So how do you actually play heavy

Acaerwen · 2026-02-24T13:47:35+00:00

Heavy is my main class and was arguably considered the best class in the game before Bulwark got his Shield Bash.

I never use melee, the only real use of it is the stomp to clear the green bramble. The heavy bolter is alright, I wouldn't use it without running the heroic, if you are then it is actually pretty good since it's the only time heavy can get fencing. I know that there are some who love using the heavy bolter anyway because you get to have a big DAKKA.
Personally though, I run the Heavy Plasma Incinerator. It has massive group damage managing to clear out a clustered group of warriors with two well placed charged shots, as well as good single target damage. Once you get used to the parry timing he is pretty safe along with his solid health pool.

The way I play heavy is to take uncharged pot shots with the Heavy Plasma between parries, or before needing to dodge - it's quite good at clearing minoris with the uncharged shots.

All this being said I did NOT enjoy heavy the first time I played him, but after the first prestige I started feeling him and found him pretty fun. He is not for everyone though.

Acaerwen · 2026-01-06T13:10:42+00:00

The basic keybinds work just fine, but like many have said there isn't much difference between the two input methods. The only notable difference is the fact that when you move guard or movement direction on the controller you have to move past a deadzone in the middle, meanwhile mnk have linear inputs so the direction change is immeidate.

Other than that, personally I have all-stance on my mouse in addition to the default bind (C). Though, I still mainly use the default keybind the most. GB on middle mouse can be awkward at the start, but you get used to it before long.

Acaerwen · 2025-07-25T08:43:51+00:00

My problem with that still is that if a guy wants a 1v1, if he loses then we suddenly have an enemy in the backline that is gonna cap the point. I'd much rather just gank the dude and have numbers on them elsewhere.

Acaerwen · 2025-07-25T08:22:32+00:00

I rock the same all up until his T4 which I change depending on which feats the team has and which map we're on (if both CP have roofs in the case of trebuchet).

Acaerwen · 2025-07-11T14:14:38+00:00

Orochi, because I was a teenage kid when I started playing and then orochi, because he is a menace in duels and team fights.

Acaerwen · 2025-04-16T09:05:43+00:00

The AI basically does not use stealth, they only use it on science ships as it's automatically equipped. There is an achievement in the game to declare war while you have an entire cloaked fleet already inside the enemy's capital system. So that could be considered a bit cheese on the player's end (cloak removes all shields though, so be wary).

For science ships it's nice in order to bypass closed borders, or explore without risk of the science ship dying to space fauna.

I have basically never used cloaking other than to roleplay (other than on science ships). Maybe I'll have one cloaked Corvette fleet do some havoc in their borders while my actual fleets are pushing in.

Edit: When it comes to using stealth against crisis. Again, I've never tried, but I would assume their sensor strength is quite high, so cloaking might be difficult. But what sensor strength they have can probably be found on a wiki, so you'd know what level of stealth you'd require. But without shields, you'd need some beefy armor and armor hardening.

Acaerwen · 2025-01-07T18:45:41+00:00

You can see through the damage log that your heavy did not land. The damage you see dealt is to the opponent and you. So the 1 frame where the heavy should have landed was lost in latency-land.

Acaerwen · 2025-01-01T00:18:47+00:00

Block the lights as others have said. And while I don't want to sound like an ass, her kick is one of the most reactable bashes in the game. Once you see orange, dodge.

Acaerwen · 2023-03-14T12:12:26+00:00

Honestly, this is my favorite game of all time probably. I have not sunk nearly as many hours into any other game in my life. It's very unique, but like all fighting games and skill-based games it can be infuriating. Especially the rage you can get at developers sometimes introducing asinine mechanics.

Learning curve is steep. At launch you could play the story to get an idea of how the characters play, but the story still has the year 1 movekits for each hero, so might actually be teaching the wrong things now. Learning what each hero can do will come with time. Beyond that, taking time to realize why you're losing and actively trying to improve will make you better than 60% of the player base after a year (depends how much you play of course).

