Black Desert Online: Newbie Guide for Maehwa Awakening and Skills

Index

1. About
2. Characteristics of the Maehwa's Awakening
3. Skills
    3-1. Awakening Skills
    3-2. Flow Skills
    3-3. Pre-Awakening Skills
    3-4. Bridge Skills
    3-5. Blade - Kerispear Swap
    3-6. Sleet Steps & Tenacious Edge Combo
    3-7. Overall Skill Combo Recommendation

1. About

This guide is written for any newbies and returning players, and is mostly about PvE.

2. Characteristics of the Maehwa’s Awakening

- Long delay before and after using skills and slow skill motion
- Close-distance fights due to short range and forward-moving skills.
- Able to sustain through CC, forward guard skills, invincibility skills, and Super Armor.


Personally, I think the Maehwa’s only drawbacks are her big skill motions and long skill delays before and after the skills are cast (I shall refer to them as 'pre' and 'post delays'. Obviously, even a powerful attack would have low DPM if it is slow, and it’s not even as powerful as it should be for being slow.

I’ll be talking about this later in the skill tips, but there are skill combos that can shorten the pre-delay. I think that when the developers came up with Maehwa’s skills, they meant them to be used in combos, but their pre/post-delays and slow attacking motions are frustrating. And their post-delay is quite long if you don't cancel that skill. 

Also, the Kerispear has no attack skills that allow the character to move horizontally; in the Pre-Awakening stage, Whirlwind Cut is a great skill with that allows a Maehwa to move a significant distance and have faster attack speed, while also supplying with WP. A Maehwa can no longer use Whirlwind Cut once she is Awakened. and there’s a possibility that players will find themselves stumped by this, and take some time to get used to it. 

The Kerispear is longer than the Blade but it has quite a short distance for a long-ranged melee weapon. The main skills for the Kerispear are Petal Drill and Petal Bloom, which are forward-moving skills. Skills used after them are all short-ranged, and there are no skills with mid-range to use in a combo. Thus, you are forced to fight in a close range since there’s no merit of using a long-ranged melee weapon. 

On the other hand, there are many skills with forward guard and CC like Knockout and Stiffness, so using these skills efficiently will be help you great a lot during grinding.

You can speed up the grinding by using several different skills in combos, unlike the time you only used Chaos: Red Moon in the Pre-Awakening stage.

3-1. Awakening skills

In Black Desert Online, there are 4 types of skills related to cooldown, and because it’s hard to name them, I’ll just conveniently call them No-Cooldown, Cooldown A, B, and C.

As for No-Cooldown skills, they literally have no cooldown; however, most of these skills have low damage.

Cooldown A skills are skills that cannot be used during the cooldown, just like most of the Maehwa’s skills (Chaos: Red Moon, Maehwa: Decapitation, Blooming: Phantom). They are great for PvP as they have high DPS, but since they have low DPM, they cannot be used during the cooldown, making them inefficient for grinding.

As for Cooldown B skills, these are skills like Moonrise and Frost Pillars that can be used during the cooldown, but the skills become weaker versions when used during the cooldown and don’t provide effects. The damage from these skills is still pretty fair even when used during the cooldown, so their decrease in DPM isn’t that significant. Once the cooldown is gone, you can use the original version once, and then it goes back under cooldown.

As for Cooldown C skills, they are skills similar to Cooldown B, but their cooldowns are reset once they are used, so in order to optimize damage and effects with these skills, you have to wait until the cooldown is gone. An example of Cooldown C skills would be Blind Thrust.

a. Kerispear Training

This skill is a basic attack using the Kerispear. The more skill points you use on this skill, the more its damage builds up, but the WP regen does not. It’s divided into the forward basic attack and standstill basic attack. The first forward basic attack has an airborne effect that works on monsters without CC immunity. The attack initiates quickly, so using it with a skill that has a Down Attack effect will provide great synergy.

