Mastery of Hurk: Living the Max DPS lifestyle

Overview

Ever felt that you were playing Hurk wrong? Does he seem really simple, or hard to play? Have you ever wondered what makes him tick, how do top Hurk players manage to do half the boss damage themselves in a party of eight? Look no further, this guide will explore how hurk works, what you should be doing when playing him, and how to always steal that top dps e-peen position.

Intro

I decided to write this guide after the jillionth newby Hurk asked me to explain to them how I played and what I did to do so much damage, this is here so stop asking me so many questions and let me waste my life in this MMO as is proper.

This is a guide for players who already have some basic Hurk experience, but want to improve their skills further.

Hurks Abilities and their Effects

Well, to start I believe it would be wise to go over the basics, so when I reference an attack, or ability, you know what I’m going on about. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go over every passive ability in the game, but there are some really useful ones that need to be mentioned. Skip this part if you already know the abilities.

Abilities

Ability description and use

This ability serves as Hurk’s main defensive ability, allowing the player to literally walk into attacks, which at max rank will reduce the damage done by 65%, leading to other bonuses. This ability can be used ad infinitum, even when down to 1 HP it will keep you alive, as long as the boss doesn’t do any damage to you outside of the activation window or outside of it’s activation requirements (Such as Druids AOE attack that doesn’t actually hit you).

Those other bonuses I just mentioned? This is them, Revenge is exactly what it sounds like, when your opponent hits you, and you timed it right to activate Impenetrable, Revenge level 1 will activate. Now all you need to do is smack your opponent back and you will get back a portion of your hp (relative to the damage of your attack) and do extra damage to boot.

There are five levels of Revenge, the next level activating when you are hit with the previous level still active, each level will grant you more damage on your next hit. You can restore up to 900 HP per hit, which is the hard-capped limit no matter how much damage you do.

There are two ways to activate Impenetrable, this is one of them, press any directional movement key and hit your dodge button, that is Charge, it can be done twice in a row before it does a cool-off animation. If you’re hit from the front while doing it, Impenetrable activates.

This is the other method of activating Impenetrable, simply hit your dodge button once with no other inputs and you will blockade, if done after charge (Charge and then blockade right away to receive the attack) it will almost double the length of impenetrable. If you’re hit from the front while doing it, Impenetrable activates.

Make sure you have the option ‘Auto-aim at enemies (When throwing)’ enabled in Options -> Controls -> Advanced Settings to fully take advantage of Blockade.

This ability is known as Awakening, as Hurk continues to hit his enemies, Awakening will continue to stack until it reaches level 5, where he gets some impressive bonuses.

Execution is a single hit ground smash SP skill, this attack when mixed with several other attack types has the potential to be Hurks top damage attack, bar none, even Terminus bows before it in pure damage potential. Read on further in the guide for elaboration of the different ways to boost its damage.

I did just mention this one, afterall. A high damage stunlock, can be used to cancel most boss animations, hold your use button as you insert your blade into the enemy. Check Glitches/Secret section for more information.

Do not underestimate this ability, Hurk is as adaptive and powerful as he is, thanks a lot to this ability.

This is the purest form of an offensive dodge I’ve ever seen in a game, during both strikes you become invulnerable to damage, best used against large AOEs and targeted boss attacks. Check Glitch/Secrets for more information.

This ability lets you use HP as stamina and keep attacking after you’ve used all your stamina up.

This is known as Parrying, or Deflection. It can be done three ways, either right click as the attack is about to hit you to perform it (Which if you fail you’ll do the frustration stomp and then get slapped), or use Ultimatium in place of the right click Parry, which costs one bar of sp but gives you a very generous Parry window, or use Impenetrable, and if you time it right and the boss is within hitting distance, you’ll be given the option to Parry.

Note: You should ‘release’ your camera as you start a parry-combo, as after each parry hit the camera will swing to face the boss, if you fight this or try to maintain control, you’ll end up facing away from the boss and will miss your parry hits.

Playstyles and Combos

Ok, now on to the meat of the Guide. I will get around to uploading a video of a Havan solo or something at one point, so you can see everything I mention in action, but for now this will have to do.

