History GameBreaker / DynastyWarriors

* Zhou Yu's while-running attack in ''3'', ''4'', and ''5'', by far the most powerful of its kind, is almost as exploitable as Ma Chao and Zhou Tai's equestrian shenanigans. He'll carve through swathes of enemies in a devastating multi-hit combo that dazes those struck and skyrockets his musou gauge with minimal risk. With a Wind Scroll and musou-bolstering items, making liberal use of this can be more effective than his actual moveset.

* Zhou Yu's while-running attack in ''3'', ''4'', and ''5'', by far the most powerful of its kind, is almost as exploitable as Ma Chao and Zhou Tai's equestrian shenanigans. He'll carve through swathes of enemies in a devastating multi-hit combo that dazes those struck and skyrockets his musou gauge with minimal risk. With a Wind Scroll and musou-bolstering items, making liberal use this can be more effective than his actual moveset.

** Zhou Yu's while-running attack in ''3'', ''4'', and ''5'', by far the most powerful of its kind, is almost as exploitable as Ma Chao and Zhou Tai's equestrian shenanigans. He'll carve through swathes of enemies in a devastating multi-hit combo that dazes those struck and skyrockets his musou gauge with minimal risk. With a Wind Scroll and musou-bolstering items, making liberal use this can be more effective than his actual moveset.

* In Dynasty Warriors 8, each type of weapon has a unique bonus ability. Boosts in attack and defense, being able to cancel into certain moves that would be otherwise impossible, and so on. And then we have the Halberd weapons. When switching into a Halberd, the player gains a HUGE attack bonus, doubles speed (like your character is on fast-forward) and makes an afterimage trail you all for 5 seconds. It may sound not that impressive, but during these 5 seconds you're so fast that you will be able to do two □, □, □, □ combos, wich will kill anyone nearby (filling your Musou and Rage gauges very fast) and deal incredible amounts of damage on officers. And when you switch off from your Halberd, you make a swipe attack that cuts throught all kinds of defenses and immunities (such as Lu Bu being immune to flinching at Hulao Gate) and stuns enyone nearby. By equiping two Halberds on your characters, you can keep the bonus for as long as you need, and keep enemy officers stunned while you tear their HP away. And to boot: you start the game with three Halberds and can equip them on anyone.

* Explosive Arrows. Because of the way bows work in the game, a player could take aim at an officer, fire a single arrow, and if the shot doesn't take the officer out immeidately, it ''will'' deal damage to any surrounding units to it. The only thing prohibitive about Explosive Arrows is this price (30,000 Gold each), and its Dispersive variant is even more expensive at 120k Gold per shot, and even this is alleviated if the player takes the time to farm gold. They become even more effective when combined with...

* Zhao Yun's C1 has startup invincibility, on top of having 5 item slots to make up for his mid-leveled Herbal Remedy on his Lv. 11 weapon; having the aforementioned setup with either Poison Orb or Blast Orb makes him be able to spam an unblockable C1 attack out of impunity to destroy generals and/or crowd control with ease; Yuan Shao works in a similar fashion with his C1 as well.

** Also in ''5'', Zhuge Liang goes from a low-tier to a top-tier mainly due to his new hard-multi-hitting jump charge that fills his Musou bar quickly, and his Musou now inflicting crumple state on his targets, causing them to take fully-unhampered-grounded damage on each beam shot. Added with his C1 and C6 gaining the unblockable properties of his C3, and you have a solid character who has great Musou fill.

* The "Steel/Death" element (lit. "Slay/Slash" in the Japanese/Asian versions) in ''[=DW3=]'' killed any non-officer (from the lowliest archer all the way up to ''Lu Bu's bodyguards'') automatically and could do heavy damage to officer characters (a percentage of their current health, regardless of your strength and their defense) while also having amazing musou fill rate on peon targets. Cao Cao, in particular, became nearly unstoppable with this; you had to set the difficulty to Hard to be challenged at all with him, especially if there were stages that required a bodyguard setup with him (since his C6 and other Steel/Death charge attacks had some notable startup). And Cao Cao's weapon with that said element was achieved in the Yellow Turban Rebellion stage, meaning it was difficult, but not impossible, to get it in the first stage of his story mode. You could then leave the game set on Hard and probably not be significantly challenged for the rest of his story. It was eventually toned down (as the Vorpal element in ''4'', Shadow element in ''5'' and so forth), but still very useful to this day.
* Also in ''Dynasty Warriors 3'' (and even up to ''5'' before it was changed in ''6''), to quote a certain [=YouTuber=], Gan Ning was capable of a "2 Musou Offense". His Musou Attack not only traveled a good distance, but inflicted so many hits at once that it could instantly break ''through'' guards (you saw that right, not break guards, break ''through'', thanks to its lingering hitboxes) to continue to deal damage for a solid amount. Even if you needed to learn to know how to control the Musou Attack, basically Gan Ning could just 4-shot any single general with 2 Musou Attacks, and he didn't even need Way of the Musou equipped either. ''4''-onwards had him literally going faster during the attack while also having a different animation that changed the hitbox, but it still didn't stop him one bit until others overshadowed him around ''5''.

