Black Desert BDO Musa Guide 2022

Musa Combos, Skill Add-ons, Build and Crystals

Musa PvP Combat Guide

Optimal Musa Combos

Pre-awakening

S+LMB -> W+LMB+Space -> Shift+Q -> C -> Dash Slash -> Shift+LMB -> F

S+LMB -> W+LMB+Space -> LMB (x1-2) -> LMB+RMB -> C -> Dash Slash -> Shift+LMB -> F

Shift+RMB -> S+LMB / Shift+LMB+RMB -> Shift+Q / LMB+RMB -> C -> Dash Slash -> Shift+LMB -> F

Shift+RMB+A/D -> W+LMB+Space -> LMB (x1-2) -> LMB+RMB -> C -> Dash Slash -> Shift+LMB -> F

Awakening

W+F -> Shift+LMB -> A/D+LMB -> Q -> Shift+RMB -> Shift+F -> F

W+F -> A/D+LMB -> A/D+RMB -> Space -> Shift+RMB -> Shift+LMB -> F -> Dash Slash

Musa’s Spirit -> A/D+LMB -> A/D+RMB -> Space -> Shift+RMB -> Shift+LMB -> F -> Dash Slash

A/D+LMB -> Q -> A/D+LMB -> A/D+RMB -> Space -> Shift+RMB -> Shift+LMB -> F -> Dash Slash

Strongest Possible Musa Combo

S+LMB / W+F -> A/D+LMB -> A/D+RMB -> C -> W+Space -> LMB (2x) -> LMB+RMB -> C -> Dash Slash -> Shift+LMB -> F

– For the people you can’t kill with conventional combos.

– The blade swap can be canceled immediately so it looks like you just used from awakening.

– 1-2 auto attacks (where is in the combo) must be done before to get the entire animation instead of just the 3rd hit.

https://gfycat.com/PoliticalDiligentCaterpillar

Crowd Control CC Mechanics Musa

Standing CC (leaves your target still standing)

• Stiff: Target appears stuck in mid-air. Lasts around 1 second.
• Stun: Target holds the head and appears dazed. Lasts around 2 seconds.
• Knockback: Target is pushed back. Lasts around 1 second.

Grounded CC (leaves your target on the ground)

• Bound: Target immediately falls to the ground as if pulled down. Lasts around 2 seconds.
• Float: Target is lifted into the air and then falls to the ground. Lasts around 2 seconds.
• Knockdown:: Target falls while being knocked backward. Lasts around 3 seconds.

Grapple CC (Target is grabbed and thrown on the ground)

Various classes have different grabs. Some of them end in a float, others in a bound/knockdown.

Smash Extenders (Elongates the ground cc)

• Air Smash: If applied while the target is in the air, the target is lifted and knocked farther away.
• Down Smash: If applied while the target is on the ground, they are lifted slightly off the ground, and knocked backward with a spin.

Musa Skill Builds:

Lvl 56 – 418 sp – Starting the Flame: https://bdocodex.com/us/skillcalc/79431/

Lvl 57 – 499 sp – Quickshot Rabam: http://bdocodex.com/us/skillcalc/79758

Lvl 58 – 606 sp – Awakening Boost: http://bdocodex.com/us/skillcalc/79757

Lvl 59 – 744 sp – FOUL PLAY!: http://bdocodex.com/us/skillcalc/79756

Lvl 60 – 1138 sp – Welcome to 60!: http://bdocodex.com/us/skillcalc/79755

Lvl 60 – 1328 sp – PvP Ready: http://bdocodex.com/us/skillcalc/79754

Lvl 60 – 1621 sp – PvP Advanced: https://bdocodex.com/us/skillcalc/81012

Lvl 60 – 2021 sp – Extreme: https://bdocodex.com/us/skillcalc/81013

Musa Skill Add-ons

These are just some combinations of skill add-ons that you can choose from. The ones underlined are the recommended but all can be viable according to different playstyles

Blade Addons

• Dragonbite: Crit 20% + PVP AP/Att Speed/Bleed
• Blooming: PVP AP + Att Speed
• Gale: Att Speed + PVP AP
• Rising Storm: Att Speed + Defense/PVP or PVE AP
• Stub Arrow: Accuracy + debuff of your choice

Awakening Addons

• Crosscut: Att Speed + PVP or PVE AP/Mov Speed
• Backflow: Crit 20% + Debuff of choice/PVP AP
• Fiery Angel: Att Speed + Crit 10%
• Below The Belt: Burn + Mov Speed debuff/PVP AP
• Projection: Accuracy + PVP AP/Burn/Att Speed

Absolute Skills:

Ok so most of the absolute skills only have extra dmg, if you don’t have the skill points there is no reason to get them or worry too much about them. A lot of our pre awakening doesn’t have SA/FG (except Dragon Bite) So most absolute skills you want to take are going to be for damage purposes or in general PVE.

