Fencing and balance are two stats that affect melee weapons in Space Marine 2. These stats are all about the weapon’s preferred blocking method. Fencing is for players who prefer to get perfect parries off, while Balance is more about the time it takes to enter the block stance. Both of these change the moves you can use and the way you can counter enemies in Operations. Here’s a closer look at the balance and fencing stats in Space Marine 2.
How Balance, Fencing and Blocking works
As mentioned, the stats do the following:
- Balance: Moderate Perfect Parry window
- Fencing: Increased Perfect Parry Window
- Block: No Perfect Parry Window.
It’s important to distinguish between these, as the perfect parry window is what enables the gun hit mechanics. Fencing has more chances to increase this. There are also builds for perfect parries in class and weapon trees to get more use of the feature. Balanced has less room for landing a perfect parry in favour or a regular parry. They parry attacks and deflect damage but you don’t get the hit market for gun hit mechanism. Blocking on the other hand completely negates damage and does not offer any chance for a gun-hit mechanic.
There are certain mechanics in class trees and weapon trees that award bonuses for parrying too. The level 3 class perk often awards an electric field for landing a perfect parry. It’s one of the ways to increase your melee DPS in AOE scenarios if you like that style of play.
You’ll often find that block weapons tend to have better weapon stats to compensate for the lack of gun hits. So, there’s a trade-off for what style of play you want to use. You’ll find pretty much all melee weapons have upgrades that adjust the stats somewhat. There’s also typically one weapon per tier of upgrades that turn the weapon into a balanced, fencing or block-themed melee weapon so it’s worth messing around with weapon stats and defence styles to find what’s right for you.
It is important to select a weapon that matches your preferred playstyle. Balance is decent for players with better reaction times to parry. Parrys are the blue circles that you can see when enemies try to attack you with leap attacks or heavy attacks. Landing it always you to block the attack, and stagger the opponent. Often Extremis enemies and the like are blown back and enable the Gun Hit mechanic. Swarm-like enemies are often insta killed from a parry execution animation.
It’s important to note that certain perks on weapons can affect the defence criteria of a weapon. For example. The Warden Blade – Alpha perk changes the defence type to Block. You can combo this with the Bulwark’s shield to make them incredibly fast at entering the shield block with their power shield. Alternatively, you can take a more balanced or fencing type to make them more of a gladiator, accompanied by their more offensive-themed class perks.
