can someone school me on how to use the guan yu spear effectively

[Jay]

i feel like it has potential but im not utilizing it correctly, can someone provide me on insight on how this weapon is used effectively? thanks

[Saint Rocco]

I can't say how much I can school anyone, but after a few runs with it I've sorted out about this much:
- The main attack, the heavy chop, is great but not as a main means to attack. It's too slow.
- The charged attack, the life stealing one, becomes incredibly useful once you find a Daedalus Hammer to improve the charge speed. Ideally, clustered enemies are best as it provides a fixed amount of health per hit - the damage it does it irrelevant.
- The secondary attack, the thrown weapon, pairs awesomely with Poseidon Boon's and knockback effect.

I was attempting to use the Hermes Plume with this weapon and at times it was challenging: the slow attacks just did not provide enough damage per second on their own. By luck, getting the knockback, subsequent Rupture, and bonus damage on collision really made it shine. Once I got a second Daedalus Hammer, I improved the charged attack's radius. Again, made that life steal much more useful.

The lack of health in general was a challenge though. Had an interesting compensation once I got the Plume granting a decent dodge chance and an Epic Hermes Boon combining into almost 40% dodge.

[KoUJkoDeBo4ka]

Bits and pieces of wisdom gathered after 1 day of playing with it:
1) at the start, special is nice for a base, because it has nice range and wide hitbox, thus it can deal damage to crowds of enemies. That's essencial for early game, when You have no boons and daedalus hammers.
2) pump up Priveleged Status and seek boons wich give You curses. Preferrably, for Your attack You want Aphrodiete or Demeter, and either one of them or Dyonisis for special, since that's easily achieved +50% damage via statuses.
3) If You are playing without tight deadline, You can abuse Exhalted in Ellysium to steal hp room by room.
4) support fire and chain lightning are not effective with the throw, while Ares's curse and Dyonisis's poison works quite nicely. Although, see paragraph 2 about what is more preferable if You decide to make attack and spin throw Your main damage source.

[itssirtou]

Hammer is king

Spin upgrades are your god

Flurry Jab is suicide

Room fights are easy, boss/MBoss fights are the only way you can usually die (survival rooms can be tough too)

For Attacks, Poison/Doom/Chill stacking are ideal, Weakness/deflect is good too.

Special can be nearly anything, but don't neglect it. It's important for a lot of fights

Spin destroys projectiles even without deflect, this is especially useful in the Hydra fight

My strat that works for rooms is charge spin as long as possible>dash cancel out of it. I nearly won my second run with it... I don't even know what finished me off but the weapon does struggle against the final boss especially.

EDIT: ALSO! Get a Call. It charges super fast when you take damage

[Wintermute]

From the ongoing run - very very carefully. So far I have weakness and damage reduction from Aphrodite, poison on alt attack from Dionysus (kinda useless so far), and Athena's call. THAT thing already saved me during triple furies fight. Hammer upgrade for bigger spin attack is also very useful.

Generally, I'd say you need to stockpile damage reductions and health. Darkness upgrade from contractor is interesting here, because it gives +2 max HP per darkness pick up. Centaurus heart gives +7 btw.

[KoUJkoDeBo4ka]

itssirtou a écrit :

Hammer is king

Spin upgrades are your god

Flurry Jab is suicide

Room fights are easy, boss/MBoss fights are the only way you can usually die (survival rooms can be tough too)

For Attacks, Poison/Doom stacking are ideal, Weakness/deflect is good too.

Special can be nearly anything, but don't neglect it. It's important for a lot of fights

Spin destroys projectiles even without deflect, this is especially useful in the Hydra fight

My strat that works for rooms is charge spin as long as possible>dash cancel out of it. I nearly won my second run with it... I don't even know what finished me off but the weapon does struggle against the final boss especially.

I wouldn't say that flurry jab is bad for this weapon. Triple hit on it combined, let's say, with +100% damage from Artemis, is nice and rips many things to shreds. Also, as we know, dash attack gains bonuses not only from that, but from main attack boons, thus it can inflict significant amount of damage.

[WGarrison]

The obvious piece to get out of the way is Fast Spin and Bigger Spin on the hammer are a big deal yada yada ...

With that out of the way, I actually like Chill attack with this weapon. When you are not injured, the normal attack is really really strong (its slower but stronger than base spear), I use it more than you would think with a weapon whose specialty is the charge attack. When injured, chill with the spin attack helps hold enemies in the spin longer.

I like to ramp up jury summons as a heat choice. The crowds from jury summons can help you heal as long as you don't let enemies tag you while charging.

The shady companion helps a lot because it gives a good amount of emergency health if needed. Trinket is probably just Demeter to start for the chill attack.

After that you are just looking for your debuff of choice on special, cast, or dash. Finish out the build however you like from there.

[Arbustoteles]

I like to use it with the triple dash attack from the hammer, Artemis dash and Artemis attack. It is actually much better than the spin attack, trust me. Specially if you can also get some Chaos bonus to your attack or dash attack.

[Vengyr]

Athena's deflect is extremely good.

[itssirtou]

T3R3Z1 PYROP3 a écrit :

I wouldn't say that flurry jab is bad for this weapon. Triple hit on it combined, let's say, with +100% damage from Artemis, is nice and rips many things to shreds. Also, as we know, dash attack gains bonuses not only from that, but from main attack boons, thus it can inflict significant amount of damage.

I think you're talking about the wrong boon. Flurry Jab is the one that replaces your spin attack with jab spam. No spin means no healing. No healing on 30 max HP means you die.

(My hatred for the reduced dash is entirely subjective. I'm sure it's good, dash attacks always are, I just can't account for the drawback and end up taking damage)

[McSweeny]

how do you unlock the spear?

[itssirtou]

McSweeny a écrit :

how do you unlock the spear?

Either 3 other aspects or ~6 Blood spent, not sure which. Achilles will call you over and have a jagged speech bubble. Then go pick up the spear

[shinoshoe26]

also since nobody said it, starting with the cerberus trinket helps out at the start when you are focusing on getting health. allows you to start close to 50 hp if you havnt upgraded the spear yet. and using the spear head trinket after you upgraded the spear a bit will help so you dont lose a lot of health at once allowing you reliably get your health back with the charge attack

[KoUJkoDeBo4ka]

itssirtou a écrit :

T3R3Z1 PYROP3 a écrit :

I wouldn't say that flurry jab is bad for this weapon. Triple hit on it combined, let's say, with +100% damage from Artemis, is nice and rips many things to shreds. Also, as we know, dash attack gains bonuses not only from that, but from main attack boons, thus it can inflict significant amount of damage.

I think you're talking about the wrong boon. Flurry Jab is the one that replaces your spin attack with jab spam. No spin means no healing. No healing on 30 max HP means you die.

(My hatred for the reduced dash is entirely subjective. I'm sure it's good, dash attacks always are, I just can't account for the drawback and end up taking damage)

Ah, yes, I confused those two. Though I thought that it is impossible to get spin-removing upgrade on this aspect, just as it seems not possible to get hammers affecting special for Zeus's aspect shield.