>>718592802
Sure thing ninja apprentice.
With the dragon sword:
You can hold Y/heavy attack during strings, so XXY(hold) releaseY for instance leads to a somewhat delayed slash that'll often catch alchemists off guard. If you start charging your UT, you held the button too long.
For Alchemists specifically, if you make them reel back you can start charging a UT in their face, this also works well if they are fisting the ground to recharge their shields, hit them with a running Y, or any heavy attack, hold Y and release either when charged OR if they try to grab you. There's a decent amount of frames where your attack (not UT) has priority over their grab.
XX(hold direction towards enemy)YYY is incredibly potent, high chance to cut off legs.
holding direction +X and the XX that you can follow it up with have a high delimb chance as well.
Buy cicada surge and use it on attacks of enemies that are surrounded by a red/black smoke, then press Y to Steel on Bone, works amazing for gorillas and snakes. you can perform this action during ANY grounded attack and is a counter that even works on grabs, it is ridiculously potent, and costs ki to balance it out.
If you enjoy Steel on Bone, I would recommend upgrading your weapon of choice (or the scythe, which has insane reach) to max level so you can chain more instant kills, if you keep pressing Y after the initial kill AND an enemy is in range. 2 kills on lv1 weapons, 3 on lv2, 4 on lv3.
Slide into enemies to interrupt them, you're probably already doing this, but I thought I'd mention it, since it helps a lot on most human sized enemies. Jumping on them is great too, be sure to buy that as well.
Save your health bar upgrades until you REALLY need them. Not a bad idea to save one for the final boss.
As Ayane, the Lv2 sword upgrade is all you need, since it's XXYhold-releaseY or XXXYhold/releaseY just tears through absolutely everything.
Hope this helps, good luck