* In [=DW7 Empires=], any characters with the ''Evil'' Main Fame are this, largely due to the fact that it gives you ample amounts of resource incomes and allows the use of ridiculously powerful Strategems. To name just a few: the Explosion Strategem can continuously blow away all approaching enemies and set bases on fire for a good 15 seconds, while the Poison Mist Strategem outright kills any surrounding enemies in less than 5 seconds under any difficulty. Ultimate Might, the crown jewel of the Evil Strategems, takes the cake by boosting your character attributes to insane levels that a few hits is enough to take down even the most fortified base, and anything the enemy throws at you will barely give you a scrath. Oh, and this effect lasts as long as you still have remaining Troop Strength.

** Cue ''8'' where its Switch Attack when fully charged procs elements. Not to mention, Switch Attacks are completely invincible (despite not being usable as reversals unlike Musou Attacks), are unblockable and will prevent the target(s) from using their Musou Attack to retaliate upon them getting hit. Add that together and when combined with Thunder, Slash and Explosive to be able to continuously fire it into a crowd in order have rapid guaranteed chances to insta-kill your targets (as it even makes the elemental procs ''themselves unblockable'', so no need for Cyclone) even in Ultimate Difficulty when enemy generals are powered up in Hyper Mode. The only downsides are that having too much attack speed on the weapon will cause the Switch Attack's hitboxes to move by too fast, and that sometimes the launch effect of the fully-charged Switch Attack won't result in much raw damage on its own without the elements, making proc'ing that spread-unblockable-instant-kill-damage requiring a bit of precision and some RNG at best.
* Sun Jian is obscenely broken in ''Advance'', thanks to the nice coverage on his moveset and his second charge having a VERY long combo chains (with each hits having a Super Effective Bonus) that makes killing officers easy. Furthermore, unlike most characters who have similarly overpowered offense (namely Xu Zhu, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei) and/or a similar moveset in general (Cao Cao and Liu Bei), Sun Jian has a standard movement speed, and an easy to control Musou that deals high damage. While a lot of characters can be a killing machine in ''Advance'' when you have their attributes maxed out, Sun Jian has a combination of traits that make him stand at the top as the best character in the game.

** The game is completely trivalized by putting any character on a Shadow horse, circle-strafing clockwise around enemy officers while spamming normal attacks on a weapon that has a long ranged one-sided horse attack or with the 360 degree Harp.

** Xun Yu in particular stands out as the most egregious example, as his Way of Life (Aide to Kings) not only comes with Threaten, but also the biggest stratagem success chance boost. You can forget fighting as soon as you get him (or any self-created character with the same Way of Life) and one territory, and just Threaten your way to unification. [[TruthInTelevision As one Tumblr blogger observed, many historians have said that the real life Xun Yu could've ruled the land himself if he wanted to thanks to his amazing administrative skills and overall brilliance.]]

* Zhang Jiao's Shaman Rod weapon in ''8''. Its C6 attack ends with a rolling fire wave in front of him that DESTROYS anyone caught in it. Even enemies wielding [[ElementalRockPaperScissors a weapon with the element the staff is at a disadvantage to]] will get stunned and burned for their trouble. And since it's a Dash weapon, it's best wielded by the most mobile characters in the game. Doing the combo and rapidly air-dashing out of crowds makes the game RIDICULOUSLY easier. It even procs elements, so you can even run and elemental setup on it to bypass Hyper Officers' defenses.

* The "Steel/Death" element (lit. "Slay/Slash" in the Japanese/Asian versions) in ''[=DW3=]'' killed any non-officer (from the lowliest archer all the way up to ''Lu Bu's bodyguards'') automatically and could do heavy damage to officer characters (a percentage of their current health, regardless of your strength and their defense). Cao Cao, in particular, became nearly unstoppable with this; you had to set the difficulty to Hard to be challenged at all with him, especially if there were stages that required a bodyguard setup with him. And Cao Cao's weapon with that said element was achieved in the Yellow Turban Rebellion stage, meaning it was difficult, but not impossible, to get it in the first stage of his story mode. You could then leave the game set on Hard and probably not be significantly challenged for the rest of his story. It was eventually toned down (as the Vorpal element in ''4'', Shadow element in ''5'' and so forth), but still very useful to this day.