Lets talk (like adults) about Hattori

[Spear Deer]

I am silver. I want to disclaim this by saying that I know that me being in silver makes my complaints slanted to the extreme, and mostly irrelevant for large scale balance. This thread is not about balance. Read on.

EDIT: I am now gold, if that makes this post seem any more credible

So I've noticed people who have yet to git gud think hattori is cancerous, and are incredibly frustrated with her right now. On the other side, people who have already gitted gud simply see overcoming the hattori spam as a hurdle to hop on your way to belonging in gold.

I get both sides, but I think something needs to be said about Hattori that hasn't really be brought up. I'm not going to ♥♥♥♥♥ about how she's OP, and I'm not going to throw a fit and threaten to quit. Those things aren't constructive, and I want to have a constructive conversation.

What I want to talk about is her overwhelming pick rate in silver, and why that indicates a problem, irrelevant from her balance state.

The fact remains that (annecdotally) about 35-50% of my matches in ranked 1v1 are against a Hattori at any give time in upper silver right now (1250-1320+). This is worth paying attention to, simply because it is anomalous. I can't help but feel like all of the people who are ♥♥♥♥♥ing about Hattori are doing so not because they lose to Hattori's more than other legends, but rather the majority of their losses are to Hattoris because such a large portion of their games are against Hattoris.

From what I have seen, and from breaking down the aspects of her design, I think there are a couple of things that are causing her to be picked so often, and by so much of the playerbase. These things are her speed, her weapon pool, and the utility of her sigs.

Hattori's speed is top tier, and she safely outspeed like 90% of the legend pool while remaining relatively safe. This means that she's an excellent pick for ranked 1v1, where you don't know who you're going to run into. She fairs pretty well against just about anyone. I'm sure there are people who do better against her than others, but all in all shes pretty solid if you just throw her against a random legend.

Her weapons are, from what I can tell from personal experience as well as talking to players much better than myself, are the two easiest to learn and safest weapons in the game. Sword and spear are both intuitive, which is not a bad thing, but makes them easier to learn, and easier to excel with than lets say, a bow. Both of these weapons also have excellent speed while also having option that let them approach safely, and easily win aerial trades. The spear's true combo is also a huge boon, allowing Hattori to easily rack up damage and punish even small mistakes in a lateral fight.

Her sigs make no sense to me. Once again, I am in silver and this is almost definitely very biased, but she seems to have sigs on both her spear and her sword that give her excellent options for edgeguarding and punishing. Her meteor sig with her sword is incredibly strong, allowing her to charge it from safety and giving her fast, semi ubiquitous coverage of the edge. Even if her sigs do not actually have that much KO potential, they seem knock back in enough favorable directions (read: lateral or at a downward angle) to give them huge effective kill potential.

I understand that Hattori is not imbalanced in the broad sense of game balance. But the fact that she is picked so often in silver is indicative of an inequality in her current state. Why are so many people playing her? I believe it is because she is a safe option that requires less skill to excel with than she does to counter. One day I will git gud, stomp the ho, and this problem will not plague me personally. However, it is likely that many players will hang around silver for the majority of their career though, and those players deserve to have this talked about. Even if Hattori is balanced, shes making the game unfun for many of us.

TL:DR: Hattori is, irrelevant from her balance state, played too often in Silver. I think there are many things that contribute to this, but it should be talked about (calmly) and addressed, because its making the game unfun for many players- and if were not having fun, why are we playing?

[Spiffer]

Silvers love Hattori because she's very easy to spam, and her sigs come out faster than most Silvers have learned how to react (Orion is also used in Silver a lot for this reason). Once you get into Gold and beyond, the number of Hattoris fall dramatically.

[Spear Deer]

Originally posted by Jate:

Silvers love Hattori because she's very easy to spam, and her sigs come out faster than most Silvers have learned how to react (Orion is also used in Silver a lot for this reason). Once you get into Gold and beyond, the number of Hattoris fall dramatically.

