Where the Darius Love at?

[DietSoap]

For the fucking life of me I cannot do a counter burst in DBCS.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Same. I haven't found it necessary to clear anything yet, except the early tutorial for it!

[Klatrymadon]

Try the "cut-in" method if you've been trying to take the beam on the chin: let the boss fire off its burst laser, tuck yourself just under the beam, then hold your burst button and move up and through its path. There's a pretty generous window of about half a second during your burst's wind-up animation where you're "active" and essentially guaranteed the counterburst. It's a hell of a lot easier than sitting directly in front of the boss and trying to use the audio cues, at least...

[glenjamin]

Also when bosses are charging up their burst laser (in every version besides PSP) there will be 2 circles that appear on either side of the beam's origin point and converge toward the center. When those 2 red circles overlap is when you want to hit your burst button to counter.

[John4300]

Try the "cut-in" method if you've been trying to take the beam on the chin: let the boss fire off its burst laser, tuck yourself just under the beam, then hold your burst button and move up and through its path. There's a pretty generous window of about half a second during your burst's wind-up animation where you're "active" and essentially guaranteed the counterburst. It's a hell of a lot easier than sitting directly in front of the boss and trying to use the audio cues, at least...

As Klatrymadon said here, your ship needs to hit the red laser while your own laser is charging up (The short time it takes between pressing the button and shooting the laser) to get the counter laser. Do take into account the red laser has slightly smaller hitbox than it appears. If you do the timing method with the sound cue, you need to take into account input delay. I do myself prefer the cut in method as well.

All default ships with burst laser (Legend, Next and Formula) and Assault with it's odd ball like burst can counter like this.

Genesis and Murakumo don't need to care about this, both get the counter laser if you just hit your own laser with red enemy laser at any time. I think Genesis might get a little kickstart in counter level if you release your charge button at the same time enemy shoots their own laser, but I'm honestly quite unclear on this so don't quote me.

Keep practicing with the timing for countering and it'll soon become a second nature for you!