Nuxia is one of the most unique heros from a mechanical stand point even in todays world where we have a hero with an actual gun. However she's never really gotten time to shine. Her kit circles around the trap mechanic which unfortunately is a very inconsistent mechanic. Even in a post CCU world where swapping your guard away to counter makes it unreactable you can still react to "counter" the trap by emoting on indicator or lighting into it since she has to trap in your current guard direction. Her traps are also the way to recycle her offense and as we've seen with the likes of Raider this is a very good thing to have that's pretty essential for chain based heros. However unlike Raider Nuxia's recyclable offense isn't great. And this is in part because her kit does not really have anything to compliment her traps. Finally we have her feats, Deadly duet is a nice concept in theory but you're hard pressed to consistently find 1v1 situations especially in a meta about team fights. Caltrops is a bit too strong considering it's a T2 feat. Thread of fate is an okay effect but isn't as powerful because it only effects one target. And infection is hard to actually use with it's short effect time of 10 seconds. My rework is going to touch on what traps mean for her kit, how to make her kit compliment with her traps, and a touch up of her unique feats.


Traps: To elaborate a bit further traps are kind of complex in that they don't really work like traditional soft feint offense as it's a mechanic that tries to solve defensive play which for arguments sake is not generally what you deal with in a dominion match very often outside of one situation. To further complicate traps they revenge lock, can be used to trap two of three directions if positioned properly, feed about a bashes worth of revenge wether they land or not, and Nuxia herself can be peeled before she actually gets to do damage since the trap itself doesn't do damage. It is difficult to outright buff her traps because of how potentially strong they can be if you make some minor adjustments. So I feel in order to buff her Traps into effective tools we need to first adjust some of these things:

Trap changes:

• Traps no longer do a follow up for damage
• Traps no longer revenge lock

I've gone on record of saying that I like revenge lock as an idea for a mechanic. However the devs have taken most methods to do so out of the game for clarity sake and I can only imagine Nuxia still has it because the devs have forgotten she has that effect. Regardless of it being intentional or not it would be insanely imbalanced of her to get my proposed power increase and be able to deny revenge while doing so. In a similar vein I think removing damage as a possibility for landing a trap is fine. Primarily because you get peeled often anyway. Removing this option in favor of utility is my idea. So with those 2 changes in mind here is what I propose traps become:

Trap buffs:

• Traps can now be triggered via soft feint or blocking
• Trap soft feint is now a bash with a hitbox and is dodgable
• Pressing GB on block automatically traps the person

I have always been a fan of two things mechanically when it comes to rework ideas. Messing with the block state, and messing with feints. While I had some what of a rework already in my head I was struggling to put the glue together to make it fit. The new hero showcase was educational and helped me come up with this solution partially. Essentially I want her traps to enhance her kit and the only way to do that is to have her traps land more often. By giving Nuxia 2 situations that lead to traps this makes it harder to just shut her out. It addresses emoting as you'll eat the bash if you emote on indicator. This doesn't prevent someone from stuffing her with a light but hitstun will and that we will get into later. I chose to have the inverse of the hero because Trap's identity was built off of blocking. She'll be just as scary with taps from external still as well and in my opinion this setup warrants her traps as a mechanic feeding more revenge than basic attacks do where imo her current situation doesn't warrant it even given the potential traps currently have.


Trap follow ups: Now that we've set the foundation for what traps are I have to explain what her traps lead into. The idea behind this rework is to give Nuxia a conditional activation mechanic (traps) that makes her moves better. Basically the easy way to think of it as landing trap gives X property to a move. With that explanation done here are the benefits of landing a trap:

• Next heavy is an unblockable finisher
• Next light input is an undodgable chain starter light
• Pressing GB and a direction is a throw

The idea is very simple, you're mixing between an undodgable 500ms light that is low damage but keeps your combo potential (aka the recycle component,) and a higher damage finisher that ends chains but gives you the potential for more damage if the throw ends up throwing someone into a wall or other person. But you also get the option to get a throw that doesn't guarantee damage for Nuxia herself. This would allow her to stall someone in revenge by throwing them into a wall or potentially ledge someone. (note that heavy finishers when they throw are automatic. So you cannot land her heavy finisher and then trap after.)

Enhancing the rest of the kit: So we've established what traps are now and what they do. We've retained the ability for her to recycle her offense. But now we need to bring the rest of her kit up to speed. Her mid chain is a particularly interesting area to look at because at the moment she only has two 400ms lights. She does have the capability to include her zone into her chains and i've always assumed that this option existed to throw off the timing of her opponent in some way. However it's slow speed pretty much prevents it from ever being a mix up. And finally we also should look at her deflect.

Proposed changes:

• Mid chain lights are enhanced
• The first half of Nuxias zone can be stuffed into her chain as an undodgable 600ms unfeintable heavy from Nuxia's left side
• Neutral zone now hits twice. First hit being 500ms and the second hitting at 900ms. Second half remains trappable both through the soft feint as well as if it is blocked.
• Deflect is now guaranteed at 15 damage and is a chain starter. Can swap guard for a 20 damage chain starting light that isn't guaranteed.

So mid chain lights assure that Nuxia can continue to attack unless she is stopped through a parry or runs out of stamina. Considering the low damage they are I find this to be fair. But I can see an argument for lowering it from 9 to say 7 or 8 for this property to exist. Nuxia's zone being a two part attack isn't exactly original however I wanted it to have a purpose specifically for being in chain. Conq used to have a zone that could be held for multiple swings but his new zone is just a single swing of his old zone. So that's where I got the idea to add just the first half of the zone specifically in mid chain only. It is slower in chain as to not be super oppressive and an easier time to parry. But the pro is that if someone is trying to dodge mid chain you now have two undodgable options. For the regular zone I wanted to make it more usable. Unfortunately because of the way traps work in my idea her unique trap animation on landing the zone trap has to be scrapped. However i'm hoping with my changes it still makes her zone unique enough.


