Heavy Cancel Technique

What
The Heavy Cancel technique is a method to cut short any Fiona attack animation: normal slash attacks, smash attacks, even spear throws. The long animation for some attacks, particularly the final smash in some combos, is often referred to as "recovery time". Only Fiona can perform a Heavy Cancel.

How to perform
To perform a Heavy Cancel, simply use a Heavy Stander move (keyboards: Space + W) immediately after triggering the final smash of a Fiona combo such as Amaranth Kick, and then release all keys to drop out of Heavy Stander. The net effect is that the long animation time of the combo's final smash is cut very short and Fiona is completely reset and ready to start a new combo. Also, because you trigger and release the Heavy Stander so quickly, you won't see Fiona drop into her typical kneeling Heavy Stander position.

Technically speaking, you must find the right timing for some attacks, especially smashes. If you Heavy Cancel too soon, you might not actually cut the animation short. A little experimentation and practice will enable you to learn the correct timing. For most smashes you can use HS almost immediately after you perform the smash. However, for Amaranth Kick, Heavy Cancel can only be done after Fiona's leg begins to drop.

NOTE: The amount of your attack speed also effects the speed of executing Heavy Cancel and Heavy Stander.

Benefits and examples
The Heavy Cancel technique provides three important benefits: faster stamina recovery, higher DPS output, and more agile dodging/running during boss fights.

Faster stamina recovery
Every smash attack drains your stamina bar, and the stamina does not begin refilling until after the smash animation (your "recovery") has fully completed. By cutting the animation short, your stamina begins refilling immediately upon application of the Heavy Cancel.

Higher DPS
By making liberal use of the Heavy Cancel technique, you can string combos together for higher DPS output. It's also useful for chaining together a Sprint Smash followed immediately by a short LR combo (Petal Toss aka "Sword #1") to enable applying two smashes during the shorter vulnerability windows on various Bosses as follows:


 * 1) Sprint into range of the boss and click R to end the sprint with a Rose Thorns (aka "Sword #0).
 * 2) Perform a Heavy Cancel to quickly recover from the smash animation.
 * 3) Perform a Bamboo Splitter to apply another smash.
 * 4) Heavy Cancel one more time to quickly recover from the Bamboo Splitter and enable you to dodge or run away before the boss's next attack.

More agile dodging/running
As the previous steps demonstrate, another strong benefit of Heavy Cancel is that you can recover more quickly while attacking a boss and dodge or run away faster than if you're stuck waiting for your final smash to fully animate and recover.

Heavy Cancel is needed less by hammer Fionas
The smashes in all hammer combos recover much faster than those in sword combos. Players have reported that while Heavy Cancel provides noticeable benefits for sword Fionas, there is no visible improvement in recovery times for the main combos used by hammer Fionas. However, even as a hammer Fiona you might still occasionally find it useful to use Heavy Cancel after a Sprint Smash or when using secondary weapons such as spear throws, etc.

Other names by which people refer to this technique
This technique is also variously referred to in the forums as:
 * GCHS (Guard Cancel into Heavy Stander)
 * HSC (Heavy Stander Cancel)

European XE Version
In the European Version Heavy Stander is identical with Guard, so you just have to press the "Guard" button to use the Heavy Stander Cancel.