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Double Aerials

Berble

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Dec 19, 2013
Messages
131
Location
Marin, CA
Is there a best combination of 2 aerials to do this or is it situational? Can it be done with any 2 aerials off a short hop and also should I be short or full hopping when I do this?
 

Artificial Flavour

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Feb 6, 2012
Messages
107
Location
Kalamazoo, MI
You cannot second aerial after a Nair.

Dair will not hit after a Uair or Fair, and only has a 1 or 2 frame window after Bair and Dair respectively.

A second Fair wont hit after the first.

These are all short hops without FFing. Other than those, any combination of 2 aerials works, and most have a few frames where you can FF.

I personally Nair for the second aerial almost exclusively. If you delay Nair until the last possible frame, you actually get 1 frame of advantage on an L-cancel.
 

Verda Stelo

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Feb 2, 2014
Messages
112
Location
Atlanta, GA
Before I say anything about double aerials (DAs) I want to say that they are bad! They are not to be relied upon versus anybody worth talking about! The ability to waveland out of a short hop aerial is a greater blessing in most situations. Make sure that you're using that option to its full extent before you implement DAs so that you may condition your opponent to disrespect your powerful aerial game.

Now let's talk about DAs. Four out of your five aerials have pretty similar properties, so it might be hard to decide which of those attacks you want to use in a given situation. The ability to understand your game situation is crucial to good usage of unsafe techniques. That ability is way beyond the scope of this discussion and comes mostly with time and experience. We can, however; break down each aerial individually and how it can be used to your maximum advantage and, even more importantly, how bad usage can create a disadvantage for yourself.

Uair: I like uair. It's quick and relatively safe overall. Luigis should probably be using it more in their general game anyway, but especially so in their DAs. A properly spaced (all moves shall be properly spaced unless otherwise noted henceforth) uair on the front of your opponent's shield can be followed by a nair or second uair for fun. A cross-up uair can be followed by another or more safely by a bair.
Fair: This has the best speed to power ratio of any of your aerials. It should always be used on a more static short hop, its hitboxes simply aren't good enough for an effective cross-up. As a first attack it can be followed by a uair or nair to your preference. As a second attack you should be more careful with it, though, as it is the laggiest of all your aerials with 12 frames of L-cancelled landing lag. Two situations in which you could use it are: while fading away, trying to catch someone chasing you, and on the rare occasion someone is shielding above you. Uair to fair will catch all but those most experienced versus Luigi off guard.
Dair: We all love this attack but you have to be careful with it in your DAs! Its range isn't that great so you're not very safe trying to follow it up with a nair mindlessly. If you hit the front of your opponent's shield go for that fadeaway nair/fair. If you're in the middle you want to have enough momentum for the cross-up and follow it with a uair or more safely with a bair. If you're in the middle of their shield and you're not jumping through it you're failing! That goes for every aerial. As a second attack, you do not want to be close enough to connect with dair except to go for the balls to the wall meteor smash hitbox to get that free punish at lower percents and easy follow-ups at higher percents--attempt at your own risk.
Bair: Your safest DA attack! Two bairs on shield are very safe and perfectly good to use in forming your Jigglypuff-esque bair walls. Bair is a great second attack on cross-up. What you trade for the safety of bair is the ability to lead in to a combo most of the time or a kill without some edgeguarding.
Nair: Too slow to use as a first attack, though it can auto cancel if you initiated it quickly enough after jump. It's best to hit with the front of nair as its hitbox extends farther in that direction than backwards, and that beautiful downward extension is mostly useless here. As Artificial Flavour stated above me, you can get a 1 frame advantage on shield if you delay the it until the last possible moment.

Now why are DAs bad again? Let's look at some cold hard numbers. At maximum freshness dair is your strongest aerial dealing 16% damage. This means it does 8 frames of shield stun. You're probably hitting with the first attack frame, 10, but for the sake of demonstration we'll say you hit with the last attack frame, 14. If you act on the IASA frame, 29, that means that your opponent has a 7 frame advantage on you when you hit them. And that's the best that it gets! Staleness is another factor to consider here. For example, if nair is one of the last nine attacks you've connected with, which it probably is, you'll lose that potential 1 frame advantage on hit, leaving you at best even with your opponent.
 
