Slayers 2 Obi Manipulation Guide — Armor and Pressure

What is Obi Manipulation in Slayers 2?

Obi Manipulation is the Blood Demon Art built around Daki’s obi sash, added at launch and still present in v0.110. Community sources agree it is a duels specialist that hands you a stack of mix-up tools instead of the wide, forgiving area damage that farming arts rely on.

The art sits inside the standard nine-art launch list that media outlets and community wikis keep publishing, and its kit is organised the same way as every other art: five abilities bound to Z, X, C, V and B. What makes it awkward to write about is not the art itself but the paper trail. The game’s developer, Ouw Productions, has never published a written keybind table, damage table, cooldown table or drop table for any Blood Demon Art. The official channel only posts move showcase videos, and those videos do not label which key fires which ability. Everything below therefore comes from community and media sources, and this page marks each claim with the confidence it actually earned. If you are still choosing whether to become a demon at all, start with how to become a demon before you worry about which art to roll for.

What moves does Obi Manipulation have?

Community sources record five abilities for this art: Obi Barrage on Z, Obi Pursuit on X, Obi Grab on C, Obi Field on V and Obi Charge on B. Every one of those names comes from a single community wiki, and no second source has published names to compare them against.

That single-source status matters more here than it does on other art pages, so the table below repeats it column by column rather than hiding it in a footnote.

None of the five names above has been cross-checked against a second independent source, so treat them as community-reported records rather than an official move chart. There is also a live risk of first-game contamination: Obi Barrage and Obi Pursuit both appear on first-game Fandom pages, so the list may blend Slayers 2 data with records from the original Project Slayers. On top of that, the site the list comes from runs a Blood Demon Art category with six entries in it, and Obi Manipulation is not one of them: only the overview table carries the art at all, and a dedicated Obi subpage returns a 404. The same site has a documented habit of copy-pasting section headings between art pages, so its coverage depth should not be read as editorial confidence in this particular kit.

Why are these five move names not confirmed?

Because no other source names them, and at least two of the names also appear in the first Project Slayers game. Names like Obi Barrage and Obi Pursuit show up on first-game Fandom pages, which creates a real risk that community records have bled across from the older title.

Three separate facts sit behind that caution. First, a community table covering how to change your art lists Obi Manipulation’s ultimate as “not yet detailed”, which means even the sites tracking this art closely have not pinned the B slot down. Second, the larger media outlets have published the art’s tier placement and its match-up notes while openly stating that complete move names are still being assessed, so the silence is not an oversight on this page’s part. Third, where the move list appears it appears exactly once, which places it in the same bucket as the other single-source items the wider community has flagged for review.

There is also a competing three-move list in circulation from a smaller SEO site, using the names Sash Whip, Eight-Layered Obi Slash and Obi Bind. That list shares nothing with the five names above and comes from a site with no editorial process, so it is not repeated as an alternative answer. It is mentioned only so that you recognise it if you run into it, and know it is not a corroborating source.

If you want to check any of this yourself, the honest test takes ten seconds: open your character’s skill tree in game and read the ability names printed there. The game is the only source that cannot be out of date, and no community list, including this one, should overrule what your own client displays.

Where does Obi Manipulation rank on tier lists?

It lands between A and C depending on who you read, with B the most common placement. The spread is not noise from one bad article: it reflects genuinely different opinions about a duels-only kit, and every placement below is reported as its source published it.

The cleanest single oddity in that table is AllThings.How, which published both the B and the C placement on the same day in two different articles. Both are listed here deliberately. A third-party aggregator that collects tier votes has flagged the art as contested with lists ranging from A to C, which is a fair summary of the raw picture. Additional placements outside that table include TechWiser at C, UrGameTips at A, GameGeekFusion at B, and one community wiki describing it as low value for general play. The full cross-art comparison lives on the Blood Demon Art tier list.

What did v0.98 change for Obi Manipulation?

Three changes are safe to repeat because two independent sources agree on all of them. The whole kit gained ten percent more damage, the Z move gained hyper armour, and the V move gained a guardbreak. Those three buffs arrived together in the same patch and they compound each other.

Hyper armour is the headline. It means the Z ability can be completed even while you are being hit, so the move stops being a gamble in a trade and becomes something you can commit to. The guardbreak on V matters for a different reason: it gives the kit a way to punish someone who is turtling behind a block, which is normally the exact behaviour a pressure art struggles against. The damage line is the least interesting of the three in isolation, but it compounds the other two, because a buffed kit that can no longer be interrupted and can crack a guard is materially harder to play around.

