YMMV / For Honor

• Adorkable: All heroes have some silly taunts but Nuxia takes it further. Her default emote has her doing peekaboo from behind her blades while another causes her to do a silly dance with them while singing to herself.
• Aluminium Christmas Trees: Despite fan complaints, Black Priors not wearing full-plated armor makes historical sense as it would make their kite shields redundant.
• Awesome Ego:
  • The Warden in the story is pretty cocky at times, seemingly not caring about "overwhelming numbers" or such. Thankfully, as a Player Character, they can back it up.
  • His players seem to like the Centurion for similar reasons seeing as he's probably not referring to his opponents when he shouts INCREDIBILIS!!!
• Catharsis Factor: For those who have played Dead by Daylight, the 2021 Halloween crossover event allows them to finally face one of the Killers while armed with your own weapons. While doing so is extremely difficult, it is immensely satisfying to finally turn the tables on the Killer, if only for a moment.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Almost the entire player base's chosen faction is the Vikings, simply because since they have the most active players, they win every faction related challenge and thus get the best rewards, meaning more people switch off of the Knights and Samurai to join the Vikings for better rewards, meaning less active players are contributing to the Knights and Samurai, meaning only the Vikings win. The rare occasions factions other than the Vikings win is chalked up to subtly rigging the results.
  • Dodge heavy attacks, often referred to as "doj heby", are a commonplace part of many heroes kits, but most infamously on heroes such as Kensei and Gryphon, being safe responses to an enemy's attacks where the only punish most heroes can deal out is parrying it and attacking back with one light attack. For even reasonably experienced players dodge attack spammers are a free kill, if agonizingly slow due to how little damage one confirms off of parrying a heavy dodge attack, but for newer players who don't understand how to bait out and punish a dodge attack properly they're faced with a seemingly invincible enemy who only ever does dodge attacks.
  • Reworked/buffed heroes typically end up being over buffed to the point that everyone is playing them because they're so strong, and without hero pick limits to stop them from being stacked, causes matches to devolve into being ganked by multiple strong heroes. Examples include Raider having been buffed to become a much faster 1v1 mix-up menace with an easily spammable, low stamina cost, high damage un-blockable that can be used to zone people out in group engagements, and the previously, laughably bad Shinobi, being buffed back to top-tier status by being given a far more lenient stamina economy and a slew of different dodge options to safely engage and dead simple 50/50 mixups to throw at opponents.
  • Detailed below in Game-Breaker, all Viking heroes who can, will only ever run Fury and Fire Flask as their third and fourth tier feats.
• Complete Monster: Apollyon is a brutal female warrior who commands the Blackstone Legion. Obsessed with war and firmly believing that Might Makes Right, Apollyon welcomes only the strongest and most ruthless into the Blackstone, with those who fight back against her spared—though she later proves to not care about her soldiers—while the rest are slaughtered as she sneers at them for being "sheep." Manipulating the various factions into conflict, Apollyon leads attacks on the Viking warriors before confiscating or destroying their supplies so they fall among themselves, allowing only the strongest to survive. When the Vikings attack the samurai Dawn Empire, Apollyon sacks the capital city, murdering the Emperor and releases the Daimyos to hunt each other down to see who will emerge. When defeated by the Emperor's champion, the Orochi, Apollyon gloats that her true plan has been to precipitate an endless war between the Vikings, knights and samurai, watching as they fall among each other due to her manipulations. Obsessed with proving everyone is as bloodthirsty as her, Apollyon only finds joy in endless slaughter, wanting nothing more than a land consumed by the flames of war forever.
• Creepy Cute: There's a lot of players who think Shaman is this, or even just plain cute. Keep in mind that this is a woman who bites people's throats out as part of her standard moveset.
• Demonic Spiders: While in multiplayer, bots aren't that great until they hit Level 2, in the campaign, some AI enemies are nightmares.
  • Valkyries are extremely difficult opponents in the campaign, since the AI rapidly alternates the directions of attacks faster than a human player can. That, coupled with their speed, means its really hard to parry a Valkyrie's thrusts. Campaign Valkyries are considered to be tougher than Level 2 multiplayer bot Valkyries!
  • In the fourth Samurai mission, the two Orochi and (optional) Kensei opponents you fight are just as deadly as Seijuro, with the same problem of them being able to change their attack directions faster than a human could, and the Orochis not needing to sidestep deflect to initiate Hurricane Blasts. They're mitigated a bit by the fact that you're supposed to have Momiji helping you fight them, but she has a tendency to get lost following you through the paper walls you cut through.
