Post by Xarious on Nov 9, 2016 18:28:37 GMT -5
A staff is easily the most deadly weapon in the game. You have incredible speed, damage that rivals strong style, and decent-ish range (with range extension, that will be covered later). Most importantly, you have blocking strength that outweighs literally every other saber style. This means that the only truly effective method of beating you is with strong style, but you have them beat in speed, which makes you a king.
Below is a detailed explanation of all my teachings regarding how to effectively use and abuse a staff to its fullest potential, divided into two sections; one for single opponents and one for dual and staff opponents.
Verses Single Saber Duelists
Distancing: Like anything else, you usually want to be on the edge of your opponent’s range so you can move in. However, it is essential with staff to do this. Staff is a predictable weapon that’s easy to anticipate, so your main offensive strategy is to harass someone enough that they don’t have time to think or compensate. You have to be aggressive.
A lot of people confuse “aggressive” with “charging in head first and dying.” What I mean by aggressive is, you have to constantly be in their face. Be on the very edge of their saber, pushing them back, keeping them moving. All someone wants to do with a single saber is get distance, relax, and prepare delays to hit you with. You don’t want to give them that time to relax. If they have that time to relax, it gives them time to think and plan, and that is to your disadvantage. A general rule of thumb that I use, is if your opponent can at any point stop moving and stand still, you’re not being aggressive enough. If they stand still, you should be right on top of them and they should be dead. Remember: You have less range than they do, but you have the speed both in your movements and in your feet to outpace them. The speed debuff is significantly reduced for non-red styles, so it is easy to slide in and out between red swings.
Style Choice: Staff itself is great, but you should typically idle in medium, especially when at a distance. Medium is easier to do yellow lowjump counters with, and to do aerial kills with. You cannot cartwheel with medium while using a staff, whereas you can stand to accidentally butterfly in full-staff. You can, however, choose to switch styles mid-air in these situations for better damage output. Medium also has a longer range than full-staff (which can be abused in the Switching section below). Up close it is up to you, but when you aren't directly on top of an opponent, you should generally stick to medium.
Switching: There are two ways people use switches. Way one is to maximize damage though the switch mechanic which can cause instant kills. This should not be your primary focus, in the same way that poking with single should not be your primary focus. Way two is to increase range. Staff has the second lowest range of any saber style. Medium, however, has an increased range of swing. The tradeoff for a staff’s lack of range, is its increased damage. You can gain both of these benefits by using switches effectively.
Using medium, you can swing for the range. Then, once you make contact with your opponent, you can switch to staff to get the added damage. Assuming your opponent is already very close, you can switch quickly and try to get the instakill factor from the switch, but that’s a side goal. Your primary goal should always be to stay as far away as you can, and hit with the edge of your range, switching to get the benefit damage from staff.
Delays: Delays are incredibly useful on a staff. Please note that in the context I am referring specifically to A-Delays. Usually, you’ll focus on them in staff vs staff or staff vs dual battles, but they are just as important against single. Against a single saber, you’re a one-trick pony. You’re aggressive and that’s about it. If they learn to compensate for your aggressiveness, they can probably beat you. Luckily, you have delays. Delays can be effectively used to change the standard timing of your swings in order to trick the single saber user. However! Keep in mind the entirety of a single saber’s tactics against a staff are, in fact, to trick you. They cannot win otherwise. They are forced to keep a lot of distance, and use tricky moves, such as delays, against you too.
Delays are also your key to avoiding twirl moves that otherwise get you killed. While in staff, any double chain left or right (WD-WD, A-A, D-D, WA-WA, AS-AS, SD-SD) will cause you to spin. Delaying will allow you to double chain any A-variety swings indefinitely, while also not slowing you down as much as a chain would anyway.
Fanning: Fanning (A-D-A-D-A-D...) is a definite no. You never want to do this. Again, think back to the poking analogy; if the opponent messes up really bad and leaves a major opening for you to do this, then and only then is it acceptable. Otherwise, avoid fanning altogether.
If you plan to fan, you generally want to utilize the crouch-fan technique (keep in mind that this also incorporates poking the fan and wiggling too). It gives you a low position (so the opponent must aim low to hit), a stronger defensive stance (so you can override their swings more easily), and a good offensive counter to their attempts to respond (if they crouch, your saber is now head-level). If you do crouch fan, you have to 100% commit to it, and they best be dead when you're done. Ideally, this should only be used when they've messed up their timing rather badly, and you can enter and commit. Due to the fact that their next strikes will be in stage 1 while point blank with you, you should be able to repeatedly block/overwhelm any attempts they make to respond until they get out of that situation. Being caught in a crouch-fan staff usually means you have lost.
