Parry Upgrade: Instinct

[JustDebel]

In the same way Reflex is an upgrade you can get for dashes. Instinct would be an upgrade for parry that could greatly increase your defensive options.

Obtaining Instinct would be similar to obtaining Reflex. At a certain level, you’d meet a teacher and do a quest for them that would give you the option to choose what reflex you want to use. After choosing your Instinct, it’d be a passive buff to your parry that would go on cooldown when used. Below are some examples of potential Instincts.

DISCLAIMER: These are just a few ideas I came up with. Some of these might overtuned or undertuned, but the main idea is still there. Each instinct would have its own cooldown depending on what it does, and while on cooldown, you would have a normal parry.

Route Exclusive Instinct

Flash

The user immediately throws out a cone shaped hitbox that does low damage and applies status effects (if any).

As magic’s exclusive instinct, Flash has multiple potential uses, and it’s effectiveness scales with your intensity and attack size. Sand and snow flashes with high intensity can instantly blind your opponent working as a defacto smoke screen. A lightning flash would instantly paralyze a soaked opponent, and on the opposite end, a water flash would quickly make your opponent vulnerable to being frozen by snow or ice or paralyzed by lightning. Magics without status effects would instead have their damage slightly increased by intensity.

Usable by: (All magics)

Strike

The user throws out a short football shaped hitbox (similar to Shot but with less range) at your cursor, which, if landed, would increase the damage and attack speed of their next FS skill.

As strength’s exclusive instinct, Strike would be a close range counterattack that would make your opponent cautious of getting parried near you. Aiming and actually hitting Strike would be a bit difficult and take some practice to land consistently, and the subsequent FS skill would have to be quickly done within a small time window to receive the damage and attack speed buff. However, eventually it would be a strong tool in a fighting style player’s arsenal. A successful parry followed by a landed Strike could lead into an incredibly high damaging combo and even kill if the opponent isn’t paying attention.

Usable by: (All Fighting Styles)

Falcata
The user can cancel their parry (within a time window) into a weapon skill from the weapon they parried with.

Weapon’s exclusive instinct would be a useful tool who’s mileage would depend on the skill level and creativity of the player. The Falcata weapon skill would considered seperate from a normal weapon skill, meaning two things, 1. It ignores cooldowns and 2. You can cancel the same skill into each other. For example if you were to parry with Kai’s Sabre, you could cancel a Falchata Flying slash into a normal Flying slash. Other potential combos could be Piercing Shot into Piercing Shot or Flash Strike into Flash Strike. Despite it’s apparent strength, you wouldn’t always be able to choose what weapon you get Falchata on, since it would only apply to the weapon you parry with. As more weapon skills get added, Falchata would become increasingly stronger as an option.

Usable by: (All Weapons)

Aegis
The user’s parry grants back a small bit of health from damage parried and greatly increases DR for a short duration.

Vitality’s exclusive instinct would be a straightforward buff to the normal parry that would make the user even more tanky and hard to kill. Since Warden isn’t a complete stat build and Vitality as a route is still underdeveloped I won’t elaborate on Aegis too much, but it would essentially let you tank through attacks. Health healed would scale on vitality
Usable by: (Vitality)

Universal Instincts

These are usable by all routes but are better with certain magics, styles, or weapons (ex recoil being better with wind, explosion, and shields, and blink being better with light, lighting, boxing, etc)

Blink
The user can immediately cancel parry into a reflex. Your blink reflex is considered separate from your normal reflexes and thus can be cancelled into a normal reflex. After a successful parry, you can use two reflexes to quickly close or increase distance from an opponent, depending on the situation. You can also choose to not reflex twice, which opens up even more ambiguity on the opponent’s end. If you haven’t done or completed the reflex quest, this would apply to dodges instead.

Recoil: The user’s parry throws out a medium cone shaped hitbox that pushes enemies back.

Knockback distance scales with intensity and multipliers.

Refund: The user’s parry would reset all cooldowns. This instinct would most likely have the highest cooldown and scale depending on how many skills the user has.

Reflect: The user’s parry would reflect some of the parried damage towards the opponent as a projectile.

