#combat analysis

[paigemathews]

Honestly, I’ve always been kinda curious about why Chris, uhhh, sucks at using a sword when Leo attacks him in Valhalla, because I find it hard to believe that Wyatt didn’t use Excalibur (physical proof of his superiority, power, and authority) in the unchanged future against Chris. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar situation (trapping Chris into a physical fight against him without powers, just to prove his superiority instead of get answers) didn’t happen between Chris and Wyatt.

There’s also the fact that both Piper and Leo canonically know how to sword fight and are actually pretty good at it. Wyatt, while not confirmed in canon, is the heir to Excalibur, so he definitely learns and is pretty deadly with a blade. (Phoebe also canonically knows, but isn’t super relevant here.) That’s all of Chris’s immediate family right there.

Between those two factors, I feel like it’s weird that he doesn’t know how to use a sword. So I have two different theories as to why:

First option: swords are a trigger. After seeing Wyatt kill people with Excalibur or even having to face him himself, it’s probable that they’re an element in his trauma. Chris clearly wasn’t expecting Leo to get this far, so being abruptly put into a dangerous situation with a trigger like that and Leo (whose presence could also be a trigger for him or just a stressor or whatever else) could have caused his response. (I think that Chris’s response would have been different if he wasn’t in the past with Leo, whose supposed to be a pacifist Elder, because I don’t think he was expecting this at all, especially if he’d thought Leo’d gotten out his anger by attacking him earlier.)

Rewatching the clip gives off this vibe to me, tba. There’s the element of panic in Chris’s voice when Leo tries to first make him fight. When he finally picks up the sword, his voice sounds younger when he tells him, “I didn’t do it.” He loses his composure when Leo points the sword at his throat, seeming to struggle to take in deeper breaths and his eyes are shiny.

Second option: purposely not defending himself to keep his cover. Whitelighters are pacifists, so sword fighting isn’t exactly something they teach. Along with that, Chris has already established that he’s from the future and the odds of swords coming back in as a weapon isn’t likely. Logically, he’d have to justify why he knows to use one.

On top of that, it’s clear that Leo already views Chris as a threat. The entire situation happens because Leo thinks he’s a threat. Showing that he’s able to fight, in an uncommon way especially, only gives Leo more reason to be suspicious of him. He’s already going to have enough issues with his cover with Leo as-is and doesn’t need to give him anymore reasons to distrust him, so he goes with it.

[rangerslayer-97]

If Respawn has done a good job and put a lot of effort into the combat as the description (screenshot from GameStop) says:

Then we are going be given a pretty good and decent, strategic combat where we actually have to play smart than hacking away at your enemy overpowering them à la Form V or VII alone. The lightsaber combat is pretty similar to old combat of the Original Series.

If you also note the combat gameplay between Ninth Sister and the caped Inquisitor, they obviously have different combat styles. The caped Inquisitor appears to heavily rely on Form IV, while Ninth Sister is more reliant on Forms V, VI and possibly VII.

The game expects us to play and fight our opponents cleverly, analyse the combatant than outright charge into battle. If this is what the game expects us to do, it looks like we have a solid Star Wars game, but I'm still going to wait till after the release date which is 15 Nov.

In fact, I honestly like this approach to combat. After playing games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Tomb Raider Trilogy and Uncharted (until they force you into a fire fight), stealth aside, they have taught me to slow down and analyse, pick your enemies to kill. It's most likely going to be the same here, we could be having multiple encounters with the Inquisitors and they have their own fighting styles.

The game will force us to adapt. No one Inquisitor is the same and the encounters might not be the same. They may have learned a new trick or two for us to counter.

I genuinely do have hope for this game. Respawn and especially EA, do not fail us! You have a shot at redemption.

[gstud]

Pyrrha V.S. Cinder Combat Analysis

Alright so with this post I'm going to be reviewing the fight between Cinder and Pyrrha, so let's get this show on the road.

In my opinion Pyrrha should've won the fight but just barely given that cinder has the fall maiden's power. Now what we know about Pyrrha: in volume one when we're being introduced to characters and such Weiss goes on an exposition dump talking about Pyrrha and how accomplished she is as a combatant "Pyrrha graduated top of her class at sanctum... she's won the Mystral Regional Tournament four years in a row, a new record." That's pretty damn impressive, so much so that Pyrrha in volume two says that she's on such a high pedestal that she's unapproachable.