Cleaning up/values and numbers: Before I get into the feat adjustments I need to list values for the things I mentioned above as well as addressing one final thing that is her dodge attacks. So let's speed through this:

• Dodgable bash trap is 500ms
• Traps feed 30 revenge (note this is their current value but since they're no longer doing damage they also don't apply revenge twice. number is subject to change if 30 is too low.)
• Enhanced mid chain lights are 7-9 damage depending on what people think is fair trade for the ehanced property
• Mid chain zone is 600ms 12 damage
• Neutral zone 1st hit 500ms second hit occurs at 900ms 12 damage 1st hit 2nd hit 16 (so 28 total which is what her zone is currently if it lands.)
• Heavy finisher damage is now 26 from 30 (due to power level increase)
• Heavy opener damage is now 20 from 24 (due to power level increase)
• Deflect guaranteed is 15, swapped is 20 and the speed of non guaranteed is 500ms.
• Side dodge attacks now can be input from 200ms-300ms instead of being fixed at 300ms.
• All dodge attacks and parry counter retain medium hitstun. All other instances removed.
• Can now recovery cancel with dodges from her finishers and after a trap lands.
• Slightly increased trajectories and tracking for her dodge attacks as well as her mid chain heavies and finisher heavies.

I snuck in some recovery cancels at the end there because she is a "dancer" with weapons that were intended to fit that. However considering her entire kit with my buffs I thought that giving her recovery cancels after everything would be a bit much. I wanted at least some part of her kit to retain the medium hitstun properties that most people forget about purely because it's relatively unique to her. It should help prevent stuffing in some situations but doesn't completely remove it as an option. But i'm open to debate with this personally. And the dodge attack changes are just to make them more usable/comfortable without making them power houses defensively. The input change isn't strictly necessary and I don't hold hopes that the devs will ever willingly include delayable windows again outside of new hero releases.


Feats: Unlike the extensive retooling of her kit i'm not going to be making major changes to her kit. I thought about potentially letting her activate a feat mid chain like the new hero did but ultimately I felt that would just be excessive (as it would be tagged onto trap sections,) and not really add much to her kit. So here are my suggested feat changes:

• Deadly duet name changed to Deadly dancer. Deal 16% more damage when near 2 or more enemies.
• Caltrops persist for 20 seconds (down from 25) with a delayed damage start of 500ms (instead of instant) Caltrops AoE buffed from 6 meters to 8 meters.
• Thread of fate is now Threads of fate. Can chain to multiple opponents from the original target.
• Infection lasts 20 seconds up from 10. Damage is now 5 a second instead of 10.

The main theme behind the tweaks is to give Nuxia more of a team presence as she's always been seen as the team fighting assassin despite her feats largely not playing into this role.
As usual because some of these are power level increases they have to be nerfed in some ways. Deadly dancer is a T1 feat that will potentially always be active for Nuxia. a 4% nerf isn't a lot though. I struggled to decide between keeping it passive but have it be a lower damage buff or let it become an active but retain the same or close to the same damage buff. The important factor here is that she can use it when near more than one person. So feedback on this is appreciated greatly. Caltrops are pretty disgusting as is for as short of a CD they have. I really am not fond of CD increases for balancing which is why I chose this route.

they already do 2 damage which is low. But the no animation + instant damage makes them (imo anyway) unintentionally strong in ganks and 1v1s. I always assumed the point of them was to have a persisting field of damage that at worst lets you clear minion lane and at best has interesting implications with team fights. So the changes made make it a bit more reasonable against players but slightly compensates for it by having a larger area of effect. The delayed damage gives some counter play as well as let people leave if they're on the edge instead of feeding renown. I thought of having a total damage cap exist along side it's regular active time to potentially address the issue vs players. Please let me know if you like that idea more than this one. Threads of fate is an interesting CC feat (similar to ring of fire works) in that it effects someone's movement. I do see how potentially snowbally it could be now that it effects multiple people. But you let me know. And finally infection. The potential it has is high with 100HP damage at least on 2 people. But that assumes you can keep two people near each other. As this is difficult and it only having 10 seconds of time it often feels like a whiff of a T4. So the idea is to let it persist longer potentially getting more damage out of the ability. But with a more reasonable damage per tick. Numbers here like with all of the other feat numbers are adjustable.


Closing statement/TLDR: The whole idea of Nuxia's rework was to make her identity as the hero who locks blades to be more fleshed out. I feel this is retained by having better access to her traps, better access to her throw mechanic on finishers, and having traps have a bigger more usable presence in her kit. She works as is, but seeing the game evolve as it has over time she's been left behind and her old ways of doing things do not compete with the FH of today. Above all I wanted her to remain unique despite having to lean more into blue/orange properties...even if this idea is a wash from a balance perspective I just hope that at the very least the ideas sounded/looked unique enough.

The TLDR is traps are now conditional "bashes" that you can access more easily. Said traps give a temporary "buff" to her chain attacks that let her get started with usable and recyclable offense. Thank you for reading.

@deathtocakl

Should notice that they haven't released a new assassin hero since Nuxia. They've also not given anyone a dodge light since marching fire either. This is likely their way of subbing out reflex guard since they can't/won't put in the effort to actually remove it from old heros. That being said they have been able to modify decay rate and did so with both Shinobi and Gladiator. So in theory they could adjust the decay rate to be super long so guard dropping before an attack is unlikely to happen.

The issue I have with reflex guard is less that (since you can just get good) and more having to refresh guard to block multiple hits. As if your timing is even slightly off there you're going to take hits and be helpless.

He's where he should've been a week ago. He feels much better to play with in terms of interacting with his entire kit. That being said he's still a pretty far cry from where he should be. This update shouldn't/hopefully isn't the last one he gets.

His damage is overtuned (but so are several other heros.) Beyond that some stamina costs could be slightly increased. But other than that yeah he's in a good spot.

I think you're being hit because Tiandi's finishers are 400ms and PK's DA's don't come out till the earliest of 300ms into her dodge. IIRC Valk has 2 400ms attacks of both her in chain top light and top light finisher. If you're still getting hit by her 500ms lights/finishers then perhaps you can't DA to punish opening lights without potentially eating a combo light. But I don't want to put my stake in that claim without testing.

Deathtocakl would be correct in saying that it's not a pk specific problem if that is the case. I think saying PK is bad overall because of this is a stretch, though I would agree that PK's dodge attacks aside from their damage are the worst things in her kit. They have a huge amount of recovery on whiff for some reason which can happen often because her DA's don't have much range. Combining that with her DA coming out 300ms at the earliest and it feels like hell. She's not the only hero with this timing and we can easily point that it feels bad in those instances as well. But unfortunately I don't see it changing because both Kyoshin (a new hero release,) and reworks like Hito's have this timing. Meaning it's a deliberate choice made by the devs.

@picoancus

Lighting him out of his neutral zone is technically an option if you start from true neutral as if he landed either a chain zone or a chain finisher heavy the hitstun on both would basically guarantee you won't interrupt his soft feints. However you're risking being light parried against a hero who very quickly makes massive health swings thanks to his over tuned damage profile. So "yes" you can light his zone opener just as early dodge is also technically an option. But both are very risky. There are better instances when vsing raider when it's more acceptable to try and interrupt.