When playing Hurk, you have to respond to what the Boss does, and while that’s true, it’s in a completely different way than the other characters, they are watching for attacks that they can use their dodges to not get hit, you are watching the timing of the attacks so you can get hit at the right time, using Impenetrable or parrying them.

Hurks playstyle is dictated by the opponent he is facing, for each attack, there is a ‘most reliable’ way of responding. For really obvious attacks where its easy to guess the timing, I recommend using a Ultimatum parry, but many bosses, especially in Season 2 have very little to no windup on their attacks, so trying to parry without having their moveset complete mastered ends up as suicide. With these bosses you should mainly be using Charge/Blockade to build up stacks of Revenge.

Five bars of Revenge along with five bars of Awakening hit with either one of the Full Moon strikes or with the running stab (Sprint and right click before the sword-dragging sparks animation begins) combined with a crit will grant you damage equal to Execution. For me it’s pretty normal to get 20k strikes on bosses such as Lakoria where it’s easy to stack Revenge bars thanks to the poison.

The POWER of Execution
Now, there are some facets to Hurk that are not widely known, for example, did you know that the damage that execution does is depending upon how many Awakening levels you have active? Not only will a level 5 Awakening grant you huge bonus damage, but it grants a reliable stun as well, though that stun cannot cancel certain boss animations, like Havan’s pillar swirl, it’s a good tool in any good Hurk’s stunlock arsenal.

I mentioned before when explaining Execution that it’s potential damage makes it Hurk’s most powerful weapon, that’s because theres more than one way to increase its possible damage. Another method is through parrying, after you get that initial parry hit you will be able to perform a parry combo. A parry combo uses the same hit pattern as your normal moveset, but drasticistally increases the damage of each hit, see where I’m going with this?

Parry can be used to increase the damage of Execution by a huge margin, try to hit with execution on the last hit of the parry combo, that will increase the time the boss spends stun-locked( Since each parry hit does a mini-stun) and will grant you extra damage along the way, just make sure you hit Execution within the parry combo time-limit, which is pretty short. Having fast attack speed, or an Werewolf Paw Artifact makes things faster and easier.

My best experience with this was against Keaghan, an Execution + 5 bars of Awakening + parry damage boost + a critical hit = 120k damage, from ONE hit

One note in regards to that though, I do not believe Revenge increases the damage of Execution since Execution with Revenge bars active doesn’t grant you any HP, nor do the Revenge bars disappear. Could be wrong but they don’t seem to effect one another.

Combo system? Where?

Hurk in unique in Vindictus in that after he does a smash, his attacks don’t stop, he can endlessly repeat one smash or cycle through different ones without stopping, even his stamina being drained to nothing doesn’t slow him down thanks to Transcendent.

Thanks to this he can combo through any of his smashes as the need arises – ‘BUT WAIT! What happens if I start a smash at the wrong time and the boss is about to hit me?’ you may ask. Well, that’s where Ultimatum comes into play, when used right, this ability will turn you into an unstoppable juggernaut of death.

With this move it makes it possible for you to NEVER overextend your movements and get hit (Without wanting to) and makes the plebs who play the other sub-par classes cry tears of shame and fury. You can cancel out of any smash with Ultimatum, out of just about any movement at all in fact, which is how SUCCSP came to be (Check out the last part of Secrets/Combos for more information). That’s not all, Ultimatum can be used to lead into parries and we know how powerful those can be and even if you miss the parry strike, as long as you time it right, the attack you’re trying to parry will pass right through you like a free dodge.

Blockade Cling and Movement Rotation

Another few useful things to mention, firstly what I like to call Blockade Clinging. Have you ever been annoyed by bosses with smaller bodies who move at the worst times making you miss your attacks? Or even have the boss ignore you and run behind you, making you move back to put yourself into a good striking stance?

