Fast landing of low FC attacks

[flagitious]

I have been doing FC fair (foward air) for a while now, its pretty easy to time the fast fall with it so that you land right after your attack hits or is blocked giving you up to a 4 frame time advantage. But recently I have been working on mastering FC of nair,bair,uair as well.

Initially I was thinking to start fast falling them before they hit like fair. But I wasn't having much success. Here are some thoughts. When you are floating at ground level (jumping while holding down) it takes 10 frames to reach the ground if you stop floating, if you fast fall it takes 3. Note you have a to wait a few frames to FF after floating, but not if you are doing an attack. While overlapping the enemy character I couldn't get it to work, it would be really slow trying to FF as soon as I started my attack. The problem was that I was trying to FF during the shield hit lag (basically time freezes for 6 frames when you hit with a uair etc), this caused FF to never happen and thus take 10 frames to land.

After thinking about it and experimenting I found a pretty good solution, start the aerial, stop floating asap, and then start FF during the end of hit lag (you can start to FF during the last few frames of hit lag and it will still work). With this method you will land 1-2 frames after an uair (depending on how soon you stop floating), and 1-3 for bair and 2-3 for nair i think. This is pretty good it still puts you at a time advantage if they block.

Has any one else thought about this? What is your method FF this low aerials? I'd really like to here from Ryoko and Quetz. BTW if you have never thought about this but use low float canceled aerials you are probably already using the method I described, it is most natural and my fingers knew it before I did.

EDIT: btw this is all for aerials that will hit on the first frame they try (overlapping or close) if you are doing low float aerials from a distance its easier to just ff them before you hit, more so if you float a little higher to start with.

[RyokoYaksa]

From the ground float, bair and uair are easily FC'd since you can C-stick them and use the control stick to FF. Nair is harder due to its speed, but still possible. Here's how the input goes:

ground float
bair, nair, uair (C-sticking when possible)
use control stick to FF before the move makes contact (5 frames for bair, 6 for uair, and a scant 2 for nair)
enjoy the combos

I've practiced this with those three moves and bair and uair are easy enough to FC this way. It's nair that's the main problem, but it's still 100% possible to FC it from a ground float. This is quite useful since you won't be hovering in the air after hitting with a move and you're not so vulnerable and have more combo options.

[flagitious]

Hmm fast falling before the move hits. Thats really hard to do, and if you do it too soon it won't even hit. I'm gonna stick to my method, but **** if you can pull that off its better I guess. I gotta play you sometime and see this.

Also you mention doing fc attacks with cstick? Holding up on the control stick to float right? I have never tried this I'll check it out sometime.

[Quetzalcoatl]

To be honest, I have no idea what I do, I'll check later and get back to you on it.

[Zato-1]

I am still a little confused on the proper way to FFC. Does your arial attack annimation have to be in progress when you hit the ground? Do you have to start falling before your arial attack makes contact? Do you have to jump a second time, before you begin your fall/attack in order to get FFC to work?

It appears to me that I still have recovery annimation when I try to FFC. Will there always be some recovery time? I can't seem to catch fox in an ffc combo (FFC to grab/dsmash for example) for the life of me.

I can't even tell if I am doing it wrong. Pls help!

[flagitious]

Before I stated its best to fast fall after this hit because its only a few frames slower and is loads easier. But I'm changing my view now, although it is difficult being able to land fast it really lets you take advantage of them when they try to shield your fc attacks.

I can't do it perfect yet but I'm working on it. It's a little hard to practice, I recommend just doing fc attacks on thin air as fast as you can. Because if you practice on a target you might automatically revert to ff after the hit. Good to practice on a target some to make sure you're doing it fast enough.

I think for nair though you gotta ff it after... too fast. Will try more.

[flagitious]

Oh yeah don't forget to practice following it up with something like a grab, whats the point of doing some **** 3 frames faster if you don't act as soon as possible afterwards. I mean theoretically if you do it perfect they shouldn't even have time to roll away from the grab, their only escape is a well timed dodge. Also for those who don't know if you want to roll/jump/dodge as at the earliest possible moment while holding block, press on the c stick left, right(roll), down(dodge), or up(jump). This requires no timing so can be nice someones. Good way to test if you do fc perfect do, have a friend block and and hold a direction on the cstick see if you can get em before they roll.

---Edit: one more thing, another advantage to fast falling right before the attack hits is that your fingers can be on their way to their next move during the hit lag---

Another thing I am playing around with is not even getting them with a FC aerial. The fastest way down is to do a move because that allows you to fast fall anytime (normally after a float can't fast fall for 5 frames). If you don't want to hit them just do a forward air. Normally they think you will hit them with an aerial so they will block it if thats all they have time left to do. By not hitting them you throw off their timing because there will be no hit lag, by the time they realize you didn't even bother to hit them you will have started your grab.