Succession Warrior

Mandatory

• Absolute: Piercing Spear – No innate input. Useful ranged CC + add-on proc. 100% mandatory.

• Prime: Scars of Dusk – Input (C) often fails to activate when hit in Q-block stance. Mandatory hotbar.

Highly Recommended

• Prime: Solar Flare – Lets you instantly engage from non-combat stance. Extremely useful when leaving respawn iframe during nodewars or using safezone immunity.

• Prime: Ground Smash – Same reasons as Prime: Solar Flare

Optional / Situational

• Absolute: Deep Thrust – Only accessible via hotbar due to Severing Thrust override. Niche use for scaling vertical terrain without triggering fall animation.

• Meditation – Small 500 HP/MP self-heal on 20s cooldown. Occasionally saves you from DoTs. Original inputs are janky and can interrupt Spin Counter, so hotbar is smoother.

• Seismic Strike – Original input (Shift+X) can feel clunky for some. Optional hotbar.

• Shield Tide – Same case as Seismic Strike (Shift+Z input can feel janky). Optional hotbar.

Irrelevant

• War Cry – Only usable on hotbar, but purely a roleplay skill nowadays with no practical use.

Spinning Slash : Lingering Crit

The key to maximizing DPS for succession warriors is to make use of Lingering Crit, Lingering Crit is a unique succession warrior mechanic that allows your skills to have 100% Crit rate. Lingering crit can be achieved by casting Spinning Slash which gives you a 3 second window to cast our main dps skills - Heavy Strike and Ground Slash or in group situations, Pulverize, giving all of the skills 100% crit rate. Remember that Jump Slash refreshes the duration of the lingering crit buff.

Here are some examples on how lingering crit can be used to maximize your DPS output in PvE scenarios:

Lingering Crit combos:

• Spinning Slash > Jump Slash > Ground Slash > Heavy Strike 3x - Counter > Heavy Strike 3x

• Solar Flare > Jump Slash > Ground slash > Heavy Strike 3x - Counter - Heavy Strike 3x

Lingering Crit combos with Z-buff and/or Shai buff:

• Spinning Slash > Jump Slash > Ground Slash > Heavy strike 3x - Counter - Heavy strike 3x 

• Solar Flare > Jump Slash > Heavy strike 3x - Counter - Heavy strike 3x - Counter > Heavy Strike 3x

Counter and Shield Strike can be used interchangably for flowing from Heavy Strike into Heavy Strike, depending on what you prefer, although after patch on March 13th 2025, Counter is the superior option after getting it's damage buffed.

Heavy strike, Ground Slash, Pulverize and Shield Strike are the only skills that do not have 100% crit rate which is why it is important to make use of lingering crit to maximize damage, after addon and z-buff changes however, using lingering crit on pulverize is inconsequential, as now you can reach 100% crit rate on the skill without utilising this tech (50% skill base crit, 18% crit from 5 stat points, 30% from addon, 30% from z-buff = 128% crit rate with z-buff = 98% crit rate without z-buff)

Pseudo-canceling

This section might be confusing to some, but to summarize it, couple skills on warrior leave you in a "uncancelable" hang-time at the end of animation after skill is finished casting, and that applies to many succession skills. You cannot however, do animations cancels in middle of animation, hence the name "pseudo-canceling". The main skill used for "pseudo-canceling" is Prime: Evasion(also known as sidestep), but Chopping kick, Shield charge and Forward Slash can be utilised in such manner as such as well.

Skills that call for always being "pseudo-canceled":
-Solar Flare (I recommend watching this video: Solar Flare flows)
-Ground Smash (Could leave you open to being grabbed)
-Shield Strike (FG, therefore could leave you open to CC)

Note: it's worth to keep in mind that some skills cancel better with Prime: Evasion, while others cancel better with other options, but at the end of the day, you should pick whichever skill best suits the situation and based on what skill isn't on cooldown to posture yourself to best suit the scenario.

Movement

In terms of mobility, succession warrior has a better sustain of movement over long range than Awakening and also on par when it comes to burst movement with lesser protection due to Solar Flare being unprotected and Frenzied Dash being FG. The movement is not that different from the awakening kit because you will be using the same skill in pre-awakening, although you have some more mobility from the Succession kit as well.

• Prime: Forward slash - Main mobility skills over long range, unprotected so use sparingly in PvP or when you know it's safe to do so.

