Year 7: Swords of Injustice Season 4

## Treason

> *"The enemy came in the night. They offered a choice: submit or die. Death. No oath is worth such fealty. We did what we had to. Some will look down on us. Brand us 'traitors.' Let them do so at the end of our blades."*
>
>

> *"Promises hold no sway over us. A Viking must remain loyal... to **themselves**. We are survivors."*
>
>

**Swords of Injustice Season 4**, named "Deceit," is the twenty-eigth season of the ongoing Faction War. Riding the waves of success, from the Inquisition to the pillaging of foreign lands to the sabotage of the Wu Lin festival, Horkos is on the move. They now raze the lands of Valkenheim, conquering village after village, by sheer force when necessary.

For the village of Moldar, a rift begins when the village chief's brother,Maddox, prefers to live another day than to die under what he perceived to be a pointless oath. As Maddox committed treason, killing the chief and all who remained loyal to Chimera, he handed the village to Horkos control. However, one survivor had been able to run: the chief's daughter, thus Maddox's niece...

## Overview

> When faced with the tyranny of the Horkos, one Viking village found itself at a cross between its Chimera-bound chief and the survivalist Highlander Maddox...
>
>

Exploiting the injustice sweeping Heathmoor, the Order of Horkos attacked Valkenheim. They soon laid siege to the village of Moldar. The small Viking town had no hope against the might of the enemy host, and so the Horkos gave them one choice: submit or die.

The leaders of Moldar came to blows over the decision. The village chieftain refused to break their oath to the Chimera Alliance, while his brother, the Highlander Maddox, argued they must join the enemy to survive. When the dread hour came, Maddox stabbed his leader in the back to ally with the Horkos.

It was treason. Heathmoor’s ultimate crime.

## Features

### Frost Wind Betrayal

The Viking village of Moldar has fallen. When Horkos forces invaded, the chieftain valiantly refused to break his oath to Chimera. But his trusted advisor Maddox thought such loyalty was madness. Refusing to condemn their people to slaughter, Maddox struck first: he killed the chieftain and assumed leadership of Moldar under a new banner. His own.

This year's Frost Wind celebrations were cut short by an act of treason. Partake in the launch of the season to earn rewards from the Event Pass and unlock unique event loot. Available only from December 7th to the 28th.

### Hero Skin

This fourth season offers a new Hero Skin to the next Hero: the Highlander. What is offered is the visuals of Oathbreaker Maddox. The Highlander Maddox wears the skin of a sabertoothed tiger to identify himself as was he is: a survivor. Once a warrior without a home, he was welcomed into the village of Moldar by the people as one of their own. There, he found a new family, and a place to belong. But when the Order of Horkos attacked, Maddox found himself torn. To prevent the slaughter of his people, he had to do the unthinkable. To survive, he had to break his oath to the Chimera Alliance – and to his family.

Become the betrayer of his kin with the Hero Skin of Oathbreaker Maddox, a full body customization of the Highlander. Available in For Honor at the start of Y7S3: Treason.

### Local Tone Mapping

Tone mapping is the process in which the game renders the visuals in a game, mask it with a brighter or darker hue before sending that to the player's screen. The intent of this process in games is to give consistent exposure even when playing in settings that are the dark indoors or the bright outdoors. However, tone mapping can run into problems when the visual that is being transferred has great contrast, such as being indoors but with a sun beaming in from a door or window. This leads to many details being lost or not properly scaled in brightness because the entire visual's average brightness is taken into account.

Local Tone Mapping seeks to solve this issue by applying the tone mapping to local parts of the visual, thus reducing how much brightness contrast affects how the visual is tone mapped. This allows dark areas in an otherwise well lit visual to be brightened up properly, and for objects such as the sky or fires in an otherwise dark setting to not be blown out in brightness.

This option will be available to PS5, Xbox series X and PC at the launch of the season. Being off by default, it needs to be turned on.

