For Honor's Core Combat update wants you to be more aggressive
ATTACK
Vikings are cowards. Same goes for knights and samurai. If you're a competent fighter in For Honor, then you might have clocked that defensive moves often beat out aggressive ones. Right now you can merrily block away until your opponent exhausts themselves, then go at 'em as they wheeze. This may have had something to do with my skill level, but counter-attacks seem a tad over-strong, too.
Great news! All of that will be worse soon! The upcoming Core Combat update revolves around emboldening players, introducing a load of tweaks that incentivise aggression. It's not out 'til August 6th, but come watch this vid and and do some thinking about swords with me.
As the vid establishes, the three goals of the update are to "increase consistency", "enhance the viability of general offensive across the entire set of attacks for all heroes", and to "counter light spam's effectiveness". They want you to be aggressive, but they don't want you to get away with mindless whacking. Seems reasonable.
I never got good enough at For Honor for much of this to seem immediately relevant, but I did play a fair whack. Some of the tweaks displayed towards the start of that vid are barely perceptible to me, even when I see them side by side. I would be fooled by both of those feints, even though the new ones will be more convincing. There's a similar story with the now more forgiving "zone input" timing window, which is a concept I never understood. I hope I will benefit despite this.
Making it easier to deal with a quick barrage of light attacks, though, is a clear and welcome improvement. Once an enemy is done with a light attack chain, you can turn the tables by simply doing a light attack yourself, because the recovery timing now favors you. Splendid. Light attacks have had their stamina cost increased, too.
The other stamina changes seem to me the biggest deal, though. They've removed the stamina cost of having your attacks blocked, which means you're free to swing your heart out. My favorite character is a monk whose style revolves around patiently waiting to be attacked, and this is pretty much the worst possible news for him - but I still see this as a welcome shake up. My ascetic ways did seem like they might be more fun for me than others.
I'll be having another go once this lands on the 6th, for sure. For Honor is a great game that's got loads better since launch, even if Brendy (RPS in peace) is wrong to recommend it over Mordhau.
Right now it's only £5 from the Ubisoft store, though you can pay more for it on Steam if you want.