One further claim circulates around this patch and is deliberately separated from the three above. A single outlet reports that Z’s guard damage was lowered as a trade-off for the armour, meaning the move is better at finishing than at breaking a block outright. Beebom, which is the source for the three confirmed changes, does not mention that downside, so it is recorded here as a single-source report rather than a settled fact. The practical reading, if it holds: Z is now a commitment tool, and V is the slot you lean on when you need the guard to actually break.

Did v0.110 change Obi Manipulation?

No. The v0.110 patch notes cover block fixes and Thunder buffs and make no mention of Obi Manipulation or of any other Blood Demon Art, so nothing about this art changed in that update. The version badge on this page says v0.110, but v0.110 is not where its buffs came from.

Because it is easy to assume the version badge on this page points at the patch that buffed the art, the sequence is worth spelling out. The armour, the guardbreak and the damage increase all landed in v0.98, and v0.110 left every demon art alone. Anything you read that credits v0.110 with demon art balance work is describing a patch that did not touch the category. The wider version timeline, including which updates did move breathing styles and systems, is tracked on the patch notes history.

Is Obi Manipulation worth picking in v0.110?

For duels, yes, provided you accept that the value is skill-gated rather than automatic. For farming, no: multiple independent sources say the kit struggles once you are fighting enemies instead of players, and the same sources describe the art as one that needs deliberate practice before its mixups pay off.

The clearest framing comes from a source that picked the art apart properly. A mix-up only earns its name if both options threaten something the defender has to respect; swapping animations does not force a different decision unless each branch carries a real consequence. That is the test this kit has to pass in your hands, and it is why two players can pick the same art and land on opposite opinions of it. On top of that, GrindNStrat and the outlets echoing it state outright that guard breaks, grab behaviour, cancels and safe combo starters for Obi still need more testing, which means nobody can currently hand you a guaranteed combo route. Treat every “confirmed combo” video you find with that caveat in mind.

The comparison that keeps coming up is Arrow. Sources call the two near mirror images: Obi is the duelling specialist that suffers in PvE, Arrow sits on the other side of the same trade-off. If you spend your sessions in Final Selection and open-world grinding, a farm-oriented art will out-earn this one for the same effort. The ice guide and the Shockwave guide cover the arts those sources recommend for players who want output without the practice curve.

Which clans work with Obi Manipulation?

Two clans come up repeatedly and both are support picks rather than damage picks. Shabana works through Siblings Bond and Core Detachment, which lay down a temporary buff zone you can fight around, and Douma adds a defensive reset through its clone return.

That is the entire list of named synergies, and it is short on purpose. No source reviewed for this page pairs Obi Manipulation with a specific weapon, so any claim that the art wants a particular blade or fan is not something this page can support. If you are still deciding on a clan, the safest move is to treat these two as options rather than requirements, and check the clan reroll guide before you spend Spins chasing one. For players who are not yet comfortable with the art’s timing, a forgiving clan does more for your survival than a damage clan does.

How do you unlock Obi Manipulation?

The general demon art chain is well documented: become a demon, use a Biwa Bell, spend an Evil Art Orb, complete the training quest, then progress through the skill tree and mastery track. Nobody has published an Obi-specific version of that route.

An official showcase video for this art does exist on the developer’s channel, but it is old, it predates the launch window, and it demonstrates moves without labelling keys or showing any unlock step. It confirms the art exists and roughly how it looks. It does not confirm how you obtain it. Two community sites have published detailed unlock chains for a different demon art, with specific vendors and resource counts, and both of those chains contradict each other and trace back to the same non-independent source, which is exactly the pattern this page refuses to repeat for Obi. The practical route is to read the quest text the game gives you after you spend the orb, and to check the skill tree guide for how mastery and node unlocks work in general. No number on this page should override what your own client shows.

What is this page based on?

This page mixes confidence levels and names them. The confirmed tier is the v0.98 balance history, which rests on two independent sources, plus the demon art unlock chain and Obi’s duels-only positioning, both repeated by several outlets. The single-source tier is the move list, the tier placements and one trade-off claim. Nothing here is official.

The single-source material is the five move names, which come only from BloxInformer’s overview table and appear nowhere else, with two of them also matching first-game Fandom records. The tier placements are reported per source rather than averaged, and AllThings.How’s B and C contradiction is reproduced rather than resolved. The claim that Z lost guard damage is another single-source item and is labelled as such in the body. Community and media sources reviewed include Beebom, ProGameGuides, Destructoid, AllThings.How, games.gg, GrindNStrat, Roonby, TechWiser and UrGameTips, all checked on 2026-09-23. No official keybind, damage, cooldown or drop table exists for this art, so verify move names and slot behaviour on your own skill tree in game.