Feint, circle, balance and you

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Fall
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Joined: Sun Oct 13, 2019 8:08 pm

Feint, circle, balance and you

Post by Fall »

First post in tactics! Now that everyone has the ability to feint, and circle, I wanted to share some advice from my combat experiences. I would suggest first priority is circling up your balance to max(25). This helps your offense AND defense, and you become almost untouchable. But once you are at max balance, don't be tempted to just keep attacking without bothering to feint. Because when you feint, it gives the enemy negative rolls, which means not only are you taking the best of your many rolls from your high balance, but they're taking the WORST from their many rolls, making it much more likely that you will get a roll much higher than theirs, and do a mortal strike. I can't count how many necks, backs, skulls, ribs I've broken with my quarterstaff for a quick kill, right after feinting the enemy as they arrive. (I just got a spine shatter hit followed by a broken ribs driven into lungs hit, both in a row, while I was writing that.)

Remember, if you move to another room, your pos balance resets to 0. I have been trying to camp one room and keeping my balance, but that's just me, and some people will probably get bored and want to move to actively seek prey.
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Fall
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Re: Feint, circle, balance and you

Post by Fall »

Update, positive balance no longer gives you offense, so I would say feinting is top priority now. Circle is still useful if you are fighting something that feints you, to keep your balance up so you don't get penalties to defense. If you have balance spenders like True Strike you will want to be constantly generating balance to use them, too.
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Karjus
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Re: Feint, circle, balance and you

Post by Karjus »

Positive balance is huge for people who pick up any combat ability as it gives positive rerolls with the amount dependant on the ability used. It also effects defensive rerolls
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Agelity
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Re: Feint, circle, balance and you

Post by Agelity »

I would also add that it's largely dependent on the specific specialization. My own observations below that I'll look at updating once I can crunch some numbers.

Having been testing Duelists for a bit I know that my best offensive ability in Armor Chink requires a minimum of 10 balance, but moves like Sweep and Tackle (which knock down & stagger) cost 5 balance to use. Finding that sweet spot between having just enough positive balance to utilize those abilities as needed along with being able to use Armor Chink might may take some trial and error though, especially when taking Combat Analysis into account (I need to do some more testing with that in particular).

My current "rotation" may look like this based on current abilities:

-Circle on cooldown to 15+ balance
-Feint on cooldown
-Sweep when balance is 15+, Tackle if it misses and balance still 15+
-Armor Chink once enemy is knocked down

If I struggle to knock down an enemy with Sweep or Tackle I may opt to just time an Armor Chink after they attack. Less likely to act as an "execute" this way, but by the time I've reached this point Combat Analysis should be active and granting me favorable offensive rerolls (the exact amount I need to do more testing on).

Two successful uses of Circle should grant me 21 balance which is enough to attempt a Sweep and as needed a Tackle, assuming you're an intelligent Warrior and have taken Combat Readiness. If both fail I still have 11 balance which can still allow the use of Armor Chink (not to mention both attempts reduce the opponent's balance a bit even on failure).

If a fight seems particularly frustrating I'll look at bring my balance back up again with Circle while still using Feint on cooldown just to give me that extra chance of knocking them over and staggering again. As Armor Chink already has a long enough cooldown I may opt to try and get a few Quickstrikes in to keep my own RT penalties down until it's off cooldown or, more likely the case, I grow impatient and use a well-timed regular attack instead of Armor Chink.

Due to the dodge-based nature of Duelist fighting keeping RT down is pretty important (as it is for others, but Duelist + Nightblade especially for defense), as one ill-timed attack could very well mean hoping that luck and skill will be enough to thwart any follow-up attacks; as useful as light armor is compared to no armor, it's only going to prevent so much. Waiting for opportune moments to launch Quickstrike and Armor Chink is often determined by keeping the enemy not only unbalanced, but also not as able to follow-up with potentially fatal attacks of their own (by keeping your own RT down in comparison to theirs, which is mostly easily done with staggering - Sweep & Tackle).

Once more abilities are released I imagine my own tactics will change accordingly, but so far I've found the above to be the most helpful for soloing enemies.
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