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Awesome guide for a brand new newb like myself! However, also being a smooth brain, I am struggling to map the color stance to the named stance. Mind clarifying for me? (Ex: Cyan:Makashi or Blue:Juyo or whatever) Thanks!
The Cult Dueling Guide 1.9
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Karus
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I guess it's not really my place to say here but, I don't think classifying the in-game styles as lore stances is the best idea.
I only say this because, you could effectively play any "form" from the lore, with any of the in-game styles.
I've literally spent the last 3 days or so figuring out an ataru variant for cyan. It's not that effective but it looks insane from others' perspective.
Placing labels on things can restrict their potential benefit for you. For example, someone in this game could tell you, that Red is totally broken and boring to fight against (totally untrue). You're never going to bother spending time fighting against it, once this kind of thought has been instilled in you.
I'm a hypocrite, since I sometimes talk about the styles in-game and give my thoughts on them sometimes. But I think you should place effort on figuring things out yourself. This guide is very good and is more than enough to get started and keep you going for a long time. Listening to everything everybody else has to say is... usually not a good idea. You'll find a lot of people have opposing views on dueling in general.
Best thing to do is never set levels on things/set expectations. MBII is very unpredictable and just when you thought you knew everything, you learn something new, and this is usually a good thing... but it can backfire HARD.
Good luck
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Eazy E
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Ah, so this guide is based almost entirely around playing with yellow (but most techniques can be used for other styles too).
The form stuff is purely for RP. Generally it's just this.
Shii-Cho: Focusing purely on basic mechanics and building on those. Average Open Jedi/Sith basically.
Makashi: Focus on evasion and timing to interrupt. Timing based style.
Soresu: Focus on PBs, evasion, timing and single hits. Defensive based style.
Ataru: Focus on fast offence, shadowswinging and DFAs/Katas. Shadowswinging style (you can see some people utilise this well, e.g. Sheaconn or Danwan).
Djem-So: Focus on facehugging and applying pressure to your enemy, heavy focus on counters. Counter-Offensive Style.
Niman: Focus on everything. Balanced style and the best one as it has a complete skill set.
Juyo: Focus on long, attack-masked combos to bypass PBs and deal damage as quick as possible. Offensive Style.
The thing is you can mix and match and make your own form using techniques from the different ones, the forms are just meant to show each playstyle to it's extreme (Some players like Nihilus only use the techniques seen under Soresu and play extremely defensively and are still effective but you don't need to play like that).
For example you might have really good PBlocking skills and Swingblocking but your timing/patience might not be good enough to adequately use single hit chains and counter chains. Well in that case you could potentially mix something like Juyo and Soresu (two completely opposing styles) by focusing on PBing and evading when defending and taking every opportunity that you can to attack/counter with an SBed, yawed and masked 4 hit combo, it would be an effective style despite not fitting any of the forms mentioned here.
The forms just give a guideline on how to use techniques generally. Most guides you see will tell you about mechanics but give you 0 idea on how to effectively use them in a fight. There's some techniques depending on how you play that you might never use, but other guides won't tell you that they're useless depending on your playstyle (Counter-Offensive players have 0 use for Shadowswinging for example as they focus on staying close to catch shadowswingers and countering). The forms give a basic guideline on how to put together techniques (when to use what etc...) to build a good style, although you don't have to stick purely to what is written in the guide. Just pick a form based on what mechanics you are good at (try to learn and play like what is written for Soresu if you have good PB and want to utilise that or Makashi if you have good timing or Juyo if you got good SB) or if you're good at a bunch of different mechanics then try out Niman or make your own style by mixing and matching techinques from different forms.
Hope this helped.
Note: The Cult is planning on restructuring parts of this guide to make it easier to follow.
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About a year ago, I wrote something up for Lightsaber Forms in MBII. As Karus said, it doesn't make much sense to tie forms to styles. They don't even have perks any more, so they're essentially just different animations/speed/AP/BP.
To me, it makes more sense to tie the lightsaber forms to specific skills and techniques, and what I wrote up has more practical use than RP use.
Seeing this thread reminded me of it. I cooked it up in an afternoon, so it's nothing special and may contain errors, but since it's been sitting in a random folder for so long, I might as well share it since it seems relevant and some of you might get some use out of it.
