Senior Member
Are zone optionselect parries an intended feature in the game? Because if we think them through, they have huge impact on the game. I really couldn't believe they made such a massive Black Prior buff on purpose when they removed recovery from the zone, which made his already strong defense nearly unbreakable, but I fail to recall an official statement about this. I would kindly ask a mod to answer this question.
Also, is it intended that shaman and berserker get in 25 damage on a heavy parry with their guaranteed zones? And if it is, why two offensive characters have such uniquely strong defensive tools?
Senior Member
Zerker's zone is not a good option select tool because if you block it you get a free parry on any of the subsequent hits since he can't feint out of them. And it is very possible to predict zone option selects because they always come from the same side.Originally Posted by Goat_of_Vermund Go to original post
They didn't remove recovery from BP's zone. They reduced the GB vulnerability on the zone startup iirc which made it useable as an option select. I'm not sure why you think BP's defence is "nearly unbreakable" when he doesn't have a side dodge attack/bash nor a 400ms attack from neutral. He cannot shut down offense against him on reaction nor does he have incredibly high parry punishes like LB for example. Conq, Warden, Lawbringer and Highlander in Offensive Stance all have a much more oppressive defence game than BP.
The thing with zone attack option selects is that they always come from the same side. There is counterplay to them in the form of predicting that a zone option select will be used and then parrying it since you already know which side it will come from. Bash based zone option selects like Glad's and BP's zone are harder to counterplay and in Glad's case very much bordering on having no counterplay. BP's zone bash option select can be counterplayed by a prediction dodge attack, but of course not all characters have dodge attacks. The really harmful option selects are the ones that are extremely safe to the point of having no counterplay. These are ones like Highlander's heavy into offensive stance option select and Conq's charged heavy option select.
Senior Member
Oh, sorry, I meant the guardbreak vulnerability, not the recovery. I might also have been misunderstandable with shaman and berserker, I did not mean their zones good for optionselect, I meant that they get very high parry punish for a heavy parry, both with an unreactable followup (though backward zone might actually be a good optionselect with good positioning, but I have seen it maybe two times, and only on youtube).
Black Prior has multiple great defensive options, especially if you fight a hero with no bash (a.k.a a bad one). First, just cancels any block recovery with a fullblock, which completely destroys follow up based offense (there might be counterplay to it, but it is there). He has superior light attacks. And along with his normal parries, he also received his zone optionselect, which honestly wasn't needed. Honestly, my muscle memory just makes me parry with a zone most of the times (48 reps of thrash pk for a whole year does that), and people just can't do anything about it- some characters literally, others are just forced to waste a whole lot of stamina to bait it, and even then, if you have no dodge attack, you still get no guaranteed damage. So, I might have four different answers for any normal direction-based offensive moves, all of them beatable in one or two way, but no option that beats more than two of them- and of course, I can just predict you are waiting for one of them and shieldbash. We might also count that heavies can be softfeinted into bashes to counter the counter's counter. I basically find it mathematically very low odds to lose with black prior against someone with no bash, he has multiple options, high health and avarage punishes. Until the point we encounter a bash hero, than it is all gone.
As I mentioned, I play Peacekeeper, and I don't have a problem with abusing optionselect zones since she is still thrash with it, but I don't know how much it is thought through. I think I never encountered anything official that recognized them as legit, intended mechanics, and when I first heard about it during Season 1 guides, players exploring it thought it is a bug that will be patched out. If it is not a bug, than it actively affects the already poor hero balance: while it might elevate a bit some bad heroes like Peacekeeper, Aramusha or Orochi, it also elevates further some like Black Prior, who by no means should have such a tool in addition to his already existing ones. Meanwhile, mediocre and thrash heroes doesn't have it: for example, Centurion zone is clearly just because they wanted him to have one without the burden of thinking of a useful way, Raider obviously never had access to it, and Nobushi also has a quite poor one (Nuxia too, though I guess she is almost non-existent for some reason, I don't know why). If it is a legitimate tactic, heroes should be balanced around it, though it is obviously not a balance breaking problem right now (breaking something non-existent is impossible).
Senior Member
The devs have directly buffed zones before with the intention of allowing them to stuff feint into GB attempts. But iirc they've never specifically stated in an official capacity on how they feel about them. The only option selects they've ever officially spoken about were charge based option selects. They want to remove those. Hence why Centurion's opening heavy was slowed by 100ms and got an increase in GB vulnerability during his pts route. Conq's, HL's, and shinobi's will likely receive similar treatment down the road.
As for my own personal opinion I think Zone option selects (and option selecting in general) is a fair mechanic that all heros should be able to access in some capacity. However, I can see an argument for people not allowing a zone input to parry. If anything from zone option selects isn't intended it's probably that. And i'd be more than fine with that being fixed. So long as you can still stuff feint into GB with zones i'm fine.
