Virtual-On Oratorio Tangram/Advanced Techniques
Universal techniques for all characters
Attack manipulation
Center Weapon Half-cancels, continued
When half-cancelling CW in some cases no part is lost and gauge consumption is reduced: there is no reason not to half-cancel. In rare cases you might get a very different attack.
Decide on the side to fire depending on the situation. If you know one half will likely miss you can choose to fire only the other and so on.
Example 1: Raiden LTCW ‘Laser net’ covers a wide area of the stage. If you think the enemy will only move towards the right side then fire that side only.
Example 2: Cypher cCW ‘Force’ fires out from the sides away from cypher. The right side will angle better towards an opponent moving to the left, as the left half is more likely to meet in a 90 degree angle (and miss).
Low gauge dash attacks
For dash attacks that fire multiple times, the amount of shots fired can be manipulated by firing at low weapon gauges. Or for some VRs by performing the attack late into the dash. The amount of shots will be much lower, but safety of the attack is significantly increased. In some cases the multiple shots dont serve a purpose for damage (if one hits, the rest do not connect) and in these cases this technique is particularly useful. Your opponent will also be confused as to the varying recovery time of your attacks.
Immediate 180 degree turn air dash attack
Air dash before your jump finishes turning towards your opponent. Then input an attack on the first frame after starting an air dash to immediately attack behind yourself.
Niche related technique: in theory possible to air dash cancel with less recovery by cancelling the airdash on the same frame as you would attack. See Porcupines analysis.
Movement & Aiming techniques
Crouch-walking
Walking input can be ‘stored’ by holding crouch. For many VR using this increases walking speed, as for some reason crouch-walking makes you move at forward walk speed in all directions. Has a large effect for the Apharmd series.
If you hold crouch right after starting a walking projectile attack, the speed of the attack will also be affected.
LAN-dash - aiming neutral and melee attacks with rotating airdash cancel
Do a horizontal airdash, input rotation and hold crouch to maintain input. Cancel the dash and hold the turbo button to gain additional turbo rotation. You turn rapidly in midair while staying mobile, quickly strafing to a side and preparing an aimed attack. Can be used to aim things like Laser attacks for VR that have access to them.
This is also used heavily for melee play. You can evade an attack rotating in the air and immediately melee the target on landing, without using jump cancels to regain lock-on.
Shot displacement
Combine walk & rotation inputs to get animation states where the tip of characters weapon is in different positions to displace the starting point of RW and CW shots. Mainly effective for Temjin and Specineff. This technique tends to get used more in Virtual-On Force.
LJ - Low Jump
Perform an air dash on the first possible frames after starting a jump. You will air dash on ground level. Can be used to reduce the recovery of air-dash attacks, but is very difficult to perform. This technique is rarely used and is much more common in Virtual-On Force. One of few techniques that are easier to do on twin-stick (because the forwards input overrides jump input, no button needs to be released).
Animation/Recovery cancels
Projectile attack walk cancel
Many attacks performed in neutral position can be cancelled immediately by walking. In some cases the walking should be stopped by inputting rotation for a frame right after (see below). Projectile attack rotation cancel
Mainly effective on crouch attacks. Attack dependent.
Landing recovery attack cancel
Landing recovery can be cancelled into attacks. Some characters have attacks with very low recovery or ability to dash/jump cancel and you can reduce the landing recovery.
Landing recovery quickstep cancel
If landing in melee range input a direction and either turbo button + attack the moment you land to quickstep immediately. This does not require the normal quickstep timing. Direction + turbo is enough. Direction can be held beforehand. Important skill to learn for melee combat.
Sugihara cancel
Cancel ground dash attack recovery into quickstep by inputting direction + turbo + attack. Direction can be held beforehand. Quickstep can be cancelled into guard, dash, jump etc. immediately. This cancel enables you to recover from dash attacks a little faster and is sometimes necessary over jumping for example against melee attacks which need to be immediately guarded. Can be described as Ground dash attack recovery quickstep cancel.
Quickstep melee variant: enter another attack input (LW, RW or CW) after the previous command. It’s a little faster if you use another trigger for each input.
Walk stop using rotate (Rotation cancel) - allows turbo attacks from walk cancels
Going from walk to neutral doesn’t stop instantly. As such you cant perform turbo attacks right away from Walk Cancels. To get around this, it’s possible to stop the walk in two frames by rotating for a split-second. For example walk -> input rotate for 1 frame -> neutral.
