Dungeon Fighter Online Male Brawler Skills Guide

Dungeon Fighter Online Male Brawler Skills Guide by VicariousExp

There’s a lot of misinformation about Male Brawler flying around based on old and outdated information floating around the internet. This is a short guide in the 2ch format explaining the updated Male Brawler. This is important because the class has changed very drastically from its original incarnation.

Overview:

People say M brawler suffers greatly from status resistance, but playing male brawler correctly, if the majority of your damage is coming from bleed and poison, you are either fighting one of those special enemies that only take 1 damage fron normal attacks or doing something very very wrong. The updated Male brawler is a midrange zoning class, think of it as a throwy mage in heavy armour with a pseudo combo system which goes under the notice of most people at first glance. The amount of damage your status ailments are doing is very secondary to two considerations:

1) Whether the enemy has a status ailment at all (for Ground Tackle and Venom Mine), especially the damage multiplier on Throw Net and

2) How many status ailments the enemy is suffering from at once (for Explosive Hook and Raging Vulcan).

Properly played, the goal of the M brawler is to apply as many status ailments as practical in a short period of time and finish the combo with your “finishers” of Explosive Hook and Vulcan, which have very short cooldowns of 5.5 seconds and 15ish seconds respectively. At mid-level, the way you apply status ailments is all the difference between a 20k explosive hook and a 50k explosive hook (50% damage buff per status ailment!). Remember that your shortest duration status ailments are bleed and poison – your most reliable ones are immobilize, slow, blind and stun. Generally speaking, I go for explosive hook or mount only with a minimum of 3 status ailments, one of which is ideally immobilize for the damage buff.

Due to recent changes, Overstrained (one of your class passives) now “equalizes” the lower of your STR or INT to the higher, making it possible to do good damage with a hybrid build. Therefore, it is no longer necessary to specialise in physical or magical damage only. Battlemages have to wait for their second awakening for this!

Skills

◎Necessary ○Recommended △Situationally Useful ×Not recommended

Common Skills

【×:Throwing Mastery】 Male brawlers generally don’t need this. Unlike F brawlers, they have stronger options to throw than discs. Will work with double throw, does not work on your throwing skills.

【◎:Focus: Physical Critical】(M) Max this.

【△:Physical Rear Attack】 Will work with neck snap if you get alt skills, but not particularly worth the SP.

【×:Ancient Memory】 Only if you go INT/Poison build, not recommended.

【◎:Quick Rebound】(M) Needs no explanation. Necessary.

◆Striker

【△:High Kick】(1 or whatever) PvP skill. For PvE, The base 1 is enough.

【×:Hammer Kick】(1) Large knockback. Difficult to combo off and unnecessary. Feel free to seal this command off if possible and replace it with something more useful. One very niche use for this is to knock close enemies backwards so that strengthened Poison can hit all of them.

【×:Low Kick】(0or1) Hits downed enemies. Short range, which makes it combo badly with the rest of your skills. You have better options. Not recommended.

【△:Tiger Chain Strike】 Does not knockdown enemy, hence it has its uses. Can be useful, but not essential. Damage is pretty decent, especially with the passive Tiger Roar.

【△:Pure Walk】(0or1) Mobility skill. Useful to escape after an uncced taunt (although that isn’t recommended in general.) Unfortunately, the movement of this skill is blocked by enemies, so it cannot pass through them, hampering its use as an escape tool. Nice, but not necessary.

【×:Air Walk】(0or1) Not generally useful for < brawler. Can be used after strengthened Block throw, but there is very little reason to want to get more air time.

【○:Tornado Kick】(0or1orM) Very useful combo skill that does great percentage based damage if maxed. However, it requires a 3 TP investment to be worthwhile and M brawler is short on SP to spare. Can hit some downed enemies and juggle and can be used after a strengthened Block throw, but tends to scatter enemies all over if you don’t snare them first with Net Throw. Be careful.

Grappler

【△:Knee Kick】（1) Combo and escape tool. 1 point is good for invincibility, but the range is very short, which conflicts with M brawler’s zoning. Does nothing to grab immune enemies, not meriting further points.

