Maiden and Spell/Lich of Flowers
Profile
A monster that recently appeared in the Kingdom of Stars. She happily follows her new queen's orders, protecting the kingdom from outsiders.
She has trouble walking, and thus rides around slowly on a flower. Her attacks focus on a combination of non-moving flower bullets, and her butterfly thralls that attack the opponent of their own accord.
Overview
Lich is a setplay trap character. She's slow and she starts out a bit weak, but any down time to establish yourself quickly snowballs into significant stage control. You need to be good at micro to worm your way out of tough situations since you're the slowest character and there's things you just aren't able to macro out of, but as the stage opens up and you can set up more butterfly thralls, you can get your opponent being shot at from all sides with flowers slowly crushing them into the corner.
Move Speed: 8.75px/frame
Focus Speed: 5px/frame
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|
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Movelist
Basic Shot
 Dimi Life
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|---|---|---|
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| Shot Type | Startup | Cooldown |
| Minor | 180ms | |
| Radius | Speed | Angle |
| 21px | 30px | -6 / 0 / 6 |
| Move Speed Multiplier | Move Lock | Direction Lock |
| 200ms | ||
| Action Lock | Combo Time | Invincibility Time |
| Attack, 800ms | ||
| Lich's basic shot is a bit weird in that she has to stop entirely to use it, although the period of stopped movement isn't very long. On its own, it's not very good at all, but it compliments her butterfly thralls well and its spread makes it pretty alright as a melee tool or to close the gaps in your setups. Not exactly the strongest shotgun skill, but effective. | ||
Wide Shot
 Lat Life
Combo
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|---|---|---|
  
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| Shot Type | Startup | Cooldown |
| Major | 600ms > 700ms > 800ms (combo) | |
| Radius | Speed | Angle |
| 1: 230px / 460px, 2: 690px / 920px, 3: 1150px / 1280px, 4: 1510px, 1740px (Rings) 1: 27px / 29px, 2: 31px / 33px, 3: 36px / 38px, 4: 40px / 42px (Flowers) |
1: 25.71N + 12.86 / 24N + 12, 2: 22.5N + 11.25 / 21.18N + 10.59, 3: 20N + 10 / 18.95N + 9.47, 4: 18N + 9 / 17.14N + 8.57 |
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| Move Speed Multiplier | Move Lock | Direction Lock |
| 25%, 500ms | 125ms | |
| Action Lock | Combo Time | Invincibility Time |
| Attack, 300ms | 700ms | |
| Lich pauses briefly to set up a dense flower field around her. Each use sets out two rings, with each further use up to the fourth setting out an additional two, up to four casts in a row for 8 total rings; each ring has a radius 230px higher past the last with one more flower along it, from 14 up to 21. Flowers in later rings are slightly larger than flowers in earlier rings.
Lat Life flowers will persist for 14 seconds on their own, although setting Lat Life will destroy all Lat Life flowers up to 100px beyond where the outer ring spawns upon use. Do note however that inner radius for the destruction ring on wide2 and beyond is only about 20px under the inner edge of the first ring in the pair, allowing you to move between casts and not erase what you've already done, or in some cases hold on to older flowers that were outside wide1's destruction ring but inside wide2's as a result of you moving forward between casts; you can use this to create strange patterns to keep your opponent on their toes. For density, only the first two rings are notably good, but applying the second set can also snipe people who are trying to move laterally to avoid butterflies, and the tiny bit of space control for those beyond that isn't bad for when you can't get close enough to set wide1s in an area but still have butterflies shooting through. |
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Offensive Special
 Butterfly Thrall
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|---|---|---|
 