---------
The road to mastery is perfect deliberate practice. Pick one thing and practice it deliberately and without mistakes. Isolate and conquer each skill by itself. Example: To master PB you isolate that activity and do PB drills for each style.
-Perfect Blocking.
-Swingblocking.
-Halfswinging.
-Slap timing.
-PB into counter attack.
-Mblock disarm.
-Basic movement such as backing away, strafing around your opponent, and chasing him.
-Running forward with uppercuts.
-Basic swing aim to make each swing hit as fast as possible.
-Basic special attacks (blue lunge, YDFA etc)
-Melee moves such as crouch sweeping kick and the flying kick.
-Fast halfswings
-PB parry combos.
-Mblock hiding style into red/purple countering vs a halfswing
-Shadowswinging (dodging an attack and coming back with your own attack)
-advanced yaws (swing obscuring, slow swings to throw off timings, WA(airswing) into SD(insta hit)
-Yellow style W and WD aim. (basically 180's for W and aiming high and 180 for WD)
-Swing feinting/cancelling into a halfswing.
-Using movement to bait someone to attack you, then shadowswing by dodging and attacking them.
-Using an mblock animation to disturb the enemy by making him think you started an attack. For example, close range, use W(hold)+A(tap) mblock anim once or twice to bait his attack.
-Perfect aggressive slap timings. (Example: WA initiation while looking down and running towards the opponent, then slapping right after so that he falls or only does 1 attack if he counters).
-Normal swing into special like purple SA into stab or blue SA into lunge, or yellow SA into ydfa.
-Close range rdfa
-Combos that are designed to get an interrupt. (For example, my good old 3 hit+halfswing)
-Using circular movements in close range to try and slip behind the opponent. Combine this with combos like yellow 3 hits on one side + 1 hit on teh other side + moving the opposite way. (Example: SD+WD+SD+A you strafe with all teh swings, often causing the enemy to get backwhacked because he has been trying to PB the same side combo from the other side as well as turning) Basically, you circle them one way with 3 same side hits, then quickly strafe the other way with A. Hopefully, they will continue turning and get backwhacked.
-Airswinging to initiate. Either fast or slow depending. Repeating 1 swing twice slowly if u think they wont attack, and airswinging a combo if they react very fast and try to attack you. For example, against a guy who is passive you can use SA(air)+SA(hit) or as many airs as it requires for u to reach the opponent. If the opp is aggressive, you SA(air)+WD(hit/parry)
-Extreme opposite yaw combos, example: aiming 90 degrees right of the model while using SA+WA same side, for a very delayed, weird looking combo, same with the opposite side. Use those once in awhile at the opportune moment to fuck with the opponent. Another fuckery combo like this is WA+WD+WA+WD with slow yaws whilst aiming up
-blue style fast halfswings.
- blue style parrying and PB parrying (especially stuff like PB into SA)
- good defensive combos like the basic W+D+W+D/W+A+W+A whilst backing off.
-comboing whilst continuously backing off (utilizing the fact that S is like W)
- defensive slap timings (When your opponent attacks you and you slap right when he starts an attack.
-Crouching to dodge slaps when necessary.
-Slap punishing with blue style (1 or 2 fast halfswings into a backstab if opponent is close)
-Patience in dueling. Playing the long game. Awareness of ACM and being interrupted, and trying to avoid it.
-Pre-aiming at PB zones at all times. Focus on aiming at PB zones with blue rather than the best yaw, cuz blue doesn't need yaw, so the focus should always be on pbing.
-Moving with the opponent to maintain PB zones. (If the opponent is strafing back and forth to fuck with PB zones, instead of standing still you move A or D to match his movement and stay face to face, that way u can more easily PB ppl who ADAD run combo.
-Using stafe-aways to bait reckless pursuit and slapping or mblocking to punish.
-Jumping swing initiations. Jump 2 and jump2+use. (example: Jump2+useinto jump1, SA+jump+WD hitting as you land, crouch immediately into a sweeping kick to stagger opponent, will often knock them) The example can also be performed with jump2 instead of 1, from a longer distance.
