"How I win fights without knowing anything" - CollegeTuition's BDO Awakening Ninja PvP Guide

So you're creating an Awakening Ninja and want to learn how to play PvP with him. Well, maybe I can help with a couple of things. In this video, I'll do my best to give you a crash course in the fundamentals of PvP with Ninja. I'm known as CollegeTuition or AllLuckNoSkill, and this is my Ninja PvP

guide

based on how I play the class. Captures In BDO, combat largely revolves around crowd controls, or CC for short. Your CCs are abilities that harden, stun, float, bind, or knock down. There are no CC breaks, so landing a single CC can lead to a combo, and a combo usually guarantees a kill.

This means that whoever catches their opponent with a CC first will usually win the fight. Therefore,

fights

will largely involve both players trying to CC each other, while also avoiding being CCed. There are 3 ways to avoid CCs: iframe, which blocks all CCs and damage; super armor, which blocks all CC, but does not block damage; or front guard, which only blocks CC and damage from the front. So, to CC your opponent, you'll want to know not only which of your CC abilities, but also how to use them to bypass your opponent's defenses. In other words, you'll want to know what your victory conditions are.

Well, as a Ninja, your main winning condition is to get behind your opponent's front guard. Keep this in mind, because this will largely be the main motif of the

ninja

you see in each fight. No matter how you end up catching them, it all starts with getting behind your opponent. So let's look at some ways to do it. Block jump. Probably the most iconic and simplest Ninja skill. You simply change Q to W to instantly teleport behind your opponent and toughen them up. You can even delay pressing W for a bit and you will stay in the iframe, but don't wait too long as there is a time limit.

Smokescreen. You may be tempted to use this ability with quickspaces, but it's actually much better to use the spacebar and chain it to another ability. And you can even do this with certain movement skills like Ninja Step. So by combining Ninja Step with Smokescreen, you'll be able to place Smokescreen behind someone by doing W+RMB on the space bar. Shadow stomp. This skill has a fast version and a slow version, but you'll almost always want to use the fast one. To use the quick version, there are certain skills you need to chain. The most common is the Shuriken throw.

So you would first cast Shuriken and then Shadow Stomp. RMB and then S+E. However, this skill only attacks forward in the direction you are facing. So you'll also have to combine it with a movement skill to first get behind your opponent and then quickly perform a camera roll before Shadow Stomping. You can also activate the quick Shadow Stomp by chaining it directly with Ghost Step, Ghost Greeting, or even Smokescreen. So if you use one of these abilities to get behind your opponent, you can skip the Shuriken Throw to get an even faster Shadow Stomp. You can also chain together Leg Sweep and Shuriken Flight, but their uses are much more situational.

Decapitating the dead. The idea here is the same as with Smokescreen and Shadow Stomp: you need to get behind your opponent, then Shift + E to use the decapitation. But unlike Smokescreen and Shadow Stomp, you're not limited to chaining it with Ninja Step or Shuriken Throw. This allows you to mix things up a bit with other skills. For example, you can take advantage of Oni Shadow's move to get behind your opponent and then Decapitate. Or you can use Smoke Screen, and you can press the space bar again to activate Concealment, and you can use that move to get behind your opponent and then Decapitate.

Murderous intent. My favorite ability from Awakening Ninja. Kind of like Shadow Stomp, there are two versions of this ability. If you simply press Shift + LMB it will create a horizontal bar, which isn't bad, but you'll usually want to press RMB first. What the RMB does is put you in what is called a transition stance. If you press Shift + LMB while in this stance, you will do a downward slash. This version of the ability has a very interesting hitbox, where if you use it at the correct distance and angle, you can make the attack land behind your opponent despite starting your attack from in front of them.

And that's just the icing on the cake. You can always use Silent Charge to get behind your opponent. RMB to enter transition stance, then Shift + W for silent charge, then camera roll, into Shift + LMB for Murderous. Now you may have noticed a common theme with these skills. They are fast, have long range, are protected, or a combination of all three. And that's exactly why we choose to use these particular abilities to trap our opponents. When you look at your kit, you'll see many more skills that have CC besides these. But just because a skill can CC doesn't mean they're good candidates for trapping.

