This guide aims to teach the basics of handling the Valkyrie. The ability to tackle higher difficulties depend on your personal loadouts and acquired advantages at present.
Core Playstyle
Palatinus Equinox is a Monster Hunter player's wet dream - having a trademark Charged Axe and Gunlance attack integrated into her moveset, giving her two separately functional and distinct modes, Guardian and Knight.
- As a Guardian most of your moves involve utilising the basic combo to do small gathers and Shield Rams to initiate her devastating AoE attack
- As a Knight you fight on horseback and it involves death by relentless jousting, picking off enemies in her path.
Usage Difficulty
Handling: Easy - Moderate
- Once you've learned to identify her separate movesets, you can begin to integrate them as one if you prefer. Her modified abilities in Elysian Realm make her a virtually unstoppable force to reckon with.
Power Ramping
- Both builds require their secondary signets to provide necessary support. The Knight Form especially - attacks hard, but loses steam very quickly without extra charges.
Power Drought Situation(s)
- Both builds can be remedied with the extra charge from Setsuna. They need it to bridge the gap for charge cooldowns, otherwise they will be resorting to Basic Atks and galloping around for little effect.
Equipment
Special Adjustments
Exclusive Signets
The Gallop signet powers every aspect of her Knight Mode's combat, both Sprint and the Elite Thrust. It also consumes the special Knight Guardian buff to restore all ICHOR, meaning after 1 Sprint charge, you get a full refresh for another Sprint charge. Executing Ultimate Evasion then gives you another cycle of Sprint and Knight Guardian.
Abyssal Chant helps by refreshing two charges of Ultimate Evasion after using the Ultimate, effectively providing more Sprint charges to use. In a drawn out battle on higher difficulties, this signet is important for survival as it cuts down on down time when Durandal is out of evasion charges and waiting for ICHOR to recover.
- Abyssal Chant's priority is based on your willingness and need to use the Ultimate. More important when Imaginary enemies are present.
Finally with Equinox, it adds another power up to Durandal and her Ultimate.
At the back, Exodus and Commitment are mainly chance upgrades if you decide to make use of the Guardian Form as a transition phase.
(Knight Form)
[Gallop -> Abyssal Chant] -> Equinox -> Exodus / Commitment
Gallop is needed to empower her Sprints and Elite Thrusts. Enables restoration of ICHOR through evasion to gain a full charge. Meaning, you can have 2 Sprints per evasion charge. With Abyssal Chant, it bridges any downtime when Durandal has no evasion charges to restore ICHOR immediately.
- Default combat cycle flows like this: Mode Switch -> Sprint x2 -> Evade -> Sprint x2.
- As Knight form, her SP gain is abyssmal, non-existent. To compensate this need during long boss battles, have at least one SP signet from any of the sets you're going into. This ensures that after the first Ultimate, she can recover more for the next, assuming you intend to stay in Knight form permanently.
(Guardian Form)
[Exodus -> Commitment] -> Abyssal Chant / Equinox -> Gallop
Exodus strengthens the Guardian's Equinox Severance attack and also impairs her enemies. Following with Commitment, it strengthens the weapon skill primarily, and both Durandal and Equinox Severance further.
You can grab the other 3 signets just for the Physical and Total Dmg boosts, they help a lot regardless of their utility or not.
- Abyssal Chant can be swapped with Commitment if you desire.
- Avoid using any gather like Black Hole, while executing Equinox Severance. Because the move shifts Durandal's position forwards, the Black Hole will pull your enemies behind you and cause the final slash to whiff entirely. Also, Commitment is only best used with her signature lance, as it has a special follow-up attack after Equinox Severance or basic combo that no other lance can perform.
Using Thorn Crown
1) Gallop + Abyssal Chant (Knight Form)
- Sprint and Ultimate boosted. Now all you need is to spend your charges efficiently to make sure you have endless sprinting ability, with the help of Setsuna, preferably.
2) Exodus + Abyssal Chant / Commitment (Guardian Form)
- Usage of the crown is unwise, as Durandal gets increasing power with each signet she gets, regardless of whether she uses her alternate form or not. However, dismissing the above anyway, she will have her Sprint combos fully functional without further boosts. The rest of her power will have to be garnered from regular signets.
- Further, as a Decimation user she will lose power from some of the signets that rely on the HP cap, while the ones for losing HP will function normally.
Signets
Priorities
Key Signets - Decimation, Setsuna
Sub Signets - Discipline, Vicissitude
- Helix (Only with Midnight Ataegina)
Durandal's strong attacks means you can focus less on function and more on passive power.
Core Contributions
Vicissitude (II)
- A good stable source of power if you play super evasively and aggressively at the same time with her mounted speed and constant time control.
Setsuna (I) - (Bonus: Time Mastery)
- The extra charge from "Fuji" is most important to Knight Form, as it gives Durandal 3 evasion charges to work with. In Guardian Form, she gets more opportunities to chain Equinox Severance and buy a lot of time on her hands. (This extra charge will help you greatly in the absence of the Abyssal Chant signet, which grants you Evasion resets after an Ultimate)
- Core (I) works well for Knight Form, as Sprints deliver a huge burst of damage in short time, topping it off with an Ultimate just in time. However, this does not apply to Guardian Form as there is no combination of attacks within 3 seconds that can deliver a huge chunk of damage.
- With the signet that resets Ultimate and Actives, it is possible to chain two Ultimates back to back when it resets opportunistically.
- The Guardian Form can make use of individual signets instead, and Core (II) as a bonus should it come to that.
- The timer pause signet "Ino-Shika-****, requires you to move. This is important because the Sprint itself does not count as moving. You MUST physically hold down the directional button during Sprints, to halt that timer.
- Remember what I said in my Setsuna article - guiding /shifting movements caused by attacking do not count.
Decimation (II)
- Durandal can easily max out a fully upgraded Decimation set with Enhanced signets within a few rotations, bringing her to full power.
- The SP signet can stack a ridiculous amount during Sprints, if you intend to use your Ultimates often, this signet will be the only SP signet you need, (Setsuna can also help recharge)
- "Ume" has no use except for moving speed, so avoid it. It doesn't speed up the Sprint attack speed unfortunately.
- "Kiku" cannot be used with Fuji, remember the rule - Evasions must avoid an attack to count, so on-command ones will do nothing.
Helix (I)
- (Guardian Form only) - Helix has a unique synergy with her signature lance Midnight Ataegina. It is the only weapon active that has no cooldown or limitation, but only in Guardian form. As such, Helix's 1st Signet can be instantly maximised up to 6 stacks of power up with repeated blasts, and an easy trigger for Core (I)'s ability.
- Though advised against because of the low use rate while mounted, players can opt to build Helix for Knight Form to make use of the critical dmg potential.
Stars (I) / (II)
- If you intend to play Stars, be prepared to deviate from the Sprint-only attack cycle. Also reminder - Stars can become deadweight if not assembled early, which also means giving up on assembling a stable Setsuna / Decimation set.
Any Questions? Go ahead and write in the comments below too. Thanks for reading!
