Warrior’s Den Recap – June 3rd

For Honor Y5S2: Mirage

Starting June 10th, For Honor’s Y5S2: Mirage transforms Heathmoor’s landscape and plays tricks on the minds of all warriors. After centuries of spoiling and exhausting the lands with constant battles for power and control, Mother Nature has decided to unleash her burning wrath. An intense drought has befallen the battlefield. The once rich and bountiful Heathmoor has become dry and desolate. The scorching heat toys with the minds of the most ferocious warriors, bringing forth new demons and nightmares. Who will be their salvation?

This season draws inspiration from Japanese mythology and the natural disaster drought These themes are strongly portrayed in Y5S2: Mirage’s events, narrative, seasonal customization, Battle Pass, and new hero. Also, making a return this season is the Testing Grounds and hero changes based on last season’s testing grounds.

For more information on everything For Honor’s Y5S2: Mirage, just keep reading. Below you will find more information on the event Visions of the Kyoshin, everything regarding Testing Grounds, and this season’s battle pass. Otherwise, you can join your fellow warriors starting June 10th in game and discover For Honor Y5S2: Mirage.

Visions of the Kyoshin

Starting at season launch to July 1st, For Honor’s limited-time event Visions of the Kyoshin is live.

Due to the battle for water, the Horkos and Chimera took the fight to the Kyoshin Temple. Groundwater was rumored to be foraged in the area. What they found there instead was torment from scorching heat and mystic warriors. Were they a mirage? Or were the Kyoshin more than a lost legend? Those who witnessed the battle agreed on one thing: The guardians of the Kyoshin Temple were nothing like anyone had ever seen...

In Visions of the Kyoshin, players will experience the Dominion game mode with a twist. Powerful entities called the Heavenly Ones contest points A and C. When defeated, these give a temporary buff as well as a special vision to the player who served the final strike. For a short period of time, you will be able to peer into the realm of these entities and possibly witness what is to come...

During the event, players will be able to play through a Free Event Pass and gain access to a multitude of rewards such as a new Battle Outfit, a Mood Effect as well as an Ornament. During the event there will also be new weapons available for players to loot.

Battle Pass

The warriors of Heathmoor struggle against the drought and mind tricks. The Samurai are reminded of the Heavenly Ones, the embodiment of light and mirages in their pantheon of deities. The themes of For Honor Y5S2: Mirage make a strong impact in this season’s Battle Pass, allowing you to dress your warriors in gear reminiscent of Samurai legends and deities or bearing the cracks of a parched and desolate landscape.

Players can once again play through 100 tiers of rewards and unlock a shared execution per hero, one weapon set per hero, 2 battle outfits per hero, 2 effects per hero, and other various customization elements. Participating players will also be able to unlock a paired emote only available through Y5S2’ Battle Pass. This Y5S2 Battle Pass will be available from season launch to September 7th.

Y5S1 Testing Grounds Fight Team Update

The Y5S1 Testing Ground changes will also be released at the start of Y5S2. Bellow you can find a list of all those heroes and more details on their changes.

• Berserker

• Gladiator

• Zhanhu

• Aramusha

• Shugoki

• Jiang Jun

• Hitokiri

Taking the feedback we’ve received from you, our player community, we have also applied additional changes to the heroes; we’ll go into a bit of detail down below, but you can see the full list of changes in our patch notes.

We look forward to seeing how they perform once they are released and we are always keeping an eye on social media and our player surveys for additional feedback.

We’ll be going through each other hero give a brief overview of the changes from their Testing Grounds iterations.

Berserker

Berserker is the only hero who did not receive any changes from the Testing Grounds; feedback was positive and did not warrant any extra adjustments.

Gladiator

Most of the feedback we received from Gladiator was positive, but we received some concerns about the power level of some of his moves, notably Fuscina Ictus, Skewer and side dodge Sucker Punch. We’re also addressing the “Stamina Bully” aspect of Gladiator which is a source of frustration amongst players.

Fuscina Ictus’ main issue is that it dealt too much damage, most notably against opponents who are Out of Stamina as it unbalances them and guarantees a follow-up heavy attack. To remedy this, Fuscina Ictus no longer unbalances opponents who are Out of Stamina; it still chains into Heavy Finishers and Skewer, but players will no longer get a large portion of free damage out of a landed Fuscina Ictus.

Skewer’s issue was that it is too safe to use in ganks; generally the changes to it were well-received, but its power was slightly too high, especially considering that players could mistime their ganking attempts and their opponents would receive close to no Revenge. We’re tweaking Skewer so that it now generates Revenge similar to most Bashes in the game – with this, players should have an easier time escaping Gladiator ganks and will give them extra lasting power if their opponents do not execute it perfectly.

