im bad, i know it, can someone explain how to deal damage (dante/nero)

[Gotsa]

first DMC game for me, im playing on Devil Hunter, avoiding is second nature, often i find myself without having taken damage, but i for the life of me cant seem to deal damage effectively on anyone but V. (spam attack with both and L trigger as much as possible)

Yes i mash basic attacks on dante/nero, i know, how awful of me.

but i grew up on links sword swing, so whatever.

chunky enemies like the split tongue thing that rushes at you, take like 3 minutes if i dont evolve on dante, even in sword mode. it just seems ridiculous to me, oh and theres several shield enemies or the frost flyer.... ( rolls eyes)

so obviously im doing it wrong. my money generally goes into the utility skills like sprint, double jump, health/devil gauge capacity, extra time with V's colossus. etc.

i bought nero's "vroom vroom" (time it right after each attack and you get 3 rev powered attacks or w/e) and even when i successfully chain it and keep it going, nero still feels weak.

like i dont want enemies to be pushovers on normal mode, and at the same time i dont want to take 10minutes per encounter basic attacking one at a time where enemies only start to be threatening in later difficulties. what difficulty is right and how am i supposed to kill things faster?

[sumolagann]

Originally posted by kyle1234513:

first DMC game for me, im playing on Devil Hunter, avoiding is second nature, often i find myself without having taken damage, but i for the life of me cant seem to deal damage effectively on anyone but V. (spam attack with both and L trigger as much as possible)

Yes i mash basic attacks on dante/nero, i know, how awful of me.

but i grew up on links sword swing, so whatever.

chunky enemies like the split tongue thing that rushes at you, take like 3 minutes if i dont evolve on dante, even in sword mode. it just seems ridiculous to me, oh and theres several shield enemies or the frost flyer.... ( rolls eyes)

so obviously im doing it wrong. my money generally goes into the utility skills like sprint, double jump, health/devil gauge capacity, extra time with V's colossus. etc.

like i dont want enemies to be pushovers on normal mode, and at the same time i dont want to take 10minutes per encounter basic attacking one at a time where enemies only start to be threatening in later difficulties. what difficulty is right and how am i supposed to kill things faster?

You can test moves in the void to see damage. Remapping neros gun to either L1 or L2 so you can charge it while fighting or during downtime will help, I map it to L2 so I can use exceed on L1.

Don't be shy on using your arms abilities, you will be able to find them or restock during missions.
Using something like rocket punch while doing combos and charging your gun while doing the combo is decent damage, I think. Exceed helps but takes some time to get it down, i recommend L1 remap if you want to do it well.

[AnemoneMeer]

Alright. Taking it from the top. Dante and Nero deal damage in very different ways.

For Nero, Exceed is a 20% damage boost to your normals + makes them execute far faster. His 80 damage swings jump to 96 damage. His specials are much more devastating in exceed as well, gaining much larger damage hikes, but blowing out the entire stock of exceed and in many cases executing slower. Exceed is core to Nero's damage. Fortunately, it's easy to teach and I can get to that later.

For Dante, think of many things as setup to damage. Balrog's punch form does almost zero damage (Individual punches do 20), and Dante's sword swings do 70. As Nero's sword does 80 or 96, you can see where the damage starts to suck horribly. However, they fill another role. Prop shredder does a lot of damage (the spinning blade of doom). Million Stab does good damage (The Stinger upgrade where you do a ton of stabs), and your swordmaster options with sword all do damage, but demand setup, which is where the normal strikes come in, creating an opening.

For Balrog, kick form is your damage in general, while fully upgraded swordmaster gives you access to Real Impact, Balrog Punch form's devastating shoryuken that does in excess of a thousand damage, but requires flame state.

Switching back to Nero, Devil Breakers do high damage, if used right. Helter Skelter does 850 if you mash out all four stages. Overture does several hundred, and more if the target is above or below you (its knock away is its weakest strike). Punchline has Boost Knuckle, Nero's version of Real Impact. However, no matter what you do, Nero is gonna feel a bit weak in terms of damage until you beat the game, as it's tied to the story.

Dante meanwhile has his guns, which are a lot more devastating than you'd think. Ebony and Ivory do a lot of damage with Honeycomb shot, from the other side of the arena. Rainstorm is more for an air to ground transition, and twosome time is for quickly laying into something for a short period. Coyote-A is more burst focus, and does poor sustained damage, but can quickly pop a target for good damage. Finally, once you get the later stuff, Kalina Ann becomes a damage monster, at the cost of being ultra high risk.