  • Anytime a Shugoki shows up. Unlike player Shugokis, who have to show a bit of caution and restraint, these AI Shugokis are extremely aggressive, hit like trucks, and use the uninterruptible stance to maximum effect, and the power behind their blows means that you've only got a couple of mistakes before you're at critical health.
  • For the "Escape of the Emperor" special event, there's the Blackstone's Lawbringers and Masters. The former are aggressive as hell (for a hero who normally focuses on parrying and defense), constantly regenerate health, and often come in packs of three at a time. The latter are essentially the Commanders from the Breach game mode, except they usually have at least one Black Prior and a couple of Officers supporting them, making them even harder to bring down. You have to fight multiple Masters to take the zone they're defending... and for the final zone you have to fight three at the same time while also protecting the Emperor.
  • The Test Your Metal event features extremely tough versions of many of the bosses or NPCs from the story mode, often with instantly-unlocked feats, boosted health and damage, and unique attacks.
• Evil Is Cool: Apollyon became very popular after release for being an absolutely badass Black Knight Dark Action Girl with a delightfully hammy War Is Glorious philosophy. Her awesome fight scenes, villainous intelligence, scenery-chewing voice acting in certain scenes and challenging and exciting boss fight also help her be a fun, awesome villain.
• Fan Nickname: The fans have come up with a wide range of nicknames for the various characters:
  • Each faction has a nickname - the Knights are "tin cans", the Vikings are "neckbeards", and the Samurai are "weebs".
    • The Wu Lin have yet to receive their own nickname from the community, in part due to disagreements on what it should be as well as trying to avoid racist or political nicknames for these Chinese warriors. "Soy boys" is one of the more popular nicknames though.
  • The Lawbringer is known as "Lawbro" or "the Ledgebringer", the latter because of their ability to toss opponents off ledges or into traps.
  • Warlord is sometmes called "Ledgelord" because of their similar ability to push enemies an extremely long distance with guard breaks and shield charges.
  • Conquerors are "Conqs" because, well, aside from shorting the name, their entire moveset involves hitting people in the face with blunt objects. Alternately, they're "RAH Man" because of their pelvic-thrusting emotes.
  • Orochis are also called "Roaches," both to shorten the name and because they're speed makes them annoyingly hard to kill if they run from a fight.
  • Both Orochi and Shinobi also get called "Naruto."
  • Shugokis are either "sumos," "Shuggos," "Huggos," or "Gokis." "Shrek" is also a common nickname.
  • The Centurion gets dubbed "Kicky McCutscene" due to the long nature of his executions, as well as this comic◊.
  • The in-game currency Steel sometimes gets called "Daubney Dollars." There's not really much a reason for this beyond that the For Honor subreddit found this funny and it grew from there.
  • Catapult, a Knight 4th tier feat is sometimes called "Roman Catapult". It actually makes sense, as Knight faction is said to descend from an old, fallen empire, equivalent to real Roman Empire.
  • The Highlander is sometimes nicknamed the "Thighlander" because of his massive thighs. Some fans also call him "Donald McGlass" after his shout when he changes stance, as well as "The Scotsman."
  • "Angels" is the quickly-developed term for ballista operators on Sentinel who save other players from executions, ganks, or losing fights.
  • The Shaman's throat bite move is jokingly referred to by some as a "hickey". Her move Predator's Mercy is also sometimes called Predator Missile due to its tracking.
  • The Aramusha is often called "Samurai Jack" because of his similarity to the titular character.
  • The default Warden that gets to be the Designated Victim in the Execution Preview menu was given the name 'Larry' by the for Honor subreddit, which has become acknowledged◊ by the developers as of the Season 10 execution set.
  • "Apollymom" or "Warmommy" for the Warmonger, since she is intentionally designed after Apollyon.
• Friendly Fandoms: There's a lot of crossover between players of this game and Dark Souls, due to their similar aesthetics, learning curves, and relatively grounded gameplay. The aesthetic also means that Darkest Dungeon also has a lot of crossover as well.
• Game-Breaker: Despite being a competitive PvP team fighting game, For Honor has no shortage of combinations of perks, gear and even the heroes themselves who can single handedly carry matches.