Then later we've seen in multiple seasons, most notably volume three, of how well she fights holding her own very efficiently against two fighters (volume 3 episode 2). Her main advantage over all of her opponents has always been polarity which we've seen her use minorly when she fought Mercury and then majorly when she fought Penny (R.I.P.) but when she's fighting Cinder she can't use her polarity with Cinder's weapons because their made of some sort of stone/glass, I like to lean towards obsidian (obsidian comes from a volcano so does cinders from burnt wildlife, not all that important though). While Pyrrha can't use her polarity against her weapons she can use it on her environment which we saw, which I thought was very effective. That's enough about Pyrrha, we're gonna now focus on Cinder which may be a bit more difficult to talk about seeing how we have limited information about her.

So we know that Cinder is working with Salem who has some control over grimm, so Salem could've taught Cinder how to fight or how to think through a fight (though I'm a bit reluctant to think that because I think Salem is just using Cinder as a pawn) so there's that, we also know that she is very cunning in the way of planning out the Fall of Beacon and recruiting people to her cause (ie, Mercury, Emerald, Roman, the White Fang) again adding onto her tactical experience which is all said and good but tactics can't win a battle alone.

Combatively she has taken out a lobby of Atlas grunts, which I'm sure any huntsman can do so, eh ok that happened, then she has the successful mugging of the fall maiden which is definitely impressive though she wouldn't have been able to do it on her own, so for the most part she excels at guerrilla warfare, hit and runs. As for her fight with Ozpin, idk what to make of it there was no body to be found and we only saw them clashing so Ozpin could've slipped away via some magic bullshit or she did kill the body Ozpin was using but then jumped hosts we don't know, but I will give her this: from what we did see of the fight it seemed like she had to go all out to at least keep up with Ozpin which can lead to exhaustion.

Now to the actual fight itself, finally. So the overall fight itself was good, it was exciting, both dishing out damage pretty evenly throughout but there were two moments, maybe three, where Pyrrha could've ended the fight or kept on fighting.

So this moment was perfect to continue on fighting rather than being at a stalemate. Pyrrha obviously is overpowering Cinder in this position even if she can't finish it with her sword she can still turn and throw Cinder into the ground with a hip toss and at that point from that point she definitely has dominant position with Cinder on the ground she can stomp on her head, summon her sword and stab her and then get interrupted by the dragon and then we could continue onward.

Then there's this scene. God I hate this scene because it goes against all those years of fighting and practice because for me and my three years of fencing there are five tenets of swordsmanship and the number one tenet is protect yourself and when Pyrrha gets up she has plenty of time to see that Cinder is winding up her shot and she should've just raised her shield and let her shield take the shot AND NOT FALL INTO THE ACHILLES ARCHETYPE. That character archetype felt so forced, but let's say it's the heat of the moment and she doesn't notice that Cinder is winding up her shot and she does throw her shield WHY WOULD SHE BE TURNED AROUND WHEN THE ARROW HITS HER, IT LOOKS SO WEIRD LIKE WHEN I THROW A BALL, OR A FRISBEE AND WHEN I THROW IT I DON'T THROW IT WITH SO MUCH DRAMATIC FLAIR THAT I END UP TURNED AROUND. It really bothers me because she's a renown combatant and that's just a silly mistake for someone of her class to make. If she wasn't turned around she might have had time to see the arrow fall apart and then reform and potentially roll out of the way and keep fighting. And even if the arrow did hit, it shouldn't pierce the armor (though that's been under much debate).

And final moment that I think that Pyrrha could've kept fighting.

This scene. At this scene when Cinder is all touchy with Pyrrha spewing out her monologue that would be a great time to grab her arm and leap off with her good leg using her adrenaline to keep going and taking cinder to the ground and do some ground wrestling and hold on until Ruby gets there which wasn't very long. I just remember a comic someone made where Pyrrha asks cinder if she believes in destiny then suplexes cinder which was just hilarious, I loved it so much. But as I've been told before Pyrrha was probably going into this fight expecting to die but at the start she went in fighting for her life, at least that's what it looked like and I also know it was decided before this volume that Pyrrha was going to die it just seems like it was set up poorly hence this post.

