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:
Shield Cancel - Using your shield after swinging an attack. Practice increasing the speed at which you're able to remove the delay between your swings.
Hit-Stun - After 3 shield canceled attacks, your weapon will be in stasis for a short moment. Knowing how to bypass this can often become the deciding factor of winning or losing a battle.
Invincibility Frames - Attacking too quickly can result in your attack being nullified. Practice spacing out your attacks to avoid invincibility frames! Improve your timing for maximum efficiency in rush attacks and combos.
Stunlock - Being able to make consecutive blows onto your enemy in a single rush attack. Practice getting as many hits as possible under 3 seconds! Improve your efficiency by avoiding invincibility frames in your attacks.
Knockback - Once your enemy is hit by your weapon, it will always push them in the opposite direction. Increasing distance between your weapon and your enemy can also increase the distance of the knockback.
Intermediate:
Weaving - During stunlock, your enemy will likely be unable to counter attack for a very brief moment. Perform consecutive attacks by moving into different angles and greatly reduce the chances of your opponent hitting you back!
Kiting - Often, players tend to commit to a certain attack or movement pattern. You can use this as an advantage to counter your enemy's aggression or cut off their escape route by forcing your enemy into running into your attacks. Good kiting can result in high damage combos or juggling your enemy into powerful stunlocks!
Weapon Switch - Switch to another weapon to extend the amount of hits in your combo. All weapons contain hit-stuns after their third swing, switching allows you to bypass this effect by refreshing the reload with a different weapon.
Single Switch - Quickly switch back and forth to the same weapon. This technique is used to remove hit-stuns and often greatly outspeeds your opponent. The better you can smoothly switch and swing, the faster your attacks can be and the deadlier the stunlock!
Playstyle - Offensive playstyles are fighters who continually perform rush attacks; Defensive playstyles are used by fighters who prefer evasive reflexes and to punish an opponent's mistakes with kiting. Focus on offensive playstyle can increase your battle speed while focus on defensive playstyle can increase your cognitive sense. A good mixture of the two can greatly increase your fighting ability!
Weapon Hold - Hold down the attack command button for a short amount of time before adding the second or third part of a weapon's combo for a delayed attack. This technique allows you to move and extend the range of a combo by a short amount of distance, and removes the chance of your attack being cancelled. Practicing this technique can disrupt your opponent's rush attack and/or better align yourself for a kill, as well as refresh the hitstun on your weapon.
Advanced:
Spacing - Follow your enemy through a series of continuous knockbacks. The goal is to perform a fast-paced stunlock while avoiding invincibility frames by managing the distance between you and your enemy between every hit, as well adapting to the prime attack speed of your weapon. This dramatically increases the perfection of your stunlocking ability!
Prediction - Analyze your opponent's movements and attack habits. Strike where you predict they will be next to perform a counter or to stop a slippery enemy. Training this technique can improve your overall knowledge of the game as you will notice similarities in different people's movement and decision patterns. Having a good prediction sense allows for great kiting and weaving attacks to outplay even the strongest opponents!
Feint - Unexpectedly change your movement patterns or attack habits. The change of pattern can throw off your enemy's prediction and lower his reaction sense. This technique can assist you in creating a big opening on your enemy for a devastating blow.
Ghost Range - Attack your enemy at the max range of your weapon. This technique enhances your ability to quick-draw swords and get the first hit on your opponent. Consistently performing consecutive max range attacks takes a lot of time and practice, but it helps outclass any opponent. A player with awareness of max range tends to be very difficult to battle in close and mid-range combat, so be careful!
Speed - Maximize your movement speed by reducing angles to cover distance, and move directly to your opponent. Reducing the amount of time needed to approach an enemy also reduces the enemy's reaction time. Maximize your battle speed by utilizing aggressive and continuous rush attacks in quick trades. This is the deadliest skill a hardcore player has as it nullifies your opponent's reactions and can greatly break through their fighting tactics. High amounts of battle speed can also outclass switching tactics and catch an opponent off-guard since it removes the small, but frequent, delay of switching.
Expert:
Strategy - After constant experiences in battle, you will be forced to make quick decisions when facing multiple people. Whether it be all at once or one at a time, you must do your best to formulate a second nature of fighting finesse. A way to train this concept is to avoid tunnel vision, and be mindful of your resources such as striker boost. Choose when to approach your enemies to avoid lethal damage. Different situations need you to keep distance until the enemy formation breaks, and you can catch off an opponent. Keep in mind who in the battle is most vulnerable to damage, who is short on boost, who is the slowest and less time consuming to rid. Should you attack the weakest opponent or separate the strongest member? Analyze what your opponent is trying to do and what are his habits. Should you play the battle at close, mid, or long range? Which weapon combinations could best counter your opponent's playstyle? Can you force your enemy to use their dash? Are you faster than your opponent to perform rush attacks or will you need to use defensive kiting? How good is your opponent with ghost range and prediction? Do they tend to run away and risk yourself into depleting too much striker boost? These questions help train yourself into noticing the best win condition for different types of scenarios.
Awareness - After a while, you'll have enough experience with the majority of the current players. You'll be able to recognize players that are hard carries, above average, decent, or amateur. You'll familiarize players who tend to focus on capturing points and players who constantly pick battles. Every set of players makes a match different. Learning to foresee how a match may play out leaves you with 3 main viable options: Capture, Defend, or Spawn Camp. Any role you decide take can impact the flow of the match - the amount of impact varies on the strength of your own skill, your team, and the enemy team.
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.
Precision - It matters how much you're attacking and not being able to hit or reach your enemy. Most veteran or skilled players tend to notice your lack of faith simply because you're afraid to reach in for battle. The best way to train your precision is to start caring less about keeping your distance and safety, and more on pursuing your enemy. It will greatly improve every attribute listed on this guide as you tend to make efficient decisions and less hoping for a lucky play. Once you master this skill, you'll likely be able to force your enemy into making movement mistakes and bad decisions that are predictable and easier to counter. Remember to focus on improving when you make mistakes against different playstyles.
Adaptability - Throughout this post, I have mentioned things such as: forcing your enemy into making mistakes, improving on mistakes, player types (offensive and defensive), and so on. All of these concepts have to deal with how a player evidently plays the game. Different people react and make different types of decisions when playing, learning who is who plays a big role on how formidable you can become as a player. In the older days, former grand players used to have a sense on every single notable person that played the game. They would adapt to the person's playstyle and tendencies to best them in combat to the point where it became second nature to know who was who. More and more different playstyles and different players came to appear; however, these new opponents would show similarities in decision making and movement patterns to current players, so even if the person was doing something different, there were already several ways to counter. My advice to everyone is to have versatility in your kit - a variety of playstyles such as zerker, hybrid, gunner can help breed new movement patterns and decision making to make yourself a less predictable opponent. Adapt to different players and playstyles as well, so that you may incorporate these into your own playstyle. Remember: not everyone loses the same way and not every situation will be the same, but a vast amount of knowledge of these basic concepts makes everything else easier and less threatening.
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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.
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!