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Provoke update (why does taunting blow not taunt???)
Get provoke if you tank I guess... Overclock also heals you for over 10%. Sorry, it's hard to be excited about Defensio/DN lately.
Updated for the Awakening update!
I don’t claim to be the best Defensio in NA because I am neither as geared nor ancient as some veterans. What I do claim is that I play the most optimal Defensio and know a lot of silly details about her skills. This is because I love testing and analyzing everything. I also love playing this class in both PvE and PvP (got to Platinum in Theano!).
I wrote this guide because ALL Machina guides on the internet are outdated. Up-to-date pieces of information are scattered, so it’s difficult for players to learn this class (I certainly struggled). I hope even veteran Defensio players find one or two trivia from this guide. If you find anything to add or fix, please post on this thread! I am open to any discussion.
This guide is long and has a lot of stupid info irrelevant to playing a functioning Defensio. Ctrl-F to sections you are interested in.
tl dr; memorize "Awakening: Combos DPS Ranking"
# Overview
+ tank class with the best DPS and party DPS buff
+ nearly infinite block and many escapes
+ high superarmor if played right
+ fluid, fast-paced gameplay
+ CUTE
- defensive buffs are not as strong as other tank classes
- underwhelming awakening
In short, contrary to the class name, Defensio is the offensive tank class. With limited party saving potential, you cannot save (noob) parties like a Guardian. However, you may be favored by experienced parties who just want more DPS (important in timed nests like Green Dragon Time Attack).
# Skills
Machina has a beautiful, fluid combo system. For each skill, I will include its properties (such as SA - superarmor) and notable skills that it combos from/to.
> Machina
Tumble: The universal dodge. You can cancel anything on ground with it.
Fly-by: Why Machinas have good mobility. If you hit anything mid-flight, you do a rolling attack that you CANNOT cancel until you land (except [Beat Down EX instant]).
• If you use retro charge (left click) near the end of the flight, you can fly again. Wheeee!
--- low SA
--- From: tumble, retro charge
--- To: any air skills, [Lariat] (right click), retro charge
Lariat: Always use the left click stomp (lv 6+) because it does 100% of the skill’s board damage, essentially doubling the damage.
• Only moves forward, so useful under confuse debuff.
--- high SA
--- From: [Fly-by]
--- To: [Taunting Blow]
> Patrona
Ducking: What makes Machina so fluid and fun. You can cancel nearly every Defensio skills on ground into [Ducking], which in turn cancels into almost everything. Use it to cancel animations, move around, and dodge attacks while DPSing to look cool.
--- iframe
--- From: easier to list skills that do NOT cancel into ducking
--- * Most Machina skills (CAN cancel [Body Check], [Charging Gear])
--- * Buffs: [Overclock], [Pressure Release]
--- * [Pneumatic Reflex] (left click counter attack)
--- To: any ground skills
Gear Steps: [Stomp Shuffle], [Steam Release], [Step Up]
These skills are your openers. As soon as a gear step starts, you get a 10 sec 25% action speed buff. You WILL feel slow without this buff, so remember to use gear steps periodically.
• With Class Mastery 1, you also get a 5 sec superarmor buff, which boosts all skills’ superarmor up a level.
• [Steam Release] applies a debuff that increases all damage.
[Ducking] essentially resets cooldowns of all gear steps. With [Pressure Release] buff setting [Ducking] CD to 0, you can loop gear step → [Ducking]... infinitely.
• The loop with [Steam Release] used to be called ‘invincible missile’ combo, but trying to use that to DPS is a terrible idea. First, you aren’t actually invincible because [Steam Release] does NOT have iframe. Second, [Steam Release] damage has been nerfed after reworks, so whatever DPS you will get is terrible. However, gear step loops are still useful for building steam.
--- high SA (very high with CM1)
--- From: [Ducking]
--- To: any ground skills, [Ducking]
Link skills can be activated with left or right clicks after gear steps.
1) Follow Up: Ruina side skill. Not useful for Defensios outside PvP.
--- medium SA
--- From: [Stomp Shuffle]
--- To: 3 normal attacks
2) Exploding Palm: Ruina side skill. Not useful for Defensios outside PvP.
--- medium SA
--- From: [Stomp Shuffle]
--- To: 3 normal attacks
3) Flying Knee-kick: TIGER KNEE. Ruina side skill but notable for being air usable. In fact, its main usage for Defensios is gaining a bit more air time while also moving forward. NEVER use this on ground, as you will be kneeling on the ground for a quality vacation before launching.
