Heroes of Arkesia,
The Breaker Advanced Class arrives next week, on March 20. To help interested adventurers prepare to master this new martial artist's arsenal and relentlessly bash the biggest and baddest enemies in Arkesia, we partnered with none other than Breaker expert and Lost Ark Creator Program member Saintone. Find the full breakdown below a few class identity descriptions for players looking to learn about the basics.
Class Identity
Stamina Energy/Shock Energy/Tenacious Power
Just like the Scrapper martial artist class, Stamina and Shock resource energy fuel one another as you use your skills. When using Stamina skills, your Stamina gauge decreases while the Shock gauge increases - and vice versa. When any skill successfully hits enemy, Tenacious Power is gained. When using your Tenacious Power meter is full, you can activate Brawl King Stance for more speedy combat. Brawl King Stance is enhanced when using the Brawl King Storm engraving and replaced with Asura State when using the Asura's Path engraving.
Brawl King Stance
When Tenacious Power reaches 100%, you can switch into Brawl King Stance by pressing the Z key. When entering Brawl King Stance, Movement Skill cooldown is reset and Atk. Speed +10%. In Brawl King Stance, Basic Attack is enhanced. Upon landing the last basic attack, Stamina Skill and Shock Skill's cooldown -5%. When entering Brawl King Stance, for 10s, outgoing damage from you and your party members +6%. When using Basic Attacks while using Stamina Skill in Brawl King Stance, the final hit of the Basic Attack occurs immediately.
Asura State
When Asura Energy reaches 100%, you can enter 'Asura State' by pressing the Z key. When entering Asura State, Fighting Spirit effect changes into Sura Destruction effect, and for 10s, outgoing damage from you and your party members +6%. In Asura State, basic attacks are enhanced and damage increases based on Crit Rate. When Sura Destruction is activated, Skill Damage including Awakening and Basic Attack skills increases. When Sura Destruction is activated, Movement Skill changes and Move Speed +15% Press X to activate Defensive Speculation. When Defensive Speculation is used, gain Push Immunity for 2s, gain Shield 40% of Max HP, and Incoming Damage -20%. When Defensive Speculation is used, when hit by a boss of a specific rank or higher, Penalty Meter -50%. After using Defensive Speculation, if you are attacked within 2s, the duration of Defensive Speculation increases by 3s 1 time. After Defensive Speculation is used, goes into Fighting Spirit Absorption state for 10s and cannot use Defensive Speculation.
Saintone’s Tips and Tricks
I get to talk about Breaker? Hell yeah.
This is the class to pick if you want to walk up to an enemy's face and start walloping. We have Gunlancer and Destroyer, and those are the big burly guys who stand toe-to-toe with the boss and never yield. But if you want the Muhammad Ali, 'float like a butterfly sting like a bee', this is the pick-up.
This is the class fantasy of a true brawler.
Asura’s Path (or Asura for short) Breaker is a fast-paced non-stop action build that trades blows with the boss and builds up his Asura energy and lets it loose into a massive flurry of punches. This is an entropy build that is heavily crit-based, with swiftness as a secondary stat. Because he gets his identity gauge on cast instead of on hit, you'll always be attacking and punching even when the boss isn't available to hit to build your next burst. Engraving description:
Total Stamina and Shock Energy -30%. Press X key to gain Defensive Speculation effect. When Defensive Speculation is used, gain Push Immunity for 2s, gain Shield 40% of Max HP, Incoming Damage -20%. After Defensive Speculation is used, enter into Fighting Spirit Absorption state for 10s and cannot use Defensive Speculation. Tenacious Power changes to Asura Energy, gaining 4% when using Shock Skill after using Stamina Skill or using Stamina Skill after Shock Skill. When in combat, gain Fighting Spirit effect, and Brawl King Stance changes to Asura State. When entering Asura State, Fighting Spirit effect changes into Asura Destruction effect. The Movement Skill changes and Basic Attack changes into Asura Destruction Basic Attack. Asura Destruction Basic Attack Damage +160/180/200% of Crit Rate. When Fighting Spirit and Asura Destruction are in effect, Skill Damage including Awakening Skill and Basic Attack +5/15/25%, Move Speed +15%.
Brawl King Storm (Brawl King for short) Breaker is also a heavy burst build, but this is the specialization-based build and utilizes a different identity skill. Similar to Igniter Sorceress or Full Moon Souleater, this build blasts all of its damage in just a few seconds. And, much like those classes, it's a non-positional build! Brawl King Storm uses a different set of skills and tripods that allow it to attack from any angle. Engraving description:
Outgoing Damage +2/8/14%, Brawl King Stance's duration changed to 15s. When in Brawl King Stance, recovers 3/4/5 Stamina and Shock Energy every 1s. Atk. Speed +20%. During Brawl King Stance, "Brawl King Twelve Forms: Falling Blossoms" skill is enabled. Brawl King Twelve Forms: Falling Blossoms Damage +20/50/80%, Crit Rate +15%. On skill use, outgoing Damage +4% per 1 Shock Energy.
Both builds make heavy use of basic attacks that largely shape and define their playstyle. Asura spams basic attack in order to unleash its punches quicker while Brawl King follows up his skills with the basic attack in order to lower his cooldowns and bring the next burst cycle sooner.
The engravings for these builds as you start out are pretty straight-forward. If you're fortunate to create a 9/7 or 10/6 stone, there are more effective set-ups, but for the better majority you can still enjoy these builds to their fullest with pretty easy configurations:
Asura’s Path 3x5 (Entropy Set):
- Master Brawler
- Adrenaline
- Raid Captain or Keen Blunt Weapon
- Grudge
- Asura’s Path
Brawl King Storm 3x5 (Hallucination Set):
- Super Charge
- Adrenaline
- Keen Blunt Weapon or Hit Master
- Grudge
- Brawl King Storm
Asura Breaker can utilize Raid Captain thanks to their class engraving providing 15% passive movement speed. Do note that you'll be slightly below full efficiency without feast or food.
