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Videos playable in 720px HD.
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Uno the Bloodless has a very crisp and yet fluid attacking style which simply brings music to the ears (yes those sword slashes are very sweet to hear by the way). His combat speciality is the Blood Gauge and multiple techniques that compliment his sword style. (More info below)
Uno's speedy attack and decent hitstun allows him to control his enemy entirely without causing knockdown by cycling the main combo up to the 3rd hit only. It is highly effective against tougher enemies when you are able to back attack them, but this is also dependent on the enemy's reaction algorithms.
However, his one major weakness is also his own power. Although he is graced with finesse in his combat style, he lacks an ultimatum against enemies, bosses especially; a killer move that decisively ends the battle. Players will eventually find the attacking cycle forced, and repetitive.
Blood Attack, Melee, Blood Recovery, Skill - Rinse and repeat in any order. You will eventually see what I mean. The motivation to reach greater heights with Uno is now on, but your patience against repetition will also wear thin quickly.
All in all, Uno is still a solid melee attacker and a very fresh experience to the melee types we've used so far in the entire cast.
Dodge:
- Type: Dash Through
- Since Uno can only evade backwards, Dodge is pretty useful when you need to do so forwards.
- Fortunately unlike Veigas' and Rin's, Uno's version of Dash-Through is very fast and covers good distance without any sort of drag in its movement. Although not as efficient as Aerial Maneuver, Uno covers ground well with this Dodge.
- Uno also faces the reverse direction after Dodging.
- Critical (→→ after 2nd or 3rd hit of combo)
- Uno ends the current combo with a quick drawing slash. This attack executes so quickly that Uno can continue juggling his poor opponent just by repeating the attack cycle with Critical; and very conveniently-
- The 1st of Blood recovery techniques.
- Double Attack (→→ on the final hit of combo)
- Uno ends the combo with a connecting thrust attack ahead.
- Ascension (Z↑ + Z)
- A rising and drop slash combo, quick to execute and can disrupt enemy momentum.
- Ascension counts as a ground attack, meaning Uno is not immune to "Jump" attacks while in the air.
- Ascension makes a good pre-cursor to Wind Lightning and Violent Squall. It isn't as effective for Mystic Wind though.
- Uno's skills tend to ignore their initial delays when executed just after the ↑ command input.
- The 2nd of Blood recovery techniques. (The 2nd slash must connect for Blood recovery)
- Evasion (←← or →→ anytime during main combo)
- Lets Uno back away from an enemy or attack. Can be used even after the final attack of the combo, making it a surefire evasion technique (that will execute itself)
- Evasion is handy as a backstep if you want to execute a well-position skill behind enemy lines once you lured them into place for a massacre.
- This evasion technique is not perfect. If the enemy attack catches you at opportune moments, you will be hit.
- Flash Strike (Z, Z during Evasion)
- Follow up attack after Evasion, which he first delivers a forward slash and can execute another dashing thrust if "Z" is pressed again. The thrust will pierce enemy lines.
- Uno turns around to face the opposite direction after Flash Strike. Take note if you use this to hotkey skills often.
- The 3rd of Blood recovery techniques.
- Jump Attack (Z while jumping)
- Uno's jump attack swings upwards instead of down. So while he has an easier time attacking enemies above him, this is not so for those sitting level with him, unless they're tall.
- Otherwise, the swing range is actually similar to other melee jump attacks, akin to a regular sword's length.
- Dash Attack (Z during Dash)
- A sweeping circle slash that launches enemies into the air. Its only drawback is the long recovery time after that swing.
- Back Dash Attack (Z← or Z→ during Dash)
- Allows Uno to turn around and take a knockdown swing at any chasing enemies, or when backed against a wall.
- In a tactical sense, this technique isn't so useful for dungeons.
Blood Skills
- Ambush (X, X during main combo)
- Uno slips behind his enemies and delivers a Blood slash (or two) right behind them.
- Uno slides quite a distance during this move. It may tend to miss if your enemy is too slender or you were too close i.e. in point blank range when executed.
- If you like to chain hotkey-ed skills with this, make sure Uno fully executes this attack before you attempt to do so, or your skill will be executed in the wrong direction.
- ^ A sure way to rectify this is to execute Ambush's second slash. The second slash will force Uno to face the opposite direction, at the cost of another Blood unit and time.
- Blood Wind (X on the final hit of combo)
- Slashes with a rupture of blood when used. Additional damage.
- Autumn Wind (X while jumping or after jump attack)
- A quick Blood slash delivered in the air. Can be used as a jump attack or as an additional follow up slash. Useful against airborne enemies, like Harpies.
