Feints

Feinting is a new mechanic in Champion's Ashes that allows players to cancel the startup of certain non-light attacks into other attacks. The purpose of this mechanic is to force people to roll, out of prediction, and punish them for not reading the feint correctly. When a feint is read correctly, the player who performed the feint can be punished.

Feints have a strict ruleset, as only certain attacks can be feinted and only certain attacks can be feinted into. Feints must be performed during a given window before the active frames of the attack and cannot be chained infinitely, except spell feints. Feintable attacks vary per weapon class and more consume resources to perform compared to a normal attack.

The general rules are below:


 * 1) Neutral R1s, Forward R2s, Second R2s and Rolling R1s cannot be feinted.
 * 2) An attack can only be feinted into another during the startup frames for the majority of attacks.
 * 3) An attack can only be feinted into another attack, not into any other animation such as rolling, for the majority of attacks.
 * 4) Only specific attacks can be feinted to and from, separated by weapon classes:
 * 5) * Light weapons such as Daggers, Curved Swords, 1h Straight Swords, Thrusting Swords, Katanas, Spears, Pikes, Fists and Claws can feint their R2s into R1s.
 * 6) * Medium weapons such as Axes, 2h Straight Swords, Hammers, Greatswords, Halberds and Reapers can feint their neutral R2s into neutral R1s or second R2s and can feint their Running R1s into neutral R1s.
 * 7) * Heavy Weapons such as Ultra Greatswords, Greataxes, Greathammers, and Curved Greatswords can feint their neutral R2s into neutral R1s or second R2s, and can feint their Running R1s into Neutral R1s or Neutral R2s.
 * 8) * Paired Weapons can feint their Running L1s into Neutral L1s.
 * 9) * Some spells can feint into other spells or attacks.
 * 10) * Some weapons can feint their R2s into Weapon Arts, but this is weapon specific rather than applied to the entire weapon class.
 * 11) Any attack that can feint to an R1 can also feint to a Kick.
 * 12) Any attack that can feint to an R2 can also feint to a Forward R2.

There are other forms of feints, such as Extension Skipping.

Many feints will combo from attacks and can create psuedocombos. As a general rule, almost all feints can be rolled on reaction.

Examples of feinting shown in action at 6:19