Storming tap is completely unreactable if you're a person who looks for indicators. This is totally appropriate in some situations like Orochi because you can easily spot when his storm rush is being used because the indicator immediately disappears. However a lot of reaction based play at high levels focus more on animations. In raider's case he has a very distinct animation of his feet leaving the ground when he goes for tap. This is why I recommended if you are playing solid guard to block top. Because you can still protect yourself whilst looking for his feet to jump. Nobushi is another character where you can react specifically because her feet leave the ground.


I will have to disagree. I don't play at high level/comp level so I could be wrong in my assertion here. But I block top basically naturally because it's far easier for my brain to make me block left or right on indicator than it is for me to swap to top guard. It just feels more natural. When I fight raider i'm already blocking top. Then I simply just choose in my head what I believe the character is going to do. If I think he's going to soft feint to GB then I just look for blue. If I think he's going to commit to or feint his chained zone I just pay attention to indicator and dodge if the soft feint window has passed. Obviously this is still a difficult choice reaction and my method doesn't rip his offense to pieces. But it is specifically why Raider doesn't blow me up on average. I'm sure against an actually good player he'd mess me up more. But average players are too predictable. So when I get rolled it's usually just because i'm playing badly. There's never been more than 2 heros at any given time that I actually struggle against.

I know Raider is S tier competitively in both duels and dominion. My response wasn't to disprove or dispute that. Just tactics that you can employ given specific circumstances. I like many others think his damage definitely needs to be pulled down. And probably an increase to stamina consumption. But mechanically what his kit is capable of is more than fine IMO.

The goal of this post is to be as informative as possible about fighting against Raider both in onesies and in team fights. This isn't about weather or not Raider himself is balanced. I am borrowing FH Dojo's info here simply because not everyone likes watching videos as a way to learn. The main reason I wanted to make this thread is specifically because in order to climb the ranks in FH and become a better player you will eventually need to learn how to pair down mix ups. In case you're not familiar with that concept it basically means you're taking actions to reduce as much risk to yourself as possible whilst also beating as many options as possible. You can look at this as making a soft read. Finally before I get into the post here is the video itself both for giving credit sake and also if you're a visual learner. There are time stamps in the description.

General tips and info about Raider: Raider can basically 3 hit chain of any kind from any situation outside of his finishers. During his heavies and zones Raider has 3 options for his mix. He can let his heavy/zone fly, he can soft feint to tap, or he can soft feint to GB. His soft feint to GB nets him 24 damage, his soft feint to tap is 12 damage, his chain zone is 38 and neutral is 24. heavies themselves net anywhere from 24-36. Chip damage for blocking is 3 at the lowest for tap and 7 for a top heavy finisher. These numbers are important to understand so you can partially make a guess on what is and isn't risky for you depending on HP values and stamina bars.

Probably the most important thing to remember not only against Raider himself but when making a read against any hero is to vary up your response. If you're making the same play every time in a response to a mix it makes it incredibly easier for the person in the mix to punish you more harshly. The only other tip that you need to know for what not to do against Raider is you never want to go for an interrupt. This is because if the Raider decides to buffer any of his actions regardless of hitstun he will trade with you and you really don't want to do that.

So the first thing you need to understand is that as far as universal options go against Raider's regular chains go is that no option you do (blocking, parrying dodging) beats more than one option. In regards to parrying your best option is to try and parry the side heavies. This is specifically because eating a storming tap is always going to be better for you since it's only 12 damage versus eating 24 damage or more. Yes you can be caught by a soft feint to GB on wrong parry timing but this is where we start talking about pairing down options. Essentially if you're only focused on side heavy you only have to worry about if he's going to commit or if he soft feints to GB.

You might think "well if he's just repeatedly going for tap i'll just be eating damage." This is true. This is why you have to make the risk to go for a parry on the side heavy. However I will note that when we get into character specific options a lot of them also beat/avoid tap as well. Again it pays to vary up your response but we will get to that later. There's two things left of note in the general section and they're both about his chain zone. The first one is you always want to dodge INTO the chain zone instead of away. The way it's hitbox works makes it nearly impossible to avoid if you dodge away from it. Which leads into the second point, Dodging the chain zone is always something you can do regardless of hitstun and it will always net you a GB if he commits to it. On average the general GB punish is 24. This number is important because Raider gets 24 on a soft feint to GB.

Dodging against his chain mix up (in onesies) is your best option against this mix. It avoids both the committed to zone as well as the tap. Meaning the only thing it loses to is soft feint to GB. Seeing as how your likely punish and his are the same number this means it's always an even risk vs reward. More than that though this makes the mix up again easier for you to deal with. As you only have to worry about the soft feint to GB. So Raider no longer has the advantage here and has to think about what he's doing a bit more.


Character specific options: So here is where we will get into specific options for specific mix ups. I will not be listing every single character because there is considerable overlap, instead I will be listing those options in their own groups and only naming characters based on punishes unique to them alone.

Full block: Any character who has access to full block can punish both his committed to storming tap as well as his opening heavy upon seeing the heavy start up animation. The only counter Raider has to this is soft feint to GB. It is worth mentioning that while this is all true of the neutral mix of a regular heavy it's not true of mid chain heavies. For example Conq has a slow start up for entering his stance so he cannot eat a heavy and then go into full block to beat either tap or chain heavy. Where as someone like Aramusha and BP can. This is something you'll need to learn in regards to match ups.


Superior block: Any character who has access to superior block attacks can beat two options as well. In this case you're superior blocking his side heavies. This option gives a little more than a light's worth of damage but not as much as a heavies like most full blocks usually give. This will beat both his committed to side heavy as well as his soft feint to guard break. It still loses to storming tap but making the right read for this nets you as much damage as tap if not more so it's worth going for occasionally if you have the option. Raider Can make the hard read to feint and parry for a top of 27 damage so it's not entirely without risk. But it's very difficult to do.


Dodge bash: Any character who has access to dodge bash can beat multiple options. You are avoiding the heavy/committed to zone. You're also avoiding the tap from this and him chaining into an attack doesn't matter because you will stuff it. The timing will vary depending on how fast your dodge bash is. Raider doesn't really have an option to counter this as hard feinting to dodge into GB is too slow. He can potentially hard feint on a read to avoid the bash but it's unlikely he'll get a punish out of it. Worth mentioning that if you've eaten a heavy trying to dodge bash is not a safe option anymore.