The use of this technique is that it makes boss positioning a no-issue, when you use blockade when in melee distance of a boss and it does that shoulder bump animation, it also gives you tracking of that enemy. This has supreme value on bosses like Keaghan/Iset/Succubus Queen, who can get lost in player effects and animations and generally be hard to hit. With the auto-tracking effect Blockade gives you, you can ensure that your attacks hit their intended target. This requires the option ‘Auto-aim at enemies (When throwing)’ enabled to get the Clinging effect.

The second thing I’d like to mention in this part of the guide is Movement Rotation, notice how most of Hurks smashes move you forwards? Well I am a person who believes that no movement should be wasted, for example, you approach the boss and using the running stab to begin attacking, this attack hits the boss and moves you past the boss in most cases.

You then normally use double Cresent as the next attack, what has happened? You’ve made a

sort of movement pattern around the boss, with you ending up on the same side as where you started attacking. What is the boss doing as you do this? The boss is turning to face you since your attack pattern just brought you around the boss.

At this point it would usually take too long to start another combo on the spot, at least if you intend to maintain the initiative, so you can then either use a charge or a running stab to move from your current position in a sort of

movement, making a full circle around the boss and leading into another double crescent.

What does this movement pattern look like? It sort of looks similar to this: ☆
(The boss will likely be moving though, so it won’t work out that cleanly.)

The end result of doing this is that not only is the boss always tracking and playing catch-up with YOUR movements, you are always facing your opponent which makes using Impenetrable easier. If you’re fast enough you can even combine this with Blockade Cling, which means even if the boss has a side-ways swipe attack, it’ll just activate Impenetrable.

Combine this technique with other abilities such as Ultimatium for easy parries, and you quickly enter into almost a dance with the boss, both moving and attacking in a seemless flurry of blows without stopping or, when mastered even taking an unwanted hit!

Useful information and Secret/Glitch attacks/combos.

Dual Terminus

____________________

When using this attack, hold the use button (The one you use to pickup objects or grab enemies), release just as Hurk swings his blade down, but before the animation ends. On most Human sized enemies, the animation will play again, enabling you to hit Terminus twice over. Doesn’t work against most Dragon sized bosses and may not hit twice if you wait too long into the animation and move out of hitting range for the second slice.

Dual Judgement

____________________

After doing the first two strikes, mash your mouse right mouse button and your sp button to do it over again before the cooldown takes effect.

The Secret Ultimatium Cancelling Combo of the Supreme Pros

____________________

Otherwise known as SUCCSP(no it isn’t), you can use Ultimatium to cancel out of the fullmoon four hit smash, which is hurks highest damaging non-sp combo already. Use Ultimatium right as you hit the second strike to cancel out of the cool-off animation and go right into another attack, this can be chained for as long as you have sp and considering Hurks crazy high sp generation rate, is for a long time. Best used against sandbag bosses like Kraken and Lakoria.

What should you take from all of this? Simple, that I play this game far too often for my own good.

Raid Solo’ing and Technique Examples

So I said I’d do some solo-raids in order to show some of the stuff I’m talking about in action, these are the ‘raw’ and ‘uncut’ videos, if you’re interested in watching the entire thing. I will be cutting out bits of these and adding them to the core of the guide to add a visual aspect of what I’m rambling on about, to make it easier to understand.

The first one I’ve done is a Hard Succubus Queen, many of Hurks most powerful moves don’t work on her, since she is immune to all forms of stuns, so straight out of the gate Terminus and Parry don’t work. I still take advantage of the parry camera tracking as you can see, along with Blockade Cling and use a more straight-forward version of Movement Rotation to enable the double and even triple crescents that come from the fake parries. In this video Revenge is my main means of DPS, I didn’t use Ultimatum animation cancelling much, if at all, due to the short periods where I’m able to hit her between teleports.

I’ll reupload with proper music at some point, had no idea how bad the youtube music inserter was.

This second one is a Havan two man, with a bud, Havan has many easy to parry moves and his AOE’s can be dodged with judgement, and even blocked with Impenetrable if you place yourself correctly. I got off plenty of execution parries, though my low Balance knocked me overside the head with each one, giving me virtually the lowest ossible damage values on each one. His one-shot AOE attack can be cancelled with both Terminus and Execution level 5, other than that this raid is just lots of chopping and dodging.