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  1. #1

    Bash Safety and the Risk-Reward Balance!

    Bash based offence is the superior offence in the game as it bypasses the most broken mechanic currently which is "just block". Moreover, it has far more superiority than regular offence due to it being safe form the "parry mess!". Yet some of them has an extra layer of safety which is being only punishable on prediction. Such bashes include BP SB, Conq SB and Jorm Chain bash. There is a weird trend going on regarding 500 ms bashes which is that it is on the unreactable range and can't be chained from on whiff.

    lets take BP as an example, BP can contentiously spam his bash (safest bash in the game btw based on numbers not LB shove) against many characters who can't punish it while being totally safe from any retaliation. Of course you can throw a wild 500 ms light to try and interrupt him and risk eating a light parry punish to your face! The bash serve as an opener for him but on the other hand, it forces an oppressive play style that demolishes any character who doesn't have a fast dodge attack.

    I can't really explain the idea that 600 ms bashes (reactable bash) are punishable by a GB if no chain is added but something as strong as 500 ms bash is super safe "and" halts the flow of battle on a whiff "and" resets the flow battle on BP's favor.

    Bash safety needs to be looked at while considering it Risk-Reward equation.
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  2. #2
    King_of_Xibalba's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by muhbelal Go to original post
    Bash based offence is the superior offence in the game as it bypasses the most broken mechanic currently which is "just block". Moreover, it has far more superiority than regular offence due to it being safe form the "parry mess!". Yet some of them has an extra layer of safety which is being only punishable on prediction. Such bashes include BP SB, Conq SB and Jorm Chain bash. There is a weird trend going on regarding 500 ms bashes which is that it is on the unreactable range and can't be chained from on whiff.

    lets take BP as an example, BP can contentiously spam his bash (safest bash in the game btw based on numbers not LB shove) against many characters who can't punish it while being totally safe from any retaliation. Of course you can throw a wild 500 ms light to try and interrupt him and risk eating a light parry punish to your face! The bash serve as an opener for him but on the other hand, it forces an oppressive play style that demolishes any character who doesn't have a fast dodge attack.

    I can't really explain the idea that 600 ms bashes (reactable bash) are punishable by a GB if no chain is added but something as strong as 500 ms bash is super safe "and" halts the flow of battle on a whiff "and" resets the flow battle on BP's favor.

    Bash safety needs to be looked at while considering it Risk-Reward equation.
    Well you are very right.
    BP and jorg bashes are supersafe I have been saying this for ages.
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  3. #3
    To be fair, you do get a dodge attack against them. In pk's case, it is 28 damage, which is very high.

    The problem is with heroes who get nothing. These are the ones with no dodge attacks, or with bad ones.
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  4. #4
    So if you're aware of the risk/reward concept then you have to realize that someone netting sub 20 damage on landing a bash is not in favor of the person attacking if said bash is capable of being dodged and GBed right? If we allow bashes to be GBed on reaction the risk for attacking with the bash is less than the reward of netting a bash. Making it defender skewed. And this game already struggles with rewarding offense.

    This also assumes that we think 600ms bashes are acceptable. I can tell you that no one believes they are. In fact the comp scene even wants 500ms bashes to be sped up because at top level play They're reactable. (the sentiment being if something is meant to be unreactable it should be at all levels of play. Not just some.) The problem with bash based offense isn't how "safe" a bash is. But rather not every hero has an option to deal with bashes. With hyper armor and unblockables you have parrying (or in some cases dodging and GBing in recovery.) Sure, with bashes you can try to GB in the start up of some of the dodges, but not all of them.

    The clear solution is to give everyone some access to punishing dodges. Dodge GB cannot be it simply because of how GB's work. If they were merely a minor throw that netted little damage (barring environment) or merely just gave frame advantage sure. But as is they don't operate like typical fighter games throws. So we can't go that route. And clearly if we gave everyone some sort of dodge attack the game might end up feeling too samey. Alternatively, we could take the game down a different path where we don't NEED to have such a big emphasis on bash based offense.


