How To Be Pro At Lockdown! Competitive pointers for people who want to improve their battle sense in Lockdown.
Hello! A little introduction about myself:
- I am Rebel-Ex. I've been playing Spiral Knights Lockdown since 2011 soon after the game mode was released. Throughout the years, I've fought with diverse players from overlooked underdogs to hardcore carry fighters. I've watched many players develop their fighting senses to extremes - many would even mark their own era. Many tactics have been sharpened and many adaptive playstyles have came and gone over the years. As a player who's had first-hand experience with countless experts and has a proficient knowledge of the game mode, these are a few great pointers you can use to improve your knowledge and ability in Lockdown!
-----Terms to know-----
Beginner:
Intermediate:
Advanced:
Expert:
A good way to acknowledge the strength of teams is to classify players into tiers:
- - S Tier: tend to be hard carries who prioritize spawn camping to allow their teams to capture points, and still focus on defending to support their teams.
- A Tier: tend to be either hard carries or above average players who prioritize both capturing and defending points to support their teams.
- B Tier: tend to be either above average or decent players who prioritize either capturing or defending points, their role mostly depends on the strength of their teams.
- C Tier: tend to be either decent or amateur players who prioritize capturing points to support their teams.
- D Tier: tend to be amateur or new players in need of guidance and experience, yet they will still try their best to support their team.
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As far as these tips and pointers go, players who gain knowledge and practice on higher category gameplay can definitely become better players. However, how much effort and training you put into each attribute and technique definitely makes you a stronger player. Per se a player who has a higher mastery of Intermediate gameplay can definitely outclass an Advanced category player, which has a lower mastery on Intermediate gameplay and average Advanced gameplay categories.
For practice drills, you can find my training sheet by clicking here.
Updated: Posted videos to showcase pointers for visual understanding.
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A barely used one, but useful in some situations.
If you shield cancel the first swing of a three hit sword and do both the second and third swings after that without shield cancelling, you will perform a different combo that goes along the lines of First Swing > First Swing > Third Swing. This can be useful in combat due to the third swing of every sword having more range and dealing extra damage.
This can be used with any sword that has three hits, most notably useful with a Flourish line weapon as the third swing is a lunge with surprisingly good range. Another good weapon to use this with is the Warmaster Rocket Hammer, as you can bypass the dash for a third swing.
There's a few miscellaneous I didn't mention actually lol
There's the skipping to the third swing
There's the recon dust walk
There's the hitbox in different alchemers
There's the changing the direction of a bullet midway after it's been fired
There's striker boost control
Etc
Was likely to add them inside the strategy/versatility section
It's also worth noting here that along the large scale prediction line of thought there's a lot of work to do with spawn timers.
All the spawns happen in small batches, and that batch is the same across teams. If you die, the game usually puts you into the next batch unless the number of seconds is too low, then you get bumped to the next batch after that. Since it's a global timer you can actually get a good feel for exactly when people will be respawned.
This means a few things:
1) If you and an enemy die at the same time, you can predict almost exactly how fast they can get somewhere. If you're the same class, you'll meet in the middle.
2) If you have dead teammates and see when they get spawned, you know a set of enemies could have just spawned in.
3) If you're really good at memorization and listening to crowd cheers for when someone dies, you can effectively keep track of everyone who you haven't seen yet as long as they died recently. (I use this to get a lot of off screen gun charges on people rushing at me from spawn)
4) you can time your deaths to quickly get back to base and spawn fast. not always useful, but nice when you have to get back to your home base to defend when you're almost dead anyways at their side.
There are a lot more little intricacies here with watching the minimap (or actual full map), but I think I covered the main chunk of the matter.
Well shit.
And here I was thinking I was good because I'm the only one who uses double healpads on Ruins
As for me, I normally get a line of light on my screen that signals when an enemy has respawned, and that's what I used to time an approaching battle
dude all there is to LD is pointing and swinging wtf is all this fake tech you're coming up with ???
Updated the expert section with added information. Please guys, most of you guys are terrible but I have seen average performers get much better in time. The reason they improved was because they fought tougher battles, but they also learned what these concepts are so they had an idea of what they should practice on.
just macro everything like every other "good" player does, who needs to time invun frames when you can just macro, don't need to get good mashing keyboard keys to single swap when you can just click a single button to have a godly swing speed with a single weapon with your modified clients, no one needs practice you just need max damage and asi and macros, spinning circles around players just like every generic lockdown pro (^:
Fuk u Red
And shut up Chicken you suck
Will be uploading example videos soon for better understanding of topics !
Notice:
Expert pointers are more in depth and I'm lazy at the moment. Will update soon!