Calcharo Guide

# Core Technique

Mastering Calcharo requires knowing how to cancel the cast animations of many of his abilities by dodging or jumping. You will not be able to extract even half of the value out of the character without mastering his necessary techniques.

  • E1, E2, and E3 can all be cancelled. (There is a bug that causes the phantoms from E1 and E2 to despawn or miss when the animation is cancelled) For a long time I used to think E3 couldn't be cancelled, but I had discovered that it only prevents you from dodging - not jumping. So you can jump to cancel E3, and chain the jump into a dodge. If you dodge fast enough after pressing the jump button, your character will be considered as still on the ground for a brief period of time, allowing you to perform a Dodge Counter, which leads into the next point:

1. E1 GROUND DODGE cancel. 2. E2 GROUND DODGE cancel. 3. E3 AFTERCAST DELAY dodge cancel (both hits go through, only cancels aftercast delay) into GROUND DODGE.

  • Learn how to cancel ALL (yes, all) of your resonance skills into dodge counters. Including E3. Knowing how to work around E3's limitations is a core part of what separates good Calcharo players from average ones. Remember, if you jumpcancel E3 into a dodge quickly enough, you'll still be on the ground and can chain the dodge into a dodge counter. E1 and E2 are both designed to fire out the phantom early if you cancel the ability before they'd normally come out (sometimes this bugs out, as stated earlier) even if you cancel it IMMEDIATELY, so get in the habit of cancelling E1 and E2 as early as you possibly can during the animation to maximize efficiency.

E3 HALF cancel (one slash damage dealt) AIR dodge

E3 FULL cancel (no damage dealt) GROUND dodge

# Advanced Technique

  • The jump attack landing can be cancelled in multiple ways. First, you can actually breakfall out of the jump attack when landing. Time the jump as soon as you land on the ground and Calcharo will roll instead. This prevents the damage of the jump attack, but it looks funny. This can also be done with Heavy Attack Mercy and Death Messenger. Again, you lose damage but it's funny.

Raw jump attack (no cancel, holding down movement to demonstrate aftercast delay)

Breakfall (no damage, just for fun, can still parry when falling)

  • The jump attack landing can also be cancelled after it has already dealt damage. "What's the point then?" Well, Calcharo's jump attack has (to borrow terminology from Guild Wars) a very heavy Aftercast Delay. This means that you're locked out of actions for a while even after the damage is already dealt. This period of time can be broken out of by jumping. As with the E3 cancel, if you dodge fast enough after pressing the jump button, you break out of the animation lock and are still considered on the ground, so you'll perform a clean regular dodge into a potential dodge counter. Learn how to time the aftercast cancel so that the jump attack still deals damage without leaving you vulnerable for too long.

1. Ground dodge aftercast cancel (requires jump input immediately before dodge) 2. Air dodge aftercast cancel

  • Learn how to jumpcancel E3 without losing out on both hits of damage. Calcharo's E3 is deceptively powerful with its gapclosing potential and damage, but is heavily underrated due to its hefty aftercast delay and wide window of vulnerability if it isn't cancelled. After the second slash deals damage, there is no reason to remain in the animation unless you want to keep your current positioning/keep stamina/look cool/etc.

