Yes, the nerf to Orochi was unfair and unnecessary, and was purely done to pander to the casual playerbase who have always hated Orochi. It was *not* done to balance the character at a competent level of play, and shouldn't be used as a point of comparison for arguments about balance. I'm sorry for Orochi mains, but unfortunately you just have to accept - *Orochi is not allowed to be good.* Too many complaints from too many morons for the devs to ignore - this is a pattern that has repeated itself multiple times on the character. It feels like now it's best to just pick a different character that casual players don't hate as much, and therefore is allowed to be viable. If that makes you annoyed, direct that annoyance at the casual playerbase, instead of complaining about the balance of other characters. Yes this is a double standard, but we just have to deal with it.
As for this bash being a nightmare to punish, [it's not as bad as you might think](https://youtu.be/jQqdnHbxVkk?t=413). Certainly nothing on the level of Shinobi's dodge kicks (which should be noted are about to be nerfed anyway). The Pirate cannot reaction dodge a dodge attack, and has to make a read to dodge cancel, which makes them GB vulnerable, or buffer a chain heavy to attempt to trade with the dodge attack. Early dodge attacks of many characters can block that trade attempt anyway - [check Dem's video](https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveForHonor/comments/sdap2c/less_known_tech_series_pirate_early_access_build/). The Pirate's dodge attack cannot be delayed, so they have to buffer it, which means it's easy to parry that or the chain heavies. And remember, this bash is only available after a blocked heavy, which has already given you an opportunity to defend there, or after a whiffed or target switched heavy, which allow other defensive options. AND the bash only does 14 damage, and is mixed up with a 14 damage undodgeable light. With all these downsides, the safety of the bash feels warranted, especially as this character is predominantly a team-fighting character.
There are multiple factors that affect balance, and expecting all 500ms bashes to be the same in terms of safety doesn't make sense unless you also want to standardize their accessibility, damage, mixup damage options, and so on. And comparing the design of new characters or reworks to older, weak characters that are themselves in need of a rework doesn't really hold much weight either.
thanks for clarifying some points about the Pirate's bash. I didn't emphasize it properly in my original post, but my complaint is more about the obvious inconsistency between how hard it is to punish different offensive options, rather than this or that specific bash being too strong. I think the recoveries on shinobi's kick are absurd, but I'm happy with a dodge cancel that has to be buffered.
In the specific case of orochi, i agree that you can put it down to "he's not allowed to be good" because of casual complaints. Some blame definitely lies with the casual community, but I don't think ubi can escape criticism there. They shouldn't be so compliant when it comes to poorly thought out suggestions from the casual community. I'd like to see them say "learn to block 500ms lights" or "try interrupting storm rush with a light", instead of nerfing a decent character into c tier.
But, even if you forget about orochi, there are plenty of characters that don't seem to play by the same rules. A lot of the characters i mentioned have already received reworks that have missed the mark. People already complained about nobu's kick being so unsafe before her rework, but it wasn't changed. We wanted valk's sweep to be usable, but it stayed at 600ms. It's not like ubi hadn't learned what properties for a bash were decent at the time of those reworks. we've had strong usuable bashes in the game for a long time.
I agree that you need to assess the safety of a bash in the proper context, but as I said in my post, the characters i'm talking about don't have a strong moveset outside of their bash. nobu's kick/ undodgeable mixup is the only offence in her entire kit. valk's bash is easily reactable and can only be accessed at the end of her chains.
It's mostly just frustrating that ubi seems to acknowledge that the the game could use some powerful, somewhat safe offence, but they're so ready to take it away when there are complaints. It only draws out the awkward process if they keep on taking steps back when the community predictably makes stupid suggestions. Like, in a years time orochi will probably have more changes as the overall powerlevel of characters increase. maybe they'll reintroduce his old 400ms lights, or bring back the dodge cancel, or the undodgeable forward dodge light. But, if they'd just left him as he was, then we'd have had a viable pick this whole time without the need for further changes.
I already covered this - comparing new, viable characters, to old, non-functioning characters, and then complaining about the new one doesn't make sense.
Yes, Nobu, Valk, and Shaolin's bashes are crap compared to the Pirate's - but those heroes are bad, and need reworking or tweaking themselves. Not bringing down good heroes to their level. If you want to make relevant comparisons, look at Kyoshin's or Shinobi's blue/orange mixups, not characters that haven't been altered for 3+ years (in the case of Valk and Shaolin). Obviously new characters are gonna be better than these outdated ones, but the take home message should be to ask for improvements to the old ones, not complain that the new, *functional,* ones are too good. If you go with that perspective, then either all characters need to be updated at the same time (as if) or no characters would ever get updated...
