Best skills and runes for Jinwoo

When it comes to skills, they all fall within specific niches so we’ll do our best to summarize the different groups and what they bring to the table. It’s important to note that we’ll try to not mention numerical values in the evaluation because they are subject to change with the skill rune rarity, meaning the number of additional casts, seconds and values of buff/debuffs could change a lot.

Crushing Blow, Multistrike, Death Dance, Armor Break and now Dagger Rush - these skills all offer different variations of break damage to the enemy. It’s good to have at least one of these equipped all the time for convenient access to breaking, on top of all the different combinations with runes.

What to equip comes down to the fight and your personal taste - in general, they all have a wide elemental coverage, and some of them add special buff/debuffs or interact with other skills. Keep in mind that some bosses do not have a break gauge, so you could remove your break skills to focus more on damage or utility.

Crushing Blow

Crushing Blow series focuses on upgrades inflicting knock-down or airborne effects to the enemy.

• Wind inflicts knock down on the enemy, buffs your attack when the skill hits and applies a shield when using the skill,
• Light sends the enemy airborne and inflicts Light on the enemy, dealing damage equal to the attack for 30 seconds,
• Dark sends the enemy airborne and gives a shield for 20 seconds, if hit while the shield is active you will unleash a powerful counterattack that stuns and deal heavy break damage,
• Fire knocks down the enemy and gives a charge bar gain, on top of reducing the cooldown of your ultimate by 10 seconds.

Multistrike

Multistrike series deals a good chunk of damage while providing great buffs, with a Water, fire, dark and light variant.

All the versions have their good niche:

• Water increases crushing blow damage and adds a light break at the end of the skill for more breaking power,
• Fire increases the damage to bosses and elite monsters,
• Dark adds invincibility during the skill, on top of giving a stacking damage buff for the skill and resets cd for dagger toss,
• Light gives a crit rate buff and resets the skill cd every 20 seconds.

Death Dance

Death Dance deals high break damage on top of offering some interesting skill interactions.

• Light version knocks down the enemy, increases crit hit damage and resets cooldown for commander’s touch. We’ll talk more about commander’s touch later but this is by far one of the strongest options you can take. It’s also important that since this crit damage comes from a skill it will still be in effect,
• Wind can be used up to 3 times and increases your power gauge when hit,
• Dark sends enemies airborne and increases damage dealt to bosses and enemies,
• Fire inflicts knockdown and adds 20% damage when hitting an elemental weakness.

If you need to break a boss weakness you should start by prioritizing the correct elemental break regardless of the skill, especially when starting out. As you progress and get access to more hunter supports and weapons you should tweak the skills on the fight and your personal preference.

Out of the three skills, Multistrike and Death Dance feel the most impactful, with light death dance being a strong universal choice due to the crit damage buff and the cd reset on commander’s touch.

Armor Break

The first of the break oriented skills to bring almighty break damage,Armor Break also doubles as a powerful damage buff option either for SJW or the entire team.

• Light version deals damage with multipliers split between ATK and DEF, while making SJW invincible during the animation and boosting his DEF for 30 seconds with up to 4 stacks,
• Fire is all about damage, with a very high multiplier and a huge Crit damage boost for SJW, lasting only 5 seconds,
• Wind is the perfect mix of high break and utility, with a potent Damage increased debuff on enemies hit. Ideal for any scoring content where SJW and Hunters play at the same time,
• Water has the benefit of applying Freeze over a large area, with not much else to it.

Dagger Rush

Extremely strong addition to SJW’s toolkit, Dagger Rush is the second Break Skill to feature ‘Almighty’ Break damage, and just like the better Break Skills it also brings more than just Break like buffs, debuffs or very high damage.

• Wind is the only version of the Skill with heavy Break, and in exchange it applies a stackable debuff on enemies’ hit that increases the Crit damage they receive, making it a good pick when you already have powerful skills on the side (like a highly invested Dkd),
• Dark version focuses on damage, with a huge damage increase if the enemy doesn’t have a Break Gauge (like Sonic Stream - Double Down -). This skill, combined with - Magnifying Slash - makes for an amazing Burst Setup in Dark Builds, offering amazing Break and incredible damage with Moonshadow and Plum weapons,
• Fire brings a massive personal Shield to SJW that only lasts a few seconds, but is perfect to Trigger Shield based buffs or survive a nuke, on top of having a very wide AoE with high base damage,
• Water version deals small damage around SJW repeatedly for a few seconds and applies the Frostbite DoT to them, on top of increasing the Damage dealt to enemies within Melee Range of SJW for the duration of the skill.

While some of these skills can also offer utility and buffs, at the end of the day they mostly bring damage to the tale. These skills are great when focusing on killing the enemy fast, especially if you do not need to focus on a break gauge.

Double Slash

• Full Moon Wheel inflicts [Airborne] on the enemies and boosts damage to non-bosses,
• Multiply has a chance to reset the skill CD and increases the damage of Mutilate for 10 seconds,
• Flame Slash changes the element to fire and sends enemies Airborne, on top of adding a Crit rate buff,
• Whirlwind Rush sends enemies airborne and also stuns them. When the skill hits, it adds one dash charge. This one can have its usages, especially against enemies that require a lot of repositioning.

