Season 6 Fighter Update: Peacekeeper

Why do we want to change Peacekeeper?

We’ve seen Peacekeeper over-perform compared to the rest of the roster in Season 4 (check out our article on State of Balance Season 4 here. In tournament play and in general play, Peacekeeper has always been at or near the top of the heap since launch.

We feel Peacekeeper currently has certain problems in fight situations:

Doesn't use entirety of kit - Dagger Cancels aren't used at all
Difficulty to sustain offense - Heavy Finishers aren't currently threatening enough to launch after striking with a Light>Light Chain
Damage output is too high across the character's kit - Nearly all of Peacekeeper's strikes are very high damage, and because of the ease of landing successful strikes with Zone Attack and fast 2nd lights in the Chain, she's overtuned on damage values.

We want to incentivize Peacekeeper players to use moves that generally aren’t used like Heavy Finishers and Dagger Cancel more frequently. The intention is that while we’ll reduce her damage on many strikes, we’ll improve her ability to land a greater variety of strikes.

Initiation Improvement: Dagger Cancel

Dagger Cancel is now always a Top Attack.

Before, Peacekeeper’s Dagger Cancel didn’t really help her moveset since it always came from the same side as the attack it cancelled, so blocking either the real attack or the Dagger Cancel didn’t require any action from the opponent. Dagger Cancel also had overlapping Parry and Dodge timings, so that didn’t help its usefulness.

Now, because it always comes from the Top stance, it should be a useful mix-up option to use from the Heavy Openers or Heavy Finishers.

This change also applies to the Zone Attack’s Dagger Cancel.

Sustaining Offense Improvement: Bleed

Bleed attacks now stack

Before, Peacekeepers’s Bleeds wouldn’t stack. This meant that if she did 2 Bleeds in a row (from say 2 Dagger Cancels), she’d actually lose out on damage from the first one – the second one would overwrite it.

Now, if Peacekeeper lands 2 Bleeds in a row, the opponent will suffer the full damage from both bleeds. This should allow her to be able to choose to be a bit more aggressive, instead of wanting to always back off after landing a Bleed.

Combining the Bleed change and the Dagger Cancel change, should provide incentives to Peacekeeper players to launch the Heavies more often, and particularly the Heavy Finisher. Before, it wasn’t very likely that threatening with a Heavy Finisher would be worthwhile, but now with the Dagger Cancel coming from another direction, and the Bleed stacking making frequent attacks more useful, we hope to see Peacekeepers use a bit more variety in their kit.

Sustaining Offense Improvement: Heavy Finisher

Heavy Finishers can now be cancelled into a Guard Break or a Dodge

Before, Peacekeepers would hit with the Light > Light, but not actually ever launch the Heavy Finisher to end the Chain. We want Peacekeepers to use these Heavy Finishers, so now we’ve given them all the same Cancel options as the Heavy Opener.

Damage Balancing

Overall Damage Output has been reduced on a variety of her attacks. Peacekeeper was overtuned in this respect, as she would often come out ahead when trading against characters like Berserker or Highlander, which seems unusual for her playstyle.

While the Peacekeeper’s attacks have been reduced in damage, we think that the improvements to Dagger Cancel and the additional Cancels on Heavy Finisher should compensate her. We expect her playstyle to be similar to how it was before, but require a few more successful strikes to land, and now the additional threat of Dagger Cancel should give Peacekeeper players the confidence to finish her Chains with Heavy Finisher.