Senior Member
Disclamers, I was not an LB main prior to this update so just like with Shugoki and Valk my opinion will be biased. I am not trying to claim that LB has fundamentally changed as a hero, all the update did was improved what he already did minus his gank tools. Those were nerfed. Finally, and I can't stress this enough, i'm NOT saying that LB's rework can't be improved upon. All I am doing is explaining his tools now and what i've been doing in order to be netting kills. Hopefully with those out of the way we can avoid pointless banter.
Lawbringer's neutral game:
LB now has a little bit more starting power than old LB. This comes from 4 sources. His zone, defensively using shove, parrying, and out of lock play.
So currently LB can unlock and force a guessing game between a 400ms top light or a 300ms side impale. Neither are reactable. This WILL be patched out ASAP. So don't overly focus on using this. Just be aware that it is an option.
Shove. Shove now confirms a light on hit. This means that LB now has two options defensively from neutral. Dodge into GB (if the attack has a fair amount of recovery,) or dodge into shove. it being an armored bash means you can trade with an armored attack to stop their offense. Both in combo shove and shove from neutral have a 400ms recovery. So dodging to punish shove on reaction with a GB will not be possible for anyone barring raider.
Zone. It was sped up to be 700ms. The recovery time on a zone from neutral is 400ms. Meaning GBing him out of it will not work. It also means LB can follow up with something like his 400ms top light quite quickly. It being 700ms also means you can reliably use it as an option select parry. It's not as good as some other zone option selects, but it's still plenty servicable. The one stipulation here is that the time it takes for you to be able to dodge after a zone input is 800ms. So bash based heros can and will counter your zone if you over use it.
Parrying. LB still has parry into impale for great damage. His zone parry was made unblockable and given some decent knock back. This means potential ledging. It also means a potential kill off of heavy parry as it's 22 damage compared to the light input for riposte. Riposte however now chains into the second attack for both light and heavy in chain, meaning LB can get to his UB mix up from parrying. Finally all top heavy finishers now give swift justice finisher follow up. Buffing LB's light parry damage should he go for the UB instead of impale.
Lawbringer's mid chains:
Not much has changed about LB's mid chain. The most notable thing being that heavy isn't always followed by a light anymore. You can input a heavy. Granted mid chain heavies are not fast by any stretch. LB can do two main things from mid chain. Mix up between light, heavy, or shove. And feint into light or shove. Feinting into lights or shoves was already something LB could do. But that was improved due to faster lights/enhanced lights. And shove is now a decent follow up from feint due to it guaranteeing an attack and being difficult to punish.
Mid chain wise you mainly mix up between a light or heavy feint into light. occasionally throwing a raw heavy or a shove. It's the fact that the options remain relatively the same regardless of which path he takes that is the strength of the mid chain. It forces the opponent to at least be paying attention instead of relying on indicators alone. Majority of my kills so far have been from chipping away with lights after feints/shove or a randomly committed to heavy when the person is expecting a shove or light. Shove is particularly important when being ganked because it has armor and can be target swapped. This essentially means heros with charge based offense or combos that do or don't have armor from an external point are much less of a threat because you can trade into it and immediately threaten the crowd with an unblockable finisher.
Lawbringer's chain finishers:
Here is where we come to the rough part of the rework. Despite the extra momentum given to heavies you can back dash on side UB or side dash on top UB early as a reaction to avoid them and be able to avoid or tech feint into GB. Technically speaking LB can feint side UB into dash shove to catch a back dash. Though a person who has good timing can back dodge and then convert into roll if the feint happens. You "might" be able to feint the UB side heavy and go for an impale if the person converts into a roll early. But in high tier play where people have their timings down pat the only time LB's UB heavies will be a threat is for target swaps or for OOS/near OOS pressure.
I should mention though that it's impossible to GB LB out of his unblockable heavies in all instances except two. If you are fighting him externally or if he whiffs into it. Even if you throw a GB on a read it bounces off like warden's top UB mix up. As far as i'm aware you still can't trade or interrupt the UB mix up outside of him whiffing into it. But if someone has video footage of you blocking a heavy/eating a light and then being able to toss out a 500ms attack to interrupt either mix up I encourage you to share with me.
