Yet another Petra Arena strat zVypurr and I have cooked up. I think this one is quite good.
At its best (first clip), this strat saves 0.7s to the conventional Fury Petra Arena. The double forward slash prevents the problem mentioned in the above post where the first Petra of the pair flies away too early, and jumping back up immediately for the second Petra in the pair means you no longer have to wait for late attacks.
At its worst, you'll need to react to an early attack from the second Petra (second clip), which breaks even or loses up to 0.3s an optimal normal strat depending on when exactly it attacks. To do this, listen for the Petra to start its attack. If it does this too early for you to be able to kill it before it attacks (which you'll be able to gauge with some practice), dash immediately to the gate and do the normal kill.
You can lose a little less (0.1-0.2ish) on some early attacks with a higher dash (third clip), but this runs the risk of forcing the Petra too high to reach (fourth clip), so I would recommend defaulting to going down to the gate.
If you have Dashmaster, activate the left collapsible platform after the first Petra kill as shown to avoid the first Petra of the pair getting caught on it. If you don't have Dashmaster, you'll have to skip this since the platform won't come back up in time for faster Petra spawns.
For the double slash on the first Petra of the pair, jump and slash at roughly the same time to lead the nail hitbox into the Petra on the way up. This is faster, but also safer since it pushes the Petra away sooner.
Alternate strat for the pair in Petra Arena (first clip). Prevents the situation where the first Petra in the pair flies too far to hit with the normal rotation (second clip) and forces the second petra to attack sooner, which lowers the chances of/possibly prevents a late attack that you have to wait for to not get hit by (third clip).
This is really tough to time because of all the possible patterns, but from video comparison it looks like this loses about 0.3s when both are done optimally. Anecdotally though it's much harder to greed the normal strat than this one, so I suspect on average this strat would go even with less chances to fail.
gauntlet reaction slash for when the petra is too close (you dont even need to do it as reaction if you dont want, you can just do the slash every time)
This method of breaking the planks after petra arena (first video) saves about 0.1s-0.2s over the normal strat (second video). It also avoids the issue in the normal strat of being able to grab the plank wall and not being able to hit the planks. This really seems like one of those strats that's been discovered multiple times but isn't the norm for some reason. I noticed it in zVyper's trap bench ComSoB.
For the first petra in petra arena, you can stand underneath where the petra spawns without getting hit. This allows you to stop your cdash earlier for the 1 slash kill, which makes it easier to handle fast spawns which would normally fly upwards too quickly. Doing the slash from underneath the petra like this means you will be too close to VS double consistently, so after doing the nail slash jump backwards before firing VS.
Slight modification to this strat that loses another 0.1s or so but also avoids most of the bad patterns with the second to last petra. I'm using the background vines in the screenshot as a cue for when to dash. Still not an ideal strat but worth messing around with I think.
EDIT: I've realized you can decide which strat to do on reaction. As you dash to the first collapsible platform, take note of the petra's position. If it's very high and to the left, or directly in your jump arc, do this safer strat. Otherwise the original should work fine.
arena c-dash https://clips.twitch.tv/SpeedyNastyHareHoneyBadger-tYS9EEJ_hHuuQgiM Upstrike here going to the wall and hold neutral. Since upstrike prevents wall cling, it should put at a very nice position and cause you can only wall cling if you go towards the wall, hold neutral afterwards. Then tap left -> immediate c-dash at the right time. It saves 0.09 on avg against normal positioning (For me usually), and is a lot more comfier as you it prevents from wall clinging accidently. The prejump before the drop was accidental btw, Optimally you would just dash over the platform
Quick kill for petra arena. For the second two, line your knight up with the top-right area of that hanging basket, like you can see in the video here. Shoot your first fireball ever so slightly before the first petra's hitbox is available. This first fireball SHOULD MISS THE FIRST PETRA. Because of the way petra AI works, the petras will always move back away from you to keep some distance, and thus the second fireball will hit the first petra with a double
15