Basic Attack - Forward Basic Attack - Standstill Basic Attack - Standstill Basic Attack] will give you the fastest attacking motion and widest ranged attack among other Basic Attack combos. When you don’t have much WP left and there are several monsters with low hp that you can’t be bothered to use a skill on, this combo is a good solution to turn to.

b. Awakening: Maehwa’s Kerispear

You switch to the Kerispear from the Blade by pressing C. There are several attacks that switch from the Kerispear to the Blade. (Shortcut Chaos: Red Moon, Shortcut Maehwa’s Will, Key command Chaos: Red Moon, Blind Slash, Blooming: Phantom) On the other hand, Awakening: Maehwa's Kerispear is the only skill that switches from the Blade to the Kerispear.

In the case of using the A+C, W+C, and D+C commands, your character will switch to the forward basic attack motion that hits your front enemy upward, while using the S+C command will make an awkward switching motion with a standstill poke. And as for the most important part, your character will put her Blade away and take out her Kerispear by spinning it around, and vice versa during C; during this motion, your Maehwa will be vulnerable to enemy attack.

Pressing C in middle of Blade and Kerispear attacks will cancel the motion, although getting hit by a monster in that moment can result in Stiffness. This makes your previous attack not count in the combo, which will again result in this stupid motion.

So in order to prevent this, always remember: it’s W+C, not just C.

And Awakening: Maehwa’s Kerispear has forward guard, which works well with Chaos: Red Moon.

Chaos: Red Moon is the main Blade skill with forward guard used during multiple hit attacks. However, there’s no forward guard for the last hit, which means your Maehwa will slash the enemy while taking enemy attacks. Against elites or strong monsters, this may bring about your death, but pressing C in the right time or have C pressed the whole time will shorten that moment of vulnerability in your last Chaos: Red Moon attack, allowing you to keep your forward guard. Of course, this doesn’t mean you always have forward guard, but as your attack speed becomes faster and faster, your vulnerable moments will shorten, thus providing more safety and security.

Switching to the Blade has complicated yet fun mechanics to it.

Switching to the Blade after canceling the attacking motion will not result in the two fixed motions for the Kerispear forward basic attack/standstill basic attack, but will be done according to the last Kerispear attack motion.

You will be able to see this by using 1 Kerispear basic attack + C, 2 Kerispear basic attacks + C, or 3 Kerispear basic attacks + C. This will randomly result in the motions for left Whirlwind Cut, right Whirlwind cut, and Forward Blade Draw.

Just because the motion for Whirlwind Cut appears doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the actual skill will follow in the combo, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not worth any studying. However, I did discover that you can cancel the animation when you switch to the Blade.

Now this is quite important; so far, the skill combos I’ve come up with are:

Forward Chase with W+C+MRB
Forward Blind Thrust with W+C+Space

and using these will result in a quick Blade switching combo.

As for Forward Chase with the Blade, it can be followed by Whirlwind Cut after going towards the left-diagonal direction by pressing A+W+C+RMB, and as for Forward Blind Thrust, you can come up with 30% Critical Hite Rate by using this combo quickly in the middle. You can go after an enemy that you have thrust away with Flow: Tip of the Iceberg by using Forward Blind Thrust and Chaos: Red Moon in a combo.

c. Full Moon Wall, Royal Rage

Full Moon Wall is a skill with the forward guard effect, and your WP regenerates once you successfully block enemy attacks. 25% of it regenerates per each blocked attack, so blocking 4 attacks will completely fill up your WP. However, most monsters come quite slowly, and waiting for them to run towards you, stop, gather their energy, and attack can take a while. Frankly, this gets tedious and slows down the grinding. Pressing Q will enable you to block enemy attacks easily, though using S to activate this skill the moment an enemy hits you will help speed up the grinding.

Royal Rage and Full Moon Wall are skills that should be used together. Your WP regenerates once you block enemy attacks with Full Moon Wall, but otherwise you will be stiffened, especially when your enemies continues to attack. Both Chase and Sleet Steps don’t work when this happens, although Royal Rage does. So while Full Moon Wall has no cooldown, consider the 4 seconds of cooldown for Royal Rage as a cooldown for Full Moon Wall. Without Full Moon Wall, you cannot use Royal Rage, and it feels uneasy to use Full Moon Wall while Royal Rage is under cooldown.

