Swingblocking combos

[PuNk]

I think this is the first time I actually open a thread so if there's already a similar thread or it's in the wrong place please forgive me.

So recently I've been trying to improve my swingblocking. It has come to my attention that I usually get slapped to the ground during my 3 or 4 hit combos with yellow which I fail to swingblock. I can succesfully swingblock a first hit in a combo and the last one obviously, but the second and third hit seem damn near impossible to, and that's when some more experienced players usually slap me or even disarm me.

So do you guys have any advice how to properly learn this or maybe tell me how do you approach it or do it? Do I like, click 8 times, 4 for attack 4 for block at the right time or I just hold mouse1 and spam block hoping for lucky timing that won't break my animation? I've spent hours and hours on dummies trying to get it right and best I can get is one in twenty tries where I SOMEHOW manage to do it while holding mouse1 and spamming block mid swings. But I don't want to rely on luck or flukes, I'd like to properly learn it but I can't help feeling that I'm doing something wrong.

 

[jewbacca]

hold mouse1 and spam block hoping for lucky timing that won't break my animation?

Is this even possible? Certainly not the right way to do it. You'd rather want to swingblock all the way through combo like this:

click 8 times, 4 for attack 4 for block at the right time

Real advice: practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice...

There's a different approach tho:
Swingblock kinda also based on perception. If you know your opponent you can swingblock only if there's a danger of being slapped or disarmed. Most people have really basic and repetitive behaviors, so it's not a big deal to predict when they are about to slap you. I'm not telling you to quit swingblock, but rather focus on it when it's really necessary. You can be pretty good swingblocking just 3 swings out of 4. (But always swingblock your first and last swing, tho)

Because of that dummies are cool only to a limited extent. You GOTTA practice against real opponents to git gud.

If you get disarmed constantly make swings unpredictable. Different angles, confusing movement, yaw more, telegraph less. It is practically impossible to disarm someone midcombo if you can't see the pattern. Yeh.

 

[Stassin]

It's pretty difficult and to be honest, even though it's always an advantage to be able to reliably swingblock each swing of a combo every single time, the more important thing to keep in mind is that you only really need to be swingblocking when the opponent slaps or when your swing is clearly too easy to predict and has a good chance of being mblocked, or also when you have a high chance of getting interrupted by another attack (all of which being things that should be avoided through various means without needing to swingblock, for optimal performance, so in fact swingblock is more of a way to limit the consequences of a mistake). What i mean by this is that instead of trying to swingblock everything all the time, you could instead focus intensely on what the opponent is doing to optimize your prediction of his moves and anticipate when he will slap. Even though this is riskier than swingblocking all the time, it's also a stronger approach (when mastered in the long term) since it will allow you to only swingblock when absolutely necessary, thus maximizing your mobility and damage output (since swingblocks impair damage & movement). Jew is saying basically the same thing i believe.

Extremely often you will get slapped when you suddenly rush in to attack, or when the enemy does that and ends his offensive with a slap in anticipation of your counter; less predictable slaps with different timings will be somewhat rarer and done by strong duelists seriously going out of their way to be unpredictable.

Nevertheless, regarding fully-swingblocked chains, they'll be insanely hard to do with blue style and reasonably doable with all others (kinda hard with duals/red). In order to do them more easily, you can adjust your movement and camera to force the swings within your chain to hit more slowly, i.e. move away from the target slightly and aim slightly in the opposite direction of your swing (aim left for a left-to-right swing for instance). That way the swings within the chain will travel for alot longer compared to almost instantly hitting as soon as they are starting (which is what happens when you try to do the opposite: move closer to the target and aim in the direction of your swing i.e. right for a left-to-right swing), and so you'll have alot more time to be able to swingblock them. This of course isn't optimal in a real duel since you're purposely making your chain slower and thus easier to PB/mblock, but it can be useful to blend in sometimes for unpredictability and when you don't want to take as big a risk. And for training your swingblocks it'll be easier too, even with blue style it will become possible to reliably swingblock all swings (though blue has short chains nowadays..).

 

[AaronAaron]

tap 4 attack 4 times and tap block 4 times

 

[PuNk]

Thank you guys for all replies! I will continue trying to get it right on both dummies and real opponents. I have a tendency to NOT use things I still haven't exactly properly learned in real duels. That might be a mistake on my part, there's nothing to lose really so maybe I'll play a bit riskier from now on and over time manage to get it right.
As for blue, am I right to say that blue can only do 2 chained swings for a combo? If yes, then I have no problem swingblocking those two, I do it all the time. My real problems are with yellow right now.

