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Slayer is a recurring playable character since Guilty Gear XX.

Stats[]

Playstyle[]

Slayer at his core with his rather half-power-exerting nature, is a rather playful basic character at his core. His gameplan solely revolves around punishment, using his attacks to stuff others and punish them for ever attempting to press buttons recklessly. Dandy Step (an invulnerable back-moving slide into a forward slide with no invulnerability frames) and its followups are vital for punishing (and creating) a miss, along with having simplistic Overdrives that can be buffered into that can inflict huge one-shot damage.

Off of Dandy Step alone via its followups: Pile Bunker is there to drive foes into the corner with ease, Crosswise Heel is a solid invulnerable anti-air launcher, Under Pressure is very safe on hit and block despite no followup potential at base to ensure Slayer can keep ambiguity in his favor, and It's Late is an overhead that while doesn't do much on normal hit is a solid ground bounce starter on counter hit.

Furthermore, said huge damage off of any random hit ("especially" if it's a counter hit) is also what makes Slayer a frightening opponent to face, given he has a few decent pokes/anti-airs/space-controlling moves that can lead into chunky damage (standing Kick, crouching Kick, crouching Slash, crouching Heavy Slash, jumping Kick, jumping Heavy Slash and a sliding poke in the form of both crouching Dust and Mappa Hunch), a variety of feints (his famed Right + Kick feint, with the extra ones added in since Slash and Λ Core) to impose on his foe. The damage Slayer inflicts builds up overtime and can easily lead into a quick stun due to focusing more on minor independent hits without too much of a combo game needed.

Slayer's unique ability to phase in-and-out with his unique front and back dashes gives him a great ability to not only avoid attacks if well-timed, but can also allow him to cross-up his foe when up close (prime for wakeup offense). Because Slayer can also jump out of his dashes like everyone else can despite lacking a running dash, he can "backdash cancel" (BDC) it into a jump, the player can input an attack of any kind to have it make use of the prior invincibility of the backdash animation without leaving the ground (during his jumpsquat frames). This complex mechanic allows Slayer to easily buffer an attack to be used as an invulnerable punisher (or buffer an attack into it) to create invincibility windows on various moves. While it can also be done with the forward dash, the backdash is more preferred due to having more invulnerability frames.

Slayer also possesses a great air combo game off of any of his possible juggle-starters with the unblockable Undertow and the aforementioned counter hit It's Late being two of them. From there, he can be in two situations: landing "The Rest" or the "Two-Hit Dandy". The former has many variants, but the original form was jumping Kick, jumping Punch, jumping Kick, jump cancel into another jumping Kick and then either finishing with jumping Dust or Footloose Journey. The latter uses his Direct-Hit Dandy Overdrive, which has a unique property, in that there are two separate hit areas: Slayer's body itself, and the purple trail that he leaves behind. Both hit areas do respectable damage on their own, but it is also possible to hit the opponent with both of them, causing massive damage and dizzy potential.

Despite several of Slayer's simplistic strengths, his weaknesses shine against more patient fighters who aren't as hasty; much of his tools can be beaten by merely getting out of his range and/or stuffing them with reliable lows, on top of his lack of grounded Gatling Combinations and reliance on grounded-combo-links and/or actually late-chained gatlings giving him a subpar pressure game and not many conventional non-Dust launchers. Not helping matters is that while most of his frame-advantage tools are safe on block (e.g. Under Pressure), they can easily be punished on startup and/or on instant block. Because of his unique array of late/delayed gatlings, chaining grounded normals with Slayer tether between links and/or not links.

Not only does a Slayer player have to learn to not carelessly abuse his own tools, but certain matchups can easily involve the opponent often running away from him to get outside of his comfort range. This is somewhat hampered more by his poor grounded mobility due to a lack of a running dash which forces him to rely more on air dashing while struggling in most zoning matchups.

In the first Guilty Gear XX, his command throw, the Chi wo Suu Uchuu (Blood-Sucking Universe) can be looped via taking advantage of the stagger hit-state, and the loop is consequently named the Bite Loop. By using a forward dash cancel, he can get out of his teleport early and execute the command throw and repeat that sequence. After 10-12 bites, he can Punch Dandy Step into a Pile Bunker, and Roman Cancel into a second Dandy Step>Pile Bunker, dizzying the opponent and guaranteeing an Instant Kill setup. The sequence requires perfect execution, but is dangerous enough to put him in the top tiers. In #Reload, his bite loop is reduced to the point where he can only chain about 6-7 bites and forward dashes, eliminating the Instant Kill setup strategy. Fortunately, the bite also gains a life heal property and the bite loop still nets Slayer a large amount of tension, while still rewarding him with a solid amount of damage.

