XxX_MLG Noob_XxX
Boar
I'm finally getting around to this one. lol. I have a major problem with the autumn enemies currently (when they're empowered). They're extremely strong, noticeably difficult to punish (unless you're a long-distance mage), and strangely skilled at creating jank moments. I'll give the run-down of each and some possible solutions. Note that in this post I am only talking about empowered enemies. The regular ones are obviously not a threat.
The Autumn Knight
There actually aren't that many problems with the autumn knight. He doesn't really "create jank" unless tornadoes are around. However, they still aren't to be favored in their current state. It's rather difficult to punish his whirlslash. (Why the heck is he using whirslash if he's a 1H user? He ain't Zhamla Meer. lol.) If you pguard the attack, he doesn't stop spinning... So you have to correct your positioning to land a 2H swipe (for the interrupt), and a 1H swipe cannot reach him (though spirit slash likely would). As is said in a lot of places, melee strongly relies on pguards for punishes, and melee shouldn't necessarily be required to retaliate with a ranged or AOE skill. So as the guy currently is, he ain't really fair. Additionally, because of how slow he moves up close, it's very difficult to pguard him to begin with. You have to watch him very closely to pull out your shield at just the right moment. And focusing closely on one simple attack isn't really something you should be doing in Temple of Seasons rooms, especially in arcade (and even more in mixed season rooms). It spells doom for you. If my complaint about pguards sounds weird, please note that your pguard window is "smaller" than average from a distance perspective. Since he moves slower, he takes a longer time to reach your shield over a short distance, therefore "decreasing" the pguard window. Of course, time remains normal, but most normal people use both time and space to get a feel for pguards.
Finally, Autumn Knights recharge too quickly. By the time they've finished one spin, they're pretty much ready to immediately move onto the next. I imagine they do this because they don't have the same "cue" to attack as the other enemies. Both winter and summer knights wait until they're in range to do an empowered attack. But autumn knights can pretty much start spinning from anywhere on the screen as long as they're aware of your presence. And after they start, they hardly stop. I also think that this is unfair because of all the shield pressure that autumn knights provide. It's quite easy for one or two of them to break your shield. And if they've pressed you up against a wall, you're forced to shield until they stop. Shield pressure by itself is fine, but not on enemies that are difficult to punish. And life gets even worse if they're hastened by wrapping themselves inside tornadoes.
Solution
1) Autumn knights should stop swirling if their attack gets pguarded.
2) Autumn knights should have a higher base speed while spinning to make pguarding more realistic in active or large rooms.
3) Autumn knights should have a cooldown between the end of spin A and the beginning of spin B. (Be friendly to your melee consumers who aren't perfect at pguarding yet. They don't need a broken shield.)
4) Autumn knights hastened by tornadoes should be added to the dojo, or added to some other means of practice. It's an incredibly annoying and intimidating mechanic. However, it's very random, and the game provides pretty much no means to practice with it consistently. If this can't be added, I kinda feel like the tornado-hastened knights should be removed altogether.
5) [Less Important | Debatable] Slightly decrease the movement speed boost that autumn knights get from entering tornadoes. I actually have mixed feelings about autumn knights getting hastened by tornadoes. It makes escaping rather difficult, and I'm not sure it's necessary. But at the same time, it's not unnecessary. And as long as the game provides fair a means for stopping the swirling (ie. pguarding, together with practicing pguarding in the dojo), I don't think it's the end of the world...yet. lol.
The Autumn Mage (Really Just Tornadoes)
Now these are the guys I have major gripes with. I believe the devs are already aware of the problem and are thinking of counterplay solutions. But to clarify the issue for anyone reading, the tornadoes are so powerful to the point where I think they're jank. (Legitimate jank, not Noob ranting jank.) They can spin you around for extended time periods -- opening you up to projectile hits, hydra headbutts, and other attacks -- and throw you anywhere at random -- potentially damaging you via spikes, ground hazards, projectiles, and other means. In the Fae boss fight, tornadoes sometimes hug the surrounding ice spikes, meaning they can repeatedly deal you large damage for no reason. (Hey Phil Swift.) Since there is no cooldown on getting spun, you can get thrown into other tornadoes, which throw you into other tornadoes, which throw you into other tornadoes, which...all while getting damaged along the way. You get the picture. It's very bad. It's very annoying. And it can easily end runs in arcade in a heartbeat, depending on the room you're in. Finally, the tornadoes can move anywhere they want to at random. You might think it's a good thing, but it's horrible. Tornadoes can spontaneously change direction. This means that when you thought you were going to pass another tornado while dodging a dangerous attack, you actually just trapped yourself. It also means that tornadoes can move in such away to completely block you into a corner. Without blink, this can mean that you're 100% screwed, though in some cases you're just bound to a small movement space.