• Prime: Solar Flare - Main burst mobility skill, unprotected, and while really fast, you should learn when it's safe to use it in PvP.

• Prime: Evasion - Our main iFrame (also the only one) and smooth mobility skill transition, as well as an important pseudo-cancel.

• Charging Thrust -  Series of FG dashes, automatically upgraded when playing succession, which makes it cover a bit more distance.

• Frenzied Dash - FG Burst Dash, very useful for chaining movement

• Shield Charge - Small FG movement, very useful for chaining flows and a stiff.

• Chopping Kick - Small SA movement, vital pseudo-cancel, very useful for chaining flows.

How to grind 101

Yes, i'm only gonna dedicate a single section to this, no point in going extremely in-depth on it, I'll try to keep basics as simple as possible, so even a new player can understand, once you get proficient with the spec, you can tailor the combo to suit your own needs, depending on the spot you're grinding.

For PvE, what we can basically do, is split our PvE skill rotation into 3 sections, and connect them in right order, once you get more proficient with skill flows, you can make your own combo while keeping logical skill order (like obviously, you don't want to -DP debuff mobs at the end of the combo or use the skills with highest single skill damage at the beginning), and while keeping in mind addon up-time sustain.

1. Scars of Dusk rotation: Counter > Severing Thrust > Counter > Scars of the Dusk
   S+LMB > Shift+LMB > S+LMB > C
   Note: I always open my combos with this, it allows you to quickly cast 3 skills which means you can proc 6 addons total + Scars is 16AP buff, maximizing the DPS output for the rest of the combo, you can also use Solar Flare before or after scars to proc 2 additional addons, if you use it before, it flows into Scars of Dusk naturally, and if you use it after, it flows into Jump Slash

2. Ling crit rotation: Spinning slash > Jump Slash > Ground Slash - Heavy Strike 3x (Or any of the lingering crit combo variants from the section earlier)
   S+RMB(Hold) > S +E > LMB+RMB
   Note:  Heavy Strike 3x means that you do the full skill, so all 3 slashes.

3. Finishers: Ground Smash > Earth Tremor / Seismic Strike >  Dusk Slash
   Shift+F > Shift+F / Shift X + LMB

This is a simplified explanation on how combo'ing works on succession in PvE, it should be easy to digest if you're only starting to learn the class, once you learn the ropes, i recommend watching my video on  BiS PvE combo:
Succession Warrior High-End Infinite PvE Combo

Combo:
Ground Slash - Solar Flare - Severing Thrust - Counter - Scars - Spinning 2x - Ground slash - Heavy Strike 3x - Counter - Ground Smash - Earth Tremor - Seismic Strike - Dusk Slash - Shield Charge - Counter - Severing - Counter - Scars - Spinning 2x - Ground Slash - Heavy Strike 3x - Counter - Ground Smash - Earth Tremor - Spinning 2x - Ground slash - Heavy Strike 3x - Counter - Severing Thrust - Counter - Scars - Seismic Strike - Dusk Slash - Shield Charge - Counter - Spinning 2x - Ground slash - Heavy Strike 3x - Counter - Ground Smash - Earth Tremor 

Note: This is literally best possible combo you can do for PvE, unless you're pushing for numbers on spots like DSR, you don't have to go this hard

Pack to Pack movement

For pack to pack movement, what you usually want to do is just spam Forward Slash and Charging Thrust, and what you can do to engage pack, is use any of the Solar Flare flows, usually Jump Slash or Scars of Dusk, then the rest of your combo the way you see fit.
What you can also do, is chain skills in a way that will allow you to pass through the pack without collision by utilizing Earth Tremor (Leap), to get back attacks from the beginning of the combo, the way you do it is:

1. Shield Charge > Quick Counter > Earth Tremor > Rest of the combo
   W+RMB > S+LMB > F > Rest of the combo

2. Solar Flare > Chopping Kick > Quick Counter > Earth Tremor > Rest of the combo
   W+C > S+F > S+LMB > F > Rest of the combo

Counter - S+LMB (Space) - CC Skill

Counter is unique skill, in a way where you can cast it 2 ways, one version of the skill will be a horizontal slash around yourself to produce an AoE KD, while the other will be a slash in front of you, that will release an energy wave that will float CC your enemies.

