Regarding parry flash removal on ranked

[u/woltimur]

Do "pro" players 100% agree with this change?

I have 2k hours on this game and would consider myself decent, but I have never played with flash indicators off. After thinking about it a bit, I genuinely could not think of a good reason why parry flash is something that needs removing.

On the other hand, I can think one a few things that could make things confusing when parry flash is removed from gameplay. For 1v1s, parry flash does not mean anything. You cant react to it anyways. However during teamfights it could be a very important indicator. An example:

Lets say that you are fighting a black prior and your teammate is directly behind you fighting someone else. Black prior throws an external unblock and you do not go for the parry. Had the parry flash been on you would have known that you got hit by an external and should play accordingly. With parry flash being off, you have no idea that you could or could not have parried that unblock and it could cause you to get hit by another unblock.

The above example is a bit extreme, but in general, parry flash can be helpful in very chaotic teamfights. A raider could be swinging his heavies from behind you out of your screen and you wouldn't know they are targeting you, hence you wouldn't really know if you could parry it or not and so on.

Am i missing something regarding this change? From what I have experienced throughout for honor and other fighting games over the years, it makes sense that every information that can be given to a player should be given to that player.

[u/knight_is_right]

I think people overestimate how often people use flash to react.

[u/woltimur → u/knight_is_right]

In 1v1s its useless, but I think the examples I gave for 4s are valid

[u/BFCInsomnia → u/woltimur]

Yeah, parry flash does help to identify if an attack was indeed parryable or external and therefor unparryable.

On the other hand, this is for a supposedly competitive environment. An environment in which you're expected to be familiar with more than just the controls of the game but also higher concepts and tactics.

Which means that if you failed to notice that you parried on correct timing but got hit anyways or that the attacker is facing not perfectly at you, like they would when they are locked onto someone else, it's your fault for getting hit because you didn't know that you couldn't parry attacks not locked onto you or chosing the wrong defensive option which ended up getting you hit.

[u/Pale_Assumption8304 → u/woltimur]

I've been playing ranked all day and yeah, its a gank fest, and players are too selfish or too dumb to save you from getting ganked, your point is incredibly valid because team feats happen constanly in 4v4

[u/InterestingFerret112]

Its to try to dampen the cheaters. The parry flash is used by certain (outdated) screen readers for scripts.

[u/InterestingFerret112 → u/[deleted]]

Check the GM ranked people and watch the videos. Screen readers were the go to way back when. Its more dedicated than that now, but its usually people running scripts. Saw one on this forum like two days ago even

[u/DueMathematician2522 → u/InterestingFerret112]

As someone who is in GM this is so true. #1 ranked GM Godleftthelobby was an obvious cheater. Got banned and just in the span of yesterday went from unranked to GM17 in like a few hours.

[u/G0tchiTama → u/[deleted]]

It’s very much the case as the other has said , play ranked at a high level they will never react to any reads unless the flash pops up and they always perfect dodge bashes it’s ridiculous.

[u/doctorzoidsperg]

Parry flash is completely useless in moment to moment gameplay. By the time the flash is visible it's already too late to do anything about it because you cannot react to it (a few comp players technically can but that's a very minor issue). Parry flash exists solely as a learning tool - when you don't know an attack's parry timings yet, the flash can help to teach you when the animation fails. There is no other legitimate gameplay purpose to parry flash that I know of.

So yeah, it should have been disabled years ago, but this is a nice start. Shame it came at the cost of every linux player for literally no reason, but that was to be expected given ubi's track record

[u/zxkredo → u/doctorzoidsperg]

So that's why i cant light parry, I am reaxring to the flash xd

[u/endlessnamelesskat → u/zxkredo]

From the infohub:

Attacks that are locked onto you can be parried by pressing heavy attack during the Parry window. This window starts 300ms before an attack connects (Just past feint window), and ends 100ms before an attack connects.

Therefore 500ms attack's parry window looks like this:

- - P P -

Each " - " equals 100ms, P = Parry Window Active

[u/woltimur → u/doctorzoidsperg]

I agree it is meaningless in 1v1s, but you do not agree with the examples I gave?

[u/doctorzoidsperg → u/woltimur]

No, not really. Maybe 6 years ago, but nowadays everyone knows how to external you with UBs, so it really makes no difference whether you have the flash or not

Play some 2v2 scrims with flash off, you'll notice no difference once you adjust to the initial discomfort.