Cerberus is more a utility tool. Its only TRUE damage options are in DT. However, vs enemies such as Hell Juddica, it can do a large % of their HP on DMD very effectively, at the cost of being a slower process, due to its Ice Wave > Electric Orbs > DT Revolver combo keeping enemies trapped at low altitude for an extended period and demolishing healthbars in DT Swordmaster. But that's a lot more costly than doing a DT Real Impact, and not as deadly. As for Cavaliere, I couldn't tell you, I don't run it, and Faust Hat is ultra high damage but not going to be usable by you for a long, long time (500k orb cost for just the final damage upgrade alone)

[One Elf]

Originally posted by AnemoneMeer:

Alright. Taking it from the top. Dante and Nero deal damage in very different ways.

For Nero, Exceed is a 20% damage boost to your normals + makes them execute far faster. His 80 damage swings jump to 96 damage. His specials are much more devastating in exceed as well, gaining much larger damage hikes, but blowing out the entire stock of exceed and in many cases executing slower. Exceed is core to Nero's damage. Fortunately, it's easy to teach and I can get to that later.

For Dante, think of many things as setup to damage. Balrog's punch form does almost zero damage (Individual punches do 20), and Dante's sword swings do 70. As Nero's sword does 80 or 96, you can see where the damage starts to suck horribly. However, they fill another role. Prop shredder does a lot of damage (the spinning blade of doom). Million Stab does good damage (The Stinger upgrade where you do a ton of stabs), and your swordmaster options with sword all do damage, but demand setup, which is where the normal strikes come in, creating an opening.

For Balrog, kick form is your damage in general, while fully upgraded swordmaster gives you access to Real Impact, Balrog Punch form's devastating shoryuken that does in excess of a thousand damage, but requires flame state.

Switching back to Nero, Devil Breakers do high damage, if used right. Helter Skelter does 850 if you mash out all four stages. Overture does several hundred, and more if the target is above or below you (its knock away is its weakest strike). Punchline has Boost Knuckle, Nero's version of Real Impact. However, no matter what you do, Nero is gonna feel a bit weak in terms of damage until you beat the game, as it's tied to the story.

Dante meanwhile has his guns, which are a lot more devastating than you'd think. Ebony and Ivory do a lot of damage with Honeycomb shot, from the other side of the arena. Rainstorm is more for an air to ground transition, and twosome time is for quickly laying into something for a short period. Coyote-A is more burst focus, and does poor sustained damage, but can quickly pop a target for good damage. Finally, once you get the later stuff, Kalina Ann becomes a damage monster, at the cost of being ultra high risk.

Cerberus is more a utility tool. Its only TRUE damage options are in DT. However, vs enemies such as Hell Juddica, it can do a large % of their HP on DMD very effectively, at the cost of being a slower process, due to its Ice Wave > Electric Orbs > DT Revolver combo keeping enemies trapped at low altitude for an extended period and demolishing healthbars in DT Swordmaster. But that's a lot more costly than doing a DT Real Impact, and not as deadly. As for Cavaliere, I couldn't tell you, I don't run it, and Faust Hat is ultra high damage but not going to be usable by you for a long, long time (500k orb cost for just the final damage upgrade alone)

Interesting. You have a source that lays out all the damage? I was going to do it myself but it's abit difficult to catalog all the damage attacks can do when i get distracted irl often. I tend to forget v.v

[AnemoneMeer]

Mostly just personal damage testing and figuring out what worked. I wanted to see what made helter skelter tick, as well as how potent exceed was on normals.

[Bstel]

The others have pretty much laid out the details, but here's some extra tips. Remap the gun button to L1/LB, especially Nero's so that you can charge your gun while you do other things. The same can be applied to Dante, while with V, you can use both Griffin and Shadow at the same time without switching fingers. Some people remap the Devil Breaker button to R2/RB for Nero so they can charge it as well, but that hurts my fingers too much.

Don't be afraid to use the Devil Breakers, you just have to time it right so they don't break unless you want them to. They are available throughout missions, and you'll always be able to restock before a boss fight. Plus, Breakers like Punch Line can be shot out to do some extra damage while you combo an enemy, and riding said arm can build up the style meter nicely. Gerbera is a nice Breaker for dodging and parrying attacks at the same time.

For Dante, his playstyle relies a lot on setups. Map out moves in your head before heading into an encounter. And take advantage of Dante's style switchings. This isn't DMC3 where you can specialize in a single style (well, you can, but it's really not recommended if you want to have a good time in higher difficulties in this game). Balrog's dempsey roll is a good alternative for a dodge, and the kick mode's your bread and butter for dishing out damage with Balrog.