• Spin Counter (Knockdown)  S + LMB + Space - KD version of the skill, one of 2 KD's in our kit, input is replaced by just Space when used as flow after these skills:
  Severing Thrust
  Heavy Strike (3rd Strike)
  Chopping Kick
  Pulverize
  Prime: Evasion
  Shield Charge
  Sideways Cut
  Guard (Q-Block)
  Shield Tide

• Energy Counter (Float) S + LMB - Float version of the skill,  our main ranged CC catch, personally my favorite skill in the whole kit, can be casted as Quick Counter to cast instantly when used as flow after these skills:
  Severing Thrust
  Heavy Strike (3rd Strike)
  Chopping Kick
  Pulverize
  Prime: Evasion
  Shield Charge
  Sideways Cut (but only if moving right)
  Guard (Q-Block)

Counter gives a 6% accuracy buff for 10 seconds upon use.

Shield Strike - RMB after certain skills - The 3rd hit is a Knockdown

Shield Strike fixes our over reliance on Counter to re-cc opponents who are using adamantines, Shield Strike has a KD which adds another instance to trigger KD right after Counter

I recommend you learn how to play with it unlocked, the sooner the better.

List of all skills that proc 3rd hit of Shield Strike:

Ground Slash, Spinning Slash, Jump Slash, Counter (both energy and spin) , Pulverize, after the first hit of Scars of Dusk, Chopping Kick

List of all skills that proc 2nd hit of Shield Strike:

Sideways Cut (only going Right), Solar Flare, Forward Slash, Kick (both 1st kick of F and 1st kick of A+F)

Skill used mostly after Ground Slash to go into Stiff > KD

To secure a higher chance of KD you can use it after counter and immediately use evasion to cancel the animation.

Note: The end animation can only be canceled by Prime: Evasion and to some extent Severing Thrust and Heavy Strike.

Chopping Kick - S + F - Vital pseudo-cancel

Used to be a bound CC, useful for punishing blockjumps and sorceress when she was leaving nightmare to pop out behind us out of Q-block, nowadays it's main use is triggering flows, chaining movement, small repositioning and pseudo-canceling, i highly advice keeping track of this skill's cooldown at all times.

In my opinion, most important section of this guide, class requires you to properly flow from skill-to-skill for it to feel nice and smooth, i highly recommend practicing in BA to get it down.

Prime: Spinning Slash (S+RMB)

• Flows from Charging thrust (W+F)

• Flows from Solar Flare (W+C)

• Flows from Frenzied Dash (Shift + Q)

• Flows from Quick Counter and cancels it (S + LMB)

• Has a faster animation when used from Prime: Evasion (A/D + LMB)

Prime: Earth Tremor (Shift + F)

• Flows from Ground Smash (Shift + F)

• Holding Shift + F makes you cast Earth Tremor at the same spot as Ground Smash

• Holding F makes you jump in the direction you're looking in

• Flows from Pulverize (S+C)

• Flows from Frenzied Dash (Shift+Q)

• Flows from Quick Counter (S+LMB)

• Can be used when Ground Smash is on CD

Quick Counter (S+LMB)

• Flows from Sideways cut but only if you moving right (D+RMB)

• Flows from Shield Charge (W+RMB)

• Flows from Severing Thrust (Shift+LMB)

• Flows to Scars of Dusk (C)

• Flows from Block (Hold S prior to input)

• Flows to Earth Tremor (Leap version, use only F, if you use Shift+F, it will trigger Ground Smash if off-CD)

Heavy Strike (LMB + RMB)

• Flows to Counter (S + LMB)

• Flows to Scars of Dusk on its 3nd hit (C)

• Flows to Spinning Slash (S + RMB)

• Flows from Shield Strike (RMB)

• Flows from Pulverize (S + C)

• Flows to Severing Thrust (Shift + LMB)

Solar Flare (W + C) 

• Flows to Chopping Kick (S + F)

• Flows to Scars of Dusk ( C)

• Flows to Shield Strike 2nd hit (RMB)

• Flows to Spin Slash (S+RMB)

Succession Warrior: Solar Flare flows

If you manage to get a catch from distance:

• Frenzied Spear > Chopping Kick/Prime: Evasion/Shield Charge > Quick Counter > Solar Flare > Jump Slash > Shield Strike > Severing Thrust > Quick Counter > Scars > Ground Smash/Earth Tremor/Pulverize/Heavy Strike
  (Hotkey) > S+F/A or D + LMB/W+RMB > S+LMB > W+C > S+RMB > RMB > SHIFT+LMB > S+LMB > C > SHIFT+F/SHIFT+F/S+C/LMB+RMB

Okay, i hope you got your coffee ready, and your reading glasses on, because now it's time to LOCK-IN and focus on the contents of this section and the next one, as i'm going to pin-point absolutely crucial parts of performing well in 1v1, i'm not going to write inputs for every skill in this section, i assume you already more or less know which skill is what input if you're actually commited to learning PvP on our spec.

