Dark and Darker Fighter Guide: Mastering the Class

hao xiuyun 5.9.2023 08:11

Welcome to my new Fighter Guide, designed to help you learn and master the class. I am Dresboni, and this guide was made in collaboration with the number one fighter, Orlanthi.

Orlanthi: Hello there ladies and gentlemen. My name is Orlanthi, and I’ve achieved Rank 1 Fighter in Dark and Darker for 3 playtests now. I’m also a Twitch streamer, and I’ve been pushing the limits of the fighter class since the very first public playtest, getting great results in many community tournaments. And I’ll be here to help you dungeon delvers understand the fighter class a little bit better.

This guide was designed to have something for players of all levels of experience, with the guide being split through a few different sections that become more complex as the video goes on. We’ll be starting out with important information and introductions for beginners, then go over the perks, skills, and weapons the class can use. Finally, we'll conclude with a full PVP guide and a few advanced tips to get you a step above the competition.
Understanding the Fighter Class

The fighter is a solid Jack of all trades whose strength is powerful equipment and a flexible kit. The class’s defensive prowess is a benefit of their signature heavy armor and self-healing ability that give the fighter unmatched resilience, which can be enhanced even further by using a shield, an item that can only be equipped by fighters and clerics. Their mobility and damage are defined by the unique sprint ability and several long-reaching two-handed weapons that give them enough lethality to demolish most classes in melee. And finally, the fighter’s perks allow for any ranged weapon to be equipped, enabling them to be a threat at any range.
Pros and Cons of the Fighter Class

Let’s go over some pros and cons of the fighter class:

Pros:

The ability to equip the best damage reduction armor in the game.
An abundance of usable gear, making it very attractive to beginners.
Potent self-healing in the form of second wind.
Being one of the two classes that can equip offhand shields.

Cons:

Being dependent on good gear, as the fighter suffers from a lack of damage and endurance without using decent equipment.
He also suffers from big slowdowns, with his most sturdy equipment heavily slowing down your character.
His armor is very noisy, making it difficult to sneak up on anyone.

Place in the Meta

The Fighter was widely considered the best class in the first few playtests, however, nerfs to varying parts of his kit have severely tuned down the fighter. The class, while still viable, can prove tricky to use efficiently and now lands somewhere along the lines of average. It isn’t the best at any specific aspect of PVP, but it’s also good enough in every aspect to where you'll always be a threat.
Getting Started

As a fighter, you’re less likely to be stuck in the limbo of never finding any gear and never extracting, as you can equip a large variety of gear. But you need to be prepared for the basics to avoid taking damage. When fighting in PVE, do not “tank” any hits, instead make them miss on you and hit them when they’re open. This strategy is much safer when you’re starting out, so avoid trying to block PVE attacks until you understand their patterns better.
Maximizing Damage and Killing Enemies Faster

Now let’s talk about how you can maximize your damage and kill enemies faster. You should know that targeting specific body parts is very important in this game because they have damage modifiers, with headshots dealing the most damage and limbs taking the least. The part of your weapon that makes contact is also important, for example hitting with the tip of a sword does significantly more damage than hitting with the handle. These are called “sweet” or “sour” spots and the same thing applies in similar ways to almost every other weapon in the game.

If you need more help getting started, check out my introductory guide, linked in the description and the card in the top right of your screen.
Fighter Perks and Skills

Now let’s go over the perks that the fighter can equip. Barricade’s effect is not only minor, but it only happens when you should be blocking all the damage anyway. Combo Attack can actually increase your damage pretty significantly but is only really good when using a weapon that attacks fast. Counterattack’s buff is not particularly useful because of how short its duration is. Defense Expert’s effect can be very good when using high AR equipment but shines more when your gear is better. Dual wield is a niche perk as it’s not a popular strategy with fighter. But the effect itself isn’t terrible. Projectile Resistance is one of the best perks in the game considering how popular the ranger is. Shield Expert’s effect is too minor to make a difference, I don't recommend it. Swift is very essential for fighter as it facilitates using heavy armor sets. Probably the fighter’s best perk. Weapon Mastery, although nerfed, is still a great perk mostly because it allows you to equip the ranger’s bows.

