KENSEI

Top Heavy Finisher Cancel

Cancels to side attacks now happen 200ms later.
All Light Finishers now have Uninterruptible Stance.
Cancel to Dodge now only happens at the same timing as the Side Cancels and Feint timing.
Can now be cancelled into Guard Break.
Top Heavy Finisher has a new animation.
Developer Comments: By changing the timing of the cancels, we will reduce the huge gap between "will it be a side attack or will they actually let the Unblockable fly". Now opponents should have 200ms less to figure out what the proper defense is.

The Light Finishers now all gain Uninterruptible Stance, to make more trading situations favor the Kensei.

Before, the Dodge was really important because there were a lot of attacks that could easily guess the Kensei’s mix up. While we’ve made a change to the Dodge so that the timing is no longer variable, this timing should be good enough to use Forward Dodge to catch opponents who are Rolling away.

The new animation was used because we wanted the Cancels to look better and having the jump made this difficult (but fear not, this animation lives on! See “NEW MOVE Nature’s Wrath” below).

All 3 Top Heavies in the Chain can now be Side Cancelled

Side Cancels:
1st Top Heavy can now be cancelled into 1st Side Attacks, Dodge and the new Melee move “Pommel Strike”.
2nd Top Heavy can now be cancelled into 2nd Side Attacks, Dodge and Guard Break.
Timing Changes:
1st Top Heavy strike is now 1000ms (was 700ms).
2nd Top Heavy strike is now 1000ms (was 700ms).
1st Side Light, when cancelled from 1st Top Heavy, has a strike of 500ms (the regular 1st Light strikes from idle are still 600ms).
2nd Side Light, when cancelled from 2nd Top Heavy, has a strike of 500ms (the regular 2nd Light strikes are still 600ms).
3rd Light strikes are now 500ms (were 600ms on Top, and 700ms on Side before). This applies to the cancelled versions and regular versions.
Priority Changes:
For the recoveries of Light Attacks, switched the input priority so that it checks for Heavy Input first. This means it should be slightly easier to perform a “Heavy into Light Cancel” than it would have been before when it looked for Light Input first.
Dodge Cancels can now only be performed while Kensei has Stamina.
Damage:
1st Side Lights are now 12 damage (were 20 damage).
2nd Side Lights are now 16 damage (were 20 damage).
3rd Side Lights are now 20 damage (were 25 damage).
1st Top Heavy is now 40 damage (was 30 damage).
2nd Top Heavy is now 40 damage (was 20 damage).
Developer Comments: Kensei’s identity is based around the Top Heavy Finisher and its mix ups – so we have extended this concept to now "mix up" throughout the chain. This should allow Kensei to attack opponents more successfully. These Top Heavies were made into longer attacks to make these inputs easy for Kensei players, and make the cancelled attacks clear-but-difficult for opponents to deal with.

NEW MOVE: “Pommel Strike”

1st Top Heavy can now be cancelled into an Unblockable "Pommel Strike".
Developer Comments: This Melee move is meant to crack turtlers. This lets the Kensei players have a solution to people who are dedicated to blocking everything.

We put it only in the 1st Top Heavy Mix-ups, so that they're not so accessible that the Kensei’s can spam these safely.

New Chains

Heavy, Light, Light chain added.
Heavy, Light, Heavy chain added.
Heavy, Heavy, Light chain added.
Light, Heavy, Light chain added.
Developer Comments: These new chains all still follow the “3 hit chain” concept, and mean that the Kensei’s can perform any combination of Lights and Heavies for 3 hits.

Remember that the “Light Finishers” gained “Uninterruptible Stance” and are faster than they were, so there should be situations in which they are a good option.

(Note that these chains use the same attacks as seen in the existing chains. They’re not new attacks, they’re new branching’s, and are meant to give the Kensei’s more room to be creative in how they put pressure on their opponents).

Heavy Hit/Block Reactions

1st Top Heavy, now causes "Heavy Hit/Block Reaction" (was Medium).
2nd Heavy in the Chain, from any direction, now causes "Heavy Hit/Block Reaction" (was Medium).
Developer Comments: This means that the opponent will spend more time in “Hit/Block Recovery”. This means that, for example, if you hit with a 2nd Heavy and then go to the “Top Heavy Finisher”, they cannot launch a 500ms attack in time to counter the Top Heavy Finisher.

