Basic Combat

Basic Combat
A How-To on Surviving in Battle!

Alright lets start with our basics, when you're first starting off in Mabinogi you have a Ego Training sword, at this point everyone knows about the Combat Skills, but lets review them!


Melee Combat Mastery
Leveling this skill will increase physical damage, max HP, and balance while using melee weaponry.


Defense
Defending allows a player to block an single enemy attack.
The Stat of Defense Aids you in Damage Blocked
The %'tage of Protection lowers enemies rate of critical hit upon you.
You will be knocked back from Firebolt, Smash, Or Magnum Shot, But Magnum shot fails to knockback when using a shield.


Smash
Smash is used to attack an opponent with a powerful slash, blow, or sometimes kick :3~
Smash is NOT counter-acted by Defense, it can be stopped with the Skill Counterattack.
Smash is stopped by using normal attacks, it is stopped at a 100% rate if done properly.


Counterattack
Counterattack uses a %'tage of the players damage with a %'tage of the opponents damage to calculate the total damage done by the skill, this skill applies kickback, or knockback to the receiver, sending them to the floor a little ways away from the user.
THIS DOES NOT WORK against The following:

• Magic
• Windmill
• Ranged Attacks (Bows & Crossbows)

Using this skill will constantly eat your Stamina until impact, and you may not move while the skill is active.

Counter also does not work on all monsters! Some field bosses can not be counterattacked, most of these are on the Iria Continent (Home of Elves & Giants)


Windmill
Windmill causes damage and knockback to all opponents in the radius of the attack, unless defense is active.

You Lose 10% of your HP when using this attack
Critical with windmill will ignore protection of the opponent
You can load another skill while you are still spinning for windmill (Chain Combos, which will be explained later on, can be used easily with windmill.)

There is also sharp mind, but I will not go into detail about this, because I believe as do many other older players that relying on sharp mind reduces a players awareness and can break the entire battle tactic if relied on too much.

These are your basic melee combat skills, now how do we use them properly.


Final Hit
Only Used By Humans
Allows the user to gain a type of holy aura, allowing them to phase walk to opponents instantly, and attack nonstop 'til the skills end.
Dual-Wielding weapons allows the user to not knockback the opponent while attacking
Using any other weapons will knockback an opponent with each hit
You CANNOT use any Potions or Items during Final Hit
Weapons can be swapped during Final Hit
Taking Damage during FH will not knock you back, or stop the skill, but you will take the damage.
FH has a cooldown of 5 Minutes.


Assault (Skill info Credit to Kitae)
Assault can be used by all races, humans & elves need a shield to use it (I heard somewhere elves do not, but thats unsure)
Giants can use it with any equip.
Assault is a dashing attack which allows you to home in on your opponent and run at them with fierce speed, and tackle them for STUN push back.
During this stun the enemy cannot do anything, and is open for any kind of attack.

Assault was made for people who spam arrows. During your dash, all arrows that come in contact with you will be drastically reduced in damage, and will not flinch your character.

However, magic now only throws you off course, but stuns you back as well.

Assault has a cool down timer of... 10 seconds (Unsure).
It is useful in many different situations, including running away (very fast), or running at (enemy too far?).

The higher the rank the more damage you will do, the more arrow damage you block, and so on.


Combos & Chain Combos
How to not get your ass handed to you against monsters

Starting off a lot of people think they can just run up in dungeons or field and spam random skills to win, this is wrong. It might work sometimes, but later on, you will just look like an idiot, and die a lot.

For many monsters, the combo can be the same, here are a few combos commonly used:
Smash => Counter => Defense => Three Hit Combo

Smash => Defense => Three Hit Combo => Counter

Smash => Defense => Three Hit => Defense => Three Hit

For Multiple Enemies theres also these:

Windmill => Counter (Can Easily get you killed if the mobs are too strong for you, after the counter, another might just beat you down xD)

Windmill => Rapidly. (If you rankup windmill enough, you can perform it in a near rapid succession, causing all the mobs attacked, to be knocked around repeatedly until they die.)

Windmill => Party Assistance (This is used when the Windmiller hits all the mobs, his or her party then moves in to sweep out monsters as he or she focuses on one themselves.)

There are also more what I guess you can call Advanced Combos involving Magic as well, these are:
Ice Counter
Ice Bolt x2 => Counter => Ice Bolt x1 => Counter

The two ice bolts at the beginning cause a monster with multiple weapons to sub their ranged and rush you, allowing the counter to work correctly.

Fire Counter
Fire Bolt x1~5 => Counter => Fire Bolt x1 => Counter

The beginning fire doesn't matter unless you're looking to cause higher damage at the start, which is a smart thing to do.

Lightning Counter
Lightning Bolt x1~5 (Single Opponent In Range) => Counter => Lightning Bolt x1 => Counter

This one is risky, not many people actually use Lightning for counters from what I've seen, I could be wrong. I do use it a lot, but only on Solo Opponents, or else the magic will hit everything in range.

Lightning Wind
Lightning Bolt x5 => Windmill => Repeation

High Ranked Windmill can allow you to start the windmill repeation off with Lightning bolt for more damage.

There are many more combos people use, a lot of them you can learn on your own, or create you own and see how they workout against monsters.

Chaining Combos are simple to pickup, what I mean by this is the Rate of Speed you can perform combos, A lot of skills can have another skill casted Immediately after the Icon of the skill fades from above your characters head, working on your awareness and speed you can optimize the speed of your performance in Chain Combos.

As the community grows and time goes by, I will improve this guide and work on it more.

If you would like more information on any skills I will refer you to Mabinogi World's Wiki, for I'm using this guide on just the basics of Combat, not a Skill database.