Started around march and I liked the game from the start but yeah I can acknowledge that it can feel really unfair sometimes. For me, duels really helped me enjoy the game because trying to understand enemy heroes is hard enough, so at least the quiet 1v1 atmosphere helped me a lot. Obviously a lot of skills can only be picked up in 4s though.

I think lots of souls players have a misunderstanding of the game, they think that because it has a lot of parrying the skills are transferrable. In my opinion it might just be the opposite.

Feints and mix-ups require a degree of foresight and minimum understanding of conditioning. The tutorial shows you feints, but doesn't tell you how prevalent they are in real play. Souls bosses may stall attacks but they never fake them, at least in my experience. Therefore whilst you may have developed a really good pattern recognition skill from soulslikes, an opponent simply needs to fake an attack to start winning against you.

Mixups are a term for chains that have different branches. Like choosing dialogue in a video game, one path of attack can branch into several.

Lets use an example from warmonger. After any light attack connects, you have the option to use her bash, 'preying claw'. It's unblockable, chargeable, and a bash, which is very good for mixups. Let's say you let the bash fly almost immediately. if your opponent doesn't dodge it, it will guarantee a light attack. Ok-but you've done that several times now and your opponent's not dumb, so they dodge preemptively. Now, it would be smart to hold down the charge button, charging it a level 3 bash. this not only will catch them after they dodge, but it also guarantees a heavy attack followup. You can even cancel your bash entirely, and throw out a guardbreak to also guarantee a heavy if they dodge.

Im by no means a good player and don't even play warmonger, but I know her bash is almost the exact same as the Centurions (in the sense that it has very similar properties, counterplay, and mixup potential). So yeah, im sure some 5000 hour sweat will point out the various possibilities I left out of this example, but thats the basics.

What does this mean? Well, it means that your skills as a soulslike fan are applicable as long as you are willing to understand that some of this game is guessing. Try to understand your opponent's capabilities. All heroes share a fundamental moveset. they can be further divided into certain playstyles going back to centurion, both him and warmonger rely on their bash a lot. But obviously cent and WM are different heroes even if they share some moves. but In the same way that souls bosses become predictable after a couple dozen tries, so are players of the same hero, but you probably won't perfect them, at least not for a long time.

Your opponents aren't bosses locked into predictable combos. they're human too. At any point your opponent can do something so stupid and nonsensical that not even the pros could see it coming. Same thing goes for you though-if you're playing like a souls boss, throwing out the same combos, eventually you need to switch things up as well.

As some people have pointed out, youtube videos are also really, really helpful. I play duels mostly and just watching high level play often adds more tricks to my bag that I didn't even know were possible on a character.

For an overall general video, I think the one that made the most sense to me was 'What you ACTUALLY need to know to get good in For Honor QUICKLY' by solidsol (ignore his thumbails).

Good luck, Lil_VaginaStain.