--- medium SA, air-usable
--- From: [Steam Release] (but please don’t)
--- To: 4 normal attacks
4) Kidney Blow: Ruina side skill. Not useful for Defensios outside PvP.
--- high SA
--- From: [Steam Release]
--- To: 4 normal attacks
5) Beat Down EX: MACHINA SMASH. One of your main DPS skills. The fist charging in air does 100% of board damage. You can use the air time to avoid stomps, but you will usually punch down early so that you can use stronger skills.
• You may also use this just as a super high jump... to climb things.
--- medium SA, air-usable
--- From: [Step Up]
--- To: 2 normal attacks
6) Twister Kick EX: RISING STORM... oops wrong class. The charging breakdance does 150% of board damage. Since the breakdance deals high damage and ends fairly quickly, letting this play the whole animation is actually decent unlike [Beat Down EX], unless a stronger skill is ready.
• You take 20% reduced damage during the charge, which might be useful in emergency.
• You can cancel the kick and leap backward by pressing spacebar.
--- medium SA
--- From: [Step Up]
--- To: 2 normal attacks, (after spacebar cancel) any air skills
Aerial Parry EX: Spammable block that you can use almost any time. Beware of the short vulnerable start-up before the block frames begin. Once the block frames kick in though, you block all hits until you land back on ground.
• You can cancel the backward skid after landing with [Ducking].
• For each hit blocked, you poop out 3 healing fields (more details in [Reverse Order]).
• With awakening, this may activate automatically when hit with 15% chance.
• You get 2 steam for simply using this and 3 more steam if you block a hit (CM1).
• For whatever reason, it is disabled under confusion debuff in Rune 3rd stage.
--- block, air-usable
--- From: ANYTHING!
--- To: (after successful block) any air skills
Beyond the Wall EX: Air-only skill. First, you shoot forward with smoke blowing out of your ass. Then, left click to grab enemies and deal damage. If the grab hits, you get a 5 second buff that boosts damage of Defensio air skills. The grab also applies a 20% attack reduction (all tanks can apply this debuff).
• After the grab, you do a backflip. You may then press spacebar to shoot forward again, which could be useful for additional air time and mobility.
--- medium SA, air-only
--- To: [Beat Down EX instant], any air skills
Overclock: A buff skill that doubles as your tank bubble skill. First, your physical damage is boosted by 10%. Then, you get 40% of your phys dmg added to physical defense. When you are well-geared, you can easily cap phys def with this buff and tank through most stomps like nothing.
• With awakening, casting the buff also applies bubble barriers to all allies in a fairly large AoE. The bubbles shield allies from damage up to 30% of their max HP.
Deus ex Machina: Ruina ult. The tornado follows you no matter what you do, so this skill simply gives you some additional DPS for 20 seconds. At lv 3, it deals around 30000% total damage, which is more than the Defensio ult. Generally not worth because you rarely get to DPS for 20 seconds straight.
• This has a super long iframe during cast time, which could be useful for dodging certain mechanics.
• Also makes you incredibly annoying in PvP.
--- iframe
Strike of the Martyr: Defensio ult. At around 24000% (with [Beyond the Wall] buff), this deals less total damage than the Ruina ult, but because it's 1 hit, this is better for burst.
• This also generates a field that gives you a buff that grants 25% damage reduction and +25% defenses. The field and buff both last 10 seconds, meaning the buff effectively lasts 20 seconds.
• This also has a long iframe during cast time but only while in air. Always use this in air after [Beyond the Wall].
--- iframe, air-usable
> Defensio
Pressure Release: The buff that should be on you at all times. It gives final damage, 15% action speed, defense, and 0 CD [Ducking]. You WILL feel slow without this buff.
• This buff also activates automatically when you use a gear step at 20 steam. If you are using gear steps periodically as I told you to, you should have no problem keeping this buff up. Otherwise, you can jump-start yourself with the active skill, but that has a fairly long CD, so save it for beginning of fights and buff wipes.
• Unlike most buff actives, the [Pressure Release] skill animation does not need to finish for you to get the buff. Animation cancel it!
Auto-repair: The ultimate panic button that you can ACTUALLY press at any time. Gets rid of debuffs, puts you on your feet, and takes 7 sec off all active skills’ CD (including [Auto-repair] itself!).