Now that we’ve concluded the list, keep in mind there’s nothing wrong with trying to experiment with the lower rated perks.
Fighter Skills

Sprint can be popped to either escape from any situation or to chase someone down and confirm a kill. It feels pretty irreplaceable, especially when you have so many slowdowns as a fighter. Second Wind is the fighter’s best ability in my opinion and will drastically increase your survivability in a fight. Although it’s single use, it can be recovered through campfires. Green and above with one campfire, or two lower tier campfires. Victory Strike is actually pretty decent and an argument could be made to replace sprint with it if you’re running a high damage build. The healing is pretty insignificant in PVP but if you’re new and have nothing else it’s ok to use, and you can slowly heal up from killing PVE. Breakthrough is mostly useless unless you’re planning on taking a red portal and fighting the Ghost king, as it removes all of the slowdown stacks he applies to you. Taunt is fairly useless because if you really want to aggro something you could just go hit it. The defense buff isn’t significant enough to be useful in PVP and it’s bad in PVE because you shouldn’t be taking any damage to mobs anyway. Adrenaline Rush’s effect is good enough but the crash is crippling and is only worth using if you pop second wind afterwards.

Sticking to the default loadout of Sprint and Second wind is recommended, if you struggle with accidentally pressing E and wasting your only second wind charge I would suggest moving sprint to E and putting Second Wind on Q instead!
Fighter Weapons

A specific weapon can either enable you to shine or limit you to suffering, so we’re going to talk about the most important archetypes of fighter weapons. Keep in mind any weapon that cannot be used by the fighter class by default suffers from a 20% damage debuff when equipped with weapon mastery. Now let’s get to it!

One-Handed Weapons with Potent DPS: These should be prioritized when using a shield and are not much worse than many two-handed weapons DPS-wise (arming sword, falchion, horseman’s, flanged mace).

Shields: The Heater and Round shield should be used over the buckler as the difference in armor ratings and hitboxes is massive (Heater Shield, Round Shield).

Two-Handed Weapons: The Spear and the Longsword are the best two-handed weapons fighters can equip as they have great damage and attack patterns. But, most importantly, they can be equipped without weapon mastery (Spear, Longsword).

Slow Two-Handed Weapons: All of these two-handed weapons had previously suffered hard from the slowdown you get when you’re swinging with them. Now in the February playtest, the devs will be slightly reducing that slowdown. If you want to give these a try in this playtest keep in mind they all have really shitty sour spots so you need to be hitting with the tip of your weapon (Halberd, ZweiHander, Battle Axe).

Ranged Weapons: These ranged weapons are very good, they increase the fighter’s threat at a range and should be used whenever possible (Crossbow, Recurve, Longbow). But these ranged weapons should be avoided, as they come with heavy downsides (Windlass Crossbow, Survival Bow).

That’s it for the weapons, if there’s a weapon we didn’t talk about, chances are it’s terrible and you shouldn’t use it.
Advanced PvP Tips

Let's start with some advice for getting better at PVP. I suggest adopting an experimental mindset while starting out, so try to follow through with your decisions. Getting scared and backing up because you got shot once will end up being worse for you. Be confident, limit test your ability to push people until you're comfortable and knowledgeable enough in the game to consistently make good decisions.

Now we'll talk about some general tactics a fighter can use in PVP. Before the fight starts, it's important to use the utility you have to give yourself an advantage. Drink protection pots and preemptively use healing pots so you have healing over time while fighting. The 30 or so HP this is going to save you is very likely to make a real difference.

Let’s get into the actual fighting. Your best strategy for dealing with aggressive parties is to try and stay out of sight of any ranged classes and deal with any melee opponents first. A good tactic is to place their melee frontline in between you and the ranged classes so it’s harder for them to shoot you. Now, if there are no more melee opponents, the fighter can try to deal with any ranged classes. If it’s a ranger you’re dealing with, approaching them is possible if you have a shield. However, against a good Wizard, your best bet is to threaten them with ranged weapons as trying to approach them is futile. They will just outrun you while also killing you. Otherwise, taking a defensive stance if possible is the wisest decision against any ranged classes.

In case you need to be the aggressor, you’re going to have to deal with the melee classes, but go after the support and ranged first. This basically stops the defending party from kiting away from you, and forces a choice on their melee frontliners: to attack you, or let their ranged/support die. If you have a team, make sure to communicate with them so that you can formulate a strategy and actually cooperate during a fight. Other classes tend to have their own preferred tactics, so finding a way to play around your teammates is your best bet as a fighter, since your class can adapt to any approach to PVP. However, if you’re a solo player, you’re going to need to chip down their HP with ranged as much as possible before going in. Don’t be afraid to disengage and heal up during fights, because you might need to take it slow to pull off a 1v3 as a fighter.