-Cartwheel instas (CW into yellow A, for example)
-Backflip animation attacks. (Example: Yellow SA, then backflip as the animation reaches its end and nears the return anim, right before return anim, backflip and aim the saber into the opponent)
-Red hops (reload RDFA)
-Well timed jumps to avoid opponents attack and gain ACM advantage.
-Close range RDFA/YDFA/CDFA initiations.
-Facehug movement that never allows the opponent to escape (constantly holding W into the opponent. And staying in the opponents face.
-Quick reactions when the opponent tries to strafe away and shadowswing. You pre-emptively chase it and hit them as they try to dodge you. If you just keep pressing W they cannot effectively escape.
-Become comfortable being up close and personal, as the closer you are, the harder it is for the opponent to PB you.
--Using movement to fuck with the enemy's ability to PB your attacks (Example: D but strafe in the direction of A. Or just simply running side to side as u attack(or more like, right before the enemy pbs you, you switch your bodys position with strafe movements, causing them to miss the PB zone.
-4 hit swingblocked combos without holding walk and in general, trying to not hold walk too much whilst playing to allow for faster chasing and movement pbzone dodging.
-Learn duals. They are the strongest offensive style by far and can kill a careless opponent in a few seconds.
-Duals fast halfswing spam, combo spam, good movement strafing as u combo spam with duals in facehug distance etc. Remember that if u get disarmed u can keep parrying with the other saber.
-yawing to obscure swings, beyblading.
-Force focus pulls (using movement to bait opponent movement and then pull them)
-Speed chase/speed lunge
-Grip pressure to prevent opponents passivity and provoke him to attack.
-Melee kata mastery such as slap into kata into kill
-switching to melee to kick ydfa
-Complimentary style switching. (Examples: blue soresu for defense and dual djem-so for aggression. Yellow general, switching to blue sometimes to lunge and defend with soresu. Switching to red in the mblock anim to surprise red counter etc)
-Mastering staff. (combine facehug solid swingblocked single halfswings with bursts of combo dmg)
-Learning how to play against all the other styles in the game (what styles counter what, how to PB staff/duals/blue and so on, basically learning counterplay vs each style in the game and how to deal with each lightsaber forms playstyle)
-Analyze your opponent and tailor a strategy to beat them, play with their mind, test their reactions and then abuse those reactions for profit. (Learn what they hate, and use it to provoke them, for example, if someone hates crouched combos use it a few times against them, if someone hates facehug, play djem-so etc. Niman is about flexibility and general mastery)
-Unpredictability.
-Master 12 different attack patterns. (can be full combos, but also a mix of combo and halfswings) Mastering involves full yaw mastery of the pattern and smooth execution. For example, pelms W(180)+A+SD, +D halfswing(fast)
^
You don't just randomly attack the target dummy. You pick certain combos like the example one above and practice it over and over again until you master it. Then do the same for 12 others. Once you have mastered a few, try interweaving them on the target dummy. Then master a few more, interweave them and so on. Keep going until you have 12 of those down (write them down to keep track)
-Research: Observe your opponents attack patterns and note them for later. Maybe watch demos of how they fight and try to come up with a counter plan. Ideally, have someone use their combos and practice pbing them. Example again, the pelm combo above. If he turns his back and does the W, u should be able to PB the next two attacks almost guaranteed.
To me, it makes more sense to tie the lightsaber forms to specific skills and techniques, and what I wrote up has more practical use than RP use.
Seeing this thread reminded me of it. I cooked it up in an afternoon, so it's nothing special and may contain errors, but since it's been sitting in a random folder for so long, I might as well share it since it seems relevant and some of you might get some use out of it.
---------
The road to mastery is perfect deliberate practice. Pick one thing and practice it deliberately and without mistakes. Isolate and conquer each skill by itself. Example: To master PB you isolate that activity and do PB drills for each style.
Form I: Shii-cho
(Basic skills)
(Basic skills)
-Perfect Blocking.
-Swingblocking.
-Halfswinging.
-Slap timing.
-PB into counter attack.
-Mblock disarm.
-Basic movement such as backing away, strafing around your opponent, and chasing him.
-Running forward with uppercuts.
-Basic swing aim to make each swing hit as fast as possible.