- Note: If the slash is done too late when Uno is almost landing, the slash may not execute and will consume a unit of blood. Remember to take into account the terrain you're on.
- Rage (X during dash attack)
- An excellent follow up to Uno's dash attack, as it cancels his freeze time into another attack that recovers quickly instead.
- Also bounces enemies onto the ground, and can force a bounce off enemies that are currently on the ground again, delaying their recovery
- Also bypasses Super Armor of almost any attacking monster. Its only drawback is the time needed to execute this move altogether.
- Blood Evasion (X during Back Dash attack)
- A long thrust attack after repelling any chasing enemies. This attack pierces enemy lines.
- More useful in PvP since monsters don't usually chase you at such speeds.
- Blood Slaughter (X, X, X in a combo)
- A 3-hit slash combo. There is a slight delay between the 1st and 2nd slash before he completes the combo chain. Using this too often will drain your Blood Gauge very quickly.
- Using this technique seems to grant Uno a form of Hyper Armor against attacks, rendering him temporarily fortified against enemy assaults.
- Blood Impale (X, Z or X, Z, Z )
- A running jab which pushes enemies back while dealing rapid damage.
- Not very useful, and has a long attack time which can leave Uno very vulnerable.
- The 4th and final of Blood recovery techniques.
- Blood Explosion (X on 2nd hit of Blood Impale)
- A reverse slash after Bloody Impale to further hurt the opponent. Somewhat better than leaving it standing.
The Blood Gauge
The source of Uno's latent strength comes from a unique mechanic known as his Blood Gauge. It is a counter that sits below the SA Gauge (We'll call each sphere a 'unit' of blood for reference) that allows secondary and additional attacks for Uno to utilise.
Blood Slashes, performed with the "X" key, are faster-acting slashes with a visible red effect that not only deals ~30% more damage than a regular slash but also lowers enemy defense by 5% while causing them to bleed profusely for light damage. As listed in the Inherent Techniques list, there are a variety of techniques usable during different types of attack chains and movements.
Skills also utilise the Blood Gauge in a different manner. Each of Uno's 3 skills (excluding both 4th's) can gain an additional Blood attack if there are at least 2 units of blood available. If there is only 1 unit or none to use, the skill executes as normal without the Blood attack.
Now to explain how the counter works mathematically. A full counter holds 6 units of blood, and is expended depending on the type of attack used, as follows-
- Each Blood slash uses 1 unit of blood, and each subsequent slash to a combo chain continues to use another unit of blood, if applicable.
- Each skill activated, will use 2 units of blood.
- ^ If only 1 unit remains, none will be used.
- Purchased Skills use the same 2 units of blood, however, if their Blood Slash (The final blow) connects on an enemy, the 2 units are then recovered. A miss on that Blood Slash will not recover any units of blood, and result in a final loss of 2 units of blood.
To progressively restore the Blood Gauge-
- Any of the 4 techniques mentioned earlier that connects with an enemy will always recover 2 units of blood, even if you're hitting an enemy stack.
- These techniques are Ascension, Flash Strike, Critical Attack and Blood Impale
- In PvP, you only recover 1 unit. But in dungeons, each of these techniques can recover 2 units at once.
With these said, it is good practice to keep an eye or mental note of your gauge's use or simply rotate attack styles ever so often to methodically maintain it. When the gauge is empty, Uno starts using his own lifeforce for each Blood Slash, which is a 5% loss of life for every slash executed. Uno may continue to do this until he runs out of HP, where in Fatal, he is no longer able to perform Blood Slashes. He may however, still restore his Blood Gauge through the use of techniques instead.
Notes:
- Once again, remember to keep your Blood Gauge filled. Your skills get to deliver extra hits and damage, while not prematurely draining your HP meter into oblivion.
- Blood attacks seem to grant a short instance of Hyper Armor, if only temporary each time.
- The individual Blood attacks in Uno's skills all can cause bleeding.
- Defense reduction is only possible by using any of his regular Blood slashes.
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| Skill Tree? What Skill Tree?!! |
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Tier 1:
Mystic Wind
- Type: Close-In
- Range: Short
- Damage: Multi
- Animation: Short
- Uno slashes in quick succession and knocks his opponent down.
- Pretty good for a boost in damage when ending a combo.
- The circular slashes hits around Uno.
- Blood: Adds a piercing thrust to end the combo, has good damage and strike range forwards and behind Uno.
- Type: One-Shot
- Range: Short
- Damage: Burst
- Animation: Short
- Uno slashes at the enemy for high damage in a single hit.
