Florentine or Sword and Board for beginner

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Florentine or Sword and Board for beginner

Postby Maddaveman » Sat Feb 09, 2013 3:07 pm

As a new fighter, should I stick with sword and board for awhile? I prefer fighting florentine and I'm pretty certain that that is what I will eventually settle on, but I'm wondering if it'll be better for my development as a fighter to stick with sword and board.

Is there anything to be gained by waiting? What skills or basic compentencies should I try to work on before switching to florentine?
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Re: Florentine or Sword and Board for beginner

Postby Remdawg Killionaire » Sat Feb 09, 2013 6:12 pm

Single sword.
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Caleidah wrote:But, his sensei passed that style down to him! Literal hours of tradition!
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Re: Florentine or Sword and Board for beginner

Postby Tyranastraz » Sat Feb 09, 2013 8:30 pm

Remy the Wroth wrote:Single sword.

/agree.
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Re: Florentine or Sword and Board for beginner

Postby Peanut of Loderia » Sun Feb 10, 2013 12:08 am

Pell drills. Both left and right hand.

Fact is while you're at practice is not the time to be practicing what new fighters must get down first: body mechanics. Learn how to throw the proper shots with both hands, then to do so moving linearly, then do so moving at an angle, and then circularly. All while returning to a proper guard.


Or whatever is most fun. In the end, this is a hobby. Nobody's going to pay you for it ever, so have fun.
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Re: Florentine or Sword and Board for beginner

Postby Dane » Sun Feb 10, 2013 2:04 am

Is there anything to be gained by waiting? What skills or basic compentencies should I try to work on before switching to florentine?

Fight single sword a lot, and put more effort into your offhand. Sword and board, as a style, should give you your greatest chance at survivability. You can learn a lot in fights by surviving, seeing the battle's line twist and break, observing different ways of killing people and avoiding death. When people say, "Start sword and board," it's more to hang around longer in fights and experience parts of the game that quickly dead new two-sworders never see. It also gives you insight into the most-played style in the game, and that's handy.
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Re: Florentine or Sword and Board for beginner

Postby Tiercel » Sun Feb 10, 2013 11:20 pm

Diversity of experience is good. Shortly after I started playing, I stopped doing sword and board, favoring single blue or Florentine. While this was fine for fighting in an open field, I had a heck of a time staying aggressive at my first major indoor events where it's line against line and you have to march into an oncoming wall of spears and arrows. Learn to use a shield so that you can have fun in all situations.

Biggest problem I see with the very new trying to fight Florentine is that they promise themselves they will use both hands equally, but instead heavily favor their dominate hand. To fix this, don't put a sword in your dominate hand for a few months (or years). Fight sometimes with a shield, sometimes without a shield, but keep the sword in your weak hand, and don't switch back unless you've lost the arm. Fighting shield & sword wrong-handed will help keep you alive long enough to learn to throw your full * of shots with your other arm.

But that's all about improvement. You should definitely fight Florentine once in a while, even as a new fighter with a weak secondary swing, because it's fun and that's why you're here.
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Re: Florentine or Sword and Board for beginner

Postby Brutus » Mon Feb 11, 2013 12:04 pm

There's no one right answer to this question. Here's the questions I would have you ask of yourself so you can determine what might be a more correct answer for yourself:

1) How many people are you fighting against? Is this a realm practice with field battles? If so, how many people are on each side? Or is this one-on-one sparring? And what weapons are they using? I don't recommend single blue against pole weapons or arrows.
2) What are your goals? Do you have a character from a movie/book/anime that you really want to be like? If you derive more pleasure out of imagining yourself to be like this person than you would from being as effective as you can be, then lean towards their fighting style. Some styles (single blue) are good for training (unless you're in a large, well-established group and you're just going to get your butt handed to you very quickly every battle, and you'll have to sit there watching everyone else fight for 10 minutes until you get your butt handed to you instantly again). Other fighting styles are a good compromise between offense (getting kills) and defense (staying alive), like sword+board. Once you get moderately decent at "florentine" (all offense) you can get a lot of kills and do a lot of damage, but you'll be pretty easily killed, especially if there are missile weapons on the field.
3) How athletic and coordinated are you (what is your reasonable top level of skill, and how easy will it be for you to get decent quickly)? If you aren't super athletic, a shield will give you a good level of defense and allow you to concentrate on swinging your weapon. I've seen plenty of people that were completely worthless with two weapons, but actually pretty good when they didn't have to concentrate on both hands simultaneously.
4) How dedicated are you? Are you just absolutely IN LOVE with this game to the point that no amount of failure will dissuade you? In that case, fight with whatever you want! It doesn't matter whether you succeed or not at first. Every single style has advantages so eventually you will learn how to use those advantages to be relatively successful. However, if you are easily discouraged, you might want to consider going the "easy route" and picking one of the better all-around styles. Then when you get good, you can dabble with other styles, and it won't be a blow to your ego if you aren't effective, because you already know in your heart that you can be effective with other equipment.

