Introduction

Self-Introduction & Brief Class Intro

Hello! I played Dragon Nest NA from 70 cap to 95 cap as Kuchiki/KuchikiiSan/KuchikiiChan and mained Dragoon and Avalanche since release. Avalanche is a safe, fast-paced, semi-DPS and debuffer class. Hope you enjoy your time with her! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me at Kuchiki#3878!

[If you're interested in learning about other classes, we have a Class Guide Archive! - Vino]

Skills

Lencea

[Forward Pierce]: Mobility forward.

[Copter Strike]: Used for [Class Mastery III] with [Momentary Phantasm]. If [Momentary Phantasm] is on cooldown, this is a good filler. Most of the damage is on the last hit, so you can left click right away.

[Hornet’s Touch]: Parry skill and animation cancel. Can activate using spacebar.

[Headbutt]: Useful for pushing objects.

[Harmonize]: “Harm/harmo/rebuff me”.

Knightess

Self-Buffs

[Force of Knightess]: Standard FD buff. You have to rebuff yourself after wipes or if the buff duration runs out.

[Fighting Spirit]: Lifesteal. Each skill hit recovers a % of Max HP. Works really well when you land multiple hits. Very effective against mobs (Green Dragon spiders, Kaeron Trial pirates, dungeons, etc).

Debuffs

[Gale Stab]: Element debuff. Only the first hit is needed to apply the debuff.

[Brandish]: Damage debuff. [Brandish] also resets [Extreme Twister] cooldown through [Class Mastery II]. [Class Mastery II] is only useful for lifestealing/very situational filler. Avoid using.

[Blunt Slash]: Ice stack debuff. There are two ways to cast [Blunt Slash];

  1. [Brandish] > [Blunt Slash]: This is the ideal and most cooldown efficient method.
  2. [Frosty Cross] > [Blunt Slash]: If you cast [Brandish] and for some reason the target moves away or you have dodge out of the first method, you can alternatively cast [Blunt Slash] using the right mouse button after [Frosty Cross]. Very situational — if possible, do not use this method.

Skills

[Splitter]: Animation cancel/mobility/damage skill. You can slide through any direction except backwards using the skill hotkey together with W, A or D direction keys. If possible, map [Splitter] to a mouse key to free up the keyboard for the direction key.

[Extreme Twister]: Used to only be good for lifestealing with [Fighting Spirit]. After the removal of Varnak crests, avalanches now have an extra slot. This skill, together with an action speed plate, is a beginner-friendly method to trigger [Fatal Stinger (Instant)]. Other skills are still better overall, so use this sparingly, but this skill is useful to get started. You may also use this skill to fill in few seconds of gaps when most of your skills are on cooldown to keep the rotation going.

[Frosty Cross]: Used for Frostbite. More on this later.

[Momentary Phantasm]: Strongest burst skill outside of [Fatal Stinger (Instant)] and [Blizzard Shooter]. Two options to use it.

  1. Class Mastery III: [Copter Strike] > [Momentary Phantasm]. Faster animation but reduces hit count to 24. Does one [Copter Strike]’s worth of extra damage.
  2. [Momentary Phantasm] (Regular): Long animation but high hit count at 40. Avoid using unless you need more hits for lifesteal.

[Lava Raid]: Good for mobility.

[Radical Charge]: Good for pushing objects/mobility. Regarding mobility, [Splitter], [Forward Pierce], [Lava Raid] and [Radical Charge] will move to the direction you are facing regardless of confusion status. Use these to get out of sticky situations.

Avalanche

Understanding Ice Spears

Avalanche can use [Gale Stab], [Splitter], [Extreme Twister], [Frosty Cross], or [Momentary Phantasm] to generate Ice Spears. When a skill hit connects with a target, you have a 20% chance to create an Ice Spear (up to a maximum of five spears). Skills that have more hits can generate more Ice Spears.

Ice Spears interact with [Crystal Shooter], [Fatal Stinger] and [Crystal Maker].

[Crystal Shooter]: throws one of your floating Ice Spears forward to generate 2% attack per spear (up to a maximum of five throws for 10% attack). Additionally, when [Crystal Shooter] hits a target, you reduce the cooldown of [Fatal Stinger] by 5 seconds. Here are some general tips:

  1. Contrary to the tooltip, you do not need to hit anything to get the 2% attack buff. You just need to cast the skill!
  2. The [Crystal Shooter] attack buff does not get debuffed. However, you have to maintain your uptime by casting [Crystal Shooter] at least once every minute.
  3. Before running any content, spend time creating five attack stacks so you start running at full power.


You can consume Ice Spears to increase [Fatal Stinger]’s damage up to a maximum of 325% bonus damage (x3.25 the board damage).


[Crystal Maker] has two effects:

1. Creates Ice Spears each time you cast a skill during [Crystal Maker]’s duration.


2. Allows you to cast [Crystal Shooter] without needing Ice Spears at all.


[Crystal Shooter]’s attack buff lasts 60 seconds, [Crystal Maker]’s duration lasts 20 seconds and the cooldown lasts 60 seconds. So long as you cast [Crystal Shooter] at least twice during [Crystal Maker], you can permanently maintain your attack buff.