But if your 2nd Heavy is blocked, they have a little more time to counter your “Top Heavy Finisher” with a 500ms attack, but you still can trade with the “Side Light Finisher”, “Side Heavy Finisher”, or beat it with a “Dodge Superior Block”.

“Swift Strike”

“Swift Strike” now causes "Heavy Hit/Block Reaction" (was Medium.)
“Swift Strike” is now performed with the Heavy Input Button.
“Swift Strike” is now considered a Heavy Attack, allows Executions, cost 12 Stamina (was 6), and a suffer Heavy Parry penalty.
Developer Comments: This means that the opponent will spend more time in “Hit/Block Recovery”, making the Top Heavy Finisher mix up safer. You can still go to your Light Finisher or Heavy Finisher afterwards.

“Helm Splitter”

“Helm Splitter” is now considered a "Light" attack again, and is interrupted when blocked.
“Helm Splitter” damage is now reduced to 17 (from 20).
Developer Comments: We made this Uninterrupted on Block way back in Patch 1.08.01, with the hope that it would let the Kensei’s reach the “Top Heavy Unblockable”. It didn’t make the Kensei much stronger in 1v1 as hoped – instead it seems only really useful in group fights. With a stronger “Top Heavy Unblockable” mix up, we think we can make this interrupted when blocked again.

NEW MOVE:“Nature’s Wrath”

Performed by pressing "Dodge Forward into Heavy".
Visualized as overhead strike (using the old “Top Heavy Finisher” animation).
This attack is blockable.
Strike is 800ms.
Strike does 20 damage.
Huge forward movement.
Developer Comments: This move is meant to catch opponents who attempt to roll away from the “Top Heavy Unblockable” mixup.

This is much slower than “Helm Splitter”, so it being Uninterrupted on Block should not be overly punishing in group fights.

Dodge

Forward dodge's Superior Block phase now starts from 100ms to the end of the dodge, and now is always in the Top Stance.
Right dodge's Superior Block phase now starts from 100ms to the end of the dodge, and now is always in the Right Stance.
Left dodge's Superior Block phase now starts from 100ms to the end of the dodge, and now is always in the Left Stance.
(At the end of your Dodge, you keep the stance you were forced into by the dodge.)
(Backward dodge still keeps your stance in the direction it was for the whole dodge.)
Can perform your dodge attacks after Superior Blocking an attack (even if it’s late in the dodge).
Helm Splitter now can only be launched starting at 100ms (was starting at 300ms).
Grasping Pounce now can only be launched starting at 100ms (was starting at 0ms).
Developer Comments: Before, the Kensei’s could get a Superior Block while dodging - but it was extremely hard to perform, because it meant they had to spend time to Stance Change to the correct stance, and then Dodge. This change is meant to make this much easier to perform.

The longer time of the Superior Block will also mean that opponents, who try to counter your “Top Unblockable Heavy” with their top light attack, are going to be beaten by your “Forward Dodge Cancel” into “Grasping Pounce” and punished.

The change to make the forward dodge attacks start later is to avoid ‘Rewind’ problems, and to better control the Kensei's range for Guard Break. When it was at 0ms, it allowed slightly more range to a Guard Break than expected, leading to "the best way for Kensei to do a regular Guard Break is to actually press Forward + Dodge + Guard Break extremely quickly", which is not intended.

Zone Attack

Zone Attack has been reworked into a 3-strike attack. The first strike is 500ms, from Left Stance, hitting your locked target – and then flows into a similar version of the old zone attack for the second and third strikes.
Zone Attack no longer has Uninterruptible Stance.
All strikes now have increased knockback when in Revenge.
Developer Comments: The Kensei’s Zone Attack struggled to find a role before – it was too slow and weak to be good in a due, and the weird hit areas and timings made it extremely difficult to use effectively in group fights.

Since it now starts with a fast side attack, it should find a use in duels, and with the increased knockback and ability to hit forward first, we would like it to be able to find a role in group fights as well.

The loss of Uninterruptible Stance was made to avoid trading in duels, but if you use it in a group fight you can use the Revenge's Uninterruptible Stance and be more effective in clearing opponents around you.

(Note: the first strike does 20 damage, it’s a 500ms attack, and doesn’t pay a stance change time cost to launch, so it should make up for the nerf to the light attacks’ damage.)

“Rushing Sweep”

Removed the bump after the Strike.
Throw

[Bug Fix] Throwing an opponent into another opponent now causes the same bumped reaction as any other heroes' throws do.