The casting speed for Full Moon Wall by using Q is quite slow, so there are some people who don’t use Royal Rage offensively, but you’ll see that it’s a highly efficient skill if you use it offensively. It is a long-ranged forward moving skill and its motion is fast; plus it has a knockout and forward guard effect, along with its special effect of +10 Attack Speed for 10 seconds.

Your grinding will speed up once your Attack Speed goes up. Also, there's something to be aware of - the possibility of the Maehwa getting knocked down becomes higher at the moment there’s no forward guard. This is why the Attack Speed buff is so important. Having higher Attack Speed lets you keep your forward guard up more frequently.

d. General Apricot

The Maehwa is a great class as it does not lack in Critical Hit Chance, and this skill provides the Maehwa with a Critical Hit and Melee Attack buff, which I personally think is not necessary. However, it does provide a Attack Speed buff as well, so put this skill up in the quickslot and keep using it whenever its cooldown is gone.

e. Sleet Steps, Tenacious Edge

Sleet Steps is a mobility and Cooldown B skill. Using this skill will activate Invincibility once every 7 seconds, and you can only use it for mobility in these 7 seconds. For some reason, it gives Critical Hit Chance +12% for 10 seconds, which may seem useless for Maehwas who always have a 30% Critical Hit Chance buff by constant use of Forward Blind Thrust, and the game system doesn’t allow these buffs to overlap.

(You might think that having both the 10% and 7% Critical Hit Chance buff will be convenient as 7% Crit buff will be present once the 10% Crit buff is gone, but it’s more likely to not happen. The 7% Crit buff doesn’t work if there’s even 1 second of the 10% Crit buff still left.)

Tenacious Edge is a skill that you keep hitting forward. If you press A, your character will twist slightly left and hit, and if you press D, she will hit towards the right. The damage itself isn’t so bad, and it has a forward guard effect, HP Regeneration, and cause Stiffness. Unlike any other skills that have cooldown, when its cooldown mark shows up, its number doesn’t show up right away, shows up a little bit later; activating this skill once more at this moment will regenerate your WP. Hit twice whenever you can.

Because it’s a Cooldown B skill, spamming the skill during its cooldown will not give you any forward guard or Stiffness effect, and less attack damage and WP, thus it becomes inefficient. So I recommend using it in middle of a skill combo or at the very end of the combo, and refrain from spamming it.

The skill itself is not so bad and has high use, but doesn’t seem to leave a good impression to those who just went through the Awakening stage. They’d feel frustrated because it has the same command as Whirlwind Cut and their characters will be standing still when attacking. Tenacious Edge has the same command as Whirlwind Cut with dull motion, although it seems to have the opposite kind of attack compared to Whirlwind Cut, which doesn’t really appeal to Maehwa players. You have no choice but get used to this- keep practicing using Sleet Steps and Tenacious Edge together with the Kerispear.

Using basic attack right after you use Sleet Steps will result in activating Tenacious Edge instead of an actual basic attack, so it’s a convenient command. I think it’s fast and convenient to use A or D in time for the 3rd hit of Tenacious Edge while pressing SHIFT+LMB. Getting used to this will help you enjoy using the Kerispear when using skill combos.

f. Moonrise

The 1st hit of Moonrise provides Stiffness to the enemy, along with 20 WP Regen and Knockback. The 2nd and 3rd hits provides Super Armor, and the 2nd hit has a wide ranged hitbox when spinning the Kerispear. The 3rd hit even has Airbound and Air Attack. Moonrise is a Cooldown B skill, so it deals less damage and loses the WP Regen, Knockback, Stiffness, Airbound, and Super Armor effects during cooldown. Using it after Sticky Snowflake will skip the 1st hit and start with the 2nd hit right away. This can be used to cut the long delay before casting Frost Pillars. Moonrise deals good damage, has a short cast time, and has decent attack speed, so it’s considered one of the Awakened Maehwa’s main skills.

g. Stigma

Stigma is a Cooldown A skill and doesn’t deal much damage, but has both forward guard and Stiffness. Using this will allow you to move backward and attack at the same time, so it’s good to use this skill when you want to adjust your character’s position. You can use it to attack the monster from behind, or move away and attack when you’ve gone too deep and are surrounded by monsters.

