[Discuss] Strength and weakness of each combat style
Hey guys, today I want to open this topic to discuss about each class's abilities's strengths and weaknesses, how to fight as one and how to fight against one. I'll talk a bout Kahlt, Windfall and Stagger. I will exclude Forsaken because there are some mechanics I want to research more about them before saying anything. So here I go.
First class I want to talk about is Kahlt.
Kahlt is recommended as an easy style to play and at some aspect, it is easy. Their ability is Absorb. They "tank" the hit without taking any impact stun, they regain some stamina instantly and the health lost can be regain when they land attacks successfully. They don't care about the direction of the hit, where it hit (high, mid or low), they just tank it. However their worse nightmare is Breaking attack that can go through their ability. To abuse their weakness, attackers should use breaking attack more and often. Those damage doesn't count if they regain them.
So here's my idea to fight as a Kahlt. Since all of the breaking attack are direct and straight forward, dodging is a crucial skill. Knowing when to dodge the breaking attack can save your life. In addition to that, strafing attack is also very handy. Strafing attack is attacks that dodge to the side, then perform the attack. If done correctly, the attacker going for a straight breaking attack will miss their attack entirely and take a hit and now become the defender.
Next, let's talk about Windfall.
Windfall is a medium difficulty class whose ability is Avoid, not to be confused with Dodge. They can Avoid Left, Right, Jump and Duck. Each successful Avoid regain some stamina, slow down the attacker's recovery time thus leave them open for the attack. With frontal and direct attacks, Windfall can avoid to the side. With zone attack, it gets trickier: some attacks are high and some a low. Windfall can jump over a low attack and duck under a high attack.
(Some attacks strike mid and cannot be avoided. I'm not sure about this point so can anyone with proper knowledge confirm this?)
To fight against Windfall, I think it's to "spam" zone attack because a simple direct attack won't do much. A zone, however, can make them think. When a zone is performed, windfall will consider their response: block, duck or jump. Mixing up the zone and they will make some greedy wrong decisions: jump into a high or duck into a low...
Next I want to discuss Stagger.
Stagger is the unique class in all 4. They not a basic class but a class you have to achieve. Stagger's ability is "Special attack". The forward attack is a charging attack where they tumble straight into their opponent, deal a small amount of damage and can take ONE hit without being interrupted. The side attack is where they avoid to the side and do a "push" that apply a small damage. Their backward attack is to "lean back" to avoid the incoming attack then kick their opponents in the face as the attack failed to connect. The different thing about stagger is unlike other classes, when successfully perform their ability, they will not be rewarded with stamina but a small damage to the enemy. Thus stamina is the most concerned element if you play Stagger.
I think the biggest weakness of stagger is zone attacks. Unlike Windfall, they have no "real" answer to a zone. Side attack is obviously not a smart move. Backward attack is not guaranteed since some attacks with long range will connect. Their best bet is to do a forward attack and hope to hit first or at least a trade.
That's sum up most things I learned until now. Feel free to comment and discus.
Cheers.
First class I want to talk about is Kahlt.
Kahlt is recommended as an easy style to play and at some aspect, it is easy. Their ability is Absorb. They "tank" the hit without taking any impact stun, they regain some stamina instantly and the health lost can be regain when they land attacks successfully. They don't care about the direction of the hit, where it hit (high, mid or low), they just tank it. However their worse nightmare is Breaking attack that can go through their ability. To abuse their weakness, attackers should use breaking attack more and often. Those damage doesn't count if they regain them.
So here's my idea to fight as a Kahlt. Since all of the breaking attack are direct and straight forward, dodging is a crucial skill. Knowing when to dodge the breaking attack can save your life. In addition to that, strafing attack is also very handy. Strafing attack is attacks that dodge to the side, then perform the attack. If done correctly, the attacker going for a straight breaking attack will miss their attack entirely and take a hit and now become the defender.
Next, let's talk about Windfall.
Windfall is a medium difficulty class whose ability is Avoid, not to be confused with Dodge. They can Avoid Left, Right, Jump and Duck. Each successful Avoid regain some stamina, slow down the attacker's recovery time thus leave them open for the attack. With frontal and direct attacks, Windfall can avoid to the side. With zone attack, it gets trickier: some attacks are high and some a low. Windfall can jump over a low attack and duck under a high attack.
(Some attacks strike mid and cannot be avoided. I'm not sure about this point so can anyone with proper knowledge confirm this?)
To fight against Windfall, I think it's to "spam" zone attack because a simple direct attack won't do much. A zone, however, can make them think. When a zone is performed, windfall will consider their response: block, duck or jump. Mixing up the zone and they will make some greedy wrong decisions: jump into a high or duck into a low...
