Punishing - Gray Raven 7 Best Combat Mechanics Tips and Tricks

Punishing: Gray Raven is a cyber-punkish Action RPG touted to be on par with Nier Automata and Honkai Impact 3^rd games that have been super popular and won the hearts of millions of gamers worldwide.

 

 

The game is highly anticipated due to the fantastic combat and superb graphics and that too on a mobile device, unprecedented for the next generation of mobile gaming. It also combines elements of going for your favorite Waifus and Husbandos, very similar to gacha games, along with many complimentary sidekicks and attachments to your weapons. The developers have worked hard to bring this reality to life in a beautiful fashion.

 

We recommend you to read our “Punishing Gray Raven A Beginners Guide to Getting Started” guide before continuing to come up to terms with the game so that after reading this guide, you can become a master of combat mechanics of Punishing: Gray Raven.

 

In this guide, we are focusing on combat, of course, as it is the game's main draw. We will discuss the 7 most crucial combat aspects of this game and give you tips and tricks along with them. To start this guide, you need to understand that the main combat system aspect in Punishing: Gray Raven is the orbs mechanic. Using the orb correctly dramatically improves the performance of the character. To learn about it, we need to start with the basics first.

 

Orb Basic:

 

In the bottom right corner, you can see the collected and total amount of orbs present at the moment. These numbers or orbs regenerate whenever you make basic attacks or do Quick Time Events (QTE) in the game.

You can unlock Liberation skill to get more orbs at the start of a combat round. The condition to unlock Liberation skill are:

 

• Max the character to level 80
• Obtain 5500 CP
• Attach six constructs meaning 12 affixes in total

 

Reaching 5500 CP isn't that hard as you need to play efficiently and reach your max while maxing your weapons ass well and attach constructs with you. Liberation is a passive skill for every construct, so unlock it for your DPS heroes first. Therefore, after unlocking the liberation skill, you have 3 additional orbs than your starting ones. These 3 will be of the same color. You can unlock 2 additional orbs after affixing your weapon, and by this affixion, you get 2 orbs every 45 seconds.

 

 

Training Ground – You can always go to the training ground to practice your heroes. You can see the orbs as a horizontal list at right in the training area, just like a combo list in fighting games. The same colored dots connect these orbs. By pressing the corresponding button, you can make these orb combos.

 

We will take Lucia: The Crimson Abyss as an example and use her Blue orb skill combo. Her skill activation enhances her supply of energy for 5 seconds. Movement speed is increased up to 10% per level up to 50%. Each attack gains two additional strikes, which deal 2% increased PHY DMG per level up to 12%. Activating this skill consumes 3 blue orbs.

 

Dodging and Supercomputing Space:

 

In the bottom right, just next to your attack button, there is a dodge gauge button. The outer circle shows the dodge stamina. In total, you can do five dodges with a limited delay, and you run out of the dodge. The gauge turns red, and you can’t dodge anymore. You have to wait 3 seconds to replenish your meter for one more dodge to the max fill the gauge again; you need to wait 12 sec. You have to be careful when using your dodges, as during brutal battles, you have written yourself a death sentence the moment you run out of dodges.

 

 

The best way to manage dodging in a fight and staying alive is to keep the distance between you and your enemy while not attacking. You have to alternate between walking, dodging, and attacking to be safe and effective. At least the game gives telegraphs during the fight, so you have some time before you can dodge. Keep an eye out for red circles.

 

The inner-circle part of the dodge gauge is the perfect dodge. When you dodge right before the enemy attacks, you enter Supercomputing space for 5 sec. In the supercomputing state, time slows down as if your enemy has stopped attacking. At this moment, all your orbs start flashing. When the time slows down, it is the perfect time to consume your orb skill as in this state, when you use your orb skills, you only consume 1 orb instead of 3 out of the Supercomputing state. Using this mechanic, you can stop the enemy from moving whenever you perfectly dodge and spam your orb skills.

 

Core Passive:

 

Core passive is the primary source of DMG for all your constructs. It is the key to progress and win battles in Punishing: Gray Raven. It would help if you utilized your Core passive along with your orb's skills. Each hero has their Core passives and different orb colors to activate these Core passives. In the training mode or during battle, you need to pause to look into the detail of these Core passives.