These seem like the best ones to take

• 1) Absolute: Rising Storm – good use in combos after CC and nice DP buff
• 2)  Absolute: Musa Spirit – a direct improvement for WP recovery
• 3) Absolute: Dragon Bite – FG normally, its good to have for a little extra dmg in trying to CC someone
• 4) Absolute: Blooming (w/Phantom) – High damage and good buffs (don’t use as initiator if using Phantom)
• 5) Absolute: Gale – good use in combos after CC does more dmg that Rising Storm

Again, do not worry about getting the Absolute skills until you have extra SP laying around. Focus on maxing out awakening skills before worrying about these

Food rotation for Musa

Standard 3 food rotation: Hamburg (or Magoria), Knight Combat, Kamasylve

Standard 4 food rotation: Special Hamburg, Knight Combat, Special Kamasylve, Special Valencia/Serendia

Main Skills Overview

These are my current quickslots and cooldown slots, I’ll use them in order to explain our kit:

Below The Belt (essential): one of our hardest hitters, with a little hole in its initial super armor. It’s best used at the end of a combo to capitalize on the down attack as far as 1v1 goes, in mass PvP, it can be pretty much spammed whenever your main SA chain is ready.

Backflow (essential): like other super armors you can linger it till idle stance to bait and rest. Most Musas only cast it after Crosscut, while it’s also possible to chain it after Fiery Angel and Foul Play with the Shift key. It can be cast both during Angel’s dash (recommended) and after the slash (the window is rather small and you will cast Projection if you wait too long). Fiery Angel>Backflow is relatively safe bait if used quickly: Angel Backflow cancel

Same with Foul Play: Foul Play Backflow cancel

Crosscut (high priority) & Counter Assassination (high priority): knowing your crosscut cd is definitely a good thing in these times without super armor. Canceling Crosscut with Q is one of our 2 protected stun engages. Remember that using your E buff will remove super armor and only leave you with increased resistance.

Crust Crusher & Foul Play (high priority): high burst skills and a decent heal too. The frontal block isn’t there during the Crust attack, leaving you unprotected for a brief moment, decent opponents will definitely punish you when used outside of a combo. Mostly a skill for mass PvP poke.

These are 2 of the 3 skills you should know how to rotate with mouse movement to keep your guard the right way. You turn on MM in settings>game>use mouse movement.

Mouse movement Foul Play

During the cast, press CTRL and follow the target or the incoming damage with your mouse.

Fiery Angel (essential): basic engage skill, try using at close range to minimize the risk of getting CC’d. Aim past your opponents and rotate the camera to their back when triggering the slash to go around frontal blocks.

Musa’s Spirit (medium priority): talking about Shift+Q, the shout. You are wasting a full point of CC to do no damage but it’s a relatively easy stun to land now that people have less super armor.

Blooming (Absolute high priority): before Absolutes it’s mostly used without Phantom for a shorter animation lock, to fish for quick stuns on the back. After Absolutes it’s a high damage skill that can after a stub arrow in your 1v1 combos and hits extremely hard in PvE as well. You can swap into Blooming from awakening with either Chase ➡ Shift+LMB+RMB or with the Absolute quickslot.

Gale (Absolute essential): one of the most powerful skills of our kit, should be in all of your 1v1 combos after a Dragonbite/Blooming and other awakening engages with a Blind Thrust swap (refer to the combos in #guides-musa)

The Awkward LMB+RMB command causes it to suffer from early damage cancels (stay in place by keeping the W key down), Absolute Rising Storm ➡ Absolute Blind Slash can be a quicker alternative in case you react too slowly after the stun.

Nemesis Slash (Absolute medium priority) & Flow: Nemesis Slash (low priority): our main heal before Rabams, it chains out of multiple skills (Blind Thrust, Twister, Foul Play). The Absolute gives some more health and shortens the cooldown. It’s not a PvP skill but is nice to have in node wars to heal off structures.

Ultimate: Musa Spirit (essential): recommended level 56 Rabam, you should have it as soon as you start to PvP. Quick heal and 30% crit buff, can be used to swap to pre-awakening with both Shift+X and quickslot.

Musa’s Spirit (Absolute medium priority): not a particularly useful quickslot, Shift+E allows you to cancel some animations and is overall faster to use; it’s just an old habit of mine to keep it there.

Musa’s Soul (essential): Our awakening buff, you get increased resistances to stay in the fight; keep mobile to avoid grabs. Crosscut loses super armor despite the appearance, use with caution.

Projection (high priority): the other skill that you should know how to move with your mouse (Mouse Movement Projection), especially useful for 100% BSR Projection. You can also cast an additional wave with 3 different cancels:

Counter Assassination ➡ Projection

Back Chase ➡ Projection

Alt+B ➡ Projection ➡ Alt+B.

Counter Assassination’s cancel is my favourite, depending on the frame of the animation you can clearly see the additional slash or just barely: Triple Wave Projection

It works the same after a back chase or by locking rage with Alt+B and unlocking it mid Projection (not recommended).

In 1v1 scenarios it can be the second float in a double float combo, once again, refer to #guides-musa.

Lock Extra Credit if you want to make sure that you can dash away after projection.

Stub Arrow II (essential, triple shot and Absolute unnecessary): our ranged engage, the quick slot lets you swap to blade mode. Skilling higher levels than II will make it slower.

