So i've put a rep into Kyoshin so far and while I think the devs nailed it in terms of visuals/asthetics and even managed a solid kit concept he unfortunately is very weak right now. I compare him to the release state of Zhanhu. This is because there's a solid foundation there but the kit has issues. Mainly in the numbers department but there's also some kit related problems. The reason i'm making this thread despite him being still very fresh is specifically because the earlier we can get this feedback to the devs hopefully they'll drop a patch for him within a week or two. As is I don't think anyone should be spending cash to unlock him right now. Anyway i'm going to start with the surface level issues and then gradually move into the deeper kit problems.
Stamina costs and damage:
The first thing I will mention is damage. Frankly I don't understand why or how his damage profile is this way. All of his damage is up front in his chains and almost none of it exists for his stance. Unlike every other hero who has a crushing counter Kyoshin's damage actually gets worse when you superior block with his stance. His damage with his regular chain attacks seems rather high in comparison. I thought the whole point of Kyoshin was his stance. There are many reasons why I would not want to use his stance attacks but for this section it's purely just damage. It costs way too much stamina and does way too little damage for me to even think about superior blocking with the stance.
As is you can block with his stance, exit it, and get a GB if you've blocked a heavy. Since Kyoshin's heavy openers are 24 damage and you're given frame advantage this is far more ideal even at the cost of 25-34 stamina when you block it compared to spending double that for barely comparable damage and also being frame disadvantage. Simply put the damage needs to be redistributed a bit and his superior blocked attacks either need to stay the same damage as the normal versions. Or they should do more damage like every other instance in the game. And this also transitions us to stamina costs. The superior block costs alone seem rather absurd.
Best case scenario you SB a light which costs 13 stamina on it's own. You've done this with the light which is 6 stamina. And then you take your guaranteed damage of 3 lights which is another 6 stamina each. That's a total of 36 stamina total for 18 damage. In other words that's about a quarter of your stamina. Again how are you supposed to regularly use the stance when the costs to do anything are so high?
Link in times, recovery, and cancel recoveries:
Now that we've established that his damage is poor and his costs are too high for his stance we're moving onto the other issues that make doing things with Kyoshin rather difficult. Kyoshin's link in times for his basic attacks are 367ms. For reference linking into heavies or from heavies is usually 100ms and lights 200ms. Only light finishers typically manage to go 300ms. In short this means it's hard to properly peel in external situations. But it also has some minor effects on when you're trying to punish someone yourself as you can be more easily interrupted. This is especially apparent when you try to use the light from his kick. Since his kick is already having a 300ms delay at the minimum due to it coming out the earliest in your dodge at that timing.
One would think "oh well just fast flow from whiffs/hits instead to defend yourself." I can see why you'd think that but unfortunately that won't work out for you either. You see the recovery cancel time for everything but blocking an attack is 567ms. Let me say that again. The RECOVERY CANCEL takes nearly as long as a 600ms light to actually be in stance. You're literally never going to superior block anything in stance after landing an attack unless the person is very slow. This also has a huge impact on why it's comically easy to stuff the unblockable from his stance. The only time you don't manage this is if you've blocked a heavy of his or if he lands one. And guess what. That's a TRADE for Kyoshin. The guy who does scraps for damage.
To my knowledge every other instance of FB is faster in this game compared to this recovery cancel. Kyoshin already shares Warlord's exit timing so you're not able to dodge/CGB/guard switch from leaving his stance to begin with and he cannot dodge cancel out of it. Why his recovery cancel is so high is beyond me. Finally we get into recoveries themselves. To put it simply both his in chain bash and neutral bash have too high of recoveries. Opening bash has 900ms recoveries across the board meaning you get a reactionary GB for making an easy dodge. Not even Gryphon's poor forward bash has that high. His chain bash recoveries are 800ms. This allows everyone to get a GB on reaction to dodging the bash even if he hits you with lights or zone. The only way this won't happen is if he hits you with his side heavies or makes you block his side heavies. To repeat here this man doesn't do damage. Why people are allowed to get so high of punishes on him doesn't make sense for the risk/reward.
Odities/hitboxes:
Here we will briefly discuss some things that don't make much sense with his kit and his hitboxes. The last section will cover the deepest flaws surrounding the current hero. So firstly I should mention here that there is a bug regarding his dash kick. Currently anytime you try to kick someone who's inputting some sort of forward movement you push yourself back so far that you cannot land a follow up. This is akin to some very old issues with other bashes in the past. Also you can currently dodge every single move from Kyoshin's stance and avoid feint to GB on a single timing of an early dodge. Again an old issue from other kits in the past that shouldn't be happening these days.
