direction, IDK why does the first character that had a heavy-light feint (although extremely useless as it was) now have the weakest version of it.
Member
My opinion on why the PK is not good:
Short version: She lacks a kit with countering options
Long version:
-She doesn't do enough damage. Most of her damage is in the form of bleed, which means not only do you have to wait for your opponent to die long after you should've killed them, but they also get to cleanse any and all bleed damage if they use any sort of healing (such as Shugo hug or Shaman heals even in duels)
-She has really slow heavies that, again, don't do a lot of damage. I feel like if her heavies were sped up and kept at the same damage, that'd be quite nice. Doesn't make sense for an arming sword to be as slow as a great axe, especially for such low damage
-She lacks an opener. She is the one and only hero in the game that lacks an unblockable or bash or any sort, so she has zero pressure for opponents who simply block. Even on console, people can actually block light spam, with or without the static guard. I would know. I'm on console
-She lacks actual countering tools aside from her deflect, which comes standard on all assassins anyways. But she is specifically a counter attacker. Maybe she can have some sort of superior light attack since she is armed with a sword and parrying dagger
-Her soft feints can only come out after 600ms, and the bleed softfeint can only come from top. This means they are incredibly reactable. Cent and Shaman don't have this kind of limitation on softfeints, and Shaman can even dictate the direction of the softfeint bleed
-Her softfeint bleed is a chain finisher. It would be much better if this counted as the beginning of another chain instead of just ending it. Right now, it's more beneficial to just hard feint for more damage and more unpredictability, whether it is a normal light or a zone
