New tricks that I learnt from bad players.

[Gurnisson]

I'd like to learn to chamber reliably, but when you have 1 life it just seems too risky especially with a polearm. Your attacks come from behind you and gets caught on things randomly (players or anything really) and they generally attack slower than 2 or 1 hand. I'd rather just hold my block until I stun the guy and get my own opening, eventhough i'm probably quite predictable

When I used LB or GLA I always chambered with my right swing, but rarely bothered with the other direction. I know you use a LB yourself so could be nice to do once in a while. Instant hit to the face on those pesky one-handers spamming left swing was always hilarious. Nowadays my chambering is very rusty. Break from the game and only using weapons with 1 direction doesn't really help keeping it up to scratch..

What I learned from bad players was noticing people facehugging and thrusting at the very start of the animation gives a much shorter stun than later on. Doing a thrust like that intentionally and follow up with a quick right or left swing is noice.

[EyeBeat]

that's because it is only the client executing that feint who sees it like that, while the enemy sees the full animation

I noticed when I am fighting I sometimes get to a point where I can queue up a hit and have it swing at the enemy with out even touching the mouse button. 

When this happens... it ends up being an incredibly faster than normal hit...

I hardly know how to recreate it.  It just seems to happen.

I use a huscarl and elite scimi.

[Vibe]

I noticed when I am fighting I sometimes get to a point where I can queue up a hit and have it swing at the enemy with out even touching the mouse button. 

When this happens... it ends up being an incredibly faster than normal hit...

I hardly know how to recreate it.  It just seems to happen.

I use a huscarl and elite scimi.

Yes I know about that, and I'm pretty certain the part where it seem freeze for a bit (the "queue") is played as animation to the enemy.

Btw this "queue & start animation halfway through the swing" attack is executed by blocking at the end of the first swing animation and attacking right after. Either way, it's very much blockable.

[Smoothrich]

If I am using a balanced/fast weapon, I just spam people.  You can block out of it if you get out footworked without much trouble.  Always better to be on the offensive.  People call me a shit spammer often cuz of it, especially because I disregard HP loss and don't bother blocking when I have plenty of health and am against a lower damage weapon, who I treat as peasants to perfect aggressive spam against.  But its way more fun for me then trying to be a feinting queen or a passive pootie blocker.  If you get good at it you can double hit people regularly and they will get mad, but its just mad cuz bad so who cares.

I spam pikers in strat battles who try to pull jump 360 bullshit and cut through pike blobs in seconds.  If a piker is supporting teammates, just charge the piker and spam because most pikers are cowards and their teammates are idiots.  You will zone him out fast but need to kill him before he gets to more teammates, then turn around and own some more.  More difficult to be aggressive against thrust attacks now though because they hit instantly (without the jump) and can interrupt attacks, but most pikers don't realize this. 

One of the best tricks to be successful as a 2hander, since all the animation nerfs, is to wade into blobs of people and spam while moving erratically.  This is completely rage inducing when someone does it to your team and I always think the person is a scrub and doesn't deserve to get all those points, but when I play Strat this is one of my primary methods of being a kill machine and a huge disruption to the enemy.  Throw in some upblocks and you are practically invincible.

[Cyclopsided]

I'd like to learn to chamber reliably, but when you have 1 life it just seems too risky especially with a polearm. Your attacks come from behind you and gets caught on things randomly (players or anything really) and they generally attack slower than 2 or 1 hand. I'd rather just hold my block until I stun the guy and get my own opening, eventhough i'm probably quite predictable

It is actually really easy to chamber once you understand your weapon's timing window. I use mostly pole arm, and I could chamber holds reliably as long as my ping was 70 or lower. However, 1h Definitely has the advantage with chambering. the chambering portion of the 1h animation happens earlier in the sequence than the other weapons, by a noticeable margin.

(click to show/hide)

I spent 3 days at my other house, first time playing melee with actual ping in months. Didn't ever both using a real weapon that could block, instead just picked up chambers again. Problem with 1h? I always reacted too quickly to attacks. It is so flawlessly fast that I was over-reacting to HELD attacks half the time. Wish i could play with real ping more often...visitors can't see pics , please register or login

The REAL trick is completely disregarding when they start the attack. You start your attack (to chamber) when their weapon is going to HIT you. NOT when they start the attack. If you need time to react at first, that is normal, just try starting the attack later and later in their animation. As your muscle memory adapts to animation cues, you can get faster and faster at chambering (in other words, chambering later and later in their animation, as far as your reaction goes). Eventually you can chamber held attacks reliably.
Held overhead and thrust attacks are the only way to learn to chamber those IMO. As in, you should never chamber an overhead or thrust based on when it starts, they give you soooo much time to react after the point of holds being released, int he animation. Have somebody hold a thrust at you with a pike, and chamber it when they release it, then progress to faster weapons. It is super easy to pick it up that way.

