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Hi, there this Fiona in West server outdps'ing everyone with a +9 arma Longsword. Like not just once, but in multiple raids with other people that have +15 lv90 weaapons. This girl name is Fuzetsu and I ask her How you do so much dps and she just say "Carefully." I also ask the fiona chat but its dead so here I am. I just wanna know how to do dps as Fiona like is there some secret moves or is that Fiona just hacking or something.
Comments
It's just that 99% of the people playing her are trash
You can still see the damage numbers of party members,they appear in kind of pink-ish color as oppose to red for your own damage.Basically enhanced attack or not if you see him pulling 20k+ smashes he is simply using **exquisite damage pots**.I did observe some people using them as well.It's probably some people who gathered a good amount of them back than.Nothing bad,maybe they just want to clear the runs faster but im just saying.
But other than that,Fiona is not weak.All characters are actully in a close range as of now compared to far before.
I mean, I probably only see 1/250 Fionas use taunt regularly.
My most fondest memories of Fiona are of Regina winding up a stab for me and stabbing the guy right beside at the last second and me deflecting nothing.
But yeah, LS has things now that can bring big damage without relying on taunt and blocks or double ammies.
The focal actully hits very hard as well and rotating between the kick method and the quickslot option,i never have a moment where i can't use it wich is very conveniant.Add to that the fact that i don't see how you can run out of stamina on her it does make her very strong.Combining all the offensive attribute she has with the fact that you can spend a good amount of time in slashing high mode, i can see why she could be very competitive without necessarely having the best weapon.
I mean there is always a few raids or situations where i character could slightly suffer a disadvantage towards another class but it's rare enough and id totally disagree with poeple who sais that she's not very strong.
Havn't bothered playing Fiona since the sheild enhancement patch but now i can tell she is a lot less repetitive.She actully has a very decent rotation.
http://imgur.com/r0kcpFy
I'm usually pretty vague when I get asked the question, "how to play Longsword Fiona." This is because I don't think there is actually a "correct" way to play Longsword Fiona.
That said, a lot of people still want to know some of my strategies (for raids). So here we go:
1. Greater Mysterious Cat Statue is mandatory for LS Fiona. It gives 250sp every 70 seconds and lets you start off every raid with a shield enhancement. This item/gear is the best armor piece in the game for LS Fiona. Get it ASAP if you don't have it.
2. Counterattack into amaranth kick combo is the highest dps move for Fiona. No other move should be prioritized over counterattack. This means Fionas should stay in front of bosses as much as possible in order to take as many hits as possible. Counterattack also gives Fionas her much needed sp.
3. There are many rotations that Fiona can do when the boss is not agroing her, but I only use 3 strategies:
a) Low SP (under 200): Shield Bash+Amaranth combo -> KickDash+focal points -> LLLLR -> repeat.
Shield Bash combo is Fiona's most sp efficient dps move. Fiona uses 55sp to activate it and gets 50sp back after the kick.
KickDash focal points costs 75 sp to activate (full combo) but I would still use it at low sp because of the high dps.
LLLLR gets Fiona +50sp but it is the lowest dps skill for Fiona. Only use it if you have to.
b) Medium SP (200-800): Shield Dash+focal points combo -> Kick Dash Focals -> Shield Bash combo -> repeat.
This is my bread and butter rotation for sandbagging bosses for Fiona. The full rotation is only uses about 150sp (you lose about 225sp but you can get 75 sp back). Every skill has 7 seconds of cooldown, so when I finish my third skill, my first skill becomes available again which means I can do this rotation indefinitely as long as I have the sp. It doesn't really matter what skill start with in this rotation but I usually do the dashes first because they do more damage.
c) High SP (over 800): same rotation as above (b) but mix in as many Active:Focal Points as possible.
Active:Focal Points costs a whooping 175 sp to use which drains Fiona's sp bar really quickly. However, the Active Focals do more damage than the Dash Focals and it also gives a small extra hit if Fionas are facing and touching the boss. Also, the Active Focals have 5 seconds of cooldown instead of the usual 7 sec CDR of the other skills so this means you can use this skill after every 2 normal rotation skills. Watch your sp bar when you are doing this move, this move drains Fiona's sp very quickly. You don't want to lose all your entire sp bar doing this move because you would have to LLLLR when you run out of sp
4. Other Skills.
Shield Enhancement: Keep the buff active 100% of the time
Slashing High: I never use Slashing High (unless Soloing which means I have unlimited SP). Slashing High gives 20% aspd but this does not necessarily translate into dps because most of Fiona's dps comes from Counterattacks and Focal points. The High SP cost also puts Fiona's at risk of running out of SP. Running out of SP means low damage when sandbagging because Fiona's LLLLR is pretty bad.
Shield Charge: Same as Slashing High. However, this skill gives extra damage and a finch for the team which is nice. I would consider using this skill if I am at max SP. But this rarely ever happens due to focal point spam.
Lockdown (Crushing Assault): This skill is good for the team but it has a really high SP cost of 1000. I would only use this still at I am at max SP and have cat statue at low cooldown. Being at low SP really hurts Fiona because if the boss is not agroing her, Fiona has to LLLLR.
Taunt: I rarely taunt because most bosses' attack have a huge hitbox anyways (havan, jug) so there is no point. Other bosses might have many unblockable attacks which waste the taunt (regina, lugh, eochaid). Once again, Taunt uses sp and SP = dps for Fiona. I would only consider using Taunt if I'm at cap SP
Deflect: Counterattack is the best move for Fiona so use that instead. Deflect is good as a "oh crap" move if the boss suddenly agros while Fiona is doing her skill rotations.
Heavy Stander and Heavy Stander Counter: Counterattack is better, more damage and more sp gain.