• Remember how [Aerial Parry] was only "almost any time"? That’s because you can’t parry while in hit stun or knocked down. Well, [Auto-repair] is usable even then. Thus, you could use it to recover then mash [Aerial Parry] to block until you are safe.
• Disclaimer - There’s one exception to ‘any time’: even [Auto-repair] is silenced by silence debuff.
Want to look cool? Like many other skills, [Auto-repair] can combo into [Ducking] into gear steps, so when you get hit, you can transition back to offense and pretend nothing happened.
• Or, if you do [Auto-repair] → [Ducking] → [Tumble] with right timing, you get 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.6 = 1.6 seconds of continuous iframe!
• If you are experienced enough to live without the panic button, you can also use [Auto-repair] offensively to reset [Taunting Blow] CD.
--- iframe, air-usable
--- From: ANYTHING!
Taunting Blow EX: Defensio's signature skill that takes care of both DPS and aggro. You do a short hop, punch, and place a bomb that somehow aggros. If you then right click, you press a trigger (during which you have iframe... somehow) that explodes all your bombs. Pressing the trigger makes you lose aggro, however.
• Each bomb creates 3 explosions, which do 50% of the skill’s board damage.
• Stacking bombs and exploding them at once used to be a thing but became totally unnecessary with CM3.
• With Awakening, you can use this in air, but that neither aggros nor places a bomb. I have yet to figure out how to use that in PvE...
--- medium-low SA, iframe (trigger), air-usable
--- From: [Lariat]
--- To: 3 normal attacks
Class Mastery 2 (CM2): [Beyond the Wall] → [Beat Down EX instant]. The instant version does FULL damage of [Beat Down EX] without the charging animation, so it does higher DPS.
Class Mastery 3 (CM3): [Lariat] → [Taunting Blow]. When used after [Lariat], the [Taunting Blow] bomb explodes immediately 4 times, BUT you keep the aggro.
• Without CM3, each cast of [Taunting Blow] does 3800% (punch) + 3 * 0.5 * 3800% (explosions) = 9500% total damage. With CM3, each cast does 3800% (punch) + 4 * 0.5 * 3800% (explosions) = 11400% total damage. Thus, ALWAYS use [Lariat] → [Taunting Blow]. Don’t bother with stacking.
• Note that exploding a bomb with CM3 does not trigger any existing bombs.
> Awakening
Reverse Order: With awakening passive Air Current Mastery, using left/right click link after [Step Up] makes you poop out a small healing field (gives +20% defenses and heals 1% per 2 sec) in random directions. Blocking a hit with [Aerial Parry EX] creates 3 fields. [Reverse Order] makes all fields explode.
• Because the fields last 8 sec, you can only get 2 explosions at most without [Auto-Repair]... but [Auto-Repair] is better used to reset CM3 and CM2.
• BUT, with 3+ fields, the explosions deal more damage than CM3. Thus, using [Reverse Order] is good after blocking.
• [Reverse Order] also triggers any [Taunting Blow] bombs. This has some PvP uses, but in PvE you should be using CM3, not stacking bombs.
Ruination: Why do we get a skill named RUINAtion? Just some generic hard-hitting awakening active. With enough action speed (gear step + pressure release), you can use this while doing the CM2, which is the optimal way to use this skill: [Beyond the Wall] → [Ruination] → [Beat Down EX instant]
--- air-only
# Skill Build
This base build includes everything I believe Defensios absolutely need: https://dnskillsim.herokuapp.com/na/...-0-00--------0
Some tips for spending leftover SP:
• Max your favorite gear steps since you will use them a lot.
• Get [Flying Knee-kick] to channel Sagat. Decent filler for getting in before [Beyond the Wall].
• Get Aerial Parry awakening if you are a scrub who can't time block.
> Crests
Saves you and boosts DPS
--- [Auto-repair] CD
Reduce the CM3 combo cooldown from 10 to 8. Now, you can essentially reset the CD with [Auto-repair]
--- [Taunting Blow] CD
--- [Lariat] CD
Your best filler skill
--- [Beat Down] dmg
If you don't want to use [Auto-repair] offensively, you may get
--- [Twister Kick] dmg
# Gameplay
Note that this all assumes an ideal DPS situation. In reality, you have to be flexible to various situations, especially if you are tanking. It's better to memorize a priority list. See # Awakening: Combos DPS Ranking.
