So you wanna be a Faejin player, eh? Sounds good! This guide will go over the basics of Faejin and how to use the style, and further down the line we'll discuss some more advanced techniques and tools and their respective applications.



Faejin is inspired by Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do, a form of martial arts taking influences from both Wing Chun and Kickboxing. We'll start this guide by talking about the thing that separates Faejin from other styles, the stance-dependent style ability.

Basically, in Absolver there are 4 different stances you can be positioned in during a fight. Front Left and Right, and Back Left and Right. The Faejin style ability changes based on what stance you face.

Front Stance:

The front stance while using Faejin enables you to use a Forsaken-like parry ability with a small hit afterward, which is also similar to the Stagger style, by using the ability horizontally (Moving your mouse/right stick to the left or right based on attack direction).

Pushing the right stick or your mouse forward will grant you a 15 frame stopping attack (Breaks power armor attacks and impacts stamina pretty well) that can be goldlinked into and out of. The stopping attack is a mid thrust, so when you're playing Faejin it can help to build your deck around this stopping attack, since whenever you're in front stance you have access to it.

Last but not least, if you pull the right stick back (or mouse) while in front stance, you will parry low attacks, such as low horizontals and thrusts. The main issue with Faejin's low parry ability is that it buffers your attacks. What does this mean? This means when you're mid attack and try to queue up Faejin low parry, it'll wait until you are completely done with the attack animation to go out. As this game has (semi) overlapping attacks, this becomes an issue when trying to fluidly defend and attack at will. The issue continues after a successful low parry as well, as your attacks are queued as well, meaning your attack after a low parry will have a large enough delay that your enemy can nearly recover completely after the parry by the time you can begin your attack. That being said, the low parry can be finicky but it's also useful (and VERY satisfying) when you do it just right.

Back Stance:

While not as complicated as the front stance ability, Faejin's ability is still useful when in the back stance. Basically, either in back left or right, you can do a small avoid move, to either side if the attack is a thrust or a vertical, or backwards if the attack is a horizontal or vertical, which is similar to the stagger style. What separates the Faejin avoid from something like Windfall is the actual advantage you get from it. On a successful avoid, Faejin only induces 0-1 frames of recovery to it's opponent. This means you are able to continue goldlinking after a Faejin avoids your attack, making it a weak point in the style.

Another separation between Faejin's back stance ability and styles such as Windfall and Stagger, is that when you execute the avoid move it sets you back to front stance, in whichever direction you were facing when you were in back stance i.e if you use the back stance avoid in back left, you'll be put in front left and vice versa. This is still useful and sometimes a little hard to time, but if you've played Windfall or Stagger before this will be easy enough to pick up and in general it will become muscle memory over time. Another thing to note about the back stance abilities is the stamina gain you get on a successful avoid.

Let's start with goldlinking

If you haven't noticed already, your character flashes yellow for a small amount of time after you throw an attack out. If you follow up with another attack right when your character flashes, the attack will come out much quicker!

One of the most important things in a fight is timing, and all it takes is practice! There are many different ways to track when you can goldlink, personally I attack directly after my first attack hits without needing to focus on it, but at this point it's just muscle memory.

Another way to know when to goldlink has to do with the stamina bar at the bottom of your screen. When you attack, two little arrows appear on either side of the stamina bar indicating when the animation is complete and you can start another one. Wait until the arrows glow and throw out another attack and it will flow with that sweet goodness we all love. This mechanism is also known as a 'perfect attack'.

You can find information (albeit a little vague) in the tips menu while inside the deck editor in meditation which can be accessed at any point during gameplay other than fights.
A neat thing about goldlinking and Faejin is that you can goldlink both into the Faejin parry strikes and the stopping thrust, and out of them, meaning you can build powerful combos while using your ability interchangeably with your combat deck.

Now let's talk about feinting

In the middle of an attack, you can cancel it and throw out the next attack (or alternative) in the string. This is vital to fights, being able to outplay your opponent with mind games by making them think you're throwing out one attack when you throw out another. This comes into play with the Faejin stopping attack, just like goldlinking, because you can use it interchangeably with your attack sequences. You can feint both the front stance stopper, and the small hit that happens after a side parry.

Here we'll be going over:

1. Proper deckbuilding terms and their meanings
2. Including the Faejin abilities in the process of building a deck and playing with it efficiently


Deckbuilding with Faejin is a little more hands on than other styles, because the most efficient deckbuilding strategy with Faejin is to keep the mid thrust stopper in mind while you're editing front stance. We'll be using different certain deckbuilding terms throughout this section, so I'll be listing them here before we get into how to build a deck for Faejin.

Frame advantage: The amount of time your enemy is stunned for after an attack, the most useful part of frame advantage is knowing when an attack can be jabsafe or confirmed. We usually focus mostly on how much advantage you get by hitting the enemy while the enemy is blocking, because that tells us the lowest common denominator. I'll be addressing this variable as +(number), for example, the attack Low Backfist is +4 on guard, which means I inflict 4 frames of stun to my enemy when I hit them when they're blocking.

