User:Rydian/Combat Tips

Intro

This is a list of combat and skill tips, mainly aimed at informing newer (or returning) players about the most useful skills and bonuses.

General Tips

• Try to avoid being hit.
  • Skills like Defense and Counterattack may seem basic and low-level, but they're very useful for avoiding damage.

• Manage Aggro.
  • Attack the enemies that notice you first, or attack the variety with the larger number.

• Upgrade your equipment.
  • As you use weapons/shields and body armor, they'll gain Proficiency. Upgrade them at NPCs for better stats.

• Don't artifically restrict yourself to one "class".
  • Talents are bonuses, not restrictions. You can rebirth into mage and then use archery just fine for example.
  • Bard skills are commonly used by players and very helpful, for example.

• Learn which skills can and cannot combo into others.
  • For example, you can't use a normal Ranged Attack right after a Counterattack.
    • However you can load and use Firebolt right after a counter, and then lead into a ranged attack.

Talent Overview

• While every talent has at least one useful skill, the different talents have different purposes and uses.
  • Not all of the uses actually match their in-game descriptions or flavor text entries, nor is everything balanced.
• The following list is an objective look at what each talent is useful for, to help new/returning players decide.

Talent	Pros	Cons	Acquisition Difficulty *
Archery	+ Powerful ranged attacks. + Can hit enemies from a safe distance + Good Dexterity stat gain.	- Prone to missing. - Often slow. - Relies on Dexterity so no heavy armor. - Giants cannot do archery at all.	Easy-Medium
Battle Alchemy	+ Has multiple forms of crowd control. + Damage raises quickly without reliance on player stats.	- Damage caps out earlier than other skillsets.	Medium
Chain Slash	+ Fast, strong melee-damage attacks. + Attacks can work from close and far range. + A debuff and some crowd control. + Great Luck stat growth, acceptable other stats.	- Relies on Dexterity so no heavy armor. - Quests to get additional skills can take time.	Medium-Hard
Close Combat (Melee)	+ Strong single-target and combo attacks. + Simple to use. + Good melee stat gain overall.	- Little to no ranged attack ability.	Easy-Medium
Dual Gun	+ Fast, rapid attacks. + Multiple AoE abilities. + Very fast for clearing rooms of weaker things.	- Horrible stat gain, bad for a first talent. - Grindy to train.	Easy
Holy Arts (Cleric)	+ Skills for healing and magical defense. + Good gains to Intelligence and MP.	- Little combat capability.	Medium
Lance Combat	+ Strong attacks that pierce/ignore enemy defenses.	- Lacks some defensive abilities. - Can't do some attacks if you're too close to the target. - Elves cannot use lances at all.	Easy
Magic	+ Strong attacks when charged. + Lots of skills are AoE. +Wide variety of attack types.	- Skills require charging before being used. - MP use needs to be managed.	Medium-Hard
Martial Arts (Fighter)	+ Strong single-target damage. + Can apply two debuffs.	- Gimped AoE when using knuckles. - Less possible damage than other skillsets.	Medium
Music	+ Strong buffs for the whole party. + Can grant some regeneration. + Can be done hybrid with any other talent. + Some crowd control.	- Little combat capability	Easy-Medium
Ninja	+ Fast ranged attacks. + A variety of attacking skills. + Some crowd control.	- Grindy to train.	Easy-Medium
Puppetry	+ High damaging AoE attacks. + Various forms of crowd control.	- Clunky movement system. - Slow to set up and execute. - Relies on Dexterity so no heavy armor.	Medium
Transmutation (Construct Alchemy)	+ Niche skills for damaging invulnerable bosses. + Some crowd control.	- Very few attack options.	Medium.

* - This column measures how hard it is to obtain/learn the skills in that talent.

For example some skills you gain just by holding the weapon (easy), others you need to do a questline (medium) or collect pages (hard).

Don't Start With Guns

A lot of players look at guns as an "endgame" talent and think they should start with guns, or that guns are OP. This often leads to players wasting time, effort, and AP trying to "main" guns, only to find them not very effective. This section will go over the specifics of why choosing guns as a first talent is a bad choice, with more exposition than can fit in the above table.

• Guns have low damage.
  • Just look at your average set of guns. Most models have little to nothing for damage. Dowra SEs (the most popular model in common use for utility reasons) have an absolute max crafting roll of 22 damage. Compare this to NPC swords you can buy in shops for a few K that literally deal more damage than that. Guns have never been high in damage, their capabilities lie elsewhere.