  • The Last Stand perk is a general Heavy-class perk that grants its user a whopping 40% damage resistance while in critical health. On its own this can extend the the lifespan of a Heavy-hero for a short amount of time, but when combined with perks like Vengeful Barrier (gain a shield upon exiting revenge) and Aegis (increases all shields gained by 25%), on top of the fact that Last Stand only ever checks for normal health instead of shield health to apply the damage resistance can easily make a player unnaturally resilient, enough to completely turn the tide of a battle and either buy enough time for help to arrive or for the defending player to simply outlast their attackers.
  • Fire Flask is widely reviled for being one of the most overpowered feats in the game, allowing the user to throw a completely un-reactable bomb that not only chunks a player for more than half their health bar, but also applies a damage-over-time effect in a large area. When combined with the damage increasing Fury feat which is present on every Viking that also has Fire Flask, the dreaded Fury Flask combo is born, allowing a player to essentially instantly kill multiple enemies without warning.
  • Shugoki is a hero with very easy access to highly damaging, wide swinging un-blockables with hyper armor, and very useful pinning tools for ganking in the form of Demon Ball, Demon's Embrace and the Staggering Blow feat which allows Shugoki to knock down enemies with any heavy attack, on top of being a Heavy-class hero with the endurance to match. A lone Shugoki can easily hold down a control point by himself and with help can very easily dispatch offenders without ever giving them revenge.
  • Raider functions in a similar manner to Shugoki, in that he's a powerful fighter on his own and can easily confirm kills on players without giving them revenge with his powerful un-blockable zone attack and his ability to constantly keep opponents pinned with his Stampede Charge. Not to mention as a Viking hero, he has access to the aforementioned Fury Flask combo, allowing him to end fights in the blink of an eye.
  • Kyoshin on his own is simply a very solid duelist with powerful defensive options to keep enemies at bay. With the help of well coordinated teammates or another Kyoshin, he can keep enemies permanently stun-locked with his Kaze stance attacks, which infamously supply almost no revenge to their victim. Shinobi and the Pirate have similar infinite stun-locking potential that allows them to single out and kill lone players completely effortlessly with no threat of retaliation from their victim.
• Gamebreaking Bug:
  • There is quite the common bug for players to become stuck in the lobby screen as people keep joining and leaving constantly. While it doesn't crash the game it forces you to close it.
  • Players discovered a glitch that allowed several heroes, most notably the Warden, to kill any hero in the game with a single hit, which resulted in legions of exploiters abusing it and temporarily ruining online play. Fortunately, Ubisoft was quick to make note of the glitch and start banning people who abused it, as well as work on a patch to remove it.
  • On the PC versions alt-tabbing out of the game in the main menu softlocks the game with a high frequency.
  • To a lesser extent, Shaolin's 4th ability which allows him to teleport to a teammate of his choice from anywhere on the map, has some accuracy issues. Players often don't even teleport wasting their time and forcing them to wait for the cooldown, or in worst case scenarios it teleports them outside of the map and kills them.
• Goddamn Bats: Pikemen in Breach. They take just three-four hits to kill and don't do much damage, but there's so many of them at the same time that getting killed by them is very easy, and they can interrupt any channeled actions, even executions.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • For Honor, like many other games, can allow players to abuse spamming emote animations for sexual-implicit fun and profit - constantly pressing the button for the Psyched emote as the Conqueror while trying to move at the same time will make them "airhump" constantly, doing the same as the Raider's Shove Off emote while in the right-side stance will make them looking like they're pelvic thrusting, and doing it with the Lawbringer will cause him to start pumping his fist in the air endlessly. It's pretty much expanded from there with players eagerly seeking any vaguely-amusing motions that can be got from spamming a hero's emotes.
  • Let us assure you that this has not gone unnoticed by content creators.
  • Occasionally, when a player's corpse falls off a long ledge away from sight, their corpse will then humorously somehow fall from the top of the skybox.
  • Sometimes, a player that's been killed will hilariously go off flying right as the killing blow landed into them. Players have noticed it happens to a dead Conqueror the most for some reason.
  • For a while, there was an exploit that allowed players to put gear from one hero onto another(but not bring it into matches). The glitch was so popular that many players complained when it was eventually patched.
  • For a long time after they launched, Black Priors' bulwark counter worked against literally anything but a guardbreak. This resulted in such astonishing feats as pulling a Zhanhu from halfway across the map after using it against their fire trap.