Hope y'all like it and I'll see you on the next post.

[kriss-watches-stuff]

Alright now on to the fight I expected and... uh oh. Weiss has a lot of training. And training. And training. And that's about it. How can I tell? "Not that forward." Weiss is taking the time in the middle of a fight to assume textbook perfect form. This is a very bad thing. I used to take martial arts, tae kwon do, I made it to high green belt before quiting. Anyway we did as part of training regular spars. The people I liked to go against the most were like Weiss. If my foe took the time to do a bunch of little corrections in their stance like this before a match my confidence soared. This is a sure sign of several weaknesses. Lack of practical experience, slavery to form, a tendency to hesitate and overthink, and predictable attack patterns. My usual strategy against such foes was to throw a very minor, easy to read, and not too fast feint and then exploit the gaps caused by the textbook defense they launched into upon identifying the "attack" heading for them. It worked depressingly well. The point of a stance isn't to be perfect in form. The point is to be automatic, comfortable, and advantageous. To this day if I get surprised by something I often drop back into attack stance instantly. And despite not doing martial arts for over a decade my friend who is a 3rd dan blackbelt compliments me that it's still a very well executed stance. The point I'm getting at is that your stance should be autimatic and not something you critique. If you haven't reached that stage yet practice your stance over and over again before focusing on your attacks. It honestly makes a world of difference. tldr Weiss is too focused on form and technique and not enough on actually fighting. Also for some reason she wears heels in combat.

[paigemathews]

Okay, so I ended up accidentally spiraling into a thing about everyone’s combat abilities, but then Prue’s got so long that I’m splitting them up. This mini-series of posts are gonna be a combination of canon and headcanons (look, I’m insisting that some of these people take a defense class, it makes sense), but Prue’s is entirely canon. I’ll eventually come back and link all of them together somehow.

Prue Halliwell

Initially, Prue is actually the sister seemingly most reliant on her powers when fighting. During the first two seasons, she primarily uses her powers to fight and only resorts to any type of hand-to-hand or self-defense when her powers are no longer an option, such as when she’s attacked by the Dream Sorcerer or dealing with Nicholas in season one. Furthermore, her focus tends to be getting away from the fight rather than full on fighting.

It’s really only after she gets her astral projection, a power that leaves her without her telekinesis, that she begins to deal with more nonmagical fighting. When she first realizes that her astral projection leaves her without her powers, she attacks Drazi with a block of wood in Heartbreak City.

Pretty much immediately after that episode, she begins to integrate some nonmagical aspects into her fighting style. What’s really interesting to me is that she mostly seems to be integrating the hand to hand in scenes where she’s reasonably sure that she can handle her opponent without magic. For example, she kicks one of the guys in Animal Pragmatism and does limited hand-to-hand combat with the Film Geek under a spell in Chick Flick, but has also already or does use telekinesis to win the fight.

The other times that she uses hand-to-hand when fighting is when she doesn’t have her powers and has no other options. Notably, she isn’t focused on winning the fight in those situations but getting away from her attacker. This includes her and Piper knocking the shelf over onto Cryto in How to Make a Quilt Out of Americans and her kicking one of the horror movie villains in the face and running in Chick Flick.

Season three is when Prue really incorporates hand-to-hand in her fighting style and also becomes such a skilled fighter. She uses telekinesis and nonmagical fighting in The Honeymoon’s Over, taking on multiple opponents at a time and winning. She uses her temporary empathy in Primrose Empath to augment her powers and fighting ability, kicking Vinceres’ ass in a super satisfying fight scene. There’s also the Wrestling with Demons match with Phoebe.

Prue continues incorporating hand-to-hand into her fighting style in season three, including kicking Belthazar in Power Outage and her interactions with Krell in Sleuthing with the Enemy. She demonstrates increased agility in Blinded by the Whitelighter. She’s flexible and does backflips or other acrobatic moves when fighting, as seen in both Primrose Empath and Wrestling with Demons.

She also demonstrates a passing knowledge of guns, being able to use them incredibly quickly in the Good, the Bad, and the Cursed when she and Cole go to the past. Along with guns, Prue has used knives several times and also used a crossbow.

