Warrior's Den February 28th

**CandleInTheDark** · 02-28-2019

One Den, one Q&A, let's get to it \m/<(-.-)>\m/

We have a Luc!

Luc alone this week as Eric is on vacation, Eric will be on next week while Luc is then they will both be here in two weeks for Eric's last show.

Last week of playstation plus. Standard edition for free forever.

New Arcade, Grimmson the Deathless.

New roadmap, this weekend brawl vanquisher challenge.

14th to 28th there will be the first seasonal event of the year.

Tournaments! Look them up on battlefy

Content of the week, penguin emote. O...k. Not my bag but for those who like it have fun.

Q&A

Stefan!

Was the recent buff to dodge I-frames intended?

No, they are investigating.

Some characters have instant start-up of their blocks when they dodge. These are Kensei, Conq, Black Prior and Tiandi. This allows them to reaction block some 400ms attacks from neutral and negate mix-ups like PK's dagger cancel. Do you intend to remove this 0ms start-up on a defensive move and standardise it to 100ms like all other guard switches?

Yes, they would prefer that you dodge, 100ms then block.

There is still a 200ms delay between switching guards and attacking/GB for static guard characters and it makes attacking after feinting far worse for static guard characters. Is this intentional, and can it be removed please?

Yes, they want it to be 100ms for every hero.

Black Prior has the old guard switch recovery that prevents dodging for 300ms after a guard switch. This was originally removed for static guard heroes in season 6, will it be removed for Black Prior as well?

Yes, this was overlooked, Black Prior will have the same as the rest.

In fact, many characters' offence can be avoided by faster characters merely walking backwards, and many more by unlock sprinting. Are the devs looking at any ways to limit the ability of characters to avoid offence with spacing, at least in duel modes?

Yes, this and unlock rolling can be a problem. They are looking at fixing this by standardising some things such as forwards and backwards strafe speed. There is a trend right now of locking and unlocking to sort of shuffle backwards faster than the opponent can move forward in lock. In duels they want moving away to have more risk and for the opponent to have better options to deal with it. At the same time they need to not overly effect disengaging in 4v4 modes.

Several characters are doing far better in the balance matrices we have been shown, than might be expected. Aramusha is one of these, as is JJ. To what extent is this partly down to raw damage numbers: JJ and Ara both have very highly damaging attacks, even if they are not considered particularly good at the top levels. Has the balancing team considered looking at damage numbers and ability to land attacks as separate parameters that affect different levels of play differently? Ara's high damage is mostly irrelevant at top end play, but is very impactful at low level play.

They think that is partially the reason, at the same time the dodge characters such as valkyrie, kensei and orochi have an effect. In full population, heavy damage, good dodge attacks and a reasonable number of 500ms lights they will do well in full population. It was the same early on where in certain skill levels kensei was at the top of lower and mid population despite being very weak in high level play where this alone will not overcome players who can deal better with these.

Would it not be better to nerf crowd-control moves like Stampede Charge and Sickle Rain and compensating the hero with a different buff instead of just waiting until the hero gets reworked?

Generally what is happening with crowd control is that characters are being introduced with moves that can be interrupted on hit, this has also happened with reworks. The benefit there is that yes you can't murder someone a highlander is cabretossing, you have to wait until the end, there is an upper limit to the kind of damage a victim can suffer in this time, as opposed to say lawbringer flip where you can be murdered during the whole animation. At the same time they are doing it as they go through the heroes because if you think back to season 7 they had a few global fixes which accounted as nerfs to some characters at once including shugoki and there was a big blowback from that. At the same time they don't want to add little things to characters in exchange for global nerfs because they might want to take these away later with a full rework.

Will gladiator's unnaturally short guard duration ever be buffed?

They are experimenting with this right now. Stefan doesn't see any problem with buffing the lower reflex guard timings given the characters with these are underperforming right now especially in 4v4.

It's great that you're nerfing revenge gain in 1v1. But wouldn't it be better to just cap revenge gain in a 1v1, and have that cap be removed once a second player attacks?

They don't want a state where a second player can jump in and revenge procs which would happen even in this setup. Revenge gain when outnumbered will need to be tweaked however.

Will you give PK some sort of unblockable or bash so that they are actually useful in ganks.