other HUGE HUGE HUGE hint: Your footwork. As soon as you see them pulling their weapon back, let's say, to the left side --: begin stepping to the right. Not chambering yet. Not blocking or anything, just moving away from their attack, giving you more time to chamber. or, giving you time to properly position yourself, THEN chamber.
Moving with the direction they are swinging is the single handed most important thing to picking up chambers. Not doing it is the most common error among people learning. It can double the amount of time you have to react to their attack.

[Kafein]

This is my personal opinion, but I like M&B combat because of feinting and holding. However, people started downright spamming more and more, and it has been going on for at the very least one year now. Good players, bad players, everyone spammed less six months ago. Now it's to the point a fair margin of the new players just look at the top scorers and think "so if run in circles and tap lmb, I will get kills" and that leads to terrible gameplay. The worst part is that with that many brainless spammers, feinting is becoming kinda risky, so feinters just default to a defensive block-attack rythm, to force the other guy into blocking, and fights get longer and longer. We are slowly reaching the point where combat isn't really directional anymore but just about timing and learning to break the already crappy player collision model of the game.

To anyone thinking spamming is pro : you are wrong. You are basically protecting yourself from the complexity of the game by doing an excessively simple move that statistically works because you can survive the hits you take when you fail, you will kill other people because their attack was mere milliseconds too late, you negate the arsenal of people that could otherwise kill you very easily and you will get chamberblocks.


Rant over. For now.

[Smoothrich]

This is my personal opinion, but I like M&B combat because of feinting and holding. However, people started downright spamming more and more, and it has been going on for at the very least one year now. Good players, bad players, everyone spammed less six months ago. Now it's to the point a fair margin of the new players just look at the top scorers and think "so if run in circles and tap lmb, I will get kills" and that leads to terrible gameplay. The worst part is that with that many brainless spammers, feinting is becoming kinda risky, so feinters just default to a defensive block-attack rythm, to force the other guy into blocking, and fights get longer and longer. We are slowly reaching the point where combat isn't really directional anymore but just about timing and learning to break the already crappy player collision model of the game.

To anyone thinking spamming is pro : you are wrong. You are basically protecting yourself from the complexity of the game by doing an excessively simple move that statistically works because you can survive the hits you take when you fail, you will kill other people because their attack was mere milliseconds too late, you negate the arsenal of people that could otherwise kill you very easily and you will get chamberblocks.


Rant over. For now.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html

The scrub has lost the game even before it starts. He’s lost the game even before deciding which game to play. His problem? He does not play to win.

The scrub would take great issue with this statement for he usually believes that he is playing to win, but he is bound up by an intricate construct of fictitious rules that prevents him from ever truly competing. These made-up rules vary from game to game, of course, but their character remains constant.

In Street Fighter, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations “cheap.” This “cheapness” is truly the mantra of the scrub. Performing a throw on someone is often called cheap. A throw is a special kind of move that grabs an opponent and damages him, even when the opponent is defending against all other kinds of attacks. The entire purpose of the throw is to be able to damage an opponent who sits and blocks and doesn’t attack. As far as the game is concerned, throwing is an integral part of the design—it’s meant to be there—yet the scrub has constructed his own set of principles in his mind that state he should be totally impervious to all attacks while blocking. The scrub thinks of blocking as a kind of magic shield that will protect him indefinitely. Why? Exploring the reasoning is futile since the notion is ridiculous from the start.

...Doing one move or sequence over and over and over is a tactic close to my heart that often elicits the call of the scrub. This goes right to the heart of the matter: why can the scrub not defeat something so obvious and telegraphed as a single move done over and over? Is he such a poor player that he can’t counter that move? And if the move is, for whatever reason, extremely difficult to counter, then wouldn’t I be a fool for not using that move? The first step in becoming a top player is the realization that playing to win means doing whatever most increases your chances of winning. That is true by definition of playing to win. The game knows no rules of “honor” or of “cheapness.” The game only knows winning and losing.

[Kafein]

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html

Quoting the author of a self-improvement book called "Playing to Win", really ? Also calling people scrubs is a great way to show how much of an asshole trying to convince tools to buy his book he is himself.

Now, all of this is true of course.