You can start with walk + rotation as long as you end in only rotation. Movement must be stopped for at least a moment while rotating.
Moomin cancel
cLTW -> ground dash cancel -> cLTW -> ground dash cancel -> cLTW.
Perform crouching left turbo attacks while dash cancelling their recovery. Used with certain VRs like Apharmd S, Grys-Vok.
When performing on Twin Stick in a horizontal dash direction the stick on the opposite side can be left in a crouch position. When done to the right 6-4 cLTW -> 6-6 GD -> 6-4 cLTW etc.
Damage reduction techniques
Ranged damage reduction
If there is a 1-2 frame window to act just before the opponent hits you you do not have time to evade. Input a crouching projectile attack at this moment and you will take reduced damage and knockdown. If it’s a projectile attack that’s useful in neutral you can use this as a kind of option select. If the attack startup can be cancelled into jump or dash, you can keep the armor active for a few frames and so on.
Dash attack & landing punish damage reduction
If there is a 1-2 frame window to act just before the opponent hits you you do not have time to evade. However you can a input crouching melee (crouching LW/CW/RW) to put yourself into maximum damage reduction (about 50% for average VR). If you can judge that there is no chance to evade this technique allows from take significantly reduced damage from ‘late’ punishes. You can mash the crouch melee input to cover multiple timings. In theory if the enemy hits you with a light melee attack, they can continue into an extended combo due to reduced knockdown value. But that requires extreme awareness. Lightweight VRs are more likely to knocked down regardless.
Close Combat techniques
Auto-guard
Walk on the ground and hold the crouch input. Guard will be stored along with the walking movement. Guard will come out if opponent enters melee range. Stops working after about two seconds.
Quick reversal
From recovery or guard: quickstep -> guard reversal melee. Fast counter technique that remains evasive and may bypass the opponents guard. eg. Sugihara or landing cancel (explained above) -> guard reversal.
Approach cancellation (A-cancel)
During the approach of a standard melee (ie. standing CW melee) input a crouching melee of another weapon and immediately release the crouch input while holding the weapon down. Crouching melee is not visible and Standing melee will come out instead. This gives a way to cancel a standing melee into another standing melee. Lets you cancel standing melee attacks into others without using other actions inbetween. Useful to chain from a weapon that has a long engage range to one that has a faster attack animation.
Character specific techniques
Rowing - High speed walking & air movement
High speed storage
Massively increase movement speed by locking your acceleration in place between movement directions. Possible directions are character specific.
9-6 rowing: Temjin, Cypher, Angelan, Stein-Vok
3-6 rowing: Cypher, Fei-Yen (lower speed), Stein-Vok
3-2 rowing: Raiden, Fei-Yen, Stein-Vok
9-3 rowing: Grys-Vok
6-9 rowing: Angelan
For temjin, input movement direction 9 then 6 and immediately hold guard. You can hold the first direction indefinitely. The only timing required is pushing crouch right after switching to the second direction. Acceleration gets locked with the crouch input.
By mirroring the inputs you can do the same techniques to the left. Can be performed while walking on the ground, or falling from the air.
Advanced rowing
Rowing can also be added to various other actions. By doing the inputs right before a jumping or crouching attack you can add the rowing speed to the attack, extending the row to those actions. By finishing the row input right after starting a walking attack you can row during those as well.
In the air rowing can be buffered at any point. For example it can be buffered during an air dash, where you hold crouch before even ending the dash. Rowing comes out once you start falling.
‘Rowing’ / Old-school ‘infinite’ acceleration
6-3 alternation with Angelan
9-6 alternation with Grys-Vok (lower speed), Stein-Vok
8-9 alternation with Grys-Vok (lower speed), Stein-Vok
Mash between 6 and 3 directions constantly to build up acceleration. This can be buffered at any point during attack / animation recoveries. Angelan can move at crazy speeds using this. Can be combined with the diagonal forwards row she has for even more acceleration or a quick direction change.
‘Skating’ - rowing during dash cancel animations
Rarely used. Buffer a row input before the end of a dash. You will row during the dash cancel. To avoid using Vertical Turn, don’t let your movement input go to neutral in the dash. For example with Cypher, dash to direction 3. Now move direction to 6 and hold crouch for the rest of the dash. When you cancel the dash you will perform a very large step motion due to the increased speed.
