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Imo there is just two game breaking skater perks left, ankle breaker and send it. Simple explanations, speed/acceleration boosts and those horrible unrealistic bambi animations.

Can someone tell what skaters abilties are overpower and breaking game? Imo biggest issue is goalies abilities but im not goalie and dont know exactly what abilities are making goalies make unreal saves every game multiple times. I think everyone who played last year FCL and other tournaments without abilites realize how bad the gameplay was. Ofc game and abilities are different from last years but it would be same bs if all abilities would be banned. Like I said last year its impossible to find perfect solution for this topic but I feel banning some most op goalies abilities would be best for competitive game.

The bans are pretty much fine right now. There's some traits every forward uses and different traits for defenders but there's still some versatility with the builds and traits - thats great.

Ban all abilities 6s aint designed to be played with abilities, only hut is

Those are not that good in this version, and when goalies are still able to use sponge now those perks are well balanced

You are deflecting again. It is not me who does not understand. We literally had over 100 messages from the community showing they want it like it was in FCL and SCL last year. That is not my personal opinion, that is the majority speaking. If you refuse to understand that, then that is your weakness ------- (your picture) Point by point: Close Quarters goals do not “just happen anyway”. CQ modifies release priority and aim assist inside close radius. Without CQ many of these shots do not trigger the high speed priority release animation. Frame comparison testing shows completely different outcome from the same shot simply because CQ unlocks a different animation branch. “One timers are easy to defend if you play actively” is also incorrect. Certain one timer styles combined with traits bypass normal defensive stick collision validation inside ICE Q. This is the exact reason Golden One Tee was banned in multiple competitive formats. It is not just about positioning. It is animation override. “Goalies make weird saves anyway so traits do not matter” is wrong. Traits modify which animation state the goalie gets access to. Animation state is outcome determinism in NHL. Without that trait the goalie is not given the same animation choices. That is not subjective. “Auto poke is broken no matter what” is only partially true. Auto poke is only unbalanced because certain traits buff recovery acceleration and turn sync after poke. Base poke without those trait modifiers is significantly more fair. Removing trait buff gives real risk reward again. “Truculence simply makes physical play more viable” is incorrect. Truculence automates force and knockdown threshold. You do not need correct angle timing or weight advantage because the trait applies force anyway. This removes skill expression. “Counter attacks score anyway” ignores the problem. Abilities artificially push low probability chances into mid or high probability outcomes by triggering faster and higher priority animation states. That does not strengthen structured defense. It increases chaos.

I can say you that goalies abilities even not near power of skater abilities. it doesnt matter what you take its not countering nothing. About goalies making unbelievable saves, its just because you cant aim, and make goalies move out of position, or not quick enough on decision making or passing around puck, so goalie have all time in the world to square up. But its how it should be. if you are on the puck you save it thats how goalies work. When you put quick releases, onetimer perks, some kinda golden rockets and who knows what else, its gives superpower to skater abiltiies, boosting their abilities and making goalie get errors in save and late saves. its what breaks game and its not interesting when 2 pro teams plays together, and its like 5:5 goals in one game. too many, and why? because goalies getting to many errors, doesnt matter your position. But when you play like core teams and lites, you can stop 20 shots, and be even shutout, why? because guys are less effective on glitch using and their decision making is slower. Why i want quick release be banned, because its makes our goalies not save puck, because this shot is comming so fast that even if you trigger save its to late. and its not normal, if you are in front of me , i should save that, not always making my glove go late on save. Also you need to understand that, you as skater decide when shoot and where to shoot, we as goalie just wait for animation trigger, we dont have button - i want save now glove shot high or low or fivehole or what, and i will trigger it in time when he shoots. We need to wait for animation to trigger on the shot, and all this abilities onetimer, quick release, rockets and all other kinda shooting abilties, are making our animation trigger delay or getting less effective, so is it fair to make our animation delay so you should score, not because you beated goalie, but because you use cheats to make us go blind or stucked, or just late. Thats why i think it will be fair just to ban all ablities, and use game as it is and then skill will decide not abilities.

I've definitely joined the ban them all camp recently. I don't think the abilities are well-designed or balanced at all. They are sort of tacked on top of the core mechanics, which they override and overpower a lot of the time, creating the sort of chaos and unpredictability that a competitive game should minimize. Look at games like Counter-Strike or Rocket League and how pure of a competitive experience they are. By introducing the abilities, the NHL series has moved further from that than ever. And in NHL 26, it's worse than it's ever been.

I agree ban them all and there gonna be no problems, someone wwnt to ban this someone dont. What changed? Skaters again learned glitch goals and this quick.release is beating goalies like nothing. Its realy close to close quarter bs.

Quick release need to ban.

If you are going to listen to the community feedback, then why not ban everything? Most people have said for a whole year that everything should be banned. And if you are not going all the way, why not remove Stick Em Up? Right now every Elite player is running Stick Em Up Elite. When there is no speed boost to get past defenders, and you face the poke aimbot on every player, the game is turning into trench warfare where everyone only plays defense and waves their stick. So why not go all the way and remove everything? Like someone wrote earlier in the thread. X Factors are simply boosts for star players in HUT. And now there is not much left to use at all, so why not just remove everything?