Here I will try to list out fighting styles as concisely as I can. For a more deeper understanding, try out another article I'll put up soon.

Okay, this is divided into 5 sections: 

1. Damage estimation
2. Tactical healing and freezing
3. Surprise Techniques
4. Prediction
5. Fighting Preferences

Ok, Damage Estimations.

The best way to find out your damage estimate is to check it out on Punchbag Bob. Take both damage stats when he defends and when he doesn't. Assume your opponent can do that much defence, 'coz well, it pays to expect the worst in a fight. Now, to test out your weapons. Usually all you need are 2 main combat weapons, unless you have unique fighting preferences which will be discussed below.  Determine which is the better attack weapon. This one will be expected to do the most possible damage no matter what. This is for when your opponent is frozen usually, when you need a need major damage, or when you only have one attack weapon to use (the other choice of weapon may be stuck on downsize power plus or a scorchstone)

In a fight, best thing to do, is watch your opponents' HP. Watch your opponents' HP. Know your maximum damage, and when the time is right hit hard. One thing to note is to watch out for surprises, if he heals or defends against you, then you're in trouble. Its always best to try for overkill. Overkill does NOT mean a snowball or muffin in round 1 though. Those are dumb techniques that waste np and leave you vulnerable in a good fight.

If you have a freeze handy, as will be mentioned below, a good idea of your damage estimation will help tons. It takes an opponent out when he least expects it and can help in perfect killings, not getting him too low so he knows what's coming and counter-defends, or not too high so you leave him with like 5 HP hanging on.

Tactical Healing.

Ok, if you have a scorchstone, count HP. It depends on preference which style you wish to follow but I'll go through three basics.

1. Max healing

2. Safe healing

3. Last minute healing

Say, your scorch heals about 50HP, you have max HP of 80. Now, for maximum healing potential, you wait until your HPs are down to 30HP, then you heal. This way you definitely get all the HP you can get out of that scorch. Downside, if your opponent predicted that you were gonna heal (this healing style is very common), then he will hit you hard when you do it knowing you can hurt him if you're using a scorchstone for one of your items that move. So you heal 50HP but only get 30HP out of it. Not quite that good.

Safe healing is when you actually count your opponents damage. You foresee he does 20HP average. He may freeze or mudball you. Lets say if he manages to pull a freeze somehow when you didn't freeze him back, he could do 45HP, 15 HP when he froze you, (while freezing you can't attack hard. and 30 HP for a major hit at you while you're frozen. So, when you're at 50HP, it would be a good idea to heal. On the bad side, if you heal that early in a fight you waste a good heal and cannot heal anymore. On the up-side, if you have a bona fide muffin-thrower on the other side, you could effectively make him waste his muffins on you and escape it, then strike back once he's out of muffins.

Last minute healing comes when you're really out of HP. It's usually done just when your opponent thinks you're finished soon. You come up with a coupe de grace, and heal back when you're like at 10HP or so. Downside, it's way too risky, especially if you get frozen or get hit real hard. Upside, it takes skill no doubt, but you could focus more on attack and heal only when it's absolutely necessary. This is best if you have a good healing ability. Use that for the last minute healing just when your opponent thinks you have no more healing to do since you probably used the scorchstone earlier.

For more on the finer tactics on healing, see below at surprise tactics.

Freezing

Well, for freezing, you have 2 choices, heal first to protect against the multiple freeze and muffin guys, or freeze once and save the next freeze for your coupe de grace. The first choice is for safe playing, usually you freeze first with a hypno helmet, and your opponent freezes you too, then you freeze the next round after getting unfrozen with fiery gaze. Usually your opponent, if he's real sneaky, will freeze you too, so whadya expect, both get frozen together and he wastes his freeze so he can't throw his muffins at you when you're frozen.

The second alternative is to freeze the first round (of course I've rarely met a player who does do that), and he freezes you. That's one freeze down both sides. Point to note is that ability freezes are now limited to ONE time. The next ability freeze very seldom works after that. I've yet to see a person now who can use fiery gaze and diamond dust in the same battle. Anyway, next move, you don't freeze. Instead protect your HP; heal, or use a Downsize-PP. This way your opponent probably freezes you, and he may hit you big time, so that's the risk. If he isn't packing muffins, he may take you down low, but he can't double freeze and hit you twice now since he wasted a freeze first round. So, now, you have a freeze handy to use on him and he can't freeze you back. 

Here we have the shock techniques, basic methods to take an opponent by surprise. Some have been mentioned a little earlier already.

1. Second healing

2. Second Freeze

3. Downsize-PPs and Thyoras Tears

4. Surprise attack

Ok, we went through the second healing bit already. It's usually a healing style someone won't expect. If you've got a good healing ability it helps. One tip; it is said that the more often you use a healing ability the better it gets, like drain-life, so use it as much as you want on one-players to get it warmed up.

The second healing is usually when you've used your scorchstone already and someone won't usually expect anymore healing to be done. The downside is that healing abilities don't do more than 30HP unless you've got really high HP to begin with (a 450HP pet could do up to 200HP healing with a level 1 heal ability, but that won't happen to lower stat pets). So you're both low on HP, your opponent thinks you're not going to heal anymore, and he whacks you. Hard. Then you heal back and you hit him too. Chances are if he doesn't heal back but you do, he's the goner. Problem is, he may still kill you if you don't heal back enough. So, the trick would be to defend and heal, to at least cut down the damage. Downside again, defending while attacking means you don't get much damage done.

