To understand swing manipulation, you have to understand what Mordhau is. Mordhau is a melee slasher game, the primary factor of which is the attacks constituting two phases: windup and release, the latter of which follows a trajectory that is contingent to mouse movement and footwork. This means, attacks are non-linear as opposed to other 'fighting' games, and can thus be manipulated in your favour. To see this, go to 'Settings', then click 'Draw tracers' and swing your sword a few times. You'll see a red line following your sword after it enters it's release phase - the damaging phase of the attack where the turncap becomes more pronounced.

Tacitly put: swing manipulation is manipulating the arch of your swing to make it harder for your opponent to parry, forcing them to either chamber feint-to-parry or eat the hit.

If you master swing manipulation, not only will your gamer skill be enhanced, but you'll also be immediately followed by a harem of women.

Now this may seem like an impossible task, locked away for all but the most dedicated of gamers, but it's actually pretty simple. Swing animations have a number of factors that influence their animation: mouse movement, footwork, riposte inputs and ini. edits. Good swing manipulation is effectively combining all of these factors to make it as hard as possible for your opponent to keep up with your attacks. In what follows I'll cover the basic forms of swing manipulation first then progressively get more technical in order of complexity.

There's two main ways of swing manipulation: acceling and dragging. To accel an attack, look in the same direction as the swing as it enters the release phase, here is a basic example of a good riposte accel:


There are few things to observe here:

1) When you're manipulating your swing, it's important to keep your mouse as centred to your opponent as possible, this makes it harder for them to read your swing as you aren't telegraphing it

2) Only manipulate your swing in the release phase, this makes it harder to read and makes it more effective to control

3) With accels, it's important to lean in to the trajectory of your swing via footwork, this again makes it harder to read and makes the accelerated attack far more convincing

4) If you're doing overhead accels, it's crucial to aim for your opponent's head as this is where their camera is. A good accelerated attack into your head is completely unreadable and, paired with an effective footdrag/overhead drag mixup, is very effective in scoring hits

Drags are self-explanatory; delaying your attack from hitting your opponent in order to bypass the 330ms parry and score a fat old hit. Similarly to accels, basic drags are relatively easy to perform: simply look in the opposite direction of your swing when it enters it's release phase:


Now if you excuse the ♥♥♥♥ quality and autistic bot continually eye-frame exploiting me, you can hopefully see the general principle of what a very basic drag looks like:

1) Look in the opposite direction of your swing in release in order to slow it down

2) As you drag out your swing move in the same direction to emphasise the drag

See, drags really aren't that hard, though if you want to master them in conjunction with accels in order to become a true gamer, you'll have to put in a little more effort.

It's one thing to perform a basic ♥♥♥♥♥ accel, it's another to master it. Generally, skill in morhdau is combining all of the mechanics together to where you exploit them as much as possible: feints, footwork, mind-games, swing manipulation and kicks. This principle extends also to swing manipulation - a good accel is relatively easy, though to make it as hard to read as possible, you need to do several things:

1) Make sure you don't late riposte. You can delay your riposte input after a parry to increase the windup of your riposted attack, this is known as a 'late riposte'. Of course, these are fantastic for drags though not so much for accels since you want the least amount of time possible between you swinging the sword and it whacking the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ you're fighting in the face.

2) Look up. Yeah, literally, just look up. If you look up slightly when performing a horizontal accel it, for whatever reason, hides the majority of the animation and makes it completely unreadable especially with weapons such as Greatsword, Longsword, Evening star, Pole axe etc.

3) Mixup your attacks. This principle extends to drags also, the aim of the game of swing manipulation is to make it as hard as possible for your opponent to react to your swing. Mixing up your attacks between accels and drags is crucial in this regard, as a general principle I would suggest doing more accels than drags as accels are really effective in pressuring your opponent and retaining your initiative. If you condition your opponent's tiny inferior mind into expecting an accel, then do a big ♥♥♥♥ off drag then it's ez gg time.

4) Learn the two different riposte animations. Ripostes also have two unique animations: wristy-twisties and Jpegs. In all honesty these aren't crucial to learn, though they can be useful in really breaking some of the animations. To perform wristy-twisties, input your riposte from the same side as your parry. To perform Jpegs, perform your riposte from the opposite side of your parry:

- Wristy-twisties same side
- Jpegs opposite side

There isn't one riposte animation type that is better for one swing manipulation type, usually it's a matter of adding another mixup you can do.