### Hero Update

Some changes will be coming to the live game at the start of the season, primarily adjustments to the previous season's Legion Kick changes, along with Hitokiri.

* In the previous patch, we've sped up our 500ms front dodge bashes to be 433ms. This introduced an unfortunate interaction where these attacks could reliably be dodged on a single timing. We've made the following changes to ensure there is no singular dodge timing to beat these attacks:
	+ All 433ms Front Dodge Bashes now lose tracking 100ms later during the attack against dodging opponents.
		- *The changes to the way Front Dodge Bashes track opponents makes it to that delayed Front Dodge Bashes will now properly connect against early dodges. This should return to the type of play we had before the changes, where the intent was that opponents had to read between dodging early or late; due to how the changes were implemented, there was an issue where a single dodge timing could beat buffered bashes, delayed bashes and dodge to guardbreak; with these new timings, this type of situation should no longer happen.*
	+ Conqueror, Jormungandr and Zhanhu have had their Front Dodge recovery lowered by 100ms.
		- *To ensure this is also fixed on Conqueror, Jormungandr and Zhanhu, we've also lowered their recovery from Front Dodge so they can Guardbreak earlier and catch the outlier dodges that can effectively dodge both the buffered and delayed bashes.*
	+ Medjay's Throne Room Tackle now follow the standardization of 300-500ms input into front dodge, than being the exception of being able to input as early as 100ms.
	+ Tiandi's Palm Strike has had its input increased to 366-500ms into front dodge than the normal standardization.
		- *Finally, we've also applied a change to Medjay and Tiandi; Medjay's Throne Room Tackle was too oppressive at their new timings, while Tiandi's new timings meant that players had one less option to beat Tiandi when the hero performed a dodge cancel from Light attacks into Palm Strike. With this new change, players should be able to trade with Palm Strike by using a Light Attack.*
* Hitokiri has received some adjustments, making their kit more suited to using their Endless Myriad more, especially in teamfighter situations.
	+ Hitokiri's Meikai Rift (Light Finishers) no longer has Hyper Armor. Endless Myriad Heavies now gain Hyper Armor at 100ms, down from 300ms.
		- *Hitokiri used to have Uninterruptible Stance on Meikai Rift to be used as an early trading tool, but this proved to be awkward as the hero needed to end their chain and pressure to trade with opponents. As the hero's identity is to be a relentless attacker and have strong mixups, we've adjusted the position of the Uninterruptible Stance so Hitokiri is able to use their chained Heavies more effectively in outnumbered situations and be more difficult to peel.*
	+ Chain link timing for Meikai (Opener Light) into Rei Kick/Sweep has been increased a bit.
		- *With Hitokiri's chained Heavy attacks getting better Uninterruptible Stance timings, we changed this chain link timing to give opponents more options after the hero's Light Openers; they can now interrupt Rei Kick with a Light attack on a successful read.*
	+ Weapon trajectory on all heavy attacks increased to have better range.
		- *One of our goals for Hitokiri is to ensure players can effectively use the hero's Side Heavy attacks in outnumbered situations, in combination with Uninterruptible Stance. Their current values were underwhelming and made it too difficult to hit external opponents; with these adjustments, they should hit more reliably and give Hitokiri more offense-based defense in group fights.*
* While not a Hero Update, the White Bone Spirit armor has been officially added as a proper customization for the Zhanhu, being given its own name and preview visual where it didn't have so before. Clipping issues on the model have been addressed, especially on Body Type 1 which it was not intended to be molded to.
	+ The White Bone Spirit armor was only available during the previous season's Theater of Bones event gamemode. While originally not intended to be obtainable as it was meant to be the visual look of the event's antagonist, when it did find itself being available for loot during the event, the Developers decided to allow players to keep looting it until the end of the event.
	+ The armor set has been named "White **Bonus** Spirit" in allusion to the set not being intentionally available as season loot.
* Fixed issues in regards to dodge animations on certain heroes not matching the direction they are dodging.
* Fixed issues with Ocelotl teleporting opponents on a Ballista, causing them to die instantly in most cases.
* Fixed issues where event and hidden gears would appear as not obtained or locked.
* Fixed Jiang Jun reciting his Sifu's Swirl voiceline when exitting Sifu's Poise in any way.
* Fixed numerous customization issues.
* And more...