When Sleet Steps is not on cooldown, canceling Sleet Steps to use Stigma will make you activate the skill almost right on the spot. But for those who use Sleet Steps often, they will find it bothersome to pay attention to Sleet Steps’ cooldown when attacking.

h. Frost Pillars

Frost Pillars is a buff skill that increases your Critical Hit Chance by 20% and has a long pre-delay.

It is a skill with forward guard that will knockback enemies even during cooldown, in spite of being a Cooldown B skill. The long delayed motion before skill activation won’t appear if you use this skill right after the 3rd hit of Moonrise. It’s not efficient to use alone, so it’s usually used as a combo with Moonrise.

i. Petal Drill

This is a forward moving skill, and it can be used to dive in to attack enemies.
It’s Cooldown A skill, has a 100% Critical Hit with Knockout, gives you Super Armor during the attack motion, and invincibility when moving. Since it has WP regeneration with decent damage, I recommend using it whenever its cooldown is gone.

Its only drawback is that its forward movement causes a delay due to its motion. You’ll also want to be careful with your aim as you’ll miss hitting your enemy if you activate it with your aim slightly away. It moves your character forward and pokes at some other places, so be precise with your aim.

It’s also a great skill to use after switching from your Blade or as a forward basic attack. Since Petal Drill has a Down Attack effect, you can deal more damage and it’s easier to hit your enemy.

j. Petal Bloom

Petal Bloom is a charging skill, and one of most powerful Awakening Maehwa’s skills. It has long charging time and a long pre-delay before the skill is activated.

It is similar to Petal Drill in how it’s a forward moving skill, and it blows away your enemy with an amazing effect and motion.

It’s a Cooldown type A skill, and you get forward guard during your charge and Super Armor during the attack motion. When your enemy is a powerful one, use this forward guard to block its attack and attack afterwards to sustain longer.

When it’s fully charged, its damage is great. So unless you are fighting against monsters that can be killed without charged damage, always use it with maximum charge. When you don’t charge it, it has a Down Attack and Down Smash effect, so it’s best to use it after knocking your enemy down.

k. New Year’s Eve

Just like Blind Thrust, this skill is activated when you press Space Bar during your attack. The difference is that it is limited to poking with the Kerispear, and pre-delay is long and takes quite a bit of WP.

Once it hits, it stiffens the enemy and turns them around to show you their back with a 100% Chance of Critical Hit. This is a Cooldown B skill, and has 5 seconds of cooldown. Because the motion for this skill cannot be canceled if you use it after standstill basic attack, it is activated quite slowly. If you use it right after Tenacious Edge, you might be able to activate it quickly, but using it randomly will just get your WP dried up in an instant.

I recommend using this skill after you use Petal Bloom, Petal Drill, and Tenacious Edge twice (6 pokings in total). Using it randomly will just make you deal less damage to monsters. It’s best to limit its usage, as it takes up a lot of WP, has a pretty long delay, and does not connect smoothly in a skill combo, even if using it makes it look like it is speeding up the grinding with its damage.

l. Oppression

This skill doesn’t seem to be that powerful when taking into account its 20-second-cooldown, though the skill does come in handy when you are gathering mobs as it has pulling effect. 

It has Down Attack and a quick cast time with no post-delay, so I use this skill to kill monster with low HP. It doesn’t provide 100% Stiffness, and it can only be activated through quickslots with no command, so it's not really a good skill.

m. Sticky Snowflake

This is an amazing skill which lets you move forward as you spin your weapon and attack enemies in front of you in a fan shape. It is Cooldown A skill, and has a DoT and a Movement and Attack Speed debuffs as well. However, because it is a debuff skill, its damage is low and the AoE is not so great when considering its long cooldown, so sometimes you can’t hit your enemy outside the fan area or is too close to you. Due to its AoE and Down Attack, I think it’s best to use this skill to finish off enemies that are knocked down. Since Forward Basic Attack knocks down the target, moving it fairly good range away from you with Down Attack effect, Forward Basic Attack - Sticky Snowflake skill combo is considered good.