Dock: Pick a spell or skill to slot into your Dock instinct. On a successful parry immediately use that spell or skill regardless of cooldown. This would have a very long cooldown (minimum 30 seconds)

[anon69880136]

Weapon counters and other counter techniques and spells are probably coming out later on this pretty much is redundant and might just make it better than other counter if they are released because usually counters in games have some endlag to not be spammed as a easy get out of jail card (In my experience) this would pretty much just be a bad idea (Plus this would pretty much make Pvp more parry based just like how Deepwoken is if you ever played it and people would easily abuse counters for easy combos)

Im pretty sure Vetex said in the QNA in september of 2022 that counter are coming later on or something so yeah

[puerreri]

i aint reading allat

[anon69880136]

Summary counters can happen when you parry and do certain things if you are a certain stat build

[puerreri]

not sure how i feel about that

[anon69880136]

can’t wait for my opponent to parry then combo me

[JustDebel]

Counters in other games have cooldowns via endlag because if they didn’t you’d be able to loop them and be untouchable. These counters would all have cooldowns as mentioned above. If you were to use a counter than immediately parry after that it would just be a normal parry since your counter is on cooldown. Realistically you’d only get off one or two counters per fight.

[JustDebel]

Not every counter has combo utility lol, and keep in mind it’s not an ACTUAL counter since you can still parry and block anything that comes after the counter

[anon69880136]

Yes but here is the thing counters will exist in the game as weapons skills, techniques, and spells which makes this idea pretty repetitive and yes just like what you said NOT all counters are used for offensive purposes but still even if this is added it would drastically changing how we play the game even though there is a cooldown to them this does not mean that people will play more defensively to proc their counter to try to land hits and aggressive playstyles are not rewarded but instead punished against people who play defensive and land their counter (If their counter is offensive such as Falcata for weapon builds) for other counters such as universal and the vitality counter they can be abused and might be op for example the vitality counter this is pretty abusable for people to get their hp back in a pretty easy way depending on the attack the opponent used and hp regen from just parrying is just op and add the boosted regen from vit builds and they are tanks if you play defensively.

(Overall this is not a great suggestion in my opinion and should not be added to the game due to some reasons being mentioned)

[JustDebel]

While I agree Falcata might be a bit overpowered I don’t think combat would drastically change as you say. Currently, parries are reactive, not predictive. If you were to engage in a fight actively trying to parry attacks you would be easily baited since your opponent would be aware of this and mix up their attacks (also keep in mind blocking has its own cooldown when you let go of G). You’d end taking more hits than if you were to play normally. You’d basically be hoping to get your counter off then what? Waiting how many seconds to do it again? Meanwhile your opponent is just hitting you over and over with their own skills while ALSO having their own counter that they’d save for when you use your counter.

AO isn’t a game where a turtling strategy works since it’s too fast-paced. Even if this were to be added it only compliment the speed of combat not slow it down since spamming counters isn’t something you could consistently do.

[anon69880136]

Hp regen is pretty op in pvp (my opinion) yes we will get vampirilism as a lost fs it will prob be balanced one of the counters says that it will return the damage and make you heal it which is pretty op. And also just like Falcata refund and dock are pretty op so I can REUSE MY AURA OR FOCUS AGAIN AND LOOP IT OVER AND OVER and dock can be reactable but the opponent may not insantly expect the skill you used and if the skill was an aoe skill then they will have a hard time parrying it and will most likely block it Techniques and weapons skills are pretty reactable but spells are a bit harder

(And just like what I said)

[anon69880136]

And I think of counters as a ability that is a high risk and high reward not something that procs when you parry things more like something that procs when you get hit

[JustDebel]

Why would you assume that vampirism would be balanced but Aegis would be broken if they’d be tested by the same balance team? If the HP regen is too strong in testing, reduce it or put a cap on it and if its still too strong then, remove the HP regen only have it give damage reduction.

If you put Aura or Focus on your Dock then yea it’d be useful to activate on reaction but just give the dock a long cooldown that only starts after the Aura ends, like around 30 seconds.

I feel like you completely ignored the disclaimer that some of these might be overpowered since they are proof of concept and just nitpicked balance issues that would obviously be thought of before being implemented in game. Lastly, a counter is just a synonym for parry but I think naming these techniques “Counters” gives off the wrong impression so I’ll try to find a different name.

[JustDebel]

UPDATE changed name from Counter to Instinct

[anon69880136]

I meant by over time fs such as vamp will be balanced and no I did no ignore the disclaimer but was just saying that counters will exist later on and some of these ideas are op