"TE OCCIDAM"V1, Yet Another Conqueror Rework, Feedback Wanted (X-r/CompetitiveForHonor)

"TE OCCIDAM" - A Conqueror Rework

Hello, this is my attempt at reworking the Conqueror, I would like to get as much feedback as possible before posting it on the forums or sending it to the developers when the "everyone give us feedback on Orochi/Nobushi" time comes for Conqueror. I tried to write this as if Ubisoft themselves had done it on a patch notes post. I don't know why.

Terminology:

Shield Bash, the dodging version which guarantees a light will be referred to as a Light Bash

Shield Bash Mixup/Riposte, the slower version which guarantees a heavy, will be referred to as a Heavy Bash

I am a rep 7 Conqueror. While I may not be the best or have the most experience, I don't think I'm a slouch. Source 1 2 (Note I have never queued for a vs AI game in my life, bot wins are vs disconnects and ragequits, mostly ragequits).

The Conqueror is a class similar to the Centurion. You aim to dominate your opponent. You want to throw them around and make them feel like they can't do anything to this impenetrable wall swinging a flail at them. You want to conquer them. Where the Centurion accomplishes his goal through offense, the Conqueror should accomplish this mostly through defense, whittling their opponents away until they get them in the wrong spot such as near walls, or out of stamina, at which point they can begin to crush them beneath the weight of their shield.

The Conqueror achieves this in 3 ways:

-Crowd Control: knocking the enemy around and moving them where you want to be

-The stamina war: You want to control your opponent's stamina and deny them access to it. The Conqueror should be rewarded for exhausting their opponent and being able to keep them exhausted.

-Defense and punishment: Many players feel helpless when fighting a Conqueror. This is exactly how a Conqueror player wants them to feel. The Conqueror should be able to establish this through their own ability beyond their opponent's inability to dodge shield bash.

SECTION 1: CORE NUMBER CHANGES AND SUPERIOR BLOCK:

The Conqueror has incredibly low damage numbers. The Conqueror being a low damage character is ok, but they are in a similar situation to pre-buff Valkyrie where their damage is simply pathetic. The nerfing of Superior Block (detailed below) and the nerfs Shield Bash has recieved entitle Conqueror to have some power pushed back into their raw numbers, as well as some giving incentives toward proper Conqueror play.

SUPERIOR BLOCK:

One of the "strongest" things about the Conqueror is that heavy attacks simply do not work on them. This is pretty much true for every character in the game though. Conqueror is often touted as an easy class because "You don't have to parry", because regular heavies hit and don't get parried soooo often. Superior Block is core to the Conqueror's identity, however getting a guard break off any blocked heavy limits design space around the conqueror's guard break and heavies tremendously. For this reason, when the Conqueror blocks a heavy, they will now only be guaranteed an instant light shield bash, akin to Lawbringer's shove. This guaranteed bash should not have a quote attached to it, because Conquerors scream "Te affligam" enough, and there is no need to give an audio queue to something guaranteed, as the opponent cannot react.

This nerfed superior block should also be applied to Conqueror's Full Block stance. Because why isn't it already.

LIGHT ATTACKS:

The conqueror has the worst light attacks in the game, bar none, no competition. This is because they get them off of a shield bash. But with nerfs to Shield Bash this justification becomes flimsy. Shield bash does less damage than every single punish to it, and is now much easier to punish. While I believe opponents should be rewarded for dodging a quick attack, the Conqueror should be able to get a little more reward out of landing it.

Side Light attack damage increased to 15, from 12

The Conqueror's top light attack is noticably slower than their side lights. It also deals the exact same amount of damage. The top light's speed means it cannot be used after a Light shield bash, unless they bash their opponent into a wall. Part of the goal of this rework is to reward Conquerors who use their CC to put their opponent into bad positions, and so you should be rewarded for knocking your opponent into a wall or corner. This gives the Conqueror a greater reward for landing a light shield bash while their opponent is mispositioned. This also rewards Conquerors for having the awareness that if an opponent is lodged in a corner their followup side light is very likely going to hit a wall.