When you are using Moonrise after using Sticky Snowflake, the motion for the 1st hit of Moonrise won’t show, and will be instantly followed by the 2nd and 3rd hit. I think it was designed to be used as follows [Sticky Snowflake - Moonrise - Frost Pillars - Flow: Tip of the Iceberg].

This skill goes up to 4 level, and investing skill points in it doesn’t really show great increase in efficiency, so if you don’t have enough skill points, then I recommend investing in this later rather than early.

3-2. Flow Skills

These skills are what you can learn once you reach a higher level, and are used in addition to existing Awakening skills.

a. Flow: Tip of the Iceberg

This skill is Cooldown A skill that is activated after Frost Pillars. It has higher damage than an uncharged Petal Bloom and has Down Attack. Its only problem is that due to its long pre-delay, slow motion, short AoE, so it must be used after Moonrise.

Flow: Tip of the Iceberg doesn’t have Forward Guard, so unless your enemies are knocked down by Frost Pillars, you’d get hit by them; it could even get canceled as it does not give Super Armor, not to mention its long post-delay.

Because its range is short, if you want to hit enemies that are knocked down far away from you, you’d have to close in on them to hit them properly.

b. Flow: Moonlight Dash

You use this skill after using Petal Bloom; after Forward Attack with Petal Bloom, it makes the Maehwa do a little jump and an additional attack with powerful damage. It has Down Attack with Down Smash so you can do great damage in combination with Petal Bloom. The only problem is that it takes some time before activation, which you can use to alter the direction. Overall, it will help you speed up grinding with its high damage.

c. Flow: Cloud Stab

This is the skill that activates after using Moonrise, and can be used at any hit of Moonrise. This is a highly efficient Maehwa skill with high damage and HP Regen, and it has quick activation time and Forward Guard.

Also, it has the most powerful Air Attack so you can do great damage if you use it after the 3rd hit of Moonrise when enemies are launched into the air.

Flow: Cloud Stab is Cooldown A skill and a main one, too, so I recommend using it constantly to keep your health full and to provide that additional attack damage.

d. Flow: December

This is the skill you can use as additional damage after Petal Drill. It has Knock Down, which can be used as mediation for skills with Down Attack.

If you knock out enemies with the Keripsear, they will land in positions that make them susceptible to Stickly Snowflake or uncharged Petal Bloom; if your enemy is too powerful to be knocked down, it’s better to use New Year’s Eve instead of Flow:December.

3-3. Pre-Awakening Skill

I recommend learning all passive skills. First learn Awakening skills; if you didn’t get enough skill points through some quests,then you’ll have to keep yourself from learning Pre-Awakening skills.

I’ll only list Pre-Awakening skills that I think are crucial.

a. Chaos: Red Moon

This is the main skill for the Maehwa that you use in Pre-Awakening stage. It is Cooldown A skill, and has powerful damage similar to Awakening skills. It has a 30% Critical Hit Chance and since it’s easy for a Maehwa to raise their Critical Hit, it will be easy to have 100% Critical Hit Chance. It has Forward Guard and knocks the enemies into the air upon first hit, with air attacks in the middle of the skill.

It’s a powerful attack, but it slows grinding due to being a channeled skill. Its last hit does not provide Forward Guard and has slow motion. However, it still is a powerful skill so you’ll use it a lot in the Pre-Awakening stage and can use after Awakening. It gets more efficient once you have higher Attack Speed, so after the new patch and Awakening, it became a good skill to use.

b. Blind Thrust

This skill is a Cooldown C skill, and it’s a bad one if you only consider its attack damage, but its lovely buffs make this skill a must. +15 WP, +20% Melee Attack, +100 Critical Hit Rate, Stiffness, and decreased melee accuracy for those hit, with an 18% increase in Critical Hit Rate for 10 seconds. Each time you use it, it resets its cooldown, so refrain from using it too often if you want to utilize the effects mentioned above. The cooldown is 4 seconds, so check your cooldown before using the skill.

There’s Forward Blind Thrust and Backward Blind Thrust depending on the command, and you can only use the Forward Blind Thrust when it’s on cooldown.

