Dueling Blades Tactics and Strategies Guide

Dueling Blades Tactics and Strategies Guide by BinaryBob

Basics of Duelling

Greetings, Duelist. As you find yourself in this brave new world, you’ll find many rivals to duel. Fame and glory can be yours, but only if you know what you’re doing. The tutorial may have explained quite a few things, but lets us go over your options in a little more detail.

First, remember that all combatants take their turn simultaneously. A turn consists of two main parts: Movement and Action.

Movement: Movement: You may choose to move your character within a certain
radius of where you stand (hotkey Q). This radius is usually constant, though it can be temporarily reduced by certain enemy skills, like the Thief’s “Blinding Dust” skill.

If you choose NOT to move during your turn, you will regenerate an extra Energy Point. Keep that in mind.

Action: Action: You may also take one action during your turn, though this is not compulsory. A brief explanation of the three types of actions available to you:

• You may perform a standard attack with your weapon (hotkey W). These attacks swing in a fan towards a direction of your choice.
• You may use one of your Class Skills instead of a regular attack (hotkeys 1-8, explained later on).
• You may charge your Energy Points (hotkey E). If you use this option, you cannot move during the same turn. The net effect of this option is +5 EP (1 from natural regen, 1 from not moving, and 3 from the charge).

If you make a mistake, you can reset your selected movement and/or action from the main turn menu. The reset button is on the far right of this menu (hotkey R). Remember, you only have 15 seconds to finalize your turn, regardless of whether you reset; make sure you redefine your movement and/or action before the time runs out, or you’ll miss out on those. Once the timer runs out, or both combatants
have finalized their movement and/or action (hotkey C), the action unfolds!

Actions have priorities; if both combatants have landed in their opponent’s action fan, then the action with the highest priority is the successful one, and the action with the lowest priority is discarded. If the priorities are tied, then a Clash begins, and both combatants engage in a minigame to determine which action is successful. In this minigame, combatants are shown numbered circles with rings that shrink around them. Click the circles as the ring touches their circumference to maximize your score. The combatant with the highest score wins, and their action is immediately successful.

At the end of each turn, all combatants regenerate 1 Energy Point (up to the cap of 10).

Priority 0: War Cry, Aura of Protection.
These skills will never damage an enemy so anything the enemy hits you with will connect. However, unlike most cases where your action would have been wasted, the buff will still be applied.

Priority 1: Standard attacks.
A direct hit in the red area beats a glancing blow in the yellow (and deals more damage as well), but otherwise two standard attacks will result in a clash minigame.

Priority 2: Broad Strike, Heavy Slash, Tri-Cut, Open Wound. (among others)
A glancing blow from these skills will beat a direct hit from a standard attack. Direct hits in the red still beat glancing blows in the yellow for skills on the same priority level, but unlike standard attacks, skills don’t deal more damage with direct hits.

Priority 3: Counterattack, Stun Kick. (possibly others)
Note: If two Counterattacks happen, it doesn’t trigger a clash.

Priority 4: Class Fury attacks, e.g., Berserker Fury, Dagger Fury, etc.
These skills are both powerful and rank higher than most in priority. It’s a huge risk to attempt but it can pay off quite well.

Priority 5: Tsubame Gaeshi, Shield Cover (maybe something else?)
I have not seen anything to date that can beat the Samurai’s counter. It will even attack a Warrior that uses Counterattack! Likewise, Shield Cover will block anything, including the ultimate Fury attacks from a class.

Common Strategies

During battle, you’ll want to know how to do a few things well:

First, know how to space yourself from your enemy. Doing this well can help keep you from straying too close to your foe, especially brutal if you’re going up against a Thief class (due to their Stun Kick and very wide attack ranges). But then again, if you like chaos (or if you’re a Thief-tree class), you may want to get right up next to the opponent…

Second, manage your EP well. If you don’t, you’ll end up being chased down when you can’t do any skills and eventually get knocked out by attacks you can’t beat. If given a chance to safely restore EP, I’d take it. Sometimes I’d even take a hit from the enemy just to restore EP so I can have options again.