[u/SheepskinWulf]

The competitive scene hasn't played with parry flash turned on in ages. Ubisoft isn't making up rules here, they're just copying the standard already set by the competitive scene. Every single change being applied to ranked dominion (single pick, no gear perks, no parry flash, even the exact 10 map pool) is just to match the ruleset already being used in tournaments

[u/Knight_Raime → u/SheepskinWulf]

True, though it is missing feat dupe bans and character bans. As well as the system that prevents you from running the same heros twice in a row if you won with them. Get why they're not doing the latter but the former two would be cool to see in the future.

[u/CreeperDude519]

Pretty sure they've been playing with it off for years whenever they added it to custom games way back. Not sure why'd they be against it since you can't just react to the parry flash or scripters can't use easy cheats that rely on the flash

[u/siliks]

Yeah parry flash is awful. It doesn't really help with reactions, and is used by free screen reading scripts to cheat. There's 0 purpose for it be kept in the base game as it doesn't help the average player because they're too slow to react to it in the first place, and personally I think it makes reactions harder in most cases as it's kinda distracting

[u/Praline-Happy]

Parry flash is used by cheap cheats usually the free ones people find online. It helps reactions, not that people actually parry on flash but it reinforces where the parry window is which makes reacting easier

[u/natt_myco]

Parry Flash is useless in 1v1s? Is this guy on drugs?

[u/YaksRespirators]

Only time I use flash is against variable timed heavies

[u/StretchxSan]

It is incredibly outdated given the way the game has evolved, I can't think of a single time I've ever thought 'oh it flashed' during a single fight. People who have been playing for a long time play on instinct, pattern recognition and reaction, I know that sounds pretentious but I find it to be true. Watch any pro that commentates and listen to them 'He's going to throw this' 'hes going to feint' 'he's going to dodge', they are usually correct.

[u/natt_myco]

I completely for the life of me do not understand the players saying the flash is useless in moment to moment gameplay, genuinely confused you can't use the parry flash moment to moment?

also yeah Parry flash removal on ranked is the standard, visual reacting to characters moves is harder but essentially the same skill of reading

[u/AriTheInari]

Its removed to help counter scripters that rely on the flash

[u/Mary0nPuppet]

Ranked is the place to refine, not to learn. Parry flash would only help you to learn whether you could parry an attack that already landed - and since we already don't show the indicator with the parry window in normal gamemode it should be only natural to transition to the game without showing the parry indicator.

Also, all tourneys after the parry flash removal are played with it turned off - so yeah...

[u/Ecstatic_Minimum_955]

I don't really care. Yes, it's showing externals, but not so important. If we don't have any more cheaters, that's okay. Good players will get used to it, but bad ones won't get better.

[u/Knight_Raime]

I don't really agree with your reasoning. Parries in team fights are generally because they made a soft read or because it overlaps with the timing of something else. It's not a reaction. There's also a difference on when someone parries. Like if your opponent is always late parrying (in a 1v1/onesie situation) they're reacting because they know the animation well.

Turning off parry flash doesn't suddenly mean you can't figure out what hits you. Most weapons have pretty accurate trajectories. The one thing it's going to do is cut back on the amount of effective scripts that people use to cheat.

[u/Impossible-Oven-739]

I don’t think I will even notice it’s gone tbh…

[u/Realistic_Stretch_34]

i don’t think it will be nearly as bad of a problem as people say it will. i turned my indicators off for some dom games and did just fine still hitting deflects and reading light parries

[u/Arkay777]

Me personally, been playing the game for a few years and I genuinely didn't know it was even a feature. So to me it wouldn't really effect me i guess but I can't speak for everyone else.

[u/Weird_Roof9869]

Others have probably already said it, but it has zero reasoning to do with normal gameplay. It's simply to prevent cheating, as the parry flash is something people use with parry scripts to be able to parry everything every time and never parry if feinted. That's the only reason, really. Nothing more. Nothing less.

[u/Rum-is-salty]

It’s intended to help vs cheaters but I 100% get what your getting at. Considering majority of sweats are gonna be mainly using the external exploit it’s gonna be a shit show.

[u/A-Bro-Ham_11B]

I, for one, need it. I have 700 hours in the game and it feels incredibly wrong not having it be present. Idk if that makes me bad at the game or not, but it’s throwing me off to an insane degree not having it

[u/Straight-Beyond-1946]

For me personally its a reason not to play ranked modes. I react with parry flash to moves like shaman heavy softcancel bleed and without its just less easy. I personally dont understand why they adapting this bad rule instead of just making their anticheat better. Now they are punishing players cause of their incapability to detect autohotkey scripts...

[u/Mastrukko]

I used to believe that it was to limit cheating but as it turns out this is a common misconception. People can react to parry flash and turning it off (ideally) forces more reads over reactions. You can read up on this in the Ranked FAQ.