For Honor getting big guard break counter changes, Valkyrie buff, more

For Honor has been out mere days, and already, the developers are talking about making changes.

Ubisoft has announced the first round of fixes and changes hitting For Honor, just a few days after the game's official launch.

Community manager Eric Pope took to the game's sub-Reddit to outline some of the biggest issues fans have raised with the developer, and how the team is responding to them.

First up is the issue of bots replacing disconnecting players in Duel, Brawl, and Elimination. The issue is not that bots can take the place of human players, it's that they spawn with full health mid-fight. When your opponent rage-quits as you were about to win - for instance - you're suddenly forced to fight a full-health bot to win the round.

Ubisoft Montreal recognises this isn't fair, and will be making a change. Now, the replacement bot will spawn-in dead. This means you get to win the current round, and both of you can start fresh the next one.

Another big change has to do with how guard break countering currently works in the game. Right now, you can't counter a guard break during the attempt, and must wait until the grab animation hits you to counter. In the beta, if you saw it coming, you could easily counter the guard break as your opponent was attempting it.

Pope confirmed that the guard break behaviour will return to what it was in the beta.

As for hero balance and bug fixes, Conqueror, Berserker, Peacekeeper, and Valkyrie are all getting touched up. There's a bug in the game currently that means any light attacks you block from a Conqueror or a Berserker allows them to combo that into a free guard break. This will be fixed.

Peacekeeper is currently also affected by a bug that prevents the second and third stabs after a guard break from applying bleed. This, too, will be fixed.

As for Valkyrie, well, the class is getting a number of buffs. Here they are:

• Light attacks: reduced recovery time
• Light chains: reduced time between attacks
• Pouncing Thrust & Hunter’s Strike: increased damage and link options after those moves
• Shield Crush: add link to Light Attack chains
• Hunter’s Rush: reduced recovery time

Pope did not say when we should expect these changes to hit the live game, or if all fixes will be included in one patch.

If you're looking to step up your For Honor game, maybe give our guide a look. We're updating it every day, and it covers everything from basic gameplay concepts to how you can create your own emblem.