An Overly Complicated Guide on Freestyle Quickswap

This is aimed at players with a decent knowledge of the game that want to indulge in a Freestyle Quickswap (both casual and advanced) playstyle. This guide will cover QS Theory (Team compositions) and each character’s QS playstyle(s).

[Last Updated 5/22/22]

Terminology

Inputs/Moves

  • BA - Basic Attack

  • HA - Hold Attack

  • E - Skill

  • Q - Echo

  • NQ - Nightmare Echo

  • Lib - Liberation

  • M1 - Click/Input as BA

  • # - Swap to Character #

  • Swap - Swap out + swap back

  • x-Sequence - A move/combo that has x swappable moments

  • BA-Chain - Basic Attacks 1-5

Character QS Roles

  • Pivot - Explained in Pivot Swap—essentially a character with a repeatable 3-Sequence

  • Dynamic - Most moves are swap-cancelable

  • Filler - Rarely swapped to only for concerto gain or for special situations. Fillers are generally niche

  • Aerial - Performs well in the Air

  • Intro Priority - Intro skill is exceptionally good and takes priority over other characters

  • Fodder - Nearly no swap-cancelable moves or must be played as a Hypercarry

Most of the higher-tiered characters have one or more of the following roles: Pivot, Dynamic, Intro PriorityAdditionally, characters are ranked from C-S for each of their roles to indicate how well they fulfill that role. Fodders do not have a rank.

Playstyles (In terms of QS)

  • Advanced - Play with Triple DPS/swapping every possible opportunity

  • Casual - Swap out a decent amount

  • Light - Rarely swap cancel

Quickswap Theory

(you can ignore this for the most part)

Quickswap is just swapping out to a different character when your current character is in long animations… right? For the most part, yes; However, most quickswap teams generally include rotations similar (not exact) to the ones below. These rotations could last as long as a few seconds to the entire playthrough.

Types of Swaps

Ordered Swap : 1-2-3-1-2-3

Ordered Swap is swapping to a character with the lowest cooldown, with the goal being to maximize the amount of swaps you make.

Pivot Swap : 1-2-3-2-1

As the name implies, Pivot Swap is continuously swapping in/out of a Pivot Character, or, a character with a 3-Sequence. This is meant for characters with abilities that have a tight window.Assuming the Pivot Character is Character 2, Rotations will start with Character 1→2 (start 3-Sequence)→3→2→1 etc. Characters that fit this role include:

  • Xiangli Yao - His Liberation Skill is a 3-Sequence

  • Camellya - Her (Standard) HAx3 is a 3-Sequence

  • Carlotta - Her Liberation is without Forte Buff is a 4-Sequence

  • Brant - Can use BA's as a "Pivot" since his playstyle is based on Bravo and they have a tight enough timing to be considered as a Pivot

  • Aerover - Can use either their Double E Swap or E BA Swap

Can't anyone play this role, even without a 3-Sequence?Yes, but 3-Sequence abilities work the best because you have to swap back to them and not swapping them will cause their combo to be wasted. You are better off playing Ordered Swap if the character does not have a 3-Sequence or abilities with a tight timing.

Duo Swap : 1-2-3-2-3-1

This is when two of your characters will be doing most of the damage/swapping. Where, your 2nd/3rd character are either Dynamic or Pivot Characters. Normally, you want to avoid this playstyle if your “neglected” character is a support like Shorekeeper—this is because supports need concerto energy (gain it by just using one BA), and using an Ordered Swap is most effective.

The general idea is that good team comps usually follow or have a variation of the above. Of course, you don’t inherently need to memorize these, as you will probably employ them without even realizing it.

Characters

QS Capability Tierlist

And with that, here is an extensive guide on each character’s greatest QS strengths and weaknesses; as well as how to play them. Each character and combo/quickswap move is labeled with a difficulty, from 1-5, with 1 being easy to use (flexible timing) and 5 being hard to use (tight timing).To try and avoid some confusion, the Value of a combo is labeled from tiers C-S, indicating how useful they are to QS teams. All units are considered to be S0Some swaps may not be listed here because they are not useful. Echo swaps are also not listed, since everyone has access to them.

