This is by far the most consistent version of mantis pogo i've tried and i have been using it for quite a long time with great success. You need to land on either of the ledges as you fall into the main part of the room. Lately i've been using the edge of these glowing mushrooms to time my left press (i start pressing left when my feet reach the red line) to land on the first ledge, but landing on the second ledge is just as fastif performed well. As for the trick itself, you need to do a full jump relatively close to the ledge to lure the mantises properly and then you are gonna need to find whatever cues work best for you (personally i jump once im a bit past the arch in red) to consistently clear both attack patterns with a full jump (technically you can react to which one you get, but it isnt too useful). Once you've hit the lever, you are gonna hold right and fb (hopefully don't fb frame perfectly or it'll come out to the left) and then slash again to kill the mantis. If the mantis did the forward slash you should be getting a decent amount of geo, but otherwise its tought to get a meaningful amount consistently. To actually perform the mantis pogo you are gonna do a full jump once you are roughly inside that arch (again feel free to find your own cue), pogo the mantis, fb to the right of the mantis so it doesnt keep going to the right and pogo left.
Pacifist Dashless Mantis Pogo You can go over the big mantis and hit the lever without taking damage, irrespective of if it backs up or not, and do dashless mantis pogo afterwards. Can save 0.4 on its own over normal dashless mantis pogo, and adding in the timesave of ambloom upslash and no soul wow room brings it up to about 0.7. More details, notes, and things I noticed in the thread.
For the grounded mantis, instead of doing fb>dash>nail, do dash>nail>fb, this lets us do a nail cancel and use one less soul, so we can skip 1 soul in wow room. This should not mess with mantis pogo, the only issue this can have is if the grounded mantis backs up, in which case you have to react by forward slashing instead of up, which loses some time but should still save time overall. Videos of both instances attatched.
Consistent set up for mantis pogo, you have to enter with 3 hits of soul. You need to land on one of the platforms instead of falling all the way through to avoid the hardfall (but it also works if you hardfall, its just slower), hold left and fb at around this height or a bit lower (see image)(you can use the lower skull as reference). If the mantis on the left attacks and pushes the other mantis backwards, you are doing it correctly, if the other mantis goes above the one attacking, you need to fb earlier. Keep holding left and upslash the mantis, jump and hit the lever as soon as possible and return. One of the mantises should be considerably behind the other and should be quite low once you reach it; it will attack as soon as you go near it. The next step is to do a full jump once you are past it, pogo once the mantis starts to return after its attack so it doesnt receive knockback and pogo again as soon as possible to make it up. The rest is just optimal movement through the room.
This mantis pogo doesn't kill the mantis warrior and doesn't use a fireball meaning it saves time in that department and its faster than the normal mantis pogo by about 0.5-0.6 if done correctly. RNG dependent for the mantis warrior on whether he jumps back or not and that's what the time save is. I didn't make this mantis pogo up I believe the original is from Blair5414. Also ignore my hp mod was too lazy to take it off. Works on all patches to my knowledge.
Dashless mantis pogo. Seems to be pretty consistent if much harder to pull off than double dash. One thing to note is that you dash as soon as you hit the lever, which I've heard loses you geo, but from my experience you can still get all the geo, just less on average. Main thing is that if the mantis on the left attacks too early it seems to mess it up but you may still be able to time your pogo better to avoid that. Seems to save 0.1-0.3
Cursed but consistent mantis pogo that skips one of the dashes, i found it based off something I did in TAS, but quick glance shows cerpin was doing something similar into double dash. Allegedly saves 0.4 but idk how accurate that is. Difficulty wise, its much harder than mantis pogo, I'm about 80% consistent after 30 minutes but I know what I'm doing wrong every time i mess it up so take that as you will. If someone else has also come up with this I'm here to vouch for its validity and post it here
This kinda messes you up geo wise, you get less geo and often none at all, so maybe don't do this all the time, or just default to top row if you're doing SS route
You want to fireball halfway through the gap (red) , higher or lower does work, but it makes the rest tighter, you then want to dash, walk a bit (green), jump and hit the lever and immediately dash to the right, full jump after getting past the alcove, pogo once while making sure to not bonk on the lip, pogo again
Backup wise, usually the worst that happens is a mantis hits you and you just mash your nail button and ur all good, you can also just do double dash if ur spooked
Common mistakes:
You need to pogo later than you would in double dash because you need more height
You need to jump for the lever at the correct spot, earlier than double dash, if you don't the left mantis will be too high/low
If ur slow the right mantis gets too close
If u fireball too low the right mantis gets too close
Fireball too high and the left mantis is too high
All in all fairly reasonable enough to do in runs with enough practice I'd assume and definitely run viable enough for comsobs
Also note a lot of the timesaves gonna be how far you go left after doing the 2nd pogo, and this makes doing the 3rd dash on the platform to mantis claw even worse timewise
adaption of shamanless mantis pogo to avoid missing it due to shamanless muscle memory, and an example of a mantis claw early control setup (go right side when dropping back down whenever you can, I just wanted to avoid the mantis here)
A backup strat for mantis pogo. End of the clip shows reaction to a walkback, both pogos are lenient as long as you dash at the height of the second pogo. Loses around 6-8s depending on execution and whether the mantis steps back. Ensure you are not too close to the mantis when it charges an attack, or the pogo will miss.
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