Startup frames (or just "Frames"): How many frames pass between the beginning of an animation and when the animation completes it's action (your attack hits the enemy, your style ability activates, etc.)

Jabsafe: When your first attack has a certain amount of frame advantage when you hit someone who's blocking, and that value makes the difference less than 10 frames with your second attack's startup frames. This makes it so that your enemy physically won't be able to interrupt your attack mid-animation, and you gain the upper hand.

Breakpoint: When your attack in sequence can be defended against using the same input as your opponent would need for defending against your alternative attack that starts in the same stance as said sequence attack. For example, let's say in my top left sequence I have Hook, which is a high horizontal attack that hits on the right side of my opponent, and my top left alternative is Jar Bash. which is also a high horizontal, and also hits the right side of my opponent. If my opponent is playing Windfall, they would be able to predict and duck the either high horizontal attack when they see me in the given stance, but if I paired Hook with a thrust like Front Kick, that would resolve the breakpoint, seeing as how Front Kick is a slow attack at 20 frames, it hits the left side of my opponent, and it's a mid thrust as opposed to Hook being a high horizontal. If my opponent was playing Forsaken, they could parry right and get a successful parry either way, if I use Jar Bash or Hook, but if I use Front Kick I would have the option of hitting them on the left side OR the right side, which is much more safe than using two options that hit the same side of my opponent.

Confirm: A confirm is when your first attack's frame advantage is higher or equal to your next attack's startup frames. This means that when your first attack hits, you can throw out your second attack without your enemy being able to block, move, use abilities or attack.

Step-Cancel: An attack that starts in one stance (i.e top left) and ends in the same stance. This means the attack loops into itself if you do the right action. Step cancelling is when you use just that attack that finishes in the same stance it starts in, and while you're doing the animation for it, holding the movement key/left stick on a controller. At the very frame that you end the attack, your character will move and reset the animation so you can throw the same attack out again. This means you can essentially just use the same move over and over again, but you can also do this mid-string with an attack that ends in a different stance to be able to switch to your starting attack in that different stance. For example, let's say you have an attack that starts in top left and ends in bottom right, and another attack after it in the top left string. If you step cancel after the opening attack in top left, you'll be put in your bottom right string.

Punish: A punish is a heavy, high damage attack you have as an option after a guardbreak attack and usually a confirmed attack after that. Let's say, for instance, you break someone's guard with Front Kick. A good option for a punish after breaking someone's guard is to use something like Spinning High Kick, which does a lot of damage and your opponent can't defend against it when their guard is broken, and Spinning High Kick does +12 on hit, meaning you can confirm a 12 frame attack after Spinning High Kick, like Stretch Out Hook. So that means you can get two completely indefensible attacks after a guardbreak. If you're setting up a punish option after a guardbreak, focus more on how much frame advantage you get on hit from the punish option, because if it confirms a second attack you're gonna want that extra hit.


Deckbuilding specifically for Faejin comes with a few fundamental rules, which makes it more complicated than deckbuilding for other styles. These constraints give Faejin decks a unique feeling and you really have to be creative with your Faejin deck. We'll start by explaining the attack properties of the different Faejin abilities, and then we'll go into how to build a deck with those abilities in mind.

The Faejin Stopper

The Faejin stopping attack (We'll start calling it Faefront from now on) is a 15 frame mid thrust attack that does +8 on hit and +6 on guard. Having +6 on guard means you can basically throw out any attack up to 15 frames after the stopper and it will be jabsafe. Since you always have access to this no matter where you are in fronstance, it doesn't make much sense to have other mid thrusts in your front stance, unless they're punishing moves or guardbreaks. Since Faefront is a stopping attack, it does 75 impact on guard. This means the Faefront ability does good damage to stamina when your opponent is blocking, and in my experience usually closes the gap between them being almost out of stamina to being guardbroken.

The Faejin Parry

The Faejin parry has a startup of 3 frames, and the hit afterwards takes 13 frames to complete. In total, the Faejin parry animation if you don't feint it is 16 frames, and it does +10 on hit, meaning if your next attack is 19 frames or lower, your next attack will be jabsafe. The Faejin parry is goldlinkable, as well as the Faejin front stopping attack.

Using Faejin to your advantage while building a deck

I'll start this right out of the gate with a statement; you don't need to focus on thrusts in your front stances. What I mean by saying this is, the Faejin stopper is a 15 frame mid thrust that keeps you in front stance and can be used like a step-cancel.This is very important to note while building a deck in Faejin because it can be used as an advantage to you. You could use nothing but horizontals in front stance and be completely covered, but it's impractical when there are so many good heavy thrust attack options in the front stance. Something to note is that the Faejin front stopper hits opposite from the stance you're in, so if you're in front left stance, the Faejin stopper will hit the right side of your opponent. A good way to use Faejin in backstance is to have a quick ranged option in front stance, so if you use your Faejin back-avoid, you can try to get in a punish before your enemy goldlinks through the nonexistent recovery frames.

Thank you for checking this guide out!

We made it! I hope some of this information helped you in any capacity, and I'll see you in the Trials! Feel free to rate, favorite, comment and share this guide for your buddies!

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