Sucker Punches are the last source of major feedback we’ve received: the side dodge variants were too strong with variable timing, making them able to avoid some mix-ups and made them much too safe, the Front Dodge variant was too slow and could not reliably be used as an opener, and finally, all of Gladiator’s Sucker Punches interact with Stamina in a way that is frustrating for players. We’ve changed Sucker Punch in the following ways: Side Dodge Sucker Punch no longer has delayable timings (similar to what we did on Gryphon), Front Dodge Sucker Punch is now faster to enable Gladiator to initiate better and all Sucker Punches deal less Stamina damage and no longer pause Stamina Regeneration.

We’re hoping that with these changes Gladiator’s power level high and that he becomes a viable alternative to Centurion for ganking in teams, but that the frustration experienced when playing against him goes down.

Zhanhu

Zhanhu’s feedback was overwhelmingly positive – the multiple changes to the hero were very well received, but the hero’s power level, especially at very high competitive levels, was too high and needed to be toned down slightly to ensure the hero wasn’t becoming too strong.

We’ve slowed down the Zone Attack to the speed it had before – at the new speed, it quickly became the best Zone Attack in the game, and Zhanhu’s new flow made it so that it was too strong in group fights. Its new speed should still be effective, but not too powerful.

The other change we’ve done is that his Side Dodge Attacks are now still always considered to be Light attacks when parried. There was a bug present on the Testing Grounds that left them as Light parries, (they were supposed to be Heavy parries) but after careful review and consideration, we decided to leave them as Light parries – Zhanhu’s Side Dodge Attacks are quite strong (they keep their new property of not being interrupted on block) but considering the difficulty in parrying them consistently, we felt that the risk/reward wasn’t balanced if they were Heavy parries.

Zhanhu’s shaping up to become a new very strong hero with these changes, and we’re hoping we’ll start to see the hero picked in the Dominion series!

Aramusha

Aramusha’s feedback was also mostly positive – Blade Blockade as a whole is a clear winner, and the extra opening power Aramusha received with the new Ring the Bell soft feints were considered strong points of the hero.

However, Aramusha also still suffered from lacking range in his attacks – since he still lacked forward movement during most of his attacks, several of his options were still too easy to evade. As such, we’ve improved the forward movement of most of his attacks so that they become harder to simply back dodge to avoid all options Aramusha could do. This includes Neutral Heavies, Infinite Light and Heavy chains as well as Heavy Finishers.

With the new increased forward range on Aramusha’s attacks, we’re hoping the hero will become a force to be reckoned with in the future as players explore the potential Aramusha brings to a team.

Shugoki

Shugoki’s changes were, overall, positive – players who didn’t play as Shugoki were happy with the reduced frustration when facing Shugoki and players who do play as Shugoki appreciate the extra steps taken so that Shugoki can open up and defend better against opponents.

The two major changes we’ve pushing onto Shugoki concern Charge of the Oni and Demon’s Embrace’s recovery. Charge of the Oni’s change was generally perceived as positive as it gave Shugoki a way to move around the battlefield a bit easier, but there were issues with the stamina consumption of the move. As such, we’ve rebalanced the stamina costs so that players can no longer mash the Sprint button to continually enter and exit Charge of the Oni while keeping high speeds and costing relatively no stamina.

Demon’s Embrace continues to be the most controversial change, but it was generally much better received than our previous iteration. With the changes coming to the move, we’ve also lowered the recovery of the attack when it misses so that you regain control of your hero in a timelier manner.

We’ll be keeping an eye on Shugoki’s stats and the feedback we receive – we hope that the frustration of playing against a Shugoki goes down while playing as Shugoki remains a satisfying experience.

Jiang Jun

Jiang Jun was well-received; while some players found that the Zone Attack that comes from Sifu’s Poise was too strong now that it is Unblockable, in most cases, the hero is well-balanced and has much better options than previously.

The last point we needed to address was Dou Shi’s Choke’s Stamina damage – the move easily dealt a large amount of Stamina damage, and even with no guaranteed damage afterwards, it could put players Out of Stamina too easily. As such, we’ve reduced the amount of Stamina damage inflicted on opponents by this move; while it still deals a significant amount, it should no longer almost guarantee an Out of Stamina state when Jiang Jun parries a Zone Attack, for example.

Jiang Jun’s new changes make him a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield, and it is now much easier to get into mixups and defend against multiple opponents, so our hope is that the hero ends up being picked more often to greater effectiveness than before.