1. E1 jump cancel. 2. E2 jump cancel. 3. E3 HALF jump cancel (one slash damage dealt) into GROUND dodge.

  • After unlocking the necessary trait, Mercy provides a hefty Resonance Liberation damage buff on cast. It does not need to hit anything. It has nothing to do with the second half of the attack either (the downward drop attack), as the entire heavy attack is considered Mercy. Therefore, you can ult immediately after the very first frame of casting Mercy and still receive its benefits. Be warned that this is heavy on stamina as Death Messenger also costs stamina to cast.
  • Calcharo's E2 can be used to provide a delayed stack of your Forte. When you have maximum stacks, cast E2 and then quickly use all stacks to cast Heavy Attack Mercy. The E2 phantom's attacks will provide you with a new stack while you're in the middle of casting Mercy, meaning you only need two stacks to power up your next heavy attack.
  • Jump attacks can be air-dodge cancelled. You can even do this after parrying an attack mid-air; you won't get the damage unless you actually land on the ground however (parry frames are separate from hit frames - Calcharo's jump attack has parry frames on the way down, with hit frames beginning on landing.)
  • Faster Death Messengers: Using a cancel technique, you can comfortably achieve three (potentially up to four) Death Messengers in a single burst rotation. To do this, start the second basic attack in the chain but don't finish it - your phantom will do it for you, granting the stack, allowing you to dodge-cancel out of the second basic attack animation and start over, rapidly chaining BA1-BA2 to gain Death Messenger stacks.

BA1, then START BA2 but don't finish it. Dodge cancel it, and start over.

  • Are you struggling to land 4 DM's? Ping too high? Keep in mind that Death Messenger hits eight times, and that its damage output is tied to how long you commit to the animation (dodging or jumping at any point will prevent further damage from rolling out.) One technique you can use to help get off 4 DM's is to dodge out of the last one or two ticks of the Death Messenger shockwave's damage, and use that moment of time to begin a new Death Messenger cycle by dodge-cancelling Basic Attack 2 into Basic Attack 1. You'll output less overall damage this way, but still more than only doing 3 DM's.
  • If for whatever reason you want to save your Death Messenger but still want to attack (to parry or deal some damage), jump attacks as well as dodge counters do not proc Death Messenger.

# Weapons and Echoes

Viable builds:

5 Lingering Tunes

5 Void Thunder

2 Lingering Tunes + 2 Void Thunder + 1 Wildcard

Ideal crit ratio is 70% rate by 240% damage.

You want at least 20% energy recharge.

Example Main echoes:

Tempest Mephis (fast attack, fast energy generation, burst damage, decent buff that's fast to activate, can swap cancel at any time although buffs are tied to the second attack)

Thundering Mephis (slower attack but more damage overall, slower energy generation but higher overall, extremely powerful buff but slow to activate, cannot be efficiently swap cancelled until the final strike is cast)

Countermeasures Echoes (for use against enemies with Red Flash attacks, stunning them and giving you a tactical advantage)

Mech Abomination (Easily cancellable cast, large ATK buff, might get some silly parries with the boulder drops)

Note that it is entirely possible to achieve the ideal crit ratio purely through echoes. It requires time and resources or a lot of luck, but you can achieve 70%/240% purely from echoes. Due to the fact that an ideal crit ratio is possible to attain through very deep (or lucky) Echo investment, this means that an ATK% weapon is best in slot for most characters (excluding signature weapons for some.) This also makes Lustrous Razor Calcharo's best in slot endgame weapon by far due to helping alleviate Calcharo's energy recharge requirements, providing Resonance Liberation Damage bonus (Calcharo is a very heavy resonance liberation damage dealer) and ATK% to round out an ideal crit ratio echo build.

But not everyone is going to spend tons of time and tuners on a single character. Meaning a raw Echo crit value of 70/240 isn't realistically attainable for the average player. Lustrous Razor is Calcharo's best endgame weapon, but other weapons suffice just fine, especially if they have crit as a mainstat to help achieve that crit ratio in a more stress-free and less time consuming way.

# Swap Cancelling

Calcharo's animations are very long, but do a lot of damage and have wide parry frames, making it easy to catch bosses even as you swap to another unit. This makes Calcharo ideal in dual-DPS compositions where another DPS can do their thing while Calcharo is off-field doing a Death Messenger (even better if the second DPS also has long animations, such as Xiangli Yao, as they will complement each others' field time during swap cancelling.) His long attack frames and long overall field time also make him ideal in Hypercarry (two supports) team comps, where you can quickswap to the supports to use their buffs and outro effects while Calcharo is on field doing damage.