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| Shot Type | Startup | Cooldown |
| Major | 680ms | 4s |
| Radius | Speed | Angle |
| 60px | Straight Left/Right (Unfocused) Self-Target (Focused) |
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| Move Speed Multiplier | Move Lock | Direction Lock |
| 100% 300ms | ||
| Ah... Friends. Butterfly thralls spawn in 400ms after use and are active for the next 20.8 seconds, shooting a shot similar to Lich's basic shot every 1.8 seconds, while also being a sizeable lingering hitbox on their own. In normal conditions, you can have out up to four at once; using the move when you already have four butterflies out will erase the oldest living one. While it takes experience to reliably get your butterflies in the right positions without being predictable, simply having as many as possible is also a sort of a boon, and newer players are encouraged to make sure they're using the most more or less on cooldown before worrying about things like delaying stuff for better position or better sync. It's an incredible move and they're incredible friends.
Using Butterfly Thrall while focused will set the butterfly directly on top of you. This can allow a bit more control when the opponent is cirling you as well as making melee defense more consistent; it's also good for setting stuff further back on purpose, either to set it in corners and get them coming from offscreen after the stage shrinks or to set them back in advance of expecting certain opponents to use their defensive abilities to get onto the other side of wall setups. In most cases, though, the unfocused version is better just for getting it a bit closer to the opponent and for maintaining full movement speed while setting up. Also, using Butterfly Thrall can overwrite movespeed mults with more duration than it, and is great to do out of Lat Life to replace its 25% slow time with a much nicer 85% one. Lat Life is good, but not the safest thing, and Butterfly Cancelling it drastically improves it, especially if you want to go into Wide2 or Wide3. When using gameplay mods in the silly settings menu, the maximum number of butterflies is modified by changing the cooldown modifier; for instance, setting cooldowns to refresh three times faster lets you set a max of 12 butterflies before they'll be erased. |
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| Butterfly Shot
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|---|---|---|
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| Shot Type | Startup | Cooldown |
| Minor | 580ms | |
| Radius | Speed | Angle |
| 30px | 27px | -6 / 0 / 6 |
| Action Lock | Combo Time | Invincibility Time |
| Action: 1750ms | ||
| The Butterfly Thrall's attack. After firing, it is exactly like Lich's basic shot, except 1.5 times larger and 10% slower; however, it is on a spawn delay of 400ms (indicated by a circle appearing and shrinking in on the butterfly, reaching the center just as it fires). It fires every 1.8 seconds starting from .6 seconds after the Butterfly Thrall spawns in (with the 400ms lead time, the first volley gaining its hitbox exactly one second after the Butterfly Thrall gets its hitbox), and will be fired 12 times before it despawns if not overwritten.
Butterfly Thralls do not have targeting arrows, and fire exactly towards where the opponent was when the shot first began, though as a result of the spawn delay it still isn't particularly accurate on its own. You need a lot of friends to come together if you want to take down your enemies. Unlike the function of certain similar effects, the shot will not spawn if the Butterfly Thrall is overwritten or erased within the 400ms spawn delay period. |
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Defensive Special
 Novi Life
Cast
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|---|---|---|
  
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| Shot Type | Startup | Cooldown |
| Major | Casting (min 100ms) + 610ms | 8.5s |
| Radius | Speed | Angle |
| 250 min, 1075 after 10s Casting | Self-Target | |
| Move Speed Multiplier | Move Lock | Direction Lock |
| 10% Casting (min 100ms) 120% 430ms |
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| Action Lock | Combo Time | Invincibility Time |
| 0 Casting (min 100ms) 800ms Minor |
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| The flower. I mean, she has other flowers, but this is The flower. Charge it up to grow it by 82.5px per second (max 10s), and release to gain 800ms of inv, devour all minor and even major projectiles within it, and gain massive stage control that will linger for 17 seconds. Oh, and releasing it also gives you a brief speed boost, too, when you need to get to the next area to set up, or to rush in with your invincibility time to threaten a melee attack and force your opponent out of position, giving you the space to, yes, set more butterflies in opportune places.
This is the only move in the game that can delete major projectiles. The only move that is capable of direct damage that it doesn't delete is Stormbeast's charging bolt strike, while she's still holding on to it and prying it out of your flower's hungry maw. (This does mean, yes, it will eat enemy butterflies and flowers. The lich mirror match is WILD.) The flower is the major reason why Lich's setplay is so strong. Growing a flower uncontested while your opponent is knocked down and unable to move can quickly turn a shaky match in your favor. Excellent move overall. |
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Strategy
as you get more experienced with not always just immediately reusing butterfly, you can delay it by specific amounts to tune its shot synchronization to your other butterflies. For instance, delaying the recast by a bit under 400ms will sync it with the previous butterfly such that your shots are as far away from each other in time as possible. Getting different butterflies to fire at once or to reduce time between shots can open up new routes for defense and attack.
Setting up your flowers and growing them right means you can sometimes have a wall of flowers from the top of the screen to the bottom. Walking the flowers forward to pin people loses its efficacy in high level play, but even against strong opponents making this sort of wall is still an integral part of playing to time - there's no need to advance into danger when the wall on the other side will push the opponent into your flowers, after all.
In a lot of matchups, going for solid walls is punishable, since the opponent will know where you need to be to replace your flowers, and so the best thing you can do with your flowers becomes not to create solid walls but to replenish pivots and regions you can move through faster than your opponent can. With that kind of space established, you can move around and put more butterflies in more areas, attacking from more angles, and slowly choke the opponent out.
As the walls close in, you will sometimes find yourself with occasion to put a butterfly into a corner that is soon to be offscreen, where your opponent can't simply move around it and it will be firing from an angle extremely awkward for them. This isn't worth dropping your positioning to intentionally set up, since it does requires you to run against a corner, but if the situation comes up organically it is always extremely funny.
mino and arcea are asleep post mnsComfy
