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Signal Skills
May 15, 2026 at 06:09 PM
Soften the May 2026 developer stream observation paragraph: the specific tag-in animation claim has not been verified against the replay body, so the section is hedged back to general pace-of-loop framing.
Signal Skills are the payoff moves in DragonSword: Awakening's combo system. Chaining them from stacked Status Ailments and Active Skills is how the game produces its biggest single-hit damage, and they are the mechanical backbone of the tag-team structure Hound13 calls Switching Signals.
Hound13 uses "Switching Signals" to describe the way Heroes rotate through a combo. On the Steam store page the mechanic is written as: "Heroes weave in and out of battle in endless combo chains through Switching Signals. Build your own team with diverse combinations and craft your ultimate stylish combat."
In practice that means a Signal Skill is triggered by switching to another Hero while the target is still under the previous Hero's ailment. The incoming Hero tags in with their Signal Skill, the target stays locked, and the combo keeps going. Because every Hero has a different ailment, a well-built roster can pass a target back and forth between several different Signal Skills without breaking the chain.
A clean Signal Skill cast is the closer of a full combo. Hound13's public framing describes the loop as:
Stack Status Ailments on the target with basic attacks and ailment moves.
Chain Active Skills that extend the ailment window and build toward the switch.
Close with a devastating Signal Skill from another Hero via Switching Signals.
Used in isolation, Signal Skills are still strong; used as the end of a properly-stacked chain and threaded through multiple Hero switches, they are the game's main damage ceiling.
The May 7, 2026 developer live stream and its archived replay showed Switching Signals in motion across short combat slices for the first time outside a tagged trailer. The material shows tag-in animations and the overall pace of the Switching Signals loop, broadly consistent with the store-page framing of weaving in and out of battle in endless combo chains. Specific names for the Signal Skills shown, exact tag-in windows, the relative timing of incoming and outgoing Hero animations, and any visible Signal Skill gauge UI have not been broken out yet and should be treated as observational rather than canon until Hound13 documents them.
Named individual Signal Skills, exact charge mechanics (whether the skill is gated by ailment state alone or by a separate gauge), invulnerability frames on the switch-in, and any visible Signal Skill UI bar have not been publicly detailed by Hound13. Expect these to be broken down alongside future Hero reveals and the Steam Next Fest demo in June 2026.
Status Ailments - the trigger condition the switch feeds off.
Active Skills - the mid-combo layer that sets up the Signal Skill.
Heroes - full roster. Each Hero brings a distinct Signal Skill tied to their ailment.