Yup, that sounds about right. But don't you think its a problem that Hattori is so easy to spam? If shes not used much at higher tiers, then her balance isn't all that relevant to higher tier game balance. But in silver shes the anti-fun for anyone who doesn't play her. I feel like this is a problem in an of itself. She needs to be less attractive to players who just want to spam. IDC if they make her better, but gate her power behind a higher skill wall.

[Sox]

I'm mid gold. And the only problem I see is her neutral sigs. They come out very fast and can be hard to read. Other than that, sword is just very hard to counter (for me at least) and I think it needs a nerf to the side air.

[Spiffer]

Originally posted by Bardcore:

Originally posted by Jate:

Silvers love Hattori because she's very easy to spam, and her sigs come out faster than most Silvers have learned how to react (Orion is also used in Silver a lot for this reason). Once you get into Gold and beyond, the number of Hattoris fall dramatically.

Yup, that sounds about right. But don't you think its a problem that Hattori is so easy to spam? If shes not used much at higher tiers, then her balance isn't all that relevant to higher tier game balance. But in silver shes the anti-fun for anyone who doesn't play her. I feel like this is a problem in an of itself. She needs to be less attractive to players who just want to spam. IDC if they make her better, but gate her power behind a higher skill wall.

The thing is, any legend can be used to spam True that Hattori is used most of the time, but Signature attacks do a lot of damage and look really cool. Lower skill levels tend to think using them a lot makes them good. If it wasn't Hattori, it would be a different legend (Orion, Vraxx, Gnash), any legend with easy to hit sigs. The problem isn't the Legend, it's the person playing it. People soon learn if they want to get anywhere past Silver, they have to think about what they're doing.

Silver is an interesting rank, you have people who got lucky in Bronze, mixed in with people who have been playing for about a week or two who are starting to learn the game mechanics better. This mixture tends to attract a lot of spam (e.i, people who got lucky in Bronze spamming sigs to kill the people who are trying to get better. This kills the person trying to get better because they haven't learned enough about the game yet.)

We need to encourage a less sig heavy playstyle in lower ranks.

[Malryck]

I think it's way more basic than that.

She is a woman, and she is a ninja. That's two thing that make her character likable. I personnaly bought her for that exact reason on my firsts days of game, and I was only playing FFA, I didn't even care about balance. She teleports and make smoke thingy, that looks cool, so I picked her.

If Ulgrim was an attractive female ninja he would be played way more. If Hattori was a hairy muscular guy, she would be played a lot less.

And purely gameplay-wise, I think it's smart to compare her to alternatives. Asuri is played a lot, because she has sword and is crazy fast. Just like Hattori. Lucien is crazy fast, but doesn't have the sword, therefore he is played a lot less. The same goes for Val, she is fast and has sword. Notice a pattern ?

Thatch has the sword but is slower, nobody plays him. Two thing dominates the 1v1 : sword, and speed. She has both. The only legend I see as much as Hattori (in Plat) is Asuri, I even see more Asuri nowaday, because somehow people remembered katar were a thing when Ragnir came out.

[Spear Deer]

Originally posted by Creepy Coolmonkey:

I'm mid gold. And the only problem I see is her neutral sigs. They come out very fast and can be hard to read. Other than that, sword is just very hard to counter (for me at least) and I think it needs a nerf to the side air.

I understand she isn't as big of a problem in mid gold, but don't you think something should be done about her ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on silver players all the time? I just think shes too easy to be decent with. Same skill level Hattori players will often beat other legends, just because a little skill goes a long way on Hattori.

Originally posted by Jate:

The thing is, any legend can be used to spam True that Hattori is used most of the time, but Signature attacks do a lot of damage and look really cool. Lower skill levels tend to think using them a lot makes them good. If it wasn't Hattori, it would be a different legend (Orion, Vraxx, Gnash), any legend with easy to hit sigs.

We need to encourage a less sig heavy playstyle in lower ranks.

I agree, but I think people would whine a lot less, and the game would be a lot more fun for more players if it WAS other legends. I wouldn't mind losing to an even mix of Orion, Vraxx, Gnash, and Hattori. But for a long time, it was ONLY HATTORI. That indicates that something needs to change I think.

