Stance

Stance Mods are special mods exclusive to Melee weapons that provide bonuses and additional attack capabilities.

Similar to Aura mods, Stances can be slotted into a special Stance slot on melee weapons, and they increase a weapon's mod capacity. Stance mods of matching polarity with their slot will double their mod capacity bonus, while non-matching polarities will have reduced capacity bonus. Leveling up Stance mods increases the amount of additional mod capacity they provide, as well as unlocks additional Melee Combos for use.

Melee Combos
When equipped, Stances change a melee weapon's animation set, and unlocks the ability to perform Melee Combos that initiate different attack patterns with the weapon. Many Melee Combos allow weapons to perform attacks they are incapable of doing without Stances, like giving single-target melee weapons like the Skana the ability to hit multiple enemies. They may also enhance a melee weapon's attacks with special effects, from increasing the weapon's damage per hit, to 100% Status Effect procs, to enhancing mobility via lunges and jumps. Melee Combos are only available when a melee weapon is drawn, and cannot be performed via Quick Melee attacks when using a Primary or Secondary weapon.

Melee combos are initiated by inputting different sequential inputs of the Melee key (Default ) and various other keys, for example, where the key is tapped three times in succession, followed by tapping the  key before tapping  two more times. Many combos have a short window of time in which to input the next step of the combo to initiate it, often timed from a particular attack animation. Different weapons have different timings on when to input the next key, thus practice is required to determine a particular weapon's combo timing; i.e. a longsword may have a much tighter combo timing compared to a heavy weapon. Certain mods that improve attack speed like Fury can shorten this window, making the timing of combos more difficult.

An equipped Stance's Melee Combo list can be seen on the "Melee Combo" button underneath the weapon's Stance Slot in the Arsenal, or in "Melee Combos" under Options while in a mission. Many Stances have a single basic combo consisting of simply pressing the Melee Key in sequence, and 1 or 2 longer and more advanced combos requiring multiple timed inputs from different keys.

Stances
There are currently 45 available stances, which are divided among 22 different melee weapon types. Stances can only be used on the weapon type they are labeled for, i.e. a Sword Stance cannot be used on a Polearm, and vice versa.

Trivia

 * Introduced in Update 13 with the release of Melee 2.0.
 * Most stance cards have portraits set within a Dojo garden, with the Garden Arch decoration in the background.
 * Among stance mods equippable on weapons, the longest stance combos belong to Cleaving Whirlwind's Broken Bull  with having 9 inputs, and Eleventh Storm's Striking Thunder with having 8 inputs. The longest stance combo overall however belongs to the ability-exclusive Hysteria's Madness combo, at 10 inputs.