    Finally i'd like to touch on the two situations you've mentioned. That being Jorge's chain bash and BP's dodge bash. Jorge's bash is reactable by the average individual. Even if it was truly unreactable it doesn't give any damage nor can you even chain off of it. There's zero reason to make this highly punishable. BP's bash is actually also reactable if you practice often enough. So much so that his best offense has always been his bullwark slash mix up. This is because last second feints with it are unreactable. It can be accessed in a wide variety of ways. And you can even mix it up with things like parrying stuff attempts, superior blocking with his light on parry attempts, going for a chain bash instead, feinting into a buffered forward bash on someone who is waiting to react. And finally letting it fly or a heavy finisher fly for someone who's trying to dodge primarily to avoid damage. (can flip dodge bash punishes too.)

    You have none of those mix up options if you stick to only bashing. If someone early back dodges expecting a buffered and then you try to buffer bash you'll likely miss do to them back walking and/or doing another back dodge on orange. If someone expects a delayed bash The same issue can happen. The only possible mix up you have is either a neutral input zone or an empty dodge into a zone. Both of which are not strong because the animation of the zone is distinctly recognizable with practice and a lot slower than his bash/delayed bash. So it "can" work but is no where near as strong as Bullwark slash mix up.


    And the kicker here is that his bullwark slash mix up is actually more risky and punishable than simply varying bash timings. As if you expect fast flow into bullwark at any point you can do a prediction guard break. Of which Prior has zero counters to. Because if he attempts to fast flow at all even to let a raw slash fly the GB vulnerability is long enough that you can stop it in start up. And if you manage to actually parry any of BP's predicted counter methods it likely puts him near OOS if not OOS. Either because you parried the slash or finisher heavy. And if you parry his light thrown to beat your parry attempt you get a chunky light damage punish. If he tries to prediction flip a dodge bash you can bait with an empty dodge into GB. etc.


    Kind of a ramble but yeah. BP's best offense isn't varied bash timing. And no bash should ever net you a GB as a reactionary reward. We're trying to encourage offense. Not continually rewarding the defender.
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  5. #5
    KitingFatKidsEZ's Avatar Banned
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    How about making normal attacks less **** instead.

    Why is stamina damage on parry still a thing?

    Why does external block cover both the angle of the attack and the actual attack direction?
    If the assassins who have no orange could dodge attack and hit if they change side last second they would be a lot less super mega **** in 2v1. But here we are and you can legit block 1 side and cover either option with no effort required.

    I dont know - good game zzz.
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  6. #6
    Originally Posted by Knight_Raime Go to original post
    So if you're aware of the risk/reward concept then you have to realize that someone netting sub 20 damage on landing a bash is not in favor of the person attacking if said bash is capable of being dodged and GBed right? If we allow bashes to be GBed on reaction the risk for attacking with the bash is less than the reward of netting a bash. Making it defender skewed. And this game already struggles with rewarding offense.

    This also assumes that we think 600ms bashes are acceptable. I can tell you that no one believes they are. In fact the comp scene even wants 500ms bashes to be sped up because at top level play They're reactable. (the sentiment being if something is meant to be unreactable it should be at all levels of play. Not just some.) The problem with bash based offense isn't how "safe" a bash is. But rather not every hero has an option to deal with bashes. With hyper armor and unblockables you have parrying (or in some cases dodging and GBing in recovery.) Sure, with bashes you can try to GB in the start up of some of the dodges, but not all of them.

    The clear solution is to give everyone some access to punishing dodges. Dodge GB cannot be it simply because of how GB's work. If they were merely a minor throw that netted little damage (barring environment) or merely just gave frame advantage sure. But as is they don't operate like typical fighter games throws. So we can't go that route. And clearly if we gave everyone some sort of dodge attack the game might end up feeling too samey. Alternatively, we could take the game down a different path where we don't NEED to have such a big emphasis on bash based offense.


    Finally i'd like to touch on the two situations you've mentioned. That being Jorge's chain bash and BP's dodge bash. Jorge's bash is reactable by the average individual. Even if it was truly unreactable it doesn't give any damage nor can you even chain off of it. There's zero reason to make this highly punishable. BP's bash is actually also reactable if you practice often enough. So much so that his best offense has always been his bullwark slash mix up. This is because last second feints with it are unreactable. It can be accessed in a wide variety of ways. And you can even mix it up with things like parrying stuff attempts, superior blocking with his light on parry attempts, going for a chain bash instead, feinting into a buffered forward bash on someone who is waiting to react. And finally letting it fly or a heavy finisher fly for someone who's trying to dodge primarily to avoid damage. (can flip dodge bash punishes too.)