When you are an external combatant, the person you are fighting can block from the side you are on. Unblockables and bashes are stronger as are guardbreaks. If you are orochi and peacekeeper in this scenario, their responsibility is throwing guardbreaks or being the person fighting if the other party is the better ganker. They want to see how peacekeeper or orochi can do their job better with the revenge changes before going into let's make a crazy new move solutions.

What do you think of the state of balance yourself right now? Do you think the tiers are a lot closer than they were before, say years 1 & 2?

So at launch we had super turtle meta and some strange behaviours on some characters, warden vortex, conqueror superior block on all blocks, bashes knocking over out of stamina opponents, unlock tech, it was less balanced and a little less healthy than today but it was a new genre and things they could not know until it panned out like 600ms lights not being viable. Year two the reworks began, the whole mentality of pushing towards offence, raider was the first to get a large scale kit overhaul which was kind of a precursor to reworks with chain fluidity and speed of attacks and bashes as well as removing free damage sources continued after this. They wanted to retain the newness and novelty of the game but work towards getting characters to where they needed them to be and losing must picks at super high level while making more characters viable. It is night and day today to what it was in year one.

Reduce parry reward? You previously mentioned you wanted to reduce the number of guaranteed side heavies, and I believe it will improve the flow of combat.

The benefit right now is if you parrya heavy you get a light, parry a light you get a heavy. Assuming we get to a place where throwing a light you get parried every three or so times we are in a good state. The reason they don't want to necessarily make a light parry punish a light is yes it reduces the punishment for being parried which yes helps offence but it isn't hat good as it will make time to kill longer without making the risk of throwing a light attack any better than it is today. What they think would be better is the lights are a little more viable than they are today so that yes when they are parried they are punished strong but they kit a little more than today. The benefit in high level play is players know their punishes and that creates depth in strategy.

You mentioned not letting stamina be drained while you are OOS, preventing permanent OOS. Is that still happening?

They are actively working on this but yes basically what is happening is if you are out of stamina and are hit by a melee attack it would freeze your stamina. What they want is that if you are oos you are for a reasonable amount of time and not a never ending bash then hit permanent out of stamina state. They are trying to get all the pieces together since some weird cases such as stunning tap and raider's carry exist that also need to be included in the solution.

Can they be/Are guard breaks not standardized?

Right now it is mostly standardised across the board, aramusha is the current outlier with a shorter guardbreak. In terms of the aramusha it means he doesn't get a side swapped heavy but it prevents a top heavy which would have to be accounted for. There is a more interesting depth in what you can get from guardbreaks, oos throws, wallsplats etc and this lets them vary the characters a bit. Destandardising these may not do much other than edge cases like the aramusha with quicker heavies.

How do they feel about valkyrie in terms of damage and recovery post rework?

Valkyrie today, as they saw in the state of balance, is one of the inconsistent characters between full population, platinum plus and top player populations where top players who are very risk adverse manage to avoid a lot of situations most players get into. This opens the question as to where one set of data shows a character might need a nerf or are ok at another tier they might need a buff. It is a difficult balancing act addressing character balance in both situations and they continue to try to walk that tightrope.

Community corner.

Dev talks.

Jessica Sauvageau, level design dev tester.

As well as being a dev she is a big cosplayer, in for honor terms the raider (also wrench, a black flag character and a few final fantasy characters).

What is a dev tester? No they don't play games all day, depending what they are working on it can be very complicated or very simple, it is a making sure everything works as it is supposed to role.

Jessica is a level design dev tester so she spends a lot of time going into the engine, making sure things are where they should be, that people can't go out of bounds. It isn't a specific role you need to know a lot of everything.

Jessica is a viking (predictable raider cosplay and all)

Been with For Honor almost four years, rainbow six, watchdogs and assassins creed before that.

They spoke about her cosplay some and that wraps us.

**UbiInsulin** · 02-28-2019

Thanks Candle! Pinned.

**EvoX.** · 02-28-2019

Most of those questions were so worthless. It's like someone is paying them to not ask touchy subjects and just stuff he could drone on.

Reddit at its finest...

**Knight_Raime** · 02-28-2019

From the q&a we learned some important stuff. Fixing the buffed dodges, fixing the instant block on dodge for some heros, fixing guard switching on solid guard so their offense isnt stifled, standardizing walking speeds/some fix to unlock rolls. Etc.

Sounds like a very good direction. Wish they had more time to address more questions but im happy with hearing these things. Only question is when will these things get fixed.

**Vakris_One** · 02-28-2019

Haven't seen the full vid yet so will just have to live off of snippets for now