Top Light attack damage increased to 18, from 12

Chained Top Light attack damage increased from 12 to 15

ZONE ATTACK:

The Conqueror's Zone is pretty much useless. This is ok, however, because some Zone attacks can just be "I'm clearing minions" attacks. However, this being the lowest damage attack in the game (10 damage for initial hit, 5 damage on second, Berserker's throw does 8 damage), being incredibly slow and costing half the Conqueror's stamina makes little sense. This is the Conqueror going ham and just spinning a flail around in a circle, that's as likely to kill them as it is someone else. Buffing this up to a nice chunk of damage shouldn't actually do anything, but hey, its a lot less stupid now.

Zone attack damage increased to 25 damage on both swings, from 10 and 5

HEAVY ATTACKS:

The Conqueror is tied for the lowest heavy damage in the game, despite being labelled a "Heavy hitter". This has lead to a semi-popular meme. The reason behind this is the free guard break they get off of a blocked heavy. This has the side effect of making the Conqueror have some of the worst parry game in the entire game, getting nothing but 25 damage and a slow, slow shield bash followup. Because their heavies are not as accessible anymore, their damage can be increased without real risk, as a conqueror will actually have to land a guard break or parry to get them.

Side Heavy damage increased to 30 from 25

The same situation as the Conqueror's light attacks, a top heavy is slow enough to only be guaranteed after a wallsplat, yet does the same amount of damage as their side heavies. More reward for forcing your enemy to misposition. While this may seem like a scary chunk of damage coming from a Conqueror, Lawbringer gets this much damage and a shove off any guard break, and again, old superior block is gone.

Top Heavy is now guaranteed when parrying a Light Attack

Top Heavy damage increased to 35 from 25

SECTION 2: MECHANICAL CHANGES:

HEAVY SHIELD BASH:

The heavy shield bash is your only followup to a heavy attack. It is far too slow to actually hit anyone who is at all skilled at the game, but this is ok. The Conqueror is not meant to have immense offensive pressure, and it does do a ton of damage with the Conqueror's new buffed heavies. However, part of the goal of this rework is to expand the Conqueror's moveset and make them more versatile.

The Conqueror can now cancel the startup of any heavy shield bash by activating Full Block Stance.

A Heavy Shield bash will now knock down an opponent who is out of stamina

GUARD BREAK HEAVY BASH FOLLOWUP:

Superior Block meant the Conqueror could not do anything special from their guard breaks. This is now gone, so Conqueror can have an option. From a Guard Break, the Conqueror can now press Guard Break again to perform a guaranteed Heavy Shield Bash (the same one that comes after a Heavy attack). This gives them another tool to drain stamina and play the stamina game the Conqueror should excel at, while giving the same Wallsplatting and mispositioning ability of a forward throw. This is more a quality of life/flavor change, however, because landing a heavy shield bash just has such a satisfying THUNK it's sad you can only ever hear it vs awful players.

Pressing Guard Break after Guard Breaking an Opponent will perform a guaranteed Heavy Shield Bash

FULL BLOCK STANCE:

Full Block Stance was clearly intended to be core to the Conqueror's identity, as they are one of the 2 characters in the entire game that can feint light attacks, and their feinting is tied into the mechanic. However, Warlord's Full Block Stance ends up being the more useful of the two, and it's not even very good on the Warlord. These changes aim to make feinting into Full Block Stance an actual worthwhile endeavor for the Conqueror.

STARTUP AND STAMINA FREEZE: Making Full Block Accessible

Full Block Stance freezing the Conqueror's stamina was intended to prevent them from simply being able to block everything forever, but also has a secondary funtion in making sure the Conqueror's offense through full block feints isn't overwhelming. In practice, this along with Full Block's long startup make it effectively useless.

Full Block now freezes stamina during the duration and for 2 seconds after, from 5 seconds (FIVE SECONDS!)

Full Block now activates 100 ms earlier (maybe just 50ms?)