LR, LLRRR, LLLRR: These moves are for clearing mobs.
5. Last Thoughts
LS Fiona is not a flashy class but one of her advantages is that even with no gear, she can be played the same as those dudes who upload to Youtube.
Fiona has a solo video of almost every boss on Youtube which is good for learning. Just keep in mind Korea got the Fiona revamp in January 2016 and NA got the revamp in May 2016.
Efficent SP (70) : Shield Bash, Shield Enhancement, Slashing High
Cooldown (22sec) : Shield Charge (honestly SP is better for LS but CDR is super essential if you want to play hammer)
Damage (10%): Counterattack (most important), Focal Point, Amaranth Kick
(helps if you have something like a razer mouse). If a boss is stunned I'll use focal point, shield dash to focal point (hotkey version), and shield dash to focal point again. by the time you're done with the 2nd dash focal, the original will be ready to use.
the down side is that even though this consistently gets me ranked in the top 3, it devours SP, so don't bother without a cat statue.
Taunt I use against against Pantheum in his lightning form a lot because people still have a tendency to lure him 50 miles away from the barrier. Another situation is on almost any other boss, this skill can help you keep shield enhancement active and allow you to deflect and counter more, meaning a crapton of sp without a cat statue.
I just woke up, and decided to ramble a little bit in an attempt to make it sound like I still know what I'm doing (I don't) bye
I can't figure out what blossom blow is supposed to be for, in the old days people could completely ignore Fiona's 2nd and 3rd smash beause petal toss/amaranth kick were the only worthwhile ones. It looks like devcat tried to fix that, but it doesn't look like her second smash has any use even now. It has no range and does worse DPS than amaranth kick, yet a second smash with 3 hits + the uselessly flashy jump slash takes longer. The jump slash takes way too long and leaves you hanging in the air for enemies to hit.
The 3rd smash's kick now does massive AOE which Fiona badly needed to clear mobs, but the optional sword slash before the kick is pretty pointless. No range and no damage. Unfortunately, the kick is still too slow to clear mobs compared to newer characters.
Amaranth kick is cringey bad, it is incredibly slow yet does not hit very hard at all by itself.
Shield deflection is an odd skill, given that counter attack is superior. It is incredibly niche, since you can stop in the middle of combos to quickly block attacks with your shield anyway, there are some frames in which you can use deflection but not guard, but those are pretty rare.
Shield bash is still useless, especially the two additional hits which are terrible DPS and take far too long to pull off.
The main issue with Fiona's DPS IMHO is that she is extremely reliant on spamming focal point combos via shield dash. It doesnt help that focal point has a pretty long animation, and the active version is pretty bad with its high SP cost and the slow charging animation.
Counter attacks are also pretty meh in end game raids, they were awesome in Ainle during the beta, but end game bosses are practically immune to knockdowns. Shield enhancement is cool and all, but is basically inferior to crosscut in almost every way. The main issue with counter attack is that it has no I-frames so when bosses spam fast multi hit combos, you can only counterattack the last hit in the combo, while sword vella can multiple times during the combo (while being immune to damage the entire time). Oh and counterattack doesnt auto aim at the boss either, while crosscut does, so it is actually very easy for counterattacks to miss because you have a tedency to move past the boss after the first counterattack, and then the second one whiffs past the boss. Counterattack vs Excavator Gianoo is a great example of this, because of his unpredictable movement, it is very likely that most of your hits will miss.
Chaining CA -> Amaranth kick is great damage...except for the lack of I-Frames preventing you from doing it most of the time, such as when the boss finishes a combo then suddenly does a backswing to hit you while you are winding up for an amranth kick.
Counter attack is only really good when bosses have slow multi hit combos, slow enough that you can CA twice for every hit in the combo. When Muspell switches to his fists and does a very slow two hit punch combo, CA is excellent for that since you can CA twice, CA twice again then amaranth kick. But most end game bosses have fast, not slow combos, and attempting to CA in the middle of a combo will just get you hit.
Slashing high is a terribly inefficient skill for its SP cost which is why it's been ages since devcat gave a new character the same skill. Back when transing and then facetanking certain bosses was all the rage, it had its uses, but now? Meh. Shield charge is meh for largely the same reason, given that you could be using that SP to spam focal points instead. Unless you really need the i-frames or flinch, its a terrible 750 SP skill.
Large shield is still pointless and devcat can't seem to figure out how to make it useful. They overbuffed small shield IMHO, to the point where large shield is unnecessary. Iron defense is just pathetic, and hammer is still inferior to longsword.
I'm leveling my Fiona alt to 90 for the event, and I can't help but compare her to the newer characters. My sword vella is better in almost every way. The one niche that i see Fiona being good for is running s2 dailies, knockdown is still useful there, and most s2 bosses such as Ikrium or Monark don't spam fast multi hit combos. Vella is definately better for nifleheim/s3 though. Unfortunately, s2 dailies aren't really end game content anymore, most level 90s that i know of flat out refuse to touch them except for the occasional SG run because frankly, 1 hour TD/moonlight runs to pick up chests is not fun, and nobody likes the wasps.
But I sort of get it, why revamp Fiona seriously when you can make a new character for profit
Counter attacks have many advantages over cross cut, even though both abilities work based on countering attacks they are vastly different due to their mechanics thus comparing them in a simple isolated example is not relevant at all Having i-frames on amaranth sounds crazy to me. Why not just deflect that said backswing and get that sweet 50% damage bonus or even pull off 2x amaranth ? This skill gives you +20% speed for 20 sec as well as giving you infinite stamina and you call it terribly inneficient ??? I would love to know what hammer players think about that
That being said, you can't make such statements with that little experience you have playing fiona. Most of what you said is just so wrong, maybe you just feel better playing vella, in that case keep playing her and have fun