Tactics: Please Stop Whiffing

An introduction to Buffering and Canceling for TERA's melee classes

Dear Warriors (or any other melee class for that matter),

Please stop whiffing.

For those who aren't familiar with the term, you may ask, "what exactly does whiffing mean?" It implies something more than just a simple miss, which could be no fault of your own. A whiff is generally more of an error in execution resulting in a miss, consuming time and potentially leaving yourself vulnerable or having other consequences. There are some times where you may want to whiff on purpose, but that's an exception and related to other tactics.

I’m sure many of you who browse TERA videos have seen many Warriors whiffing entire attack chains into the air and wondered if the animations are designed to be that long and restrictive and how this could affect game play negatively. These videos feature players who have not yet learned the art of properly positioning and spacing themselves, as well as not having a full understanding of some game systems. There's no reason to keep whiffing attacks if you’ve missed any of the hits and are no longer in range, and it's easy to learn how to avoid this.

Two important things to consider.

1: the Buffering System. TERA has extremely lenient buffering for inputs which can store successive moves of your chain significantly in advance of any perceivable intuitive link point. You can think of it as a wide queuing window, even if it isn't exactly that. One solution is to stop mashing. Time your taps and you can start, stop or continue the chain responsively based on your needs.

2: the Canceling System. A very high number of moves allow for movement skill or block canceling. Essentially, by using a movement skill or block after the animation for a skill has started, you can cut it off and transition immediately into another action without having to wait for the previous animation to fully play out. This technique allows you to reduce wasted time on whiffed attack animations. By doing this, you can simultaneously recover and reposition or evade.

Additionally, a common complaint is how many melee attacks move the player forwards as part of the move. Please don't complain about this. Despite potential initial difficulties with spacing and aiming, this is a very strong tool that you can use to your advantage if you develop a feel for it. Get a sense of the speeds and travel distance and timing. Don’t be too lazy to triangle or circle around a stationary enemy and take advantage of when the movement strongly assists your ability to maintain pressure and offense.

There you have it - some very basic and very foundational principles of melee classes (and really a lot of the classes still fit) in TERA. Keep an eye out for more of our tactics based articles in coming days.

Comments

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Thread on Official
# Jul 15 2010 at 8:03 PM Rating: Decent
I found this article to be very helpful in explaining cancelling and decided to post this on the official forums. I linked it back to here, to help gain some publicity for this site and made sure to credit you. If you arent comfortable with that, just tell me and I will get the thread closed/deleted.

Thread is HERE.
Thread on Official
# Jul 15 2010 at 8:24 PM Rating: Excellent
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137 posts
I'm glad that you found it helpful and appreciate you sharing stuff that you like. Feel free to do it anywhere so long as you give credit. The more exposure the better!
Skill in an MMO -- saweeet!
# Jul 15 2010 at 7:34 PM Rating: Decent
Most people who get accepted into the closed beta, just like most people who actually play the MMO genre, are pretty terrible. To see these videos posted is merely to glimpse into the caliber of people allowed to test and play. We need people who know what they're doing figuring out all the ups and downs and ins and outs of the combat system for a variety of classes.

Personally, I was considering a caster class(as I usually play), but if the quality of meleers out there is really this bad I'll just have to play one and own it up I guess.
Skill in an MMO -- saweeet!
# Jul 15 2010 at 8:21 PM Rating: Excellent
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137 posts
Yeah, tests need high tier players to be able to evaluate balance for competitive play. And I've heard that exact same thing. Many people who wouldn't have thought to play a melee class now suddenly want to, to prove that they can do it right.
As expected
# Jul 13 2010 at 6:45 PM Rating: Decent
As usual you bring up nice articles involving player-skills, pvp and combat tactics.

It has been a concern for myself to figure out how things work during the combat. Indeed timing and possitioning are top priority in a succesful multi-hit-"combo". Indeed the TERA combat system does bring the combat to a whole new lvl and experience. Player-skills are now from top importance!
As expected
# Jul 13 2010 at 8:19 PM Rating: Decent
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137 posts
Not only for combos, but as you get more used to it, use it for defensive, evasive, or baiting purposes too.
Sounds like
# Jul 13 2010 at 6:02 PM Rating: Decent
Quote:
1: the Buffering System. One solution is to stop mashing. Time your taps and you can start, stop or continue the chain responsively based on your needs.


I am very glad that Tera has decided with this because it will actually add tactics to the game. It seems now a days all the MMOs use button mashing and really no skill based system. People who have great timing and good aim will do well in this game.

Oh and to all you warriors out there "Please stop whiffing."

Your whiff is what causes the team to begin to lose. Then your lovely healer/priest has to work extra hard to make up for your mistake
Sounds like
# Jul 13 2010 at 6:18 PM Rating: Decent
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137 posts
Agree, I prefer finesse and timing to speed jamming everything asap as the best solution to everything.
Sounds like ....
# Jul 13 2010 at 2:53 PM Rating: Decent
Sounds like it may take skill to play the melee side of Tera, step to the side kids and let SCarroll handle this ;)

Im split between Warrior and Lancer...

Great post Chimeko cant wait for more articles!
Sounds like ....
# Jul 13 2010 at 3:00 PM Rating: Decent
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137 posts
Well, one, some, or all of these concepts can be applied to every class which has a movement skill or block skill. It's just that these problems occur most frequently and most prominently for melee classes, but it's really near universal.
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