[Spoilers for Iki Island DLC] Ways to deal with these enemies?

[superfid2006]

Hello, I am currently playing through the Iki Island DLC after finishing the main game; the upped difficulty so far seems fun despite having all skills maxed, especially the Tournament sidequest was fun.
I am having a bit of trouble with the twinblade wielding enemies though; I figured they were Brutes, but using the heavy attacks while using the corresponding stance does nothing - as does the polearm stance. The only way I figured to deal with them was using the same strategy I used against brutes before gaining the corresponding stance, throw a kunai and rush the enemy down.
Are there any better ways to deal with them? I suppose you could try Perfect Dodging, or just plain headshotting them with the bow.

[Hanzo]

Get hallucination darts, shoot them and observe.
Fire/Exposive arrows as well as smoke bombs are probably the easiest solutions.

[superfid2006]

Good idea. I went through the game without having to rely on most of this stuff, so these options slipped my mind haha
I read that NG+ has increased difficulty, looking forward to checking it out once I am done with the DLC

[soul like that be capable of]

funny thing i am doing iki now right after finished act 1 haha i level up to max from act 1 i did everything its not so hard atm on hard . people told me to do it after main story. but i dont mind once i beat it rest of game will fill like a walk in the park.
one thing make it easier is to have unblockable hit that go in even if they do red attack but you had to unlock it during act 1

[Xengre]

Easiest solution for me is to just simply throw a Kunai (esp with +40% ghost weapon dmg when using versatile charm, though even without Versatile's bonus and just the default +20% base dmg still great) to either instantly kill them or stun. Horse charge with the horse armor and upgraded charge can 1-shot them, too.

Alternatively, you can use smoke bomb, especially with the multi-kill assassination since very ironically it is mostly used for loud combat due to how the enemy can still scream during it...

These methods can be boosted further with the charm that has a 15% (30% with versatile charm) return ghost item on melee attack effect so you can fairly reliably spam them.

Fire arrows or a longbow charged shot to face also work since the island is when you start to get pretty abusive concentration time bonuses.

For melee I always just dodge their jump attack and then punish but don't even bother trying to punish after their spam long-winded spinning attack. This forces a more reactive approach to them rather than straight aggressive unless you get lucky and they are just standing there for a moment so you can run up and hit them.

Not much different than the already mentioned approaches, just more detail that may/may not help.

[Hanzo]

Originally posted by superfid2006:

Good idea. I went through the game without having to rely on most of this stuff, so these options slipped my mind haha
I read that NG+ has increased difficulty, looking forward to checking it out once I am done with the DLC

Yes, that the same feeling I did get. Enemies force you to rely on your tools more. I've also barely used anything in the main game, except bow and kunai, but difficulty spike want you to try more tools.

[Axetwin]

For the twinblade guys I either just shot them in the head, nail them with a sticky bomb or threw a kunai at them so I could safely dps them down with my sword. If I had Ghost Stance charged, they were always my priority (second to the Shamans of course). They are not worth the hassle to try to fight legit.

[superfid2006]

Originally posted by Axetwin:

For the twinblade guys I either just shot them in the head, nail them with a sticky bomb or threw a kunai at them so I could safely dps them down with my sword. If I had Ghost Stance charged, they were always my priority. They are not worth the hassle to try to fight legit.

Again, I would not even know how to fight them legit, honestly. I assume jumping to dodge since they are using polearms? Guarding is not working no matter your stance, and trying to do a perfect dodge also never worked for the few tries I had before resorting to ghost weapons.
Funny you get the saddlebags though, as if in preparation for just these enemies. In the base game I only ever had to use them if extra objectives required them (some real Assassin's Creed vibes from that if you go for a hundred percent completion), or for fun like when fighting the Khan. Had to laugh when he got downed incredibly fast once the arsenal was unleashed lmao

[Abaddon]

sure, but does saki ever stop being a ♥♥♥♥♥?