• Guns get low damage from your stats.
  • Guns use half your STR combined with half of your Int for damage. Many players literally lose damage by putting (clean) guns on, for many players guns will deal less damage than bare hands. Players make up for this deficit by pumping both STR and Int up high, and then putting max damage enchants everywhere they can. If you're missing the stats to support guns and you don't have a bunch of stuff enchanted for damage, you won't be doing much.

• Guns are bad at stunning.
  • Most gun attacks don't stun well, especially not normal attacks which barely stun at all. This means pure gun attacks won't keep things off of you for very long. If you're not killing things in one or two attacks, they're going to run right up to you and wreck your face. This is especially bad when using AoEs, because you will hit a bunch of enemies that will all aggro you at once (whereas normally enemies in Mabinogi will slowly aggro you one or two at a time if left alone).

• Guns are horrible for stat/character growth.
  • In Mabinogi, a good chunk of character growth (in combat terms) comes from permanent stat bonuses you get for ranking up skills. It's also best when the skills you're working on give the stats you need for them. For example melee skills tend to give STR, which makes all your melee damage better. Unfortunately the Gunner talent has very few useful stat boosts. It's pathetically weak and will not grow your character in any meaningful way. So if you don't have the stats to support guns... ranking guns won't give you the stats you need.
    • Guns: 23 STR & 21 Int total for all skills combined.
    • Ninja: 3 skills that give more than 23 STR each.
    • Magic: 12 skills that give more than 21 Int each.

So why do players use guns at all?

• Rapid attacks & big AoEs with decent multipliers.
  • They're great for rapidly clearing things that are weaker than you. Back when guns came out, we didn't have a bunch of super-endgame content, so people used guns to steamroll SMs and stuff because the players were simply that much stronger than pretty much any available enemy. The strongest content was Lords, and Lord missions have such low drop rates for anything useful that most players saw them as a waste of time to run.
    • Nowadays though, there's a lot more higher-level content with absolutely insane numbers and mechanics, stuff few if any players can overpower (and definitely not easily). Dungeon revamp, Phantasm, Baltane elites, Sidhe Fifhanddlausfkfn, Avalon Raids & Bosses, Techn Duinn, etc. So gun usage by high-level players has fallen off because they can no longer one-shot what's considered hard content.

Useful Skills

• This section will list individual skills that can be useful even if you don't want to invest in the rest of the talent.

Offense

While Mabinogi has a lot of skills for killing things, some are objectively better than others.

Alchemy

• Hydra Transmutation can deal lots of damage over time and bypasses invulnerability.

Archery

• Urgent Shot buffs the aim speed of your next shot, and you can purposely miss to trigger it.
  • This can help you fire off a more rapid Magnum Shot barrage.
  • This can even let you actually use Crash Shot before next week.

Bard

• Discord's damage over time effect bypasses invulnerability (e.g. Lich and Gem Arrow Golems).
• Dance of Death's damage bypasses invulnerability too, but it's a fixed damage amount.

Chain Slash

• Chain Impale deals high damage to a target and forces a stun on it, can stunlock for repeated usage.
• Spinning Slasher counts enemies killed by it as dying on top of you, good for sacrifice circles.
• Chain Crush kills enemies on the spot without knockback, and also seals off their magic/alchemy.

Crusader

• Judgment Blade is a large AoE with a very high damage multiplier, with the potential for higher than normal critical damage.
• Celestial Spike bypasses invulnerability to deal damage.

Magic

• Firebolt, if chaincast (+4) via wand upgrades, is incredibly strong DPS.
  • Even if not chaincast, it forces a knockback on most monsters each hit which keeps them away from you.
• Snap Cast can be used to immediately fire off full charges of magic.
  • Snap Casting Fireball when enemies spawn is a great way to clear a wave in seconds.
• Lightning Rod is incredibly strong.
  • You don't need a secondary effect when your targets simply stop existing.
• Meteor Strike is slow to load and has a big cooldown, but deals large damage in a big area.
  • Meteor is half-physical damage so it can hurt enemies that are melee-immune or magic-immune (but not both).

Melee

• Bash is OP, you can infinitely stunlock most enemies with little effort while repeatedly hitting for huge damage.
  • It's seriously overpowered, any other MMO would have nerfed it a week after release.
• Smash can cause status effects now.
  • The daze/stun from blunt weapons prevents enemies from using magic, invaluable when fighting a Lich.
  • The bleed effect from swords bypasses invulnerability and will finish enemies.
  • The armor break effect from axes temporarily lower's the target's damage resist to physical damage.
• Rage Impact stuns enemies around you and makes them take more melee damage from the next hit.
  • The stun is very short, but you can lullaby the enemies afterwards (which does not remove the debuff).