Forward Blind Thrust during forward movement has almost no pre/post-delay, but using skills that come after, like Nemesis Slash and Backstab, will be activated slowly if you use Forward Blind Thrust.

a

As for Backward Blind Thrust, there’s a post-delay, and the Maehwa will thrust one more time if you click on your RMB. It’s not smooth or natural in skill combos due to this delay, but it will have Nemesis Slash and Backstab go out faster than Forward Blind Thrust does.

c. Ultimate: Nemesis Slash

This is the skill that generates HP, and you use this after using Blind Thrust. Learning this skill will be great especially if you just finished your Awakening as there won’t be any Awakening skills with Life Drain (Life drain from tenacious Edge won’t be enough). When in the Awakening stage, switch to Blade by W+C and press Space Bar quickly for its quick activation. Lift your finger from W when you press Spacebar so that you can have Backward Blind Thrust instead of Front Blind Thrust.

d. Maehwa’s Will

Another must-have for the Maehwa. It’s better to make it a habit of using this skill whenever its cooldown is gone. You can use this skill when you have either the Blade or the Kerispear out. Using this skill from the quickslot will switch your weapon to the Blade, while using it by command will keep the Kerispear in your hand.

e. Ultimate: Chase

This is another essential skill for the Maehwa.

This skill is a Cooldown B skill, gives you Invincibility for one time, and Super Armor until its cooldown is gone. Forward Chase and Backward Chase are different; Backward Chase makes you pass through the enemy. You can evade enemy attacks and move to attack from behind when using this on your enemy; practicing by moving your screen 180º degrees and keep your enemy behind you to use Backward Chase will help in many ways.

After using Chase, you’ll be switching your weapon, so instead of using Dragon Bite with the Blade, press C to switch to your Kerispear which is better, and use Forward Chase-C + Space - Space so that you can use Nemesis Slash right afterwards.

You may aim for an increase in speed when you cancel its motion with basic attacks while having your Blade out, but there’s not much difference so it’s better to just use Chase. It may seem faster with the Kerispear, but it shows slower movement speed, thus more WP is used. This skill will raise the Maehwa’s slow grinding speed slightly, and will eat up a lot of your Herbal Juice.

f. Sword Training, Maneuver Training

Sword Training raises your attack points and unlike its name, it also increases the Kerispear’s damage once you master it. As for Maneuver Training, this skill increases your Evasion Rate. When you use Blind Thrust, you will be able to see that you are not getting hit as much by enemies.

g. Infinite Mastery, Skilled Hunter

These two skills are essential skills that you must master.

Having only high Defense will get you killed, and having only high HP will also get you killed. It’s best to have them both increased equally. Thus, Infinite Mastery is a great skill that gives you high HP and makes you less likely to die.

Also, Skilled Hunter is a great skill that increases your damage against monsters, considering how it is so costly to raise your Attack points later in the game.

3-4. Bridge Skill

‘Bridge Skill’ refers to a skill that can connect a skill to another skill.

The following are the conditions for using a bridge skill:

a. You must be able to cancel the previous skill.
b. You must be able to cancel the following skill.
c. It must have short casting time and quick motion.

The Bridge Skills you can possibly use in the Pre-Awakening stage are the following:

Divider
Forward Blind Thrust
Blunt Kick

Here is a skill combo you can use with these skills:

Basic Attack - Divider - Forward Blind Thrust - Blunt Kick - Chaos: Red Moon

The good thing about using a Bridge Skill is that:

a. You can get skill buffs.
b. You can deal more damage in less time.
c. You can move your position (Usually forward).

It may seem complicated at first, but once you get used to it, you can easily use the skill combo, and instead of just using Chaos: Red Moon alone, it’s better to use this skill combo since it has the following benefits:

a. Basic Attack (Gain WP)
b. Divider (Heal HP, WP & HP Recovery Effect)
c. Forwards Blind Thrust (100% Critical Hit Rate)
d. Blunt Kick (You can move further inside to deal full damage in a circular range, and for some reason, it makes the Chaos: Red Moon cast motion faster)

This is an example of how it would look if you use only Bridge Skills together, although I personally don’t recommend this skill combo.

