Kahlt as a class is a joke now
So I started messing around with the new patch pretty excited, and had a genuinely good time messing with Windfall, as it feels a LOT stronger and more relevant now. It's definitely a threat, and it really ups itself with this patch.
I was already apprehensive of the kahlt "buffs", but I still came in open minded and came out wondering if Kahlt's ability is even an ability anymore.
To win games you need an offense, and being defensive doesn't do anything but stall, typically for a moment to actually land your offense. Kahlt doesn't have anything going for it anymore though.With windfall, my dodges stun and let me lead into jabs, and now I have the advantage. Stagger is like windfall but I also poke them, letting me land longer offenses. Forsaken is a complete cakewalk.
But Kahlt? Kahlt has zero advantages from defensive neutral at all. If I absorb it doesn't change the fact that you are hitting me. And I mean hitting me, as I still take the force of that hit. Kahlt's ability is an ability that sacrifices HP for no frame advantage and doesn't impact the offensive pressure on you at all. Kahlt has no offensive advantage from Absorb in any way. The stamina prior to this patch is essentially what made the class a class, and even then it was still weak. Taking that away has made it almost unplayable. Fast hits like jab alone can pretty much destroy any stamina I regained from Absorb, but unlike Parry my absorb has the added detriment of leading into absolutely nothing except maybe eating another hit, effectively getting rid of the recharging HP.
This gives us the single option of charge attack, as it goes hand in hand with the defensive buff, but it is absurdly easy to back dash away from an enemy player once you see the Absorb go off. And yea, they can still do a jab, but with the tiny slimmer of stamina, you can't even afford to invest any actually threatening moves.
Besides the sick idle stance, there's no reason to pick Kahlt, a class with an 100% chance to absorb and lead into nothing, over Forsaken, a class with a 50% chance to lead into colossal damage.
Kahlt ability pays HP and stamina for the masochistic tendency of dying a slow death.
I was already apprehensive of the kahlt "buffs", but I still came in open minded and came out wondering if Kahlt's ability is even an ability anymore.
To win games you need an offense, and being defensive doesn't do anything but stall, typically for a moment to actually land your offense. Kahlt doesn't have anything going for it anymore though.With windfall, my dodges stun and let me lead into jabs, and now I have the advantage. Stagger is like windfall but I also poke them, letting me land longer offenses. Forsaken is a complete cakewalk.
But Kahlt? Kahlt has zero advantages from defensive neutral at all. If I absorb it doesn't change the fact that you are hitting me. And I mean hitting me, as I still take the force of that hit. Kahlt's ability is an ability that sacrifices HP for no frame advantage and doesn't impact the offensive pressure on you at all. Kahlt has no offensive advantage from Absorb in any way. The stamina prior to this patch is essentially what made the class a class, and even then it was still weak. Taking that away has made it almost unplayable. Fast hits like jab alone can pretty much destroy any stamina I regained from Absorb, but unlike Parry my absorb has the added detriment of leading into absolutely nothing except maybe eating another hit, effectively getting rid of the recharging HP.
This gives us the single option of charge attack, as it goes hand in hand with the defensive buff, but it is absurdly easy to back dash away from an enemy player once you see the Absorb go off. And yea, they can still do a jab, but with the tiny slimmer of stamina, you can't even afford to invest any actually threatening moves.
Besides the sick idle stance, there's no reason to pick Kahlt, a class with an 100% chance to absorb and lead into nothing, over Forsaken, a class with a 50% chance to lead into colossal damage.
Kahlt ability pays HP and stamina for the masochistic tendency of dying a slow death.
Comments
The whole grey hp has never favoured using anything but light attacks, the new changes have not addressed that. Absorb is the only ability that cant reset to neutral in a vacuum, thus it is the only defensive ability without a defence. When it granted stamina recovery, that was acceptable as you got a huge advantage on offence through feeding off your opponent's counter attempts. it was also acceptable on defence as the extra stamina actually lets you block a lot more at the expense of having a harder time reversing the pressure.