For more concise information about patch notes, see here.

### Testing Grounds

A new round of Testing Grounds arrives, and with it comes the return of Highlander's rework. Seeking to reinvent his stance without removing what had made him iconic, this second wave of Testing Ground seeks to better what was done in the previous round. Together with his rework comes changes to Peacekeeper to make her kit more viable for 4v4s, along with touch ups to Medjay's moveset to make him more balanced but also more flexible in switching between his Stances.

* TBA'd

For more details about this Testing Ground, see this page.

### Hero Fest

The mini-events known as "Hero Fests" continue this season. Aside from giving a spotlight to the particular Hero by making them free-to-use for that week, they will be cheaper to purchase by 33%, have two Symbols and one Emblem sticker assigned to them that will be obtained upon log in, and finally a unique Execution for them.

Hero Fests will now occur three times per title update, up from two of last year. This means each season will offer six Heroes a fest per season, resulting in 24 Heroes receiving it a year.

The first three Heroes to receive this Fest this season will be Highlander on January 4th, Warlord on the 11th and Warmonger on the 25th.

### Battle Pass

> Another battlepass is here. Through the hundred tiers, get access to the new collections of items that you'll be able to unlock as you progress through the free or premium pass. Battle Pass and season content will be themed around the cold winter, sabertooth tigers and the Oathbreaker himself, Maddox.
>
>

When Maddox broke his oath and killed his chieftain, the village of Moldar changed allegiance from Chimera to Horkos. Under the new leadership of Maddox, all those who have followed the Oathbreaker have taken up new weapons to wield in battle. With these, those who wield them show their new allegiance. But for their enemies, it means only one thing: these are the weapons of traitors.

Bring your customization to a whole new level with some flair of cold-winter betrayal for your character's look through the 100 Tiers of rewards available for all heroes, all worth over a million Steel! For the premium tier, there is included a Unique Execution carve the back of your opponent with axes before letting them explode into blood-wings and a special Signature where you saddle up... on a toy horse. As this pass is seasonal, progression through the Pass will reset at the end of the season.

#### Free & Premium Pass

The Season Pass has two ranks: the Free Pass and the Premium Pass. All players will have access to the Free Pass, earning rewards which include embossings, ornaments, an emblem outline, color swatches, paint patterns and more. Rewards are earned every few tiers.

The Premium Pass on the other hand offers the bulk of rewards, such as new signatures, new weapons, new executions, new effects, and more. Premium Pass owners will still receive rewards from the Free Pass. The Premium Pass also offers +10% Battle Points, the points necessary to progress through the Battle Pass tiers.

As both Pass' progression are shared, a player is able to upgrade to a Premium Pass and receive all rewards they would have gotten if they had purchased the Premium Pass from the start.

#### Notes

Take note that the purpose of the Battle Pass is to guarantee rewards for players, compared to how all rewards were based around random drops post-match or scavenger crates. The Battle Pass however will not replace any current system of cosmetics and loot gain, such as the above mentioned random drops, any event loot or the content of the week.

Content of the Battle Pass, even for the Premium Pass, will only be character customization items and consumables, preventing a pay-to-win model. All tiers are also visible to Free Pass owners, so there are no hidden rewards. However, the exclusive rewards in the Premium Pass may become unobtainable at the end of the season.

Progression through the tiers of either Passes can be hastened with Steel, skipping either 1, 5 or 20 tiers at once. The price for hastening progress is static through the tiers and between both ranks of Battle Passes.

## Gallery

### Video

For Honor- Year 7 Season 4 - Treason Launch Trailer
## Trivia

* The emote effects in the Frost Wind Betrayal Event pass is a reference to the Thin Red Path cinematic trailer.