Highlander rework I've been thinking of for a while now. trying to make him better while keeping the essence of the character there. Lemme know what everyone thinks. I tried to make him stronger by eliminating some weaknesses and reducing some of the areas he was a bit too strong in.

Ill start with all characters should have standard guard, including assassins (important later)
Faster sprint speed on par with Lawbringer
HP from 125 to 130 as a small quality of life upgrade putting him more so between assassin HP and vanguard HP

DEFENSIVE STANCE:

-Neutral heavies are sped up to 800ms sides at 24 dmg and 900ms top to 27 dmg. This literally makes them even with JJ's testing grounds neutral heavies so sides are confirmed on GB and for ease of use, top heavies on light parry
-Second light loses hyper armor. In my opinion, no lights should have hyper armor.
-Defensive stance gets a dodge attack, simple 15dmg dodge attack that can be caught with feint to GB. Celtic curse side attack animation is what i think of. Chains to offensive stance or to finisher heavy.
-Zone attack, all hits sped up to 600ms, all hits can be followed up with offensive stance.
-New chains in two hit combos which all openers and all finishers can be recovery canceled to offensive stance. (Chains of L,L L,H H,H H,L) 2 hit chains instead of 3 hit similar to warlord,
- Can follow up a parry with:
-Light on heavy parry
-top defensive or any offensive heavy on light parry
-Zone on heavy parry that's just one hit of the normal 3 part zone that is unblockable , still 600ms and does 15 dmg can be chained to OS or to finisher attacks. This allows some back fighting in ganks scenarios
-Allow Celtic curse to feint to neutral. Make left side and right side Celtic curse the same speed as there is a speed difference between the two sides.

OFFENSIVE STANCE:

-Highlander has access to reflex guard in offensive stance. This adds some defense and allows hit to maintain pressure against people that single light and try to knock him out all the time. He can block but cannot parry from offensive stance. idk the animation for blocking, i could only think of how shaolin blocks with his forearm guard. This would help against undodgeables being a single counter to highlander's entire offense as well as help him getting hit out of offensive by teammates in 4s.
-No stamina cost for exiting offensive stance but still one for entering offensive stance
-Offensive stance heavies that are chained after kick or grab have lowered dmg to 25. Still 30 dmg from neutral. Hito gets 24 on a bash so there should be no issue here i just don't like weird numbers and this is similar to most GB punishes.
-Kick can now be soft feinted to a light. This light is undodgable and used as a roll/ dodge catch. The light only comes from the same side as highlanders guard before the kick. Doing 15ish dmg i think is good.
-Hyper armor added to the last frames of Grab. Its a long bash and this would help with some trading issues it has as well as its non-feintable
-A dodge forward bash ( i wanna say kick but it would look funky sped up) added. 500ms bash that gives an OS light. If highlander gets reflex guard then he should be able to stay in OS better. Where his openers/ neutral pressure should lie. Low damage but allows pressure on the opponent. Whiffed bash doesn't give a GB but a dodge attack will hit as a light can follow up the bash.
-Heavy soft feint to OS light can now be soft feinted in all directions instead of the same one as heavy since parry timings overlapped.
-Reduced stamina cost on heavy, kick, grab, and the feints/ soft feints of offensive stance. This allows more flow and better chaining in the offense stance comparable to other bash focused heroes.

Keep in mind:

Offensive kick is 700ms
Offensive grab is 600ms from soft feint but there's a 400ms delay added in the beginning of the bash when done from neutral.
Offensive heavies are 800ms

These numbers are important when looking at the damage a bash gives as these are not 500ms bashes giving heavies. Highlanders bashes and soft feint options are his chains and that is his chain pressure. Lowering the damage to something comparable to other heroes while also reducing the stamina cost to that of the other heroes of the game is a big help that would go a long way not only to help highlander but to reduce frustration I believe. I believe that this will make both stances viable which is something that highlander needs, but each one has a clear goal and one will be better than the other in certain situations.

It is very possible that with something like this Highlander could become very strong to the point of being OP. The whole point was making him better and him being my main I may not see something that others will.