FULL BLOCK OPTIONS: More Options through Shield Bash

As of forever, the Warlord has had more options from their Full Block stance than the Conqueror, despite the Conqueror being more cloesly tied to it. This rework aims to give Full Block more options when used both defensively and offensively.

Full Block Stance now has Superior Block, Guaranteeing a light Shield Bash off any blocked heavy attack.

Conqueror's Full Block Heavy Shield Bash has been removed from the game

Conqueror can now perform a Superior Light Shield bash from Full Block. This bash is identical to a light shield bash, but has full block throughout the startup. Blocking any attack through this startup should stagger the opponent enough to land the light bash, the same way blocking an opponent's light attack with conqueror's dodge will guarantee a Light Bash.

Conqueror can now hold the guard break button while in full block stance to charge for 2-400 ms(?) to perform a Superior Heavy Shield Bash. This bash is identical to a Heavy Shield Bash, but has full block throughout the startup and the charge. Because of the speed (or lack therof) of the heavy shield bash, a blocked light attack should not guarantee this bash unless the opponent mistimes it really badly, or you predicted what your opponent was going to do.

Conqueror can now press the Feint button to cancel charging a Superior Shield Bash. This removes the Conqueror from Full Block Stance.

The goal of this is to make Full Block feinting actually viable. The speed of a normal shield bash should allow this on its own. However it now comes with its own mixup opportunities. If your opponent gets antsy and dodges too early, you can charge your Superior Shield bash to catch the end of their dodge and hit them with a heavy. If they fail a parry, you get to punish, etcetera. The main point of this change is to get rid of the atrocious Full Block Shield Bash and replace it with the much more useful Light Bash. The Charge option is there because more options is never a bad thing, and there is precidence in Conqueror's charged heavies, which reminds me:

CHARGED HEAVIES, AND SUPERIOR BLOCK HEAVIES

SUPERIOR BLOCK: Remove it. Seriously. All this does is screw with parry timings. Nothing is guaranteed off of timing it right, your opponent is always able to block or even parry the heavy, and the reward you could theoretically get is the exact same as a parry anyway, being a normal heavy. This ability has never benefited me, it has only ever hurt me or done nothing. It doesn't even guarantee an attack when blocking heavies, which is the entire point of Conqueror's superior block!

CHARGED HEAVY: This attack is conceptually useless, and I will explain why. There is nothing stopping an opponent from simply walking away from you. Even Shugoki can unlock and probably doesn't even need to sprint to be able to avoid this attack indefinetly. The clock is too long in For Honor for stalling to be at all entertaining or viable. Even if it was made unblockable, it would still be parryable even with superior block heavies. It would still drain a ton of stamina and it would still be useless because your opponent can simply walk away. Even if you block your opponent into a corner where it should be more effective, why aren't you just shield bashing or trying to guard break them? It's probably just going to bounce off the wall anyway. It's a cool idea, but this is yet another aspect of the Conqueror that can hurt them in a lot more ways than it can help them. Many Conquerors, due to latency or bugs or whatever, start charging a heavy when they simply pressed the button, resulting in being denied damage from guard breaks. Additionally, when low on stamina, there is a specific bug where even if you don't charge your heavy, it will begin to charge, draining you of your stamina and exhausting you. There is also the Conqueror and Shinobi-specific flicker bug, a completely separate one from the zone attack flicker, where rapidly changing your guard before the attack will display an indicator and animation different than what the attack actually is, before cutting and resuming the actual attack.

The one use the charged heavy has is also gone with the buffs to heavy attacks. On an out of stamina opponent, the Conqueror could charge their heavy to stage one to deal 33 damage. 2 damage less than a top heavy after these buffs. This isn't even that useful, as knocking someone out of stamina down near a wall (remember those design goals about positioning) will currently allow you to get two heavies.

These mechanics are made for a different game than For Honor actually is. Conqueror's age really shows in these abilities and I believe that the buffs to Full-Guard make removing these ok. It's not removing options if they were never actually options.

MISCELLANEOUS ISSUES AND FIXES:

Conqueror can no longer be guard broken through their heavy following a Sprinting Shield Bash