【△:Seismic Punch】（0orM) More like a semi controllable stomp. PvP skill. Has a long aftercast delay, unlike the female version (at least until a future patch) – will hit downed enemies, but it is very easy to get hit out of the incredibly vulnerable startup.

【×:Iron Physique】(0orM) You wear heavy armour and attack from mid to long range. This isn’t necessary.

◆Nen Master

【×:Nen Shot & Doppelganger】 Will occasionally stun you due to your innate class passive (Overstrained). Doppel may have a use in PvP if you don’t mind a 2% chance of killing yourself.

Throwing Skills

These are your bread and butter. It is highly recommended to max these, because there is little point playing M Brawler otherwise.

Pros：☆ Cons：★

【◎:Sand Splash】(1orM)

☆Physical％＋Fixed damage. Short cooldown (3 seconds) Does not require stocks, so it is always available. TP investment (cheap) increases the range and damage to the point where it hits really far away. Will pierce obstacles.

★Hitbox at close range is poor.

【○:Poison Throw】(0orM)

☆Deals fixed magic damage and poisons (100%, 3 seconds). Will hitstun and produce a small aoe poison cloud on contact. Lowest Y axis hitbox of any throwing skill, will hit almost any short enemy. Will float juggled enemies. Has many stocks. Due to changes in Overstrained, it is no longer difficult to do good damage with it, giving you a good hybrid magic option against high physical defense enemies.

★Popular skill to drop as the poison duration is very short, therefore it should be the last skill used before Raging Vulcan. Very little Z axis range and will NOT hit downed enemies. Blocked by obstacles.

【Strengthened Poison Throw】

☆Poisons a large circular AoE in front of the M Brawler, doing very high poison damage over a very short duration (3 seconds). Peculiar as it will cause hitstun but does NOT hit, meaning it will not break breakable objects, which can be useful when trying to avoid damaging things like pots in the nightmare. Will hit downed enemies and ignores obstacles.

★No close hitbox, very unwieldy to use against close enemies. Short poison duration makes it Vulcan unfriendly. Will do absolutely nothing against rare poison immune enemies, as opposed to smashing them in the face with unstrengthened poison throw (which would still do fixed magic damage not reliant on status ailments)

【◎:Needle Throw】(M)

☆Fixed Physical damage + bleed (High damage, short duration of 3 seconds, moderate chance). Pierces enemies 100% of the time and decreases hit recovery. Y axis reach is deceptively fantastic, hitting very short enemies easily. Will hit downed enemies!

★Very poor Z axis range, blocked by obstacles. Bleed effect chance is the lowest of all your status ailments and has a short duration, making it vulcan unfriendly. Has a notable startup time.

【Strengthened Needle Throw（multishot）】

☆Fixed Physical damage + bleed (High damage, short duration of 3 seconds, moderate chance). Pierces enemies 100% of the time and decreases hit recovery. Fan shaped and does insane damage at short range if all 4 needles hit.

★Notable startup time makes it interruptible. Will not pierce obstacles. Bleed may be strong, but is not guaranteed.

【◎:Block Throw】(M)

☆Fixed physical damage. Stuns at a very high rate, 100% at max rank. Has a very large aoe from shards if the brick makes contact with an enemy, often hitting well behind your character, providing good coverage. Very fast startup, making it a great interrupt and will juggle aerial enemies.

★Will not pierce obstacles.

【Strengthened Block Throw】

☆Fixed Physical damage, 100% stun, even at low levels. Ignores obstacles. Distance controllable by the arrow keys, one of your longest ranged attacks when thrown far and will hit downed enemies. Does huge damage if both hits connect.

★Extremely vulnerable when jumping up, making it easily interrupted. Semi vulnerable when falling after the attack, although you may cancel the falling motion into any aerial attack.