Kyoshin can currently stuff GB attempts on reaction with either the light or zone input from his stance. Also an issue that we've dealt with in the past. And then there's his hitboxes. Frankly these alone should be enough to signal a problem with the hero as he's literally designed to be an anti gank/team fighting hero. All of his stance moves will pass straight through people even if you're hugging them. This is basically Zhanhu and hitokiri's old problems. The only exception to this is his stance light. Every other stance attack only hits multiple people at weird angles including Fujin force. What's even worse is that crushing counters make your hitboxes even worse. The stance light for instance will physically only ever hit the person you're locked onto once you CC. But it actually gets worse. If you crushing counter someone externally the LOCKED ON TARGET can parry the CC. Oh also his mid chain bash has hilariously short range for target swapping purposes. Even if you manage to target swap it the follow up isn't target swappable for some reason. Even though his bash from dash bash is target swappable. Just further proof his team fighting/anti gank doesn't live up to what was advertized.
The flawed core that is Kaze stance:
So i've already explained how bad his stance is from a numbers point. Costs far too much stamina to use, does too little damage, has poor cancel recovery times. The moves themselves have poor hitboxes barring one attack. The CC effect is parryable. Can avoid the whole stance on one timing. etc etc. But even if the developers fixed all of these surface level problems Kyoshin will still have problems. And this is because his stance does not work as it's intended to be. The stance is meant to be an anti gank tool that saves him in clutch situations to give you Faraam moments. It's also supposed to give you access to team fighting tools and is the singular way to bridge into some type of combo system so you have some very nice flow going on.
Part of the reason this doesn't work well is the surface level problems I mentioned. But also it's because of other things. For one Kyoshin doesn't have a tool to deal with dodges in stance. His zone and light do the same damage and so the zone itself doesn't serve a purpose. Especially when you consider that his zone despite not being stopped on block doesn't chain into anything if blocked. You can't even recovery cancel off of it. Fujin force also has the same problem. It can't be feinted either and is 600ms. You can actually go into the stance again after Fujin force. But seeing as how everything is poor in the stance that's not really beneficial.
You're also discouraged to use his stance even in team fights because of Fujin cuts. Fujin cuts can be GBed on reaction from an external opponent. So already externally is not a good situation. You could argue to use fujin force instead as a target swap to stuff the GB attempt. But you're just looping yourself back into the same problem. Kyoshin also cannot fast flow into his stance from that final Fujin cut. Meaning you're spending 18 stamina just to get 10 damage and you put yourself in frame disadvantage. Oh also Fujin cuts currently cause problems with gank setups allowing him to infinitely loop with another Kyoshin until the target is dead. Frankly I don't see how they're going to fix that without causing issues for Kyoshin himself.
To summarize, even if the damage for his stance was there, even if his stamina costs were fair, and even if all the other issues were fixed Kaze stance would still be very poor when it comes to flow.
Closing thoughts:
Kyoshin has a long laundry list of mostly number problems and a start/stop nature of flow that really just mimics how Zhanhu launched as a hero. There are some good things in his kit. And he's fun to play. But he's very poor right now. Just on the surface he looked to be a worse BP and that didn't seem to bad since not being as good as a strong hero isn't a bad thing inherently. But at the moment I have to change that statement. He's not a worse version of BP, Kyoshin is a wannabe BP when someone makes a poor attempt at copying something. He's like a generic brand of a good cereal. But even amongst other generic brands this one is bottom of the rung. We can and should sit here and discuss his flow issues after his surface problems are addressed.
Those are deeper kit issues that needs more feeling out and more discussion to find the right solution if any. But the rest? Absolutely needs addressing sooner than later. I don't understand how we can release a hero in this state anymore. It seemed like the devs were learning and growing and moved past these mistakes. I can only assume this is a result of pouring a lot of dev time into his visuals and design. As any decent amount of actual playtesting should've made most of these listed issues rather apparent.
EDIT: It's been discovered that Kyoshin's link times are actually faster if you're unlocked versus locked on and also can intentionally flicker with his stance. Even more old issues that the devs have squashed a number of times in the past.