Also, you can parry enemies' attacks. And learn enemy step as soon as you can and practice on how to utilize it in The Void. It's a bug in DMC3 that became a feature in later installments. Basically, the game registers the enemies as something solid, like the ground, so jumping on them resets your jump, allowing for multiple double jumps, or even multiple helm breakers (the attack where you slam down on an enemy).

[chaotic fried rice]

Get enemy step and learn to jump cancel as you get your head around all the weapons, skills, breakers, styles etc. and how to combo with them. It'll eventually just click with you and it is much easier in this game than it ever has been in previous games to learn tech. Take it slow and have fun with it the game it's super complicated the way you're playing is how everyone plays when they first start.

Watch good players and if you see something you really like try to imitate it, copying is encouraged in the DMC community most people have copied techniques from other players but also have parts of their style that are their own, you'll find your own preferences as you play more.

Also don't worry so much about tech, if you decide to get really into the technical aspects of the games combat system it's easy to get really obsessed with it and forget to just enjoy the game and form your own style. If you get too focused on it and just spend all your time in the Void beating up infinite health enemies your combos will look super mathy and mechanical, which can be fine some people like it and it's impressive watching pure tech skill but DMC is all about experimenting and expression with the mechanics. Always try to be stylish and just try things, get creative with it. What's stylish is basically up to you, do whatever you think looks cool and is fun to do.

Fundamentals as Nero: Learn to exceed well (just gotta learn the timings, each move is different, you'll get the muscle memory down slowly) and learn the difference between non-exceed and exceed attacks, sometimes you actually want the non-exceed attack. His breakers have tons of utility and lots of hidden uses, a lot of what Dante can do that Nero can't seem to do he actually can do with his breakers.

As Dante: Pick a style you like and make that your neutral state style, learn it first and then base your use of the other styles on how you use that style. In moments of downtime, the end of combos and fights, or just when you don't really know what to do next and need a second to think, you return to this style. Trust me this may sound complicated and unnecessary when I first heard this I was like what but it really does make it easier to use all the styles together. The good thing is all the styles are quite viable to be your neutral in this game so pick whatever you like, if you like gunslinger go with that. In this game mine is swordmaster because of how much I like the summoned swords of DSD, previously I was royal guard and that is a very good choice always. That's another prime tip with Dante, learn royal guard it's all you need to style the entire game on any difficulty. Literally all you need is B/O and your left stick and every enemy and boss can get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ with the royal release and negating any attack. After you've got that neutral style down start learning the others and how they can compliment your neutral style and learn how to cycle through your weapons as you combo enemies. This is a big step and quite hard but you'll get there like before it'll just click and you'll find yourself doing insane things suddenly and see the combo potential ever expanding.

Tech still takes some time to learn and skill to apply but most players will be able to use it now in some capacity with just a bit of time in the void whereas before it was very difficult and technical to execute you'd need tons of time in a trainer or running BP/certain missions over and over and over. Something I'd do as well is focus on perfecting difficulties before you move on. S rank all missions on Devil Hunter before moving onto Son of Sparda, same thing with SoS before doing DMD.

[stiel560]

For nero, his devil breaker like overture has big damage and most of his attacks with exceed has good damage. So you gotta learn exceed. And also his charge shot is crazy good. You have to get used to charge while doing combos. I remapped my button to do this.

As dante... Stinger, real impact, meteor faust hat, kalina ann. His other moves doesnt do that much damage. But that's how you should play dante. You play dante by mixing lots of moves.

But if you asked what moves give great damage, there you go.

[AnemoneMeer]

Stinger does very little damage stiel. It's not at all worth using for damage outside of DT.

[Bstel]

Originally posted by AnemoneMeer:

Stinger does very little damage stiel. It's not at all worth using for damage outside of DT.

Agreed. I mostly use normal Stinger to knock back enemies, giving me some breathing room. DT Stinger, however, is used for dishing out damage.

[stiel560]

Originally posted by AnemoneMeer:

Stinger does very little damage stiel. It's not at all worth using for damage outside of DT.

Stinger can be spammed & very very safe to be spammed giving great overall DPS. Especially with DT+devilsword+style on swordmaster. That's why i include it. But of course we dont use it that way, the stylish point would suffer.

[AnemoneMeer]

Originally posted by stiel560:

Originally posted by AnemoneMeer:

Stinger does very little damage stiel. It's not at all worth using for damage outside of DT.

Stinger can be spammed & very very safe to be spammed giving great overall DPS. Especially with DT+devilsword+style on swordmaster. That's why i include it. But of course we dont use it that way, the stylish point would suffer.