  • Warden's Spinning Decapitation execution notably does not have its kill time synced with the actual decapitation itself, meaning its possible to frame perfectly interrupt the execution (a roughly 200 millisecond window) and then reattach the victim's head to their body, no worse for the wear.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The theme of the first season of Year 4. After the Year of the Harbinger, which starred such people as Vortiger, Sakura, Hulda, and Sun Da, along with hints at a SECOND cataclysm like the one a thousand years ago, the next theme they went for is... Hope. And to top it off, the very first bit of story we get is that the war is over! The beautifully animated story trailer encapsulates the feeling perfectly.
  • Four special executions were released at the end of the first season of Year Four, all of which are designed to allow the victor to honor their opponent. The Knights draw a sword and knight their foe, the Vikings give their opponent a horn of ale to drink, the Samurai give the opponent a knife to commit Seppuku with and then cuts off their head and bows to the corpse, and the Wu Lin light a paper lantern over their corpse.
    • Special mention should be made for the Wu Lin's respect execution Tiandeng. Paper lanterns in China were formerly for military use before becoming symbolic of family reunion, thus the Wu Lin can offer this simple act of kindness in the form of a wish that their opponent may be reunited with their family in the afterlife.
• High-Tier Scrappy: For Honor has had a rather tenuous history of heroes falling squarely into this role before being rebalanced, or worse, nerfed into obscurity. Notable examples include:
  • Lawbringer in the earliest versions of For Honor was infamous for his block-shove, a defensive move that allowed him to throw a hyper-armored bash on reaction to blocking an enemy attack, shoehorning him into a playstyle of doing absolutely nothing until he blocked or parried an attack. Later updates would remove his block-shove, but did nothing to improve his absolutely abysmal neutral game leaving him forced to stare down his opponents until they did something he could counter.
  • The Raider is the only hero who has been consistently oppressive for different reasons throughout the game's life cycle. In earlier versions they were infamous for their sprinting grab to throw enemies around into environmental hazards or trap them in a Cycle of Hurting by draining their stamina and pinning them, their horribly over-tuned damage on their zone-attack finisher and the Stunning Tap which blinded the victim, disabling their heads up display and draining their stamina at the same time. As the stamina bullying aspects of Raider disappeared, Raider got numerous buffs to their actual fighting capabilities by giving them an absurdly efficient stamina economy to essentially spam infinite high damage, hyper armor attacks and unblockables in team fights, which would eventually be toned down to far more reasonable levels.
  • Centurion was this upon his release, having an absurdly overpowered punish game that became infamously derided as the cutscene where Centurion was able to confirm multiple bashes and heavy attacks off of a single parry or guardbreak, often resulting in touches of death from so much as a single mistake. Centurion has been heavily rebalanced since to focus more on mix-ups and pinning enemies for coordinated takedowns rather than long drawn out combos.
  • Shinobi has the dubious honor of regaining this status in modern For Honor. Their original iteration was infamous for being annoyingly slippery and possessing ranged attacks that allowed them to poke enemies from outside their field of vision, before losing anything resembling viability for almost 4 years, before being buffed into an equally oppressive hero with the ability to touch of death enemies with a teammate present so easily accessible that Shinobi was actually banned from competitive tournaments because of how overcentralizing Shinobi became to the meta.
  • Pirate was this upon her release, with a kit that had everything, over-tuned tracking that made dodging her impossible, easy access to a hyper-armor unblockable, nearly unpunishable dodge recovery cancels, a highly damaging unblockable that could setup for easy touch of deaths with teammates present, and strong feats that gave her incredibly staying power and potential to win team fights at the press of a button. While her feats remained unchanged, the devs in a knee-jerk reaction to the communities outrage at how busted Pirate was slowly nerfed the wrong aspects of her kit with every patch, until they actually did tune her more problematic aspects, but by the time that had happened they had already gutted the rest of her kit without retracting the changes that weren't necessary.
  • Medjay on release wasn't perceived as being terribly powerful or interesting other than the potential to infinite people to death with his Staff-mode grab attack. It wasn't until people started actually getting hit by his staff attacks did they realize how absurdly busted his damage and hitboxes were, made worse by Medjay having hyper armor on basically all of his staff-mode attacks, essentially relegating him to being an unstoppable blender that chunks you for not insignificant amounts of damage if you don't block or parry him.