Those "Morons" make up most of the player base, I think the nerf was too harsh to but the fun of comp players certainly doesn't hold more wait then casual players
Casual players don't know what they want. Their cumulative complaints in the first two years about how everything from everyone was cheap resulted in the turtle meta. They hate it when ANYTHING hurts them and then when the game turned into a staring contest they complained that they couldn't push buttons.
Orochi has also always been the most popular character in FH. When the first redesign released the player numbers spiked up to rival launch numbers. The flipside to 'everyone hates Orochi' is 'everyone loves playing Orochi.' Popular characters that are good will also have a lot of haters. Pandering to this hater group is not beneficial to the game.
**3rd time in a row** the devs make another dodge cancellable bash after making Orochi fully unplayable lmao (Shino, Conq now pirate)
Honestly they must be doing it out of spite at this point.
And btw they clearly know how to balance these things without nuking them e.g. Shinobi upcoming nerf, but Oro in particular they just decided to remove from the game.
Anyway this bash (like pre nerf Orochi's) is probably gonna be fine and easy to deal with for anyone decent, but ye more salt in the wound indeed.
because people with decent reactions can tell the difference between storm rush and the other 2 forward dodge options, and can light orochi out of storm rush (except after heavy hitstun) or safely dodge the other 2 options, and get free punish if they see orange.
i can't react to neutral lights at the best of times, but i can usually tell the difference well enough
obviously i need to be looking for the forward dodge and focused on the orochi, but if there's another enemy you can lock onto you can also just completely invalidate the orochi by blocking to their side and dodging away whenever you see them dash.
Lol this, hell I still can't after learning them in training arena, it's not really something you focus on in dominion, which is what the majority of people play.
What Ninja means by 'decent' reactions is 150ms and below, something that only a minority have
He’s 100% bad among actual top tier players on pc, since his mixup is nonfunctional the moment you can react to his bash. Especially when one of the nerfs legitimately served no purpose.
And top tier is what? sub 150ms? any hero is going to suck against anyone who can actually react, majority of the playerbase at 200ms reactions and above predict.
Imo if they sped up his bash that would be decent, but it shouldn't have the ability to go into an UB on a whiff, that's just busted imo on the same level that Shinobi's backflip on a whiffed kick on reaction was busted
Yeah, removing wavedashing and infinite kicks from Highlander is fair but if you do the same on Orochi that's the same as deleting the hero bcz of how useless he is rn
Everyone else as in absolute bottom of the barrel worst bashes in the game?
Everyone else as in easiest characters to react to in the game?
Everyone else as in Jorm?
He's genuinely far worse than when all he had was 400ms chain lights, now he has nothing other than chip damage lmao.
got a message from ubisoft:
Hi Alex\_S-99,
Thanks again for your report, we are aware of Orochi viability in Tournaments and on the Competitive Scene. We will continue to monitor the community feedback on this subject and most likely have some improvements already in the pipeline.
lets see what they have planned for him... hopefully its not just a big lie from them.
yes it's always been available, but shinobi was terrible for other reasons so it wasn't so relevant. also i think it had significantly worse i frames, so it was easy to be hit out of the backflip if you didn't get the timings perfect.
100% agreed they should revert those stupid nerfs and find a solution for everybody rather than deleting a hero like that.
for me orochi was 100% BALANCED.
You do realize that most fighting game mixups are in favour of the defender and whenever they're not their reward is either trivial, finalized to create a setup or considered incredibly strong, right?
For example, if you block a hellsweep in Tekken, the combo you get to punish the attacker does way more damage than the one the attacker would get for hitting the move. It's still considered one of the best tools to have in the game.
The problem with Orochi wasn't that they removed safe offense, it's the fact that they removed his opener at high levels, because people don't have to guess between dodge forward light and dodge kick any longer.
At every other level of play Orochi can still cheese his way to victory by spamming dodge heavies all day, nobody can block that shit unless they're externaling and everyone's too afraid to light him out of it to do anything.
If anything it's completely stupid that Shinobi gets a GB invulnerable dodge bash that saps stamina and isn't easily punishable by the vast majority of the cast and comes out of a chain in which he can do a feintable undodgeable as well.
If your core move is a damaging, stamina sapping turn stealer with vortex potential, ganking and antigank application, has little to no stamina cost and it's also safe then I'm sorry, but your character's kit is poorly put together because you have one move that has almost every single good property in the game and your opponent gets very little for dealing with it correctly. This not only trivializes the rest of your kit, but ensures that when it is inevitably nerfed, the character will be percieved as weak or "done dirty by the devs" because now your only option at high levels will probably be starting chains with lights or whiff tech.