Dodge attacks: So like dodge bashes dodge attacks cover multiple options in the mix up. However because DA's are not bashes they are subject to more nuanced situations. A lot of people struggle with the fact that Raider can chain into a hyper armored attack on whiff. What you can do here really varies depending on your character. Some can just block the follow up HA heavy while others cannot. Kyoshin as an example can block the follow up heavy but PK can't. This is just dependent on your character's recoveries for their DA's so it's match up knowledge you need to know.

The other thing you need to keep in mind is hitstun. If Raider has put you in hitstun via a heavy DA's who start 300ms into the dodge will be beaten by Raider soft feinting into GB. Additionally Raider can soft feint to GB if you decide to wait it out after DAing his mix up to potentially catch you in recovery. This would require strong match up knowledge for the raider as well. Though the one chain you don't have to worry about with DA's is from his neutral zone. If you eat his opening zone you can still DA his entire mix up because the chain link times from that mix are not as good as his regular ones. Basically think of DA's like this, they're capable of beating his entire neutral mix up but depending on your specific DA your options afterwards depend on your character. And if you've eaten a heavy your options are reduced to parrying or blocking for his normal chain mix. As DAing in that situation is not in your favor damage wise.


Black prior: Bp has a wealth of options at his disposal to counter raider's mix. He can flip for 24 damage on every option raider does besides soft feint to GB and this is available even on block meaning his flip is just as powerful if raider is in chain. BP also has access to CC lights. Finally he has his fwd dodge heavy. This does 24 on cc and 20 if not. It will beat both tap as well as soft feint to GB. So in most cases it's generally worth it to use that attack if you think he'll be doing either of those options. Adding all of this together means BP on average will be punishing Raider about as equally as Raider can punish him. You've got a lot to mess around with in terms of defense so you should be mixing up how you punish Raider.

Conq: Like BP he has a few options. He's got full block and dodge bash. But like BP he has a unique option of his zone. While his zone cannot parry anymore you can still use the same timing to punish heavies and storming taps. This also works as a defacto counter in chains for the most part because of the 100ms start up of superior block on the zone. This leaves raider with only feint to parry and granted that's not difficult to manage since his zone is really reactable. But he's only getting a heavy parry worth of damage from it. Conq's zone does 8 damage on first hit and Raider gets a light for a heavy parry which is 12. So basically look at it like this, you can beat his entire mix that doesn't deal with unblockables drastically making the read easier for you. And if you read wrong and he feints into parry you're only losing a 4hp difference. It's very worth going for.

Kyoshin: Kyoshin doesn't have a unique option like BP's flip or Conq's zone but I wanted to mention him specifically because of his dodge attack situation. Kyoshin can simply just block the follow up heavy after DAing however that's 5 chip damage. But he can also fast flow to punish that heavy. It also beats soft feint into tap. Raider however can make a read for this and soft feint to GB. In this case Kyoshin has 2 other options. He can go for his bash (it doesn't beat HA,) or he can go for an UD heavy finisher. Both will stuff soft feint into GB. I bring this up because it's a very good showcase on how each hero does not completely shut down the other person despite winning a mix up. Sure 5 chip damage doesn't sound like a lot but because you've blocked that heavy You can't use your dodge attack to beat his mix again since soft feint to GB will catch you.

Kyoshin can fast flow after that block to again beat a heavy or tap but again will be vulnerable to soft feint to GB. If Kyoshin just continues to opt into the safer route of blocking everytime that chip will build up and make it easier for the raider to take health lead or even win when he finally makes a punishing read. So it pays to take risks for Kyoshin so he's sent back to neutral and free's up all of his options again.

Shaman: The final character mentioned in the video. She has DA's with quite good recoveries so she has some options. However her unique thing is specifically her recovery after deflecting. She can continue to deflect Raider's options which forces Raider to have to feint into neutral for a potential punish. Feinting to neutral means Raider no longer has chain advantage and is stuck dealing with DA's again.


Team fight tips and closing statement: With Raider it's really quite simple to understand, if you external block him you drastically reduce the effectiveness of his mix up. This is because you're blocking all blockable attacks on a single side making it easy to CGB if he soft feints into it. Additionally you can dodge away from his mix up as well if you're trying to avoid block stun/GB setups since his soft feint options won't reach you (providing you're moving away walking wise.) However it should be noted that if you're already in hitstun from any attack you cannot dodge to avoid his mix up. Characters that have superior block on attacks can even punish his options externally including his soft feints. The only thing you really have to keep in mind besides if you're in hitstun or not is his neutral zone. It has absurd tracking/forward momentum. Meaning if you're attempting to early dodge to avoid a setup of some kind he can hit you with neutral zone.


So that about wraps everything up. I didn't touch every single character for brevity sake as this post is already quite long. I may also do a thread using the same video for Orochi specifically in the near future. Spaniard is specifically working on a long video for both Raider and Orochi giving more match up specific knowledge against these two. So I think it's just better to wait for that than simply write out every single match up. This after all isn't meant to be a detailed guide on how to beat Raider but merely to help you do better against him. If you made it this far I appreciate you reading it. Thank you.

TLDR: Based on the bones of the rework alone it's good, but there are a handful of issues that need to be addressed which should at the very least see the delay of his rework being released on live.

The goal of this post is to highlight the good and bad of the rework. If you would like a visual representation of the numbers being talked about here I'd suggest Looking at Freeze's newest video on the rework. At the end I will give my personal suggestions for adjusting the rework going forward.

Animation quality: So this is a pretty easy one to discuss as most people have noticed it. Based on this alone I would suggest delaying the rework just because of how important clarity is for fighting games. We will start out with the worst offender which will be his chain heavies. Now not all of the situations are bad. Same side heavies look a little jank but are pretty fine as is. I think the primary issue for same side attacks is transitioning between a light or a heavy on the same side. It looks like it's dropping some frames instead of the usual smoothed out animation that is hidden thanks to the CCU changes. In addition to that it feels like switching from top to right (from conq's PoV) or vise versa ends up with really off animations. Left side to right side and vise versa seems fine. And left to top or vise versa seems fine as well. In addition to that all of his same side for top animations look clean enough.