As you can see, there's no easy answer, and no one answer is correct for everyone. Like most things in life, there are many different factors to consider. To paraphrase, anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
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Re: Florentine or Sword and Board for beginner

Postby Brutus » Mon Feb 11, 2013 12:13 pm

I just thought of something else. A lot of people up above were saying "single sword" and I literally * my head to the side and went "huh?" Aside from when I moved here from Numenor and we started up Riverbend, I NEVER fought single sword in a battle. You just die too quickly and have to sit there and watch fighting. You aren't learning much during that period.

Then I realized a key distinction needs to be made between battles, and sparring. For sparring (one-on-one), FIGHT SINGLE BLUE!!! Fight against EVERY style. Learn to dodge arrows, not block them. Learn to jump glaives. Learn to use the sacrifice limb. Yes, yes, yes! However, in my humble opinion, unless the battles are very very fast and/or the competition is not that good, fighting single blue in a field battle will get you killed quick for a long time. It's up to you whether you think you'll discouraged from that much adversity, or whether you'll stick with it long enough to get decent. Or you could just add a shield and you'll be living a lot longer (once again, unless you're in an ueber-Realm where it really doesn't matter what you've got, you're going to die horribly anyway).

Another quick story: the first piece of equipment I owned was a shirt of chain mail. I literally ran around Numenor practices looting corpses for the first couple months so I had something to fight with. Next I got a shield and a butter knife. With a shield and armor, I stayed in fights for a long time. I was racking up XP that I wouldn't have got as a corpse, and I advanced faster than most people who started fighting when I did, and I think those are two factors that contributed to that.
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Re: Florentine or Sword and Board for beginner

Postby Remdawg Killionaire » Mon Feb 11, 2013 4:48 pm

SS will help on those field battles where you inevitably get armed and have to drop your off-hand equipment. You'll probably die but it's helped me countless occasions. Really helps in tourney fighting I've found.
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Caleidah wrote:But, his sensei passed that style down to him! Literal hours of tradition!
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Re: Florentine or Sword and Board for beginner

Postby Maddaveman » Wed Feb 13, 2013 12:05 pm

Thank you all so much for your responses. Ive been doing pell training with both hands for a few months, but I still have a lot of bad habits when fighting that should be helped by using single blue at practice.

Im going to give single blue and sword n' board a try for awhile and put florentine on the back burner until I have a better grasp of my basics.

Brutus wrote:There's no one right answer to this question. Here's the questions I would have you ask of yourself so you can determine what might be a more correct answer for yourself:

1) How many people are you fighting against? Is this a realm practice with field battles? If so, how many people are on each side? Or is this one-on-one sparring? And what weapons are they using? I don't recommend single blue against pole weapons or arrows.
2) What are your goals? Do you have a character from a movie/book/anime that you really want to be like? If you derive more pleasure out of imagining yourself to be like this person than you would from being as effective as you can be, then lean towards their fighting style. Some styles (single blue) are good for training (unless you're in a large, well-established group and you're just going to get your butt handed to you very quickly every battle, and you'll have to sit there watching everyone else fight for 10 minutes until you get your butt handed to you instantly again). Other fighting styles are a good compromise between offense (getting kills) and defense (staying alive), like sword+board. Once you get moderately decent at "florentine" (all offense) you can get a lot of kills and do a lot of damage, but you'll be pretty easily killed, especially if there are missile weapons on the field.
3) How athletic and coordinated are you (what is your reasonable top level of skill, and how easy will it be for you to get decent quickly)? If you aren't super athletic, a shield will give you a good level of defense and allow you to concentrate on swinging your weapon. I've seen plenty of people that were completely worthless with two weapons, but actually pretty good when they didn't have to concentrate on both hands simultaneously.
4) How dedicated are you? Are you just absolutely IN LOVE with this game to the point that no amount of failure will dissuade you? In that case, fight with whatever you want! It doesn't matter whether you succeed or not at first. Every single style has advantages so eventually you will learn how to use those advantages to be relatively successful. However, if you are easily discouraged, you might want to consider going the "easy route" and picking one of the better all-around styles. Then when you get good, you can dabble with other styles, and it won't be a blow to your ego if you aren't effective, because you already know in your heart that you can be effective with other equipment.

As you can see, there's no easy answer, and no one answer is correct for everyone. Like most things in life, there are many different factors to consider. To paraphrase, anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.


1. Its just realm practice with 4 to 10ish people

2. My goal is not to be the best, but as good as I can be while having fun at the same time. Florentine is definitely the most enjoyable for me right now.

3. Im pretty athletic and very coordinated. I grew up my whole life doing martial arts and gymnastics, and I still do both today. I like being as mobile as possible and trying to find odd angles of attack, but my defense suffers a lot. I also have been neglecting my footwork so ive been trying to emphasize that at practice. My worst area is endurance since my athletic background focuses on large, short bursts of energy rather than constand exertion.

4. I really love this game and want to get as much out of it as possible :) so I want to improve my longevity on the battlefield. Like I said, I dont intend to be the best fighter ever, but I want to have a good grasp of fighting theory and strategy and then apply it to the field.

Thank you guys again!
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