ChronoBlade Aurok Guide

ChronoBlade Aurok Guide by Decepticle

In this guide I will be focusing on Aurok. Aurok is a powerful melee brawler with a strong array of abilities. With him you will have multiple ways to engage enemies, strong pressure styles, and it doesn’t take long at all for him to get going and put the hurt on as most of his best skills are at the top of his trees. (I am going to do this rather bare bones for now, but am willing to update and go more in depth based on the response I get)

Notable Skills – (I can do a breakdown of every skill once I try them but for now I am focusing on the ones I deem strong)

Howl – Howl is incredible, it is a massive damage increase, it causes a mild hitstun on enemies, you can cast it mid combo and not drop it. It also carries a small cooldown, making it easy to upkeep and recast as needed. It also comes with a small Armor break debuff at later levels. Always have this skill.

Seismic Slam – I respecced out of this early and came back to it later. That was a mistake. SS has great range, another armor debuff, does solid damage, hits a decently wide line, and can also be cast mid combo and with a proper dash can keep the combo going. The only real downside is its cooldown, but even then its still very well worth it. I really enjoy this skill, and highly recommend keeping it on your bar.

Sucker Punch – When SP works it works really well, usually dropping the target down to less than a 3rd of their health. Landing the attack can be tricky, as you slide a ways forward and launch the targets away. It puts you in a dangerous spot if you miss. I’d say try and out and see if you like it.

Grappling Hook – I really want to like this skill, when it hits it tosses the enemies into the air and puts them in prone state which makes for easy pickings. It seems to have really thin hit detection tho, and many times it doesn’t seem to hit or pull the target. This skill needs to be looked at a little I feel, because I think with very small tweaks it could be very good.

Tornado – This skill I can’t recommend, its range is really poor, the energy drain is high, and its damage isn’t that impressive. Maybe with higher ranks if it affected a larger area it could be strong, but as implemented I would avoid this skill.

Charged Skin – This skill is popular if you go heavy Berserker tree. If cast on top of enemies it seems to do double damage and have a push back, but sometimes triggers an enemies counter attack so be careful. The damage is fine although it doesn’t seem to scale all that well late game. It isn’t a bad skill, I generally would prefer casting Mock instead. Another skill I’d say try it, see if you like it.

Magma Blast – What’s not to like about throwing charged Hadokens? This skill is very fun, adds a lot to your combo, isn’t very expensive, and does reasonable damage. Also the animation is spot on. If yo u go full Berserker, don’t pass this up.

**Update**
Permafrost – Got around to trying this skill out. Very impressed. Aoe stun/slow, does a lot of work. It has caused some issues with hit detection, and be wary as you can “dislodge” enemies out of their falling stun state, and they will sometimes attack back immediately. Tighten up the hit detection and this move will stay on my bar.

Traits –

Brawler – A simple 25% armor bonus. Good for leveling. Very good if you get some strong late game gear and aren’t going the crit heavy spec.

Ringing Blades – 10% crit. Even if you aren’t going crit heavy, this should always be on your bar.

Deep Reserves – For some reason this trait gives 50 instead of the listed 25. Its a lot of juice if you are going a more skill heavy set. Curious if the amount is a bug though.

Sliding Strikes – Adds a DoT to your crits. The damage is nice, but I find generally enemies die too fast for the full damage to take effect, I personally feel there are better traits for the slot, but early game when you haven’t reached those traits its perfectly fine.

Singularity – Adds a burst to all of you crits. When this skill works it works very well, adding additional hitstun to your attacks and makes short work of groups of enemies.

Infighter – At max rank this skill gives you a 40% chance to removes 25% of the targets armor up to 2x! This is a massive damage increase when it procs and is one of my favorite traits. Mixed with the rest of the armor shredding at your disposal enemies and bosses will drop fast.

Followthrough – 10% basic attack boost, nothing to sneeze at.

Dempsey Roll – I really want to like this trait, when it procs it hits really hard. But at max rank only triggering 24% of the time, it never feels like enough. Then again, when it goes off, it scales with crit, so I can understand the low proc rate. Luck is a cruel mistress. Its very strong, should definitely try it out.

(If there is a skill or trait I missed that you want to know more about, feel free to ask and I will update the list, if I didn’t mention them by no means are they bad, just overlooked in my testing)

Builds –
Hybrid
Skills – Mock/Grappling Hook/Sucker Punch/Seismic Slam
Traits – Ringing Blades/Dempsey Roll/Infighting/Followthrough

This is my current build. It does a very high amount of basic attack damage and has massive armor shred capability. These skills allow you to control the flow of battle and how you engage different enemies. It takes a while to pump the points in to get to these traits but I have liked the outcome.

Crit Build *Special mention of ZiggyD
Skills – Mock /Charged Skin /Magma Blast
Traits – Ringing Blades/Sliding Strikes/Singularity/Brawler

This build is simple, get crit gear and punch faces. The risk I find in this build is you generally take weaker gear to augment your crit score which can lead to higher damage and faster deaths. Overall a strong and popular style of play.

Notable Combos –

D – I’m serious, Aurok’s lefty jab that opens his combo string is amazing. It has great reach, hit stun, hits multiple targets, and can block cancel. I generally just attack slow enough to poke with D until they get low enough to land a larger combo/finish off a target. Its not flashy, but its very effective.

D>S – This is how you deal with blockers. I tend to jab all the dual weild guys and open with this in case they start to block. Generally fast enough to dodge if they jump back for the lunge. Also a good aoe clearing combo for tight knit groups.

**Update**
D>D>D>S – This combo is 3 quick hits into an uppercut into a shoulder tackle. The shoulder tackle hits HARD. The popup is nice, and if they survive the uppercut and/or tackle it gives a really nice knockdown that you can usually finish them off. Very handy combo.

I know those weren’t the most exciting combos but Aurok tends to throw his body around and his large slams don’t tend to land for me so I stick to the easy stuff. My connection isn’t always stellar either. Just fight safe and don’t go crazy on the mashing as it gets harder to block/cancel the longer your combo string is.

I hope you find this helpful