A more secure thing to do would be Downsize-PPs. Thyoras Tears if you got the $$$. They protect you against every single damage, so you get away with 0 HP damage. Cool? They're one use, so use them when you need it or pack more than one. So, a surprise move with one of these things is when you got your opponent down low, scorchstones and abilities are long gone, and it's a matter of who does more damage or a draw. Except when you pull out a Downsize and attack, he can throw all the muffins in the world at ya and it won't even leave a scratch. While of course a good whack will take him down and you don't need to use abilities, so of course a berserk or fierce attack will help. Lots.

Surprise attacks here refer to a secret weapon that causes more damage than your average. Say, you're hitting him with two dual expert bows and are leaving 30HP damage on him. If you do have a tiki bag handy, or a muffin, it helps for a surprise. Plus the opponent would never expect a pre-packed muffin, or would be nervous if he just discovered you made a tiki bomb. 

To use a surprise attack weapon, this is where damage estimation and that left-over freeze helps. You know how much damage you do at minimum (one weapon and a hypno, or two weapons but with a low attack 'cause of using fiery gaze not fierce attack), then hit him while freezing. While the hapless opponent is frozen, whack him with the best you got. Example:

1: Your opponent is at 50HP with no freezes. You do 20 average, 40 with your best standard weapon and a tiki bomb. 

2: You hit with two weapons and gaze fierily. Damage done is 15 HP only. Opponent's frozen.

3: Go at it full blast, berserk if you have it, fierce attack if you don't or your power bar ran out (berserk needs the power bar). Your average is 40HP. 

4: You do 40HP damage. The guy is frozen after all and cannot defend or heal. That was the point. You clean him out nicely. At 50HP I don't think he was expecting that.

Of course, you need to know what moves your opponent is going to make at you so you can counter-attack accordingly. Don't you hate it when you use a downsize and your opponent heals and freezes you instead. Or when you throw a muffin and he pulls out a Thyoras Tear? 

There is no tried-and-true was of reading your opponent's mind. No, internet doesn't help with trying to read body-language either. But here are points to watch out for when you're fighting.

• Opponent's HP level

• Power Bar level

• Whether freezes have been used

• Whether scorchstone has been used

• Number of weapons used

• Maximum damage

The opponent's HP level, well, everyone looks at that right? Yup, but I mean in the sense of damage estimate. See above if you don't know what I mean.

Power bar levels determine the number of abilities that the opponent can use, plus it determines the strength of berserk attacks. Berserk attacks with some power bar level left is ok, but when the power bar runs out, berserk significantly weakens. 

More on freezes is mentioned above. Well, you need to know whether your opponent has used up all freezes. The 3rd freeze is a wild card and may or may not happen. Chances are it won't and it'll be wasting power to try it. So, if your opponent has that last freeze left, be careful, keep HPs at optimum level i.e. watch his damage estimate and make sure you're out of range from being frozen and wiped out with muffins.

Always do try to count the weapons being used. There will definitely be one hypno helmet and a scorchstone, so that leaves 6. Check out how many weapons are used to do the main damage. Might be 2 usually it. That leaves a minimum of 4 wild card weapons. They may be Downsizes, muffins, a defence weapon like a sponge shield. If the opponent starts using one-use items, start counting. It'll be safe to take a risk if you can count out all the one-use items which are used up, so he can't pull out a Downsize or something.

Maximum damage is the big thing. Carefully determine what the average damage is being done to you, without defence. That's the raw maximum damage you're taking. It helps to stay some HP above this line at all times. You never know when the next freeze or muffin is coming your way unless you counted out all the weapons your opponent has.

That's basics for predictions. The rest is mostly intuition and observing your opponent's fighting style, which is next.

I'll list out a few basic fighting styles, they can be customized to personal preferences. These are quite standard.

• Blitzkrieg

• Freezer

• Medic

• B-52

• Defender

Blitzkrieg is a pretty funny name, but what I mean by that is that you simply whack fulll blast. Weapons of choice: stuff that do tons of icons in damage, but don't defend. Movement of choice is berserk or fierce attack. They simply go out to do full damage, and take risks with HP so that they can do optimum damage. Predictions for these fighters usually involve the best time to hit a guy. One such time is during the opponent's healing. He can't attack, can't defend, and you waste out his scorchstone.

Freezer. Like the name suggests, freeze first. Or not necessarily. They also save a freeze at times, and freeze you when you're low on Hp to stop you from healing, then wipe you out. A good strategy for a quick battle and stops the opponent from counter-attacking.

Medics are people who heal lots. Okay, not just scorchstones, they spend most of their abilities on heal, healing vapor, restore, drain life, etc. They just keep healing back, and sacrifice attack strength (can't use fierce attack when you're using abilities) for the sake of keeping HPs at a safe level.

B-52... bombers!! They waste one or two moves to create snowballs, muffins, tiki bombs, clockwork grundos, then unleash them full strength. A smart bomber will not use the bombs immediately after making them though. That's too predictable. A smart trick is to save them, keep the opponent on their toes, make them waste a Downsize even, then smack the bomb at them for major damage. Downside, wastes a turn. Upside, K.O. in 2 rounds.

Defenders are people who also sacrifice attack strength for safety. Except its a safer way than healing, you just stop damage. Weapons of choice are those that do not do much icon damage but block a lot of icons coming your way. Weapon of choice, thyoras tear and Downsize-PP, G-staff, Pear of Disintegration. 

Ok, to clarify things, here's an example of the above styles combined:

If you have queries, ask me. This isn't like a fool-proof guide to fighting. It's supposed to help those who have no idea what weapons are for.