Next I want to discuss Stagger.
Stagger is the unique class in all 4. They not a basic class but a class you have to achieve. Stagger's ability is "Special attack". The forward attack is a charging attack where they tumble straight into their opponent, deal a small amount of damage and can take ONE hit without being interrupted. The side attack is where they avoid to the side and do a "push" that apply a small damage. Their backward attack is to "lean back" to avoid the incoming attack then kick their opponents in the face as the attack failed to connect. The different thing about stagger is unlike other classes, when successfully perform their ability, they will not be rewarded with stamina but a small damage to the enemy. Thus stamina is the most concerned element if you play Stagger.
I think the biggest weakness of stagger is zone attacks. Unlike Windfall, they have no "real" answer to a zone. Side attack is obviously not a smart move. Backward attack is not guaranteed since some attacks with long range will connect. Their best bet is to do a forward attack and hope to hit first or at least a trade.
That's sum up most things I learned until now. Feel free to comment and discus.
Cheers.
Comments
In defensive state you could be dancing around your enemy and use your backward special+dodge / power to run out.
I doesn't have a spirit build but I think it would be viable, the powers/weapons would comes very often and the weapon deck seems interesting.
Here's my own difficulty ranking from easiest to hardest: Windfall > Forsaken > Stagger > Kahlt.
I would like to continue my thoughts about Forsaken style.
Forsaken's ability is parry which completely stop opponent's attack, stun them a bit which open a window for counter attacking. In addition, successfully parrying attacks can reward you with a small amount of stamina (for "obvious" reason) In my opinion this ability is the most deadly of all 4 styles. However it does have some issue with thrust attacks and vertical attacks. Technically you CAN parry MOST attacks although you only have left and right parry (I wanted to say that you can parry ALL attack but it might not be true). Some thrust or vertical attacks seems like they come straight on you but they do have some direction hints. Some attacks tilt a little bit suggesting their direction. However thrust and vertical attack still have some value against forsaken because the direction is not 100% clear like a weak sloppy 360 tornado.
Playing against a good forsaken is frustrating and nerve wrecking because you'll never know when your combo's gonna stop, and i meant stop, not pause. Cause when they parry you, they'll most likely going to start their combo and if the first hit is fast enough, it is a guaranteed hit not to mention their combo incoming.
Now to play as a Forsaken, strafing attacks are your friends because they negate thrusting and vertical attacks, your biggest weakness. If you sense that your opponent is throwing a lot of those against you just throw back a strafing attack and turn the tide.
Stagger > Forsaken > Kahlt > Windfall in terms of ease of play. (Easiest to hardest).
Windfall > Kahlt > Stagger > Forsaken in terms of effectiveness. (Least to most).
You said "It has 4 directions" while listing windfall's weakness. This is a strength not a weakness. This means technically windfall can avoid EVERY attack.
When Forsaken parry a heavy attack, they don't get a stamina reward. Windfall however get rewarded for all successful avoid.
I think stagger is a bad style since your stamina is a huge problem. No matter if you succeed dodging or not the stamina is drained away and reward you with some peanut damage. Also they really struggle with horizontal attack.
But it's just the matter of taste i guess. Different people like different styles. It's a nice thing that the dev team balanced it out without a overpowered meta style
Forsaken does get stamina reward for parries. At least I do when I parry something, strong attack or not.
It is common for windfalls to dodge sides because most of attackes are high or mid verticals and even if they dont dodge on point to get the shard, it still dodge sometimes.
Kalht and stagger can still be hit using feint, but they arent hard countered like forsaken is or windfall, you need a kind of fast combo or very good timing (goldlink is a mecanic too, you can mess the timing with it ,dont forgget that) if you dont want to be interrupted most of the times.
Remember that the stagger " ability class" are special attacks that you can use in the middle of your combos any time, that is the unpredictable of his fighting style, not the normal attacks that you have seen a hundred times.
There is a weird bug on forsaken now(gonna create a post if doenst have yet), basically after a sucessfull parry, fast hits are confirmed, but if you enemy next move have a dodge propertie, they can dodge the attack and hit you even when it inst dodging the right direction.
this topic is older than a year and almost every information is outdated and or wrong.
If some of you guys need information to the classes than please make a new post
formulate your questions and ill awnser them.
For example:
Forsaken can parry every move. There are no exceptions.
AND forsaken can confirm a 14 frame fast hit after every successfull parry 100% of the time.
Depending on the speed of the feint you can confirm a hit of up to 15 frames
on a forsaken player that parried at the wrong time.
2nd example:
Stagger can backdodge everything except Thrusts.
Stagger can sidedodge everything except Horizontals.
The stagger front charge has a hitstun of 9
the sidedodge has a hitstun of 8