Visit "Specific Team Compositions" for gameplay examples

Airborne Abilities

Some character pages will refer to this section. Does not include plunges (except for special situations)

- Changli (BA, Skill, Lib, True Sight),
- Jinshi (BA, Skill, Lib),
- Zhezhi (BA, Skill),
- Shorekeeper (If gaining forte)
- Verina (If expending Forte),
- Jiyan (Lib)
- Carlotta (Lib)
- Aalto (With mist gate ideally),
- Camellya (Blossom Mode),
- Roccia (In Beyond Imagination State)
- Yangyang (With full forte stacks)
- Brant (BA, Skills, Forte, Lib)
- Aerover (Lib, when close to ground)
- Some NQ's

Specific Team Compositions

Videos are rated with a points based system. A 95% = 5 points off, 90% = 10 points off, etc. May expand on this feature more in the future.

  • (-1) Minor Mistake: A misinput that had little effect on the final outcome (Eg, pressing the wrong ability)

  • (-2) Mistake: A misinput or an unoptimized section of gameplay that had a noticeable effect (Eg, not utilizing a buff, dodge cancelling an animation unintentionally)

  • (-4) Blunder: A major unoptimized section of gameplay that had a large negative effect (Eg, staying idle for too long, letting stackable skills waste CD, avoiding the usage of certain skills for no apparent reason, etc.)

  • (-5+) Unoptimized: Refers to the whole playthrough in general being unoptimized (slow swapping, etc.)

98% - Carlotta, Changli, Shorekeeper | TOA 2.1 P2 : 3-4

Ordered Swap

  • (0:30 | -1) Minor Mistake - Accidentally did Changli HA instead of TS

  • (0:35 | -1) Minor Mistake - Should've done a Shorekeeper BA/Echo somewhere here - SK was partially neglected in this section

95% - Changli, Xiangli Yao, Shorekeeper | TOA 2.1 : 2-1

Pivot Swap + Ordered Swap

  • (0:20 | -2) Mistake - Should've ulted with Shorekeeper instead of using Xiangli Yao's LOR

  • (0:20 | -1) Minor Mistake - Because of previous mistake, should've swapped to Changli to expend true sight buff. Did not do this, instead swapped to Shorekeeper and used SK outro on Changli, thus wasting the TS buff.

  • (0:33 | -1) Minor Mistake - Accidentally used Changli BA2 instead of HA/Forte

  • (0:47 | -1) Minor Mistake - Didn't swap to Xiangli Yao to use his LOR

  • Video Explained

94% - Roccia, Camellya, Havoc Rover | TOA 2.1 P2 : 1-4

Pivot Swap

  • (0:23 | -1) Minor Mistake - Should've let Camellya use her (Blossom) Spinning Combo before swapping to Roccia

  • (0:25 | -1) Minor Mistake - Could've been more efficient at using Camellya E, kind of delayed a bit by using BA

  • (0:52 | -1) Minor Mistake - Should've swap cancelled Rover's E

  • (0:53 | -1) Minor Mistake - Should've swap cancelled Rover's Forte

  • (0:58 | -1) Minor Mistake - Should've used Camellya's E, being airborne delayed combo

  • (0:23 | -1) Minor Mistake - Missed timing for Camellya's (Standard) Spinning Combo

Changelogs

Logs from 3 versions prior will be deleted

2.2

- Added Ciaconna

2.1

- Added Zani

2.0

- Rearranged the website to include 3 websites - the home (this one), 5 star characters, and 4 star characters. Will eventually merge into one once I find a stable financial income that can support a better website service.
- Added Aerover
- Updated Airborne Abilities to include Aerover
- Updated Tierlist, moved Jiyan/Lingyang to "Hard to use", Carlotta to "Really Good", added Cantarella+Aerover