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Okay, so I got my Highlander up to Rep 8 and noticed how incredibly weak he actually is to the point where it's not even funny, every hero that gets reworked/comes out is a straight counter to HL (cough cough *SUN DA*).
Seriously, Ubi? HL mains have been suffering just like Glad mains for 2 whole years with 600ms lights and Offensive Stance turtling waiting to get crushed. The only time HL is actually godlike is when someone plays him 24/7 and starts dodging everything with his 400ms dodge and punishes you for even trying to attack.
I tried making some sort of list of balance changes I would like to discuss with everyone regarding Highlander and how he could be buffed.
Keep in mind these are just things that came up on my mind, so some of them might be too broken for the game, that's why I wish to ask what you think.
General
- Better HP (I was thinking of 135)
- Faster running speed
- Out of lock attack is now faster to catch rollers and has better tracking (think of Aramusha or JJ)
Defensive Stance
- Celtic Curse is now undodgeable
- Side Celtic Curse can now be soft feinted into Offensive Stance
- Side Celtic Curse can now be feinted
- All lights are now 500ms, chained or not
- More chains leading into a final heavy strike/Offensive Stance
- Hyper Armor now starts 500ms into the heavy starter
- All heavies can now be soft feinted into Offensive Stance
- Zone attack is now 500ms, damage is now 25/30/35
- Second light in a chain damage is now 17, down from 20
Offensive Stance
- Offensive Stance now possesses a Passive Hyper Armor which refills after a successful strike
- Stance Heavy damage decreased to 35dmg
- Heavy into Kick now tracks early dodges
- Caber Toss now tracks dodge rolls (not sure about this one)
- Window between Caber Toss and the actual knockdown is now smaller (this means no more staring contest after a successful caber toss)
- Changing Guard animation is now faster and lights deal 12dmg
- Heavy into light can also be achieved when changing Guard side (for example right heavy into left light)
- Grab no longer guaranteed, but resets the HL to Defensive Stance
- If the HL does not dodge nor attack within 2s, he will go back to Defensive Stance
- Kick into Caber Toss now works against all dodge attacks, not just some of them
- Heavy into Caber Toss window is now faster
- Kick now guarantees a DS heavy finisher
Why these changes?
It's hilarious how HL, a huge Scottish Pillar Man, has the HP of an assassin and the speed of Shugoki who is literally a fatman (also best girl but shhh). His HP definitely needs a big buff and his running speed to match someone like Raider.
Everyone knows the out of lock attack and zone are a terrible joke, these buffs should make them much more viable.
Celtic Curse definitely needs to be undodgeable because enemies tend to dodge roll from everything the HL does, making him feel depressed.
More soft feints into the Offensive Stance give him more options instead of just backdodge light.
His lights should be 500ms, 600ms lights are outdated, this is a fact.
Side Celtic Curse can be a really good move, but it gets parried quite often to the point where there's no reason to actually use Celtic Curse at all, these changes should help the HL by giving him more options while not being punished for trying to catch the enemy.
One hit to interrupt the Offensive Stance is a terrible move because it causes HL mains to start turtling and fishing for the light only to dodge and punish with 40dmg, which is why I think nerfing the heavy damage is a good change as much as I love it, 40dmg is simply too much considering his potential.
Giving him some sort of passive hyper armor which does not refill by turtling unlike pre-rework Shugoki and adding a timer should force players to get close to the enemy and start attacking instead of turtling away waiting for the bait. This should also help against heroes with very fast dodge attacks like Sun Da or Orochi.
To compensate for his nerfs, I think buffing his options will help him be much more threatening while not being completely unstoppable since you can still hit him with multiple attacks or simply grab him to reset him to his Defensive Stance.
I never quite understood why some dodge attacks like Kensei can't be grabbed with caber toss, making the HL effectively useless in his Offensive Stance.
While his lights are decent, it's fairly obvious to understand where they're coming because of the Changing Guard animation being slow and too obvious, speeding up this animation while buffing the lights should help him a bit.
