Dragon Ball Xenoverse Advanced Combat Tricks – Jump Cancel, Step Cancel, Meterless Vanish

We covered how to get started in Dragon Ball Xenoverse, as well as some beginner’s and even a few advanced tips. Now it’s time to channel your inner Saiyan and learn some of the best advanced combat tactics you can find in Xenoverse. If you haven’t already acclimated yourself with the basics of how to play Xenoverse, do that before you tackle some of the advanced techniques. These abilities are for the people looking to become the best of the best when it comes to DB Xenoverse!

Draining Stamina

You can win matches with Z-Souls and a few seemingly overpowered Ultimate or Super Attacks, but against the best, that won’t be enough to finish the job. You’ll need to hit them where it hurts and that means draining their Stamina to the best of your ability. If you can initiate a Guard Break state by fully depleting an opponent’s Stamina meter, he or she won’t be able to block or Vanish until the meter is completely full again.

Heavy attack combos are your best bet in many cases. Most heavy attack combos drain a good portion of an opponent’s Stamina meter, and a fully charged heavy attack will completely deplete a Stamina meter, leaving the opponent helpless for a short time. If your opponent used a few Vanishes and you feel his or her Stamina meter is low, unleash a heavy combo string to finish the job. There’s no better time to use a powerful combo string than after you’ve landed a Guard Break on an opponent.

Evasive Abilities

You probably know that whatever evasive ability you have equipped costs three bars of your Stamina meter and gets you out of a sticky situation. What you may not know is that it makes your character invincible for a short time and prevents an opponent from draining your Stamina meter. In most cases it’s best to use a Vanish to get out of combos, but if you know the opponent is going to try to make you block an Ultimate Attack or charged heavy attack to break your guard, using an evasive ability is a much safer prospect. It’s not difficult to punish a Vanish if the opponent predicts you’re about to use it, but an evasive technique has the same results without the risk. It uses a lot of meter, but sometimes it’s more than worth it.

Jump Cancel and Step Cancel

One of the best advanced techniques in Dragon Ball Xenoverse is the ability to cancel basic attacks with a jump or step. Not all attacks can be canceled, so test your character’s combo strings to see where you can cancel and how you should cancel. To perform a cancel, simply tap or hold the Jump button and a direction during the animation of a basic attack. When performed correctly, your character will stop the attack and jump or step instead.

You may ask yourself why you’d want to stop a perfectly good combo. When you perform a cancel, it allows you to continue your combo uninterrupted. Most combos won’t extend beyond 10 or 12 hits unless you add a special move to the end of the combo string. By using a cancel, you can stop your combo string before it ends, then start another combo string while the opponent is unable to escape without the use of a Vanish or similar technique. With the cancel ability, it creates combos that can extend to well over 20 hits. This also forces your opponent to use Stamina meter on a Vanish or evasive technique. If they don’t, he or she will take a ton of damage from your newly extended combo.

You can also cancel basic attacks into Ki blasts by pressing your Ki button during a basic attack animation. This isn’t quite as effective as a Jump Cancel or Step Cancel, but it can be useful to create some distance between you and the opponent.

Vanish Jump

Immediately following a Boost Dash or step, press jump and a direction to teleport. This looks exactly like a Vanish, but it doesn’t use any of your Stamina meter. While your character is invisible, hold a direction or press an attack button to move your character in a specific direction or attack after the Vanish Jump. This is primarily for positioning, but because attacking from the back cannot be blocked, it can be very useful as an advanced movement option.

Jumping Attacks and Cross-ups

At first glance, jumping attacks may not seem useful. However, when you jump over an opponent and attack his or her back, suddenly they won’t be able to block (you can’t block attacks from behind your character). When you combine this with Jump Canceling, it creates some interesting situations. For one, you can continuously Step Cancel during a combo string to slowly move around to your opponent’s back, eventually granting you an unlockable attack from behind. You can also Jump Cancel in the middle of a combo string to perform a cross-up attack that hits behind the opponent.

Now read these advanced tips for more Dragon Ball Xenoverse strategies.