User:Waterbeat
From SpiralKnights
|
The topic of this article or section is subject to personal opinion, and does not represent any one absolute truth. |
| If you disagree, discuss your concerns on the the talk page before editing. |
This is my guide on how to use the Dread Venom Striker effectively. It is still under construction and I will possibly rewrite or add more information to all sections.
Contents
Dread Venom Striker
The Dread Venom Striker (DVS) has fast swings that deal normal damage, allowing it to be effective against every monster type. I do not recommend using the charge attack
since its doesn't offer a lot of utility. The damage increase on the charge attacks hits is not enough to compensate for the drawbacks: for the duration of the charge attack
you are unable to dodge or block attacks and you cannot adjust your aim.
Dread Venom Striker benefits a lot from damage bonuses and the effects of poison. This is great, because it can inflict poison! When using DVS, you are forced to match your gear to it. Like Echo, you will need armor that provides damage bonus for swords (or a universal damage bonus). DVS is unique in this way: many weapons do just fine without damage bonus. DVS on the other hand really needs all the damage bonus it can get to show its true potential.
Dread Venom Striker benefits more from damage bonuses than for example Final Flourish for 2 reasons.
- It has normal damage which actually means that monsters resist it quite well and,
- It has each of its 5 swings split up in a regular hit and a ghost hit, which means monsters can put their defence to use twice, whereas they can only defend once against a Flourish.
Building a good loadout
In this section I will try to discuss all the aspects of building a loadout around the Dread Venom Striker.
Armor
Shield
When using the Dread Venom Striker, you will often find yourself very close to your enemies. Because its attacks are so fast, you can often attack until right before their attack will hit you, at which point you will quickly raise your shield and block. After you block their attack, you can immediately start attacking them again. You do not have to waste time dodging and kiting enemies. Playing like this requires a strong shield. Pick a shield that defends against the theme status of the level and at least 1 of the main damage types.
For example: In Heart of Ice, you may use Dread Skelly shield because it defends against freeze+shadow+normal. You should not use Crest of Almire since it lacks freeze resistance.
If you are new, I recommend getting Grey Owlite Shield and Dread Skelly Shield first. Those 2 will give you a nice coverage to tackle a lot of missions. Later on also look into (no particular order): Gorgomega, Savage Tortoise, Omegaward, Heater Shield, Dragon Scale Shield.
Barbarous Thorn Shield is a possibility for piercing levels, but I do not recommend using it everywhere. Getting your shield broken and statuses like shock or poison inflicted on you will slow down your killing. Get your damage bonus elsewhere.
Weapons
Electron Vortex
Gran Faust/Divine Avenger
Battle Sprite
Maskeraith
Maskeraith is my favourite pet to use with Dread Venom Striker. Its skills are great ways to increase your damage output and often it gives you that little extra you need to finish off a monster without having to block or dodge its attack.
Key skills: Vengeful Quills, Deadly Shadow Cloak
Quills: I recommend the Vengeful upgrade. There's not a huge difference compared to Virulent Quills, but I prefer Vengeful. Overall this is a great skill to increase your damage. The quills do a lot of damage when hit and they also help spread poison around faster. Combined with a fast recharge makes this skill perfect for smaller groups or single enemies that are otherwise hard to take down, like a Giant Lichen Colony. Make sure to have the appropriate damage type equipped as your sprite's harness.
Shadow Cloak: Deadly Shadow Cloak greatly outperforms Vengeful Shadow Cloak. Do not get the latter under any circumstance. This skill works great with any weapon, but as we know, Dread Venom Striker benefits more from damage bonuses than other weapons. Deadly Shadow Cloak gives a huge damage bonus for 2 seconds; this may seem short, but its sufficient to decimate a large group of monsters that got caught in your vortex.
Drakon
While I do prefer the Maskeraith, Knights who have other Sprites as their companion needn't worry! Drakon has some useful skills that allow for interesting combinations.
Key skills: Scorching Barrier, Firestorm
Flame Barrier: Pick Scorching Barrier. The extra orb and the size increase both help to increase the amount of hits you can get in with the barrier. The Scorching Barrier's damage is often very helpful to take down stronger monsters before they can launch their attacks. For example Almirian Crusaders will take so much damage from your DVS and the barrier when using an elemental harness, that you can usually kill them before they can pose any real threat.
Firestorm: Both ultimates are viable in my opinion. Frenzied Firestorm is nice with the party wide Damage Boost while Explosive Firestorm has a lot of extra damage through explosionticks that can deal ~50 damage per tick. I love Explosive Firestorm with elemental harness for taking care of large groups of Zombies, but against other monsters Frenzied Firestorm might be more useful.
Seraphynx
Seraphynx has 3 useful abilities. This pet works well when you solo with DVS, because monsters have less HP and you can do without the extra damage Maskeraith or Drakon provide. It obviously also works well in a party, where heart attack can heal your teammates and angelic aura can protect them while attacking.
Ray of Light: Pick Disintegration Ray: Lowering defense synergizes well with Dread Venom Striker. Use it on a group of enemies that you caught in your vortex to hit multiple targets, then proceed to hit all of them with strong DVS hits.
Heart Attack: I recommend Iron Heart Attack, because unlike Violent Heart Attack, it doesn't have the animation that can blur your vision a little bit. Use this on vortexed enemies to help out your teammates.
Angelic Aura: Pick Valkyrian Aura. When under a lot of pressure, this aura lets you safely charge up your Vortex bomb at maximum CTR to change the tide of battle. The aura is also useful during offense: the aura will take a few hits for you so you can focus completely on killing your enemies. For instance, this works well when killing a group of vortexed fiends: without the aura, there's a good chance you'll take a chair to the face.