DT stinger is a completely different beast from standard stinger in terms of properties. Standard stinger is garbage damage (I think it does like 90), DT stinger is a few hundred.

[One Elf]

I found this setup most comfortable for Nero for me:

Attack: Triangle/Y

Gun: Square/X -this way you can charge it and tip your thumb over to hit Triangle or use the lower part of your thumb to jump/dodge

Jump: X/A

Devil Breaker: L1/LB

Dispose of Breaker: O/B -I have it here as it'll be your least used button on Nero with this setup.

???: Dpad(Or L3/Left analog click if you prefer that) -Won't spoiled this for you but when you get it this is best where you can toggle it fastest but not in the way of other buttons. Don't click if you don't want spoiler Devil Trigger

????: R2/RT -Another spoiler. This is frequently used and I suggest putting it where you can access it in a flash. Don't click if you don't want spoiler Devil Bringer
The point of this setup is to allow you to dodge and attack in any situation without moving your other important attacks out of the way. It won't minimize button pressed but it should help minimize reaching.

[chaotic fried rice]

Originally posted by One Elf:

I found this setup most comfortable for Nero for me:

Attack: Triangle/Y

Gun: Square/X -this way you can charge it and tip your thumb over to hit Triangle or use the lower part of your thumb to jump/dodge

Jump: X/A

Devil Breaker: L1/LB

Dispose of Breaker: O/B -I have it here as it'll be your least used button on Nero with this setup.

???: Dpad(Or L3/Left analog click if you prefer that) -Won't spoiled this for you but when you get it this is best where you can toggle it fastest but not in the way of other buttons. Don't click if you don't want spoiler Devil Trigger

????: R2/RT -Another spoiler. This is frequently used and I suggest putting it where you can access it in a flash. Don't click if you don't want spoiler Devil Bringer
The point of this setup is to allow you to dodge and attack in any situation without moving your other important attacks out of the way. It won't minimize button pressed but it should help minimize reaching.

With Nero I personally find it way easier to play him with his gun mapped to a trigger or bumper (I use L1 personally) so you can more easily charge Blue Rose as you combo. I map X/Square to devil breaker and have my melee attacks on O/B so I can jc easier with Nero (I hate using the joints of my thumb to hit triangle + X it's so uncomfortable for me), exceed is on L2, lock on R2, triangle and R1 are those two later game abilities you mentioned that are spoilers. D-pad I have set to break away as it's the least used, you're right about that but idk why you'd want your least used button as O/B.

[One Elf]

Originally posted by 8in1semtex:

Originally posted by One Elf:

I found this setup most comfortable for Nero for me:

Attack: Triangle/Y

Gun: Square/X -this way you can charge it and tip your thumb over to hit Triangle or use the lower part of your thumb to jump/dodge

Jump: X/A

Devil Breaker: L1/LB

Dispose of Breaker: O/B -I have it here as it'll be your least used button on Nero with this setup.

???: Dpad(Or L3/Left analog click if you prefer that) -Won't spoiled this for you but when you get it this is best where you can toggle it fastest but not in the way of other buttons. Don't click if you don't want spoiler Devil Trigger

????: R2/RT -Another spoiler. This is frequently used and I suggest putting it where you can access it in a flash. Don't click if you don't want spoiler Devil Bringer
The point of this setup is to allow you to dodge and attack in any situation without moving your other important attacks out of the way. It won't minimize button pressed but it should help minimize reaching.

With Nero I personally find it way easier to play him with his gun mapped to a trigger or bumper (I use L1 personally) so you can more easily charge Blue Rose as you combo. I map X/Square to devil breaker and have my melee attacks on O/B so I can jc easier with Nero (I hate using the joints of my thumb to hit triangle + X it's so uncomfortable for me), exceed is on L2, lock on R2, triangle and R1 are those two later game abilities you mentioned that are spoilers. D-pad I have set to break away as it's the least used, you're right about that but idk why you'd want your least used button as O/B.

Because I hold Square/x so I have easy access to T/Y and X/A but not O/B because Im always charging the gun. I don't have my gun on top buttons because it hurt my finger always holding down L1/LB when I used to do that in DMC4. Over short periods time it'd become physically painful to hold it down for me. my left hand wasn't exactly the same after the last time I broke my arm so it's likely just a me thing.

Also when I play fighting games I frequently map my Heavy attack to X and special button(drive for blazblue, Shield for UNIST) to R1/RB so I'm very familar with rarely using my O/B button in fast pace games.

[M4N]

Stop calling yourself bad. Not everyone lives in their mom's basement and has a name Donguri.