Member
I'm going to line up a few gathered ideas of my own and other users from other communities here real quick, in hopes that they get some visibility from the devs.
First and foremost I think the most obvious issue with Zhanhu are the inconsistencies of the hurtboxes on the right side and overhead heavy unblockable finishers. Currently, they are extremely terrible, physically phasing through standing opponents and not hitting external attackers it swings through them, while the left one is very good. Please standardize his hurtboxes on these attacks using the left side finisher as a standard.
Secondly, his recoveries on whiffed finishers are excessively awful. Nothing about this characters damage or pressure is justifying having such bad recoveries. These need to be given another look. On top of being reduced so that the Zhanhu player can respond, many suggestions include allowing the dodge cancels in this characters kit to also extend to chain finishers - and live up to the advertised "limitless" concept in that way. It would also improved the flow of the character tremendously.
Third, both his guardbreak range as well as the throw distance are rather pitiful. Since this character has no bash game to speak of that he can use on his own, and must rely on basic feints and reads to open up the opponent, his guardbreak tracking and range being so bad cuts directly into the fundamental expectations of playing the character. Guessing right only to to be punished for it because of poor range not reaching, when you don't have many tools is not good. Again, nothing about this characters damage output or pressure justifies having such a poor guardbreak range and throw distance.
Fourth, the one way this character can access their bash needs a buff. A creative idea I've seen people offer is that the counter punch also ejects flames onto the opponent, giving a small burn proc for 10-15 damage. This would be both thematic and unique, providing a reason to use the move more often, as well as be a self-sufficient way to access the tier 3 perk, providing pressure to the move based on your build. The other obvious option is to give the counter bash a stamina regeneration pause after landing it. Currently, the enemies recovers stamina so quickly, using the move is basically useless - because no followup is guaranteed after. If the bash also paused stamina regeneration, it would force your opponent to think twice about their next move and properly give Zhanhu some pressure to use after correctly superior block-dodging and choosing to bash. Honestly, both adding the flame and the stamina pause after bash could be added, since no followup is guaranteed, making it a respectable option.
Fifth, and finally, the Zone attack. This is a personal one. This move was clearly designed to be a bread and butter move for Zhanhu, used as both a bridge for combos as well as a read punish on dodging opponents. However, there are several glaring flaws in this move preventing it from succeeding as that, but ones that can be addressed. The obvious one is the speed. It needs to be faster than it currently is, plain and simple. Not tremendously so, but reasonably. The less obvious issue has a bit more depth to it. It concerns the fact that the zone always comes from a specific direction, like most zones, but the fact that this zone is a static side attack, while having the undodgeable property. The problem this presents is tied to it's undodgeable property. Currently, the unblockable mixup finishers with Zhanhu are intended to make the opponent choose a parry timing to commit to, if they want to avoid the unblockable hitting them. However, they also have the option to simply dodge. The reason the zone exists on Zhanhu is intended to be a counter, so that if you guess correctly that your opponent will try to dodge your finisher chain instead of parry it, you can punish them while continuing your combo. However, that isn't quite how it works out in reality, and as more people get wise to this fact, it will simply get worse.
The issue is, because the zone is an undodgeable side attack, an opponent with a deflect or a superior blocking dodge (see: a huge amount of the cast including Zhanhu) can simply choose to always dodge in the direction the zone always comes out in as an "option select dodge" on any chain finisher the Zhanhu does. Because undodgeable moves eliminate the invincibility frames on a dodge, what this does is make deflects and superior block dodges guaranteed to work. This is because currently deflects and superior block dodges have their properties overridden by invincibility frames on dodges, but undodgeables make these mechanics even more reliable.
So, in practice, it means that a dodge into where the zone comes from allows a player to both totally run away from having to deal with Zhanhu's unblockables and ALSO punish the Zhanhu player for guessing correctly that they would dodge. In higher skill brackets, as people catch onto this, it will simply become a guaranteed response to abuse Zhanhu's zone. In lower skill brackets, you get plenty of frustration from "happy accidents" on the side of the worse player spamming dodge and getting a reward for being wrong. Let me give you a clarifying example.
You open up with any move on a berserker. You hit him once, and you get the feeling he is the kind of player who dodge attacks the second he can move while being hit. Guessing this, you decide to zone attack to catch that dodge. You are correct. Berserker immediately commits to a dodge attack. But there is a problem - he attempts to dodge attack in the direction of your zone, either on accident or on purpose - and deflects your zone, and follows up with his deflect grab instead of a dodge attack. He then grabs YOU and heavies you for triple the damage he would have had, if you simply let him hit you with the dodge attack. In this scenario, your correct decision making has punished you harder than if you didn't make a decision at all. What this shows is that the move you used to support your correct decision making has a fundamental flaw.
Essentially, the conclusion here is that you are better off not even pushing buttons at all. After all, if you just waited and parried the dodge attack, you would get a free heavy out of it. Or light, in the case of heavy dodge attacks. What this does is induce turtling, because standing still is better than pushing buttons in basically all relevant scenarios for the Zone Attack in this context - wanting to punish dodges. This is something the design team wants to step away from, stagnant gameplay with 2 people staring at each other. Because, once the person spamming dodge attack stops doing that, it just becomes a staring match, and we are back to early seasons of For Honor where offense is bad and only reacting instead of predicting is strong.
So, my personal feedback in regards to this issue, is to consider making the zone attack indicator a top attack for the person you are locked onto instead of a side. This is for gameplay reasons based on the current design of how moves work. I'll elaborate. By making the zone attack, which has undodgeable properties, a static top attack instead of a static side attack that always comes from the same direction, it completely eliminates accidental side dodges either blocking or deflecting the zone. Side dodge attacks are often the most popular response, and this means a top indicator zone attack will always hit these people instead. This makes the move having undodgeable property far more useful at achieving it's function, and safely allows the Zhanhu player, the one actually attacking, to be correctly rewarded for guessing right AND attacking, instead of standing there and not pushing buttons instead, hoping their opponent is impatient enough to commit to doing it without any animations playing on your part.
What this also achieves is, IF players actually want to be greedy and intentionally deflect or superior block dodge into your Zone Attack, they still can - however, they have to dodge FORWARD into your face to do so, in the hopes your Zone Attack was actually what you did. This changes the ballgame completely and makes it an honest read and mental back and forth on both ends - if your opponent is incorrect and you did not zone, the unblockable finishers you did instead will hit them, because they are pushing their face into your attacks, instead of moving to the side. It implies an actual risk being taken in an attempt to counter your counter, while locking out low skill accidental scenarios and more skilled opponents intentionally option select dodging 90% of your characters offense at the same time. This changes the interaction fundamentally, and makes it actually rock/paper/scissors. Currently, you can throw rock to your opponents scissors and still lose. This fixes that.
I would please urge the fight team developers to at least test this change out internally to see if it has merit. If it does, I believe the animations could easily be adjusted parry-wise to synchronize fluidly. Ultimately, I want to press buttons, especially the buttons my character is supposed to press to win, instead of not pressing buttons.
Thank you for your time.
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