 

Let’s use Lucia's skill Crimson Abyss (Alpha) to demonstrate. To activate her Core passive, you need to use 3 blue orbs along with any other 3 orbs. As soon as the Core passive activates, she goes into Sword Wave mode. All the remaining orbs will be converted to Sword Wave orb. Besides making a great combo, this looks very satisfying on-screen. This way, when you are utilizing orbs, you save one orb every time you Supercomputer and, in the meanwhile, you deal more damage.

 

One thing that you need to be mindful of is that the only RNG in this game is the orbs. You get random orbs at the start of the level, so you're unable to choose which ones you get as these are the game mechanics and that what makes the game a bit more challenging and ultimately fun. Like most games of this type, no matter how difficult the bosses are, they always have a pattern. The sooner you absorb these patterns into your muscle memory, the quicker you can complete a level.

 

 

QTE Off-field:

 

QTE is a tag-team call-in mechanic, just like other fighting games. You can activate it by pressing 3 orbs of the same color as your ally. QTE mainly provides you with either buff you or debuff your enemy or, in some cases, deal a minor DMG. Ultimately, it benefits you overall in DMG of the game and makes your battles faster. Along with this, your off-field characters get some buffs too.

 

One more aspect of QTE is doing double during the fights. To do that, you need to invest 4 Da Vinci coins into one of your heroes. Da Vinci 4 set bonus is triggering the second QTE character in your pool. Your ATK increases by 20% when all three heroes are on the field. This way, you can take the game to a whole new level. The more Da Vinci sets you have on your heroes, the more devastating you’re on the battlefield.

 

Another question that comes to mind is how to adjust and position your QTE among your heroes? With this question, let’s move on to our next part of this guide.

 

Team Positioning:

 

Before the start of any mission or battle, you have the option to add different heroes to the roster, which you do by placing them in their corresponding colors. You can set three heroes in a team at one time. One thing to note here is that you can swap positions, giving you diversity and flavor to every fight. The center hero at any comp of your team will always be your leader and the one you control during a fight. This leader will provide their leadership skills to buff the fight.

 

To sum it up, we’ll explain in an example. Let’s suppose your left character has the 4 set pieces equipped, and your center, your leader, uses the blue orb skills to trigger the QTE. QTE will trigger the left-hand hero’s 4 set Da Vinci. Due to the Da Vinci set being triggered, your right-side hero will also join in. that’s the battle combo basic.

 

Switching Skills:

 

As we have already mentioned in the preceding sections that you always start with 3 orb skills, it doesn't matter if they belong to your hero or not. If they correspond to your hero, you can immediately use them, but if you use 3 orbs that are common to one of your heroes, they will immediately switch to the battlefield. So, if a character jumps in using 3 red skill orbs and their Core passive is 3 red orbs plus 1 blue orb, you'd need to press the blue skill orb to put your new hero's Core passive. Neat trick, right? The game doesn’t mention it anywhere in the tooltip or info graphs, so you'd have to do trial and error to learn this switching combo on your own of your favorite heroes.

 

The easier method to do this is to choose your favorite heroes and practice training mode to figure out their switching into Core passive combos. This switching mechanic can be used to meld into a dodge as well. This way, when you know you’re not making an impact with your melee character, you can switch dodge into one of your rangers or an assassin to make your battle easy. Switching mechanics is also beneficial when you want to dish out maximum DPS in quick succession and when you’re on time.

 

Ultimate Skills:

 

 

Ultimate skills require energy to use. You can build up your energy by making regular attacks along with utilizing some orb skills. Most of the heroes have a different rate of charging up their ultimate skills, and some heroes have a completely different build-up to their Ultimate. As soon as you charge your Ultimate, you’ll see an Ultimate button right next to your dodge gauge.

 

LDPlayer Features for Punishing – Gray Raven:

 

Punishing: Gray Raven is a fast-paced action RPG that is best played with as smooth an experience as possible, and to do that, do follow these 6 tips to have a buttery smooth experience. Smooth experience should be complemented with faster combo action, which will only be possible while playing with a controller and macros.

 

Conclusion:

 

The combat is what this game is known for, so to master the combat in this game, you need to have all the info you need in bite-sized portions and designed as we have in this guide. We are sure that after learning to apply these 7 tips and tricks, you'll know what to do and not need hand-holding.

 

To get a complete picture of combat mechanics, we recommend you to read our complimenting guide on weapons and memories. Furthermore, if you want to dive deep into the game's mechanics truly, you should read our updated Tier list to get a better sense of all the heroes this Punishing: Gray Raven has to offer. Never be afraid to set your orbs straight, Gray Ravens.