Diagonal Fan: (WA-WD-WA-WD) This is the classic feature of “I’m a rusher who wants to die.”
You should almost never use this for practical purposes. Yes, diagonal strikes can and will break blocks, yes, WD swings are useful, but this is simply a more aggressive fan. The same downsides as above, also apply here. Only, diagonal fans lack the upsides of crouch fanning potential.
Hurricane: (WA-SD-WA-SD or WD-AS-WD-AS) This is a similar principle, albeit maybe a more useful but less practical one. In my experience, these keystrokes are not only hard to master, but also not very effective. A hurricane’s primary focus is heavy block breaking, generally against another staff or duals. It carries the same downsides as any fan, except to a worse degree because it is vastly more difficult to keep moving while doing this.
General swings: In most styles, one side or the other is the more favored side, and you should restrict yourself of almost all others. In staff, you’ll usually want to be using A-based swings for delays, but there really are no “restrictions” to a staff outside of W and S swings. Most of the time, you should be focused on A or D, and you should only be using single swings or delays. Chains are almost always a bad idea with a staff. Your trademark feature is fast and damaging, so you need to keep moving quickly at all times, making chains no longer a viable option.
Staff Poking & Wiggling: Generally speaking, you want clean, single slashes. Similar to any other poke or wiggle, and the switches mentioned before, poking and wiggling are only really used when your opponent drastically screws up and you can afford to do it. It is far less important with staff, as staff is built around quick enter and exit with a high base damage as is. Once again, only useful really during a crouch fan, and crouch fans assume your opponent already made enough mistakes to warrant making one yourself.
Blocking: A staff carries with it some of the strongest blocking in the game (more or less, depending on various server configurations). This can work both for and against you, depending on the situation. Staves that block less, often can go through enemy defenses easier, making them a brutal and relentless force. Staves that block more can use the block to fend off nearly any attack. Unless a strong style swing is in mid stage, it can almost never break a staff block. Even then, usually it takes a good W swing to really pass through. Medium users will also be hard pressed to break through it. Although it can be done, it is rarely attempted and even rarer to see it succeed, as medium users need to either delay through a staff at a careful distance, or poke with their mid-swing hit at just the right time. On top of those factors, they will also need the server configuration gods to be on their side, as blockier-type configurations can make fighting staff with medium next to impossible.
You can also use their attempt at extensions against them. For example, if they try to full poke and retreat and leave their saber in the ending stages pointed at you as they retreat, you can catch that and parry off of it. You should really be able to parry most hits with staff, although things such as crouch blocking are not effective with staff. In order to parry, you need to hit one of the sides of the staff, and crouching does not place the staff at a good angle to catch blocks unlike with strong style.
Finally, you can effectively use a more “rush” style tactic if you time it right. Because the block strength of staff is so high, strong style opponents will be hard pressed to break your staff with anything less than a mid-strike connection. This means if you get right on top of them before they can get a swing off, you can effectively parry spam them until death, making distance all the more crucial for single saberists.
Summarized End Points: For reasons already stated, we can generally assume your opponent will be using strong style. This means 1.) You can out maneuver them. 2.) You can do as much damage as they can. 3.) Your hits are faster than they are. 4.) Your blocks are almost as strong as theirs are.
In other words, you have an advantage to a new degree. Any good staff user doesn’t need to use tricks, they can just play normally and eventually the single saber user will lose. The only way for a single saber user to win is by using tricky moves. Changing timing with delays, using A-variety swings to throw you off, using wallrun or glide delays to change the flow of combat, using S key movements as lures, etc.
Medium may be your biggest worry, depending on the server. In which case, you can still out delay and out crouch-fan them if you time it right, since your swings still have priority.
So, when fighting a single user with a staff, just remember: You have already won the fight, the only way they can win is if they trick you into running into their saber.
Verses Another Staff or Duals
For this section, assume the above rules apply unless otherwise specified.
Delays: This is essentially the most important tool you have. Because delays remove the start of the swing, if you time them right, you’re entering combat in mid-stage. That means you have far less of a chance of being blocked. You pretty much always want your first strike to be positional. That is to say, use it to get into a position where your delay strike will be able to land. For example, I often use D-A delay, because I can swing outward with D to draw opponents in for the attack, and inward with an A-delay to strike.
Swing Types: When it comes to types of swings, diagonal is more effective at breaking blocks. In older history, hurricane attacks were used to break fanning-based attacks in a much more crude way. Now, delays generally outdo most types of swings in the block-break department. This becomes more of a situational call at the discretion of the user, though it is generally advised of two things: keep primarily to a-variety contact swings, and utilize delays as often as possible.