An ability like Fox Claw, for example, has a CC of stiffness, but doesn't meet any of our criteria above. That is why the skill is not suitable for use as a catch, but rather used in combos, which we will talk about later. Ok, so getting behind your opponent makes sense against Frontal Guards, but what about iframes and Super Armor? Well, Iframes are just total immunity against everything, so there's not much to do there, but we do have a solution for Super Armor. There's one mechanic I haven't mentioned yet: Grabs. Death's Descent in the pre-

awakening

and Flash Bondage in the Awakening.

Both used with E. Grabs are a special case, as they are not exactly a type of CC, but are instead skills that can bypass Frontal Guard or Super Armor by applying their own CC. However, the main reason I mentioned these two skills separately is because I don't want you to think of them in the same way as the other skills we just talked about. Don't think of your grabs as simply a CC to trap your opponent. Instead, keep them in mind as tools to use specifically against Super Armor. This way, you can put your opponent in a sort of Catch-22 situation where he can't rely on either his Front Guard or his Super Armor.

If they try to use Super Armor to prevent you from getting behind them, then they become predictable and you will be able to grab them easily. But if they try to mix up Front Guard abilities, then well, you know how to deal with them. That's why even despite the existence of Super Armor, your victory condition doesn't change. Because as long as you have your grips, your opponent will never be able to simply use super armor. And as long as you keep trying to get behind them, they won't be able to simply rely on their front guards.

Movement They say that the best defense is a good attack, and that is very true in the case of Ninja. In Pre-Awakening there's no way to stay still and be protected indefinitely, and while you have Q Block as Awakening, using it actually hurts more than it helps. Instead, Ninja survives by being constantly on the move. After all, you're a Ninja, not a Tank! So don't think in terms of how you can block the damage, think about how you can avoid it altogether. So, remember how we used to use skills like Ghost Greeting, Shadow Stomp, and Murderous Intent to trap our opponents?

One thing you may have noticed is that while these abilities are your catches, they also move you a considerable distance as part of the ability itself. Well, it turns out that this same move we use to attack our opponent will also be the move that keeps us safe. We'll take a page from martial arts here and use their philosophy when thinking about Ninja: "The hand that hits also blocks." So let's take a look at the skills that drive him. We have Ghost Step, Ninja Step, Silent Charge, Murderous Intent, Ghost Greeting, Shadow Stomp, Shadow Slash, Concealment, Oni Shadow.

Just before we were using these skills to trap our opponent, but now, by simply chaining them together, these same skills are also the ones that will move us a great distance. And that's a key idea here for Ninja. It is not a class where you separate movement from attack and defense. Your attacks are your movement and your movement is your defense. But of course, in real combat you won't simply move in a straight line. After all, you're fighting an opponent, not running a marathon. So instead, you'll want to move around your opponent while attacking them at the same time, alternating between movement and CC.

Let me give you an example to illustrate what I mean by that. Let's say you start the fight with Silent Charge into Murderous Intent. This serves as both a move to get within range of your opponent and an attack to try to trap them. Fail, so right after entering Ghost Step, then switch C. This serves as a defense to block your opponent's counterattack and as preparation for your next attack with Shuriken Malice. Your opponent uses it with Super Armor, so you do the Phantom Step again. This time it acts as a defense to prevent your opponent from grabbing you, but also as a move to get behind your opponent, immediately allowing you to perform a Shadow Stomp.

But your opponent also manages to block this, so this time you use the Ninja Step. Like Ghost Step, Ninja Step also serves as a defense to prevent your opponent's counterattack, while moving you behind your opponent at the same time so you can attack with Smokescreen. Unfortunately, Smokescreen also misses, so you immediately use Concealment to get their move behind them again and then attack with Decapitation. However, he becomes super armored. Now that you've used up most of your pre-

awakening

captures, you use Ghost Step and C Swap to defend yourself, but also to prepare for a Killing Intent later on.

At this point, your opponent has stood still in Super Armor, so you try to grab him, but he was smart enough to stop in time. Now you enter Blockjump. This defends against your opponent's counterattack and also attacks your opponent immediately afterwards. But your opponent was able to get out again, so now you take a Ghost Step once more to defend yourself. Your opponent tries to retreat, and since you're in the Awakening stance from the C shift above, you go into Silent Charge and Killing Intent, and the whole process repeats until you catch your opponent. So you can see how almost every skill you use has two purposes, both to prepare your next attack and to defend against your opponent's counterattack.