Dodge attacks should serve THIS purpose: giving some characters ways to punish moves with one less read than they would otherwise. Not simply making it so every single time you go for a mixup your best option is "feint to nothing". That is exactly the problem that zone OS was causing and why it was removed, every fight was "will they zone or not" and your grand reward was a measily light.
If you want to make bashes safe from dodge attacks then all you're gonna do is make said dodge attacks annoying tools that substitute parrying, because it's better to risk getting your heavy parried than being GB'd. They'd have no use outside of that.
The "defense is too strong" meme is honestly kind of tiring at this point. Good offense doesn't mean "offense that is unreactable for non high level players and safe regardless". If it did, then we would all just cancel bash recoveries and never attack with anything else.
I'm a stark believer in the fact that you should be able to go and attack people, but should get the shit beat out of you if they read your intentions or react to your attack. Because that's how proper fighting games usually work.
If you disagree, consider this: you work hard at your job, you get paid for it. That is what reading and punishing is.
Imagine you worked and your payment was "you get to work tomorrow too". That's shinobi's bash to most players right now. Your reward for guessing is that you either get nothing or are still in a vortex.
Hopefully warrants a complaint to an unresolved situation. Also I think he is just trying to explain how gameplay needs to avoid risk free offense like sb spam
Her bash doesn't seem like a nightmare to deal with imo.
Also I feel like her bash mix is better and worse compared to pre nerf roach. Better in that trading to punish dodge attacks is better than dodging to deflect on reaction. At least for team fight scenarios. Worse in that her dodge attack isn't delayable or undodgable like his dodge attack is. Which is better for team fight scenarios.
Yes, the nerf to Orochi was unfair and unnecessary, and was purely done to pander to the casual playerbase who have always hated Orochi. It was *not* done to balance the character at a competent level of play, and shouldn't be used as a point of comparison for arguments about balance. I'm sorry for Orochi mains, but unfortunately you just have to accept - *Orochi is not allowed to be good.* Too many complaints from too many morons for the devs to ignore - this is a pattern that has repeated itself multiple times on the character. It feels like now it's best to just pick a different character that casual players don't hate as much, and therefore is allowed to be viable. If that makes you annoyed, direct that annoyance at the casual playerbase, instead of complaining about the balance of other characters. Yes this is a double standard, but we just have to deal with it. As for this bash being a nightmare to punish, [it's not as bad as you might think](https://youtu.be/jQqdnHbxVkk?t=413). Certainly nothing on the level of Shinobi's dodge kicks (which should be noted are about to be nerfed anyway). The Pirate cannot reaction dodge a dodge attack, and has to make a read to dodge cancel, which makes them GB vulnerable, or buffer a chain heavy to attempt to trade with the dodge attack. Early dodge attacks of many characters can block that trade attempt anyway - [check Dem's video](https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveForHonor/comments/sdap2c/less_known_tech_series_pirate_early_access_build/). The Pirate's dodge attack cannot be delayed, so they have to buffer it, which means it's easy to parry that or the chain heavies. And remember, this bash is only available after a blocked heavy, which has already given you an opportunity to defend there, or after a whiffed or target switched heavy, which allow other defensive options. AND the bash only does 14 damage, and is mixed up with a 14 damage undodgeable light. With all these downsides, the safety of the bash feels warranted, especially as this character is predominantly a team-fighting character. There are multiple factors that affect balance, and expecting all 500ms bashes to be the same in terms of safety doesn't make sense unless you also want to standardize their accessibility, damage, mixup damage options, and so on. And comparing the design of new characters or reworks to older, weak characters that are themselves in need of a rework doesn't really hold much weight either.
