Hammer Fiona 3.35 changes feedback

[eager dust]

Long post please forgive me.
I have been a Hammer Fiona player for ~14 years. I'm still not very good, but I have always enjoyed her. In fact, she's the only character that I enjoy playing in any semblance of regularity. Previous gameplay changes have usually been pretty great. Adding the Butterfly-into-Stigma combo was one of the greatest things ever. Adding Deflect was one of the greatest things ever. The recent changes, however, have been a mixed bag.
Making Tireless and Shield Enhancement (for the dirty filthy Sword users) into proper passives was great! Removing Taunt Strike was great! Fiona was famous for having too many SP skills so I never used it anyway (or Taunt for that matter). As a bonus, now that Tireless is a passive, I can even actually use Taunt! All this is great and good. I can't speak to the Iron Defense change because I like small shield, and that is where my complaint manifests: small shield + hammer got gutted hard by the deflect change.
Small Shield + hammer cannot use Iron Defense or enhanced counters, it it saw no benefits from those changes. Deflect has not just been our core direct damage mitigation/booster option, but something of hammer-Fifi's "get out of jail after over commitment" card. Her combos are long and her animations are too, so having a way to animation cancel into Guard out of ~75% of her moves was basically essential to her survival. Tab-Space is deeply etched into my muscle memory. Now, that animation cancel costs 30 stamina, and also provides 66% fewer hit-stagger iframes. Frankly, this is extremely punishing for a weapon setup that seems to have been largely overlooked in this patch.

Fiona does have means to mitigate running out of stamina, since she has two ways to activate Slashing High, but those two ways have cooldowns and high SP costs that can easily leave her completely vulnerable now. Even in an ideal world, you have 18 seconds between SHs in which you can easily drain your entire stamina bar, as I did in these two pictured Morgant fights. Now, I did have enough SP to activate SH once it was off cooldown, but this also relies on the boss' attack pattern allowing me to do that. It's not a reliable situation for someone of my skill level.
Would it be possible to roll back the Deflect changes? Please bring back the hitstun iframes - they were not only useful, but awesome. DINGDINGDING was a glorious sound to hear, but now those boss attacks are stressful because the deflect only blocks half of the attack. Can the stamina cost be reduced back from 30 to 10?
I can't afford Wave scrolls and Berserker can't keep up with the tripled stamina costs of something that I can easily use 3 times in a boss attack string (while whiffing two of them so I get no stamina back). It's easy to say "just get good" but I am bad and if I haven't gotten good after 14 years, a pep talk won't change that.
Please consider reverting the Deflect changes.

Also thank you for finally bringing back Robed Dragon.
Also the Wolf Head did not get fixed for Fiona's face yet and this makes me cry.

[topaz quarry]

I could not agree more with the OP. Iron defense also has gaps betweel nornal/smash hits which make it VERY unreliable and dangerous skill to use! For example, using it to counter Jarnir's / Emmet's continuous spinning attacks WILL get you killed if boss hits you during the 1st gap, destroy your rhythm and finish you off in no time. This skill has no guarantee and I refuse to use it like it is now.

Fiona was supposed to be a DEFENDER but as she is now... She has to chicken out from every intense confrontation like every other class. How does this make her special?

[scarlet locust]

dude. large shield doesn't have a stamina issue after the update - only small shield.
and why don't you sit in heavy stander like you like to do to deal w/ jarnir/emmet spinning attacks?

[scarlet locust]

the issue is that gitting gud doesn't fix the problem. i whiffed no deflects in this clip and yet still ended up w/ most of my stamina gone in just one butterfly swing sequence
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/529723192265277441/1493979018335355061/Vindictus_64bit_2026-04-15_04-36-47.mp4?ex=69ea2a62&is=69e8d8e2&hm=7150984f8e87544d6e56763aae3033941a9a6bc412b6894e4ab5d9a47fad54f6&

[eager dust]

Removing Emmett from the game entirely would also be an acceptable bugfix for this specific situation.

[topaz quarry]

Not true. If you fail TAB, you loose 30 stamina. This can be really punishing. And please mature and stop hijacking other people's threads to spread hatered towards large shield Fionas. Kid.

[scarlet locust]

lol i'm not sure how i'm spreading hate by giving you a way to deal w/ something you said there is no way to. you said she has to "chicken out" and that's just not the case. though... i'm not even sure if it is possible to chicken out of emmet spin. he does kinda pull you in

and i think that was the point, for it to be punishing to fail tab... so just don't fail it.

[scarlet locust]

okay i take it back i was wrong. large shield might have stamina issues same as small shield

yeah same exact thing that happened in the above clip i posted is happening on large shield

[woeful cobalt]

it has to be the only one that has litearlly zero stamina problem with large shield

since patch i had no problems with sp and stamina

on smoll shield surely it has to be a problem

[scarlet locust]

yeah it was actually your videos i started watching that made me say large shield didn't have stamina issues. but idk. i didn't finish watching them and maybe it was just because you were using slashing high

[woeful cobalt]

ofc i will use slash and high

why shouldnt i

attack speed buff is a must on large shield

how elsesome one will go from stigma to stigma all the time ?_?

the moment you apply the first stigma you have to be able to pick an other one, and without slash n high you cant do that

[scarlet locust]

i'm not saying you shouldn't lol i'm just saying that was possibly why your video gave me the impression that large shield didn't have a stamina issue

also the first time i played it i didn't seem to notice an issue but maybe i was just too preoccupied w/ trying the new iron defense

[woeful cobalt]

yus yus

[scarlet locust]

or perhaps it was because i wasn't using deflection and just spamming the guard frames on iron defense

[woeful cobalt]

i mean, technically if you know what boss do, you can do that too on large shield, i dont even pay attention to my stamina tbh xd

rotation is this open paw do one full stigma get the 250 sp open taunt and iron defence and then keep hiting with stigma untill you get max sp for the first slash n high, without paw tho this can not be done, surely you want to avoid getting into deflection animation, untill you get your first slash n high

otherwise you just open ID first and continue the rotation as i refered