Understanding Frostbite

Avalanche can use either [Frosty Cross], [Blizzard Shooter] or [Icy Blast] to apply a Frostbite debuff for 5 seconds. When a target is frostbitten, attacking the target with any skill hit using [Gale Stab], [Splitter], [Extreme Twister], [Frosty Cross], [Momentary Phantasm], [Copter Strike], [Brandish] or [Blunt Slash] has a 25% chance to trigger [Fatal Stinger (Instant)]. Since the proc is RNG based, multi hit skills with fast animation times are better to proc [Fatal Stinger (Instant)].

  • [Copter Strike] can proc frostbite [Fatal Stinger (Instant)], even if the tooltip does not say so.

[Fatal Stinger (Instant)]: The Instant does damage equal to [Fatal Stinger] with five ice spears, thus making up the bulk of your DPS spread. When you get a [Fatal Stinger (Instant)] proc, cast it above all else.

[Fatal Stinger (Regular)]: A good filler when you have five ice spears and your skills are all cooling down.

  • Special Tip: [Fatal Stinger (Instant)] and [Fatal Stinger (Regular)] have insane super armor. It is possible, but tricky, to use these skills to resist some mechs (GDN Krakas push-back). See the following clip.

Parry Skills

We have access to five parry skills. The priority order for Parry Skills are as follows:

[Parrying Step] (1) > [Hornet’s Touch] (2) > [Splitter] (3 and 4 with CTC) > [Fatal Stinger] (Regular, 5)

Blocking an attack with [Parrying Step] reduces the cooldown of [Gale Stab], [Splitter], [Extreme Twister], [Frosty Cross], [Momentary Phantasm] and [Fatal Stinger] by 20%, so this is your most important parry. [Hornet’s Touch] comes next as it is the second easiest parry skill to time. [Splitter] is third because it is the hardest parry to time. Last is [Fatal Stinger] – while [Fatal Stinger] has a huge parrying window, it is not worth it to cast [Fatal Stinger] for parrying. It is better to cast it together with five ice spears for damage.

  • Do note that enemy debuffs go through Parry. At times, it is much safer to [Tumble] or use [Splitter] to move out of the way.

Timing

[Splitter] (0:00), [Parrying Step] (0:03 – note how blocking reduces [Fatal Stinger]’s CD from 4 sec to 0!), [Fatal Stinger] (0:08), [Hornet’s Touch] (0:16)

Airtime Skills

[Rising Lava]: Great airtime. When falling down, you can briefly prolong airtime by casting [Falling Meteors] with the right mouse button.

  • Case 1: Regular Airtime. Tip: You can use [Rising Lava] to jump even if debuffed with Krakas green ball.
  • Case 2: Extended Airtime

Skill Crests

Action Speed: [Momentary Phantasm]

Cooldown: [Brandish], [Blunt Slash], [Frosty Cross], [Splitter]

Damage: [Fatal Stinger] and +1

Pick one: [Copter Strike DMG], [Extreme Twister AS], [Icy Blast CD]

  • [Copter Strike] is good for DPS
  • [Extreme Twister] is good all around
  • [Icy Blast] gives additional iframes for stomps

Skill Build

Unified Skill: 1) FD Boost or Ultimate CD Reduction. (This is personal preference; FD boosts overall damage, while CD reduction gives you a long iframe to easily dodge killer mechs such as Kodiak's Stomp.) 2) HP Boost or DMG Reduction (Personal preference as well.)

Rotation

[Blizzard Shooter] (Frostbite) --> [Gale Stab] (Element Debuff) --> [Splitter] (Animation Cancel) --> [Brandish] (Damage Debuff) --> Right Click --> [Blunt Slash] (Ice Stack) --> [Copter Strike] --> [Momentary Phantasm] --> [Fatal Stinger (Instant)]


Note that I stacked five [Crystal Shooter] stacks and five [Ice Spears] before the rotation.

Gameplay Tips

  1. Always cast debuffs first using the rotation above.
  2. Outside the opening rotation, we do not have a strict rotation, outside casting [Brandish] > [Blunt Slash] off cooldown. Since [Fatal Stinger (Instant)] is probability based, we can only play by prioritizing certain skills over others and then reactively deciding what we do from there.
  3. Frostbite debuff priority: [Blizzard Shooter] > [Frosty Cross] > [Icy Blast]
  4. [Fatal Stinger] proc skill priority: [Class Mastery III] > [Splitter] > [Gale Stab] > [Splitter] > [Copter Strike] > [Extreme Twister]. (See the decision-making flowchart.) If you get a proc, cast it then go down the chain until you get another proc. If you do not get a proc, cast the next skill and continue down. Proceed until the frostbite duration is over or you reach the end of the chain.
Decision-making flowchart — refer to point 4.

Raid vs. BTG Spread Discrepancies

In raids, [Blizzard Shooter] and [Momentary Phantasm] tend to occupy #2 and #3 respectively, while [Splitter] is at #4 or #5. This is because there are downtimes during mechanics where your heavy hitting skills have the chance to go off cooldown. Secondly, blocking with [Parrying Step] also contributes to cooldown reduction. Since heavy hitting skills are prioritized over [Splitter], they will see more usage in raid, whereas in BTG, you have no idle times to recover your heavy skills, so [Splitter] is spammed more often, which brings it above [Blizzard Shooter] and [Momentary Phantasm] in BTG spreads. This discrepancy is normal and will be more prominent the more we follow the priority order.

Rune Dragon 8-Man Normal DPS Spread (Courtesy of ZenZach)

Full Astral +10s, with 100% FD