25 Hours of Lawbringer: An overview of his problems

Hi all,

I just picked up the game for the first time when it released (didn't play alpha / beta) and decided to main the Lawbringer. I realize that he's a Hard rated class but I liked his hero trailer so much that I couldn't pass him by.

At this point I've played 20-25 hours of Lawbringer and have just hit Reputation 1 through exclusively 1v1 duels, no Dominion or Deathmatch, so I feel as though I have a good idea of his strengths and weaknesses compared to some of the other characters in the game. After a steep learning curve and rough start I've managed to maintain around a 71% winrate and around a 1.5 KDA.

Here are what I believe to be his biggest problems:

Speed

I realize that the Lawbringer is designed to be a lumbering, slow-moving tank but that doesn't excuse the fact that all of his basic attacks (with the exception of his top light, which is surprisingly fast) are excruciatingly slow and very easily parried / blocked by even a novice player. Even after throwing someone to the ground I struggle to land anything more than a single light attack as a heavy simply comes in too slowly.

Even after throwing someone into a wall, I can't land a heavy from any side without it being parried by a good player; this is extremely frustrating and it feels like I'm unable to punish people properly as I simply can't land damage.

The ultimate failure of his speed is that the Lawbringers core philosophy, counter-attacking, becomes almost impossible to execute. After landing a parry, I can either top-heavy which becomes an unblockable, or side-heavy which will gore the opponent on my spear. Unfortunately, due to the extremely slow turnaround time for his swings, I have yet to land either ability on any decent player as the gore ability is easily blocked / parried and the top-heavy is even more easily side-stepped.

Stamina

The Lawbringer feels as though he has too little stamina for what he wants to do. After a Shove-Guard-Heavy-Shove-LAOTL mix-up combo, by the time they're on their back I have enough stamina for a single light attack ( good players will easily parry a heavy) before my opponent is back on his feet. This again leads to that feeling of inability to punish people for their mistakes, I can land a couple of moves in a chain but then become fatigued and have to back off.

Range

Despite having a poleaxe, the range that the Lawbringer brings to the table is consistently a let-down and I find myself "missing" attacks where my weapon clearly connects at what should be maximum range. Compared to a hero like Nobushi, the Lawbringer should have a similar range but it simply doesn't feel that way in game, this is especially noticeable with a top heavy attack.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the Lawbringer is fun to play and his playstyle has a lot to offer but he feels too sluggish to compete against heroes like Kensei or Orochi, let alone Assassins who are simply able to outmaneuver him with ease.

It feels as though my only option to deal damage against a proficient player is to wait for them to attack me, block into a shove, guardbreak and hope to God they don't counter it, then light-heavy-heavy for an unblockable. Unfortuantely, unless the opponent is against a wall the combo does almost zero damage as the first heavy is so slow that you could stop, perform a full emote and then still have time to block it, and as mentioned above the unblockable is so easily avoided that I've stopped wasting the stamina on it for the majority of cases.