Brawl King’s two most powerful attacks are charge-based so Super Charge is vital since they'll make up the lion's share of your damage profile.
Both of these builds are relatively low difficulty! When it comes to knowing 'what to do' and 'what order to press things in' both of them are very simple. With Brawl King you have a lot more leniency due to being a non-positional build.
For Asura, your normal skills are very fast so you usually don't have to worry about missing your big-hitters, but the challenge of Asura will mainly come from decisively activating your Asura state and landing all of your punches without the boss turning or moving away from you. It takes between 4-6 seconds to launch all your punches and you can't easily reposition once its underway.
Because your identity punches make up approximately half of all your damage, it's pretty important that you use it as frequently as you can, without missing the boss' face. Losing most of your Entropy set and Master Brawler as well as the 20% natural damage bonus for frontal attacks is too much damage loss. That's why even though Asura is a simple and easy-to-learn class, it benefits a lot more than Brawl King Storm from extensive content knowledge. Kayangel and Akkan have a few patterns that are particular unfair for frontal attackers but outside of that, those raids and all the other ones are fair for Asura!
Don't be discouraged, it's just a slightly steeper learning curve.
Asura Breaker is famous for its powerful special shield called Defensive Speculation. Brawl King doesn't have access to this ability since it's tied to the engraving, but because Brawl King Storm is non-positional it's naturally a safer build and doesn't really need it.
Plus, the Breaker HP and defense co-efficient are very high, meaning they're naturally tankier than most the classes in the game.
Defensive Speculation is the main tool that lets you fight in the boss' face. Gunlancer and Destroyer have extremely powerful shields that lets them stay in front of the boss for extended periods of time, but for Breaker your shield can be activated on a whim to soak attacks for a few seconds before going on a short cooldown.
It's strong enough to soak a few attacks or one particularly deadly attack, especially when stacked with the shield of a supporter which you'll often have during these patterns anyways. Defensive Speculation gives you 40% HP shield, 20% damage reduction, 50% reduced gauge from special boss mechanics (e.g. lust meter from Vykas, madness meter from Kakul, plague meter from Akkan, and darkness meter from Thaemine), and push immunity. You won't have debuff immunity during it, so don't tank stuns/petrify/fear unless you have spacebar or a Bard's Guardian Tune.
What makes Defensive Speculation so strong is that it has no animation and can be activated during any other skill or motion. It's your shield in a pinch and lets you stay in front of the boss to pull off your frontal attacks. Use this creatively to maintain better uptime and waste less time fleeing!
But just know your limits. You aren't as sturdy as the other frontal attackers, especially when your shield is down. Don't overstay your welcome and weave in and out, just like a real boxer.
Lastly, how does the basic attack fit into all of this?
For Asura, the speed at which you click does impact the rate at which your punches come out during your identity. People who click fast or rapidly press the basic attack key on their keyboard will finish their punches quicker than those who just hold the button down. There's a lot of advantages to this, such as being able to squeeze in additional punches, maintaining Adrenaline stacks, or just getting all of your damage out before the boss turns. It's a pretty immersive experience, especially if you're a screen shake enjoyer.
As for Brawl King Storm, your basic attack key is vital to making your DPS cycle function. While you're in your identity state (this doesn't work when you aren't in this state, which is why Asura doesn't use it since their identity is different) pressing the basic attack key after any Stamina (yellow) skill will follow-up the skill with a jab that reduces all current skill cooldowns by 5%. Unlike Asura's method of identity generation, this follow-up jab must connect with an enemy in order to proc. You'll know if you got the timing correct on the jab because a special screen effect will happen that looks like air blasting on the edges of your screen. You're trying to lower your cooldowns as much as you can, end your identity state, and finally build up full identity gauge again right before your main damage skill comes off cooldown. Doing this will allow you to initiate your next DPS cycle significantly faster than without which is a really big deal.
The timing for the follow-up jab in the Brawl King Storm build is very lenient. And for Asura, you don't have to go crazy with the clicking if you don't want, as there's an upper limit to how fast your punches can go off. Even just moderate clicking speed will yield benefits. Asura has another tech called sequence breaking that's useful to learn, that you can learn in more detail on the Breaker community guide when it's updated.
Breaker is a really fun class. As someone who really enjoys monk archetypes in video games, it fit right up my alley. I enjoy Striker as well, but kicking a boss in its rear just doesn't scratch the same itch for me as being at the forefront of the action. And for the meta chasers out there, Asura is stronger if you're confidently able to land a majority of your attacks at the head. But if you're concerned about positional uptime consistency, Brawl King Storm isn't much weaker and is able to approach its theoretical damage in real raid scenarios thanks to being non-positional.
I encourage you to try both utilizing the Super Mokoko Express' Engraving Support settings to find what you like more! Even though Asura has a bit more quirks with being positional, a lot of people have claimed they find it more comfortable in terms of skill flow and how useful Defensive Speculation is. You can't go wrong no matter which engraving you choose. Just know as you make a more final choice that the two builds have fairly different skill and gem loadouts so it can be difficult to build and have both long-term. This also includes their identity gems, which are different from one another.
Thanks for joining us for Saintone’s Breaker breakdown, and make sure to tune into his Twitch Channel for live content and Breaker Tips. We hope these expert tips and tricks help as you plan and get ready for Breaker to release on March 20. Stay tuned for the full release notes next week, ahead of the March Update. In the meantime, we’ll see you in Arkesia.