I have yet to see a HL use the heavy into light, and I can see why nobody dares to use that move. Not being able to change your guard and use a light during a heavy is ridiculous and makes the move useless, and we don't need useless moves.
While playing HL, I noticed that his second light in a chain is 20 dmg. If we were to buff his lights to 500ms, 20dmg is way too much considering it has instant Hyper Armor. 17dmg is much more fair considering the potential.
Being able to use a DS heavy finisher after a kick would help the HL spice things up by successfully mixup between his Stances to provide a much more interesting and fun fight, not to mention actually offering the player a choice to either keep going on the offensive or stop and going on the defensive.
On the other hand
Making the HL immune to grabs while in Offensive Stance might not be a good idea since there are still heroes who don't have a dodge attack like Centurion.
While passive hyper armor could be a good change for his Offensive Stance, I fear people will abuse it just like how pre-rework Shugoki mains abused theirs, sadly.
There are still people out there complaining about kick into caber toss. While I think nerfing the heavy damage should help, buffing kick into caber toss might not be a good idea even though I hate when you can't grab some dodge attacks.
By buffing the lights, I fear some HL mains might start light spamming.
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I absolutely love most of your ideas except for the nerf on his os dodge recovery down to 400 ms ,that would make his light chain dodging too difficult and being a dogdelander has very much become one of his character traits IMO,
And btw im a fan of your you tube channel too!
https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthrea...some-real-love
Can you tell me what you think of my proposed changes to him?
Member
Ah yes, I read your post multiple times in the past.
I honestly forgot about HL zone lmao, it's such a bad move I didn't even bother. What I think is that it needs a good speedup because the zone itself deals a great amount of damage, not to mention it can be feinted, unlike Cent. His running attack probably needs better tracking like Black Prior or Orochi and some speedup to catch rollers since he has a second attack like Aramusha/JJ. I agree with being able to exit OS faster, the HL absolutely needs that.
Enhanced lights, I am conflicted about that. While it could help the HL chain his attacks, I think it might be way too oppressive due to the fact that he has hyper armor and soft feints into OS if we were to count my ideas too.
Better HP and Speed: YES, YES, YES, YES! Jesus Christ, why does HL have such terrible HP? Why should I be forced to use the Bulk Up perk to even have a chance? Not to mention how damn slow he is.
About the 400ms dodge, that is probably true and you do need skill to constantly dodge attacks (currently I'm not that good at it yet but I'm practicing it), so I can agree with that.
On a side note, thanks! I actually didn't expect people to recognize me.
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Member
That makes no sense, 20dmg is not worth the light parry risk, 30dmg is fine as it is. If anything, it's low compared to other heroes who have CC like Warden or BP.
Not to mention, having 500ms lights actually means smaller window to execute the CC, so it would be harder for the HL to land it.
Just my thoughts.
Member
Why not make him a little oppressive? He has been undertuned for too long They allowed raider to have steroids for a good half year no?
So we could give him enhanced lights on his opener and chained and while we are at it make his top os light stun the opponent too because why not eh?
Also give his side starters an undodgable property and a hyper armoured caber toss too lol
Senior Member
Not max rep with him, but rep 28 ain't too bad I guess. My thoughts: 600 ms opening lights suck. Lower damage, make them 500ms. If the second light stays slow - it should - why not make it unblockable or undodgeable? I would love this. Still an easy parry, but by all means nothing then an option you have riskily to commit to. His grab toss mix-up seems all right to me actually. Not flawless, but it's a good tool.
That's my most important points.
More hp? Yea, might be good. Faster movement? Might be good too, but outside the Highlander bubble ... It's ok for him to be somewhat slow. Kensei is too for example.
Before I move to the more controversial stuff in my opinion, just take my words that I want the game as balanced and fun for as much players as possible. So I don't really care about like the top 0,001%.