(0. [Steam Release] for the action speed buff and damage debuff if needed)
1. CM3: [Lariat] + left click → [Taunting Blow] + 1 left click (to jump instead of [Ducking] next)
2. Jump, CM2+: [Beyond the Wall] → [Ruination] → [Beat Down EX instant]
3. [Step Up] → [Twister Kick] → [Ducking]
4. CM3 → [Ducking]
--- Add [Steam Release] → [Ducking] if you need to apply damage debuff
5. [Step Up] → [Beat Down]
--- Crash down early unless you have a lot of action speed buffs (shard, Lencea)
6. [Reverse Order] (2 explosions)
7. Jump, CM2: [Beyond the Wall] → [Beat Down EX instant]
8. CM3
After 3rd CM3, you are in a pretty awkward situation where all your main DPS skills are on cooldown. There are two ways of playing from here:
Offensive: Use [Auto-repair] and repeat from 1.
Defensive: Use the 6 seconds before next CM3 to apply buffs like [Overclock] and build steam. If that's not necessary, you may do a [Step Up] link into 1 explosion [Reverse Order].
• Don’t forget to use your 2 buffs in the beginning: [Nitrous Overhaul] and [Pressure Release].
• If a blockable attack is about to hit you, just mash [Aerial Parry] since it can cancel any skill.
• After blocking any hit, do [Ducking] → [Reverse Order] for some fast damage.
# Gearing
I am not going to go into details about this because Defensio is a straightforward AGI class. Check ‘Gearing’ section of Foxy’s Sniper guide to get a rough idea of how to gear AGI classes.
Some Defensio notes:
• Like Snipers, you get 50% AGI boost from CM1, but at 95 cap, raw physical damage is better.
• You get 20% free final damage (10% from both [Nitrous Overhaul] and [Pressure Release]). Don't sacrifice too much physical damage or crit damage for FD.
# References
• Vara's Defensio guide (outdated info and gameplay sections, but most other stuff are still relevant)
http://forum.dragonnest.com/forum/cl...defensio-guide
• Foxy’s Sniper guide (95 cap gearing info)
http://forum.dragonnest.com/forum/cl...ensive-guide-~
• Dragon Nest general skill info spreadsheet
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=554797075
Get provoke if you tank I guess... Overclock also heals you for over 10%. Sorry, it's hard to be excited about Defensio/DN lately.
Updated for the Awakening update!
I don’t claim to be the best Defensio in NA because I am neither as geared nor ancient as some veterans. What I do claim is that I play the most optimal Defensio and know a lot of silly details about her skills. This is because I love testing and analyzing everything. I also love playing this class in both PvE and PvP (got to Platinum in Theano!).
I wrote this guide because ALL Machina guides on the internet are outdated. Up-to-date pieces of information are scattered, so it’s difficult for players to learn this class (I certainly struggled). I hope even veteran Defensio players find one or two trivia from this guide. If you find anything to add or fix, please post on this thread! I am open to any discussion.
This guide is long and has a lot of stupid info irrelevant to playing a functioning Defensio. Ctrl-F to sections you are interested in.
tl dr; memorize "Awakening: Combos DPS Ranking"
# Overview
+ tank class with the best DPS and party DPS buff
+ nearly infinite block and many escapes
+ high superarmor if played right
+ fluid, fast-paced gameplay
+ CUTE
- defensive buffs are not as strong as other tank classes
- underwhelming awakening
In short, contrary to the class name, Defensio is the offensive tank class. With limited party saving potential, you cannot save (noob) parties like a Guardian. However, you may be favored by experienced parties who just want more DPS (important in timed nests like Green Dragon Time Attack).
# Skills
Machina has a beautiful, fluid combo system. For each skill, I will include its properties (such as SA - superarmor) and notable skills that it combos from/to.
> Machina
Tumble: The universal dodge. You can cancel anything on ground with it.
Fly-by: Why Machinas have good mobility. If you hit anything mid-flight, you do a rolling attack that you CANNOT cancel until you land (except [Beat Down EX instant]).
• If you use retro charge (left click) near the end of the flight, you can fly again. Wheeee!
--- low SA
--- From: tumble, retro charge
--- To: any air skills, [Lariat] (right click), retro charge
Lariat: Always use the left click stomp (lv 6+) because it does 100% of the skill’s board damage, essentially doubling the damage.
• Only moves forward, so useful under confuse debuff.
