Balance light attacks | Forums

[TrondurIGotu]

Then heroes like Nuxia would have 4 or 5 damage chain lights. They are at a point where balancing really isnt possible without making an entirely new game.

[Lord.Warden.]

I've been calling for removal of 100ms since day 1 on release. I love the idea of making light parries be equal to heavy parries so people who get light parried stop crying about the damage and it will force them to put some thought into their attacks (especially gryphons).

[Gaser.]

My two cents:

1. Lights keep their current speed. Fast/unreactable lights are needed to give flow to the fight. We don't want staring contests again. At the same time, they shouldn't be faster(except for Warden's 600ms lights) since the community won't react to well to that, given the mixed reception to the CCU and the Testing Grounds prior to it. Also, if neutral lights are too fast then they would be used to stuff offense on reaction like LB's top light of old. The devs need to continue to explore other ways to improve offense.
2. Reduce light damage. Light spam's strength resides in its combination of speed/unreactability and damage to the point lights are low-risk high reward. Reducing damage of offense in general would give more players time to make reads and make the game more accessible/inclusive.
3. Remove free heavy from light parries. Yes, I agree with MrBdur on this. If the damage of lights are going to be reduced, then the punishment for them getting parried should be reduced as well or higher level players will feel lights are not worth throwing and they would be right to a point. While turtling isn't as viable as it used to be, this change would hit the nail in the coffin and force the light parry maniacs to try something different. A free light for the parry should be fine.
4. Reduce the stamina costs of lights back to 6 or lower. The stamina nerf of lights was pointless given the fact that light spamming heroes like the Orochi can still throw 4 full light chains before running out of stamina with each chain doing around 40 damage, if not over. With stamina being a shared pool, the stamina nerf only succeeded in reducing offense overall so the progress we got from the stamina penalties removal was lost. We are still not attacking more as we hoped.
5. Lights shouldn't have hyper armour. While only a few heroes have this feature, this makes fights more frustrating. Armoured lights are either stuffing offense on reaction or forcing the defenders to wait their turn.

Hyper armor on finisher lights is fine in my opinion.

[Knight_Raime]

My two cents:

1. Lights keep their current speed. Fast/unreactable lights are needed to give flow to the fight. We don't want staring contests again. At the same time, they shouldn't be faster(except for Warden's 600ms lights) since the community won't react to well to that, given the mixed reception to the CCU and the Testing Grounds prior to it. Also, if neutral lights are too fast then they would be used to stuff offense on reaction like LB's top light of old. The devs need to continue to explore other ways to improve offense.
2. Reduce light damage. Light spam's strength resides in its combination of speed/unreactability and damage to the point lights are low-risk high reward. Reducing damage of offense in general would give more players time to make reads and make the game more accessible/inclusive.
3. Remove free heavy from light parries. Yes, I agree with MrBdur on this. If the damage of lights are going to be reduced, then the punishment for them getting parried should be reduced as well or higher level players will feel lights are not worth throwing and they would be right to a point. While turtling isn't as viable as it used to be, this change would hit the nail in the coffin and force the light parry maniacs to try something different. A free light for the parry should be fine.
4. Reduce the stamina costs of lights back to 6 or lower. The stamina nerf of lights was pointless given the fact that light spamming heroes like the Orochi can still throw 4 full light chains before running out of stamina with each chain doing around 40 damage, if not over. With stamina being a shared pool, the stamina nerf only succeeded in reducing offense overall so the progress we got from the stamina penalties removal was lost. We are still not attacking more as we hoped.
5. Lights shouldn't have hyper armour. While only a few heroes have this feature, this makes fights more frustrating. Armoured lights are either stuffing offense on reaction or forcing the defenders to wait their turn.

Not aimed at me but I wanted to specify something. When I mentioned lights being faster in my response i'm more referring to hiding the indicator more. Particularly for neutral lights in most cases. I do think some lights should be made faster speed wise like raider top chain lights being 600ms and 700ms and zhanhu's finisher unblockable light being 565ms? Raider's should be 500ms across the board like all the other standard chain lights on most heros. And Zhanhu's needs to be faster to blur that line of borderline unreactable more. Soft feint lights should be looked at on a case by case basis though. I could compile a specific list on this topic if requested.

While you and I have had our disagreements about reducing light damage I would personally sign over my support on that if parrying across the board only gave a heavy parries worth of damage in return. This would kick start a chain of massive tweaks to the entire cast. But it's a path I think that should be tried on TG since we already got to test essentially two different overall damage profiles of heros on TG already.

I think lights can have HA on finishers since finisher lights already have FD in most cases. The only hero I can think of that isn't much bothered by this is Kensei because his finisher lights always cause medium hitstun. That combined with his dodge attack having the same capability to avoid things as Gryphon's means he's not really punished for finisher lights nearly as much as he should be. That should be handled seperately. But as a concept I think lights having armor on finishers is fine.

[Soldier_of_Dawn]

Hyper armor on finisher lights is fine in my opinion.

Not aimed at me but I wanted to specify something. When I mentioned lights being faster in my response i'm more referring to hiding the indicator more. Particularly for neutral lights in most cases. I do think some lights should be made faster speed wise like raider top chain lights being 600ms and 700ms and zhanhu's finisher unblockable light being 565ms? Raider's should be 500ms across the board like all the other standard chain lights on most heros. And Zhanhu's needs to be faster to blur that line of borderline unreactable more. Soft feint lights should be looked at on a case by case basis though. I could compile a specific list on this topic if requested.

While you and I have had our disagreements about reducing light damage I would personally sign over my support on that if parrying across the board only gave a heavy parries worth of damage in return. This would kick start a chain of massive tweaks to the entire cast. But it's a path I think that should be tried on TG since we already got to test essentially two different overall damage profiles of heros on TG already.

I think lights can have HA on finishers since finisher lights already have FD in most cases. The only hero I can think of that isn't much bothered by this is Kensei because his finisher lights always cause medium hitstun. That combined with his dodge attack having the same capability to avoid things as Gryphon's means he's not really punished for finisher lights nearly as much as he should be. That should be handled seperately. But as a concept I think lights having armor on finishers is fine.

Personally, HA on light finishers isn't so bad as long it's a 3+hit chain we are talking about. With 2-hit chains, the HA would kick in too soon and negate counter-play as it would be a HA'd light after the first attack. However, I do get where you both are coming from in terms of the finisher lights having FD. Overall, I still prefer lights not to have HA at all given their speed. HA should be reserved for trading on read(e.g. heavies) rather than making some of the safest attacks even safer.

Yes, 600+ms chained/neutral lights should be standardised to 500ms. I just wish they had fresh animations instead of speed-ups since they don't look nice or natural. I wouldn't touch Zhanhu's light finishers because I predict that would swap one problem for another but we'll see what the upcoming TG does with him. Perhaps making his light finishers feintable could be an option? However, speeding up his recovery cancels to the level of Tiandi is the biggest necessity for Zhanhu in my eyes.

[Maxpain6]

Nice. Just like I said 3 years ago. Light parry should never equal free heavy. Good idea. Change that.