Ghost Step is a recurring theme here. You want to be constantly thinking about it, weaving it in between your attacks. The C exchange and transition stance are also quite important as they give you frontal protection, so you want to make sure to look at your opponent when he uses them. And although many of your captures are technically unprotected, this combination of movement and attack is what allows you to stay safe while using them. You can think of it like this: you have attacks within your movement and you have movement within your attacks. To move and fight like a Ninja is to stop your opponent's attack and counter yours.

Cancellations Many Ninja abilities can be canceled with animation. Canceling the animation allows you to interrupt the skill mid-stream and start a different skill. There are three main ways to cancel an ability: Ghost Step Malice or Smokescreen. Technically there is also the option to do it with Brace, and also Seamless, but it is very situational, so we won't worry about them. All you need to do is press the keys to use one of those skills, and you'll instantly transition to that skill, canceling any skills you were currently using. So, as a quick example, let's say you use your Rabam ability, Illusion of Restraint.

This puts you into Pre-Awakening and you can now press Q at any time to use Malice immediately. When you do this, you'll notice that your Front Guard is also gone, which makes sense if you think about it, because you canceled Illusion, which is what gave you the Front Guard in the first place. Now, one of the reasons you might want to do this is that if you cancel Illusion at the right time, you can still take the damage, but without having to wait for the full animation to play. However, not all skills will be like this, so let's look at some other reasons why you might want to cancel the animation: Blade Spin.

The most common way to cancel Blade Spin is probably with Shuriken Malice. This is mainly used to cancel the ending animation to deal more damage, sort of like with Illusion of Restraint. But remember, canceling with Malice this way will also end the Super Armor early. However, you don't have to wait until the end to cancel Blade Spin. In fact, you can cancel it at any point in its animation. So you can use Blade Spin defensively during your move, which you then cancel with Ghost Step or Smokescreen to try and trap your opponent. You won't get all of Blade Spin's damage this way, but the goal will be to CC your opponent, so that doesn't really matter.

Decapitating the dead. Since this abilityhas a fairly long animation with only a very short iframe in the middle, it can often be risky to use. So, to make it safer, you'll usually cancel it by holding W + F for Ghost Step or Spacebar for Smokescreen. Unlike Blade Spin, this ability can only be canceled during specific points in the animation, so holding down one of those two abilities will cancel it right after the CC sounds. However, this means that you don't take the damage, so if you managed to CC your opponent, you can choose not to cancel it.

Block jump. Since this skill has an iframe, teleport, and CC built in, it may seem a bit redundant to try to cancel this skill. The problem, however, is that you are actually vulnerable when you respawn behind your opponent. After using Blockjump, you might have second thoughts and decide that maybe appearing behind your opponent isn't such a great idea after all. You can press S to go back, but sometimes even that isn't an option. This is where you can cancel it with Smokescreen or Ghost Step. However, canceling with Ghost Step has an interesting property. If you target your opponent and Ghost Step, you'll actually teleport towards them anyway, and then Ghost Step will be behind them instead of your current position.

And all of that will be iframe. However, you must be precise when pressing the keys, touching W + F at exactly the same time; otherwise, the game will simply interpret it as if you just pressed W. If you're having trouble doing this, you can enter your settings and set up a keybind for WW evasion. This way, pressing that key combination would accomplish exactly the same thing as pressing W + F. Transition Posture. If you were to change from the awakening pose to the transition pose and then back, there will be a slight delay before you can do

anything

else.

This is where you can use Ghost Step to cancel that delay and use another ability or return to the transition stance again. Since the swap animation is Frontal Guard and Ghost Step is iframe, this allows you to continually switch between Frontal Guard and Iframe, and can be used to temporarily stop an opponent. This actually ends up being better than just using Frontal Guard alone, as the iframe gives you a bit of time for your Frontal Guard to recharge. But still, remember that you're a

ninja

, so try to rely on your movement to protect yourself, not this.