--- high SA
--- From: [Fly-by]
--- To: [Taunting Blow]
> Patrona
Ducking: What makes Machina so fluid and fun. You can cancel nearly every Defensio skills on ground into [Ducking], which in turn cancels into almost everything. Use it to cancel animations, move around, and dodge attacks while DPSing to look cool.
--- iframe
--- From: easier to list skills that do NOT cancel into ducking
--- * Most Machina skills (CAN cancel [Body Check], [Charging Gear])
--- * Buffs: [Overclock], [Pressure Release]
--- * [Pneumatic Reflex] (left click counter attack)
--- To: any ground skills
Gear Steps: [Stomp Shuffle], [Steam Release], [Step Up]
These skills are your openers. As soon as a gear step starts, you get a 10 sec 25% action speed buff. You WILL feel slow without this buff, so remember to use gear steps periodically.
• With Class Mastery 1, you also get a 5 sec superarmor buff, which boosts all skills’ superarmor up a level.
• [Steam Release] applies a debuff that increases all damage.
[Ducking] essentially resets cooldowns of all gear steps. With [Pressure Release] buff setting [Ducking] CD to 0, you can loop gear step → [Ducking]... infinitely.
• The loop with [Steam Release] used to be called ‘invincible missile’ combo, but trying to use that to DPS is a terrible idea. First, you aren’t actually invincible because [Steam Release] does NOT have iframe. Second, [Steam Release] damage has been nerfed after reworks, so whatever DPS you will get is terrible. However, gear step loops are still useful for building steam.
--- high SA (very high with CM1)
--- From: [Ducking]
--- To: any ground skills, [Ducking]
Link skills can be activated with left or right clicks after gear steps.
1) Follow Up: Ruina side skill. Not useful for Defensios outside PvP.
--- medium SA
--- From: [Stomp Shuffle]
--- To: 3 normal attacks
2) Exploding Palm: Ruina side skill. Not useful for Defensios outside PvP.
--- medium SA
--- From: [Stomp Shuffle]
--- To: 3 normal attacks
3) Flying Knee-kick: TIGER KNEE. Ruina side skill but notable for being air usable. In fact, its main usage for Defensios is gaining a bit more air time while also moving forward. NEVER use this on ground, as you will be kneeling on the ground for a quality vacation before launching.
--- medium SA, air-usable
--- From: [Steam Release] (but please don’t)
--- To: 4 normal attacks
4) Kidney Blow: Ruina side skill. Not useful for Defensios outside PvP.
--- high SA
--- From: [Steam Release]
--- To: 4 normal attacks
5) Beat Down EX: MACHINA SMASH. One of your main DPS skills. The fist charging in air does 100% of board damage. You can use the air time to avoid stomps, but you will usually punch down early so that you can use stronger skills.
• You may also use this just as a super high jump... to climb things.
--- medium SA, air-usable
--- From: [Step Up]
--- To: 2 normal attacks
6) Twister Kick EX: RISING STORM... oops wrong class. The charging breakdance does 150% of board damage. Since the breakdance deals high damage and ends fairly quickly, letting this play the whole animation is actually decent unlike [Beat Down EX], unless a stronger skill is ready.
• You take 20% reduced damage during the charge, which might be useful in emergency.
• You can cancel the kick and leap backward by pressing spacebar.
--- medium SA
--- From: [Step Up]
--- To: 2 normal attacks, (after spacebar cancel) any air skills
Aerial Parry EX: Spammable block that you can use almost any time. Beware of the short vulnerable start-up before the block frames begin. Once the block frames kick in though, you block all hits until you land back on ground.
• You can cancel the backward skid after landing with [Ducking].
• For each hit blocked, you poop out 3 healing fields (more details in [Reverse Order]).
• With awakening, this may activate automatically when hit with 15% chance.
• You get 2 steam for simply using this and 3 more steam if you block a hit (CM1).
• For whatever reason, it is disabled under confusion debuff in Rune 3rd stage.
--- block, air-usable
--- From: ANYTHING!
--- To: (after successful block) any air skills
Beyond the Wall EX: Air-only skill. First, you shoot forward with smoke blowing out of your ass. Then, left click to grab enemies and deal damage. If the grab hits, you get a 5 second buff that boosts damage of Defensio air skills. The grab also applies a 20% attack reduction (all tanks can apply this debuff).