Dagger Toss

• Detonation adds the Fire element to the skill and burns the enemy for 10 seconds,
• Electric Shock changes the element to Light and inflicts a debuff every time it hits that deals damage based on atk,
• Ascensions increases the damage to broken targets,
• Bombardment knocks enemy down and inflicts more damage to knocked down enemies.

Vertical Arts

• Sequent explosions change the element to Water; it starts the combo by knocking enemies down and then sends them airborne. It also increases the damage to broken target,
• Crosshairs changes the element to Fire, sends enemies airborne and increases the damage to bosses and elite bosses,
• Reap changes the element to Dark, knocking down enemies and adding a shield to Jinwoo. You can counterattack using this skill before being hit, stunning the enemy,
• Gale changes the element to Wind and knocks enemies down, increasing the damage dealt to non bosses enemies.

Cutting Rush

• Annihilation sends enemies airborne and increases damage to broken enemies,
• Effulgence knocks enemies down, increasing Crit Damage for 12 seconds. It will also reset its own cooldown when used,
• Sunder changes the element to Dark and sends enemies airborne, while also granting the [Invincible] status while the skill is in effect and giving extra crit rate for 12 seconds,
• Escalate gives a chance to give a 100% guaranteed critical strike on the next hit when attacking an enemy with a back attack.

Vital Strike

• Decimate adds an ATKk% buff for 12 seconds after using the skill,
• Internal wound sends the enemy airborne and adds a Def Down debuff for 12 seconds. This is very strong, as you can use it when Shadow Step is on cooldown to have a longer uptime of this important debuff on the enemy,
• Hone in increases damage to bosses and elite bosses by a significant amount when using the skill,
• On point changes the element of the skill to Water and adds a Shield for 12 seconds.

Mutilate

• Cold storm changes the element of the skill to Water and inflicts Frostbite (damage over time) and Freeze for 2 seconds,
• Phantom adds more damage based on Jinwoo’s HP and also resets the skill CD when hittingm
• Strike decreases the enemy Defense and Attack for 12 seconds,
• Stroke of Lightning changes the element to Dark. It’s a charging skill that can knock down enemies and also has a change to ignore the enemy defense when attacking.

Sonic Stream

Newest addition to the game, Sonic Stream offers both damage and utility options, and was in fact so strong in terms of damage that it prompted Netmarble to buff the other damage skills to bring them up to its power.

• Light is a pure damage skill, inflicting correct damage and boosting its own damage when the target doesn’t have an active Break Gauge (Raid Cut was the old name of Sonic Stream),
• Fire fully charges your Core Attack upon landing the final hit, and also buffs the damage of all your Core Attacks for the next few seconds. Excellent in Core Attack setups to improve your Burst,
• Wind builds its damage up depending on the number of hits before the final blow, while also granting your SJW increased ATK per each hit that landed. Great generic tool to increase your Attack in a Wind setup,
• Dark may have low base multipliers, but its damage can be exponentially increased by timing it properly during your Burst window, especially if you’re using Plum Swords at A3.

Out of these skills, the most notable and universal ones are Sonic Stream, Cutting Rush, Vital Strike and Mutilate. Cutting Rush offers extra utility, Vital Strike can offer powerful buffs/debuffs and Mutilate has a strong universal debuff and damaging abilities. Sonic Stream can bring a lot of damage and self buffs to the table, so long as the skill fits well in your setup.

This skill is just so awesome that it gets its specific paragraph. While it has no element attached to it it’s one of the most devastating utility skills in the game:

• Black Hole: this version of the skill gathers all enemies in one spot, dealing increased damage to non bosses. Phenomenal when it comes to quickly clear maps with a lot of enemies, especially in the later story chapters.
• Finisher: Knocks down the enemy and inflicts a powerful defense down for 12 seconds
• Liberation: knocks down an enemy and can be used up to 2 times. Every time it hits, your attack increases for 12 seconds and it can stack two times.
• Absorption: sends enemies airborne, then knocks them down at the end of the combo. When it hits, you recover 3% of your mana points and recover 3% of the power gauge, for a maximum of 3 times.

All effects are great based on the scenario so you can’t go wrong with it. As mentioned, the light version of Death Dance will reset the cooldown for Commander’s touch, so you can quickly stack the atk buff, keep permanent uptime on the defense break and much more.

QTE skills are used when dodging an attack, they have no runes so it’s much more straightforward: just use Shadow Step, the time stop and huge Defense Down debuff are just invaluable.

For ultimate skills, you should always use Truth: Mutilate.

To close this section off, you can generally plan your skills around your weapons: if you plan to run an offensive combo like Plum and Scythe/moonlight dagger, getting some extra break power or cc is going to help you dish out more damage, coupled up with crit rate/damage buffs.

If you already plan to bring some strong cc options like Book of Themis, then you can run more offensive skills to compensate for the weapon’s damage outside of the cc window. When progressing through the story or playing gates, you should probably include Commander’s Touch given it’s strong grouping power and overall flexibility.