By the end of season three, her fighting style incorporates both her powers and hand-to-hand combat and she appears equally comfortable with both. While she didn’t demonstrate a lot of fighting ability before roughly halfway through season two, I feel like it’s probable that Prue took some kind of self-defense or fighting classes previously, in part because of her personality. She’s one of the best fighters of the entire cast and of the Charmed Ones. Realistically, she seemed to surpass Phoebe, but due to Phoebe not dying in season three and Phoebe’s entire journey, I’m going to say that Prue is actually the second best fighter.

[gstud]

Weiss Trailer Analysis

Alright so I'm probably late to talk about this, like reaaaly late but I gotta start somewhere.

Anywho I wanted to rant a bit about the combat in Weiss's most recent trailer focusing mostly on her weapon, so Weiss's weapon is essentially a rapier.

There's no curves on it and it doesn't have quilians like a longsword, it's very effective with thrusts and can also do cuts, though not as devestating as say a longsword or a saber, or I guess the katana (ew).

The cuts with a rapier are most effective when you hit a major artery and you might be able to cut through some bone in say an arm or calf if you put some force behind it. It'd be more understandable with a side sword which is thicker than a rapier and has more of a defined edge that can be used for cutting through people.

Like that, I can see that happening on a human, not so much on the decapitation, but maybe, though I'm not 100% sure on that because I haven't done test cutting with a rapier against dead animal, my point is (haha), is that you can't cleave through the main center of mass with something that looks like a tooth pick especially if the thing you're cutting through is thicker than a human being.

Like this, this looks silly to me.

This is me just nit picking but it looks kinda odd to me and after doing longsword and arming sword fencing for like three years, it just looks funky to me. But besides that I did like the trailer far more than others, it had good animations and it was nice to see winter again.

[themysticmusegallery]

Combat Analysis: Kiera of Aillte Glas

Combat is a rather large part of the Dresden Files universe, so I thought it might be nice to go over the general abilities and strategies used by my various movies, along with their strengths and weaknesses. This is mostly for quick reference and advance plotting purposes.

With that said, let’s continue with Kiera, princess of the Aillte Glas selkies.

Kiera is much older than outward appearances would suggest, her changeling years dating back to pre-Christian Ireland. She has seen a lot in her years, and yet not as much as you might think. Due to a rather patriarchal trend in her family’s Court, she has often been sequestered away and basically taught how to be a proper bride. A rebellious streak, however, has given her ample opportunity to learn other talents as well.

As a selkie, Kiera holds dominion over wind and water, among other things, and her mantle of princess has given her an incredible amount of power to back it up. Her magic often comes in the form of spellsinging, weaving ancient songs and flooding her words with power to make them manifest, though quicker songless gestures may also be used for smaller, more immediate spells.

A contrast to her warmongering father, Kiera rarely actively attempts to be aggressive, even when faced with just such a foe. More often than not, if someone wrongs her, she will often cast a spell of confusion on her opponents limbs, words, or even the items they carry. This often subdues the opponent enough for Kiera to get a laugh in or simply get away. She may also conjure a thick, chilling fog to waylay a foe, often billowed forth from a blown kiss.

In more dangerous or dire situation, her song may take on a more dissonant tone, blurring and twisting another’s vision and balance to the point of nausea or vomiting. It may become shrill like a banshees, causing pain in all she will let listen, or outright rob them of their senses. Kiera may also call down powerful gusts of wind to knock people about like ragdolls, or call nearby water to her command to crash and strike

If Kiera absolutely, positively needs to kill someone, her go-to method is to fill her foe’s lungs with seawater with a snap of her fingers. Her relatively innocuous curses may turn entropic, giving the target increasingly nasty bouts of bad luck until they expire. Otherwise she may call forth the might of the storm, bringing down bolts of lightning.or bludgeoning baseball hail.

Like all fae, Kiera is vulnerable to the touch of iron, be it in the form of steel or some other alloy. It burns her and rapidly reduces the effectiveness of her magic. She is also intimately connected to her shapeshifting sealskin in terms of power. If it is stolen, her power gradually wanes, eventually leaving her next to powerless. It should be noted that it is seldom as simple as snatching it off her body: selkies are rather aware of this one glaring weakness of theirs, and through many different methods make their skin much harder to procure when still on them.