Currently the 3 abilities can be compared by equating some of their attributes.
If we take Forsaken as 50% chance to avoid damage not accounting for player skill, and we take Windfall as once again 50% same accounting for execution, and attack direction, left right low high. Further if we take these abilities over a number of hits.
New Kahlt: Take damage, +20 stamina. Negligible HP recovery on a trade, and negligible effective hp boost over next 5 seconds. So you are trading HP now for HP later from trades. No Punish possibility, bad pressure reversal.
Forsaken: Nullify 50% damage, +15 stamina. No HP recovery, EHP bonus. You are getting your defence instantly. Free medium/high damage punish, complete pressure reversal.
Windfall: Nullify 50% damage, +35 stamina, (45 as a difference compared to your opponent+ their spent stamina on attack) and a further stamina regeneration. No HP recovery, EHP bonus. You are getting your defence instantly. Light/medium punish, good possibility of pressure reversal, minimum reset to neutral. Ability moves the character and attacks have more difficulty tracking, so even a mistimed (no stamina reward) Avoid can still negate damage completely and reverse.
OLD Kahlt: Take damage, +50 stamina.Negligible HP recovery on a trade, no EHP bonus. No Punish possibility, bad pressure reversal. Ability to block longer, keep offence longer with new stamina.
I will not comment on Stagger as it is my least used style.
There is a logical connection between how much stamina you get rewarded and how much defence an ability offers. This was the case for old Kahlt however it is completely backwards with the new Kahlt, it gives you low stamina reward, no instant defence, and completely negligible over time defence for which you already have payed more than it is worth.
From: Kahlt main who also has about 20 hours in Windfall and Forsaken each, who tries to keep up with discussion of the better players of this game. I will not be playing Kahlt any longer, and will be trying to preserve the stamina game-play with Windfall.
What do you mean by "I often times come out with more health then I had before the absorb" and "with the spam offence I have gone form half health to full of a set of absorbs and guards alone". Absorb does not grant extra hp, you just take damage as grey life, you do not get more, and if you mean the heal ability and it's application with charged attacks, that is nothing to do with the Kahlt Absorb ability.
Honestly this thread may have been an exaggeration fueled by the other problems with the 1.06 patch (which are gone now). While Kahlt is still much weaker than it was and arguably the worst style ability, it does still have some use. I do not retract any of my previous assessment, but I realise that it is not the complete end of the world.
The stamina gain should be higher for an ability where you risk health, dont get an instant benefit aside stamina and dont have an easier or guaranteed punish. You might not even use the protection (which is capped a and limits gear choice) if you play well and you are not supposed to get hit anyway.
If there should be mechanic at all next to the stamina gain then I would like to see a damage and/or attack speed buff in relation to your ghost health.
True risk vs reward.
The playstyle of requiring charge attacks is usable now because if you try to just dodge through it I will hit you, and it forces you to either back off or to eat the hit. With the dodging frames gone and the tracking to be seemingly fixed, we can actually hit things without dodges causing such problems, like diving completely through sweeping hook.
However most of these buffs also apply to every other class, and our ability is still pretty useless. Rather than use it at all I mostly just rely on shockwave and my deck as the ability itself will rarely see use because I just lose HP for stamina that I can lose in a single hit, where as with shockwave I can defend myself properly, reset neutral, and find myself swimming in stamina.
I am glad for the 1.07 update, as I was worried I would quit but found myself enjoying the game again almost immediately with the consistencies of my hits being back to what it once was. Honestly the updatese hella rad.
Just hoping for more balancing as Kahlt has gone from one of the weakest classes to... well even weaker.
I liked the old Kahlt, but I wouldn't mind having the reward be whatever the damage was, you take it - but it also gives you the opportunity to heal above it.
ie: You have 500 health and get hit by an attack doing 200.
You take the 200 as "ghost damage" but gain 200 above the 500 you're at as "ghost damage" that you have an opportunity to heal provided you don't get hit even once. (as per normal ghost damage rules)
You can get around 40 blunt with light mobility. Together with a buddy you can also count how many hits are required to kill someone and calculate the average damage and get the difference.
