Bruises require an adjacent ball to be popped while touching them twice before they can be cleared, breaking apart colors and slowing down your opponent. Earlier we talked about strike composition, as defined solely by combo size. Those numbers and pictures still apply, but adding bruises will immensely improve the staying power of your strikes.
How Do I Make Bruises?- When you have your strike ready to go, stick a few balls to the bottom of one of your charged groups before firing.
- For every ball that drops off your screen during a strike, one ball in your strike pattern will be turned into a bruise instead.
- To see it in action, click RIGHT HERE to see some strikes that incorporate bruising.
- There is a maximum number of bruises, topped off at 50% of your strike's volume.
Three Group Combo = 9 Bruises
Four Group Combo = 13 Bruises
Five Group Combo = 13 Bruises
Six Group Combo = 18 Bruises
- 4/5 groups have the same max bruises for a reason! We'll discuss.
What Do Bruises Do?
Two things! Bruises force your opponent to spend more time working through your strikes, preventing them from clearing the entire attack in three or balls. That would be reason enough to use them in their own right, but the drop-off balls sent to create bruises also increase the Width of your strikes.
Here's another table from Boothook's Strike Calculations. If we look at the three-group combo, an attack with up to three bruises keeps the standard size (2 high, 5 wide) (See my post on Strike Structure for more details). However, adding a fourth drop-off ball causes the width of the strike to increase by three (now 2 high, 8 wide). Furthermore, adding an eighth drop-off ball causes the strike to be max width (2 high, 9 wide).
Going down the chart, eight seems to be the magic number. Though all of these strikes can handle more bruises, all combos up to six groups will increase to maximum width with only eight added drop-off balls!
To break it down, that unbruised Three Group Combo (2 high, 5 wide) goes from this ten ball strike seen here:
To this strike instead (2 high, 9 wide, 9 bruises), with a total volume of eighteen balls. (Bruise location chosen randomly.)
It's the final width after calculating the drop-off modifier that dictates how many bruises a strike can handle. (For a 3 group combo, 18/2=9 bruises max.) Since 4 and 5 group strikes are both 3 rows high, they are identical once you reach eight drop-off balls, as seen here in a max-bruised strike.
So, if you're bruising, don't bother with charging a fifth group! Maybe you can power through and get that sixth group for a strike 4 high and 9 wide with as many bruises as you can manage (for a 6 group combo, up to 18), but the larger strike is generally outweighed by the time investment and risk involved.
But What About My Hammer?
Ah, right, the hammer! Some bludgeons (Hammer, Skull Rings, Blackjack), have bruises pre-built into the pattern. These bruises will show up even on strikes without any drop-off balls, and theoretically can cause max bruised strikes to contain even more bruises. (In the hammer's case, a max-bruised 4 group strike can have up to 20 bruises!) It's not a definite, though, since there is an even chance for a drop-off ball to assign itself to a piece of your pattern that was already bruised, overlapping and essentially wasting it.
Four Group Combo = 13 Bruises
Five Group Combo = 13 Bruises
Six Group Combo = 18 Bruises
- 4/5 groups have the same max bruises for a reason! We'll discuss.
What Do Bruises Do?
Two things! Bruises force your opponent to spend more time working through your strikes, preventing them from clearing the entire attack in three or balls. That would be reason enough to use them in their own right, but the drop-off balls sent to create bruises also increase the Width of your strikes.
Here's another table from Boothook's Strike Calculations. If we look at the three-group combo, an attack with up to three bruises keeps the standard size (2 high, 5 wide) (See my post on Strike Structure for more details). However, adding a fourth drop-off ball causes the width of the strike to increase by three (now 2 high, 8 wide). Furthermore, adding an eighth drop-off ball causes the strike to be max width (2 high, 9 wide). Going down the chart, eight seems to be the magic number. Though all of these strikes can handle more bruises, all combos up to six groups will increase to maximum width with only eight added drop-off balls!
To break it down, that unbruised Three Group Combo (2 high, 5 wide) goes from this ten ball strike seen here:
To this strike instead (2 high, 9 wide, 9 bruises), with a total volume of eighteen balls. (Bruise location chosen randomly.)
It's the final width after calculating the drop-off modifier that dictates how many bruises a strike can handle. (For a 3 group combo, 18/2=9 bruises max.) Since 4 and 5 group strikes are both 3 rows high, they are identical once you reach eight drop-off balls, as seen here in a max-bruised strike. So, if you're bruising, don't bother with charging a fifth group! Maybe you can power through and get that sixth group for a strike 4 high and 9 wide with as many bruises as you can manage (for a 6 group combo, up to 18), but the larger strike is generally outweighed by the time investment and risk involved.
But What About My Hammer?
Ah, right, the hammer! Some bludgeons (Hammer, Skull Rings, Blackjack), have bruises pre-built into the pattern. These bruises will show up even on strikes without any drop-off balls, and theoretically can cause max bruised strikes to contain even more bruises. (In the hammer's case, a max-bruised 4 group strike can have up to 20 bruises!) It's not a definite, though, since there is an even chance for a drop-off ball to assign itself to a piece of your pattern that was already bruised, overlapping and essentially wasting it.