• Iron Woobie: The Samurai have lost their homeland, become the last of their kind, and are fighting a desperate war for survival. Don't be fooled though, they're some of the deadliest warriors around and have no intention of giving up.
• Magnificent Bitch: Apollyon is the ruthless, terrifying, armored warrior leading the Blackstone Legion, who desires war as the true state of mankind, dreaming of a world where only the strong survive. Recruiting only the strongest for her armies, Apollyon also attacks the Vikings and manipulates a greater conflict while forcing them to fight among themselves so only the strong will survive. Turning her eyes to the east against the samurai who call themselves the Chosen, Apollyon invades and with a series of brilliant gambits, subdues them as well, also uniting the knight legions and remaining Chosen against her. Even as they oppose her, Apollyon plans it so that with her death, the Vikings will invade, destroying the fragile alliance and kicking off a massive war that continues years after her demise. Combining a dark charisma with an endless hunger for war, Apollyon shows why she is possibly the most terrifying figure to ever lift a sword on the battlefield.
• Memetic Badass:
  • The Black Prior can use Shrouded Bulwark to flip anything. He can flip unblockables, anything that impacts his hitbox, Shinobi's ranged attacks, explosives, catapults.... He can flip anything. Except guard breaks.
    • While the Black Priors have since been patched so they can no longer flip everything, they can still amusingly flip Pirate's gun under incredibly specific circumstances.
  • Daubeny has slowly become one, with the joke being that a fight with Holden Cross would indeed have been an execution... For Cross. It built from there.
    • It seems that Daubeny's badassery has become an Ascended Meme. Year 3 season 3's event, centered around the Jormungandr, hinted that the badass Warden Alarius may be Daubeny or working for Daubeny. The arcade missions released around this time have "H.D." sending you on missions against the Jormungandr. More recently, a Warden matching his description has been mentioned waging his own one man war against the Order of Horkos, and his exact helmet is in a prominent position on the art for Year 5 Season 1, Asunder. The Lore ends up confirming it - he personally saved Holden Cross from the Order of Horkos!
• Memetic Loser: The Orochi are noted to be effective assassins allegedly capable of matching one hundred enemies on the battlefield. Due to the tactics used by a lot of Orochi players, they're known in the community for spending most of their time running away or waiting to unfairly gang up on opponents.
  • Considering a common thread of detest/annoyance for all the other Samurai heroes, the Kensei has some fame seeing them as unappreciated and underrepresented fellows.
  • The fandom's perception of the male Warden has gradually morphed into something of an Unlucky Everydude as well as a Chick Magnet, depicted as a Celibate Hero often being tempted by Nobushi and the other female heroes forming an Unwanted Harem (partially because of his anti-bleed feat making him immune to their bleed attacks).
  • Shinobi, in general, are portrayed as memetic losers, because they have so many abusable mechanics and are infuriating to fight against, leaving a lot of the fans portraying them as obsessive try-hards who only spam very safe moves and are no fun to fight against.
  • Both Lawbringer and Shugoki have gained this opinion in the fandom though more in the vein of Lord Tachanka from Rainbow Six Siege. The former for being seen as underpowered and receiving no rework or buff and the latter for struggling against faster characters (which as time went on became more numerous) and getting multiple nerfs. Then Season 9 came along for Shugoki....
• Memetic Mutation: Memes are a meme unto themselves when it comes to For Honor. It has spawned a plethora of these and keeps pumping out more, as cataloged here and with its own devoted subreddit.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Ledges and pits are an instant kill if you're knocked into them. Some believe it's a cheap and annoying tactic (especially in duels), while others see it as just another part of the game.
  • When the game first launched, gear bonuses were considered way too powerful, especially ones that boosted Revenge gain. The developers acknowledged this as a problem and corrected it, reducing the overall stat bonuses so that the difference between high level and starting gear wasn't so jarring, as well as removing the movement speed stat entirely.
  • Revenge is generally seen as a band-aid slapped onto the game to solve ganking, when in practice it either causes no end of frustration for players who have teammates who constantly feed revenge and interrupt punishes, and likewise for players on the receiving end of a gank who are unable to properly use revenge due to the plethora of abusable loopholes of the revenge mechanic and pinning attacks that can prevent a player who even has a full revenge meter from using it at all.
