Million Arthur: Arcana Blood/System
Movement
You can block during airdashes.
Air backdashes are frame 1 invincible, can block after the invuln frames end. Ground backdashes are vulnerable on the first frame and are invincible after, making it lose to meaties.
You can air dash after a superjump, but not after a double jump.
If your airdash causes you to cross over your opponent, you will turn around at the end of the dash.
Air blocking restores an air movement action (e.g. you can airdash, airblock, then airdash again).
Dash momentum exists, similar to most anime fighters. Dashing before inputting a combo/blockstring will mitigate pushback and make tick throws possible.
Canceling a normal into a forward dash will lock you into the dash animation and is punishable on reaction. It can be normal/throw/special canceled on the later frames before you would normally be able to block. Only specific normals are forward dash cancelable.
Attack
Standard A, B, C chain routes.
Most normals can be canceled into specials, although there are some exceptions to that rule. D moves typically cannot be canceled into specials outside of EB, although they still count as normals.
Universal anti-air on 6C is air-unblockable and invulnerable to air attacks.
Autocombo on A buttons xN. Can be started with either 5A or 2AA. Will end with a Million Skill if meter is available. Generates more meter than manual combos at the cost of damage/proration. The last hit is the one that generates most of the meter, and it is normally considered a special move for canceling things.
Throws have 7f startup on the ground, and 5f startup in the air, 12f tech window. After a throw tech both players are at neutral advantage. The player who inputs throw earlier will remain in place and push the opponent back when teched. If both players input throw on the same frame, the pushback is small and will remain close range. When this happens there is a louder "pop" sound during the throw tech. Some characters can combo off of throw or use Enchant Boost Cancel (EBC) for a combo extension. Yamaneko's air throws cannot be EBC'd if an elemental bullet is used by the throw.
You gain +1 hitstun when the opponent is crouching.
Million Skills are 100-meter supers on special input + two attack buttons(excluding the D button).
Million Excalibur is a 200-meter super on 214 + two attack buttons(excluding the D button) with a cinematic on hit. Most have some invuln, although very few have it from the very first frame. Support knight mana recharges during the animation.
Recovery
Hold an attack button to recover in the air or on the ground. In the air no direction will have you tech upwards, while holding forward or back will have you tech in those directions. You have air movement options after air recovery. D can be held to not recover in the air, but recover on the ground on the first possible frame. Both air and ground recovery can be delayed by pressing the button later or not press a button at all to do a late wakeup on the ground. Late recovery will leave you open to extra attacks and OTG hits. After recovering you will be throw invincible for a short window, but pressing any attack will make you vulnerable to being thrown early.
Evasive Dash/Roll
Rolls are hit and projectile invincible, but are vulnerable to throws. Frames 1-26 are hit invincible, and 1-34 projectile invincible for all characters. Roll distance changes depending on the character, but is the same number of frames. You can cancel into burst at any time during this. At the cost of 100 meter, this roll can be done as a guard cancel in blockstun with 6A+B and is fully invincible. Because you can roll while crouching or moving backwards, a simple OS would be holding 1 or 4 and pressing A+B+C during blockstrings. With 100 meter you will Enchant Boost, but with less than 100 meter you will roll through gaps or tech throws.
Support Knights
At the beginning of a match, both players choose three Support Knights to act as assists. These are used by inputting 214 + A/B/C. On the HUD, A is the leftmost card, B is the middle, and C is the rightmost.
Each assist costs between 1-3 points, with the 5-point assist gauge starting the round at 0 and recharging throughout. When a point in the gauge is blue, it is available for use. If one is black or red, it is not. A Support Knight's card will be face-up in the HUD if it is available to use, and face-down if it is not.
Costs should be taken into heavy consideration when picking Support Knights. 1-costs are usable more frequently, but can only be cancelled into from normals. 2-costs can also be cancelled from specials and 3-costs can be cancelled from 100-cost supers(million skills).
Canceling attacks into an assist will cause the associated points to become red, which increases the time the gauge takes to recharge. The points will remain red for about 6 seconds after the opponent leaves hitstun. This means a combo must end in order for the gauge to start recovering. This red cooldown can be avoided by linking into an assist instead of canceling into it.
Assists can be cancelled into eachother and will not go into red cooldown. An assist must fully recover and disappear before being able to use it again.
Elements
Each character and Support Knight is associated with one of three elements: Fire, Ice, and Wind. Attacks using these elements have the following effects on hit:
Fire: Damage over time, extra damage is based on how many frames the opponent is on fire and is unscaled. This damage is not included in the damage totals shown ingame.
Ice: Extra hitstun
Wind: Health regeneration, is based on each move's hidden health regen value and IS scaled.
Additionally, each element has a counter element: After landing an attack of one element, landing one of its counter element is a guaranteed counter-hit, even in the middle of a combo! Most assists will gain additional properties when they get a counter element hit.