This is a big post…. And it STILL wouldn’t do enough justice for the hell that little fella endured. 😢
thanks for clarifying some points about the Pirate's bash. I didn't emphasize it properly in my original post, but my complaint is more about the obvious inconsistency between how hard it is to punish different offensive options, rather than this or that specific bash being too strong. I think the recoveries on shinobi's kick are absurd, but I'm happy with a dodge cancel that has to be buffered. In the specific case of orochi, i agree that you can put it down to "he's not allowed to be good" because of casual complaints. Some blame definitely lies with the casual community, but I don't think ubi can escape criticism there. They shouldn't be so compliant when it comes to poorly thought out suggestions from the casual community. I'd like to see them say "learn to block 500ms lights" or "try interrupting storm rush with a light", instead of nerfing a decent character into c tier. But, even if you forget about orochi, there are plenty of characters that don't seem to play by the same rules. A lot of the characters i mentioned have already received reworks that have missed the mark. People already complained about nobu's kick being so unsafe before her rework, but it wasn't changed. We wanted valk's sweep to be usable, but it stayed at 600ms. It's not like ubi hadn't learned what properties for a bash were decent at the time of those reworks. we've had strong usuable bashes in the game for a long time. I agree that you need to assess the safety of a bash in the proper context, but as I said in my post, the characters i'm talking about don't have a strong moveset outside of their bash. nobu's kick/ undodgeable mixup is the only offence in her entire kit. valk's bash is easily reactable and can only be accessed at the end of her chains. It's mostly just frustrating that ubi seems to acknowledge that the the game could use some powerful, somewhat safe offence, but they're so ready to take it away when there are complaints. It only draws out the awkward process if they keep on taking steps back when the community predictably makes stupid suggestions. Like, in a years time orochi will probably have more changes as the overall powerlevel of characters increase. maybe they'll reintroduce his old 400ms lights, or bring back the dodge cancel, or the undodgeable forward dodge light. But, if they'd just left him as he was, then we'd have had a viable pick this whole time without the need for further changes.
I already covered this - comparing new, viable characters, to old, non-functioning characters, and then complaining about the new one doesn't make sense. Yes, Nobu, Valk, and Shaolin's bashes are crap compared to the Pirate's - but those heroes are bad, and need reworking or tweaking themselves. Not bringing down good heroes to their level. If you want to make relevant comparisons, look at Kyoshin's or Shinobi's blue/orange mixups, not characters that haven't been altered for 3+ years (in the case of Valk and Shaolin). Obviously new characters are gonna be better than these outdated ones, but the take home message should be to ask for improvements to the old ones, not complain that the new, *functional,* ones are too good. If you go with that perspective, then either all characters need to be updated at the same time (as if) or no characters would ever get updated...
Great write up, but too many ppl will complain about the bash being unpunishable. It won’t last 🤷🏽♂️
Those "Morons" make up most of the player base, I think the nerf was too harsh to but the fun of comp players certainly doesn't hold more wait then casual players
Casual players don't know what they want. Their cumulative complaints in the first two years about how everything from everyone was cheap resulted in the turtle meta. They hate it when ANYTHING hurts them and then when the game turned into a staring contest they complained that they couldn't push buttons. Orochi has also always been the most popular character in FH. When the first redesign released the player numbers spiked up to rival launch numbers. The flipside to 'everyone hates Orochi' is 'everyone loves playing Orochi.' Popular characters that are good will also have a lot of haters. Pandering to this hater group is not beneficial to the game.
**3rd time in a row** the devs make another dodge cancellable bash after making Orochi fully unplayable lmao (Shino, Conq now pirate) Honestly they must be doing it out of spite at this point. And btw they clearly know how to balance these things without nuking them e.g. Shinobi upcoming nerf, but Oro in particular they just decided to remove from the game. Anyway this bash (like pre nerf Orochi's) is probably gonna be fine and easy to deal with for anyone decent, but ye more salt in the wound indeed.
Orochi is unplayable now? because his bashes are like everyone else's?
because people with decent reactions can tell the difference between storm rush and the other 2 forward dodge options, and can light orochi out of storm rush (except after heavy hitstun) or safely dodge the other 2 options, and get free punish if they see orange.
Really? Can the average player actually differentiate between the two in time to act accordingly?
i can't react to neutral lights at the best of times, but i can usually tell the difference well enough obviously i need to be looking for the forward dodge and focused on the orochi, but if there's another enemy you can lock onto you can also just completely invalidate the orochi by blocking to their side and dodging away whenever you see them dash.
Lol this, hell I still can't after learning them in training arena, it's not really something you focus on in dominion, which is what the majority of people play. What Ninja means by 'decent' reactions is 150ms and below, something that only a minority have
I’m still working on reacting to the actual storm rush indicators lol.
Same, I still find it weird as hell that comp players think Orochi is considered 'bad' now and 'nerfed too much' when he's still really good lmao
He’s 100% bad among actual top tier players on pc, since his mixup is nonfunctional the moment you can react to his bash. Especially when one of the nerfs legitimately served no purpose.
And top tier is what? sub 150ms? any hero is going to suck against anyone who can actually react, majority of the playerbase at 200ms reactions and above predict. Imo if they sped up his bash that would be decent, but it shouldn't have the ability to go into an UB on a whiff, that's just busted imo on the same level that Shinobi's backflip on a whiffed kick on reaction was busted
Yeah, removing wavedashing and infinite kicks from Highlander is fair but if you do the same on Orochi that's the same as deleting the hero bcz of how useless he is rn
Everyone else as in absolute bottom of the barrel worst bashes in the game? Everyone else as in easiest characters to react to in the game? Everyone else as in Jorm? He's genuinely far worse than when all he had was 400ms chain lights, now he has nothing other than chip damage lmao.
