Difference between revisions of "User:Waterbeat"
From SpiralKnights
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{{showhide| Trojan |content= [[Trojan]]s are fairly easy to beat. The strategy with DVS is no different than with any other weapon: wait for it to swing its mace, then attack its back using your regular strikes. The charge attack offers only a little bit of extra damage, but forces you to finish the full combo, which might get you hit. Use Deadly Shadow Cloak after it swings its mace to take it out really fast. If you know a Trojan is going to spawn, you can prepare a charge and boost it with deadly shadow cloak. I only recommend doing it in area's where you won't get swarmed by other monsters when the Trojan(s) spawn. If that is the case, then deal with the other monsters first by using standard DVS tactics. }} | {{showhide| Trojan |content= [[Trojan]]s are fairly easy to beat. The strategy with DVS is no different than with any other weapon: wait for it to swing its mace, then attack its back using your regular strikes. The charge attack offers only a little bit of extra damage, but forces you to finish the full combo, which might get you hit. Use Deadly Shadow Cloak after it swings its mace to take it out really fast. If you know a Trojan is going to spawn, you can prepare a charge and boost it with deadly shadow cloak. I only recommend doing it in area's where you won't get swarmed by other monsters when the Trojan(s) spawn. If that is the case, then deal with the other monsters first by using standard DVS tactics. }} | ||
| − | {{showhide| Chromalisk |content= [[Chromalisk]]s are slow and usually come in groups. Just place an Electron Vortex and use Vengeful Quills with a Piercing Harness to take them down easily with DVS slashes. Seraphynx users can use Disintegration Ray to end them faster or Valkyrian Aura to make sure they don't take a random hit. When there are Wolvers mixed with Chromalisks, I recommend using Valkyrian Aura over Disintegration Ray. }} | + | {{showhide| Chromalisk |content= [[Chromalisk]]s are slow and usually come in groups. Just place an Electron Vortex and use Vengeful Quills with a Piercing Harness to take them down easily with DVS slashes. Seraphynx users can use Disintegration Ray to end them faster or Valkyrian Aura to make sure they don't take a random hit. When there are Wolvers mixed with Chromalisks, I recommend using Valkyrian Aura over Disintegration Ray. You can also use Heart Attack if your team needs it, especially when it's just Chromalisks. }} |
{{showhide| Wolver |content= [[Wolver]]s are pretty much handled the same way as Chromalisks. They are just a little harder to catch in your vortex, so dont be afraid to place a couple down and slice 'em when you have them all together. Quills or Cloak will help you to kill them fast. Valkyrian Aura is useful because sometimes they will try to bite you, so with the Aura you don't have to worry about that. }} | {{showhide| Wolver |content= [[Wolver]]s are pretty much handled the same way as Chromalisks. They are just a little harder to catch in your vortex, so dont be afraid to place a couple down and slice 'em when you have them all together. Quills or Cloak will help you to kill them fast. Valkyrian Aura is useful because sometimes they will try to bite you, so with the Aura you don't have to worry about that. }} | ||
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{{showhide| Rocket Puppy |content= Even though the [[Rocket Puppy]] is part of the family of Gun Puppies, I feel like it deserves its own mention here. Instead of bullets, these fire homing rockets. To deal with them, you just slash them with DVS. When they fire a rocket, raise your shield and it will absorb the hit without losing health. Then continue to slash until it's dead. You shouldn't have too much trouble with these, but they are still dangerous to a party, similar to how Howlitzers are. If you let them fire rockets around the room, people will get hit unexpectedly, taking lots of damage and getting set on fire. When you encounter these, make sure to deal with them appropriately and absorb their rockets. }} | {{showhide| Rocket Puppy |content= Even though the [[Rocket Puppy]] is part of the family of Gun Puppies, I feel like it deserves its own mention here. Instead of bullets, these fire homing rockets. To deal with them, you just slash them with DVS. When they fire a rocket, raise your shield and it will absorb the hit without losing health. Then continue to slash until it's dead. You shouldn't have too much trouble with these, but they are still dangerous to a party, similar to how Howlitzers are. If you let them fire rockets around the room, people will get hit unexpectedly, taking lots of damage and getting set on fire. When you encounter these, make sure to deal with them appropriately and absorb their rockets. }} | ||
| − | {{showhide| Jelly |content= [[Jelly | Jellies]] }} | + | {{showhide| Jelly |content= [[Jelly | Jellies]] are easy to take care of with the standard EV+DVS combination. Use Quills with a Shadow harness to kill them faster. }} |
| − | {{showhide| Kat |content= }} | + | {{showhide| Kat |content= [[Kat]]s are tricky to keep inside the vortex. I recommend placing a few vortexes down until you catch a few of them and then kill them. You can also just disregard getting them in a vortex and just slash them with your DVS. They are more a nuisance rather than a threat.}} |
| − | {{showhide| Mecha Knight |content= }} | + | |