Suggestions (because the devs are already pursuing solutions and I don't think I have all the answers)
1) Give the tornadoes a consistent motion pattern. I actually suggested this on the discord. But I think a perfect pattern would be for them spiral outwards and disappear upon hitting a wall (or simply drag along a wall until they disappear). This means that all the tornadoes would spin out evenly from the enemy's center. And these tornadoes would move towards the outer radius while having a slight, consistent, congruent curve. (Hence "spiraling outward".) The benefit of this is that the player will always know where the tornadoes will go, giving him a good idea on how to dodge. This also prevents extremes, such as tornadoes grouping themselves together against a wall (becoming meaningless) and completely cornering off the player (becoming a nightmare). Whatever happens to tornadoes, I do think they should have some consistency.
2) Prevent tornadoes from chain spinning you. This is a problem for obvious reasons. Hopefully I shouldn't have to describe them. The first punish makes sense. But any following spins are completely out of the player's control (assuming they were thrown directly into the tornado).
3) Do not allow tornadoes to invoke hazards. If a tornado can spit you into hazard dps that you have no control over, it's extremely unfair. It can kill hp really fast without much rhyme or reason.
4) Provide some form of counterplay for tornadoes. The devs are already thinking through this. Better to use a mechanic when possible/feasible than entirely remove it, right? I just don't know what good counterplay would look like. Being able to decide your direction during the spin? Allow people to attack or shield in the direction they're facing while spinning? Being able to determine your direction during the spit out? I don't know. Teddy is much smarter than I am.
5) [Less important] Make it possible to pguard tornadoes. Because why not? Pydoyks mentioned this before. He might very well just want to pguard everything. lol. But if tornadoes became pguard-able, it would be nice if they could move a little quicker.
6) [Debatable] Give special skills like whirlslash the Autumn Knight treatment. Because it would be freaking awesome. Maybe require silver or gold whirlslash to be used for this to work. But to be able to use whirslash for attacking purposes would be cool and fun. It would be neat if the player had control of the tornado's direction while whirlslashing too (since the autumn knights have control as well).
7) [Less Important] Maybe consider giving tornadoes a new spin? Maybe something they could do could be drag the player in at a certain distance (like the gravitational fields). I think this is really only reasonable if/when counterplay gets added...and only if it's reasonable/fair. However, if that was all tornadoes did (as opposed to locking the player into a helpless spin state), maybe they wouldn't be so bad. Idk.
The Autumn Knight
There actually aren't that many problems with the autumn knight. He doesn't really "create jank" unless tornadoes are around. However, they still aren't to be favored in their current state. It's rather difficult to punish his whirlslash. (Why the heck is he using whirslash if he's a 1H user? He ain't Zhamla Meer. lol.) If you pguard the attack, he doesn't stop spinning... So you have to correct your positioning to land a 2H swipe (for the interrupt), and a 1H swipe cannot reach him (though spirit slash likely would). As is said in a lot of places, melee strongly relies on pguards for punishes, and melee shouldn't necessarily be required to retaliate with a ranged or AOE skill. So as the guy currently is, he ain't really fair. Additionally, because of how slow he moves up close, it's very difficult to pguard him to begin with. You have to watch him very closely to pull out your shield at just the right moment. And focusing closely on one simple attack isn't really something you should be doing in Temple of Seasons rooms, especially in arcade (and even more in mixed season rooms). It spells doom for you. If my complaint about pguards sounds weird, please note that your pguard window is "smaller" than average from a distance perspective. Since he moves slower, he takes a longer time to reach your shield over a short distance, therefore "decreasing" the pguard window. Of course, time remains normal, but most normal people use both time and space to get a feel for pguards.
Finally, Autumn Knights recharge too quickly. By the time they've finished one spin, they're pretty much ready to immediately move onto the next. I imagine they do this because they don't have the same "cue" to attack as the other enemies. Both winter and summer knights wait until they're in range to do an empowered attack. But autumn knights can pretty much start spinning from anywhere on the screen as long as they're aware of your presence. And after they start, they hardly stop. I also think that this is unfair because of all the shield pressure that autumn knights provide. It's quite easy for one or two of them to break your shield. And if they've pressed you up against a wall, you're forced to shield until they stop. Shield pressure by itself is fine, but not on enemies that are difficult to punish. And life gets even worse if they're hastened by wrapping themselves inside tornadoes.
Solution
1) Autumn knights should stop swirling if their attack gets pguarded.
2) Autumn knights should have a higher base speed while spinning to make pguarding more realistic in active or large rooms.