Ninja

• Basic attacks are spammable at range for decent damage.
  • With a Hagi's Shuriken you can stunlock a single enemy with normal attacks from a distance.
• Kunai Storm is a spammable ranged AoE.
• Sakura Abyss, despite the long startup, can deal very high damage in a large area.

Defense

Traditionally tanking wasn't viable for a long time, but nowadays it's more doable for most content.

In addition there's more skills that allow you to play it safe.

Magic

• Mana Shield can take damage to MP instead of HP.
  • MP can't be wounded, so this makes recovering from archers easier.
• If you're getting hit with Fireball a lot, consider putting fire Elementals on your gear.
  • Fire Shield is a possibility as well, but isn't as strong and has more downsides.
• Spellwalk allows you to move with intermediate magic loaded.
  • This means you can safely load up Fireball or Thunder from a distance, then walk within range to fire it.

Melee

• Heavy Armor Mastery and Light Armor Mastery are skills that grant strong defensive bonuses.
  • You just need to wear any type of light/heavy armor to activate the mastery bonuses.
    • The bonuses are worth more than any normal armor's stats, so go for cheap armor until you can get high-end armor.
• Shields give invisible defensive bonuses, and you might want one simply for getting the Master of Shields title.
  • You could also use a Guard Cylinder (cylinder-shield). It's not as defensive as bigger shields, but it lets you use various Alchemy skills with melee.
• In general, Protection is better than Defense (when you're picking out upgrades and stuff).
  • Defense is a flat damage reduction, while Protection contributes to a percentage damage reduction.
  • Strength contributes to defense.

Crowd Control

Mabinogi is an MMO. If a mission/dungeon lets more than one person in, that means it's designed for more than one person

If you're solo (or simply not overpowered for it) you'll want to make use of crowd control skills to keep things at bay while you kill stuff.

Alchemy

• Sand Burst (usable with a guard cylinder) blinds a single target.
• Rain Casting (usable with a guard cylinder) makes a cloud, enemies under the cloud won't naturally aggro.
  • They are not forced to drop aggro if they're already mad though. Consider using Crisis Escape to force them to drop aggro.
• Shock repeatedly stuns enemies around the shocked target (which can be yourself).
• Frozen Blast can freeze an enemy in place.
  • It has a low success rate unless used with Elemental Wave.

Bard

• Lullaby is invaluable, putting enemies around you to sleep is so good that it's almost cheating.
  • If enemies are asleep they can't attack you, their skills are cancelled, they can't load counter, etc.
  • If you rank up Song to rank 5 or higher, then you unlock the ability to use most bard skills without an instrument.

Crusader

• Divine Link lets you link with a pet, granting stat boosts and making the pet take a lot of aggro from you.
  • The pet tends to gain a lot of physical defensive stats, making it a good tank for this purpose.

Magic

• Icebolt slows enemies for a few seconds.
• Ice Spear allows enemies to be attacked (for half damage) when frozen now.
  • A wave of frozen enemies with players spamming AoEs on them won't survive long.

Melee

• Crisis Escape makes enemies drop their aggro on you.
  • When it ends they'll be able to aggro you again normally, so it's mostly an "oh crap too many things are on me at once" skill.

Ninja

• Shadow Cloak drops aggro when you use it and gives you a speed boost so you can nope the nope out of there.
• Shadow Bind freezes up to 6 targets for a few seconds.

Other

• Various pets have effects that damage, stun, or freeze enemies around you when summoned.

Support & Recovery

Even the best player gets hit now and then, and even the strongest player can use buffs.

Alchemy

• Life Drain can recover up to 450 HP, making it good for healing yourself from enemies.

Bard

• Battlefield Overture can give a nice attack boost, meaning you kill faster.
  • Upgrading an instrument for Music Buff Effect helps.
• Vivace speeds up magic charging and also makes archery aim faster.
• Fantastic Chorus's green circle grants MP/Stamina regeneration for party members standing in it.
  • This can greatly reduce the need for MP potions.

Chain Slash

• Death Mark debuffs an enemy so that they take more damage from all sources for a duration.
• Chain Burst increases the damage of your other chain skills for a duration.

Crusader

• Shield of Trust's subskills can heal up to 30% wound and 210 HP to 3 players each time when fully ranked up.

Magic

• Party Heal can be used on yourself without stamina loss, though it costs a lot more MP.
• Inspiration can be used to recover MP periodically.