[2019] Pro tip: don't become overly reliant on advanced techniques. Go back to the basics every once in a while; mixing things up is your greatest tool.

I'm seeing this a lot in duels, especially ranked; people throw out so many feints, morphs, and drags, that they actually just end up hurting themselves with it. Even worse if they don't actually mix it up with anything else.

Adopting that behavior is understandable, as even a single feint makes short work of most frontline/invasion players. Even the veterans usually fall to the mixups 101 of trading a couple of parries, and then feinting.

Problems arise, however, when you go overboard with it. I've been playing a bit of ranked duels lately, and I keep running into people even well into platinum who open each round with a handful of feints into an animation-f*cked stab morphed into out-dragged overhead. It's certainly a beautiful show to watch the first time, but I'm here to win a fight, not to watch you dance. So if you're going to open up every round with a routine that gives me enough time to stab you in the face.. I'm just going to stab you in the face.

The biggest issue with it however, is the stamina cost. By doing fancy stuff after each parry, you're going to blaze through your stamina. If I notice my opponent doing that, I absolutely love to just do simple parry->swing sequences to ride it out until they run out of stamina, weapon gets knocked out of their hands, I quickly pick it up, and get a free round out of it. Then they usually call me an honorless cunt. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Bonus low effort meme

related to the above.

The bottom line here is, it really doesn't hurt to just go back to a basic swing every once in a while. I know I'd be losing a lot more duels if people would actually mix up into the occasional simple parry->stab instead of going for advanced stuff.

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