• After the grab, you do a backflip. You may then press spacebar to shoot forward again, which could be useful for additional air time and mobility.
--- medium SA, air-only
--- To: [Beat Down EX instant], any air skills
Overclock: A buff skill that doubles as your tank bubble skill. First, your physical damage is boosted by 10%. Then, you get 40% of your phys dmg added to physical defense. When you are well-geared, you can easily cap phys def with this buff and tank through most stomps like nothing.
• With awakening, casting the buff also applies bubble barriers to all allies in a fairly large AoE. The bubbles shield allies from damage up to 30% of their max HP.
Deus ex Machina: Ruina ult. The tornado follows you no matter what you do, so this skill simply gives you some additional DPS for 20 seconds. At lv 3, it deals around 30000% total damage, which is more than the Defensio ult. Generally not worth because you rarely get to DPS for 20 seconds straight.
• This has a super long iframe during cast time, which could be useful for dodging certain mechanics.
• Also makes you incredibly annoying in PvP.
--- iframe
Strike of the Martyr: Defensio ult. At around 24000% (with [Beyond the Wall] buff), this deals less total damage than the Ruina ult, but because it's 1 hit, this is better for burst.
• This also generates a field that gives you a buff that grants 25% damage reduction and +25% defenses. The field and buff both last 10 seconds, meaning the buff effectively lasts 20 seconds.
• This also has a long iframe during cast time but only while in air. Always use this in air after [Beyond the Wall].
--- iframe, air-usable
> Defensio
Pressure Release: The buff that should be on you at all times. It gives final damage, 15% action speed, defense, and 0 CD [Ducking]. You WILL feel slow without this buff.
• This buff also activates automatically when you use a gear step at 20 steam. If you are using gear steps periodically as I told you to, you should have no problem keeping this buff up. Otherwise, you can jump-start yourself with the active skill, but that has a fairly long CD, so save it for beginning of fights and buff wipes.
• Unlike most buff actives, the [Pressure Release] skill animation does not need to finish for you to get the buff. Animation cancel it!
Auto-repair: The ultimate panic button that you can ACTUALLY press at any time. Gets rid of debuffs, puts you on your feet, and takes 7 sec off all active skills’ CD (including [Auto-repair] itself!).
• Remember how [Aerial Parry] was only "almost any time"? That’s because you can’t parry while in hit stun or knocked down. Well, [Auto-repair] is usable even then. Thus, you could use it to recover then mash [Aerial Parry] to block until you are safe.
• Disclaimer - There’s one exception to ‘any time’: even [Auto-repair] is silenced by silence debuff.
Want to look cool? Like many other skills, [Auto-repair] can combo into [Ducking] into gear steps, so when you get hit, you can transition back to offense and pretend nothing happened.
• Or, if you do [Auto-repair] → [Ducking] → [Tumble] with right timing, you get 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.6 = 1.6 seconds of continuous iframe!
• If you are experienced enough to live without the panic button, you can also use [Auto-repair] offensively to reset [Taunting Blow] CD.
--- iframe, air-usable
--- From: ANYTHING!
Taunting Blow EX: Defensio's signature skill that takes care of both DPS and aggro. You do a short hop, punch, and place a bomb that somehow aggros. If you then right click, you press a trigger (during which you have iframe... somehow) that explodes all your bombs. Pressing the trigger makes you lose aggro, however.
• Each bomb creates 3 explosions, which do 50% of the skill’s board damage.
• Stacking bombs and exploding them at once used to be a thing but became totally unnecessary with CM3.
• With Awakening, you can use this in air, but that neither aggros nor places a bomb. I have yet to figure out how to use that in PvE...
--- medium-low SA, iframe (trigger), air-usable
--- From: [Lariat]
--- To: 3 normal attacks
Class Mastery 2 (CM2): [Beyond the Wall] → [Beat Down EX instant]. The instant version does FULL damage of [Beat Down EX] without the charging animation, so it does higher DPS.
Class Mastery 3 (CM3): [Lariat] → [Taunting Blow]. When used after [Lariat], the [Taunting Blow] bomb explodes immediately 4 times, BUT you keep the aggro.
• Without CM3, each cast of [Taunting Blow] does 3800% (punch) + 3 * 0.5 * 3800% (explosions) = 9500% total damage. With CM3, each cast does 3800% (punch) + 4 * 0.5 * 3800% (explosions) = 11400% total damage. Thus, ALWAYS use [Lariat] → [Taunting Blow]. Don’t bother with stacking.
