The Combo System

Lunia gives you four combat inputs and then asks you to be clever with them. A attacks, B attacks, dash, down attack. Everything else in the game is stat padding on top of what you do with those four keys.

The defaults are A or Z for A, S for B, X for dash and Space for the down attack. Full binding list is on the controls page.

Attacks are a graph, not a list

Every action in the game carries a list of follow-ups. Each follow-up names the input that triggers it and the earliest point in the current animation where that input is accepted. That is the whole combo system: a directed graph with timing gates on the edges.

Sieg's opening A chain, as an example of the shape:

Two things fall out of that table. First, the follow-up starts before the current animation ends, so a chain of A hits runs at roughly 0.30s to 0.33s per hit rather than the 0.40s to 0.50s the animations suggest. Inputs are also buffered: pressing early queues the follow-up instead of dropping it. Mashing is genuinely faster than waiting, which is not true in every game.

Second, damage share is not flat. Ordinary chain hits are worth 0.4 of your attack value. The finisher and the B-branch launchers are worth 1.0. Dropping the chain early to restart at A1 throws away the expensive hits.

Other characters have the same skeleton with different numbers. Dainn is the notable exception: from a standing start his B input does not begin an attack chain at all, it begins mana gain.

Dash cancelling

Almost every attack in the game has a dash edge on it. Sieg leaves A1 at 0.250s of a 0.500s animation, and A2 at 0.160s of 0.433s. That trailing half is a commitment with no damage attached to it, and the dash deletes it.

This is the single largest skill gap in Lunia combat. Attack, dash, attack beats attack, attack for a large share of moves, and you spend the whole time mobile instead of rooted.

Watch the input windows though. Some dash edges are open for the whole animation, but A1's closes at 0.250s: press dash after that and Sieg finishes the swing. Cancels are something you decide at the start of a move, not at the end of it.

Dash itself chains. Forward again during a dash gives a second and third dash, and A or B during a dash gives dedicated dash attacks rather than the standing chain.

Knockdown and the down attack

When something is knocked down it stops being a valid target for your normal attacks. This is not a feel thing, it is literal: every attack declares which target states it can hit, and when an attack does not say otherwise the default is standing plus airborne. Grounded is excluded.

The down attack is the mirror image. It declares grounded only, and it is the only attack in a standard move set that does. It is also worth a full 1.0 damage share against the 0.4 of a chain hit.

When you are the one on the floor

Getting knocked down puts you in a lie-down state that runs 4.3 to 4.8 seconds depending on character. You do not have to sit through it.

• A at any point during the knockdown gives you a rising attack. It knocks back everything around you and covers your get-up.
• A direction, a dash, or B from 0.5 seconds into the knockdown gives you a plain get-up.

Waiting out the full four-plus seconds is always a mistake and it is always your own choice.

Air combos and the juggle multiplier

Launch a mob and it enters the airborne state. While it is airborne, an air hit counter runs on that mob, and from the third hit onward each hit multiplies a damage factor by the stage group's air damage value. The factor compounds. It stops growing after the ninth air hit and holds there for the rest of the juggle.

With the common 1.2 stage value that looks like this:

The value depends on where you are. Across all 68 stage groups (see the stage browser for which stage sits in which group):

Two consequences worth internalising.

Mobs get nothing. The by-mob air damage value is 1.000 in every single one of the 68 stage groups. When a mob juggles you it is doing flat damage. The multiplier is a player tool only.

PvP inverts it. PvP runs 0.93 and removes the nine-hit cap, so the factor keeps compounding downward. Every extra hit in a PvP juggle is worth less than the last. Juggling for damage is a stage habit, not an arena habit.

The counter is attached to the target and resets the instant that target is no longer airborne. Your own combo count resets when everything you were juggling has landed, which means juggling a pack keeps your number alive far longer than juggling one mob.

What the game actually counts

Your highest air combo in a stage is reported at mission clear, and it feeds three separate systems.

Rank. Air combo rank is 1 to 3 for C, 4 to 7 for B, 8 to 15 for A, and 16 or more for S. It is worth 15% of your stage clear rank. Lives are 35%, clear time 25%, style 20%, secrets 5%.

Style points. Air combo hits award style points from the third hit onward, scaling with the count. Down attack hits award them too, for every class except Lime and Krieg. Landing 10 hits inside one second awards a multi-hit point.

Achievements. Six of them, 10 points each, and they are pure air combo:

Note that the damage bonus caps at nine air hits but the counter does not. A 100 air combo is entirely achievable, it just stops paying extra damage a long way before you get there. Do it on a pack, in a stage with a high air damage value, and pick up the rank while you are there.