Now be careful, not all skills can be usefully canceled and some skills can't even be canceled at all. For example, you should let the full Serpent Ascension and Katana Shower animation play, leaving yourself vulnerable to CCs during Serpent or grabs during Katana Shower. Black Moonlight, on the other hand, can be canceled, but only before the CC lands. For these types of skills, you'll definitely want to think twice before discarding them. In general, these are some of the most frequently canceled abilities, but it is by no means an exhaustive list of all abilities that can be canceled.

In fact, almost half of the abilities in our kit can be canceled in some way. So I encourage you to experiment with other skills to get an idea of ​​which skills you can cancel and when, and adapt them to your needs. Combos The reason we use combos is simply because our abilities simply do more damage when combined in a certain way. The aerial attack or downward attack you see in the skill descriptions are what are known as special attack modifiers, which give the skill additional damage when the target is floating or on the ground, respectively. So it makes sense that people want to put a lot of emphasis on optimizing their combos, since it's the flashiest part of a fight and is ultimately what really kills your opponent.

However, I personally think that comboing your opponent is probably the last thing you need to worry about when learning Ninja. If you and your opponent have the same team score, and you're both actually trying to kill each other, so neither of you are running full DP builds, then you don't need very elaborate combos to kill your opponent. So your skill cap for fighting an opponent will depend more on how well you can catch your opponent and how well you can avoid getting caught, rather than how well you can combo. BDO is a very fast paced game and also Ninja is a fast paced class.

Abilities will be constantly on or off throughout a fight, so when you trap your opponent, it's a matter of deciding which ability you trapped them with and what abilities you have available off cooldown. So that means that what you really need to know about combos is how to start a combo with every possible catch and still be able to do that combo even if certain abilities are on cooldown. That's a lot of variations you'll need to prepare for, so I don't think you should start learning combos by looking at long optimized sequences of skills that you have to memorize and repeat word for word.

Instead, you want to understand the anatomy of a combo and what makes a combo work, so you can prepare a lot of simple combos that you can then adapt on the fly to any situation. And that's why before all that, you'll want to make sure you understand how CCs work in BDO. Now there are several

guide

s that explain the mechanics in detail, but here's a simplified TL;DR: First, there are three categories of CC: Stiff Hits and Everything Else. You can CC anyone twice in a row before they have a chance to recover. , but Stiff counts as 0.7 CC;

Oddly specific, I know. And smashes count as 0 CC, but only work on opponents who already have CC. So any time you reach or exceed 2 CC, you will not be able to CC your opponent again for 5 seconds. Another way to think about this is that you can do a total of 3 CCs if the first or second CC are rigid, but only 2 CCs if neither of them are rigid. Secondly, the CCs will overwrite each other, not accumulate. So if you stun someone and then harden them, the rigid will immediately overwrite the stun and you'll also get 0.7 added to your CC count.

But, if you use two of the same CCs one after the other very quickly, only the first CC will take effect and contribute to the CC count. The second CC is completely ignored. And third, Stiff and Stun doesn't work against someone who is already floating, tied up, or knocked down. So if you understand this, you won't come up with a new combo for every different skill you use. Just

knowing

what type of CC you used will be enough to determine how to proceed with the combo. Let me explain. Let's start with a very standard combo, where you're Awakened and you trap your opponent by toughening them with Killing Intent.

Rigid is very short so you immediately enter Serpent Ascension. And that's 1.7 CC. Now you DPS with Blade Spin which puts you into Pre-Awakening, then you go into Malice, and then you go into Shadow Stomp, and now you hit the CC cap. And if they're not dead yet, you can add more DPS, like perhaps Fatal Blow into Illusion of Restraint. Now, what if this time you start in pre-awakening and trap your opponent with Blockjump? You decide to try and grab the Death's Descent and that's 1.7 CC. And despite opening completely different than last time, you can still Blade Spin into Malice and Shadow Stomp for DPS and second CC.

Then you trade C and finish them off with Serpent Ascension, which now only deals damage because you've already reached the CC cap. So did you notice how in both examples, we started with completely different abilities and ended with completely different abilities, but still used Blade Spin on Malice and Shadow Stomp for the DPS and the second CC? This is what I mean. It didn't matter that it was Murderous Intent and Serpent Ascension the first time, or that it was Blockjump and Death's Descent the second time. In both cases they were still 1.7 CC, so you're still good for DPS, then Shadow Stomp before hitting the CC cap.

