For folks that run without in-game music on, here are some setups for dashing through the gate as it opens. The first is for a kill with VS and the second is with a nail (since this will affect nail cooldown). This takes some practice to get used to the freezeframes; using the WK flipping back animation gave me a better feel for it. For the second setup, I wouldn't recommend buffering a jump out of the dash since it can come up just a little short if timed perfectly.
Timing from the kill rather than the death animation is necessary to be fully consistent since, like Gruzmother, WK count as dead as soon as you land the final hit (which is what the gate timing is based on), but their death animation depends on how exactly they're killed (e.g. having to fall if killed midair, or not doing the flip back if the last hit is a pogo).
Saves somewhere between .14 and .24 to just walking through depending on how well it's greeded.
setup for a dash exit from the watcher knights arena if you play without in-game music. neutral jump off the right wall -> wait for the last wk to disintegrate -> 1 minimum height hop -> buffer 3 full height jumps -> land -> turnaround -> dash.
easily saves 0.2s over walking out. can use both the crumbling audio cue from the dying wk, or screenshake if you have it set to for example x0.1 (both lower and higher probably work well).
videos: on-screen wk death, off-screen wk death, and walking jump for comparison.
After 8 years we finally have a timing setup for the first nail on the watcher. Walk all the way right to the gate then walk back. If someone has anything better/for the pairs please lmk lol
Alternate opener on the first knight for shade soul WKs. This and pogocancels are almost the same time on avg (accounting for the difference in soul after roll this is a tiny bit faster) I prefer this one, because it's easier (especially in AS where you have to avoid diving during pogocancels), it doesn't risk getting you shade souls i-framed, and it makes the kill times closer on avg, no matter the rng pattern (Roll is less good, but bounce is less bad) 8.6s for nail attack 8.6s for roll, leaves you with 1 soul 9.6s for bounce
These should be the best dmg rotations for pogocancel opener on the first knight. 8.7s for nail attack, saves 0.8 at the cost of one soul compared to dashing back over like Strat does in current TE WR 8.8s for roll, leaves you with 3 soul 10.2s for bounce
idk who needs this, here are fireball ranges in the wk arena, for when you need to be sure you're hitting the offscreen guy, use the central background pillar to orient yourself and stick close to it
this strat will allow you to get another nail hit's worth of soul on the first knight if you are low. this allows you to do the first knight quick kill with only 6 soul before the fight, as demonstrated in the video (started with 7 soul, ended with 1 soul)
Here is all the boss battles in 112 and 107 where flukenest has been found to be either optimal or viable/ preferable over the non flukes alternative. I will first post the unambiguously optimal fights and then post the ones which may come to preference.
Nosk: Good RNG fight saves 10 seconds over non flukes combsob. Bad rng isn't super punishing as nosk has a lot of attacks where he can get multihit, you shouldn't be losing more than 5 seconds. If he goes into the ceiling instantly you can shriek as usual.
The charm loadout is: Shaman stone, spell twister and flukenest, needs overcharming.
Collector: There is a completely consistent quickkill which has been posted in strats before. Additionally, flukes will instakill collector out of the final phase. In total this is seven seconds of timesave over perfect shriek only fight.
Charm loadout is shaman stone, flukenest and dreamwielder. Charm switch optimally at tram bench or at oro bench for a safety heal.
Watcher Knights: Saves 5 seconds on average over optimal shriek fight. Each watcher dies in three fluke casts, so you can kill them before they even attack. To make up for the lack of twister i have come up with a couple of strats to gather soul (showcased in video). Its still optimal to throw the chandelier down, and the fight needs to be started with full soul.
If you need 3 hits of soul on the way to Watcher Knights, then you can do this strat to get 3 hits without losing too much time. Haven't timed how long it takes compared to normal strat, but getting the soul can be worth sometimes. You need to hit the rava immediately after the 2nd wall jump otherwise he'll be too far away to get the 2nd hit with the upslash. As long as you hit him with that first nail hit you will never dash into him. Not too difficult to do with some practice.
a setup to greed the first ddark after the dnail do 2 normal dashes then full jump when the knight overlaps with the right eye of the last watcher, as soon as you hit the wall do a full wall jump while holding left and do 2 neutrals when you hit the ground the visual cue to start the ddark is when the knight's feet are at the top of the watcher's horn, you can do it when they are halfway between the top of its head and the top of the horn like i did in the clip but it's very risky and doesn't save much time(probably less than 0.2s) to see if you got it or not open the debug console and if the watcher's health is at 132 then you got it, if its at 155 then you missed the first hit use this only if you know the timing for the dnail without any setup cause if you mess up, knowing the timing is the only backup if you are too late and can't get the dnail without getting hit, commit to the dnail and tank the damage, the soul is more important than the health i tested this only on 1221 but it should work on cp too
Pest's "old" tutorial on basic watcher knight's strats, specifically with some meta think strats (which can be applied to literally any boss) on how to learn the fight: https://youtu.be/Oc-_Vg-Y8ME
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