Closing thoughts/feelings:
I can't speak for other players and certainly not for LB mains, But i'm enjoying this rework for the same reason why I enjoyed Goki's and Valks. They managed to shed all the clunky aspects of the kit and make them feel up to date with the games current mechanics. Things are easy to understand but have some semblance of potential even if it's not as strong as newer heros (talking wu-lin and forward.) Personally I don't think armor or soft feints really fit this character. To me he's always been/always will be a wall. I would have loved a more usable long arm. But at this point in time I can understand exactly why a soft feint into long arm wasn't done. I think because LB was designed as a turtle he will remain fundamentally flawed unless they change who he is. But, at least to me, he feels cleaner to play now.
As always thank you for reading and if you have any questions i'll do my best to answer.
Member
He has one mixup and no mechanics that he can actually rely on. He's like an orochi with one very predictable 400ms light except he's got no ability to close the distance despite his weapon. His neutral game doesn't force anything and the spiritual removal of long arm and no shove on block stripped him of any identity.
He's honestly pre rework raider with no stunning tap soft feint.
I appreciate your input as always but most of his kit won't be touched, everything will be a feint top light or parry bait. He's got really nothing to elevate him, everything you listed other heroes either do or do better.
Wait until his "new" kit is old news, I bet you won't find success.
Member
Lawbringer is "the guy that can do the thing everyone else can already do.....parry". You can literally backdodge away from everything else. He just sits there and waits for a parry even harder. If he can't get a parry, he dies.
Wanna know why he feels like a wall? Because he can't get damage in and he just sits there as he gets his face kicked in by everything that can't be parried. His theme is supposed to be that guy that comes and brings judgement and doom. He feels more like a receptionist trying to figure out what random homeless crack addicts are trying to say
Senior Member
Originally Posted by bannex19 Go to original post
I also respect your opinion but I can't take your input seriously when you say they've removed his gank potential just because you can knock him out of said tools.
Like I get that people enjoyed being able to use that stuff stress free. But sometimes training wheels need to be removed. I've been playing LB most of the day using his tools long arm/impale just fine. And I mostly pub on my own. At most with a friend.
Hyperbolic statements do not make good conversation starters.Originally Posted by KotoKuraken Go to original post
Member
Used to be an LB main back in the OG season 1 days. Personally I think his update on only actually 'works' because of the 100ms guard delay change. A huge majority of players (at least on PC) are relying heavily on feint into top light because it's extremely fast. Not sure if it's just me, but a lot of 400-500ms attacks seem unusually faster than normal.
Raime, I've done a bit of testing on the UB finishers. If you're hit by a heavy (and have the extra stagger as opposed to a light after shove) you cannot interrupt the move safely. He can still feint it into parry with that timing.
-However, I've found that if he goes into the UB finisher from a light, you can interrupt it very consistently with a 400ms attack. Very rarely has anyone been able to block it from me, and nobody has ever parried it. This leads me to believe that there simply isn't enough time to parry that interrupt unless they make a VERY hard prediction on you and immediately feint it into a parry attempt.
I personally like the direction they went since it gets rid of a few clunky mechanics (shove being a mix-up but the guesswork was on the attacker and not the defender, shove on block slowing down fights, etc.). However, I think the extra combos are very situational and not extremely useful aside from fighting someone who dodges way too much. If it weren't for the 100ms guard delay change happening at the exact same time, I feel like LB would be right in the same place as before. Nothing major was changed, but as the game becomes less about parrying and more about dodging/HA through things/bashing to interrupt, I worry that LB will be outdated. This is even more obvious when you look at Raiders improvements (I refuse to say rework, because the only hero to ever receive a true rework was Kensei). Raider got improvements even where he didn't need them, and kept his strengths at the expense of the CC changes that are making their way into the game. Raider went from 'ok, powerful party punishes and good teamfights' to 'extremely powerful 1v1 and 1vX offense with ok teamfights'.
Maybe I'm a bit butthurt since raider I'd frustrating to fight right now, but I'll give it more time before I decide whether it's OP or not. In comparison, the LB improvements aren't very expansive or super effective, especially when you consider that his feints are still very slow and (like a few too many heroes) his offense can be shut down with backdodge. Like you said, hopefully they improve the UB tracking and change disengages enough to make him a bit more threatening.
In my personal opinion, I think a few things need to happen from here to make LB a bit better.
