This is true. One way to look at it is the assassin classes are rushdown. If you try to fight them at their own game you’re going to lose. So if you go in being the aggressor they’re going to side parry, and hit you with faster attacks. You do have to be patient you have to wait for them to do something unsafe and punish them for it. Those side dash attacks they do are parryable on reaction. If they are doing them empty without deflecting or dodging one of your attacks you should be able to punish them for it.
I don’t know who you play but I think Warlord is incredibly strong against the assassin classes. His trades are always in his favor and he has great counter pressure with headbut into guaranteed light into 50/50 headbutt or GB.
I will be running a bunch of Dominion matches this evening, hoping to try to grind through to Rep 5 on my Warlord.
I have so many characters I want to try, but it’s really hard not to just keep training and improving with the Warlord since the playstyle seems to fit pretty well for me. Maybe after getting a couple more Reputation levels I’ll pick another character to dig into for a while.
I’ve seen people analyze the speeds of the assassin light attack speeds, but I’m not sure how accurate they are. Also, lots of players tend to complain about it, so it may be that they’re too fast and need a rebalance.
Based on the video, the Peacekeeper’s light attacks have a single frame where a slow blocker (Raider, Shoguki, Nobushi, and Lawbringer) is able to block to not get hit after the first light attack. Orochis and Berserkers attack a bit slower, so there might be a larger window, but it is still very small for a lot of slow blockers to react to consistently. If you factor in online input delay, it can be almost impossible to react to these attacks without just guessing. There was a recent stream where the team said they would look into block speeds and normalize them.
Seeing as you play Warlord, I would suggest trying to yse your all block stance to avoid the light attack spam from assassins. I’m not too familiar with his moveset, but try to get a light off after blocking because assassins tend to keep swinging the lights once they’re in. If you have any armored attacks that you can use after a block, try to trade with a light and take control.
For some specific tips, always block up when Peacekeepers and Orochis need to approach. Their most reliable initiators are overheads. Orochi in general has a huge reliance on up attacks, so in neutral, keep your guard upward against him.
This is already part of me repertoire, but this isn’t all guaranteed. Between latency and just general oddity, it’s possible to transition to all block and still get hit. It’s also pretty common to attempt either the light or heavy followup attack to a successful allblock and have an Assassin dodge out rather than taking what on any other character is a free punish (assuming I’m not Exhausted, of course).
As I said, it’s not like I can’t beat any of the three Assassins, but it’s very frustrating that guard stance shifting is vulnerable to their light spam, and how safe their side dash attacks can be, even after a block or in other situations where you should be getting a punish.
I feel your pain honestly. My Lawbringer can’t do anything against light spam. Your best option if they get close is to roll back. It sucks because it kills a lot of stamina, but I usually do it to get enough to bait a leap attack from peacekeepers. The assassin gap closing attacks are very easy to block, but it could help you to learn to parry. Take advantage of their limited engage options and parry them whenever they try just so you get a punish, and then back off out of their comfort zone.
Again, our characters are pretty different, but maybe a super passive style against them as your Warlord can help a lot like it does for my Lawbringer.
I tend to use a lot of red in my customized characters, but because half of the time I am on the Defenders, the red in my original emblem looked very out of place. Instead, I worked for a while to make a symbol which was suitably grim and included skull imagery, but was also neutral enough that it would look good on both my red and blue armor.
I tried to edit the emblem so that it would resemble some sort of undead wraith or fallen angel (with claws and a tattered trailing robe), and I’m fairly happy with how it turned out.
I can one-shot assassins in revenge mode with a charged heavy attack. I’m also very, very fast for a shugoki which surprises people who think they can just run away.
Besides the usual horrible servers tonight, the game has decided for some reason to give me 3 days of champion status. I have no idea why since I didn’t purchase it. Is there some kind of event or something?
Do you think so? Personally, I’ve only had about seven or eight times where I’ve gotten disconnected from a match, though I do see the “matchmaking failed” message when searching for a game sometimes.
Well, I haven’t spent nearly as much time in the game as you have, but whenever I try to get on I get bump from as many queues as I join successfully and often get weird failure messages.
Before anyone asks, my NAT is Open, my connection is wired and my speeds are great.
So yeah, I’ve been having lots of trouble. The matches I do get into people often disappear in the middle, including Obi Wan Kenobi style vanishing while your sword goes through them.
Was just bumped out of 2 Dominion matches in a row. URGH.
Meanwhile, let me copy/paste these comments from /r/kappa about FH duels which are my feelings exactly.
competitive For Honor is a joke right now, there’s 5 viable characters who are a mile above the rest of the cast because offence -besides Peacekeeper- is way too slow and risky. If you don’t have an easily conformable unblockable like Conq or Warlord you’re wasting your time and 90% of the match involves staring at each other until someone gets ballsy enough to throw their bash out
I made top 16 in the Panda Global tournament with my day 1 conqueror despite being a Nobushi main throughout every single alpha and beta. Shat over people who were clearly good players but weren’t aware of the REAL meta.
Yesterday for me the servers where the worst I’ve seen and that’s saying a lot. If I could actually get in a game it would be a miracle if I didn’t get bumped out before it ended. The servers are my only real complaint I have with this game. Thankfully I have rum so I may survive the weekend. lol
I should add that it was so annoying trying to get into a game last night I just quit playing even though the game gave me champion status for free.
I imagine everyone already knows this but there’s a dominion challenge event going on. I only discovered it today. The servers are still acting up on me today so I haven’t been playing as much as I would like with championship status.
The system for weekly / daily challenges must be some kind of random thingy because today has 2 of the same challenges. Very easy 3000 xp and 200 steel for doing 1 challenge. (pick same one twice) Resilience