Switching: I cannot emphasize this enough: Do not use switches against another staff or duals. It's just a terrible idea. Unlike with a single saber, a clean hit is rarely if ever feasible in these scenarios. Switches are only useful if you manage to hit cleanly, otherwise you run the risk of your block strength only being equal to that of medium style. Keep in staff the whole time, as the block strength is quintessential to defeating opposing multisaberists.
Staff Poking & Wiggling: This is a very bad idea in a multisaber clash. Wiggling and poking by nature create blocks. In this kind of battle, you want to get as clean as possible. The only time you will want to even attempt this, is if you bypass the block of your opponent with a delay and can stay in for a long enough duration to deal some serious injury (crouch-fans, generally). However, even then, it is very risky. Most of your fighting in this situation is about enter, hit, exit. You do not want to focus much on trying to wiggle or poke.
Staff Saber Defense: In a staff vs staff battle, the opponent has just as many—or, rather, just as few—options as you have. This means that the primary focus of a staff vs staff fight is going to be a lot of delay spam and timing clashes. It is thereby essential to master delay strike timing, because even the slightest MS difference in swing timing can decide the winner of the clash.
Dual Saber Defense: Dual sabers has one thing and only one thing going for them in a fight against staff: they have more range. Ideally, a dual saberist wants to stay at a distance, out of range of the staffer, and hit with delays. Alternatively, they may try a cross-attack similar to medium style where they hit and do a quick 180 turn. Both of these are effective against a staff.
In block strength and damage dealing, staff wins out. If the staffer chooses to remain passive, it is imperative to abuse the blocking advantage by keeping at the edge of the dualists range and utilizing delays and parry strikes. If the staffer chooses to go aggressive, then they have to hardcore push with their delays in order to win, otherwise the range of dual saberist will beat them.
One of the biggest notes is that, in an ideal situation, if you are in someone's range and they aren't in yours, you are probably dead. In fact, a saber with the capacity to put someone in range without being in range of their opponent is theoretically the most favored to win, because with two perfect fighters, the one without the range will never have a chance to strike. This becomes a serious issue for staff when fighting duals, which means that you literally must make what I refer to as natural mistakes in order to win. Natural mistakes being any action that, against the most perfect opponent in existence, would result in a loss. You'll definitely want to take for granted the fact that there are no real amazing dual saber users out there with the pinpoint ability to abuse range.
Hopefully you've learned something regarding the art of Staff usage. Questions, comments, concerns? Our expert Staff are always on standby, just post below.
Below is a detailed explanation of all my teachings regarding how to effectively use and abuse a staff to its fullest potential, divided into two sections; one for single opponents and one for dual and staff opponents.
Verses Single Saber Duelists
Distancing: Like anything else, you usually want to be on the edge of your opponent’s range so you can move in. However, it is essential with staff to do this. Staff is a predictable weapon that’s easy to anticipate, so your main offensive strategy is to harass someone enough that they don’t have time to think or compensate. You have to be aggressive.
A lot of people confuse “aggressive” with “charging in head first and dying.” What I mean by aggressive is, you have to constantly be in their face. Be on the very edge of their saber, pushing them back, keeping them moving. All someone wants to do with a single saber is get distance, relax, and prepare delays to hit you with. You don’t want to give them that time to relax. If they have that time to relax, it gives them time to think and plan, and that is to your disadvantage. A general rule of thumb that I use, is if your opponent can at any point stop moving and stand still, you’re not being aggressive enough. If they stand still, you should be right on top of them and they should be dead. Remember: You have less range than they do, but you have the speed both in your movements and in your feet to outpace them. The speed debuff is significantly reduced for non-red styles, so it is easy to slide in and out between red swings.
Style Choice: Staff itself is great, but you should typically idle in medium, especially when at a distance. Medium is easier to do yellow lowjump counters with, and to do aerial kills with. You cannot cartwheel with medium while using a staff, whereas you can stand to accidentally butterfly in full-staff. You can, however, choose to switch styles mid-air in these situations for better damage output. Medium also has a longer range than full-staff (which can be abused in the Switching section below). Up close it is up to you, but when you aren't directly on top of an opponent, you should generally stick to medium.
Switching: There are two ways people use switches. Way one is to maximize damage though the switch mechanic which can cause instant kills. This should not be your primary focus, in the same way that poking with single should not be your primary focus. Way two is to increase range. Staff has the second lowest range of any saber style. Medium, however, has an increased range of swing. The tradeoff for a staff’s lack of range, is its increased damage. You can gain both of these benefits by using switches effectively.