1) Make his heavy feints able to happen slightly faster. This would make his feint into gb actually work against most heroes who attempt a parry.
2) UB finishers need to have their tracking increased. Top UB should track back dodges (not rolls), and side UB should track side dodges.
3) QoL change, his heavies and zones should hit more minions. Ever since the update, it feels like zone hits far less minions.
4) Long arm should be useable from some kind of soft feint, or there should be a soft feint out of it. Example would be long arm can be soft feinted into a side heavy which counts as the second heavy in a chain (meaning it can be chained into shove to continue the chain or use a finisher). This would make the move force a reaction but allow a little bit of mixup potential without making it game-breaking.
5)I think something needs to be done about his heavy openers. I don't think HA is the way to go. I think he needs some sort of soft feint from his heavy openers. Nothing too fast since that wouldn't make sense, but maybe something that immediately lets him go to his UB finisher? It's slow and won't have HA so technically it can be interrupted, but if someone is just staring at you it can force a reaction. In my head I see him stopping his heavy mid-windup, spinning around and swing the heavy from the other direction while being UB. Might be OP, might be useless.
These changes fix his issues with needing some kind of opener that isn't just top light or side lights (easily parried in mid-high tier), make his long arm not a dead piece of kit for 1v1 while retaining its use in 4v4, and make his offensive pressure effective at forcing reactions with unblockables which was his entire attack style to begin with.
Senior Member
I started playing LB again for the first time in months after the update yesterday, I even blew a shift at work to do it lol the first hour or two were pretty painful, and I started thinking that maybe everyone was right and his rework was just a big nerf.
Then about 3 or 4 hours into using him I started to get the hang of him, the back dodge defence strategy on his shove from heavy attack only works on defence if you have no imagination, once a player started back dodging me every time I would just unlock and run at him as soon as the heavy landed, I got a lot of GBs and light attacks in by doing this, I would even get neutral shoves in when they would use light attacks on me while moving in on them.
He has options, you just need to think. After I got a few impales from them back dodging out of my mixup, they stopped assuming it was coming every time, which helped me land it more often.
Overall I think the LB rework isn't bad at all, it's been quite a while since I've been this successful with LB. Once you get someone on their heels the unblockable mixup can do some serious work.
Senior Member
After playing a few duels with him, I think he could use a gap closer/chase down. Other than that, he is good on offense, and since I barely used the blockshove, he feels immensely stronger. I still has to get the hang of it, and I forgot how to parry during my long break. I write here again after a few more days of practice.
Junior Member
"Good on offense" ? Dafuq? He's garbage tier at offense if not overall! I play nothing but duels and I mained him before and after this patch, I've been playing nothing but LB for about 5h now and I can say without a doubt that, yes he was buffed, but he's still garbage tier. He has NO openers or ANY tools to force any form of a reaction from his opponents that would open them up.
Shove? - Easy dodge
Heavy feints? - you have enough time to wait until it's unfeintable to either dodge or parry.
Unblocables? - Need to land a heavy for those, impossible vs skilled players.
Mix-ups? - What mixups? He has none.
All he can do is just stand there and fish for parrys vs opponents who offen have an insane ammount of tools to get past my defences and I can't do jack **** to 'em. Even if I get a parry all I can do out of it is a Light stun followed by an attempt to punish, which can get stopped by anyone who doesn't panic and that's it. It's just sad...
Senior Member
Originally Posted by The_B0G_ Go to original post
Yes conditioning is a big part of LB's success.
Originally Posted by Goat_of_Vermund Go to original post
Maybe.
I agree that at higher levels of play LB is still forced to turtle. But as i've noted before they buffed his turtle game. Shove from neutral is a strong defensive tool. Zone is usable as option select. and they buffed his parries. The improvements he got else where let him go offensive some what for every other tier of play.Originally Posted by GrimAnima Go to original post
Member
The gank potential was the only way that move was useful. Im not saying they removed the gank potential of the LB I'm saying they removed long arms primary usage. I understand that they had to do it due to normalizing.Originally Posted by Knight_Raime Go to original post
The rework does flow better but the flow is cut way too short due to his stamina starvation. No hero should have to rely on out of lock gimmicks, I think that's an unintended mechanic that there really isn't a good answer for.