 

[AaronAaron]

As for blue, am I right to say that blue can only do 2 chained swings for a combo? If yes, then I have no problem swingblocking those two, I do it all the time. My real problems are with yellow right now.

Yes that is correct. But really, you shouldn't be using stupid op styles. If u want real fun, play yellow v yellow

 

[Aizencin]

There are a lot of ways to do it, what i do with yellow, blue and cyan is most of times, but for other styles i hold both m1 and m2 and release m2 when i the attack end, then hold it again

 

[SK5]

Tap attack to drain minimal bp, hold block until the end of the swing, release block and repeat. Its hard to get the timing down but its going to feel smooth after you get used to it.

 

[AaronAaron]

Tap attack to drain minimal bp, hold block until the end of the swing, release block and repeat. Its hard to get the timing down but its going to feel smooth after you get used to it.

I only liked ur post because no one else likes ur post and i feel sorry for u because of it. ur also scared of prime

if this gets removed DEVS DONT CARE ABOUT ME

 

[Shilling]

OH MY GOD

 

[kvinto]

I only liked ur post because no one else likes ur post and i feel sorry for u because of it. ur also scared of prime

if this gets removed DEVS DONT CARE ABOUT ME

same

 

[jewbacca]

Well memed

Tap attack to drain minimal bp, hold block until the end of the swing, release block and repeat. Its hard to get the timing down but its going to feel smooth after you get used to it.

BTW
Wasn't difference in drains between tapping and holding was removed in prev updates?

 

[SK5]

BTW
Wasn't difference in drains between tapping and holding was removed in prev updates?

1.4.5 had big flat drains were added last patch and now they removed in 1.4.6 i believe.

 

[Lessen]

There are drains for holding but afaik from observation (not remembering what the patch notes say), the drains only happen if you're holding during the damage portion (the time when there's actually a hitbox to hit with at all at all) of a swing, meaning you can verrrrry easily do half-swing chains without draining yourself at alllll, while full speed combos (or chain swings or w/e you call them) still reward timing and tapping if you want to minimize your self-drains.

p.s. this thread reminds me of when i fiiiirst tried mb2, which was at least a year if not longer before i really officially Started Playing Mb2. I got really resentful towards the saber system because of weird quirks like "one of Reds swings is a lot faster than the other" and "if you start a red swing to the left and then run right, your swing will go REALLY HIGH and probably miss" and "swingblocking combos seems impossibly hard."

but now that i have accepted that the saber system is not like other game systems which are clearly built for sensibility, and is instead kind of more like a real life system where you have you figure out what works and learn good technique and stuff, i like it more

I have a tendency to NOT use things I still haven't exactly properly learned in real duels.

same. By which i mean, there's a lot to this saber system and applying it properly is actually fairly hard and sometimes non-intuitive. For instance, it took me forever to realize that if I get hit RIGHT after starting a swing (before the damage portion), i think that counts as a block (not even a full block, like, a partial block) and is really bad for me. And there's no real indication that I blocked instead of parrying. (except BP drain and maybe sfx?). So I would lose tons of BP and not be sure why, since I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do to parry.

And one time I was getting thoroughly trounced by some guy and then i was like "OK, I'm going to get really serious about doing full four-hit combo spam, properly, to parry as much as I can." I'd been doing it lazily before and not paying attention. Once I started focusing on four hit combos I started winning against him.

little bits of technique can go a long way. Really understanding the (initially extremely unintuitive) timing for MBlock. Understanding how to yaw for every swing to combo super fast. Understanding parrying. Knowing the PB zones and putting the effort in to try to PB attacks (if parrying isn't an option). Comboing with minimal holding.

Yes that is correct. But really, you shouldn't be using stupid op styles. If u want real fun, play yellow v yellow

twice when using yellow i've met a guy who called yellow OP and Spammy, and it made me confused.

it may have been the same guy tho

 

[PuNk]

Well I've been at this for years, but I've never really gotten into dueling until later and just when I started learning some more advanced stuff like yawing, mblock, etc. I made a big break from MBII. I'm here to stay now so I'm trying to catch up with everything I never really invested enough time in to learn.
Again thanks for replies! I'm sure I'll git gud eventually.