The best Bridge Skill that can be used after the Awakening is Royal Rage. The casting time for Royal Rage is short, and it can be canceled with C. This is the skill you must get the Add-on once your Maehwa is Awakened (Here is a guide on Skill Specialization and combos for your reference).

Full Moon Wall - Royal Rage - Forwards Blind Thrust - Chaos: Red Moon

If you were to add the Bridge Skills here, you can use New Year’s Eve after Royal Rage, and Blunt Kick between Forward Blind Thrust and Chaos: Red Moon.

3-5. Blade - Kerispear Swap

This is one of the characteristics of the Maehwa Awakening, which makes it distinguished from all other classes.

This part is that players new to the Maehwa Awakening find baffling.

If you press C when standing still, you become vulnerable during the motion (Cannot be canceled), and doing that while having monsters gathered around you will get you either killed or at least near death.

So you must develop a habit of pressing C with W A S D.

The only way to change the Maehwa’s stance to Awakening is by pressing C, and it is a class with no Awakening Skills available for use in the Pre-Awakening state.

So here are some good skills you can use when changing from Pre-Awakening to Awakening:

ChaseC, DividerC, Dragon Bite - Dragon ClawC, Chaos: Red MoonC

These are the switches I like to use because the weapons will be switched more smoothly.

3-6. Sleet Steps & Tenacious Edge Combo

This is the Sleet Steps - Tenacious Edge skill combo , which isn’t as good as Whirlwind Cut from Pre-Awakening, but still good enough if you use it well.

You can pace your movement to be long or short just like I have done in the image above.

But since Tenacious Edge is a Cooldown B skill, I don’t recommend using Tenacious Edge alone to deal damage when going around the enemy at the same time.

If possible, use Sleet Steps - Stigma (Must not be on cooldown) - Sleet Steps - Tenacious Edge - Sleet Steps - Moonrise in combo.

As I explained above, it’s better to switch to other skills rather than using one skill in a row since Cooldown B skills deals less damage during their cooldown. If you use the skill combo above, due to Stiffness effect from Royal Rage and Tenacious Edge, you’ll be able to use the Moonrise combo in a Back Attack (Tenacious Edge is a skill that thrusts the Kerispear thrice two times, so 6 in total. Its cooldown is set after the 2nd hit of three thrusts).

You can use the Sleet Steps combo like this to attack enemies behind their backs.

3-7. Overall Skill Combo Recommendation

This is the best skill combo I recommend when you’ve just Awakened.

(A: Full Moon Wall - Royal Rage - Forward Blind Thrust - Chaos: Red Moon - Weapon switch)

(B: Petal Drill - New Year’s Eve - Tenacious Edge - Sleet Steps - Stigma - Sleet Steps - Moonrise - Frost Pillars)

(A: Full Moon Wall - Royal Rage - Forward Blind Thrust - Chaos: Red Moon - Weapon switch)

(C: Petal Bloom - New Year’s Eve - Stigma - Sticky Snowflake - Moonrise)

You can use these skill like this: A-B-A-C-A-B-A-C.

If you’ve just Awakened your Maehwa, the cooldown for skills may be long (they get shorter as you invest skill points in them). There are rooms for you to use other skills when using the A-B-A-C-A-B-A-C skill combo; feel free to use Tenacious Edge now and then. Your combo attacks will come to their full form as you level up and learn Flow skills, allowing you to use the combo skills below:

(A Group: Full Moon Wall - Royal Rage - Forward Blind Thrust - Chaos: Red Moon - Weapon switch)

(B Group: Petal Drill - Flow: December - New Year’s Eve - Tenacious Edge - Sleet Steps - Stigma - Sleet Steps - Moonrise - Frost Pillars - Flow: Tip of the Iceberg)

(A Group: Full Moon Wall - Royal Rage - Forward Blind Thrust - Chaos: Red Moon - Weapon switch)

(C Group: Petal Bloom - Flow: Moonlight Dash - New Year’s Eve - Stigma - Sticky Snowflake - Moonrise - Flow: Cloud Stab)