Junior Member
I'm not going to just outright say NERF CHARACTER OP. Do I think some characters need some tweaking? Definitely. While I don't know all the specifics (such as specific attack speeds or damage numbers), I feel like I can make some informed opinions, though keep in mind when I make my opinions that most of it comes from my experience in 4v4 game modes, and I don't really have a lot of experience in 1v1 or 2v2 game modes. I will, of course, be starting with the recent hot topic characters, the Wu-Lin.
Tiandi seems all right. At first I wasn't sure about him/her due to looking like they were going to be assassin-tiers of dodge-attacks. But after fighting against and playing as Tiandi, I feel they're in a good spot as a character. He doesn't have ridiculously fast combos that players can't react to, or an absurd amount of damage output.
Shaolin. Where do I begin with this character who is, so far, my absolute biggest offender of things needing fixed and otherwise scratching my head as to why the For Honor team designed him this way. Honestly? His attacks are not what I have the most issue with, primarily. If anything, just the sun kick which I feel is creeping on Centurion/Valkyrie/Nobushi levels of silliness when it comes to just opening up free attacks, but I'll group all that in one lump sum later. His feat loadout is what irks me the most. Why did they need to give a hybrid character stealth? Especially when it comes to his tier 2 and tier 4 feats. I'm sure everyone knows exactly what two I'm referring to: The teleports. No other character has feats like this, why did Ubisoft give a assassin hybrid character with high damage the ability to just teleport with strong ganking power? As far as I'm aware, there's not a whole lot of counter to that, especially when one of the teleports goes behind the target and into the sun kick, thus opening you up to attacks. The other I'm a mixed bag about. I can see where it might be useful getting the Shaolin into a fight where a teammate could be outnumbered. My opinion on those feats? Increase the cooldown significantly.
Nuxia at first was tied with Shaolin for me due to the fact that it's hard to play offensive in a game where defense and turtling is key. But if you try to play defense against Nuxia, it's likely you're going to fall into her hook traps because you are reacting naturally and trying to parry/block an attack. I've seen others complain that she's awful 1v1, which confuses me because I feel she not only has great dueling ability (relatively fast attacks and the hook traps), she also has feats literally designed to fight isolated players. It's in ganks where she is at her absolute strongest, considering if a player wants to fight Nuxia + any other character, they have to be more aware than ever. Given that most players are NOT top tier players, these ganks typically end with the Nuxia team winning. Assuming any level of coordination, if the Nuxia is being targeted, the off-target player can attack from the direction Nuxia's trap is, and if the single player doesn't want to get hit, they have to move off the guard but will get hit anyway. If they put Nuxia as the off-target, it doesn't matter where her hook trap is as long as the player is guarding in the same direction she is, thus opening the single player up to yet more attacks. My personal recommendations are to either lower the damage of the hook trap, or set it to only react off one thing, not everything (blocks, full-blocks, and parries).
Guan Yu Jiang Jun is an interesting topic to discuss, if only because he's got a small number of combos (like Tiandi), but the character is surprisingly fast for a heavy, and far more damaging. In addition, being able to use his Sifu Stance as a back dodge is questionable considering how many times he could do that without penalty, in addition to the rapid stamina heal. I would say perhaps lower his damage a tad, and shorten the i-frames the Sifu stance dodge has. Or at the very least, slow down grandpa because he's grown too powerful.
Now, some of the next characters I would like to see changed might be due to some bias, so take it with a grain of salt.
To start, the Lawbringer. His character type reveals him as a "Counter-attacker". Okay, that's neat. However, some things I've noticed while playing as Lawbringer. His attacks are really slow. Even an attack meant to be something to punish players after a parry is slow, and extremely parryable. While his damage is okay, I feel like overall he need a little attack speed so that he isn't stuck being solely a turtle. Perhaps I'm just not playing him the "right way".
The recommendation I'd make for Conqueror can extend to Warlord as well. All I'd like to see is for Full-Block stance to be able to activate faster, with an increase in stamina cost for blocking in this stance.
I mentioned this earlier, but I feel like three characters need to have a bit of a chance to one part of their kits. Centurion's punches, Valkyrie's spear sweep, and Nobushi's kick. All of these attacks can be used in chains and difficult to stop once started. My only suggestion is to put in a sort of "debuff" when they are used, like with Shugoki's anti-stagger passive, so that if they are used, they can't be used again at full effect for several seconds. My other suggestion is to make these attacks blockable and/or parryable.
Did I think Aramusha needed a buff? Not in the slightest. Attack speed and damage boosts across the board were, I think, highly unnecessary. In addition to that, what bothers me the most is that his infinite attack chains can be soft feinted into attacks in another direction with little to no consequence, and given his attack speed boosts, they confirm rather easily. I feel like taking away the ability to soft feint attacks into another attack would be the way to go, but in lieu of stripping him of this ability, increase the stamina cost of attacks that come from soft feints, or lower the damage from these attacks.
I think Kensei and Jiang Jun have a similar ability that I am finding difficult to counter, being that they can dodge in one direction but attack in another direction. I'm not sure what I would want done about this, unfortunately.
The last thing I would suggest is just consistency. There have been times where I am in the middle of a heavy attack on a number of characters only to be guard-broken in the middle of the attack, and unable to counter-break. But, I would do the same thing in the middle of someone else's heavy and their attack goes through without issue. Could it be a latency issue? Possibly. But it's happened enough times to make me a little puzzled and certain there's a bit of a problem with consistency.
That's all I have to say, and do take what I say with a grain of salt. I'd be open to other opinions and arguments, though as I said above, I'm not familiar with exact numbers. Just been going off my experiences.
Junior Member
hmm, tiandi;s second light on his combo is faster than orochi's light (I think) maybe tweak that a little bit
conqueror's light spam cant be avoided using dodge, it forces you to block, hence making the characters with deflect useless if they got hit by 1st light attack. considering conqueror is a heavy he must be slow but must hit hard to compensate for the slow attacks.
jiang jun's inconsistent attack speed must be tweaked, right now it has a slow start but releases fast with tons of damage. not to mention it hits anyone with its great reach and AOE. either they give it a FIXED SLOW ATTACK SPEED or stay the same but NERF the DAMAGE.
shinobi is very predictable and has large amount of punishable windows after failing to deflect, I suggest give shinobi a dodge-to-heavy like shaman and kensei but slightly lower damage compared to its straight up heavy because shinobi's range play is trash and very easy to counter . maybe add a guranteed range guardbreak after kicking the enemy to the wall, its only guranteed range guardbreak is the enemies staggered time after you parry their light attack, and make the range heavy of shinobi soft feintable to light. nerf the double dash stamina consumption and even nerf the quad-dash stamina consuption, so that shinobi doesnt look like a ballerina on the battlefield abusing the dodge
buff/revamp the lawbringer and shugoki thats it.
AND LASTLY, REDUCE THE TIMES OF WU LIN FACTION TALK AFTER MAKING A MOVE. its irritating that they shout everytime they do an action