Using medium, you can swing for the range. Then, once you make contact with your opponent, you can switch to staff to get the added damage. Assuming your opponent is already very close, you can switch quickly and try to get the instakill factor from the switch, but that’s a side goal. Your primary goal should always be to stay as far away as you can, and hit with the edge of your range, switching to get the benefit damage from staff.
Delays: Delays are incredibly useful on a staff. Please note that in the context I am referring specifically to A-Delays. Usually, you’ll focus on them in staff vs staff or staff vs dual battles, but they are just as important against single. Against a single saber, you’re a one-trick pony. You’re aggressive and that’s about it. If they learn to compensate for your aggressiveness, they can probably beat you. Luckily, you have delays. Delays can be effectively used to change the standard timing of your swings in order to trick the single saber user. However! Keep in mind the entirety of a single saber’s tactics against a staff are, in fact, to trick you. They cannot win otherwise. They are forced to keep a lot of distance, and use tricky moves, such as delays, against you too.
Delays are also your key to avoiding twirl moves that otherwise get you killed. While in staff, any double chain left or right (WD-WD, A-A, D-D, WA-WA, AS-AS, SD-SD) will cause you to spin. Delaying will allow you to double chain any A-variety swings indefinitely, while also not slowing you down as much as a chain would anyway.
Fanning: Fanning (A-D-A-D-A-D...) is a definite no. You never want to do this. Again, think back to the poking analogy; if the opponent messes up really bad and leaves a major opening for you to do this, then and only then is it acceptable. Otherwise, avoid fanning altogether.
If you plan to fan, you generally want to utilize the crouch-fan technique (keep in mind that this also incorporates poking the fan and wiggling too). It gives you a low position (so the opponent must aim low to hit), a stronger defensive stance (so you can override their swings more easily), and a good offensive counter to their attempts to respond (if they crouch, your saber is now head-level). If you do crouch fan, you have to 100% commit to it, and they best be dead when you're done. Ideally, this should only be used when they've messed up their timing rather badly, and you can enter and commit. Due to the fact that their next strikes will be in stage 1 while point blank with you, you should be able to repeatedly block/overwhelm any attempts they make to respond until they get out of that situation. Being caught in a crouch-fan staff usually means you have lost.
Diagonal Fan: (WA-WD-WA-WD) This is the classic feature of “I’m a rusher who wants to die.”
You should almost never use this for practical purposes. Yes, diagonal strikes can and will break blocks, yes, WD swings are useful, but this is simply a more aggressive fan. The same downsides as above, also apply here. Only, diagonal fans lack the upsides of crouch fanning potential.
Hurricane: (WA-SD-WA-SD or WD-AS-WD-AS) This is a similar principle, albeit maybe a more useful but less practical one. In my experience, these keystrokes are not only hard to master, but also not very effective. A hurricane’s primary focus is heavy block breaking, generally against another staff or duals. It carries the same downsides as any fan, except to a worse degree because it is vastly more difficult to keep moving while doing this.
General swings: In most styles, one side or the other is the more favored side, and you should restrict yourself of almost all others. In staff, you’ll usually want to be using A-based swings for delays, but there really are no “restrictions” to a staff outside of W and S swings. Most of the time, you should be focused on A or D, and you should only be using single swings or delays. Chains are almost always a bad idea with a staff. Your trademark feature is fast and damaging, so you need to keep moving quickly at all times, making chains no longer a viable option.
Staff Poking & Wiggling: Generally speaking, you want clean, single slashes. Similar to any other poke or wiggle, and the switches mentioned before, poking and wiggling are only really used when your opponent drastically screws up and you can afford to do it. It is far less important with staff, as staff is built around quick enter and exit with a high base damage as is. Once again, only useful really during a crouch fan, and crouch fans assume your opponent already made enough mistakes to warrant making one yourself.
Blocking: A staff carries with it some of the strongest blocking in the game (more or less, depending on various server configurations). This can work both for and against you, depending on the situation. Staves that block less, often can go through enemy defenses easier, making them a brutal and relentless force. Staves that block more can use the block to fend off nearly any attack. Unless a strong style swing is in mid stage, it can almost never break a staff block. Even then, usually it takes a good W swing to really pass through. Medium users will also be hard pressed to break through it. Although it can be done, it is rarely attempted and even rarer to see it succeed, as medium users need to either delay through a staff at a careful distance, or poke with their mid-swing hit at just the right time. On top of those factors, they will also need the server configuration gods to be on their side, as blockier-type configurations can make fighting staff with medium next to impossible.