    You have none of those mix up options if you stick to only bashing. If someone early back dodges expecting a buffered and then you try to buffer bash you'll likely miss do to them back walking and/or doing another back dodge on orange. If someone expects a delayed bash The same issue can happen. The only possible mix up you have is either a neutral input zone or an empty dodge into a zone. Both of which are not strong because the animation of the zone is distinctly recognizable with practice and a lot slower than his bash/delayed bash. So it "can" work but is no where near as strong as Bullwark slash mix up.


    And the kicker here is that his bullwark slash mix up is actually more risky and punishable than simply varying bash timings. As if you expect fast flow into bullwark at any point you can do a prediction guard break. Of which Prior has zero counters to. Because if he attempts to fast flow at all even to let a raw slash fly the GB vulnerability is long enough that you can stop it in start up. And if you manage to actually parry any of BP's predicted counter methods it likely puts him near OOS if not OOS. Either because you parried the slash or finisher heavy. And if you parry his light thrown to beat your parry attempt you get a chunky light damage punish. If he tries to prediction flip a dodge bash you can bait with an empty dodge into GB. etc.


    Kind of a ramble but yeah. BP's best offense isn't varied bash timing. And no bash should ever net you a GB as a reactionary reward. We're trying to encourage offense. Not continually rewarding the defender.
    Ok, lets make a common ground here. 500 ms is an unreactable bash for at least 99% of the player base. Claiming that it is reactable because "some" top players can react to it is irrational and out of place. Yeah they can speed it to 466 or delay the orange effect but that won't make any difference except for a minor group of individuals and they can't be considered as a reference here. Their issue is not big of a deal and can be solved easily. Of course one can claim that the animation plays a big role here and I do agree as for instance, BP bash is easier to dodge than Conq or Warlord bash because of how obvious the animation is. Animation role is a major subject on its own and deserves a separate post.

    With that out of the way we can go back to the risk-reward equation. I never claimed that a GB punish (with no chain retaliation) against a 500 ms bash that lends a light is a proper punish and quite frankly I was mocking how they made 600 ms bashes for being reactable with very weak chain outcomes. The only one that can be considered as a good one is Glad's as he can use it as an option select which makes an unhealthy oppressive bash defensively. Yet the concept on how 500 ms bashes work right now is the problem here. The ability to initiate offence from neutral "risk free" on such speed against characters who lack the ability punish it "properly" renders the bash straight out OP in these match ups. The bash becomes more of interrupt offence gutting tool in a staring contest where the bash owner waits for the opponent to do anything to punish him while occasionally throwing a bash for the sake of teasing and thats it. This is the main reason why pre-rework LB and Conq was the most broken match-up in For Honor history. LB had no offence (and still has non btw) and all what Conq had to do is just pressure him with the bash mix-up and abuse his defense whenever LB tries to do anything. This match up was straight out fixed just by making LB shove confirms a light and gave him the ability to punish Conq (as simple as that) and the match-up became a clusterfuck of a staring contest because both sides are too afraid to do anything lol..

    Now, I am not really a fan of giving defensive dodge tools to everyone as the option select catastrophe is what really made non-bash based offence so trivial. I would much rather make the bash more interactive by allowing chains to flow from it similar to recovery cancellation instead of being a rigid linear opener with no counter-play for some. I know safe offence is lovely and shinny in every fighting game yet how it is implemented right now led to a massive imbalance in the roster. You either give such safety to everyone (which I know will never happen) or insure that interactivity is well preserved through out all offensive and defensive tools.

    To make it short, a safe tool that resets the flow of battle in favor of the owner with no counter play is always an unhealthy tool, let it be offensive or defensive.
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  7. #7
    A good first step would be increased block damage (and lethal potential), and the stamina costs for chained attacks should be far lower. As you said above, normal attacks are weak because they barely give enough reward for the risk you take, a bash is probably still a better option.

    I think the easiest solution is giving everyone a dodge attack or something like that. Yes, that would kill some uniqueness, but if you can't do **** against a whole form of offense, it won't make you unique, it will just make you thrash (I always loved their reason for not being PK and Orochi an unblockable is the preservence of uniqueness. Fine then, in this case make Hitokiri and Lawbringer unique and them plain and boring). Even the relatively weak characters with a dodge attack feel already far better against a Black Prior than an Aramusha does, though Aramusha is obviously superior to most assassins, at the very least he deals some damage.
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  8. #8
    KitingFatKidsEZ's Avatar Banned
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    Wardens shoulder mixup has almost 0 risk (depending on the option you choose) and is 100% unreactable and gives a huge payout.
    If we nuke a bash lets make sure to nuke this one first.