Hitokiri

Hitokiri almost ties with Zhanhu in terms of appreciation of the changes the hero received – most players are very happy with the new chain openers, as well as Sweep finally having a place in the hero’s toolkit.

While the feedback was positive, there are some aspects of Hitokiri that we are addressing. First, Rei Kick and Rei Sweep will now deal less Stamina damage and no longer pause Stamina Regeneration. Hitokiri’s flow is great, but opponents need to have a way to come back against a Hitokiri that manages to catch them in the Rei Kick/Sweep mixups. Beforehand, Hitokiri would end up dealing too much Stamina damage and left opponents in a state where they had to wait before counterattacking – this change should help with this issue.

Hitokiri’s Endless Myriad heavy attacks, which are guaranteed after the Rei Kick/Sweep options, also dealt slightly too much damage. When a Hitokiri is able to mix you repeatedly, the damage racks up very quickly, and as such we’ve lowered the damage of the attack slightly to give opponents more room to breathe.

Finally, Hitokiri’s new side dodge attacks were considered to be too strong, as they dealt too much damage and could be delayed to avoid mixups. We’ve removed the delayable portion of the attack as well as reduced damage it deals to make it more in-line with other dodge attacks.

Hitokiri seems to be in a very good spot with these changes; 1v1 is much stronger and 1vX also seems to be getting quite a bump, so we’re happy with them. We’re hoping the hero will once again be picked in tournaments and become more competitive.

Y5S2 Testing Grounds

From July 1st to 8th, a new Testing Grounds that will be opening up. We’ll be testing the following changes:

• Raider changes

• Orochi changes

• Shinobi changes

• Option Select changes

We’ll go into further detail about the changes in a blog post as well as a Warriors’ Den segment as we ger closer to July 1st, but we’d like to take a bit of time to explain exactly what Option Selects are, as it is an often misunderstood topic amongst the community.

Intro to Option Selects

An Option Select, at its core, is when a player performs one or multiple inputs (usually in very quick succession) and one of multiple different actions occur, depending on what your opponent performed. In a sense, the game “Selects the Option” that matches the situation – for this to happen you need to have multiple different “Actions” as the outcome of what you performed as a player.

In many fighting games, Option Selects manifest themselves in wildly different scenarios, but in For Honor specifically, the term Option Select can only be applied to the “Parry” action. This is because of what Options Selects are at their core: as a player, you perform an action, and depending on what your opponent performs, you either Parry or do a different action.

A good example of Option Selects in For Honor is the infamous “Zone Option Select” – as a player, you can attempt to Parry an attack with the Zone Attack input (pressing both Light and Heavy buttons at the same time). The result is that you will either Parry if your opponent doesn’t Feint their attack or perform a Zone Attack if the opponent Feinted their attack. This is an Option Select; you perform a single input, and the resulting action from your input is either “Parry” or “Zone Attack”.

Many players mistakenly feel that Dodge Attacks as well as Superior Block attacks are Option Selects, but they in fact are not –when you perform a Dodge Attack, for example, you will ALWAYS perform that Dodge Attack, no matter what your opponent performs; this is not an Option Select, as the only result of your action is a Dodge Attack. Dodge Attacks, used defensively, can defeat multiple offensive options, but in the end when you perform a Dodge Attack, it will always come out – it won’t sometimes Parry and sometimes Dodge Attack.

For Honor players can use multiple Option Selects, but they are generally detrimental to the game as they stifle Offense, especially Unblockable (but Parriable) Offense. Players who know how to perform these Option Selects can easily defend against attacks that, by their design, should be more difficult to defend against.

In the Testing Grounds for Year 5 Season 2, we’ll be testing new technology that mitigates the impact of Option Selects. We’ll go into deeper detail as we come closer to the release of the Testing Grounds, but as an example, a clear winner in this case is Shugoki – with the new changes that are releasing with this Season, Shugoki can be considered weak against certain Option Selects; before his changes, he was able to cancel his Heavy Attacks into Demon’s Embrace, letting him beat players who would attempt to Option Select his charged Heavy Attacks through the use of Uninterruptible Stance, but as this is no longer the case, Shugoki may have a similar experience to a lot of unblockable Heavy attacks where they are easier to defeat than intended. With the new Option Select changes, however, players will not be able to Option Select a Shugoki and will have to defend themselves against his Unblockable Finishers in the way that was intended.

That’s it for now! We covered everything going on at the start of For Honor Y5S2: Mirage. Keep an eye out for more details on what Is coming throughout the season. We are excited to see you out on the battlefield on June 10th. Don’t let the mirages get to you.

The For Honor Dev Team