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Verda Stelo

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Feb 2, 2014
Messages
112
Location
Atlanta, GA
Thanks Griff! I just want Luigi to be the best that he can be.

And a small addendum to my last post that I forgot about: hit confirms! At low percents if your opponent isn't DIing away you can follow one aerial with another without jumping again. The old Ka-Master is the dair>fair, uair can lead into another or a fair as well, and bair>bair works too.
 
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Scarlet Bean

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Sep 18, 2013
Messages
193
Thanks Griff! I just want Luigi to be the best that he can be.

And a small addendum to my last post that I forgot about: hit confirms! At low percents if your opponent isn't DIing away you can follow one aerial with another without jumping again. The old Ka-Master is the dair>fair, uair can lead into another or a fair as well, and bair>bair works as well.
How long have you been playing competitive melee btw
 

Verda Stelo

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Feb 2, 2014
Messages
112
Location
Atlanta, GA
I started playing Luigi three or four months ago with a few months of Falco before that. Just over a year total.
 

Scarlet Bean

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Sep 18, 2013
Messages
193
I started playing Luigi three or four months ago with a few months of Falco before that. Just over a year total.
Nice. I started out with ganon,and then moved to fox;got bored of fox and his linear playstyle--there was nothing to figure out.Ended up with Luigi because of how unique his playstyle is....and because of the luck factor.
Been playing for around 2 years now.
 

Verda Stelo

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Feb 2, 2014
Messages
112
Location
Atlanta, GA
I think most people are better off learning the competitive game with one of the top tier characters anyway. Knowing how to correctly play a good character with lots of options can help you understand how to handle the shortcomings of worse characters and how to maximize their potential by necessity. Too many people never try out the lower tiers though. I believe characters like Luigi, Young Link, and Donkey Kong have much left to discover, we just need the right player and that's who I intend to be.
 

Scarlet Bean

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Sep 18, 2013
Messages
193
I think most people are better off learning the competitive game with one of the top tier characters anyway. Knowing how to correctly play a good character with lots of options can help you understand how to handle the shortcomings of worse characters and how to maximize their potential by necessity. Too many people never try out the lower tiers though. I believe characters like Luigi, Young Link, and Donkey Kong have much left to discover, we just need the right player and that's who I intend to be.
Bububu I want to be the people's champion ):
 

BluEG

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
287
I think most people are better off learning the competitive game with one of the top tier characters anyway. Knowing how to correctly play a good character with lots of options can help you understand how to handle the shortcomings of worse characters and how to maximize their potential by necessity. Too many people never try out the lower tiers though. I believe characters like Luigi, Young Link, and Donkey Kong have much left to discover, we just need the right player and that's who I intend to be.

Luigi fundamentally breaks the game, his playstyle is soooo different. I think learning elements from other characters is great but a focus solely on Luigi will ultimately help the most.

As far as double aerials go, they are great against many lower-mid skilled players as they are not expecting it and fall to shield pressure. However, highly skilled players will know to stay in shield and simply shield grab and punish. Its very unsafe in many circumstances.

A far better option nowadays is to waveland your SH aerials to maintain momentum and bait attacks from your opponent when they try to read a double aerial.
 

KH0N

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jan 2, 2014
Messages
5
Location
MA
Im a fan of the double aerial myself I find myself doing a lot of d-airs to n-airs to jab pressuring.
 

Stride

Smash Ace
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Messages
680
Location
North-west England (near Manchester/Liverpool)
Staleness is another factor to consider here. For example, if nair is one of the last nine attacks you've connected with, which it probably is, you'll lose that potential 1 frame advantage on hit, leaving you at best even with your opponent.
The knockback formula and by extension the shieldstun formula invariably ignore move staling.

EDIT: I'm wrong, ignore this post
 
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Dapplegonger

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 9, 2014
Messages
207
Location
San Jose, CA
NNID
PetX-tremist
3DS FC
5129-1289-1208
Luigi fundamentally breaks the game, his playstyle is soooo different. I think learning elements from other characters is great but a focus solely on Luigi will ultimately help the most.
I completely agree. Its nearly impossible for me to try and get good at any other character because I'm so used to Luigi's unique movement and playstyle. I've tried using Marth or Young Link against Marth (I suck with Luigi in that matchup) but its too hard to get used to
 
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