When you include Stub Arrow in your combos it’s important to have a pre awakening chase cancel set up to close the gap ASAP. For those unaware you need a bind to the WW key (settings>input>Assigned key (WW)) and press it with LMB.

Cyclone Slash (low priority): a ranged CC that can travel very far if you aim it high, it can catch opponents playing without effects or unwary people in mass PvP.

Quick Shot (essential): recommended level 57 Rabam. Very good ranged damage to initiate or snipe low HP targets disengaging. Also deals a good chunk of damage to blocks.

Flow: Dash Slash (essential): the flow to Spinner, should always be used from quickslot. Applies a DP debuff and deals good damage, used to finish people in a string with Below the Belt and Fiery Crevice).

Other skills

Fiery Crevice (essential): a very powerful skill, to finish your combos and to use on cooldown in pve where it has double the hits.

Twister (essential): The extremely short cooldown and quick animation make it a good engage. High damage and WP sustain in PvE due to the increased hits.

C swap: all classes have a frontal guard in their C swap, which also lingers till idle stance.

Retaliation: the good ol’ blade Q block also works if you don’t want to spam C swaps. Holding that Q down in between chases should keep you protected (assuming you face your opponent and the servers like you enough); keep LMB down during block to rotate it faster than normal (requires you to lock Retaliation). The counter hit is our other knockdown, and also keeps its frontal guard, it works very well versus some kinds of mobile, unprotected engages of classes such as Mystic and Striker.

Blind Thrust (essential, Absolute low priority): second 30% critical buff, good stiff filler for combos.

Dragon bite (essential, Absolute high priority): frontal guard and almost non-existent cooldown make Dragonbite the best engage we have. It’s not easy to land and will be very satisfying when mastered, refer to the Musa Combat Guide video by InkQ to learn its secrets.

Dragon claw (Absolute medium priority): simple flow to increase damage, take for advanced builds.

Lunar slash (Absolute low priority): again a simple flow, this time split into 2 parts, in most combos you’ll see that only the first one is recommended to avoid an early float. The entire string deals very high damage in PvE.

Rising Storm (Absolute essential) & Blind Slash (Absolute or nothing): Absolute Rising Storm is possibly the best PvE skill of the kit and also an excellent PvP filler and float when Gale isn’t possible. Chains very well into Absolute Blind Slash and Absolute Roundhouse kick for good Air attacks.

Blaze (low priority): Blaze scales with Absolute Rising Storm but has no air attacks, ok skill for PvE.

Charged Stub Arrow: Evasion (??? priority): advanced PvP i-frame, used to get out of vacuum skills or dodge grabs. Due to the somewhat high skills needed to use it correctly it’s hard to rank on a priority list. It’s something you should try to master if you want to be a real good duelist.

Arrow Grapple (low priority): the speed on it was increased to non-trash tier, it’s now an alright gap closer, and most importantly looks good.

Carver (low priority): it’s a fast but unprotected float engage, I personally prefer to lock it because it can interfere with Blooming but it has its use.

Roundhouse Kick (Absolute or nothing, low priority): the only decent kick, fun airsmash for gimmicky combos and one of our 2 knockdowns.

Extra Credit (low priority): Situational, animation locked; Projection’s flow has some uses in stunlocking your opponent and dealing some extra ranged damage. I generally keep it locked to avoid it interfering with Chase, it can do you more harm than good if that happens.

Divider (Absolute very low priority): adds some damage to the pre awakened heal, one of the very last skills to take.

Whirlwind cut (Absolute low priority): a great WP regen skill, take it to rank 3 or 4 if you like pre awakened grinding, or even Absolute if you can afford it.

Whirlwind cut: Grinder (very low priority): a little flow component to debuff target DP on the 3rd hit of WWC, could be acceptable for end game grinding areas such as Hystria and Gyfin, given you can avoid CCs.

Tiger Blade (medium priority): optional quick slot and Musa’s ultimate weapon, to RMB the fucc out of there for no stamina cost. Starting and ending animations are i-frames (you can cancel the end by re-equipping your weapon), chase is stamina free and can be cancelled with Divider.

One Step Back (low priority): down attack, PvE damage filler, mediocre PvP last hitter/disengage.

Spinner (trash): rank 1 is “ok” for pre-engage attack speed buffs, save your skill points for something else. WP sustain for PvE.

Skill Enhancement (Rabams)

The recommended Rabams to take are Ultimate: Musa Spirit (56) and Quick Shot (57).

Steel Gale (56) doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, Absolute Rising Storm works well instead; Pouncing Dragon (57) is a slow ability with poorly thought-out CC. Both are unprotected.

Pre-Engage Buffs

Pre-Engage buffs are exactly what you think they would be, they are self-buffs that can be used without actually hitting a target. Here are some important ones to use and are really helpful.

They are all unprotected and can be long enough to get punished, be sure to read what’s happening around you before committing to the longer animations.

• Blind Thrust – a 10 second 30% critical buff
• Spinner – a 10 second +10% attack speed buff
• (i) W+LMB ➡ Spinner (will only do the animation that will give u the attack speed buff)
• Rising Storm – 20 seconds evasion buff