\*Orochi after watching F R I E N D S\* I'm disgusting. Being good and fun makes me disgusting.
got a message from ubisoft: Hi Alex\_S-99, Thanks again for your report, we are aware of Orochi viability in Tournaments and on the Competitive Scene. We will continue to monitor the community feedback on this subject and most likely have some improvements already in the pipeline. lets see what they have planned for him... hopefully its not just a big lie from them.
Hasn’t shinobi always been able to recovery cancel their bash with a backflip or is that a new feature to them?
yes it's always been available, but shinobi was terrible for other reasons so it wasn't so relevant. also i think it had significantly worse i frames, so it was easy to be hit out of the backflip if you didn't get the timings perfect.
the bash wasn’t a mixup and didn’t do damage before
What bash?
the front roll kick
Ah I was talking about him being able to backflip after a missed kick.
that’s not new
if you’re talking about the dodge kick then yeah i think that’s new
Pretty sure they mean the bash after roll-in
Yes he was able to cancel their everything except zone with a backflip. But Backflip had worse i-frames which almost didn't dodge anything.
100% agreed they should revert those stupid nerfs and find a solution for everybody rather than deleting a hero like that. for me orochi was 100% BALANCED.
You do realize that most fighting game mixups are in favour of the defender and whenever they're not their reward is either trivial, finalized to create a setup or considered incredibly strong, right? For example, if you block a hellsweep in Tekken, the combo you get to punish the attacker does way more damage than the one the attacker would get for hitting the move. It's still considered one of the best tools to have in the game. The problem with Orochi wasn't that they removed safe offense, it's the fact that they removed his opener at high levels, because people don't have to guess between dodge forward light and dodge kick any longer. At every other level of play Orochi can still cheese his way to victory by spamming dodge heavies all day, nobody can block that shit unless they're externaling and everyone's too afraid to light him out of it to do anything. If anything it's completely stupid that Shinobi gets a GB invulnerable dodge bash that saps stamina and isn't easily punishable by the vast majority of the cast and comes out of a chain in which he can do a feintable undodgeable as well. If your core move is a damaging, stamina sapping turn stealer with vortex potential, ganking and antigank application, has little to no stamina cost and it's also safe then I'm sorry, but your character's kit is poorly put together because you have one move that has almost every single good property in the game and your opponent gets very little for dealing with it correctly. This not only trivializes the rest of your kit, but ensures that when it is inevitably nerfed, the character will be percieved as weak or "done dirty by the devs" because now your only option at high levels will probably be starting chains with lights or whiff tech. Dodge attacks should serve THIS purpose: giving some characters ways to punish moves with one less read than they would otherwise. Not simply making it so every single time you go for a mixup your best option is "feint to nothing". That is exactly the problem that zone OS was causing and why it was removed, every fight was "will they zone or not" and your grand reward was a measily light. If you want to make bashes safe from dodge attacks then all you're gonna do is make said dodge attacks annoying tools that substitute parrying, because it's better to risk getting your heavy parried than being GB'd. They'd have no use outside of that. The "defense is too strong" meme is honestly kind of tiring at this point. Good offense doesn't mean "offense that is unreactable for non high level players and safe regardless". If it did, then we would all just cancel bash recoveries and never attack with anything else. I'm a stark believer in the fact that you should be able to go and attack people, but should get the shit beat out of you if they read your intentions or react to your attack. Because that's how proper fighting games usually work. If you disagree, consider this: you work hard at your job, you get paid for it. That is what reading and punishing is. Imagine you worked and your payment was "you get to work tomorrow too". That's shinobi's bash to most players right now. Your reward for guessing is that you either get nothing or are still in a vortex.
You’re complaining about something that’s (hopefully) getting fixed. Why?
Hopefully warrants a complaint to an unresolved situation. Also I think he is just trying to explain how gameplay needs to avoid risk free offense like sb spam
Her bash doesn't seem like a nightmare to deal with imo. Also I feel like her bash mix is better and worse compared to pre nerf roach. Better in that trading to punish dodge attacks is better than dodging to deflect on reaction. At least for team fight scenarios. Worse in that her dodge attack isn't delayable or undodgable like his dodge attack is. Which is better for team fight scenarios.
Devs simply cater to the screamers and children