Virtual-On Oratorio Tangram/Cypher

RVR-42 Cypher
[サイファー]

Introduction

Virtuaroid with the highest class in air mobility in exchange for defense. Its high attack performance allows it to perform two attacks while dashing in midair, keeping opponents at bay with ease. You can deal great damage even to heavyweight opponents by hitting a rush attack in fighter form.

Character Traits

See Notation / Character Descriptions

Strengths

Weaknesses

Highest airdash mobility & ability to do two airdash attacks. Powerful spread projectile with neutral LW. Multiple low commitment attacks. Can throw out a heavy attack barrage in neutral. Mobility can disorient opponent and be used to rush down. Can also turtle using air mobility. Good at sniping recovery animations with airdash CW. Strong anti-air attacks. Air superiority. High melee attack reach. Solid character matchups. All are near even or in your favor with minor exceptions. ! Spread attack barrage can be made ambiguous using rotation and advanced movement. ! Advanced air movement makes jump attacks useful, opening more options.

Pixie character with very low health. Can die from 1-3 mistakes. Low ground dash speed. Low damage per hit unless using CW or melee (matchup dependant). Cannot afford to trade damage in most matchups, allowing the opponent some extra options. ? Low health and weak ground dash makes it somewhat hard to handle.

Commonly Used Attacks

See Notation / Common Attack Descriptions

Neutral projectile attacks

RW LW & cLW LTLW & cLTLW cCW ‘Force’ LTCW ‘Force’ cLTCW CW RTRW cRTRW cLTRW RTCW

Movement check, Chip Movement check, Spread pattern, Prediction,* Movement check, Spread,Interrupt,Anti-melee,* High damage, High homing Check, Piercing, High homing, Anti-melee Movement check (fast), Knockdown Erase, High homing, High damage Punish, Prediction, OTG Prediction, Piercing Interrupt, Anti-air knockdown, V-Armor removal >400 range only, High damage, High homing --*Erase on crouch variant--

Ground dash attacks

GD8: cCW GD9/8/7: cLW GD2: cCW ‘Force’ GD6/4: RW

Punish, High damage, Knockdown Chase, Interrupt, Erase, Anti-melee Anti-air (Anti-jump), High homing, High damage Multi-hit, Anti-melee

Air dash attacks

AD8: CW AD9/7: CW AD4/6: CW ‘Force’ AD9/8/7: RW AD9/8/7: LW AD4/6: LW / RW

Punish, Evade+Chase (Boost), High damage Punish, High damage Punish, High homing, Anti-Air Movement check, Punish, Interrupt Movement check, Punish Chip

Jumping attacks

jLW & jRTLW jRTCW jRTRW

Prediction Chip, Erase OTG over walls

Special attacks

SLC (AD8:CW , 100% all gauges) Air dash melee (AD8/9/7 CC) Transformation (double jump + Special)

Rush attack, Prediction, Timeout Prediction, Instant startup Unused, Air stalling

Melee attacks

Guard reversal melee RW/LW melee Quickstep melee Ground dash RW/LW melee

Long reach General use Long reach Very long reach, QS -> diagonal CC etc.

Strategy

Matchup strategy

Cypher / Matchups

Advanced Techniques

Landing recovery cancel using Vulcan

Standing RW has no recovery animation. When landing from the air you can cancel landing freezes by inputting RW on the landing frame. This way you can continue to an action like jumping or dashing almost immediately.

FWD airdash CW speed boost without firing

Start a forward airdash and perform CW as the second attack while the CW gauge is around 76-82% gauge.
You will get the speed boost tied to the move without firing the projectile or consuming ammo. A useful but situational tool since often you want to dash CW just for the speed boost.

Horizontal dash cancel movement

Cypher moves at a high speed during the dash cancel of a horizontal dash. You can repeatedly dash cancel horizontally for some decent movement speed. Bal-Bados has a similar technique.

High speed movement - 9/6 & 3/6 button lock variants

See Advanced Techniques / Rowing for more info
High speed ‘rowing’ movement in a horizontal direction.
Input: Move to direction 9, then 6 and immediately hold crouch.
OR Move to direction 3, then 6 and immediately hold crouch

Cypher will move horizontally at a high speed until crouch is released. Same applies for matching directions to the left.
In addition to walking on the ground can be performed in various situations like during a whole jump attack (input at the start), during a crouch attack or when falling from a jump.

Horizontal walk speed utilizing rowing is significantly faster than Cypher’s ground dash. His jumping attacks become much more effective when using rowing during the attack and / or the following descent. Grounded daggers can be displaced by rowing for a split second before attacking, making opponents unsure of their position.

Jump dagger cluster

During jRTLW or jLW turbo rotate to the right while the attack is active. The dagger pattern will turn into a smaller cluster with much smaller gaps.

Infinite dagger glitch

Input: walking RW -> cLW -> cLW

• cLW must be input as quickly as possible. Cypher will throw two sets sets of daggers with a large cluster on the right side.
• Weakness: committed to sliding attack animation. Can be combined with rowing to make more effective (9RW -> 6cLW).

Instant attacks (standing)

Input an attack (say RT attack) immediately after inputting RW (vulcan). The attack will come out without any startup. This includes melee attacks if the RW weapon is not in melee range. Timing is more strict for projectile attacks.
For melee range this can be used on purpose by rotating or moving a bit to the right of your target. RW into instant CW melee is a strong technique. Difficult to use in practice.

Instant crouch melee

Input / mash cRW while opponent is approaching or landing in front of you. You will perform an instant cRW melee out of the crouching vulcan.

Additional Resources

Frame Data

Rough data collection by Porcupine. Startup frames, duration and forced recovery times. No data on melee attacks.

• Cypher framedata

Notable Players

Cypher / サイファー

• AZY / えーぜ
• Soyokaze / そよ風 / SwordedShepherd / SuzuRan Yakumo 14
• いらく / i-lak-10
• BA
• nakane / ナカね
• ハーレー / harley
• Psyledics
• Keimadeoute
• Shima katsu / しまかつ
• fz gantetsu / がんてつ

western players:

• Schooly D
• Zaarock