I'm admittedly pretty bad with the MaA; after I finish unlocking everything for the Archer I think I'll work on that. Any tips with the class? A good MaA is so annoying/tough to deal with as a Vanguard
MaA is definitely tough to master, especially compared to vanguard or knight, but I find it much more rewarding than those classes. They're easy-mode for when I can't be bothered concentrating and just want to smash stuff
Most important thing to remember is that you're squishy. You do NOT want to trade blows with anyone, as even an archer can drop you in two hits. Knights & Vanguards can knock you down in one with certain weapons.
So I guess tip #1 is to learn your spacing and keep your distance. If you don't think your attack will interrupt your opponents attack, cancel it and parry instead. If they're still winding up you will interrupt, if they're in the downswing, you won't.
I cannot stress enough how important the one button dodge binding is. This will be your most used button so stick it to something you can reach easily (I use a thumb mouse button)
Don't forget to enable it in your settings! I think it's disabled by default.
I also set the double-tap dodge slider to minimum as I don't want to accidentally dodge when I don't mean to (dodging off a log bridge to your death is embarrassing)
Backwards dodge will likely be your most used move. If an enemy starts swinging, do your back dodge, watch the attack miss, then do your forward dodge and land a couple of quick hits.
Once you've learned the spacing you can just skip the back dodge and save stamina - just use the forward dodge when you see an opening.
It'll take a few hits to kill heavily armoured enemies, so combos are your best bet for doing that damage quickly. Once they recover from your first attack, duck back out of range and repeat the process.
Feinting also works fantastic, and since your weapons hit so fast it's almost impossible to detect a feint. Stab-feint followed by stab is pretty much a guaranteed hit, but make sure your opponent isn't one of those LMB spamming idiots because there's absolutely no point feinting one of them since they never parry anyway & you'll just catch a side slash to the face.
You really need to adjust your tactics depending what your opponent does.
LMB spammer? Wait for them to miss then duck in and just keep comboing. You'll interrupt every attack and destroy them.
Guy who actually uses block? Use spacing and fake him out with feints.
In a way, MaA is the most frustrating class to play, because you can out-duel someone, then right before you get the kill someone else will take it.
Or you can dart in and out, wounding your enemy, then he lands one lucky blow and you die.
However, like I said, I just love the feeling of winning duels based purely on skill, rather than relying on heavy armour and high damage weapons.
I think my favourite thing to do as MaA is to dodge between several enemies and watch them all LMB slash eachother to death while trying to hit me, then picking off the survivors one by one, spamming the laugh emote every time one of them TK's the other.
Wow, that ended up being pretty long.
TL/DR: MaA squishy, don't get hit.
