Hitokiri is a mess
Hopefully the title isn't lock worthy. Had to delete it several times because of how upset I actually am. This is very much a rant thread because I am actually pissed off. I tried giving her a fair shot despite seeing issues early on. But I can't stay positive anymore. We're 2 years in we shouldn't be designing terrible heros anymore. So before I gut her kit and lay it bare for all to see let me explain what my tipping point was.
The competitive community just recently discovered something. As we all know out of lock guarantees damage if you get hit while outside of it. This became more prevalent when they added 300ms GB vulnerability to rolls. However, they have discovered that you can preserve the out of lock stun through a guard break. This means you can GB someone and splat them to set up quite a lot of damage. This is fine..however...EXECUTIONS are considered to be out of lock. In case you weren't aware executions give a free GB. This means it's VERY easy to guard break someone and potentially wall splat them for insane damage. The reason I bring this up is because Hitokiri is a hero DESIGNED around getting executions. And she can easily be interrupted with a GB or a bash. Essentially meaning that they designed a hero around a mechanic that gets heavily punished for even attempting.
So if you're still here after reading that let me now talk about how bad her actual kit is and we'll start with the major complaint that everyone and their mom is upset about:
Armor from neutral:
This is the singular flaw in her kit that actually does something positive for her. It lets her trade on reaction to indicator. This forces both Hitokiri and her opponent to turtle up instead of attempting to engage. "but why not just feint gb/parry her?" Glad you asked. Her heavies are too quick to feint GB. And feint to parry isn't worth it. You get a heavy parry's worth of punish at best. At worst she can just feint herself and parry your feinted attempt or GB your attempted parry. It's mega unsafe to attempt to parry her heavies outside fully charged ones.
Unblockables:
You'd think a kit that has both unblockable heavies and bashes would actually be quite versatile. WRONG in her case. Her unblockable side heavies have the same issue is gladiator's skewer attack. Meaning you can see when they're committed to because she doesn't have momentum on her swing till she can't feint anymore. "then just use her top heavy instead." GOOD IDEA..not. See her charge heavies are like goki's. Meaning you can GB early (700ms into the attack actually) and all the way up to the attack being almost thrown. and she can't tech it. Meaning if she's constantly trying to bait a dodge or a parry by long charging you can just GB on reaction and counter the top heavy. "But externally she lands them all the time." Charged heavies have a huge recovery window. So if she's being ganked or in a team fight constantly going for those is a bad idea.
Then there is her bashes. So so so so so so SO many people are comparing it to Warden's bash mix up. This is overselling it. Warden can access his bash mix up both mid combo and from neutral. Beyond that Warden's bash mix up isn't reactable. Hitokiri's is. People are dodging on orange which is early and that gets you GB broken. You dodge on indicator. Sweep is mega easy to avoid because you can tell when it's no longer a kick. Essentially if you space hitokiri well (which isn't hard because she has zero range,) you can back dodge on indicator and dodge to avoid the sweep and get a punish. Or roll if you're not confident. Both her kick and her sweep have stupidly long recovery windows. Meaning anytime she commits to either she's risking being guard broken.
Her sweep in particular is so bad on recovery that if you don't buffer the heck out of her light you can actually not get the punish. Or worse you barely mistimed it so you hit someone on wake up and they get a free GB on you. Granted you can chain since it's a light starter but all options from doing so are reactable.
Lack of flow:
Her kit is incredibly disjointed which is hilariously sad considering they JUST made black prior. Who hitokiri basically shares kit depth with. But she doesn't have flow like his kit does. Her zone is 600ms and doesn't chain into anything. "but zone attacks are minion clearing tools!" No. Zones are now officially apart of kits. The developers have made changes for zones to compliment gameplay outside of minions. Her dodge attack tool is specifically meant to catch rolls. but because it's 700ms and has poor range you can actually parry a hitokiri attempting to catch you. At least with kensei's bad roll catch it chains. Her kick can't catch back dodges at all meaning instead of her kick/sweep being something to use as mix ups during her infinite chain you only use them on someone who's near or at OOS.
Misc:
She has no range or aoe presence. Meaning she's pretty bad at anti gank or clearing B. She's easily spaced. So is someone like berzerker but at least he has functional presence if he's on top of you. Her forward dodge recovery is 700ms. So she can't even attempt to punish someone with feint into GB by dodging forward to catch someone who back dodged early. Her finisher light is nearly worthless. It would justify having horrible recovery if you could chain back into her kick/sweep mix up. But instead you're basically trading meh damage for damage that's guaranteed to punish you and hit a lot harder than your light did.
Her tier 4 feat can be early dodged and has massive recovery. it shouldn't need both when there are ways to survive it. Not to mention it's buggy. Allowing you to repeatedly use it for kills without a cooldown or kill multiple people with one use. (no I will NOT explain how this is done.) Going for executions is not worth it for her in a majority of situations because you get out of lock punished for doing so. Sure, she shouldn't be immune to the game's rules whenever she executes. But she also shouldn't be punished for attempting to play the way she was designed. She NEED executions because she has no conventional way to heal like every other hero does with some sort of aoe heal feat or second wind.
Wrapping up:
Overall i'm incredibly disappointed with the team. I don't understand how they can continually make a step forward but stumble every step of the way. Hitokiri absolutely REEKS of horrible design practices from all the way back in the first seasons of the game. (same with raider's rework but that's been beaten to death already.) It's just such a shame because in my opinion she's probably the best looking and most interesting designed hero of the samurai. A faction who's basically gotten jack all treatment wise through out the games life span (i'm a knight so don't @me.) I'm not going to make suggestions on how to fix her.
I'm done beta testing your game. I'd have happily signed on as an actual Q&A tester for this game and worked for free because I love the concept of the game THAT much. But I just can't anymore. There's literally no reason for me to attempt to help.
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and one think you propably miss ... she can use 4 stars skill on commander and it takes how much 25-30% of total health maybe more so 2x Sakura in Match and its done xD
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