So, undodgeable Celtic curse mix-up. Very interesting, but very strong. It's a heavy, has hyperarmor and can hit bystanders due to a rather well done hitbox. It's damage ain't half bad, range is ok as well. So if we really did go for such a massive buff, we should nerf it's damage.
Something I would personally slightly prefer more: top from Celtic unblockable, sides undodgeable. Of course, add a damage nerf here and maybe make it easily gb-able whenever Highlander wants to spam it from neutral while in your face. Should be a feared starter for a fights beginning.
Now, I would absolutely freakin love to access exactly this mix-up to cancel my defensive stance finishers and keep going in the offence by letting forward Dodge cancel out some finisher recovery frames.
Now for offensive stance: I would not change anything. Hyperarmor would make him flat out op against everyone who can't trade better. His damage there, even if you nerfed it to 35, would still be forcing players to react.
But actually, if you gave him a better neutral game with 500ms lights or second light with special property, this would be an immense improvement already. More hp too. And it all would be in line with what he is. But I think the safer you build him, the more properties his attacks get, the more you would need to decrease his damage. Dunno if you want to move all the way down to 30 damage heavies and 12 damage lights.
This doesn't come out of nowhere. Check Zhanhu numbers. I actually think that changes on Highlander could even make him worse in say dominion then he is now. Because one reason he still stays strong is his numbers. So I dunno, but maybe we have to be careful what we wish for.
Member
You're not wrong, but I do not wish to make HL faster except for the lights and the zone because they are purely parry bait. The thing about Offensive Stance is that it is supposed to be, you know, offensive? And yet you're not encouraged to do that because one hit, one grab and there goes your OS along with your HP, and that forces you to turtle in the distance, which is honestly not fun at all.
I honestly don't mind his overall damage, it's not too high compared to the Vanguards and HL is slow anyway, 500ms hyper armor doesn't allow him to heby on red.
The thing about OS is that only kick into caber toss works (except against kensei dodge attack because reasons), heavy kick misses 90% of the time and heavy caber toss is too slow to catch someone using dodge attack, which is the whole point I'm trying to make: HL needs his options buffed because every dodge attack counters him hard, it's too easy to get him out if his stance and force him into defensive.
I'd rather have HL actually hit someone rather than having high damage coming from useless moves (basically pre-rework Shugoki).
My personal opinion:
- He doesn't need light damage nerfs, he's not that powerful
- I'm okay with having Celtic Curse top unblockable and side undodgeable, with a slight nerf to his top CC damage
- OS right now encourages too much turtling because he suffers heavy penalties from trying to be offensive. Nerfing the damage down to 30 doesn't make it worth the effort unless you add the changes I had in mind, effectively making him offensive while not totally oppressive due to the damage change
- 500ms Hyper Armor is fine because his heavies are slow. You need timing to make them work and they can be baited for an easy grab
Overall, though, I think some kind of Testing Grounds would be great for trying out my ideas and see how he plays without the nerfs. I wish we had the power to make changes like that in Custom Matches.
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Because being OP isn't fun in this game for alot of people, believe it or not. It's not fun to play something OP, and it's not fun to face it either. It just sucks. It goes both ways ya dig? lolOriginally Posted by KevalOfHades Go to original post
I'd love to see the dev's update his DF kit to current standards so he can at least deal with things in a vanilla way at least. This would include a 500ms opening light and sped up HA on DF heavies so they at least function against others standardized sped up attacks.
500ms opening light would create MANY more instances of actually using and landing a light attack in DF stance and then quick entering OF stance from there. At least 600ms HA on heavies would bring back trading functionality which currently has been lost with everyone's lights being standardized to 500ms. These two changes alone would solve alot of issues IMO.
Celtic curse being hard feintable should happen too. They've sped up the game considerably, and in doing so this keeps Highlander out of OF stance considerably, so it's time to bring some bread and butter functionality to the rest of his DF stance kit, which would be the ability to feint Celtic curse to bait.
Lastly, you shouldn't be able to "roll away from any HIghlander OF stance mixup." Super lame.
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