(DIsclaimer: this is my first ever fighting style suggestion, sorry if it sucks, but please be nice and don’t chew me out too much if it’s bad)
AO has a lof of features right now but one thing it lacks is fighting styles.
Compared to the amount of weapons and magics in the game, fighting styles feel very small and limited in their options, making strength overall underwhelming and disappointing compared to going weapons or magic.
I propose 1 fighting style that could help add some diversity into the mix, it’s gimmick is fairly simple, but I feel like it could be an interesting FS to use if played hyper-aggressively.
I call it “Dagger flow” which is probably not the best name but aw well
Stats N' stuff
This is a fighting style heavily inspired by striking your opponent in rapid succession and keeping momentum, as well as trying to incorporate some themes from Pencak silat, which is an umbrella term to describe various fighting methods from indonesian martial arts that involve piercing strikes, joint control, and weaponry.
This fighting style’s M1 hitboxes aren’t anything special, but at higher mastery levels, all m1 attacks have longer range and gain knife like attributes
It has above average damage, and below average size.
The gimmick
Dagger flow is a fighting style that is extremely combo orientated in nature and relies on consistent hits to reward the player with a boosted, stronger combo finisher hit. Landing a few consecutive hits also comes with its own effects such as being able to proc bleeding and slightly increased bonus damage. everytime you complete a combo successfully, and get a final bonus crit, your combo resets, and a new combo appears that requires more consecutive hits, for an even stronger final hit.
credits to @Virge13579 for help with the gimmick.
You would have a meter that tells you how many hits you need to land consistently, and you also have 4 “penalty warnings” that will go down with each hit you miss, if you miss 4 hits, your combo resets to the beginning, this does not reset unless you either die, or miss 4 hits.
you start off with a combo that requires 5 hits, and on the 6th hit, you have the combo reset, and an extra 2 more hits are required for the next combo, this keeps adding up by 2 until either a set cap is reached, or you miss 4 hits and your combo resets all the way back to the start where you need to land 5 in a row again.
landing 2 hits in a row always causes bleed to be proc’d, and every hit after that gets a slight damage boost.
Multi hit moves like multi-shot and multi-ground slam only add 1 hit to the combo for balancing purposes.
This makes Dagger flow a risk and reward type style that heavily relies on good aim for a great reward, but punishes players who lack the skill needed to land hits consecutively.
How to learn it
This style can be learned probably from an NPC at tiberia, since tiberia kind of lacks any content at the moment besides being important for the story.
The actual NPC quest would involve using the crash skill numerous times at enemies.
Why it should be added
Adds a new fighting style, which will help strength users with more diversity and give more options
Introduces a consistent combo gimmick that high skill players can benefit from
Adds more content to ravenna and makes tiberia more important outside of just being a story location
Possible complications
Might be hard to implement
Might be too powerful in the wrong hands of extremely skilled players.
Please share your thoughts! 