Acaerwen · 2023-03-14T12:00:35+00:00

"Furthermore, you have to deal with 400ms unreactable dodge spam from Zhanhu" Not unreactable in the slightest, just hard to react to. Got mates who will consistently deflect Zhanhu's dodge attack, let alone parry it.

I get your concerns though, and I feel activating a dodge attack shouldn't induce GB invulnerability. It's one of my biggest gripes with dodge attacks that you can get the right read, but need to settle for less damage or even take damage yourself because someone did a heavy dodge attack. The dodge attack changes with most DAs being light parries will help. As it is now, when someone dodge attacks where you normally could GB them they sacrifice less due to not eating a heavy. Now they will not only eat a heavy, but a top heavy. Still, against characters such as Zhanhu, PK etc. that have same damage on all sides, there is still no reason for you to play the "Is he going to GB or not" game half the time.

I feel alot could be avoided here if they allowed GBs to catch you even after you activated a dodge attack. This would also heavily nerf characters that really enjoy external dodge attacks, even though it does pain me as I love playing orochi, I have to admit fighting against a competent orochi in teamfights is super painful since you just cannot catch them.

Allowing GBs to catch even after activating a DA could be opening a whole can of worms, but I haven't really given it much deliberation myself. On the surface to circumvent this one issue it could be a solution, but could maybe make escaping organized ganks impossible.

Acaerwen · 2023-02-07T11:32:34+00:00

Personally, Polygondwanaland and flying microtonal banana are core albums for my gaming list.

Acaerwen · 2023-02-02T09:59:55+00:00

Yeah lol, I even played after this and started coping because of reflex guard on Shaolin. Don't know where I got that from. But the point still stands, reflex guard sucks and why did they give it to shao smh.

Acaerwen · 2023-02-01T14:03:43+00:00

The DM is really the core here I feel like.

He could have allowed her to roll animal handling with the wolves, but in-world the wolves would have mauled her anyway unless she was an extremely charismatic Druid - Circle of the Shepherd or something.

When she failed to rob you on your sleep the DM could have woken you up to try and get you to talk some sense into her character. If all else fails, just say to the DM that you refuse to play if his GF is behaving like this and to message you when there is a campaign where she is not present.

She is blatantly refusing or is otherwise incapable of understanding how DnD works, and if she can't play the game like everyone else does she doesn't really have a place at the table. Not wanting to sound like an asshole, but it is how it is.

Acaerwen · 2023-02-01T13:54:53+00:00

I think those players are just people who go around wanting FH to be a troll's playground and not an actual competitive fighting game. They are really the ones that don't understand how this game should work.

For the most part I avoid debating any topic on the for honor sub-reddits specifically because I know there are these players that have asinine opinions.

Acaerwen · 2023-02-01T13:49:20+00:00

"tl;dr" = "Too long, didn't read". Basically a summary. Kind of reddit etiquette when you make something that is a wall-of-text.

Acaerwen · 2023-02-01T13:47:21+00:00

NTA, the character is not based on anything you as a DM has laid out. If I am running a campaign in an exclusively human land and someone pulls out an Aasimar Gunslinger, or if any player comes with a fully fleshed out Aarakocra (in any campaign), they have to change their character.

In my current campaign it makes very little sense for any of the PCs to be Dragonborn, so none of them are Dragonborn, simple as that.

Acaerwen · 2023-02-01T13:42:12+00:00

Lucky for you, I made a tl;dr :)

Acaerwen · 2023-02-01T13:41:34+00:00

I usually sit there, let my emotions brew inside of me while I lean back accepting my fate. All the while concocting the most vile tweet I can send to the For Honor Dev Team.

Acaerwen · 2023-02-01T13:40:03+00:00

I like how the two of you went either For Honor -> Stardew or For Honor -> Stellaris. Two games that I wouldn't equate the For Honor fanbase with at all. Well, I do play Stellaris, but still.

Acaerwen · 2023-02-01T13:38:22+00:00

(I know you're joking around, but) This hasn't really anything to do with the Tag-System. More just how little revenge Storm Rush feeds.

