I’ve been seeing a lot of people say that the Lawbringer is incredibly strong because he can shove out of basically every blockstring and force mix-ups after it hits. My friend actually picked him up and have vortex’d people to death within 5 seconds with him. Very interesting if so, same for the Valkyrie. Some characters appear to have vortex style gameplay, it’s really strange to see in a game based around swordplay and gives me SFIV Akuma flashbacks.
The current problem children with vortex to my knowledge are - Warden, Valkyrie and Lawbringer. I’m afraid of Valkyrie buffs, she seems like she’s two damage buffs away from being insane. Some people also argue the conqueror but that character is fucking garbage.
Anyway, here is some general shitWarden and Orochi and an explanation of why I think they’re S tier.
There’s currently a bug/technique in the game I’m going to refer to as ZAFC’ing, it means Zone Attack Feint Cancelling. Essentially this is like a form of kara-cancelling light attacks, the only issue being two classes get incredible usage out of it whilst others don’t. It’s done by pressing light attack, and then immediately pressing heavy attack in the first few start-up frames of your light attack. The game registers the light attack, but when you press heavy attack so close to the light the game goes “OH SHIT YOU WANTED A ZONE ATTACK?” and cancels into it. You burn the stamina for both of the attacks still but what this does is feint faster than a human can react without expecting it, so it catches anybody who is complacent when blocking.
Someone has probably already found this stuff out, but I don’t visit the reddit or interact with the community so I’m just one guy trying to find every bit of tech there is for each character. Noticed high level Warden’s and Orochi’s doing it and it clicked with me what they were doing. This is probably an already widely known thing. Regardless, you can imagine how strong this is with characters who have very fast zone attacks like the Warden and Orochi. Fortunately, at least in the Warden’s case - his zone attack is punishable with guard break. Yeah, punishable. It has hella recovery, every character gets a guaranteed guard break into max damage if they successfully block his zone attack.
That’s it for today. I’m sick of playing the 1v1 game mode, it’s littered with shit Warden players who only try to vortex you to death. I’ve been playing Dominion, it’s a shitload of fun.
Also important to know, since I think it’s pretty likely people are going to be doing this A LOT. Unparryable is one thing, but the phantom hit is pretty insanely broken, pretty much stops you from being able to even evade.
The two hit bug is just strange, the off-lock unparryable attacks are something akin to deadangles in Dark Souls. My only explanation is that when charging the heavy attack, if you off-lock around the moment the game begins to register the heavy attack as a charged heavy attack, it throws out a regular heavy attack for some reason. You can see the damage of the initial phantom hit is less than the charged attack so that’s my take on it.
This makes the Shugoki probably the best character in the game until it’s fixed, especially if you can do this from his light > heavy attack.
The game in it’s current state just feels like a horribly mismatched take on balancing, some characters are just absolutely worthless and have no redeeming factors - Raider, Conqueror. But the tiers of characters differ between game modes, like the Raider is passable in 4v4 game types. I think balancing this game is going to be near impossible if the devs don’t focus 1v1/2v2 or Dominion exclusively.
Seeing as how vanilla 4v4 games have passive buffs, gear stats, feats and all kinds of bullshit that has no place in a competitive game (protip: fast characters are ridiculously overpowered in Elimination because they can just run away and buff themselves over and over, including the health regen one) balancing the game around that is a moot point. But yeah, it just feels like some characters have absolutely horrible balancing. I will give the dev team the benefit of the doubt and say some of it may be because they couldn’t foresee the dominant strategies, but shit like Warlord - Conqueror is just weird. Warlord gets virtually everything the Conqueror gets except the useless infinite zone attack, the infinite lights string that is only useful if your opponent lets you flail around for three hits or so, and the questionably useful charged heavy, and also gets better throws, better lights, faster attacks and guaranteed damage off his headbutt.
Fuck honor. I’m all for doing whatever it takes to win. I keep coming in this thread but I cant play the game. I want to so bad though. I’m gonna hit up my buddy and see if I can play it on his PS4 if I like rent it from that store front box shit or if I just buy it.
I think it’s worth the price tag, people who keep saying it isn’t worth it’s price are probably the same people who have 1500 hours in SFV and say the game wasn’t worth the money.
The funny part is that the game has mechanics for dealing with these exact situations, and the AI will relentlessly stab you in the butthole if they outnumber you. Clearly it was never intended to be only one-on-one, which more or less ruins the only argument the whiny babies had. Granted, that argument was just screaming HONOR, so it’s not like it was much of an argument to begin with.
I stand and watch in 2v2s after I’ve killed my opponent most of the time, but don’t get pissy if the opponent decides to gank us. It just prolongs the game and gives them a chance if I don’t gank. The Souls community is FULL of dumbasses who expect everyone to adhere to their personal rules.
Not to mention that like half the dudes who cry about honor will immediately start attacking the moment you finish off your opponent, no matter what. Including during exectution animations, which is completely unavoidable. That seems pretty goddamn dishonorable to me. As a matter of fact, due to how revenge works, the best strategy is often to just lock on and freak the opponent right the fuck out so your buddy can take advantage.
Waiting for the other 1v1 to end before beating up an opponent is pretty retarded unless you just want to prove that you’re better than him. The game already has enough mechanics to help people fight more than one opponent at the same time (see revenge) and if you die and leave your teammate alone it’s entirely your fault.
Word. If I were to play a 2v2 and take out my opponent I wouldn’t run to my buddy and watch him fight. I’d run to my buddy and help him beat the fuck outta the dude he’s fighting. Fuck all that shit about honor.
I wait for the initial 2 rounds and if my brawl partner is losing for set point I gank.
It is better this way bc it tricks your opponents into thinking they are safe
There’s a certain amount of sense in waiting, because the last thing you want is to hit the guy and give him revenge that helps him kill your buddy. Unless you’re a character that stuns/bleeds/heals on hit in which case it’s probably worth it. Be an opportunist. Wait if it seems beneficial, or stab him in the back if that seems like a better idea.
And there’s also the rampant hypocrisy in that these people are willing to hit unavoidable backstabs or revive teammates, which seems to go completely against the idea of an honorable duel.