【◎:Net Throw】(M)

☆Physical fixed damage. Immobilizes (mid-long duration) at an extremely high rate of success. Will hit downed enemies. Ignores obstacles. Although this did not use to increase damage unlike the F Brawler’s heaven’s net, it now DOES multiply all damage taken by immobilized enemies by 15% and 3% per additional TP level, making it absolutely essential.

★Very slow startup. Will annoy parties if you bind scattered enemies in place.

【Strengthened Net Throw】

☆Same as normal, but now drags all enemies it hits directly in front of you, setting them up for a world of hurt. Will even drag downed enemies.

★Even slower startup than normal net throw, with no protection unlike the female version. Irresponsible use will troll/irritate parties. Will not drag enemies it cannot immobilize. Dragged enemies can be blocked by obstacles (the way it works is it will drag all enemies based on the draggability of the CLOSEST enemy on the X axis it hits.)

【◎:Strengthened Throw】(M)

1 point to master. Mandatory. When strengthened, Poison and Net will consume 2 stocks, Block will consume 3 stocks and Needles will consume 4 stocks. The strengthened move can be performed at full effectiveness even if this would take you below zero stocks, so it is most efficient to use this with only 1 stock remaining.

【◎Auto-Load】(M)

1 point mastery wonder. Automatically reloads your throwing items, meaning you only ever have to prep them once per run. Makes Spitfires jealous. Extremely useful. Mandatory.

【◎:Double Throw】(M)

Mid duration buff. Doubles any thrown consumable, block, poison bottle, needle, or sand splash. Increases the radius of explosive hook while active. There is a damage penalty to the second attack, which decreases as this ranks up – this does not affect status ailments, so throwing two bricks is almost guaranteed to stun any non resistant enemy, for example.

This skill is mastered at 10 ranks and will have a 40 second duration on a 40 second cooldown then, enabling 100% uptime. It massively increases your burst damage, so taking and maxing it is absolutely mandatory.

《Awakening Skills/Passive》

【◎:Thousand Hands】(M)

Awakening Passive. Absolutely essential and why M Brawler needs to awaken ASAP (you are virtually crippled without being awakened). Has been nerfed and rebuffed to better than pre-nerf levels. Buffs damage of all throwing skills, cooldown of all throwing skills, now decreases reload time of all throwing skills (!), increases the stock of all throwing items (saving you hell of a lot of mp), makes throwing items fly faster, but no longer appears to increase the range of thrown items. Big deal. This is one of the best class passives in the game. If you feel your damage starts to drop off after level 50, you probably haven’t awakened yet. Make it a priority.

【Cursed Quake】

Full Hyper Armor during activation, now sort of snares enemies. Damage is decent and will automatically be capped anyway. Rank 9 (not currently available) makes it reload all your thrown items to max capacity, but their reload time is already very fast with Thousand Hands, so this isn’t really such a huge advantage. Damage is decent.

Other skills

【△:Crouching】(0or1)

Can be useful to avoid certain attacks (arrows, etc) and in PvP. TP expenditure gives very short duration invincibility. Not a big deal outside of otherverse.

【◯:Explosive Hook】(1orM)

Pseudo throw with invincibility on throwable enemies. 2 percentage physical attacks, followed by a large fixed magical AoE. Moderate chance of adding a long duration Burn. The entire skill has a large damage bonus (increasing by 1% per level) for every status ailment on the enemy it hits – 1 status ailment would increase its damage by about 50%, 2 would double its damage, etc. Will NOT grab enemies through hyper armour. Becomes far FAR more useful with at least 1 rank of TP spent in it, which will make it immediately perform the magical explosion portion on all grab immune targets it hits (you will still lose the damage of the second hit). Due to its severe limitations, this skill may not seem useful at first, but due to its scaling effect as a mini vulcan, its short duration, it has great damage potential, plus it is the only way brawler can naturally apply burn, which buffs both itself and Raging Vulcan, so I recommend taking it once you can afford the TP.

【◎:Claw Mastery】（0orM)

PATK and MATK buff, small chance for an incredibly short duration bleed on hit and a noticable hit rate buff. Useful for your percentage skills, but doesn’t really help your fixed damage. Max this if you use Venom Mine, Hook or Raging Vulcan heavily. Ignore this if you don’t use claws.