This to me indicates the animations themselves can be cleaned up a bit to look less janky. I think the primary cause for this is the absence of the spin transitions that live conq has. Perhaps these had to go in order to make room for the new current chain heavy animation which is the same animation as the fully charged heavy animation. I appreciate that the devs have used the same animation for clarity on the attacks as not to confuse players with different animations. However because of this we are missing some key frames. I believe it wouldn't be hard to add some in to smooth out the transitions of the pain points outlined above. Feints and same side lights could probably use some frame smoothing as well but at least IMO they are not really needed to understand the action being done. I would however like to see a bit more animation smoothing for both scutage collection as well as soft feinting into his full block from his chain heavies. As is the transition for the latter looks abrupt as hell like it's meant to settle in from one spot to the next. But it hitches on one position before transitioning into the end position. For the former it just looks a bit messy because of how fast it transitions from superior block into the attack. On 60fps it's just noticable enough to understand what happened. But it could stand some improvement.


Scutage collection: Overall it's a very good addition to the kit as it fills the role his old zone did for outnumbered situations but it fits into what FH is now as a game. That being said the move itself has some glaring flaws. The first one being it is counterable. What I mean is low recovery zones and recovery cancels can avoid and even punish this move. Generally speaking each full block/superior block situation has both the unblockable and undodgable property. However Scutage collection does not have the undodgable property meaning recovery cancels can avoid it. And despite the fact that the move has the unblockable property it can still be parried by low recovery zone situations. This needs fixing. It's other issue is it's hitbox. It really only covers his left side up to the front some what. But it completely misses his right side. Considering the move is meant to be a "get off of me" tool it should really cover his entire self barring his back side.


Regarding full block cancel: As it currently stands Conq's full block cancel improves his ability to counter guard break when whiffing a bash from neutral and dodge things from neutral. In chain his full block cancel only improves his ability to dodge things from neutral. At current slow dodge attacks cannot punish him in any situation (slow being anything above 700ms when the attack lands,) fast dodge attacks (anything hitting 700ms or below) can pretty consistently punish his in chain dodge bash when done from a light hitstun. Neutral bash is inconsistent to punish for fast dodge attacks. Both situations require early dodge (meaning seeing orange and not indicator,) and early dodging can punish with a GB in some scenarios if you have good reactions. Dodge bashes barring LB's can consistently punish both neutral bash as well as chain bash from light hitstun. Unless you're LB. Charge bashes technically can't punish but force Conq into a mix up anyway.


Feat talk and misc: So Conq has two glaring issues not counting the above and feats. That would be a lack of a chase tool and a return of both flicker and option select. So for the former even though Conq's heavies got a nice improvement for range you can still easily escape conq's pressure after he has whiffed. This is very bad and reminds me of Black prior's situation. Pretty much every hero needs a chase tool at this point. As far as option select goes you can press heavy and dodge bash at the same time when dodging out of full block or just in general. This either will superior block for you and thus give you Scutage collection or it doesn't block an attack and you can bash the person instead. Shouldn't have to mention that this needs addressing. Flicker is actually back too. In Freeze's video he said it's probably easier to replicate for K&M players but I can pretty easily make it happen myself with a pad on console. It's an issue Ubi has fixed in the past though so they should have no problem fixing it again.

Beyond those things I want to briefly mention that conq's chain link times are longer out of lock than in lock. This isn't the "biggest" problem because you primarily only are out of lock when vising minions. Would be nice to have it addressed but it's not necessary. Another complaint I have is the hitboxes for his lights and heavies. In my opinion they are too small and thus generally only hit one player at a time. This is easily seen if you stand in minion lane surrounded by minions. Generally speaking both will only hit 2 and sometimes 3 minions. Considering Conq is being pushed into a team fighting role with his update hitboxes are really important for these scenarios and should be prioritized. Finally we get to his feats. While T1 and T2 selections are mostly fine as is his T3 and T4 are pretty lacking in both damage (compared to other T3 damage feats) and support. I know Ubi isn't in the habit of looking at feats when doing reworks but I STRONGLY suggest they look into his selections if they really would like to see Conq be used more in a 4's setting. As feats really hugely impact who gets picked for what.


My opinion overall and suggested changes: Overall I think they did a very good job with transitioning his identity over into a post CCU world. He still has defensive quirks that stand out amongst other heros defensive tools. Not having to worry about stamina with his full block tool is such a minor adjustment but it really hones in on the fortress feeling he's described as. Dodging out of his stance is completely unique to him unless you want to count Nobushi (I don't because she doesn't all block with her stance.) Finally having scutage collection exist along side his superior block options retains the identity of his old zone but in a more active fashion. Still being able to full block cancel his charged heavies is also a nice touch. And it feels so good to be able to regularly feint now.

Offensively what he has is kind of boring and it's effectiveness at high level play is...not consistent. This isn't entirely new as many forms of offense don't really cut it at that level of play. I cannot really express how I feel on that as I do not play at that level. All I can do is urge the devs to find a way to make offense more consistent at all levels of play. That all being said I like how his offense feels. Having an infinite chain that works regardless of what side you choose at any point, same side or not, heavy or light input, I feel works very well with the flail idea. Even if animation wise it leaves much to be desired in the "realism" department. I think the way his infinite works along side full block cancels and his retained defensive identity makes him unique enough. But I also do not blame people who don't spend as much time as I do analyzing combat and it's feel find it to be too same-ey to many other hero offerings.

All that aside though he does have some substantial issues as mentioned above. I really like how his full block cancels play out in terms of including a frame advantaged bash into the mix of options he has. But I also understand that for high level play this does open the window for players to reaction punish some options. It really depends on how Ubi wants his bashes to behave. There's a few different routes they can take with it. Beyond that Conq now enters the bracket of other heros that are capable of back whiffing a light into a cancel to let them both space and punish people attempting to deal with them. I could say "at least" his lights don't have CC properties like some other heros in this group have. But that doesn't really make it feel okay. The devs at one point did say they weren't okay with back step CC and one can assume that dislike could extend to back whiffing things in general. But until the devs give an updated assessment and statement on back whiffing it's just something we will have to continue to stomach for the time being. Anyway onto my suggestions:

• Add key frames to swapping from light to heavy/heavy to light animations on both the same side attacks as well as swapping from top to right and right to top
• Smooth the transition frames for full block cancels on charged heavy moves as well as feints
• Add a few more frames for blending the animation of superior blocking into Scutage collection
• Make Scutage collection undodgable and truly unpunishable
• Increase the hurt box trajectory of Scutage collection to extend to his right side as well
• Increase hurt box trajectory of side lights and heavies both neutral and in chain
• Reduce the damage of fully charged heavy from 32 to 28
• Give Conq a forward dodge heavy. Preferrably a 700ms heavy with generous input window, does not need to be feintable
• Reduce hitstun/block stun of chain heavies so punishing his chain bash in most situations can be done with a quick dodge attack. (hitstun values stay the same for flail uppercut and Scutage so Conq is encouraged to use his defensive tools to maintain peak offense)
• Fix out of lock light/heavy chain links to mirror his in lock chain link times
• Lengthen his time to GB recovery from 800ms on both his bashes to 900ms
• (If possible) make time to side dodge out of full block to be 1 or 2 more frames longer but keep his forward dodge out of full block at 33ms
• Failing that make the time it takes to enter full block from a whiff longer than current (either issue should fix reactionary punishment for high level play)
• For Tier 3 Buff Pugno Mortis from 40 damage to 50 damage possible with an increased radius from 8 meters to 10. Now has damage drop off like LB's Ignus ember. Heal on block replaced with Second wind
• For Tier 4 Buff Catapult time to land from 2000ms to 1500ms. Reduce overall possible damage from 200 to 150. Create a sharper damage drop off and increase it's radius from 8 meters to 10. Replace Uninterruptable with Morale booster.