| − | {{showhide| Gorgo |content= }} | + | {{showhide| Mecha Knight |content= [[Mecha Knight]]s are the elite soldiers of the Construct family. Unlike other constructs, these robots are dangerous, so use your best combination on them. Drakon users will use Scorching barrier and DVS strikes to subdue them, they tend to keep running towards you as you knock them back, so all of your hits will land. With experience you will learn if you'll knock them over or not, this will depend on your ASI as well. Go hard and shield if you're not gonna make it. Maskeraith users should catch them in a vortex and use Deadly Shadow Cloak. Mecha Knights have strong attacks that will break any shield that isnt specialised easily. They are one of the reasons why a strong shield is mandatory with DVS. You have to get close to them and you can't really dodge their attacks. }} |
| − | {{showhide| Devilite |content= }} | + | |
| − | {{showhide| Thwacker |content= }} | + | {{showhide| Gorgo |content= [[Gorgo]]'s are strong monsters of the Fiend family. Their range can be surprising, so be sure to be ready to raise your shield. I recommend disposing of them quickly with your best abilities. Use Firestorm or Scorching barrier, Deadly Shadow cloak and Valkyrian Aura and kill them with DVS. You don't really need to put up a vortex because they don't really get knocked back anyway. You might even 'slide' off of them while attacking (Usually not with Deadly Shadow cloak, they die fast enough then). }} |
| − | {{showhide| Demo |content= }} | + | |
| + | {{showhide| Devilite |content= [[Devilite]]s are pretty easy to beat because they have low HP, but when they turn into Overtimers they become dangerous. Try placing a vortex and luring them into it and use Quills or Firestorm or Aura depending on your pet, after which you can slice them with DVS. You will definitely be able to make good use of your shield against these, make sure to equip a shadow shield with the correct status resistance. }} | ||
| + | |||
| + | {{showhide| Thwacker |content= [[Darkfang Thwacker]]s are the elite soldiers of the Gremlin family. They carry a shield on their back which can interfere with your vortex, but I still recommend placing a vortex and using your best abilities on them. Quills or Deadly shadow cloak work best. With Drakon I would use Firestorm on them. Just like with Mecha Knights, be careful when meeting them head on. Attack hard with DVS and shield if they are going to attack, I find it harder to predict when exactly they will do their attack, so Shielding a bit earlier is recommended. Better to block for a bit longer, than to get hit occasionally and suffer a lot of damage and the Stun status, which will further reduce your DPS. }} | ||
| + | |||
| + | {{showhide| Demo |content= [[Demo]]'s }} | ||
{{showhide| Ghostmane Stalker |content= }} | {{showhide| Ghostmane Stalker |content= }} | ||
{{showhide| Lichen |content= }} | {{showhide| Lichen |content= }} | ||
Revision as of 18:13, 31 May 2015
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The topic of this article or section is subject to personal opinion, and does not represent any one absolute truth. |
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This is my guide on how to use the Dread Venom Striker effectively. First I go over each part of your loadout: which armor, side weapons, shields, pets and optional trinkets. After that, I try to describe some effective ways to deal with each type of monster. Later I might add a Video section, since that would demonstrate more practical situations, but I haven't found a way to record yet (tried OBS and I got blue screen of death twice upon pressing the start record hotkey...). Sometimes I have little Hide/Unhide boxes that explain some things a bit more in depth. I only put those for subjects that are relevant to this guide, but in the future I might add them for more general sections (for example explaining more in depth how shield defense and status resistance compare or perhaps some hints on how to get decent UV'd gear).
Contents
Dread Venom Striker
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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 means that monsters actually 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
When using Dread Venom Striker, there are a few things you should consider when picking your armor. First of all, you want to get as much damage bonus for swords as you can get, preferably maximum, but ultra is acceptable. Next is status resist: some status will drastically lower your damage output as well as make you die faster. Then you can weigh in damage type, because it lets you preserve your Health more easily, which allows you to play more aggressively. Lowest priority is additional ASI, which is always nice to have, but does not outweigh the advantage that damage bonus, status resistance and defence provide.
As we know, Dread Venom Striker benefits more than other weapons from damage increase buffs. This goes both ways though, which means it's also more vulnerable to damage penalties. This makes Poison a very dangerous status when using DVS. Getting your damage reduced makes monsters live longer and harder to disrupt, while at the same time you are also taking more damage from their hits and unable to heal. Shock is a known strong status that you do not want to suffer from for too long. It stops you from using your Vortex Bomb and makes it dangerous to get close to monsters in general, because you are defenseless when you spasm.
Next in line are Fire and Freeze. Both are very strong statuses, but Fire doesn't stop you from killing monsters. Too much fire will drain you of Health and force you to play less aggressively though. Freeze is again a very dangerous status that can hamper your killing and survival. It breaks after a hit though, so your strong shield will let you take that hit after which you can dash out of harm's way. Teammates can also free you, so thats why its lower in priority.