Telling you to click the head and kill opponents in melee is easy enough, but how do you actually win melee fights when there’s someone fighting back?
Mastering Movement and Blocking

First, let's talk about movement. One of the most important skills in any melee game is your footwork. Since being hit slows you down, getting the first hit is a game changer in a lot of the melee encounters, so using your movement and feeling out the attack ranges is crucial. To get the first hit, you must abuse the fact that attacks in this game are very committal, and initiating one heavily slows you down, stopping all your momentum. Missing leaves you extremely vulnerable while your weapon comes back up. This means if you can bait in the first attack from an enemy while staying in a close enough range, you’ll get a free hit on them. From this point, you can keep hitting them and start trading attacks if you’re confident you’ll win, or take advantage of the fact they’re slowed down, back up, and try and get a free hit again. Essentially allowing you to keep outplaying your opponent. The slow two-handed weapons we mentioned earlier are particularly vulnerable to this. If you’re using them you need to keep in mind this goes both ways. Meaning you should pay attention to their movement to make sure you don't miss your attack. Otherwise, you’ll be the one at a disadvantage.

Another aspect of footwork is your body manipulation. Jumping, crouching and even moving your head around with your mouse is very important to make it hard for you to be headshotted. Once you learn each weapon’s attack directions and maneuver around them, it can become very difficult to hit you.

Now let's talk about blocking. The shield acts as an entirely separate collision box which stops attacks. The player can aim this hitbox in front of them to stop any incoming attacks. However, because these are separate hitboxes, you may be hit by a weapon before it hits your shield, causing it to be interrupted but only after you were already hit. For that reason, make sure to properly aim your blocks and perfectly cover your character. If your head sticks out the top, rangers can still shoot you over the shield and land a headshot. A helpful rule is that if you can see them, they can see your head. A big part of being good at blocking is being able to adjust to enemy movement and attack direction. Move your shield accordingly! Notice in this clip how you need to follow the enemy’s movement with your shield to properly block an attack. Lastly, keep in mind jumping is a very popular strategy to deal with shields, usually netting the attacker a headshot as well as bypassing your shield, crouching and leaning back eliminates this option while still protecting you from normal grounded attacks.
Fighter Special Techniques

In this section, we’re going to tell you some of the best information we can to make your fighter stand out among the rest.

Use Throwables: They have a use case over normal ranged weapons because they are fast to pull out, don’t slow your movement speed down as much as bows do, do great damage, and apply a fat slowdown when they hit. Try using them when you’re chasing someone.

The Pavise Shield: It's not only my favorite weapon, but it’s one of the most useful ones for you as a fighter. Because you can hold it up like a riot shield allowing you to approach rangers with ease. You can plant it on the ground to block doorways, allowing you to easily cheese PVE and forcing players to come in one at a time.

Stacking Healing Potions: You can stack the effect of healing potions of different rarities. In other words, each different rarity has its own separate healing effect, meaning you can drink potions of different rarities and have them all heal you at the same time.

Loaded Crossbows: You can keep loaded crossbows in your inventory that you can pull out and shoot at any moment. Basically, you’re able to shoot a 70+ damage bolt instantly, pull out another one from your inventory and do it exactly the same way again, without having to reload. This heavily increases your ranged burst damage potential and really helps when you’re engaging an enemy.

Longsword Riposte: If you’re using the longsword, you have access to a powerful exclusive mechanic. After blocking an attack, you can do a riposte attack right out of your block that does 1.5x times the normal damage. The combo you can do out of your riposte also does extra damage and comes out faster than normal combos. To perform a riposte, simply tap the block button again after blocking an attack.

Manipulating Attacks: Attacks can be manipulated in real time to take your swing wherever you want. By moving your mouse in the direction of your swing, you can force it to cover more area. Using this tactic it becomes easier to cleave multiple enemies with one single attack.

Let us know in the comments if you have any useful tips we didn’t include in this guide.
Conclusion

That concludes our guide! This video is part of a series of guides for every class in Dark and Darker. If you enjoyed it, make sure to check out my other guides and let me know which class I should do next! If you’d like to see more Dark and Darker content from highly skilled players, Orlanthi and I will both be streaming the upcoming playtest. Links in the description. If we’re live make sure to drop by and say hello! We’ll be happy to see you.

With this comprehensive guide, you're well on your way to mastering the Fighter class in Dark and Darker. Good luck in your adventures and may your battles be victorious!

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