【◎:Mount】(M)

Percentage physical damage. Hits only once, unlike the F version. Technically hits 3 times, but you will never see this once you get the vulcan upgrade. Max this because it affects the damage of Vulcan.

【◎:Taunt】(M)

Decreases enemy status resistance and hit rate, but makes them all aggro you. 20 second duration on a 20 second cooldown at max rank, making the TP buff unnecessary. This is necessary if you do OV. It lets you reliably land status ailments on stuff 20 levels higher than you.

Cube Skills

【◎:Raging Vulcan】(M)

Uses 1 Colorless cube. Turns Mount into a 1 hit incredibly high damage percentage skill, and lets you use it on on enemies even when they aren’t downed. The shockwave from mount which hits the non primary target has a huge radius and is fixed damage. The TP upgrade is absolutely mandatory, without it, this skill will not have a grab cannon effect and will be useless on grab immune targets. Vulcan receives a 20% damage and 10% range bonus for every status ailment the grabbed target is afflicted with, if you can inflict 5 status ailments, this will do double damage. Fantastic skill considering the cheap MP cost of mount.

【◎:Ground Tackle】(M)

Consumes 1 Colorless cube. Does 3 hits of high fixed damage with full Hyper Armor. This is one of your highest damage skills, but it is very finicky and you must understand 2 things about it:

1) This skill does 145% more damage on enemies suffering from a status ailment. Like all other multiplier skills, never use this on an enemy that isn’t bound from Net Throw. It does not scale with multiple ailments.

2) This skill does 50% extra damage to any enemy that is grab immune. In practice, this is the difference between 40kx3 =120k damage on a goblin and 70kx3=210k damage on a dendroid. The TP upgrade increases the damage and makes it go a shorter distance if you hold backwards after activating the skill, this is rarely useful though. You get it for the 25% attack increase, which works whether the back key is held down or not, as confusingly worded as the tooltip is.

【△:Venom Mine】(0orM)

Consumes 1 colorless cube. Huge percentage based magic attack with a 100% base chance to poison for a medium duration (5 seconds). Like Ground Tackle, does more damage on enemies suffering from at least one status ailment, but similarly will not scale with multiple status ailments. Much better with the changes to Overstrain, Has full hyper armour. As this skill is percentage, it is better if you have a highly overenhanced weapon, but otherwise it has less utility and a larger cooldown than ground slide, plus terrible range on the Z axis. Ignores obstacles.

【◯:Needle Spin】(0orM)

Consumes 2 colorless cubes. Does 10 hits of fixed physical damage with a 100% base chance of a long duration high power very high level bleed. Has full hyper armour and can be sped up considerably by mashing the X key. This skill has good hitstun and can semi lock down enemies if used after needle throw, although it isn’t as reliable as the f Brawler Junk Spin. A very large portion of the damage of this skill comes from the 10 stacks of bleed it will do to all enemies in range. Does not scale with status ailments, so it makes a good opener. Has good range on all axes and hits downed enemies, but is very expensive mp-wise. Fortunately, M Brawler isn’t very MP intensive.

【◎:Sticky Ball】(M)

Uses 1 Colorless cube. Longish startup, but has full Hyper Armor during it, making it quite safe. Throws a purple ball which travels a short distance or until it hits an enemy, whereupon it does an obstacle-piercing explosion with good radius on all axes, afflicting hit enemies with a very high level slow. Since this counts as a unique status ailment, this skill is highly recommended as it is has a fairly low cooldown and the status ailment is quite reliable. Not affected by throwing masteries.

【△Blood Rage】(0or1)

Jumps up similar to strengthened block throw and does multiple hits with bleed to targets in front of the m brawler. Not really recommended as it has no interrupt protection, making Needle Spin far superior at doing exactly the same thing, except with much better coverage. Stylish, I guess. You shouldn’t really have the SP to spend on this.

Alt Skills

【○:Neck Snap】

Can be useful as an interrupt in the otherverse and high level dungeons.