    The payout on things like conq bash is already poor. (13 or 12 dmg or some ****) And you do get a gb on guessing correctly (which you should if you dont think you can react to it anyway) or a light on guessing gb (15 for most characters) - so damage wise the numbers are already in favor of the defender - EVEN if you really cant react to them in any scenario ever which i dont think is a majority of the playerbase. Warlord should be similair - dont have the exact numbers in my head for WL rn. BP should come down - suggested that ages ago but since Ubisoft cares and keeps the meta fresh by addressing issues in a timely manner - this is where we are..

    On other note 600ms bashes are not just "reactable" (see op) - they are useless - its just another button you can never press like a large majority of every characters moveset.

    The only real advantage the classic offensive bashes (since those are the ones you are targeting the most considering the context of the things you write) - warlord, bp and conq - have is stamina.

    And stamina has been an issue for ages. Its never been addressed because we smart.

    Defense is on average still much much much better than offense.
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  9. #9
    Originally Posted by muhbelal Go to original post
    Ok, lets make a common ground here. 500 ms is an unreactable bash for at least 99% of the player base. Claiming that it is reactable because "some" top players can react to it is irrational and out of place. Yeah they can speed it to 466 or delay the orange effect but that won't make any difference except for a minor group of individuals and they can't be considered as a reference here. Their issue is not big of a deal and can be solved easily. Of course one can claim that the animation plays a big role here and I do agree as for instance, BP bash is easier to dodge than Conq or Warlord bash because of how obvious the animation is. Animation role is a major subject on its own and deserves a separate post.

    With that out of the way we can go back to the risk-reward equation. I never claimed that a GB punish (with no chain retaliation) against a 500 ms bash that lends a light is a proper punish and quite frankly I was mocking how they made 600 ms bashes for being reactable with very weak chain outcomes. The only one that can be considered as a good one is Glad's as he can use it as an option select which makes an unhealthy oppressive bash defensively. Yet the concept on how 500 ms bashes work right now is the problem here. The ability to initiate offence from neutral "risk free" on such speed against characters who lack the ability punish it "properly" renders the bash straight out OP in these match ups. The bash becomes more of interrupt offence gutting tool in a staring contest where the bash owner waits for the opponent to do anything to punish him while occasionally throwing a bash for the sake of teasing and thats it. This is the main reason why pre-rework LB and Conq was the most broken match-up in For Honor history. LB had no offence (and still has non btw) and all what Conq had to do is just pressure him with the bash mix-up and abuse his defense whenever LB tries to do anything. This match up was straight out fixed just by making LB shove confirms a light and gave him the ability to punish Conq (as simple as that) and the match-up became a clusterfuck of a staring contest because both sides are too afraid to do anything lol..

    Now, I am not really a fan of giving defensive dodge tools to everyone as the option select catastrophe is what really made non-bash based offence so trivial. I would much rather make the bash more interactive by allowing chains to flow from it similar to recovery cancellation instead of being a rigid linear opener with no counter-play for some. I know safe offence is lovely and shinny in every fighting game yet how it is implemented right now led to a massive imbalance in the roster. You either give such safety to everyone (which I know will never happen) or insure that interactivity is well preserved through out all offensive and defensive tools.

    To make it short, a safe tool that resets the flow of battle in favor of the owner with no counter play is always an unhealthy tool, let it be offensive or defensive.

    Since you want to talk about the main subject at hand I will be brief in response to the first part and then we can both speak no more of it. I find your response to top player problems to be a weak one. It is only natural in any pvp game for things to become weaker at higher levels of play. This in itself isn't a problem by default even in the context of For honor. The problem is the game already has very little to it's gameplay. Both in base game mechanics and hero kits in general. It's already fairly common that a kit has 1 or 2 truly usable aspects in high level play. Should one or two of those things become even weaker due to reactions at that level of play you effectively shorten the pool of viable heros. Which is unacceptable. Am I crying that it's a huge issue? No. But it shouldn't be ignored. And i'll reverse the situation around. If 500ms bashes are already unreactable for the average player base then making them faster shouldn't realistically matter for the average player.