  • The abscence of single-tones paint schemes for player customization. If you want to have, for example, your character(s)'s left shoulder red, you either have to fiddle with various paints schemes and hope the secondary colour isn't too visible on a few of them, or use one of the very few colour schemes where the primary and secondary colours are identicals and hope one has the colour you wanted.
• Spiritual Successor: Some people who have tried the game have compared the combat to Bushido Blade; you have to analyze your opponent’s defensive stance, use misdirection, choose the direction of your swing, and a single misstep can get you killed instantly. Word of God has confirmed that Bushido Blade was, indeed, a major influence on the game’s combat system.
  • Also to the much earlier Pirates Vikings and Knights, but also including samurai.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The final chapter of story mode. Although the Orochi has defeated Apollyon, she laughs in their face for thinking that her defeat would be the end of it. The Samurai have invaded Ashfield and war still runs deep. The Chosen and Iron Legion are poised to attack each other as she speaks. A Warden and Kensei seem to lower their arms, ready to part ways. At that point, the Warborn storm the fortress, causing the Samurai and Knights to engage each other due to believing the other is attacking. Even though the Warden and Kensei try to get their troops to stand down, it turns to Hell and the two have no choice but to fight to the death themselves. Apollyon berates everyone's ideals of duty, kinship, and honor as mere lies to hide the wolves inside them, and dies having proved herself right.
  • The Samurai traveled across the world to find a new home, only to discover after finding one that they're possibly the last of their kind. Now the descendants of these survivors who sought nothing but safety are caught in a deadly war against two peoples who outnumber them several times over.
    • Who knows how many ancient and priceless relics were stolen or destroyed by the Vikings when they raided the Myre in the story. The Vikings didn't just slaughter Chosen and steal their wealth, they could've killed a piece of their culture.
  • Seeing Gudmundr, a mighty warlord and by all indication The Good King, kneel dejectedly in front of his burning hall is pretty heart-wrenching. The Warden has to practically force a sword into his hand - Gudmundr is so far past the Despair Event Horizon that he doesn't even seem to care about dying in battle and going to Valhalla anymore.
• That One Attack:
  • Throws, due to the numerous environmental hazards throughout the maps. It only takes a single guard break to be thrown into a pit, off a ledge, impaled on a wall of spikes, or set on fire. Moves that push or throw opponents like the Lawbringer's impaling charge are hated for this reason.
  • Certain unblockable attacks, like the Shugoki Demons Embrace. While it's telegraphed and easy to dodge, the would-be victim needs to see it coming, and if they're busy slaughtering minions or fighting another player, they're not likely to realize they're being charged until the Shugoki has grabbed them, and if they're in a narrow corridor or on a bridge, there's nowhere to dodge to. It doesn't help that the Demon's Embrace does more damage based on the Shugoki's missing health, so an injured Shugoki could immediately turn a losing fight around with one move if the opponent can't avoid him. It has since been nerfed to deal a flat bar of health, but still maybe perceived as such due to healing lost health.
  • The Knight's Tier 4 Catapult feat is incredibly powerful. It has nearly unlimited range, formerly hit fast, and dealt enough damage to instant kill anyone it hits. From a high vantage point you can easily call in an artillery strike on players from across the map, who won't have any idea it's coming. It has since been nerfed.
  • The Shaman's Predator Mercy that can be performed when the opponent's bleeding. The move deals a ton of damage, is fast as heck, had bugged tracking, is a confirmed hit after a throw, and on top of all that, will heal the Shaman if it hits.
  • For Playstation and Xbox players, light attack spam in general is a major irritant because of the lower power of the consoles resulting in lower framerates plus input delay that can stop one from even simply trying to block, resulting in players being killed by nothing but lights through no fault of their own.
  • The Black Prior's shield bash and light attack combo is becoming one. Since their lights do so much damage and are confirmed after a bash many players like to just spam it for easy damage. While not entirely untrue now, patches have made Black Priors more reasonable to react to.
  • The Raider's stunning tap became this after their rework. It not only stunned the target and damaged their stamina, but could also be soft feinted out of a heavy. This resulted in Raiders spamming the move constantly and it becoming the single most hated part of their kit. When Raider was finally nerfed, the stunning tap was changed to the "storming tap" and lost both its stun and stamina damage.
