Cabal Online Combo Guide

Cabal Online Combo Guide by Sapphyra

Note: The actual Combo-Guide can be found between the red lines. Text between the green lines contains training tips or additional information not necessarily related to the guide. The rest is the story about CombomanJoe, which I made up for the purpose of providing screenshots and getting a little entertaining touch into a dull, yet complex topic.

First we’ll need a newb – any volunteers? ….. Anyone?!
Ah, there we’ve got a perfect guy. He’s still quite much of a baby, staying where it’s warm so he can feel comfortable. Come here Joe – today we’ll turn you into a real CombomanJoe.

…and don’t look at me like that. It’s not gonna hurt….much hehe.

================================================== ===============================
The Basics:

• You need a character who is at least lvl 10, who has reached the 1st Growth Goal and finished the quest to lvl-up your battlestyle.

• Furthermore you’ll need at least 3 different attack skills. (It works with 2 as well but you can’t really combo with only 2 skills)

Now imagine a triangle. Just any triangle will work. What did you learn about triangles in school? Right, the inner angles sum up to 180° (not important for us) and the sum of the length of the 2 shorter sides is always bigger than the length of the long side. In case of combo-ing: The cast time of 2 skills must always be longer than the cooldown time (CDT) of the 3rd! This is VERY important if you don’t want your combos to end due to an unfinished downtime, so the right selection of skills and the right distribution of skillpoints is vital! This also applies if you are going to combo with 4 different skills. Cast time of 3 > CDT of 4th. At last you will need some SP. (Skill Power? I don’t know ) You gain it by simply killing stuff or dancing. (Not sure if killing other players will give you SP.)
================================================== ===============================

Let’s check back with our little lady. He has gathered some SP already – that’s the yellow bar. Once it’s full the bar gets emptied and one of the 5 dots next to it lights up. (1 dot = 5000SP)
Activating the Combo skill will drain 500SP.

So…how’s the combo-ing, huh? As expected it isn’t any good at all.

================================================== ===============================
Now it’s time to explain the Combo Gauge. It’s located in the center of your screen (default) or right below the target’s health bar at the top edge of the screen. This can be changed in the game’s options menu.
When the Combo skill is activated “COMBO START” will flash over your screen and the Combo Gauge appears. Since there is not much time to examine it in-game I’ll provide some shots of its different stages. In last 3rd of it you’ll notice 2 vertical lines.

When the colored bar is between those 2 lines you should hit one of the hotkeys where your skills are lying. If you did it right it’ll look like this:

If you did it (almost) perfect it’ll look like this:

Note that there is always some range of tolerance where you can hit before the 1st line and it’s still ok. And you can ALWAYS hit behind the 2nd line and it’s ok.
================================================== ===============================

How is your combo-ing now?

…ya, right. Go cry you sissy!

Maybe it’s time to find an experienced mentor for you, and I have an idea who could be your mentor already.

With an armour like that he won’t have to prove his experience to anyone.

Now sit still and let him have a look your setup of skills.

As you can see he has 3 skills already, but he didn’t listen when I talked about cast- and CD times. The first 2 skills’ cast times add up to 3.1seconds and that’s less than the 3.6seconds CDT of the 3rd skill. It can’t work like that. Once Power Stab is at lvl 3 it’ll have a CDT of 3.0seconds. Everything fits then.

================================================== ===============================
At lvl 9 a skill’s cast time will equal it’s CDT, at least up to the Master skills. After that it may vary. To find out how many seconds of CDT a skill loses per lvl you need to subtract the cast time from lvl 1’s CDT and divide it by 8.
Example: Power Stab (see pic above) has a cast time of 2.0secs and a CDT of 3.6secs.
3.6 – 2.0 = 1.6; 1.6 / 8 = 0.2
At lvl 10 the CDT will jump up again to start falling from lvl 11-18, but it won’t ever reach the state where cast time = CDT again. Lvl 19 and 20 I haven’t analyzed so far. I may add that later or search the forums. I think they are stated somewhere.
================================================== ===============================

The mentor surely knows what he’s talking about. He teaches our little loser another vital fact about combos. Focus multitasking – the ability to fight a monster while focusing on another.
He tries to listen carefully, but as a warrior he’s not one of the smart guys. –Big buffs, no brains!-

================================================== ===============================
Focus Multitasking: First you need to find out how many hits you need to kill a monster. (preferably the number of different skills in your combo, or a multiple of that) Make sure it’s not going to die in less than the expected number of hits if one of the skills hits critical. YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO WATCH THE HP BAR! When the last skill starts you should have found a suitable next victim and select it so the next skill can hit that one while the previous monster dies. That’s what we mean by ‘Focus Multitasking’. It’s not always easy to watch the Combo Gauge and also look for a new monster to kill and sometimes you’ll even have to spin your view around a bit – that’s when it comes to practising. You can make it easier for you if you choose the skill with the longest cast time to be the final strike.
================================================== ===============================

================================================== ===============================
Practising Focus Multitasking: Go to monsters you can kill in 1 hit, no matter what skill you are going to use. They should be populating a vaster area with not too few of them running around. A good example would be the Red Garlie in Dessert Scream.
Select one of them standing a moderate range. Launch your combo, time it right – your guy will walk over to the mob. You should have plenty of time to select a new mob, standing a bit off your current target. Select it and wait until the Combo Gauge starts filling again – hit the next skill and your guy should once again walk over to the mob leaving the first mob dead behind and you quite a lot of time to search for a new one.
================================================== ===============================

Poor CombomanJoe, it’s all a bit too much for him and trying to remember all the things he learned don’t seem to work well in practise. But at least he succeeded using the Focus Multitasking. The rest will come all on its own just by using the combo skill now and then and finding suitable monsters to use it on.

I hope you had at least a little fun reading it and remember some of it later, because after all it’s not just stylish, but people near you will get a message whenever you chained up 15 or more combos. A big Thanks to 4lex for being mentor!
Good luck and see ya’ll in-game!

================================================== ===============================
Additional notice: Successful combos will increase the experience you get for the hit. A red (excellent) Combo Gauge means 20% bonus, a brown one probably 10%. Yellow won’t give you any bonus EXP and when you stop a green bar (hit too early) the combo fails.
When you have items dropping don’t try to pick them up using your mouse button. Clicking anything but a monster will instantly break the combo chain – use ‘space’ instead. You can even press ‘space’ before the mob is dead, just make sure you are currently within the final strike. The item will be dropped directly into your inventory.
Also, don’t spam 4lex (my mentor) with training requests hehe…
================================================== ===============================

CombomanJoe later died, trying to prove his skills in a duel with his former mentor….

================================================== ===============================
EDIT: More useful information! (01-13-08)
Stopping a combo without breaking it: You have to do this while changing monsters. Simply activate a skill that has an unfinished downtime while you are walking over to the new monster. You will stop the combo without breaking it. To continue simply activate a skill with a finished downtime.
I found this to be quite useful when I wanted to write something or sort my inventory during combos.

Reactivating support skills during combos: Certain support skills can be reactivated without breaking the combo. Therefor wait until you are walking to a new monster and activate the support skill, just like you were going to stop the combo (above). You can do this several times, but you need to activate a normal attack skill each time, before trying to reactivate a support skill.

There is a 3rd trick that slipped my mind…I may add it later, once I remember what it was.
================================================== ===============================