    Anyway, to the main body. I will take partial blame on that. Usually when someone is talking about punishability for fast bashes it usually tags along with the idea that it should be equally punishable by all heros. And potentially on reaction. The only way this game currently could allow that would be a GB for a reaction dodge. I admit that I did read your post and it doesn't directly mention GB's or reaction punishes. However the line that made me believe this was roughly what you were asking for/on about was the last line. "Bash safety needs to be looked at while considering it Risk-Reward equation."

    To me this means it seemed like you were implying BP/Jorge's bashes risk/reward was skewed. And my response was basically "well if they were GB-able that would skew the risk/reward in the defender's favor." Which obviously is something we can't have on something that's meant to be strong offense. So if this isn't what you were asking for then let me try asking with a question.
    Are you asking for 500ms bashes to be able to have decent chain follow ups so that the emphasis isn't heavily placed on only doing varied bash timings?
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  10. #10
    Originally Posted by Knight_Raime Go to original post
    Since you want to talk about the main subject at hand I will be brief in response to the first part and then we can both speak no more of it. I find your response to top player problems to be a weak one. It is only natural in any pvp game for things to become weaker at higher levels of play. This in itself isn't a problem by default even in the context of For honor. The problem is the game already has very little to it's gameplay. Both in base game mechanics and hero kits in general. It's already fairly common that a kit has 1 or 2 truly usable aspects in high level play. Should one or two of those things become even weaker due to reactions at that level of play you effectively shorten the pool of viable heros. Which is unacceptable. Am I crying that it's a huge issue? No. But it shouldn't be ignored. And i'll reverse the situation around. If 500ms bashes are already unreactable for the average player base then making them faster shouldn't realistically matter for the average player.


    Anyway, to the main body. I will take partial blame on that. Usually when someone is talking about punishability for fast bashes it usually tags along with the idea that it should be equally punishable by all heros. And potentially on reaction. The only way this game currently could allow that would be a GB for a reaction dodge. I admit that I did read your post and it doesn't directly mention GB's or reaction punishes. However the line that made me believe this was roughly what you were asking for/on about was the last line. "Bash safety needs to be looked at while considering it Risk-Reward equation."

    To me this means it seemed like you were implying BP/Jorge's bashes risk/reward was skewed. And my response was basically "well if they were GB-able that would skew the risk/reward in the defender's favor." Which obviously is something we can't have on something that's meant to be strong offense. So if this isn't what you were asking for then let me try asking with a question.
    Are you asking for 500ms bashes to be able to have decent chain follow ups so that the emphasis isn't heavily placed on only doing varied bash timings?
    I think we are on the same page regarding top players reactability of the 500 ms bash. Yes, I agree that if a certain tactic loses its value the higher you go up in skill level then it is bad by design. Actually thats why I considered 600 ms bashes as pathetic due to how enormous the range of player base who can react to it effectively with no real followup pressure on whiff. On the other hand, 500 ms bashes is working very well against most players which makes it a much more healthy tool. My only concern against speeding it up is the possible butterfly effect as it may result in some unintended combos such as not being able to dodge BP's light>bash after a guard switch (again). I think the safest route is to play with the visuals as I mentioned in my previous comment. Making the bash not so obvious animation wise and maybe delay the orange glow effect for 100 ms may result in a huge difference for the top community without causing any real effect on the current combo system.

    Back to main point and to answer your question, Yes, that is exactly what I want!
    Openers should serve as a chain starter instead of a mean to tease your opponent with fractional damages. The current perception of 500 ms bash "generally" is that it serves as an opponent's defense opener and that is it. If the bash landed then "Yay" it is a free safe light then back to neutral. If it whiffed then it is OK, my character is safe and we are back to square one. This should not be the case at all!

    An opener should serve as a chain starter which means if it lands or whiffs then the perception should be that I am only trying break my opponent's "passiveness" and punish him for it by accessing a much stronger chain mix-up instead of having most of my pressure concentrated on the bash itself. It should be something like (for BP's case) a whiffed bash> "chain starter" light or a soft feintable heavy into bash or Full-block. This of course comes at the cost of not being safe from GB if no chain input is added. The previous example was just some brain storming from my side and I am kinda afraid from the coming storm on myself from team " Are u nuts ?!! BP is super strong and doesn't needs anything more" lol.

    Anyway, the character should not be strong because of the how safe or lethal the bash itself but because how dangerous he becomes after the bash on hit or whiff. I think this sentence summarizes my whole post.
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