  • The devs are quickly developing an obsession with giving every new/reworked hero bash/undodgeable 50/50s, where the defending player has to essentially make a coin flip on whether their aggressor is throwing a bash attack that needs to be dodged or an undodgeable that has to be blocked/parried. This kind of mixup is heavily bashed on for being a very lazy way to make heroes "good" in lieu of anything more interesting and engaging for gameplay.
• That One Boss: General Tozen is a Difficulty Spike at the end of the Viking story. Forcing you to fight three copies of himself who gang up on you in the first phase. Then gains a large speed boost in the last phase, and begins calling in arrow storms between his attacks.
  • Seijuro is similar to General Tozen, as he's also an Orochi. Unlike Tozen, he doesn't use any gimmicks, he's just incredibly fast and durable, and can change attack directions faster than the player can change their guard.
  • The Valkyrie at the end of the second Knight mission is a Wake-Up Call Boss that will warn you just how nuts the AI can get.
  • The "Test Your Metal" multiplayer event, which is a limited time Boss Rush which pits players against characters and bosses from story mode in a game of Elimination. In addition to the bosses retain their unique moves(Gudmundr's Bear Hug, Tozen's All-Guard Stance) a lot of the characters have extra health, and gain feats as they level as well. As the match goes on, they also gain new abilities which can range from mundane but doable (Holden Cross gets truckloads of HP, Stone and Siv get unblockable heavies), to frustrating (Kizan's hyperarmor instantly returns, Mercy heals on attacks, Ragnar gets knockdowns on his heavies, etc.)
  • The Commander in Breach gameplay is intentionally made to be one of these, with absurdly high health and the ability to hit really hard. On top of that, he's backed up by the defending team heroes, while the attacking team has a limited number of respawns, meaning that the attackers have to fight a continuous 4v5 battle to take him down.
• That One Level: Any mid level or higher quest in Arcade mode can become this, due to the odds being stacked heavily in the AI's favor. Players will usually find themselves fighting multiple opponents who can have any number of crazy buffs, like causing knockdown on hit, constantly regenerating health, being unblockable or uninterruptible, and even re-spawning after a short delay if they are not executed. This is coupled with possible drawbacks like lower stamina, being unable to parry, or see the enemy's UI. While never unbeatable, these scenarios can be brutal and rage inducing. Luckily there are Anti-Frustration Features in place, allowing players who quit to keep whatever experience, gear, or steel they have earned, ensuring they still get something for their efforts if a stage proves to be too much for them. This has since been patched and the mode is usually a lot fairer.
• That One Sidequest: For a time, multiplayer Orders that could only be completed in Bot matches were this. Between the usually slow matchmaking for those modes and the repetitive objectives, completing them would often turn into a long grind. Making things worse were the number of "AFK Farmers" that would fill up the Bot gamemodes, making completing certain orders an even worse grind. This was later changed by removing PvP and PvE distinctions to orders, letting players complete them in whatever manner they choose.
  • Tribute specific Orders fall into this category for similar reasons; because it has become such an unpopular mode matching making can take awhile, even for PvP games, making them a chore to complete.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The game missed a huge opportunity by not showing how the Warden reformed the Iron Legion after leaving the Blackstones. Or how Holden, Mercy, and Stone defected to join him/her. Holden's defection would have been especially interesting, since he was Apollyon's second in command.
  • This is also the fandom's consensus on the "present-day lore" presented in regards to how Heathmoor is reeling even years after Apollyon's demise, specifically starting from Year 4, the writers took all the nuance of the 4 factions' battle for Heathmoor and threw it out the window, introducing the Warmongers and the Order of Horkos, a faction fervently dedicated to prolonging the Forever War in the name of Apollyon For the Evulz. The Grey-and-Grey Morality of many important figures was completely thrown out the window as they were either inducted into the Horkos or killed, For the Evulz of course, leaving only the explicitly Lawful Good entities such as Daubeny, Holden, Stigandr and Ayu in opposition to the Horkos.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: This is most people's reactions to almost every single cosmetic option the majority of the Viking heroes have, due to their almost complete lack of historically accurate Viking armor. The only two notable exceptions are the Berserker possessing a single chainmail and helmet option, and Highlander.
  • Special mention goes out to the Raider hero skin, Bolthorn the Cursed. A Raider who doomed his entire clan with a horrible Egyptian curse whose entire body has been scarred a scaly, stone grey... who also somehow wears even less than the default Raider and is apparently supposed to be culturally respectful to the real life Vikings.