-Basic special attacks (blue lunge, YDFA etc)
Form II: Makashi
(Advanced dueling skills)
(Advanced dueling skills)
-Melee moves such as crouch sweeping kick and the flying kick.
-Fast halfswings
-PB parry combos.
-Mblock hiding style into red/purple countering vs a halfswing
-Shadowswinging (dodging an attack and coming back with your own attack)
-advanced yaws (swing obscuring, slow swings to throw off timings, WA(airswing) into SD(insta hit)
-Yellow style W and WD aim. (basically 180's for W and aiming high and 180 for WD)
-Swing feinting/cancelling into a halfswing.
-Using movement to bait someone to attack you, then shadowswing by dodging and attacking them.
-Using an mblock animation to disturb the enemy by making him think you started an attack. For example, close range, use W(hold)+A(tap) mblock anim once or twice to bait his attack.
-Perfect aggressive slap timings. (Example: WA initiation while looking down and running towards the opponent, then slapping right after so that he falls or only does 1 attack if he counters).
-Normal swing into special like purple SA into stab or blue SA into lunge, or yellow SA into ydfa.
-Close range rdfa
-Combos that are designed to get an interrupt. (For example, my good old 3 hit+halfswing)
-Using circular movements in close range to try and slip behind the opponent. Combine this with combos like yellow 3 hits on one side + 1 hit on teh other side + moving the opposite way. (Example: SD+WD+SD+A you strafe with all teh swings, often causing the enemy to get backwhacked because he has been trying to PB the same side combo from the other side as well as turning) Basically, you circle them one way with 3 same side hits, then quickly strafe the other way with A. Hopefully, they will continue turning and get backwhacked.
-Airswinging to initiate. Either fast or slow depending. Repeating 1 swing twice slowly if u think they wont attack, and airswinging a combo if they react very fast and try to attack you. For example, against a guy who is passive you can use SA(air)+SA(hit) or as many airs as it requires for u to reach the opponent. If the opp is aggressive, you SA(air)+WD(hit/parry)
-Extreme opposite yaw combos, example: aiming 90 degrees right of the model while using SA+WA same side, for a very delayed, weird looking combo, same with the opposite side. Use those once in awhile at the opportune moment to fuck with the opponent. Another fuckery combo like this is WA+WD+WA+WD with slow yaws whilst aiming up
Form III: Soresu
(Advanced defensive skills)
(Advanced defensive skills)
-blue style fast halfswings.
- blue style parrying and PB parrying (especially stuff like PB into SA)
- good defensive combos like the basic W+D+W+D/W+A+W+A whilst backing off.
-comboing whilst continuously backing off (utilizing the fact that S is like W)
- defensive slap timings (When your opponent attacks you and you slap right when he starts an attack.
-Crouching to dodge slaps when necessary.
-Slap punishing with blue style (1 or 2 fast halfswings into a backstab if opponent is close)
-Patience in dueling. Playing the long game. Awareness of ACM and being interrupted, and trying to avoid it.
-Pre-aiming at PB zones at all times. Focus on aiming at PB zones with blue rather than the best yaw, cuz blue doesn't need yaw, so the focus should always be on pbing.
-Moving with the opponent to maintain PB zones. (If the opponent is strafing back and forth to fuck with PB zones, instead of standing still you move A or D to match his movement and stay face to face, that way u can more easily PB ppl who ADAD run combo.
-Using stafe-aways to bait reckless pursuit and slapping or mblocking to punish.
Form IV: Ataru
(Acrobatics for dueling)
(Acrobatics for dueling)
-Jumping swing initiations. Jump 2 and jump2+use. (example: Jump2+useinto jump1, SA+jump+WD hitting as you land, crouch immediately into a sweeping kick to stagger opponent, will often knock them) The example can also be performed with jump2 instead of 1, from a longer distance.
-Cartwheel instas (CW into yellow A, for example)
-Backflip animation attacks. (Example: Yellow SA, then backflip as the animation reaches its end and nears the return anim, right before return anim, backflip and aim the saber into the opponent)
-Red hops (reload RDFA)
-Well timed jumps to avoid opponents attack and gain ACM advantage.
-Close range RDFA/YDFA/CDFA initiations.