It should also be known that while Kiera excels at magic, she has had very little schooling in hand to hand combat. While her magic often compensates for this, she is still a novice when it comes to throwing punches or wielding a weapon. She’s also inexperienced with large scale fights, and often attempts to flee such situations rather than stay and fight.

As previously noted, Kiera is not a fighter by nature. She’s mostly out to get away from a stuffy royal setting, to have some fun out from under the thumb of her Court. It takes a lot to get her in a violent mood, and even then she is more likely to confuse, mislead, and trick rather than unleash her full capabilities.

Still, make no mistake: Kiera is the Lady of Aillte Glass. As with any fae, she can be plenty terrifying with the right motivation.

[themysticmusegallery]

Combat Analysis: Rosa Vazquez

Combat is a rather large part of the Dresden Files universe, so I thought it might be nice to go over the general abilities and strategies used by my various movies, along with their strengths and weaknesses. This is mostly for quick reference and advance plotting purposes.

With that said, let’s continue with Rosa Vazquez, the Aztec lycanthrope and former hitwoman/shocktrooper of the Red Court

Taught to fight nearly every waking moment from the time she could walk, Rosa lived through perhaps the most accurate modern rendition of a Spartan’s life, and then some. As a result, Rosa is a terrifying combatant with muscles and reflexes that push the limits of human capabilities. She is also an expert on reading body language and predicting movements, often taking nominally faster opponents by surprise. Her senses are also superb, honed by living among vampires and the spirit she communes with, allowing her vision in low light conditions and predicting movement by sound alone.

 She is proficient with many different types of weaponry, ranging from machetes and warhammers to pistols and shotguns. Her preferred weapon, Sangre, Black Teeth of the Red Night, is a formidible weapon all on its own. When paired with Rosa’s physical capabilities, even groups of vampires have difficulty taking her down.

This, of course, is all barring the influence of her Rage. Every lycanthrope is a natural medium for a spirit of rage and feral might which grants them enhanced strength, speed, and regenerative power. Rosa is no different in that respect. Where she does differ, however, is her notable control and the power her Rage confers. Along with training her body to fight physical enemies, her harsh upbringing also gave her an incredible control over her Rage, allowing her to think rationally and even strategically when in a berserking frenzy. Even when not under a full moon, Rosa’s spirit grants her enough strength to easily shatter bone with her bare hands and survive rather grievous injury. When under the light of a full moon, she has been known to go toe to toe with some incredibly physically powerful foes, even trolls.

The rage spirit itself is still something of a mystery to Rosa. She believes it to be a different breed than those that fueled the likes of the Streetwolves and the Norse berserks of old, as it does not urge her to run with a pack, and it seems to impart more strength than most others she has encountered. With her long unbroken line of lycanthrope ancestors, she believes it to be the same spirit that empower her father, his father before him, and all those going back to the legendary Teresa de la Noche Roja, and has grown in strength from inhabiting so many warriors. Still, all she can do is theorize, as the Rage is not exactly the talkative type.

In battle, Rosa has a tendency to be a bit on the dramatic side. She has never been one for ambush, and will usually announce her presence in some way before attacking. Unless given sufficient reason to do otherwise, she will usually close in for either shotgun fire or melee combat, preferring to see her opponent up close when she’s fighting them. Borrowing from the Tao of Inigo Montoya, she does not usually start her fight off with her full strength or Rage, prolonging the fight so she can enjoy it, especially if the opponent has severely angered her in some way. More often than not she tries to make the killing blow with her bare hands, snapping the opponents neck or breaking their skull. Otherwise she delights in breaking her opponent’s spine.

While an undeniably fearsome opponent, Rosa is not without her flaws. Her strongest times can be rather easily avoided by engaging her in the day or under a new moon. While she can easily ignore a lot of pain and has impressive regenerative abilities, they have their limits. She can bleed out just as easily as anyone else if she doesn’t address the wound. Prepared opponents may lay down heavy cover fire to prevent her from getting close with her favored weapons, reducing her overall effectiveness. She also has no extraordinary defense against magic aside from her pain suppression and regenerative power. Sufficiently fast and/or physically powerful opponents such as Black Court vampires or Forest People also have a much easier time combating Rosa’s skills. Her control over her Rage is also not endless. It can be worn down with time or broken with sufficient mental stress, which can render her fighting skills moot. It should also be noted that Rosa has had very little schooling other than martial.