If the whole point of these reworks were to move heroes away from passive play, why did you decide that LB doesn't need to be a part of this? You can't have a hero hinge entirely on parries, and expect people to be offensive with him. I honestly dont know what you were thinking with this. Right now the only way to play LB is to wait for parries, because he has no openers, his dodge shove is still really easy to react to, and he has no mixups or soft feints. This rework has essentially changed nothing about his playstyle. The LEAST you could've done was give him a soft feint into his bash, that way he could somewhat mixup players. It's honestly like you dont learn at all. You saw with orochi that speeding up attacks and giving more combos DOESN'T make a hero more offensive.
You had one request from the community on LB's rework, and that was to give him better offence. I honestly dont know how you missed that message.
IIRC their stated goal was to update the non dlc heros with mechanics of current heros to keep their identity intact but also make them viable in what the game is currently like.
Technically you also can dodge into shove as a defensive measure now as well as parries. Since it gives confirmed damage and leads into an "okay" mix up.
I don't think they missed the message, I think what the community sees as offense is something they didn't want for LB. In order to be offensive from a neutral position you have to be pretty heavily over tuned and usually weaker in the combo section. Where as with Lb they buffed his mid/end chain stuff and only partially touched him from neutral. Personally I don't like that LB was designed to be a turtle. But I enjoy playing him anyway. If we were to have any turtle based heros I think current LB is the best itteration of this.
Exactly!Originally Posted by TenguOfAshina Go to original post
You can not sustain from parries and top lights. Even not with 10-20HP more then other heroes. He needs more.
Parries are more and more difficult, since offense gets faster, bashier and lots of soft-feints. Also his parry punishes aren't really buffed a lot.
Unblockable top heavy still needs a light parry. Pre rework it dealt more damage and was followable with a guaranteed shove (mostly OOS for enemy) with a good chance of a light or gb. No you just get a guaranteed "tab".
Impale with wall splatt deals 10dmg less and hasn't hyperarmour anymore. That's a nerf.
Heavy parry into light is now chainable ... that is good.
Top lights with no other real thread beside ... block top and react on side.
Yesterday I really fought some tryhard Lawbringers exactly this way. No chance for them ... no way to open me up, 2nd chain heavies after a light (only option) next to always parried.
LB is going to be on the more defensive side of the scale due to his theme. That doesn't mean that improving offense isn't one of the team's highest priorities - there's an overall distribution of hero offensive viability that is still being pushed en mass towards "more offense" right now.
I think it's also possible that Raider, Hitokiri, plus LB all introducing new HA into the game would have been seen as the team making the roster same-y in the name of offense. It's something I hear about 500ms lights from time to time.
I think LB has quite good offense now, of course it isn't a high level viable offense (tell me the hero who have it except Warden, BP, maybe Zerker and maybe Raider), but for simple duels it is quite good. Just heavy in block and delayed 433ms shove or heavy, or buffered light if opponent trying to backdodge. It just let you to open opponent in pauses when he don't want to attack, such iniciation is safe (even Raider can't do dodge+gb for reaction), have decent damage (especially in relation of Law's HP), if it isn't Conq, Nobu or Shinobi I don't think you will have any problem.
Personally I think a great way to increase his offensive is to allow him to soft feint his heavies into a his shove. That way it could track people attempting to dodge the attack, it can punish people who just want to block LB's attacks and not react to anything. Plus it wouldn't change much of his identity as he currently has the bash in his chain anyway. I know that a change like this wont be done overnight, but it would be something nice to see in the future.
That is a fair concern. They'll likely have to revisit some heros they've already touched on rather soon if they plan on continuing to add new heros post year 3.Originally Posted by TenguOfAshina Go to original post
I've personally always been against "keeping identity" since they first started reworks. But it like the blocking mechanic is something they're refusing to budge on for the time being.