You can also use their attempt at extensions against them. For example, if they try to full poke and retreat and leave their saber in the ending stages pointed at you as they retreat, you can catch that and parry off of it. You should really be able to parry most hits with staff, although things such as crouch blocking are not effective with staff. In order to parry, you need to hit one of the sides of the staff, and crouching does not place the staff at a good angle to catch blocks unlike with strong style.
Finally, you can effectively use a more “rush” style tactic if you time it right. Because the block strength of staff is so high, strong style opponents will be hard pressed to break your staff with anything less than a mid-strike connection. This means if you get right on top of them before they can get a swing off, you can effectively parry spam them until death, making distance all the more crucial for single saberists.
Summarized End Points: For reasons already stated, we can generally assume your opponent will be using strong style. This means 1.) You can out maneuver them. 2.) You can do as much damage as they can. 3.) Your hits are faster than they are. 4.) Your blocks are almost as strong as theirs are.
In other words, you have an advantage to a new degree. Any good staff user doesn’t need to use tricks, they can just play normally and eventually the single saber user will lose. The only way for a single saber user to win is by using tricky moves. Changing timing with delays, using A-variety swings to throw you off, using wallrun or glide delays to change the flow of combat, using S key movements as lures, etc.
Medium may be your biggest worry, depending on the server. In which case, you can still out delay and out crouch-fan them if you time it right, since your swings still have priority.
So, when fighting a single user with a staff, just remember: You have already won the fight, the only way they can win is if they trick you into running into their saber.
Verses Another Staff or Duals
For this section, assume the above rules apply unless otherwise specified.
Delays: This is essentially the most important tool you have. Because delays remove the start of the swing, if you time them right, you’re entering combat in mid-stage. That means you have far less of a chance of being blocked. You pretty much always want your first strike to be positional. That is to say, use it to get into a position where your delay strike will be able to land. For example, I often use D-A delay, because I can swing outward with D to draw opponents in for the attack, and inward with an A-delay to strike.
Swing Types: When it comes to types of swings, diagonal is more effective at breaking blocks. In older history, hurricane attacks were used to break fanning-based attacks in a much more crude way. Now, delays generally outdo most types of swings in the block-break department. This becomes more of a situational call at the discretion of the user, though it is generally advised of two things: keep primarily to a-variety contact swings, and utilize delays as often as possible.
Switching: I cannot emphasize this enough: Do not use switches against another staff or duals. It's just a terrible idea. Unlike with a single saber, a clean hit is rarely if ever feasible in these scenarios. Switches are only useful if you manage to hit cleanly, otherwise you run the risk of your block strength only being equal to that of medium style. Keep in staff the whole time, as the block strength is quintessential to defeating opposing multisaberists.
Staff Poking & Wiggling: This is a very bad idea in a multisaber clash. Wiggling and poking by nature create blocks. In this kind of battle, you want to get as clean as possible. The only time you will want to even attempt this, is if you bypass the block of your opponent with a delay and can stay in for a long enough duration to deal some serious injury (crouch-fans, generally). However, even then, it is very risky. Most of your fighting in this situation is about enter, hit, exit. You do not want to focus much on trying to wiggle or poke.
Staff Saber Defense: In a staff vs staff battle, the opponent has just as many—or, rather, just as few—options as you have. This means that the primary focus of a staff vs staff fight is going to be a lot of delay spam and timing clashes. It is thereby essential to master delay strike timing, because even the slightest MS difference in swing timing can decide the winner of the clash.
Dual Saber Defense: Dual sabers has one thing and only one thing going for them in a fight against staff: they have more range. Ideally, a dual saberist wants to stay at a distance, out of range of the staffer, and hit with delays. Alternatively, they may try a cross-attack similar to medium style where they hit and do a quick 180 turn. Both of these are effective against a staff.
In block strength and damage dealing, staff wins out. If the staffer chooses to remain passive, it is imperative to abuse the blocking advantage by keeping at the edge of the dualists range and utilizing delays and parry strikes. If the staffer chooses to go aggressive, then they have to hardcore push with their delays in order to win, otherwise the range of dual saberist will beat them.
One of the biggest notes is that, in an ideal situation, if you are in someone's range and they aren't in yours, you are probably dead. In fact, a saber with the capacity to put someone in range without being in range of their opponent is theoretically the most favored to win, because with two perfect fighters, the one without the range will never have a chance to strike. This becomes a serious issue for staff when fighting duals, which means that you literally must make what I refer to as natural mistakes in order to win. Natural mistakes being any action that, against the most perfect opponent in existence, would result in a loss. You'll definitely want to take for granted the fact that there are no real amazing dual saber users out there with the pinpoint ability to abuse range.
Hopefully you've learned something regarding the art of Staff usage. Questions, comments, concerns? Our expert Staff are always on standby, just post below.