- Blood: Adds a rising slash to the skill, knocking enemies slightly into the air. The blood version deals the same total base damage as the default, but deals additional damage in the form of heavy bleeding on the enemy.
Tier 2:
Wind Lightning
- Type: Impact
- Range: Short
- Damage: Burst
- Animation: Short
- Uno primes his sword and zips into the air and back onto the ground in 2 fast slashes.
- Excellent for dealing burst damage to counter-reactive enemies, as it strikes almost instantaneously. (Depending on your Criticals, this skill can do an extreme amount of damage)
- Also able to strike enemies around him with the 2nd and 3rd blows if he lands in the middle of an enemy line.
- Blood: After landing, Uno deals a high Impact circular blow that sends enemies ricocheting away.
- Type: Linear, Pierce
- Range: Long
- Damage: Burst - Multi
- Animation: Short
- Uno zips back and forth as he thrusts his sword across his enemies, piercing through enemy stacks.
- Good for striking enemies in a line, as this skill has pretty good linear range.
- Blood: Ends with a diagonal rising slash as a 4th hit.
Tier 3:
Violent Squall
- Type: Splash, Linear
- Range: Mid
- Damage: Burst - Multi
- Animation: Short
- Uno leaps into the air and unleashes 3 large shockwaves ahead with each slash.
- Strikes a generally wide area of approximately 2.5 platforms. Positioning is important to get the best out of this skill.
- Violent Squall deals lesser damage to enemies that are further away, use this knowledge to prioritize and determine the position of your targets.
- ^ In the same respect, avoid using Violent Squall at point-blank or too close to an enemy. Keep some distance, as more physical contact with the shockwaves means more damage, allowing each wave to completely deliver their destructive force instead of being halved or less.
- Blood: Erupts a splash torrent of damaging blood that deals heavy damage.
- Type: Linear, One Shot
- Range: Long
- Damage: Burst
- Animation: Short
- Uno unleashes a linear burst of his sword energy ahead in a long thrust, striking enemies in one entire screen length (goes off-screen if not at the map edge)
- Deals extremely potent damage with this skill alone.
- Blood: A ripple of blood energy surges forth after the initial energy thrust, dealing much lesser damage than before.
Tier 4:
Full Bloom
- Type: AoE: Large
- Range: Wide, Large
- Damage: Multi
- Animation: Long
- Uno materializes a circle of Blood Dancers that encloses the field within with a continuous rain of swords.
- It strikes anything within 3x platforms of height and has a very large strike radius.
- Due to the passive nature of the attack, it does not cause repulsion nor bounce. Enemies that carelessly walk into the field will start taking damage even at the edge of it (Chances are they won't walk away, because of the AI's nature to approach you instead)
- Good positioning and some luring can help to clear a stage entirely with little effort. 7 seconds of AoE damage is very devastating when used well.
- Sometimes, Uno may be pushed out of his field of attack during the execution. If this happens, enemies may not be drawn into the correct position and the attack can come up empty. Thus, timing and knowledge of common enemy actions is very important as foresight.
- DO NOT attempt to use another skill while Full Bloom is still in effect. Any interruption will halt the damage even though animation effects remain.
- Blood: Full Bloom neither consumes Blood nor have additional attacks
Blood Flower
- Type: Combo Augment
- Range: Nil
- Damage: Multi
- Animation: Long
- Blood Flower consumes Uno's sanity and turns him into an avatar engulfed by and afflicted with the curse of his own blood.
- The avatar emits a damaging aura of blood while being both extremely agile and mobile, being able to repeatedly dash for bursts of speed (Like Elesis' Bravery) and obtaining a swift double jump and rapid descent ability together.
- While the skill persists, Uno is completely invincible against enemy attack.
- Only the standard attack changes, into a furious and bloody cloud of sword slashes by the avatar. The only difficulty in using this attack is controlling Uno's movement accurately while doing so.
- Its main drawback is the progressive loss of life. The first 5 seconds is passive and then begins to sap away 10% of your total HP every second until you reach Fatal, where the skill will automatically end.
- As such, the skill is designed by default to last 15 seconds. HP potions and all sorts of recovery potions/methods can prolong Blood Flower's usage indefinitely, as long as even a fraction of HP remains.
- If you use Blood Flower without any HP, it will only last for 4 seconds.
- Weapon Change does not cause the skill to end prematurely; but serves no purpose either.
- *Entering a stage portal will halt the skill and HP loss.
- It is in essence, an extremely powerful but self-destructive version of Mocking Blade. Once Blood Flower executes, there is no remote way to stop it except * and until Uno is completely drained of life. It should be used as a last resort or at least with support items.