If you made it this far thank you for reading. As always see you in the next thread~

Every time someone tells me what to do with my money when it comes to my own personal enjoyment I buy it twice just to spite them.
If you're not content with something you're perfectly within your right to not spend money. But don't tell others what to do because you're unhappy.

Grats though. Now someone else is getting the hero early.

@deathtocakl

Just adding onto this but I feel like people would be more accepting of the FA/FD setup if the game properly communicated it in some fashion (even a proper tutorial would be fine.)
But also if more heros had the ability to "steal turns back" to use a fighting term phrase. Most of the reworked/new hero releases feature ways to do so but not many when the CCU dropped initially.
Probably the easiest way to accomplish this (both in terms of actually implementing but also for clarity sake) would be to give recovery cancels to most of the cast. Hero's like Raider and Shugoki don't actually need this due to the nature of their offense. But a lot of heros should get it or be like raider/goki offensively.

@csodaszarvas_g

I knew his top ones were slow but I had no idea his side opener ones were also that slow. Then again I don't really play Kensei.

@brandarsson

My logic goes thus:

While I can see what you're getting at with the comparison there I can't really agree fully just because adding a smidge of context to those other moves kind of hurts the comparisons being made.
In Rei sweep's case it gets HA 1000ms into the animation of a 1300ms move which offers about 400ms window of HA. If we were to take that window for HL's caber toss he'd get HA 400ms into the 800ms move. This would effectively allow HL to trade into every dodge attack in the game like I wanted and has the bonus effect of not being able to be stuffed even from neutral. So that is a very good comparison.

I can see where you're going with this. Considering CT's extreme vulnerability and difficulty to use in 4s, there's definitely an argument for it. You're suggested change might really be a requirement to make it viable.

I would gladly give up the new soft feint suggestion from CC to let him stay in OF from whiffing CT as well as getting a chargable CT that gets armor when charged. This solves the issue of people attacking CT specifically (so a 1's situation and some 4's scenarios) however Due to how long CT is once it's caught someone that still leaves him open to being stuffed either in the throw animation itself or after words with BM. I think adding armor to the animation once he grabs someone might be a bit overkill since we don't want HL to just be able to ignore what's happening around him. I'm also not comfortable with the idea of adding armor to BM since it's not a move unique to just after CT. I think it's fair to give a chance for a peel to happen I just don't know how much of a window to peel should exist.

We could do the thing that Valk and Hitokiri's sweeps do where the heavy input is a quicker attack that is timed to hit perfectly within the window of someone hitting the ground. But Valk's is an entirely unique animation for her punish and Hitokiri's chain heavy animation doesn't look jank when sped up. I think HL's BM would. So perhaps the best solution here would be to let HL recovery cancel into GS sweep after the opponent has been thrown to the ground. This allows people to still peel HL in the throw animation after it lands (requiring good timing/awareness) and still affords them the opportunity to peel the actual punish move itself. But in that case enough time has passed that HL is now afforded a chance to counter play a peel attempt.

My intent for kick was to transform it into a cast-standard forward-dodge bash and make it available from both DF and OF. To compensate for that change, it needs to also confirm an attack that is more cast-standard. I settled on Chain Light because it does exactly half the damage of Balor's Might.

That logic makes sense, I am still on the fence about giving him access to kick from DF as it seems like the devs really wanted to seperate UB's in general to the different stances. The one exception being HL's CC's in DF. But that is a defensive action so it sort of fits there anyway where as giving him a forward dodge kick is an offensive action. Regardless of that if Kick were to be accessible in both stances it's reward should stay the same to avoid confusing the player. To be fair you could just hold heavy after the DF light lands on kick and go right back into OF. But it would feel like an odd step to have to take just to maintain said stance.

Aside from having different rewards being confusing if we added a chain option in OF we'd have to some how explain why you can't just chain from that OF light into BM. Honestly it just seems simpler to not have kick in DF and leave kick's reward to being just BM and adjusting BM's damage to feel like a fair reward for both kick and toss but not be too much damage on Toss. I'm pretty stumped here. Maybe you can think of something?

@nameless-perso

The goal of my response to your thread wasn't to give you an exhaustive list of what changes i'd want to make Gryphon better. It was purely to critique your suggestions.
Since it seems like we're not making any grounds there and you've expressed a desire to be done talking i'll respect your wishes. Take care. (Also, I did post a follow up specifically about the delay comment. So telling me to go boot up the game and do those things on Warden is pointless as i've already done that and many other tests.)

@darrowshowlers

 I only read the buttom part because I'm not paid a teachers wage to read essays. 

If you can't extend the courtesy to actually read the entire post of someone you're responding to they're not obligated to do the same for you.

You could've simply stated you disagreed with the assertion and then posted why you disagree instead of basically insulting me.

I'm not going to indulge the rest of your reply since you apparently didn't read mine. Please remember that for the future if you want me to actually give you a response argument/if you want to discuss with me. Have a great weekend.

The descriptors of heros have not been legitimate for years now and can be seen as misleading for many Heros. Best to ignore them.

That being said everything in his kit is standard speed wise. The only exception to this is his side opening heavies as they were slowed down awhile back due to balance issues.

They're currently 900ms which is definitely not a normal thing for most heavy openers. I'm not even sure if anyone else has that slow of a heavy opener (that's not charged.)

IIRC the change was made so he couldn't get it as a punish from heavy parries anymore or perhaps it was to avoid him getting unintended punishes elsewhere. I cannot recall.

