Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith/Aya Shameimaru

Non-Spell #1

In this attack, Aya shoots a static formation of a bunch of circles of various directions and sizes based on her position. By following her, you can make sure to kill this pattern before the next wave starts (which would be affected by the randomness of her movement). It is reccomended to lead Aya to the right as the dodges there are quite simple, after all, the gaps in one side of a circle align with the gaps on the other side of the circle with respect to their movement. So, at the start, stand a bit to the right, follow Aya along, stay in the closest gap to you and you're done.

Non-Spell #2

HUD Alignment for Aya Non2's first wave. Use the orange dots on the HUD for visual reference, youll be safe within the blue area if you bottomhug.

Due to how Aya's position in the previous spell is fixed, Aya will start this nonspell in the same position every time. As such, the first wave is completely static and can be made completely riskless. Two common strats exist for it: going off to the bottom left corner of the screen and using the HUD alignment shown aside. Whichever method you choose is up to preference, going off to the corner loses out on dps, but takes less precision and if your monitor doesnt make the orange dots very visible it might be preferred.

As for the following waves of the attack, one might notice that the gaps are actually fairly precise, specially if Aya goes down. One nice approach to make aligning yourself nicer is to, instead of looking to go into the slightly diagonal gap, to instead look at the blue circle shot straight down, and visually align yourself to the edge of the big circle. Remember that the bullet's hitboxes are smaller than their sprites, so infact you have quite the bit of leeway,

Non-Spell #3

Positioning for the start of Aya Non 3. Use the border between Mountain and Sky in the background for your vertical position. There, once the items are collected, Aya will do her first movement.

This nonspell, given enough time, can give some very messy situations, specially if Aya decides to go low down and things line up weirdly with the previous wave. Thankfully, with intentional boss leading, one can fairly reliably quickkill the attack before anything too dangerous happens (unless you are playing as ReimuC, I guess). One can choose to just lead her right or just lead her left, either strategy can work, but one needs to choose to ensure consistency.

To make things easier, there is an reliable way to tell when exactly Aya will move for the first time, which will help with dps since you can follow Aya along on the first movement. By not PoCing right after Storm Days and positioning oneself according to the background, you can know that the boss will move right as you collect the items. Like that you can follow the boss on her first movement and get a cleaner faster kill.

Spell Card #3 |「Peerless Wind God」

Widely considered to be the most difficult spell in the game, Peerless Wind God is a spell that relies heavily on the player's raw ability to read bullets quickly and "Just Dodge", however there are still some strategies that can be used to make it more manageable. Firstly, dodging at either the very left or very right of the screen can make it far easier to read the bullets compared to being closer to the middle of the screen. Which side you pick should depend on what you find most comfortable to read as it is debated whether the left or right is better. Try a few attempts at the spell on either side and pick whichever feels more natural

A Recommendation for Dodging Height marked with a Red Circle.

Secondly, your height on the screen. Although you do want to be on the very edge of the screen, try not to let yourself get stuck at the very bottom as well. At the bottom corners of the screen, you have no space to move any further down and this completely disallows any retreating moves to give yourself a second longer to think and choose the right gap. It is inherently a very fast spell but just half a second more time to think can save your capture so it is very wise to position yourself a decent bit up from the bottom so you have space to move down if a particularly hard pattern shows up right above you.

The third thing to keep in mind is reading window. For this spell you typically want to have your reading window in a fairly small and focused area above Reimu / Marisa. If you are making a specific micrododge you might want to move the reading window down to your actual player sprite instead of ahead of it, and also move down the screen as mentioned in the previous paragraph because with a decent dodging height you should have the space below you to allow that. Try not to make the reading window too large as that could become overwhelming or confusing because you'll be trying to pay attention to too many angles at once.

Spell Card #4| Blockade Sign「Terukuni Shining Through Heaven and Earth」

Aya's final spell is fairly simple and revolves around lane switching. It is formed of fast yellow arrowheads that open and close gaps and yellow rice rings that speed up their firerate the longer the spell goes on. A good way to handle this spell is to try to dodge the two parts seperately, for example going through a crossing of the yellow arrowheads and then focusing on getting through the yellow rice wave before switching back to focusing on the arrowheads and just repeating until the end of the spell. Even near the end of the spell there should be enough time to switch your focus between each bullet type.