Wizard/Assault

**Assault Wizard** may not have Hurricane Big Magic, but he does have a lot of damage.

For all intents and purposes, Assault Wizard is just Flame Style Wizard, with the key differences between Assault and Form Change being that Assault has different special moves and a unique Rider Art attack.

## Command List

**Rider Art:** High Speed Dash. Press RA or S to perform the Copy magic Rider Art attack. This is a "cutscene" attack, meaning that it cannot be bursted midway through, and (possibly) ignores damage scaling. For some reason, the damage on this Rider Art is *insane,* doing roughly 40% by itself on *high defense characters*. This is your bread and butter.

**Dash Action:** Air Dash.

### Special Moves

**n.S:** Defend magic. Wizard summons a flame barrier around him dealing multiple hits. Active frames last quite a while and has fairly quick recovery, making it somewhat useful as a wakeup meaty, but it does very little guard damage.

**f+S:** Big magic. Same as Form Change Wizard's.

**d+S:** Sleep magic. Puts Wizard to sleep. He is vulnerable for quite a while, but if the animation is allowed to complete, Wizard restores some health. Pretty much useless. Don't do it ever.

**j.S:** Shooting Strike. Same as Form Change Wizard's.

### Notable Normals and Strings

**f+LLL:**a spinning roundhouse kick followed by a sword slash and a gunshot. f+L moves forward a decent amount, is decently fast and has good tracking.

**LH j.LHHS:**Aerial Combo. j.LHH causes a ground bounce, which lets you combo into Rider Art. This is your combo. Do it. Revel in the glorious unburstable damage.

**f+HHHH:** fires a shot from his weapon, then backflips twice while firing two more shots and ending with a backflip kick that knocks down. Can be a decent string to approach with from longer distances. f+HHH can also be used to cross over your opponent on their wakeup if you want to try some shenanigans.

**j.H:**fires a shot from his weapon. Doesn't halt aerial momentum -- doing a j.H early into a forward jump can be a good way of covering your approach.

## Strategy

You have to play neutral and pressure a bit more honestly than Form Change thanks to your lack of Hurricane Style's Big magic, but once your opponent slips up, you can make them pay for it dearly by comboing into your Rider Art. Your entire gameplan essentially revolves around this: make your opponent slip up, then punish into an unburstable combo that does *at least* 60% life. Fun times.

There are three main things that Assault Wizard will spend meter on: Rider Cancels, Aerial Combos and Rider Art.

Rider Cancels are used to bait bursts and pushblocks as well as convert random pokes into your BNB combo if you have the meter.

Aerial Combos are essentially your optimal combo in terms of meter usage.

Rider Art is your go-to combo ender if you have half a bar of meter on you. Do it.

### Combo

You'll notice that the heading for this sub-section is "combo" rather than "combos". This is because Assault Wizard only has one combo. That combo is:

LH j.LHH RA

This will do ~60% on high defense characters. Against any other defense rating you get Climax Time. This combo is absurdly strong, because the majority of the damage comes from the Rider Art, which is completely unburstable.

Of course, since Aerial Combos are more susceptible to bursts than basically any other combo, you'll likely just be converting stray hits into Rider Art, or even just landing Rider Art on its own. It's all damage, baybee.