Steel Marionette
New member
During a Street Brawl game I got counterspell thinking it would help against a Graves with enhanced echoshard. It did not help though nearly as much as I thought so I went to testing. I discovered that with how Deadheads stagger out their hits Counterspell will only protect against the hit and a few frames after leaving the rest of the cluster of Deadheads to freely do damage. Even turning off cooldowns and spamming spell parry my health was going down.
How I did the test was to spawn in a Mo and krill, deck them out with spirit resist and debuff resist (and obviously Counterspell), and then toss out three max level Deadheads (With Graves having Escalating Exposure, Boundless spirit, Rapid Recharge, Superior Duration, and a few other spirit proc'd debuffs). After the 3 jars were down I'd tag Mo and Krill with her gun and swap to Mo and Krill. You will want to have at least 5-6k health on Mo and Krill since during the swap there's a few moments where you wont be able to do anything but the Heads will be hitting. After you're able to use your abilities simply parry right before they hit you. I also recommend moving around a bit to get the Deadheads to hit a bit more staggered (after all when are you ever going to be standing dead still in a actual game). It would probably be a lot easier to test with two people but this is what I have to work with.
To be clear, I do think that technically Counterspell is working as intended given that the window for blocking damage is only .8 seconds. The issue is that with how they stagger their hits they will pop Counterspell with the first hit and simply stagger out hits until the damage nullification period is over and you're still locked in the parry animation. This inevitably leads to you getting hit for free applying all of Grave's spirit stripping and spirit proc'd debuffs. You also are parrying which means you're not moving or shooting while the enemy Graves is free to keep shooting at you.
Obviously meleeing is the easiest way to destroy Deadheads but that still allows them to get at least one barrage in before they get into melee range. Timing a Counterspell parry against Deadheads should in theory be the best way to prevent getting hit at all but as explained above it simply does not work out that way with how they attack. Extending the spell parry window would probably not be a good idea so I thought of a more elegant solution, have Deadheads be destroyed in a small area around the player when a Deadhead triggers Counterspell. Given how valuable Counterspell is (and the opportunity cost of putting it on cooldown for 15-20 seconds to counter a Grave's Deadheads) the destruction of Deadheads upon hitting an active Counterspell would be a fair compensation.
How I did the test was to spawn in a Mo and krill, deck them out with spirit resist and debuff resist (and obviously Counterspell), and then toss out three max level Deadheads (With Graves having Escalating Exposure, Boundless spirit, Rapid Recharge, Superior Duration, and a few other spirit proc'd debuffs). After the 3 jars were down I'd tag Mo and Krill with her gun and swap to Mo and Krill. You will want to have at least 5-6k health on Mo and Krill since during the swap there's a few moments where you wont be able to do anything but the Heads will be hitting. After you're able to use your abilities simply parry right before they hit you. I also recommend moving around a bit to get the Deadheads to hit a bit more staggered (after all when are you ever going to be standing dead still in a actual game). It would probably be a lot easier to test with two people but this is what I have to work with.
To be clear, I do think that technically Counterspell is working as intended given that the window for blocking damage is only .8 seconds. The issue is that with how they stagger their hits they will pop Counterspell with the first hit and simply stagger out hits until the damage nullification period is over and you're still locked in the parry animation. This inevitably leads to you getting hit for free applying all of Grave's spirit stripping and spirit proc'd debuffs. You also are parrying which means you're not moving or shooting while the enemy Graves is free to keep shooting at you.
Obviously meleeing is the easiest way to destroy Deadheads but that still allows them to get at least one barrage in before they get into melee range. Timing a Counterspell parry against Deadheads should in theory be the best way to prevent getting hit at all but as explained above it simply does not work out that way with how they attack. Extending the spell parry window would probably not be a good idea so I thought of a more elegant solution, have Deadheads be destroyed in a small area around the player when a Deadhead triggers Counterspell. Given how valuable Counterspell is (and the opportunity cost of putting it on cooldown for 15-20 seconds to counter a Grave's Deadheads) the destruction of Deadheads upon hitting an active Counterspell would be a fair compensation.
