Ahoy mateys! I'm a new-since-the-hungering-deep pirate who sails solo most of the time. I'm generally not good at combat - I get flustered and make mistakes, and die a lot, lol. But I was wondering if any wise pirates out there might have some good tips for PVP direct combat, and/or how to practice for direct combat, to get better. I generally play with cutlass and EoR, because I'm a pretty good sniper, at least against skellies. With the cutlass, I'm more of a flailer, sigh! ;) I'm Xbox, and have been gradually increasing my controller sensitivity over the past several weeks. I really enjoy this game, and have no doubt that I'll continue to do so even if my combat skills stay the same. But it would be cool to improve! Any and all advice appreciated :)
Combat tips?
@roogirl I'm sure someone else will have better advice but I kinda just hope for the best and try not to die lol
Sword lunging is definitely your friend, but only if you manage to stay on target. Don't stick to one weapon either, go in with a cutlass and finish of with a shot (or vica versa). The cooldown / reload is too long to stay alive using just the one I find so definitely mix it up
@roogirl I know some advanced sword combat tips that you may not know.
Firstly, the lunge.
When doing a heavy sword attack, be sure to hold block before doing the attack as it give you more agility to move while charging the attack. You can also jump once you start the heavy to launch yourself very far.
Secondly, the combo.
The sword uses a hit registration combo to keep your attacks at a fast pace. The combo is a series of three light attacks. Each light attack must hit something for the combo to continue. If it doesn’t hit something you will be momentarily penalized, and will not be able to swing for about half a second.
Thirdly, the blocking techniques.
Whilst blocking, you can dodge in a direction of choice, by pressing your jump button, and moving in the direction you want to dodge. You can also perform a fast slash by blocking, then attacking while you still are holding down block.
@roogirl I also personally suggest to try and “get gud” with the pistol, it does half the players health on hit, and can easily finish off a player you’ve already damaged.
I think the EoR is better than the pistol. To be most effective you should be comfortable aiming without zooming in. To do this, you have to get used to where the center of your screen is. An easy way to practice is to aim at something without zooming in, then zoom in to see how close you were, rinse and repeat. You can also practice on skeletons at a progressively increasing distance for progressively better accuracy.
Sword combat tips:
- don't swing unless you will hit something (to keep your 3 hit combo going)
- back up if you will miss because you will be delayed before your next swing.
- get closer and attack if your opponent will miss a swing.
- you have the advantage when you block the 3rd hit of a combo (you can swing again before your opponent) so be ready to walk up and swing
- if your opponent is going to block your 3rd swing, back up or block because they will have first swing after
- try to get to the side of your opponent or behind
- try to hit your opponent from max range with the cutlass. This allows you to take small steps back to make them miss.
- you can move while swinging, effectively increasing the range/width of your swing
- if someone continually blocks try to sword lunge them.
- hide your sword lunge animation with anything you can on the ship to make it harder to dodge. Stepping just around a corner or behind the fat pole in the middle of the ship are my favorites
- Set your course in automatic mode (avoid rocks and island)
- board the enemie when he recieved damage and then
- just anoy them until they are sunk. Vou don't have to fight. Eat a banana, keep your distance, block cutlass attacks, stay away, have masts between you and them.
PvE advice. When fighting a group of skeleton try to do circles around them. It keeps them all from attacking you at once and keeps them grouped so your attack hits more than one of them. When fighting ranged and melee either run towards the ranged one or knock the melee one towards the ranged one until you can hit both and keep the melee in between you and the ranged so he shoots the skeleton and not you.
PvP advice. Watch your ladders and hit them before they reach the top rung. The animation once they hit the top will prevent you from knocking them back off. At the same time, don't give them a shot of you from the bottom of ladder. You can wait until they board, body block them and use blunder to one shot them or at least knock them back off boat. When swinging your sword try to hit them through obstacles like a mast and around corners. So, even if you miss you can keep attacking. Bananas, eat them and guard them. You can eat a banana faster if you spam it canceling the animation. In a sword fight, let them make the first move and wait until they do their 3rd attack to attack back either dodging or blocking during that time. Also, switching to a gun is a good combo breaker. Stay calm.
Im an Xbox player too like you mentioned and have been here since day one so i feel i might be able to help you so yea mate good luck with it
Firstly, for me PVP is a hard thing to master in this game due to many variables that change throughout the fight:
checking if your ships fine,
if theres people on the ship
do i have ammo for my guns,but in reality it just comes down to knowledge of how it works from my eyes.
im a player who goes CQB (Close Quarter Combat) and roles with the blunderbuss and cutlass. but this is due to my own playstyle and realistically thats just a tip in general find your perfect playstyle.
the two pairs i will normally see is
Pistol + EOR
Sword + Blunderand this is just due to the player and thats what decides how they play
but from playing recently the cutlass is normally a must need mainly due to its massive positives and not so many negatives. These being its quite high damage and ability to pick people off at low health. next i would suggest a Pistol or Blunder as the EOR is not the best, personally, in PVP especially in a boarding situation. But It is up to your choice and if you feel good with the weapon e.g how you said you felt good with the EOR keep using it if you want playing and practising is just the main way to improve with it.
Furthermore, PVP has changed a lot due to updates to damage and obviously the change to the barrels which makes boarding a whole lot harder. As well as the cursed cannonballs making things 10x difficult. which makes once your empty on bananas then its quite hard to really continue without the whole crew being dead so you can grab more.
Finally, i suggest joining up with a couple of players because lets be honest sailing alone can be quite boring at times and having a couple mates or randoms there just to talk to and discuss how the voyage has gone is just a nice thing in general.
All together though just enjoy it after a while pvp will come naturally overtime through playing and generally just enjoy the game as much as your doing now so
Good luck with continuing to play and have fun sailing i guess.
Here's my How To: Basic and Advanced Combat Techniques thread that I made up a while back - I'm sure you will find it very useful.