Form V: Djem-So
(Aggressive dueling play)
(Aggressive dueling play)
-Facehug movement that never allows the opponent to escape (constantly holding W into the opponent. And staying in the opponents face.
-Quick reactions when the opponent tries to strafe away and shadowswing. You pre-emptively chase it and hit them as they try to dodge you. If you just keep pressing W they cannot effectively escape.
-Become comfortable being up close and personal, as the closer you are, the harder it is for the opponent to PB you.
--Using movement to fuck with the enemy's ability to PB your attacks (Example: D but strafe in the direction of A. Or just simply running side to side as u attack(or more like, right before the enemy pbs you, you switch your bodys position with strafe movements, causing them to miss the PB zone.
-4 hit swingblocked combos without holding walk and in general, trying to not hold walk too much whilst playing to allow for faster chasing and movement pbzone dodging.
-Learn duals. They are the strongest offensive style by far and can kill a careless opponent in a few seconds.
-Duals fast halfswing spam, combo spam, good movement strafing as u combo spam with duals in facehug distance etc. Remember that if u get disarmed u can keep parrying with the other saber.
-yawing to obscure swings, beyblading.
Form VI: Niman
(General skills/meta)
(General skills/meta)
-Force focus pulls (using movement to bait opponent movement and then pull them)
-Speed chase/speed lunge
-Grip pressure to prevent opponents passivity and provoke him to attack.
-Melee kata mastery such as slap into kata into kill
-switching to melee to kick ydfa
-Complimentary style switching. (Examples: blue soresu for defense and dual djem-so for aggression. Yellow general, switching to blue sometimes to lunge and defend with soresu. Switching to red in the mblock anim to surprise red counter etc)
-Mastering staff. (combine facehug solid swingblocked single halfswings with bursts of combo dmg)
-Learning how to play against all the other styles in the game (what styles counter what, how to PB staff/duals/blue and so on, basically learning counterplay vs each style in the game and how to deal with each lightsaber forms playstyle)
-Analyze your opponent and tailor a strategy to beat them, play with their mind, test their reactions and then abuse those reactions for profit. (Learn what they hate, and use it to provoke them, for example, if someone hates crouched combos use it a few times against them, if someone hates facehug, play djem-so etc. Niman is about flexibility and general mastery)
-Unpredictability.
-Master 12 different attack patterns. (can be full combos, but also a mix of combo and halfswings) Mastering involves full yaw mastery of the pattern and smooth execution. For example, pelms W(180)+A+SD, +D halfswing(fast)
^
You don't just randomly attack the target dummy. You pick certain combos like the example one above and practice it over and over again until you master it. Then do the same for 12 others. Once you have mastered a few, try interweaving them on the target dummy. Then master a few more, interweave them and so on. Keep going until you have 12 of those down (write them down to keep track)
-Research: Observe your opponents attack patterns and note them for later. Maybe watch demos of how they fight and try to come up with a counter plan. Ideally, have someone use their combos and practice pbing them. Example again, the pelm combo above. If he turns his back and does the W, u should be able to PB the next two attacks almost guaranteed.
Eazy E
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Ahhh, okay, this make senses. Thank you! From what I've gathered just romping around the forums, Yellow form seems to be the meta, go-to. Are the other in-game stances competitive or viable? Just messing around, I found Cyan and Purple to be pretty neat, but Yellow does feel familiar relative to base JA.
Eazy E
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Completely viable it's just an "EU thing."
Back in 1.3 every single style was completely broken cus of bad balancing and perks. The weakest styles were yellow and red, thus it became tradition that whenever there was a duelling tournament or something of the like that every style aside from Yellow (and sometimes Red) were banned, for the purposes of Balance.
The tradition sorta just carried on till today, all these years later, eventhough the styles are far more balanced now and all are somewhat viable, the oldfags in the community just like to stick to their yellow.
D
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Good to know. I definitely appreciate all the info. Is most of the player base EU nowadays then, or at least the most active on the forums?
Eazy E
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I'd say NA and EU is roughly the same. It's just EU tends to have a larger duelling scene with tons of duelling clans (all suck aside from Cult btw) so you'll find most opinions regarding duelling to come from EU players.
Eazy E
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Soon.
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