Now, the difference between 40 and 60 blunt defense while eating a side kick looks like being less than 10 damage prevented per hit...
That is less than 1% of my health bar, by my definition that is worthless. And that is before soft cap hits, apparantly every point of defense over 60 is worth even less.
Now if you just have 1 easy to access guardbreak you can perpetually drain my stamina if you know what you're doing.
50% damage no grey health, no other EHP boost, guard breaks still break Absorb, but are reduced by before mentioned 50% reduction.
On success next attack in a small window (Like, buffer into it small) has Charge attack properties. Limit this only to attacks that do not have other innate properties, so you couldn't for example, Charge+Guardbreak. Or any other sort of reasonable use limit, this would also force Kahlt deck openers to either be of use by themselves, or used with the Charge.
Stamina bonus based on damage, scaling from 20-40 depending on how much damage you Absorbed with the main skill. If you timed it on an a super heavy Axe Kick on defence, you get the 40. If someone tried to Back Tripped Kick out, you'd only get 20 on offence.
The extension would be useful on lights as they can trade with anything and give pressure instantly with low chance of being counter parried/dodged. On Mediums and Heavies, because they could still trade but as they are slow they can be parried/dodged just like charged attacks can be now (if you try to charge attack out now, without feinting). Which opens up Absorb+Light, Absorb+Medium/Heavy, Absorb+Medium/Heavy Feint, No Absorb Charge, No Absorb Charge Feint Mixups as your opponent is forced to respect whatever you do after the Absorb.
This iteration would be strong as it gives both upfront defence and reliable counter pressure. However that's something Forsaken especially can already do. Further you are staking 50% of the Initial Absorb, and 100% of whatever your next attack trades with. Which would be around 150 Damage taken, +/- 50. And you still eat Guard break into side kick all day.
Or, fuck all that and just give us our stamina back Kappa.
Other styles might need buffs to keep up with that iteration, I mean, Windfall and Stagger need buffs either way.
Note1 100% absorb would be way more busted than this version. It would be the only ability that would fully allow you to get rid of all incoming damage. Every other ability is 50% on average not accounting for player skill.
Note2 Kahlt Was and still is the #2 Style, the problem is its #2 by a long shot and that Forsaken is Mechanically strong.
I literally got so frustrated when I first played Kahlt I proceeded to spend over 48 hours devising a viable mixup deck that only uses punches. I started on a Friday night and came out on a Monday morning with a deck I've fallen in love with.
In my opinion, Kahlt is great for learning the nuances of your deck and the utility of intentional step cancelling and spacing because the ability is pretty ass and feels like you're just not up to speed with everyone else due to their guarantees to punishes or quick disadvantaged escapes.
Failing that, ghost damage and being able to force an opponent not to gold link would be alright. Not the same as the others since any slow move they throw at you will most likely be a GB-string meant to shut you're entire style down BUT you can at least get an -okay- punish if they use -any- other slow move.
My biggest peeve with Kahlt is they don't stop the damage, and anyone with half a brain cell can utterly dominate your stamina bar at will thanks to guard breaks which you have no answer for outside of dodging unlike EVERY other style in the game.
playstyle was not altered at all, merely can no longer pressure as well
if it rewards anything it would be suboptimal play.
I do not believe there is a way to make absorb on a mechanical level work with slower harder hitting attacks (other than charge moves as a high risk/reward option)
so hitting hard only thing i could think of would be to give you a damage buff on your next attack you use. I don't know how fun, interesting, or balanced that would be though.
current kahlt i do feel li ke could absorb guardbreaks without being OP, though it would be MUCH more powerful. but not OP because of shitty stam regen.
right now one of THE most effective kahlt builds is 3-4 side avoids as starters, 3 charge attacks in alt, 1 gb or another side avoid in alt, then possibly back trip kick to replace the 4th side avoid as a starter.
this is due to the fact that guardbreaks counter absorb right now, while those side avoids counter guardbreaks.