Fire is countered by Ice
Ice is countered by Wind
Wind is countered by Fire
Multiple successive attacks of the same element will cause a combo to start gaining bonus damage, up to double the original damage. Assists increase the damage relative to their cost, so a 1 mana assist will add 10% move damage, 2 mana adds 20%, and 3 mana adds 30%. This bonus is lost when an attack with a different or no element lands, or when the combo ends. The element multiplier is seen most often during Enchant Boost, which add elemental damage to all normals a character has, as a character usually only has access to elements through D-button attacks or Support Knights.
Enchant Boost
By pressing A+B+C in neutral, blockstun, or during a combo, 100 meter will be spent to enter a powered-up state comparable to Arcana Heart 3's Extend Force. All normals (but not specials or supers) become imbued with a character's associated element for the duration of the boost. normals on characters with no element (wildcat and koume) will copy the last element used (ex. EB ice assist into 5aa, both hits of the autocombo will have ice element). Characters will also be able to jump cancel all of their non-d normals(with a few exceptions) in this state. Additionally, the timer is completely stopped during Enchant Boost! Note that using Enchant Boost in the air does not restore air actions. Neutral and guard cancel Enchant Boost are punishable on block, but will knock back on hit. Cancelling an attack is +14 and does not knock back on hit, and the duration is heavily reduced. Attacks DO gain meter while in EB, making it very meter efficient in most cases. You can cancel into this from movement options like jumps, forward dash, and airdashes.
Limit Break
While Enchant Boost is available as a guard cancel option during blockstun, Limit Break acts as a more traditional "burst" mechanic. By pressing D and any other button simultaneously, you can interrupt by rising up a little bit and shooting out a burst of energy that can escape your opponent's combo! This will also extend your max meter to 300 (as opposed to 200), and you will gain 100 meter. If the burst connects with the opponent you will build an additional 0~100 meter depending on how much life you have left (100%~25% or less) Take care when using it, as you only have one burst per round. You cannot act after a burst until you touch the ground again, so if you are blocked or whiff it can be incredibly unsafe. You can cancel rolls, backdashes, and other movement options into burst.
Guts
Like some other anime games, this game has a damage scaling system where the less life the enemy has, the less damage they take. This value SEEMS universal between all characters, and scales to a minimum of 60% damage taken when the enemy is almost dead (Guts seems to stop increasing a bit before the enemy dies). Guts kicks in somewhere around 50% hp, but the exact point doesn't really matter because not much can be done to counteract it. Guts is calculated every time the enemy takes damage, so not only can the end of combos that started before guts kicked in be effected by it, but even multihitting moves will gradually lose some damage with each hit that connects. There are niche scenarios where a combo with more DoT fire damage will be the optimal choice only when guts scaling is heavier (since the fire ignores scaling), but it's generally not worth worrying about.
Scaling
While not much is known about exactly how scaling works at this time, the general assumption is that it is more or less the same as Arcana Heart. Each move will decrease the damage and hitstun done by every hit that comes after it for the rest of the combo by a set amount. Which move you start the combo with will typically have a large effect on how the combo as a whole scales. Using the same move more than once in a combo seems to have additional scaling penalties. While specific information on how exactly the scaling/proration system works is currently unavailable, all you really need to understand is that a lot of characters will have to change their combos slightly, or even do completely different combos, depending on what move they used to start them.
OTG/Crumple States
There are 2 main states the opponent can be in to allow OTG hits:
1. The opponent does not ground tech: you can get black beat ground hits to net a very small combo extension. These hits pop the opponent up into the air and they can recover quickly. To properly convert off of these hits usually requires canceling into an assist then getting an elemental counter to continue into an air series. It's often not worth it because the combo scaling is still in effect.
2. Certain moves will knock the opponent down face first and allow followup OTG hits to extend the combo without the opponent being able to recover. These hits will also pop the opponent up into the air, but they will not be able to recover as fast. It is possible to OTG twice in the same combo.
Certain moves will cause the opponent to enter a crumple state where they will be standing then collapse forward into an OTG state. While standing in this state the opponent is able to be comboed by throws, which is normally not possible. Two main ways to see this state are with CH Sorcery King assist or CH Nice Chin Chin assist.
Example of all 3 states being shown in one combo: Video
Infinite Blockstun Prevention
If a blockstring is heavily extended the blocker will flash white and pushback will be massively increased. This does not come up very often since the string has to be airtight and requires heavy assist use against characters that are not Snow White. Example: Video
Clashes
A clash will occur when two normals' hitboxes overlap eachother but do not connect with the hurtbox of either move. When the clash happens the point of contact will flash white and both players may cancel into anything. In practice this happens extremely rarely because you almost always come into contact with the opponent's hurtbox. Literally nobody is ready for it when it happens. Example: Video