[Tinfoil hat theorist :^)]

A thing that could bring down her playrate could be making her sigs easier to punish, but maybe shift some power elsewhere, as spamming hattori's aren't impossible to deal with, but a lot harder than some other legend spamming.

[Spiffer]

Originally posted by Stulte:

A thing that could bring down her playrate could be making her sigs easier to punish, but maybe shift some power elsewhere, as spamming hattori's aren't impossible to deal with, but a lot harder than some other legend spamming.

Making her sigs easier to punish would absolutely kill her playability in any rank higher than Gold.

[Mem-Cho]

The game is free, which attracts kids.
Hattori's appeal is edgy (xxxDemOn NiNjAxxx) which attract again those kids to main her.
You've got it.
P.s. btw I'm a lvl 10 Hattori

[Cubey3]

Wow, a civil discussion on the brawlhalla forums? you good sir, i salute you.

To me i encounter hattori alot because I am low gold, yeah shes annoying and her sigs are quite strong but she is beatable. The only problem with her she is so fast and her sigs are so powerful and have alot of utility, hattoris sword dsig is basically a better ember katar dsig. I think maybe some force (not damage) needs to be reduced in these moves just to make it not to traumatising for the newer players

[Spear Deer]

Originally posted by Orb | Cubey3:

Wow, a civil discussion on the brawlhalla forums? you good sir, i salute you.

To me i encounter hattori alot because I am low gold, yeah shes annoying and her sigs are quite strong but she is beatable. The only problem with her she is so fast and her sigs are so powerful and have alot of utility, hattoris sword dsig is basically a better ember katar dsig. I think maybe some force (not damage) needs to be reduced in these moves just to make it not to traumatising for the newer players

I think a force reduction is in order for her sword sig that everyone loves to edgeguard with. And as an ember player I agree with what you say about her swird dsig. Makes me sad.

Originally posted by Jate:

Originally posted by Stulte:

A thing that could bring down her playrate could be making her sigs easier to punish, but maybe shift some power elsewhere, as spamming hattori's aren't impossible to deal with, but a lot harder than some other legend spamming.

Making her sigs easier to punish would absolutely kill her playability in any rank higher than Gold.

What if they moved her power somewhere else? I don't think she should be gutted, but I think too much of her power currently lies in moves that are very spam happy

[BlackWaterGaming]

the thing with hattori is shes visually appealing, has fast movement speed and fast sigs which makes spamming easy. this makes her appeal to alot of silvers andd below, the thing to note is shes got low defence and is very easy to k.o because of it. once u learn how to dodge spam you can knock her out pretty quickly.

now i understand silvers and below think shes op, but past silver she dies down considerbly because everyone learns how to counter her. she isnt gonna be nerfed(Hopefully) because to put it simply this is a competive game, and when u start balancing for lower ranks you can completely throw off the balance in the higher ranks, where the skill level is much higher and requires more precise balancing. yes she can spam, but learning how to counter the spam is a hurdle every player has to learn to get past to move up in the rankings, and once you do hattori isnt so op anymore.

[Lopefy]

for me hattori have a verry good speed stats and her sigs hit in a large area and are really fast. I tink in low rank (bronze to end gold) it's a verry strong pick because you can make mistake and don't be punish. Or randomly do a Nsig with sword and hit. For me hattori have the strongest sigs.
I'm an ex diam

[Shopee]

Gold player are probably the most cancerous group right now so saying you're gold just brought your crediblity down(i'm being facetious)

[GregHouse!]

Originally posted by Feinex129:

Gold player are probably the most cancerous group right now so saying you're gold just brought your crediblity down(i'm being facetious)

Silvers may actually be worst. Most of the people that come here yelling and insulting about spamming are usually silvers. And if they are doing it here, you bet that they are doing it also on the post match chat.


On topic: I don't see 35%-50% Hattori at all. Maybe 12% to 15% being the most popular but still it's a wide variety of legends that I face all the time and she is not hard to deal with so I don't mind. I'm mid gold in the brz server