So you didn't need to memorize both examples in their entirety. Because now you know that every time you get that first CC, you can potentially Blade Spin into Malice and Shadow Stomp. So if we expand on this example and open with, say, I don't know, Boss Slaughter this time, you can do the exact same thing. But no matter how complicated the combos get, the general idea remains the same: you want to input 1 CC, do filler DPS, get a second CC, do more filler DPS, and then die or back off. you reached the DC limit. Today's goal isn't really to show you all the possible combos, or even the best combos.

There are too many combinations to cover in this video, and people create new combinations all the time. Instead, I want to focus more on how to think about combos, so you can execute some simple combos and be able to win

fights

right away. But hey, if you want to take the time to optimize the timing of each skill in your combo and get the most damage possible, then do it. But if not, you don't have to worry either. A slightly unoptimized combo will still be better than running into a situation where you don't know how to combo someone at all.

Fishing CC Alright, that's good and all. But what if I don't know what skills my opponents have? With 23 classes in the game at the time of this recording and more on the way, do I really need to spend months learning every frontal guard and super armor for every class? What if I'm tired of watching guides right now and want to jump into PvP right now? Well my friend, then let me teach you this weird trick that everyone hates: CC fishing or as I like to call it, how to win fights in Ninja without

knowing

anything

. If you've ever gone fishing, no matter if it's in real life or in BDO, you'll know that a lot of it is just throwing out a hook and seeing if a fish will bite.

You are not hunting a particular fish, you just know that there are fish in the area and if you try to fish there you will get a fish or you can try somewhere else. So, as the name implies, CC fishing is simply throwing a CC and seeing if it works on your opponent or not. You're not predicting that they'll use a particular skill, you just know that if you try to CC you'll be able to catch them or you'll be able to back off safely. And while this may seem like a bad strategy where you're just throwing out Hail Marys, it actually turns out that CC fishing is somehow an inherent part of BDO combat.

See, the thing about BDO is that each class will have ways of keeping themselves protected most of the time. It won't be the same as what Ninjas do, but they will have their own ways. While it is ideal to know the exact ability your opponent will use and counter it strongly, your opponent may have too many options available. So CC fishing is your way of forcing your opponent to choose one option, reducing the number of remaining options he has and making them more predictable. And this isn't a reckless move either, because the main reason CC fishing works is because of BDO's design decisions.

See, in 2018, the developers balanced the game with the idea of ​​most skills having CC or protection, but not both. Which means that even if your CC is blocked by your opponent's protected skills, that skill won't give you CC back. Not getting a CC doesn't mean you lose, it just means you have to try again. So CC fishing is something all classes can do, and many classes do it to some extent. It's just that of all the classes in BDO, Ninja is a class that can do this continuously and even base their entire playstyle around it. Between our variety of quick grabs, the ability to cancel most abilities, the reason for getting behind the opponent, and even the way we attack and move.

All of this complements CC fishing very well. The only thing you really have to worry about are those skills that CC multiple times, or are shielded and CC you at the same time, like the basic Awakening skills. Those are the ones you should memorize, regardless of the strategy you are using. But you will discover them as you fight more and more opponents. At the end of the day, I by no means recommend CC fishing as the strategy you should employ. I'm just saying that being a natural part of the game, it can be a good starting point if you want to jump right into the battle.

After all, when you're just starting out, the important thing is that you feel comfortable with your moves, captures, cancels, and combos. Then, over time, you will be able to develop better strategies for individual classes. As they say, practice makes perfect. Conclusion We have reached the end of the video. Today we discuss the fundamental ideas of PvP as a Ninja. We've focused on why we do the things we do, not just how to do them. So as you close this video today, it doesn't matter if you've forgotten the exact examples I gave, because the important thing is that you now know how to think like a Ninja.

Remember: Get behind your opponent's front guard Use your movement to stay alive And combine your offense and defense together And ultimately be flexible in your thinking, adapt what youWe talk today in your style. As Bruce Lee would say: "be water, my friend." So good luck and have fun.