- Also, avoid using his skills in this period of time. The life drain does not halt and is quite a pointless endeavour.
- Blood: Blood Flower neither consumes Blood nor have additional attacks
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The Journey with Uno:
You will have probably seen this coming. One word: BLEACH. The source
on which Uno is designed and created from. I'm going to go ahead and
say not only is the default design based upon Ulqiorra Cifer of the
Arrancars, they surprisingly share the same friggin' Voice Actor! (Tony
Oliver)... So you know they were blatantly going all out and not hide
the suspicions. (Update: Fully mentioned on main website even)
Anyway, back to the real deal. Unlike
the miserable fencer that is Edel, Uno has a completely functional
combat moveset that does what it should do - hit anything and everything properly that's what!
Ol' Edel had that trouble with landing hits with her jumping attack and
boy was that rather gut-wrenching... Doesn't help that the girl was so
weak in dealing damage and very skill reliant.
Unlike any other character we've
seen as well, Uno does not have a functional skill tree - just his
Dodge, 4th MP bar and Tier 4 skills which you can optionally unlock too.
His combat mechanics are fully available to you from the get go and all
you need to do is go ahead and level him. Sounds easy? It should be.
*Video montage from GC website, assembled in order*
I believe everyone should be given a Character Slot item to try Uno out (and of course, level him up to 40 if you want to keep him permanently). It should not take too long if you have a lot of exp buffers at your disposal and also completed the pre-event conditions for additional perks on his arrival - remember, the Character Separation mechanics mean that Uno is on his own for a lot of things, but that's where the support package comes in as well.
Here's some of the general inconveniences of a starting Uno, assuming you aren't cheating *snigger* your way with K-Ching.
No access to pets of any kind OTL
- A basic Slime costs 700pts. You only have 500pts >_>'''. Wait 2 days please.
- Available pet scrolls and their resources for creation can be brought over from the WH (Warehouse). However, the nearest forge is in Silver Land. And even then, the choices are dependent on continent access. So yup... You have Rutherford scrolls? 650 Gate Ores? 100 Xenia Pearls? Please wait till Xenia to forge him thanks.
No shared accessories OTL
- They were fairly divided before Character Separation, those items are now non-transferable.
Champion Mode? No tickets OTL
- Fortunately, if you were keeping stocks of useless high level equipment, they can be transferred to Uno via WH and sold for copious amounts of GP, in which you can buy just about anything you want, for now.
- With the new requirements, Crests now require lesser runs to obtain them progressively as Uno advances. Uno's decent combat strength also allows him to fight through Champion Mode with moderate ease, while obtaining a lot of set equipment and exp to go.
- At the same time - no crests, because you have to earn them all over again as Uno.
No early usage of Tier 4 skills OTL
- Thanks to the 4th MP bar being kept at Lv70 as usual, early unlocking with Extreme Skill Keys at your disposal will also mean nothing.
That's about most of the inconveniences I can think of. For more accurate information regarding tiered rewards and the things you can buy etc, do refer to the main website for the entire listing.
Once again:
Red Moon + Black Moon
If you make a rush for Silver Land, the Forge there will allow you to create Uno's Moonlight Chest, which contains a full Epic Phantom Phoenix Armor set minus the accessories and weapon. Also 10 SB Scrolls as a bonus.
The Red Moon is obtained from the Lv10 Uno Support Box, while the Black Moon is bought from the K-Ching Shop for 100 K-Ching/VP.
Author's Note: It is an excellent deal if you first remember that 10 SB scrolls alone would cost 300 K-Ching already - and the Epic Armor Set is worth 210 Bullion of upgrades, 35 x 6 pieces in total.
Lv30 Uno Support Box - The Cash Armors that follow
If most of you obtained at least 30 tokens during the pre-event, congratulations. You should receive the Blacksmith Protection item which allows you to equip armors that are -10 above your current level (Think of it as a temporary -10 Level Requirement to all equipment as long as you have it) It is of great benefit to be able to use the armors early after all. You will also be able to use the next few Cash Armor sets that follow in the later support boxes as long as your Blacksmith Protection hasn't run out.
And since they are cash armors, you will definitely want to configure their properties as well.
Lv50 & 60 Uno Support Box -
At these levels, the box you open will have an "Experience Cash Items Box", which contains the above goodies. Not so much the potions but you get 3 days of Premium GC Club and 1 more day of Blacksmith Protection.
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If anything else peculiar pops up, I'll be sure to let you guys know as I level up my own Uno as well (Just remember, I don't do much on weekends as usual) Some of you diehards might be 85 before I'm even done writing this article 100%.
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