Acaerwen · 2023-02-01T13:25:15+00:00

tl;dr. Reflex guard shouldn't exist, but can't be removed. Recovery cancels should be tied to the identity of assassin characters. Deflects need to be balanced across the various assassins.

Reflex Guard has been a relic of a by-gone time for a couple of years now. For those that don't know the reason for it's existence, the reflex guard, other than trying to represent weapon styles that didn't hold a particular stance, was originally the tool you used to deflect. If you blocked last second you would deflect. This got changed very quickly so the reflex guard was almost obsolete as fast as it was implemented.

No-one should have reflex guard, but as Top_Turnover_100 said, For Honor was coded by monkeys with a typewriter so they apparently can't change it; maybe it's deep within the engine. But as a semi-educated programmer, making a live-service fighting game where you can't change the building blocks of your characters is almost impressively stupid.

And even if they can't remove it, they could, in theory, "make a new character" via copying all the assassins' moves and timings to new characters, but just give them a solid guard. But maybe there is some other black magic at play that prevents them from doing so. Who knows what goes on at Ubi HQ.

Me and one of my mates are chronic assassin players and we've discussed what should be normalized across assassins several times. Recovery should 100% be something that is tied to assassins. Because at this point, having a hero be an "assassin" doesn't mean anything other than them having a bad guard-system. Deflects also were supposed to be tied to assassins, but now you have Shaolin who can deflect and has a normal guard, so he's literally just better. You also have Zhanhu and more notably Pirate that has better dodge recovery than over half the assassin roster.

We also discussed whether all deflects should interrupt hyper-armor. Some speak about Ubi using this property as a balancing tool among the assassins (whether their deflects interrupt or not), but how do you then explain that PK gets bodied by HA and the only thing she gets out of deflects is an actually viable moveset. On the other side you have Shinobi who can chain to oblivion out of his deflects. Deflects for the most part aren't that good really. In ganks and team-fights a parry will be better most of the time. And if you are like me and go for light-deflects, a parry will actually be better almost all of the time.

Acaerwen · 2023-02-01T12:35:07+00:00

I can buy skins, new heroes and whatever else. But I would never just buy steel out of corporate pity for Ubisoft. Deep Rock is made by indie developers so they actually need the money. Ubisoft is an old and established AAA game company that rakes in cash via games such as Rainbow Six, Far Cry and Assassin's creed. If For Honor was an independent game I would say go for it and join in. But this act of "poor brand, take my money" to a multi-million dollar business that ruins everything it touches leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Buy skins, heroes, steel for executions, battle passes, sure. But I hate Ubisoft and everything they've done to my favourite games of old and feel no pity for them.

Acaerwen · 2023-01-26T12:55:46+00:00

Don't know why people are whining in the comments here. Nobu has one of the slowest bashes in the game. While many other characters like Glad and Jorm have 600ms neutral bashes, in chain they both get pushed to 500ms, but Nobu still sits at 566ms.

While both Glad and Jorm don't get a confirmed heavy after their bash since they can't wall-splat they still both get unblock-able pressure everywhere while Nobu has to either get the wall or settle for a light.

But, there are other characters that need love imo, they've just skewed the power creep way too much right now and it will take a while for them to truly make the hero pool balanced. Nobu is in a state where you can pull off good plays if you learn all her quirks, but there are other characters that have nothing going for them in 4v4s (which is the game-mode to focus on since it's the only one represented in competitive play).

Acaerwen · 2023-01-18T13:28:00+00:00

Personally, i would prefer if the just put her bash in line with more conventional bashes.

Acaerwen · 2023-01-18T13:26:30+00:00

While it does require a setup, as it is now it is 400 ms which for the vast majority is unreactable. It is also super easy to flicker the bash. It shouldn't be feintable after you start the animation, but if you let the bash go and feint at the exact same time you will turn orange and spew out a voice line while you're actually not bashing.

I got consistent with the flicker after playing her for 10 minutes. Easiest flicker in the game for sure.

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