In Slash, Slayer gains a new Mappa Hunch Feint, which is perfect for gap-closing tick throw setups, but at the cost of his Undertow no longer being unblockable, but having 1-hit super armor at least.

In Λ Core, Slayer gained several new moves: while he has a jumping Down + Kick command normal/special skill that is a great air-combo-extender and an Slash and Heavy Slash version of Dandy Step that makes him dash forward with a turn-around animation that can switch sides up-close (and thus crosses-up his foes with the followups), one of the more notable ones which is his Force Break, Big Bang Upper. The move can be hit-confirmed after an anti-air poke, or a crouching Heavy Slash, and it blasts the foe upward, and cannot be teched, giving Slayer a chance to continue with a devastating bounce combo. Likewise, It's Late can now be performed standalone, allowing Slayer to mixup with the overhead on its own without needing to input it from Under Pressure as a frame trap, but it no longer ground bounces on counter hit while instead doing a hard untechable knockdown.

Furthermore in Λ Core's original life-span, his standing Heavy Slash had a ground bounce on airborne hit which could be looped into itself in the same juggle/air-combo several times via several other attacks in between, which made for yet another way for Slayer to achieve huge damage off of a juggle starter. Yet in Λ Core Plus R, the said attack is nerfed to only being a ground slide on airborne hit.

However, while most of his base damage is slightly neutered from past installments in Plus R, Slayer not only has his command throw input simplified with a new Heavy Slash version Dandy Step, but he also gains 2 new boons: the Force Break Pile Bunker and the Heavy Slash version + Force Break Dandy Step. The former was added due to Pile Bunker's original Punch version being nerfed to only inflict ground slide as the FB version now has wallstick (along with the original version only doing so on counter hit), though the overall wallstick allows either Pile Bunker to be linked into each other without an RC needed. Meanwhile the Heavy Slash Dandy Step is basically a further-yet-slower version of the Slash version Dandy Step, with the FB version being the forward slide of the original Punch and Kick left standalone which gives Slayer substantial invincibility frames more optimal than a BDC, with the window for inputting the followups to be much sooner than any normal version of Dandy Step. When FB is combined with FB Pile Bunker, it becomes a near-impossible invulnerable option to contest directly.

Meanwhile in Xrd -Sign-, Slayer is somewhat reworked to be more akin to his Reload version while also retaining his Λ Core jumping Down + Kick. While he loses his standing Dust and Mappa Hunch Feints, along with his Slash/Heavy Slash version Dandy Step, his original Dandy Step now influences the properties of his Pile Bunker depending on if the Punch or Kick is used beforehand. Undertow now returns to being unblockable (with a generous YRC window), and Dandy Step itself also gains a new followup in the form of Helter Skelter to replace the original singular version of It's Late; Helter Skelter is a move that makes Slayer hop into the air to stomp the ground in a small bounce, which allows him to perform airborne actions during it or land with no landing recovery to feint with a low instead.

Xrd REV2 gives Slayer another new gimmick to add to his focus on counter hit punishing; Chi wo Suu Uchuu/Blood-Sucking Universe can now grant a unique temporary buff to Slayer for 3 seconds (which the timer can be stacked upon itself by landing more continuous bites up to an extension of 10 seconds). Said buff causes any of his offensive special moves or Overdrives to always trigger a counter hit, no matter the foe's R.I.S.C level, but the buff goes away on hit or block (and before on patch 2.1, even on whiff).

EX Slayer in the XX games is a more conventional/intuitive take on Slayer's moveset, where he gains a normal sliding dash animation (ripped from Dandy Step's forward movement), and all of his normals can be performed with normal gatling routes. Likewise, he loses his phasing dashes, but also gains certain followup inputs on some of his special moves (such as Mappa Hunch) which can involve other attacks, or even backstepping feints with animations akin to Dandy Step's back moving portion. This essentially gives him an increased focus on frame-trapping/stagger pressure with gaps in between his moves that can prevent his foe from acting recklessly off of on hit or block.

Commands[]

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