• Note that exploding a bomb with CM3 does not trigger any existing bombs.
> Awakening
Reverse Order: With awakening passive Air Current Mastery, using left/right click link after [Step Up] makes you poop out a small healing field (gives +20% defenses and heals 1% per 2 sec) in random directions. Blocking a hit with [Aerial Parry EX] creates 3 fields. [Reverse Order] makes all fields explode.
• Because the fields last 8 sec, you can only get 2 explosions at most without [Auto-Repair]... but [Auto-Repair] is better used to reset CM3 and CM2.
• BUT, with 3+ fields, the explosions deal more damage than CM3. Thus, using [Reverse Order] is good after blocking.
• [Reverse Order] also triggers any [Taunting Blow] bombs. This has some PvP uses, but in PvE you should be using CM3, not stacking bombs.
Ruination: Why do we get a skill named RUINAtion? Just some generic hard-hitting awakening active. With enough action speed (gear step + pressure release), you can use this while doing the CM2, which is the optimal way to use this skill: [Beyond the Wall] → [Ruination] → [Beat Down EX instant]
--- air-only
# Skill Build
This base build includes everything I believe Defensios absolutely need: https://dnskillsim.herokuapp.com/na/...-0-00--------0
Some tips for spending leftover SP:
• Max your favorite gear steps since you will use them a lot.
• Get [Flying Knee-kick] to channel Sagat. Decent filler for getting in before [Beyond the Wall].
• Get Aerial Parry awakening if you are a scrub who can't time block.
> Crests
Saves you and boosts DPS
--- [Auto-repair] CD
Reduce the CM3 combo cooldown from 10 to 8. Now, you can essentially reset the CD with [Auto-repair]
--- [Taunting Blow] CD
--- [Lariat] CD
Your best filler skill
--- [Beat Down] dmg
If you don't want to use [Auto-repair] offensively, you may get
--- [Twister Kick] dmg
# Gameplay
Note that this all assumes an ideal DPS situation. In reality, you have to be flexible to various situations, especially if you are tanking. It's better to memorize a priority list. See # Awakening: Combos DPS Ranking.
(0. [Steam Release] for the action speed buff and damage debuff if needed)
1. CM3: [Lariat] + left click → [Taunting Blow] + 1 left click (to jump instead of [Ducking] next)
2. Jump, CM2+: [Beyond the Wall] → [Ruination] → [Beat Down EX instant]
3. [Step Up] → [Twister Kick] → [Ducking]
4. CM3 → [Ducking]
--- Add [Steam Release] → [Ducking] if you need to apply damage debuff
5. [Step Up] → [Beat Down]
--- Crash down early unless you have a lot of action speed buffs (shard, Lencea)
6. [Reverse Order] (2 explosions)
7. Jump, CM2: [Beyond the Wall] → [Beat Down EX instant]
8. CM3
After 3rd CM3, you are in a pretty awkward situation where all your main DPS skills are on cooldown. There are two ways of playing from here:
Offensive: Use [Auto-repair] and repeat from 1.
Defensive: Use the 6 seconds before next CM3 to apply buffs like [Overclock] and build steam. If that's not necessary, you may do a [Step Up] link into 1 explosion [Reverse Order].
• Don’t forget to use your 2 buffs in the beginning: [Nitrous Overhaul] and [Pressure Release].
• If a blockable attack is about to hit you, just mash [Aerial Parry] since it can cancel any skill.
• After blocking any hit, do [Ducking] → [Reverse Order] for some fast damage.
# Gearing
I am not going to go into details about this because Defensio is a straightforward AGI class. Check ‘Gearing’ section of Foxy’s Sniper guide to get a rough idea of how to gear AGI classes.
Some Defensio notes:
• Like Snipers, you get 50% AGI boost from CM1, but at 95 cap, raw physical damage is better.
• You get 20% free final damage (10% from both [Nitrous Overhaul] and [Pressure Release]). Don't sacrifice too much physical damage or crit damage for FD.
# References
• Vara's Defensio guide (outdated info and gameplay sections, but most other stuff are still relevant)
http://forum.dragonnest.com/forum/cl...defensio-guide
• Foxy’s Sniper guide (95 cap gearing info)
http://forum.dragonnest.com/forum/cl...ensive-guide-~
• Dragon Nest general skill info spreadsheet
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=554797075
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