Pirates of the Burning Sea introduces Swashbuckling

Pirates of the Burning Sea has gotten props for deviating from the tried and true MMORPG paradigm based on endless grinds and item collection. By not focusing solely on those two elements, the game has made room for more innovative areas.

Among those areas is the highly touted Swashbuckling combat system. In the same manner that you don’t become a chicken by sticking feathers to your butt, not every buccaneer in the seas is a good swashbuckler. There are many areas to it than you think, and swinging a sword is among the most elementary of things to understand.

Swashbuckling involves three aspects. First, there are there’s Defense which your character uses to stay alive. Then there’s the Combat Pools which set the parameters as to how likely you are to stay among the living. And third, there are the skills which you’ll use to put opponents to sleep with the fishes.

There are three parameters in the Combat Pools, specifically the Health rating, the Initiative measure, and the Balance rating. Health, as in other games in the genre, tells you how much punishment you can take. Initiative is a more offensive attribute which you’ll need to put together devastating special attacks. Balance lets you know how capable your character is of performing defensive maneuvers.

Depending on how you play Defense, the Combat Pools rise and fall. There are three defensive moves. First is the dodge, which is more of a desperate move since you lose balance and initiative with it, second is the Block which is a neutral effort that prevents damage while not affecting the Combat Pools and then there’s the cool Parry which raises initiative and balance to allow you to get a bigger edge over your foes.

That’s about it for Swashbuckling in a nutshell. The folks at Flying Lab Software promise a lengthy guide on sills soon, so keep visiting the MMORPG blog to get a fix on that.

Pirates of the Burning Sea has gotten props for deviating from the tried and true MMORPG paradigm based on endless grinds and item collection. By not focusing solely on those two elements, the game has made room for more innovative areas.

Among those areas is the highly touted Swashbuckling combat system. In the same manner that you don’t become a chicken by sticking feathers to your butt, not every buccaneer in the seas is a good swashbuckler. There are many areas to it than you think, and swinging a sword is among the most elementary of things to understand.

Swashbuckling involves three aspects. First, there are there’s Defense which your character uses to stay alive. Then there’s the Combat Pools which set the parameters as to how likely you are to stay among the living. And third, there are the skills which you’ll use to put opponents to sleep with the fishes.

There are three parameters in the Combat Pools, specifically the Health rating, the Initiative measure, and the Balance rating. Health, as in other games in the genre, tells you how much punishment you can take. Initiative is a more offensive attribute which you’ll need to put together devastating special attacks. Balance lets you know how capable your character is of performing defensive maneuvers.

Depending on how you play Defense, the Combat Pools rise and fall. There are three defensive moves. First is the dodge, which is more of a desperate move since you lose balance and initiative with it, second is the Block which is a neutral effort that prevents damage while not affecting the Combat Pools and then there’s the cool Parry which raises initiative and balance to allow you to get a bigger edge over your foes.

That’s about it for Swashbuckling in a nutshell. The folks at Flying Lab Software promise a lengthy guide on sills soon, so keep visiting the MMORPG blog to get a fix on that.