Avatar Combat Basics

Yesterday someone asked desperate how to suvive in fights, i went online and found some good descriptions tyhat cover the basics, one is for the Florentine LIne and the other Dirty Fighting, read both as they give som great hints that work on all three lines.

FIRST, you might want to redo your skills. It's very, very easy to pick a bad set of skills, so a respec is likely in order. You can get one from your pennant/commendation guy at the capital for 10 small pennants/commendations. Very cheap there.

What you want to do is... get a really good prepatory attack first. Look at all the skills and pick your favorite. You can play the whole game with just the basic attack for damage if you want... it's just quicker with a good damage skill is all. Prepatory attacks are the KEY to winning fights.

My example: Florentine - Elegant Loop
- this attack does around 30 points of balance damage usually for me right now. It also has the extremely nice benefit of draining my opponents initiative. All prepatory attacks will increase your own initiative. Their balance falling + my initiative increasing = goodness.

SECOND, NEVER use a PISTOL or a FINISHING MOVE in the middle of a group fight. Both pistols and finishing moves cost balance to use. If your balance goes low, you will die. Balance is the key to this game, not your health. Without balance, you cannot defend at all. Same goes for the bad guys, which is why your prepatory attack is the most important move you have.

THIRD, other skills. I'm not sure all the lines have it... but you want to get as many skills as you can that passively increase parry/block (dodge isn't as good early on, becuase dodges lower your balance alot when they occur), you also want any skill that will refill your balance/initiative bars, and any skill that gives you increased defense temporarily.

Instead of using initiative for Finishing moves in group fights, let your prepatory attack build it up, and turn on active block. Active block gives you more defence, but more importantly increases your balance recovery, which is key. If you have high balance, it's tougher for the bad guys to hit you. Every time they hit you, you lose balance. If your balance goes low, it's extremely tough to get it back from a group of bad guys constantly whacking and taking advantage of the fact that your balance is low.

What I usually do is, immediately upon entering an AvCom mission, or boarding, I Cntrl-click my Elegant Loop prepatory attack. This means it will fire every 3 seconds automatically that an enemy is within range. It's my "auto-attack" like from other MMOs. I approach a group of 3 baddies, and when I aggro I hit my initiative boost skill for 40 free initiative and slower decay. I then hit the first baddy with a skill that lowers all his defenses (parry,block,dodge) by six each. I then turn on active block (usually after an elegant loop or two) when my initiative bar is fairly high. At this point, I just wait till I've beat down the targets balance to below 50, then I start hitting the key for basic attack (which for me I use rending strike for the high damage and chance of bleed dot... but you could use the basic attack given to you for free, it doesn't matter). Once he's dead, I swith targets, and hit the defense debuff skill again, let my auto Elegant loop beat down thier balance, then chew them up with my basic attack when thier balance is down. Rinse and Repeat.

With the passive defense buffs to parry/block, and having my elegant loop feeding initiative to a fairly constant Active block toggle turned on, I almost never get hit by a group of 3 baddies. Occasionally, when a group of 2 roamers walks up on me, I'll have to hit my emergency balance recovery skill, and maybe my "6 seconds of parry immunity" skill. Most of the time though, Active block keeps my balance up even through 5 though and it's not necessary.

Anyhow, that's how I do it. I'm level 25 right now, but I've been doing this since around level 12, I've just got more passives now. As I skill up, I'll probably finish grabbing passives, then invest in some pistol skills and a good finishing move for fights against other players/bosses. I'll then spend whatever I have left on group buffing skills probably.

This is my florentine build. I don't know if Fencing and Dirty fighting allow for similar tactics or not, but I bet you can at the very least set your best prepatory attack to auto attack with ctrl-click, and turn on active block after you've built a little initiative. That's the key to survival, even if you don't have other skills to enhance your defense. Active block is huge for keeping your balance recovering quickly. If you pull 3, and roamers are coming, run back away abit after the pull so the roamers don't jump the fight as quickly.

Don't look at health as your lifeblood. BALANCE is the key here. Your health means nothing when your balance is gone. It's only seconds until death with no balance.

Here is one for Dirty Fighting

Well... this has been an informative thread so I thought I'd add in the Dirty Fighting tactics...

Powder Jockey line to full (This is a /CRAZY/ good line, even post nerfs)
Low Blows up through the 2nd prep attack (it has the highest balance damage in Dirty Fighting)
Reckless Swings up through the area hate remover
Firearms to the 2nd level

I'll break this into two sections. One for boarding the other for missions.

Boarding:

1. See how many waves the enemy has.
2. If 0 then tab target the enemy captain run in, shoot the captain, improved flash powder to stun everyone, order attack my target, toss a grenade, shoot the captain, stab captain repeatedly. Unless there is a significant level difference this should kill the captain in seconds. If a significant level difference exists then using prep attacks on the captain will improve your odds of killing them quickly.
3. If they have waves then treat it like a normal boarding action, try to wear down the crew. I try to use Imp. Flash powder to help mitigate damage to my own crew. I also try to kill the captain when the enemy crew is down to 3 members fighting as that's generally when the most advantage is to be had from causing captain respawns.

Avcom Missions:

1. Body pull. Pulling with an attack causes more chain aggro than body pulling.
2. Use the single target 'flash powder' skill on a target then attack a different target.
3. Use grenade or shot as an opening move. I agree that finishers and these in the middle of a group fight are bad, but grenade as an opening move allows you time to recover the lost balance and can provide a huge boost to the speed with which things die.
4. Be careful where you move and how. Someone mentioned those nasty ship missions where if you go down the stairs in front of you there are 5 mobs waiting. Go down the other steps. I have managed to avoid that wandering patrol in every ship mission so far by simply running down the left side while they were out on the right side. It's almost like mobs don't see too well around corners and the middle of the ship debris.
5. Don't bother with prep attacks against normal regular mobs. For whatever reason the normal mobs seem to get hit often enough even at full balance that they die just as quickly without prep attacks. This seems to be untrue of the boss mobs and "seasoned" veterans. For those types use the prep attack with the most damage so you can get them down. Kill the regulars first so that you can make use of a finishing move against the seasoned mobs.


Last but not least, get in a group. Seriously. It's faster, less painful, and there's nothing quite as amusing as watching a group of 5-10 enemies fall down from 2-4 grenades in a row!;P

Hope this helped and wasn't too redundant with the other posts. Oh, and thank you to the other posters as I've learned a bit about the other fighting styles that I didn't like very much and was having a lot of trouble with when I tried them.

Hello Francis,

I have to confess it was me putting out a solid yell last night. I'm in Santa Catalina and every blooming quest is a land based fight - I'm even stuck with a wooden leg because I seem incapable of even taking one of the three NPCs that you have to pass to get to the carpenter!!!

This guide will be so very useful. Will try and respec again tonight and cross fingers!

Amen to that.

But to some it up in a few known words:

"Keep your feet, keep your head!"



Nothing more to add, great long 99% unread post (Just kidding I actually read around 95% )

I will have 150 balance in a few levels.

Can you explain how balance works over 100? Does it actually get better or do I just have 100 balance rolls until I lose the first 50?

Im stacking balance too, certain offensive attacks do for example minues 20 balance therefor if you have 120 balance to begin with you are much better off.

Would be nice to know if your better off stacking +dodge or +parry rather than purely adding on balance though. So in summary I cant realy answer your question Keline but it seems to work well for me so im sticking with it until I read otherwise.