3) Autumn knights should have a cooldown between the end of spin A and the beginning of spin B. (Be friendly to your melee consumers who aren't perfect at pguarding yet. They don't need a broken shield.)
4) Autumn knights hastened by tornadoes should be added to the dojo, or added to some other means of practice. It's an incredibly annoying and intimidating mechanic. However, it's very random, and the game provides pretty much no means to practice with it consistently. If this can't be added, I kinda feel like the tornado-hastened knights should be removed altogether.
5) [Less Important | Debatable] Slightly decrease the movement speed boost that autumn knights get from entering tornadoes. I actually have mixed feelings about autumn knights getting hastened by tornadoes. It makes escaping rather difficult, and I'm not sure it's necessary. But at the same time, it's not unnecessary. And as long as the game provides fair a means for stopping the swirling (ie. pguarding, together with practicing pguarding in the dojo), I don't think it's the end of the world...yet. lol.
The Autumn Mage (Really Just Tornadoes)
Now these are the guys I have major gripes with. I believe the devs are already aware of the problem and are thinking of counterplay solutions. But to clarify the issue for anyone reading, the tornadoes are so powerful to the point where I think they're jank. (Legitimate jank, not Noob ranting jank.) They can spin you around for extended time periods -- opening you up to projectile hits, hydra headbutts, and other attacks -- and throw you anywhere at random -- potentially damaging you via spikes, ground hazards, projectiles, and other means. In the Fae boss fight, tornadoes sometimes hug the surrounding ice spikes, meaning they can repeatedly deal you large damage for no reason. (Hey Phil Swift.) Since there is no cooldown on getting spun, you can get thrown into other tornadoes, which throw you into other tornadoes, which throw you into other tornadoes, which...all while getting damaged along the way. You get the picture. It's very bad. It's very annoying. And it can easily end runs in arcade in a heartbeat, depending on the room you're in. Finally, the tornadoes can move anywhere they want to at random. You might think it's a good thing, but it's horrible. Tornadoes can spontaneously change direction. This means that when you thought you were going to pass another tornado while dodging a dangerous attack, you actually just trapped yourself. It also means that tornadoes can move in such away to completely block you into a corner. Without blink, this can mean that you're 100% screwed, though in some cases you're just bound to a small movement space.
Suggestions (because the devs are already pursuing solutions and I don't think I have all the answers)
1) Give the tornadoes a consistent motion pattern. I actually suggested this on the discord. But I think a perfect pattern would be for them spiral outwards and disappear upon hitting a wall (or simply drag along a wall until they disappear). This means that all the tornadoes would spin out evenly from the enemy's center. And these tornadoes would move towards the outer radius while having a slight, consistent, congruent curve. (Hence "spiraling outward".) The benefit of this is that the player will always know where the tornadoes will go, giving him a good idea on how to dodge. This also prevents extremes, such as tornadoes grouping themselves together against a wall (becoming meaningless) and completely cornering off the player (becoming a nightmare). Whatever happens to tornadoes, I do think they should have some consistency.
2) Prevent tornadoes from chain spinning you. This is a problem for obvious reasons. Hopefully I shouldn't have to describe them. The first punish makes sense. But any following spins are completely out of the player's control (assuming they were thrown directly into the tornado).
3) Do not allow tornadoes to invoke hazards. If a tornado can spit you into hazard dps that you have no control over, it's extremely unfair. It can kill hp really fast without much rhyme or reason.
4) Provide some form of counterplay for tornadoes. The devs are already thinking through this. Better to use a mechanic when possible/feasible than entirely remove it, right? I just don't know what good counterplay would look like. Being able to decide your direction during the spin? Allow people to attack or shield in the direction they're facing while spinning? Being able to determine your direction during the spit out? I don't know. Teddy is much smarter than I am.
5) [Less important] Make it possible to pguard tornadoes. Because why not? Pydoyks mentioned this before. He might very well just want to pguard everything. lol. But if tornadoes became pguard-able, it would be nice if they could move a little quicker.
6) [Debatable] Give special skills like whirlslash the Autumn Knight treatment. Because it would be freaking awesome. Maybe require silver or gold whirlslash to be used for this to work. But to be able to use whirslash for attacking purposes would be cool and fun. It would be neat if the player had control of the tornado's direction while whirlslashing too (since the autumn knights have control as well).
7) [Less Important] Maybe consider giving tornadoes a new spin? Maybe something they could do could be drag the player in at a certain distance (like the gravitational fields). I think this is really only reasonable if/when counterplay gets added...and only if it's reasonable/fair. However, if that was all tornadoes did (as opposed to locking the player into a helpless spin state), maybe they wouldn't be so bad. Idk.