Its not good, but also not good?
The playstyle was completely altered. It went from overwhelming stamina presence to "we're going to pretend you didn't hit me!".
Kahlt is literally the only ability to get shat on by guardbreaks constantly. Every other ability has the means to counter act guard break reliance, but if you just have simple access to guardbreaks you can pretty much bully Kahlts away from you and perpetually drain them.
This pretty much, as you said, limits the Kahlt deck to extremely specific initiators that will generally have defensive properties, a negative that no other ability finds itself crippled with.
A good Forsaken Player can move his deck to a windfall and still be relevant. Decks are interchangeable with various classes.
Put any other classes' deck on a Kahlt, and the Kahlt will pretty much fucking die because the game is different to them. Abilities defensively disengage and let other people reset neutral game, with Windfalls dodge giving them stance, stamina advantage, and guaranteed light hits, Stagger letting them prevent neutral resets and stay in constant aggression with stamina, and Forsaken destroying neutral with critical guarantees off small EZ Bake reads.
Kahlt's absorb has none of these qualities to circumvent aggression and also doesn't do anything to help you if you're already in the flow of combat.
It pretty much ALL comes down to the deck with Kahlts, and even then I find myself netting better results with every other ability (worth noting though Stagger feels the most balanced among the 3 styles besides Kahlt, letting me land really rapid aggression but forcing my stamina down).
The only reason I use Kahlt now is simply because I'm stubborn and refuse to succumb to an easier playstyle because im a big boi damnit ill play how i wanna
Also them sick Idle Stances. No Dusty Plebs here, son.
I tried all styles and I am comfortable only with windfall, so I go with it, but the time I spent with Khalt to learn it, I found that it was, at least for me, the hardest to pull off.
I started as I windfall user, so I did'nt have to learn it. Learning forsaken was a breeze. I'd pick a npc that initiate his combo always the same way, and I nailed the devensive move everytime. I learned stagger by using it in real fight, because I wanted to give it a try. I found out as the previous poster said, that it would allow the flow of combat uninterrupted and I tought it was fun, but I still prefered windfall. When it came to Khalt, I tought that would be the easiest to learn since I did'nt have to input any direction. Actually, I had to learn it the way I learned forsaken, against a NPC initiating his combo always in the same fashion, and contrary to forsaken, even if I KNEW exactly what was coming, I would still not nail the timing right.
I my opinion, that is what I would change to even things out. I would give Khalt slightly more "time" it is active so it is a bit easier to pull off. Or I'd make it more responsive (activate faster)
The truth is, I never ever saw a player be able to use Khalt as effectively as a NPC, which goes a long way into showing the ability is harder to pull that it should be.
I'm not a Khalt user, so that's just my 2 cents. Maybe it's a bad idea, but I think the real fault with Khalt is not that it's less "useful", I think it's MEANT to be less useful. The real fault is that it's advatage of being supposedly the easiest to pull, is not true at all.
Forsaken's the meta. Windfall and stagger are pretty good, for opposite reasons, with stagger keeping aggression and Windfall evading punishes. Both are fairly good IMO in regards to an isolated space without Forsaken involved.
Kahlt will struggle unless you build your deck specifically for kahlt with offensive moves that double as defensive options. However, in said isolated space with Windfalls and Staggers I feel it is still OK, just a bit lower due to most of the punishment opportunity coming at your own expense and the lack of true ways to circumvent attacks.
Adding Forsaken into the mix gets you straight boozled, as Forsaken is straight up miles above everything else.
Someone on the steam forums said you only waste 5 stamina if you miss, but you are open for that period of time and not recharging your stamina bar.
Ideally I'd like it easier to use. Parry seems to last "forever" and windfall is immediate. Absorb is pretty much immediate but the timing feels incredibly strict. You glow seemingly as soon as you press the button - and if they hit you while you're glowing for even a fraction of a second you're hit anyway.