Fair or Dair

[DJ _ICE]

Since there was no "Ask Luigi questions sticky", I had to make this its own thread. Assuming there is enough time for each move to come out, as a combo finisher/kill move, which is better to use? In what situations would the other aerial do better? I've seen most pro Luigis using Dair, how come?

 

[-ACE-]

Generally dair is better, having more damage/knockback... But if you're in a pinch and don't have enough time for a dair, fair's hitbox comes out faster (frame 7 vs frame 10), and can be more useful (reverse fairs from the ledge come to mind). Fair reaches much higher initially, and has a good hitbox throughout the "chop". It really depends on spacing, where you are in relation to your opponent, and how much time you have.

 

[DJ _ICE]

I see. Would you happen to know their angles as well?

 

[Verda Stelo]

Dair is stronger overall and sends your target at a roughly 45 degree angle. Fair has a larger hitbox overall (not sure about range, both are pretty similar) and launches at more like a 30 degree angle. Dair is generally better for killing, but consider the launch angles and what you want to get out of each hit. If your opponent has great DI and recovery they can come back from a dair much more easily than a fair.

For example, consider this situation: you're edgeguarding a Marth and he's just landed on the stage after you edge hogged his sweetspot option away. Ledge hop dair will give Marth a second chance at recovery until much higher percents than a ledge hop fair due to the knockback angle. This is especially important on larger/higher stages like DL and FoD.

 

[-ACE-]

It's not a huge difference when they have good DI, but that's exactly right.

Also one of the best things about dair is your ability to hit sweetspotters at the ledge. SH, FF, dair the instant they are trying to grab it.

 

[DJ _ICE]

Thanks a ton guys!

 

[Verda Stelo]

Something I just remembered: don't forget about the reverse hitbox on the fair! It's great for catching people in bad (really bad) DI.

 

[DBSammy]

As a combo finisher, it also depends on the location of your opponent as well. Fair if they're slightly above/away and Dair if they're below.

 

[Stride]

Both moves actually have the same knockback angle; the Sakurai angle (http://www.ssbwiki.com/Sakurai_angle). Internally, for the purposes of having a numerical angle attached to a hitbox, it's 361°, but the actual knockback angle changes based on various factors.

The way the Sakurai angle works is: against aerial opponents, the launch angle is always 45°, while against grounded opponents, the angle varies depending on the knockback dealt. At 32.1 units of knockback or higher, the launch angle is 44°, while at 32 units or below, the angle is a semi-spike (the wiki gives 0° as the angle for this, which I don't understand since that would be completely vertical; maybe they're mixing normal angle notation where 0° is north with the Melee .dat file notation where 0° is west). Between 32 and 32.1, the launch angle is scaled linearly between the semi-spike and 44° angle.

Since both attacks have knockback values of well over 32.1 units even at 0%, I think the launch angle of both moves can safely be thought of as being 45° in all circumstances (the semi-spike will never occur, and the one degree difference on grounded opponents is insignificant).

Neither aerial has higher knockback than the other in all circumstances, as there are multiple move properties that affect knockback and the properties are influenced by percentage in different ways. The differences are that forward aerial has higher base knockback than down aerial, while down aerial has higher damage than forward aerial (they both have the same knockback scaling). The result is that the knockback of dair overtakes the knockback of fair at roughly 60-90%, depending on character (I didn't check this at all thoroughly, so the figure is very rough). An example is below (values are on Fox, and rounded to the nearest integer):
At 0%, forward aerial does 76 units of knockback, while down aerial does 61 units of knockback
At 30%, forward aerial 109, down aerial 105
At 60%, forward aerial 143, down aerial 149 (dair already deals more knockback here)
At 90%, forward aerial 177, down aerial 192
At 120%, forward aerial 211, down aerial 236
At 150%, forward aerial 244, down aerial 280
At 999%, forward aerial 1206, down aerial 1516 (you can see how the proportional difference increases with percentage)

The tool I used to find the launch angles was Master Hand, which is what the Project M Back Room used to port character data from Melee for Project M.

On a different note: a forward smash only comes out one frame later than a frame-perfect jump->forward aerial and comes out 2 frames earlier than a frame-perfect jump->down aerial. An uncharged forward smash always does more knockback than a down aerial and starts doing more than a forward aerial at low percentages (approximately 30%; I didn't bother to check properly). The extremely vertical angle that forward smash sends at makes it more situational until high percentages, however. I'm trying to experiment with using forward smash as a combo finisher; you can set up for it in a lot of the same circumstances you can set up for up-B sweetspot or fair/dair.

Also the tool I used to determine knockback values is here: http://smashboards.com/threads/tool...n-hitlag-shieldstun-calculation-v1-11.324878/

[I'd also like to mention that I finished typing all of this out and then accidentally hit Ctrl+W and lost it all. Apparently drafts are discarded if you close the window.]

Edit: I'm pretty sure that either aerial could appear to have a more horizontal angle when they are used a lower percentages, since the opponent would start to fall very soon after getting hit.

tl;dr: The launch angles for fair and dair are the same Also fair has more knockback at lower percentages while dair has more at higher percentages.