5) Footwork. Footwork is the second most important skill to learn, just before alt f4ing. If you run into the direction of your accel it makes it way more difficult to read as it gives your opponent less time to think, though be careful not to over-exaggerate your footwork and hit them in early release.

6) Watch good players play. The most effective way, aside from trial and error, is to watch absolute gaming units such as bear, pewtis, [REDACTED], xeonyz1, or just spec the alpha male within your duel yard.

As you already know, to master swing manipulation within mordhau requires mastering several smaller mechanisms then combining them into something more powerful. This extends too to drags, akin to mastering accels these require aggregating the following mechanics:

1) Master late ripostes. If you delay your riposte input by a few hundred ms you gain a few hundred on the release/windup phase of your attack, thereby extending the drag. Contrarily, inputting the riposte instantly after you take a parry is better for accels as it reduces the time your weapon travels, though the opposite is true if you want to pull of a convincing drag.

2) Fake accel. You can achieve this by faking an accel during the windup phase of your attack using footwork and mouse movements, then dragging it out. This makes it far more convincing as it may cause your opponent to parry early, expecting an instant hit, only to be met with a beefy drag.

3) Footwork! This was largely explained by the previous section, though generally if you just follow the trajectory of your attack with your footwork it'll be better.

4) Know your weapon. Mastering a weapon and becoming a one-trick can be very productive, though you may be called a noob gs one-trick, you'll effectively be a master with your respective weapon. It's important to know each weapon has different lengths, windup speeds, release speeds and damage, so while the formula for swing manipulation may be similar across the board, there are idiosyncrasies with each weapon.

We've covered how to do the basic horizontals swings and touched briefly on the principles that make drags hard to read, though equally important to have in your repertoire is a strategy to deal with swing manipulation. Generally speaking, there are several ways to counter someone who is throwing their mouse across the room with every attack:

1) Footwork. Footwork is perhaps the single most important skill that you could learn in this game; improving your offence and defence simultaneously, it's a trump card that every self-respecting player must possess. So, how do you use it to have a better time against a drag queen?

- Using it to deal with drags. A useful tactic to employ is positioning your character in such a way as to increase the time it takes for the dragged swing to hit you. This usually constitutes walking in the opposite direction of your opponent's swing in order to give yourself more time to read. Toe-drags can be dealt with relatively easily, by simply jumping at just the right time and throwing in a chamber, you simultaneously dodge and punish your enemy for their insolence. Horizontals you just run in the opposite direction of, from left or right, by keeping in face-hug range of your opponent when they are dragging you are making it harder for them to control their swing because of the turn-cap penalty. This, sometimes, allows you to force your opponent to miss by over-dragging and if you throw in a chamber to guard against accels while you're doing this you get a free punish off.

Now, if they combo their missed drag and you fail to punish make sure you abuse the recently added miss-detector system to your advantage. Tacitly put, the miss-detector reduces the parry to attack recovery if you parry an attack that misses you. This allows you to firstly parry their initial swing and, if you time it right, you can punish them with the faster attack that miss-detector provides you before their combo strikes. This is quite a finicky thing to pull off mind you, so practice truly does make perfect.

- Using it to deal with accels. The same principle of maintaining distance to negate the opponent's face-hug advantage applies to accels, though there are a few idiosyncrasies here. Sometimes, you can run through your opponent's attack if you suspect they're starting up an accel, often times your opponent over-accels out of frustration allowing you to seize initiative by running through the attack while it's in it's early-release phase, meaning it'll do no damage.

2) Chamber feint-to-parry. Ah yes, the cheese of top-tier, though chamber feint-to-parrying is incredibly important in having a consistent defence if your footwork fails you. Chamber feint-to-parry effectively guards against any attacks and, properly done, makes you practical invulnerable. Understand that the standard parry duration is 330 ms and is a one-time use, meaning there is a thing called parry recovery that prevents automatically parrying in succession:


Chamber feint-to-parrying artificially increases the parry by guarding against both accels and drags, while increasing the time you have to input a parry while remaining guarded against an alternative attack. Keep in mind though, it costs loads of stamina so use it sparingly.

3) Just read it bro. While this is useful as a last-resort tactic, many of the attacks in this game are simply unreadable if done right, meaning just sitting back and donning your reading glasses isn't always a safe defence.

So, there you go, a hopefully useful guide for swing manipulation in mordhau. This guide explains the basic mechanics of swing manipulation as well as tips to improve your swinging game. If you want to learn the more unique drags within the game, youtube is your best place, though a universal rule to follow is just to practice until it becomes a matter of sub-concious muscle memory.

gg have fun : )