Balancing Parry With 4 Changes
Just a few changes to make parry more skill based than currently. Mainly by making it more reactive, while also allowing that reactive buff to be used against it by other competent players.
1. Increasing the recovery time. As of right now successfully parrying can garuntee 100+ damage when input buffered (which for decent Forsakens is easy to do every time). By increasing the recovery time, this allows similar punishes against missed parries when the offender baits properly (with a feint or a move with different timing). Making the risk in missing a parry similar to the reward landing one gives.
2. Decrease input delay/lower startup time (for all style defensives). By making the startup slightly quicker, faster attacks can be reactively parried. Forsaken players will be more likely to try and parry faster moves because of this, but that also gives their opponents more opportunities to counter their parry attempts. There will be a larger variety of moves that players can use against it by baiting a reactive parry, then punishing with a feint into an attack. Combined with the previously mentioned change, failed parries will be harshly punished, but provide more opportunities for players to get the edge on one another (by it having more risk and reward tied into the mechanic).
In addition, locking a player out of parry with constant fast jabs will be much less common; as the player blocking can parry (or in the case of the other style evade/absorb/stumble) the next attack. By forcing the offending player into mixing up their attacks, turtleing and rushdown playstyles will have a harder time dictating the pace of the fight outside of the other players control. As of right now a rushdown forces turtling with minimal difficulty, and turtling leads to an inevitable waiting game where the defendant almost always has the initiative (main exception being when one deck hard counters the other).
3 & 4. Remove buffering and replace it with a successful parry having no end lag. As of right now higher level players can easily know for sure wether or not their parry will land, and can always buffer when applicable to their advantage. So by replacing buffering with a recovery cancel, there will be minimal change at higher levels. In addition, in the moment reactive play will be more viable, and thus cause parry attempts against more attacks. Leading to a higher likely hood for the other player to counter by baiting out parry attempts.
Overall these changes would decrease player reliance on redundant playstyles, and allow for a little more deck variety by giving weaker/lesser used attacks more mindgaming potential. Risk/Reward would also be higher, leading to less lottery parries being thrown out, and by extension making random luck rewarded less often.
1. Increasing the recovery time. As of right now successfully parrying can garuntee 100+ damage when input buffered (which for decent Forsakens is easy to do every time). By increasing the recovery time, this allows similar punishes against missed parries when the offender baits properly (with a feint or a move with different timing). Making the risk in missing a parry similar to the reward landing one gives.
2. Decrease input delay/lower startup time (for all style defensives). By making the startup slightly quicker, faster attacks can be reactively parried. Forsaken players will be more likely to try and parry faster moves because of this, but that also gives their opponents more opportunities to counter their parry attempts. There will be a larger variety of moves that players can use against it by baiting a reactive parry, then punishing with a feint into an attack. Combined with the previously mentioned change, failed parries will be harshly punished, but provide more opportunities for players to get the edge on one another (by it having more risk and reward tied into the mechanic).
In addition, locking a player out of parry with constant fast jabs will be much less common; as the player blocking can parry (or in the case of the other style evade/absorb/stumble) the next attack. By forcing the offending player into mixing up their attacks, turtleing and rushdown playstyles will have a harder time dictating the pace of the fight outside of the other players control. As of right now a rushdown forces turtling with minimal difficulty, and turtling leads to an inevitable waiting game where the defendant almost always has the initiative (main exception being when one deck hard counters the other).
3 & 4. Remove buffering and replace it with a successful parry having no end lag. As of right now higher level players can easily know for sure wether or not their parry will land, and can always buffer when applicable to their advantage. So by replacing buffering with a recovery cancel, there will be minimal change at higher levels. In addition, in the moment reactive play will be more viable, and thus cause parry attempts against more attacks. Leading to a higher likely hood for the other player to counter by baiting out parry attempts.
Overall these changes would decrease player reliance on redundant playstyles, and allow for a little more deck variety by giving weaker/lesser used attacks more mindgaming potential. Risk/Reward would also be higher, leading to less lottery parries being thrown out, and by extension making random luck rewarded less often.
Comments
I'll pass this over to the team, though while I can't promise they'll be implemented, I'll make sure they see your thoughts and ideas and will keep them in mind.
Thank you again, Velindian, and if you think of anything else that could do with tweaks here and there, please feel free to share those too!
Looking at it from the outside I'd say: Absorb needs to support more attacks when coming out of it (jabs and hyper armor are the only reliable options right now), evading can have weird spacing inconsistencies due to latency, and Stagger seems like its only exclusive downside is stamina regen (side dodges specifically have the same issue Windfall's side dodge has, but that's universal to anything that adjusts player position with latency being inescapable). Certain decks can hard counter easily, but that's a problem with every style not being widely applicable (Parry being the one exception due to the risk reward being more so reward than risk).