@optimal_gaynks

My last response to you gave some balance suggestions. But i'll post again to be more clear:

Necessary changes:

• WTP damage nerfed from 27 to 22
• WTP reach reduced by 2 meters
• Gunshot confirm after WTP now feeds 30 revenge
• Trick shot damage reduced to 50 from 75 with an equal split in bleed and direct damage
• WTP speed increased from 866ms to 900ms

Possible changes:

• Link in time to unconfirmed bash after whiffs increased by 133ms
• Hitbox on dodge attack nerfed to not hit behind her
• Can't dodge recovery cancel a whiffed bash
• Removal of armor on forward dodge heavy
• Recovery cancel window changed from 200ms to 300ms to just 300ms

Changes that won't happen:

• Changing of the armor timing for her heavy finishers
• Removing her ability to dodge cancel whiffs in general
• Removing her ability to dodge cancel after any current confirmed attack/feat
• Reducing her chain heavies range
• Nerfing her dodge attack in anyway (making it a light, making it have more GB vulnerability, reducing it's I frames, etc)
• Making her feed more revenge (outside of the one bugged instance that I already mentioned)
• Nerfing forward dodge heavy beyond losing it's armor
• Stamina costs being increased anywhere

Explanations:

So let's zoom through this to avoid making it too long for people who don't want to read an actual discussion. Pirate's current problem first and foremost is her ganking capabilities. I mention this because despite being decent at team fighting she's got tools that poise her as more of a ganker/opportunity creator with ease of access to very powerful gank tools. Walk the plank and things related to it are what enables her the most. If we reduce WTP's damage as well as make the gunshot after feed the proper revenge suddenly she won't be enabling one shot ganks against most of the cast/with a ton of characters as her ganking partner. Reducing WTP's range forces these ganks to be more accurate in general but also removes egregious examples like back light into WTP while an ally acts as her wall. And she'll no longer get self confirms in 1's. I reduced WTP's speed to 900ms purely to keep it in line with her forward dodge heavy. By that I mean light hitstun (which is what her gunshot does) will prevent her from being able to endlessly loop WTP soft feints to catch all dodge attacks.

There will still be some DA's that this will catch after light hitstun but those will be the slower DA's which the other soft feint in her kit also currently works with. This basically forces the pirate to consider her mixes more and increases the consistency of it's interactions whilst not really hurting it's reactability (since it and block bash are already reactable at a top level anyway.) Finally Trick shot is the only feat she has that's imbalanced and reducing it's damage is more appropriate than increasing it's CD.


The "possible changes" section is mainly to highlight more noticable changes for the average player that have a theme of reducing her safety which seems to be the second loudest complaint about her. I don't think all of the adjustments listed here need to happen nor do I think Ubi would do so if their goal is to not nerf her into the ground like they did with Gryphon. In my opinion 2 of any of those changes would be enough to adjust her safety without hurting her too much. But I could see an argument for a third change if one of those changes is to remove the armor on her fwd dodge heavy. Personally the 2 changes i'd make of that list would be to fix her dodge recovery cancel window to 300ms and increasing the link in time to her bash after a whiff by 133ms.


Finally the last section is comprised of nerf suggestions i've read about that just don't fall within the scope of something that Ubi has done with adjustments in the past. Changing her armor timing on her heavy finishers isn't going to happen because Ubi has a standard way of armor timings now when it comes to chain based attacks. Openers always have armor after the feint window. Heavies in chain if they have armor are being put at 100ms to avoid any confusing situations with trades happening or not. They're not going to remove her ability to dodge cancel on whiffs as it's a very intentional design on how her kit is meant to be played. Which plays into why her dodge attack is the way it is. The purposefully gave it a fixed input window at that specific speed so that she can freely cancel without the DA itself being the problem. Adjustment of specific cancels like after a whiffed bash or the window in which she can cancel seem more plausible. Fwd dodge heavy already sees a very niche use in her kit since it requires frame advantage to be a legitimate mix up. It doesn't work well as an opener in single picks/duels because of it's speed and animation. And generally speaking in 4's you use WTP as your way in since it enables ganks better with it's pin property. That or whiffing into your gunshot.

@knight_raime

Replying to myself here because I like to hold myself accountable for when I make mistakes:

Kyoshin doesn't have an artificial delay window into his bash after landing any of his attacks. Neither does Warden. LB is the only one here that you listed that has an artificial delay and that's a big part of why his mid chain sucks. The only other hero in the game that has this kind of delay besides LB and Gryphon is Highlander with his neutral Caber Toss input.

I was wrong about this, I went to triple check as I usually do after I make claims about hyper specific situations just to make sure i'm not spreading misinformation. Here is the total list of characters that have a delay to an in chain bash:

Kyoshin: after a heavy opener.

Warden: any attack that links into his bash that's not a light attack.

Lawbringer: mid chain bash is always delayed as well as after his unblockable heavy finisher.

Centurion: his dodge forward heavy and running heavy.

Gryphon: after side dodge heavy, forward dodge heavy, mid chain heavy, double light.

Warlord: after forward dodge heavy.

Highlander: neutral caber toss input.

Nobushi: zone soft feint and side dodge heavy.

Pirate: blocked heavies, blocked side dodge attack.


I still stand by my statement that the delay for Gryphon is what hurts his kicks performance. I also will claim that the delay for most of these heros is either a non factor (ex warden because his is a chargable bash or Kyoshin's main mid chain mix not being the bash most of the time anyway) or is actually beneficial for the hero if they're not fighting a reaction capable player (ex Nobushi due to how hidden stance plays a role in her kit.)

Gryphon has the most instances of a delayed bash of this list barring Warden since Warden has more access to his bash compared to Gryphon. But again, it doesn't matter since that bash is chargable. The most direct comparison would be LB and LB is already considered poor mid chain mix up wise partially because of the delay to his bash. Which really only cements my point rather than hurts it.

@darkerlord2007

 he just super armor through EVERYTHING I try to do

It's hyper armor not super armor. There's an actual difference even if the devs are going to be inconsistent and use the terms interchangeably. Anyway, His armor comes out after his feint window. Meaning unless he's in frame advantage (which he almost never is) you can stuff his armor on reads.

He throws uninterruptable lights 

He's forever frame disadvantaged unless he lands a heavy so your lights should be beating his lights if you're both mashing the light button after he's landed a light finisher.

 KNOCKS ME INTO A WALL WITH AN UNBLOCKABLE AND THEM ANOTHER HEAVY AND ANOTHER UNBLOCKABLE!!! HOW IS THIS FAIR?!?!

While I dislike the incredibly bursty damage that exists in his kit he has a very noticeable voice line that happens when he does his punch mid chain versus when he does his unblockable heavy. This means with decent training you can react to the audio que and avoid this situation most of the time.