Movement in 1v1

So first of all, for proper movement in combat i highly advise tracking cooldown of:

• Prime: Evasion (iFrame)

• Solar Flare (Unprotected)

• Spinning Slash (SA)

• Chopping Kick (SA)

• Frenzied Dash (FG)

• Counter (FG)

• Shield Charge (FG)

• Shield Tide(SA into FG on latter portion of the skill)

Now that you got your cooldowns ready, let's get to it:
First of all, our engages revolves around Solar Flare, Jump Slash and Frenzied Dash, as they're super fast and  they can be cast into any direction camera faces, here are some examples:

1. Solar Flare

2. Solar Flare > Jump Slash

3. Frenzied Dash

4. Frenzied Dash > Shield Charge

5. Frenzied Dash > Jump Slash

6. Frenzied Dash > Solar Flare

7. Frenzied Dash > Solar Flare > Jump Slash

Because of our innate lack of SA protection on movement, and only having 1 very short iFrame which we utilise as a pseudo-cancel for a lot of our abilities, we have to pay attention to our cooldowns to properly chain movement. In general, you can allow yourself to move unprotected when you determine it's safe to do so, but that comes down to you knowing your match-ups, and that's something that comes with experience.

Movement in group PvP

Here, the principle stays the same, you want to keep track of your all the skills from before, but now you want to make sure you're chaining it properly to ensure you're protected majority of time when you're moving, example of a semi-protected movement chain would look something like this:

• Charging thrust > Shield Charge > Prime: Evasion > Chopping Kick > Fast Counter > Whirlwind Slash > Jump Slash > Shield Tide > Shield Charge

If you however want to stay fully protected(as little non-SA movement as possible), you'd do something more like this:

• Q-block > Fast Counter > Whirlwind Slash > Jump Slash > Shield Tide(Only the SA portion) > Prime: Evasion > Frenzied Dash > Earth Tremor

Unfortunately, our class lacks fully protected movement, therefore we need to transition between FG skills to chain into our SA movement sequences.

Engage

Because of massive variety of flows our spec has, pseudo-canceling and lingering crit, we need to wisely manage our cooldowns and keep our options open for engage and disengage while not leaving ourselves fully vulnerable, there are many ways to approach engage and fish for CC, and now I'm going to explain on how I engage and look for catches.
Here's an example of an engage:

• What I personally like to do while in Q-block stance is:
  Fast Counter - Earth Tremor (reposition) - (could go for a frenzied spear attempt here if safe, and then follow up with one of combos from combos section if you hit it) - Chopping kick - Shield Charge - Solar Flare - Jump Slash - Grab > follow up combo
  
  Explanation: This allows you to try for 3 CC's, first CC attempt is fast counter(Float), then you can try frenzied spear(stiff), and at the end you go for a really fast engage with Solar Flare > Jump Slash flow, if you fail grab, you still have your iFrame off-cd to dodge, if you do hit the grab, you already have Lingering Crit, therefore can maximize the damage of heavy strike and ground slash, this is one of VERY few occasions where you can do Heavy Strike 3x > Ground Slash at the beginning of the combo, although i still recommend saving it until the end of your combo for reset potential.

Catches

Our primary catches are:

• Ground Smash

• Counter

• Shield Strike

• Grab

Looking for catches with Ground Smash, it's our main block-jump punish skill, when you see a blockjump coming your way, you can try to punish a small gap it has by using this skill, for example if you see Ninja/Kunoichi use theirs, you should either:
A) Instantly disengage and reposition - i usually do Sidestep - Chopping kick - Frenzied Dash - Back to q-block(this is an example, any disengage you can chain, that will leave you protected is fine)
B) Instantly use Ground Smash - if you timed it well, you will CC your enemy, i don't recommend as there are many factors that will decide whether it connects or not.