If chess was modified, adding the rule that the first player saying "I have too many pawns" wins the game, "scrubs" would probably still be playing the kind of chess we know, while people that play to win would be busy putting duct tape on their opponent's mouth, and following your logic there would be nothing wrong with that. I mean, we would lose one of the most interesting strategy games ever designed in favor of something that anyone above the age of 3 would call stupid but at least you win over scrubs.

[[ptx]]

Egads, Kafein, everyone can right-left-click-spam to do feintspam. It is just as "cheap" as anything else. I spam a lot of people, i will not deny. But i cannot afford to take hits, more often than not my enemies take far more hits than it would take them to kill me (lack of armor looms? non-str-crutch build? medium armor at most?). I take a risk, sure, but, what you don't seem to get, is that it is a calculated risk. I attack, when i see an opening. I guess you don't see such openings in your enemies behaviour, which is why you have such a problem with this.

And, afterall, if the non-"spammer" is so skilled, why does he lose to the "brainless" guy?

[MrShine]

There's 'spam' and then there's 'conscious spam', which IMO are two very different things.

You can decide to swing repeatedly against an enemy.

^ That's noobish spam, and very easily countered by anyone who blocks your first swing & maintains proper footwork while countering with an attack.

OR

You can prepare a follow-up to your swing in the event the enemy is a) out of position b) using the wrong swing for the situation c) delayed in reacting d) occupied by another enemy.  If they commit an error, then your 'spam' attack lands.  If they don't commit an error, you can stop the follow-up swing mid animation and block instead.

^ That's the sort of 'spam' that is calculated & effective. 

They are really quite different.

Yes it is frustrating when someone catches you unawares by spamming when they "shouldn't", but those are risky moves and really it's your own fault for being in a situation where you could have punished them but you didn't.  My rule of thumb is start slow with any new enemy (focus on simple attacks), and as the fight warrants increase your complexity.  This will catch many 'spammers'

[Vodner]

To anyone thinking spamming is pro : you are wrong. You are basically protecting yourself from the complexity of the game by doing an excessively simple move that statistically works because you can survive the hits you take when you fail, you will kill other people because their attack was mere milliseconds too late, you negate the arsenal of people that could otherwise kill you very easily and you will get chamberblocks.

If doing a fairly simple thing negates the arsenal of your opponent, then that arsenal isn't worth anything. The only real problem is when a combination of very high armor values and high IF means that you aren't really taking a risk, because you can survive a half-dozen shots.

[rustyspoon]

The only real problem is when a combination of very high armor values and high IF means that you aren't really taking a risk, because you can survive a half-dozen shots.

Yeah, this game would be soooo much better if people died faster. It makes it a hell of a lot more fun in my opinion. It also makes fights more interesting when you know you'll be dead in 1 or 2 mistakes. IF is for chumps.

[San]

I like how weapons designed to 2-shot everything have well-defined drawbacks. I think it would be too much if my long, spammy weapon can also kill anyone quickly. It would ruin the point of those powerhouse weapons. I think maximum armor is pretty dang high, and loomed medium armor turning into the equivalent of heavy is just nuts, though. Too much for most non-loomed 1h cut to handle, that's for sure.


In most games I play, knowledge > anything else. This can be obtained by playing, reading forums, or research of the mechanics. It just takes time for players to discover what works for themselves. At first, I focused on my animation in relation to my opponents'. Things began to become more dynamic once I learned the importance of footwork and animation differences. Learning from losses and understanding what your opponent knows/utilizes that you don't is  an important next step. I like how classes and builds can be wildly different, yet people can make them work.

[Artyem]

I took the long tedious journey that is playing as 21/15 1h after 6 gens of 2h / polearm.  I have begun to master the art of being thankful that as polearm / 2h most people don't out swing you when you're already half way through your swing.


Well, that and I've gotten better at not raging when I die to some bullshit backswing from 20 ft away or some shit like that.

Lesson to be learned:  playing as a one hander helps you learn how to control the anger, as you learn how to be the most under powered piece of shit in the entire game.  (only true to people who don't have +3 shields and +3 elite scimitars)

[Tigero]

I once did a STF agiwhoring 1h character, and i have never used such op class in M&B, i could literally outreach a danish by stepping back and spamming with my shashka and with the speedbonus i could kill in 5 hits a regular person. And i'm not even going to say shit about high level shielder chars, they can hide behind that thing forever and make a deadly fast blow whenever needed. Shield forcefield must be nerfed so you have a chance to kill my old friends who hide forever behind that crappy piece of wood...