The lowest priority is Stun and then Curse. Stun is a status you will not get inflicted by often and even if you do, it doesn't have a very long duration. Curse is even less common and won't hurt you too much if you don't have a penalty to it and 3 weapon slots.
Snarbolax set: This armor set provides 2x damage bonus medium, for a total of damage bonus very high. It also gives you Poison and Freeze resistances, both useful.
Poison, Shock, Fire, Freeze, Shadow, Normal are all great UVs to get on your snarbolax set.
Black Kat set: The main selling point for this armor is its unique universal damage bonus of high on each piece, the full set can give you maximum damage bonus for all weapons. It also has a MSI low on each piece which is useful for dodging. The set has penalties to all status except Stun and Freeze though, getting poisoned at -4 resistance will be frustrating. Same goes for shock and fire. It does have good Freeze resistance.
Skolver set: Same as the Snarbolax set but with Piercing defence instead of Shadow. Also loses all of Snarbolax' poison resistance, but gets some extra freeze resistance.
Chaos set: The status penalties usually make it a bad choice for a DVS loadout. Nevertheless, it could have its place in a level that doesn't have a lot of status, to help speed up your Vortex charge time.
You can equip combinations of these sets depending on the situation and what your personal loadout lacks. For example running with a BKC and a Snarbolax Coat will still get you ultra damage bonus, which is enough. There are other armor sets that give medium damage bonus against certain monster families (chroma lines, valkyrie set, radiant silvermail), but most area's have more than 1 monster family, so these armors will usually not do the job.
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, Crest of Almire.
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
This section is about the other weapons you can use with DVS.
Electron Vortex
A vortex bomb has great synergy with many weapons, DVS is definitely one of them. I recommend always equipping one, unless there is an experienced Vortex user on your party and even then, bring it just in case. I prefer the Electron Vortex because it can do Shock, which helps keeping the monsters in place after it explodes. The alternatives being Graviton Vortex and Obsidian Crusher don't have this advantage. Obsidian Crusher has a useful Poison status, but DVS can already inflict that and if you have a Maskeraith, that's a third possible source of Poison. Don't be afraid to chain a few vortexes: this sucks in more monsters that you can proceed to cut up with added damage from pet attacks.
Gran Faust
Use your DVS as a lead attack, follow up with a Gran Faust swing to finish them off or to knock them back/disrupt them. I use this attack style mostly against Gremlins and Slimes because some of them (Thwackers and Lichen) can be dangerous when staying close for too long. This sword also offers a nice defense with its wide swing and knockback, for those situations where you get cornered.
Handguns
You can use a variety of handguns to help you reach switches. Another idea is to use a Tortofist to create a wall of spikes you can push enemies against with DVS, providing damage from spikes and stopping DVS knockback that sometimes causes your Ghost hits to miss if you aren't careful. I dont recommend actually using the Tortofist yourself, but there's definitely some synergy when a party member is using it.
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 this makes the 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 even more from damage bonuses than other weapons. Initially Deadly Shadow Cloak turns you invisible, after 15 seconds it ends and gives you a huge damage buff for 2 seconds; this may seem short, but its sufficient to decimate a large group of monsters that got caught in your vortex. The cloak ends prematurely if you start attacking or charging, so you can decide when to activate the buff. A super-combination is when you activate the 2 seconds of damage buff from Deadly Shadow Cloak, followed by picking up a damage buff pickup. Both buffs will stack and make your damage go through the roof.
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: it 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: with the aura, you don't need to worry about the chairs being thrown at you.
Trinkets and Perk
Heart Pendants should be the first trinkets you consider. Keep in mind you don't really need trinkets to play with DVS, but the extra HP these give can allow for more aggressive play. You can risk more and sometimes it creates some spectacular combinations. Grand Solstice Ring and Gift of Autumn are possible alternatives to Penta-Heart Pendants.
An Elite Slash Module can help you reach maximum damage bonus when using the Snarbolax set for example, this is probably the only situation where I would drop a health trinket. I wouldn't take a Slash Module over a Health trinket if my loadout had damage bonus ultra. In that situation I'd prefer +6 hp over the extra low damage bonus.
Status trinkets and Defence trinkets aren't worth the slot. Status trinkets (+2) are also weaker than the Status Perk (+3) your pet can equip. I usually use the HP perk on my pet as well, but the status perks can be useful to reach immunity. You can also equip a Damage bonus perk if your loadout demands it. MSI is useful but not necessary with DVS, since you rarely kite (except when charging vortex, but you can do it just fine without MSI). On the contrary, most of the time, its you who are chasing the monsters, not the other way around!
The Monsters
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Video Section
Will try to record some video's myself in a few weeks. Can't promise anything because recent tries with OBS resulted in nothing more than 2 Blue screens before giving up.