Not to mention the lightning fast and UNDODGEABLE LIGHTS.

His lights are 500ms which is the same for a vast majority of the lights in the game. Having UD finisher lights would be a good boon if his mid chain mix actually worked. But they like Pirate's UD lights have very poor tracking/reach. So he can't even use them to peel in team fights very well. Oh and even if he lands the UD light your light is going to beat any option he'd do from neutral since he's frame disadvantaged.


Let me be clear, I also don't enjoy fighting the guy. But he's considered the worst hero in the game for a reason. I'm sure with enough practice (and less blaming the game) you'll be able to overcome your issues with him.

@nameless-perso

You are wrong, characters with deflect still need to dodge in a correct timing, only characters with *superior block* on dodge like Kensei, Zhanhu and Conqueror

Except i'm not. The reason you can dodge the heavy and the kick at the same time is because they overlap in the same timing window. That window also is the same window for Deflect's active frames.
Further more of the 3 characters you named Kensei and Zhanhu have the same active frame windows for their superior block and that window is the same one for deflect. Conq is the only one who has a longer SB window and that's on live. His TG rework (both 1 and 2) normalized them to the same window as all other superior blocks. There is no difference between the two in this instance.

have 50% of chance to avoid one of the side heavies, but even so, you can feint and counter their dodge by parrying

This statement doesn't counter anything and is just you being argumentative.

Top heavy have a lot of uses, it makes dodge attempt more probable

anecdotal at best.

 you not to hit your team on team fights 

Already said this

 passes through the guard of someone who blocked an attack

Blocking an attack blocks all other attacks that are blockable if they hit within the same frame.

I caught a lot of players who tried to parry a Helm cleaver and took 22 damage in trade

And i've light spammed someone to death. That doesn't mean it's effective at all levels of play. Which should be the goal.

even if they make his foward dodge heavy feintable, what benefit it will have?

Safe option from neutral. Lets you mess with external indicators. Potentially tricking someone. It doesn't need to work 100% of the time to be worth adding. That's like saying there's zero reason to have Warmonger's forward dodge heavy feintable just because it can be reacted to. It should do more than just be a slow unfeintable attack that semi consistently catches a roll.

well, that's a fancy lie, take Tiandi for example, 

Tiandi can often trade by inputting his heavy after a whiffed palm into dodge attacks. There are very little dodge attacks in the game that can punish his palm on reaction with a DA.

take old Gryphon bash for example which was exactly like that, most of players were dodge attacking because it was very consistent to do that

I played launch Gryphon. I was parrying dodge attacks. Again like Tiandi there were only some DA's that could consistently punish it. We could avoid this issue anyway by having his shove chain into finishers on whiff instead of his mid chain. This combined with making his armor 100ms into his heavy finisher would mean all DA's would trade with him.

 instead of having a mix-up extremely risky (and low rewarding)

It's not extremely risky. It offers the same mix up potential as other mix ups damage wise. The difference is just reversed order. Yes you can get GBed or light parried for 24 ish (average damage punish for heavies in punishes) but they also cannot effectively null your mix since you're forcing them to dodge forward with the UD light. If you land the kick you get the same reward as they would wether they parry or dodge into GB on a right read. To deem it extremely risk/not worth the risk/reward you'd either need to get less damage than they would consistently (ex Zhanhu punishing any bash with a dodge attack) or the mix up itself would have to have a counter that works against both options in the mix. Gryphon's UD light or kick is in neither of those situations.

As I said, the problem isn't the change itself that you want to make (as long as the heavy you get from the kick loses some damage) the problem is what changing his kick does to the rest of his kit.

the same happens to Warden, Kyoshin and Lawbringer

Kyoshin doesn't have an artificial delay window into his bash after landing any of his attacks. Neither does Warden. LB is the only one here that you listed that has an artificial delay and that's a big part of why his mid chain sucks. The only other hero in the game that has this kind of delay besides LB and Gryphon is Highlander with his neutral Caber Toss input. The point I was making was you're writing it off by saying "it only happens" like it's a niche event that rarely happens in his kit. Even if the delay existed for all in chain bashes in game that's irrelevant and not a counter to the suggestion. You're just being argumentative because it's not what you're specifically wanting. The delay only hurts his kick's mix up potential and you've not given a substantial reason to not remove it. Just as you've not given a legitimate reason to not make his forward dodge heavy better.

@brandarsson

The only argument I can see against it is the fact that I still see CT as a counterpart to moves that don't have HA on other heroes. Those include Valkyrie's Spear Sweep, Lawbringer's Long Arm, Warlord's Crashing Charge, and Shugoki's Demon's Embrace, among others. I have a hard time justifying HA on CT when these other moves don't have the same benefit

Valk's sweep in my opinion is in a rough spot right now. I will avoid saying what I want to do with it for the sake of brevity but suffice to say I don't think it can stay as is whenever they get around to updating her again. LB's long arm is a questionable move. It is a very niche case usage of a move. But what it does is very strong. I wouldn't compare LB's long arm to anything really just because of that. I'm not sure how Caber Toss can be compared to crashing charge so maybe you can enlighten me on that. And with Demon's Embrace that move is also in a weird spot. Not sure what should be done with it. I think CT is comparable to valk's sweep, TG Shaolin's sweep, and Hitokiri's sweep. Nothing else IMO.

As to your first point, I'm not a big fan of CT dropping to DF on whiff.

Neither am I. I think that in most cases exiting to DF should be in the hands of the player and not because of some weird happenstances. That being said my suggestions are my ultimate dreams for HL as a hero. Ideally he would get a chargable armored toss as that would add more character to his kit. I want to think that because we're just now playing with feintable bashes that are not charged bashes (TG Shaolin sweep) that we're not far behind adding in delayable moves that aren't just bog standard charge attacks. But who knows.

But, in my mind, Formorian Kick should not confirm Balor's Might, but Chain Light instead

Apologies for not catching that suggestion before. It certainly does solve the issue I currently have with dodge into kick doing too much damage at the moment. At the same time i'm not really sure how I feel about the idea of landing a kick in offensive form and being pushed back into DF. It sounds like it feels natural for that to happen in the case of Greatsword sweep. But idk about the kick. I was and am fine with him whiffing the kick lets him chain into a DF light though that seems fine.

As for recovery cancels, I don't think Highlander actually has any, he just has shortened recoveries for dodges

This is correct as per the competitive information hub. I do not know what if any difference this makes in terms of safety that recovery cancels also provide.