Generally, you always want to look for a Ground Smash catch whenever you determine your opponent can't instantly punish you with grab(or you're sure their grab is on CD), when they're postured close to you, even if you don't manage to land a CC with it, it's still a -20% movement speed debuff + addon proc, which will make punishing any mistakes your opponent makes easier.

Looking for catches with Counter, should usually be done only with the fast counter version, as it allows you to keep a safe distance from your opponent and lets you choose from one of few flows which instantly allow you to follow-up with one of the combos listed in section above, or to reposition to keep safe distance.

For Shield Strike, we approach it a bit a bit differently, we don't want to use it randomly, only in specific scenarios, as AoE isn't big at all, i personally would use it a bit more defensively, here are couple instances where i would use Shield Strike as a possible catch:
A) We're 100% sure our opponent is in a FG skill right now, then what you wanna do is use Solar Flare to get behind their FG, use Chopping Kick into Shield Strike so you flow straight to 3rd hit of Shield Strike.
Another way to approach this, if our enemy is close to us, is use Prime: Evasion > Chopping Kick > Shield Strike, to go around them into their back trying to land our CC.
B) We're getting pushed into, our cooldowns are still up, and we think there's a chance our opponent will try to use an unprotected skill, then we can use Chopping Kick Backwards straight out of Q-block stance, and go for a Shield Strike KD attempt

Grab is pretty self explanatory for every spec that has one, so no point in going into excruciating detail about it, as we've talked about engaging with it already a bit. General rule of the thumb is, we go for a grab catch whenever we think our opponent is gonna be caught off-guard by our fast movement, or when our opponent postured themselves too close to us, letting us punish their poor position.

• Always use A/D + LMB inputs for Prime: Evasion, for unknown reasons, it's faster than using A/D + Shift, which could potentially mess up your timings or leave you vulnerable.

• When your BSR reaches 100%, but you don't want to use your ult yet, you can use ALT + B to block your BSR usage, another way to do it however, is by using one of movement skill into jump slash flows, which would be:
  Charging Thrust > Jump Slash
  Solar Flare > Jump Slash
  Frenzied Dash > Jump Slash

• If you ever hear someone say "Whirlwind Slash" and you're confused what the hell is that skill and why you can't find it in your skill tree, it's very simple, it's Spinning Slash after using Quick Counter, the reason some people still call it that, is because pre-reboot in 2021, that was a separate skill, sharing the same cooldown as Spinning Slash, which was just integrated into Spinning Slash as one skill, why it was ever a thing, we shall never know.

My take on succession warrior is that it comes down to mastering 4 aspects of the class:

1. Cooldown management, due to class's unique interaction with lingering crit, pseudo-canceling and class being extremely flow reliant to feel smooth and stay properly protected, good cooldown management is a crucial part to performing well on the spec.

2.  Knowing your flows and chains, due to us utilising skills in a manner where we often have to use DMG skills as movement abilites to stay properly protected and on the move, you need to constantly keep cycling follow-up options in your head, in case of you landing a stray CC on your opponent, i'm gonna record a video in future with examples of this applied in combat for showcase purposes.

3. Finding your own playstyle, while this of course is true for majority of specs available in the game, succession warrior leaves way more possibilites for adapting it to your own needs, many players adapt more reactive-defensive playstyle, while some prefer playing more proactive-aggresive playstyle, in my opinion, it's absolutely crucial that you find that balance that best suits you, every succession player plays the spec differently, and it's completely up to you to find what works best for you, by yourself.

4. This applies to virtually every class in the game, however, proper posturing is absolutely crucial to performing well in PvP

Gearing guide made by our goat, BiceptimusPrime, watch it and you'll know everything you need to know, and in case you're still not sure what's your current best possible upgrade, join warrior discord and ask for advice in #gear-help channel!
BDO Gear Guide - From Season To Endgame in 2025 - Get Ready For Edania | Gearing Progression Guide 

28.08.2025

• Removed  addons sections due to addon changes introduced in July 2025, refer to  #addons channel on warrior discord for current up-to-date addons

• Removed DP stacking from Succession warrior unique techs section, no longer a thing, we got 20dp more flat as our q-block self buff as compensation

• Updated gearing sections

• Mandatory/Optional locked skill updated

• Cleaned up formatting for some sections