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Q&A Official FAQ and QnA Thread - Ask Your Questions Here!

Kadano

Magical Express
Joined
Feb 26, 2009
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Vienna, Austria
I think those commentators just used that expression to say that DI on Marth's upair doesn't help much. The ~17.5 degree alteration will only change the knockback angle from 90 to 73, which is still really easy for Marth to follow up.

@ASDI: Yeah, you got that right.
 

Signia

Smash Lord
Joined
Feb 5, 2009
Messages
1,157
Questions about crouch-cancelling mechanics:

Can you crouch cancel even you're in a recovery animation? What about when you're dashing?

How does crouch cancelling affect meteor attacks, the supposed counter?

What is a recommended way to SDI when you crouch cancel?
 
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Bones0

Smash Legend
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Aug 31, 2005
Messages
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Jarrettsville, MD
Questions about crouch-cancelling mechanics:

Can you crouch cancel even you're in a recovery animation? What about when you're dashing?

How does crouch cancelling affect meteor attacks, the supposed counter?

What is a recommended way to SDI when you crouch cancel?
1. You cannot do a true crouch cancel when stuck in any animation other than a crouch, including dashing. You can do a faux CC in that sense that you can hold-buffer ASDI downwards. ASDIing towards the ground can keep you grounded in situations where you would normally be launched into the air, but you still fall over (if you've ever been stomped by Falcon and just fallen over instead of being popped up, that's what happened).

2. That is extremely prevalent misinformation, but there is nothing about meteors or spike attacks that "counter" CCing. The only attacks (excluding grabs) that are able to circumvent CCing afaik are attacks with multiple hits in quick succession, such as Fox's drill. Idk for sure, but I think the way it works is the first hit is CCable, but the second hit follows up before the opponent has enough time to go back into the crouch animation so they can't CC it. This is why you can CC two hits of Fox/Falco's fair and Marth's nair, but not Fox's drill. Idk if any other moves are capable of the same effect as drill, but I'd imagine there are at percents where the opponent is in stun too long from the first hit in order to start crouching again in time. So like, maybe if Marth nairs an opponent at 100%, they can CC the first hit, but the second hit will connect before they are out of stun and able to hold-buffer a CC for the second hit. Not sure about this, but the important thing to know is that spikes can definitely be CCed.

3. The game prevents you from SDIing into the ground or into the air when you are grounded (often referred to as "Forbidden DI") because it'd be possible to survive attacks at really ridiculous percents by teching, or you'd be able to SDI moves like Fox's drill into the air and land with no stun. The only SDI I could imagine being applied in combination with a CC would be CCing a move and then quarter-circle SDIing away or towards the opponent. If you are trying to CC grab, this could be very helpful for avoiding shine/jab followups after aerials. In general, this will be really difficult because CCing reduces the hitlag you receive so the window for SDIing is much smaller.
 

d z

Smash Cadet
Joined
Mar 14, 2014
Messages
49
What frame does the game check your joystick position to determine tech roll direction, is it the same one you press shield, the frame you hit the surface, or something else?
 

Signia

Smash Lord
Joined
Feb 5, 2009
Messages
1,157
1. You cannot do a true crouch cancel when stuck in any animation other than a crouch, including dashing. You can do a faux CC in that sense that you can hold-buffer ASDI downwards. ASDIing towards the ground can keep you grounded in situations where you would normally be launched into the air, but you still fall over (if you've ever been stomped by Falcon and just fallen over instead of being popped up, that's what happened).
So if you hold down during a recovery animation or dashing, right before you get hit, it's no different from getting hit but not launched? There must be very little hitstun against grounded opponents, then.

2. That is extremely prevalent misinformation, but there is nothing about meteors or spike attacks that "counter" CCing. The only attacks (excluding grabs) that are able to circumvent CCing afaik are attacks with multiple hits in quick succession, such as Fox's drill. Idk for sure, but I think the way it works is the first hit is CCable, but the second hit follows up before the opponent has enough time to go back into the crouch animation so they can't CC it. This is why you can CC two hits of Fox/Falco's fair and Marth's nair, but not Fox's drill. Idk if any other moves are capable of the same effect as drill, but I'd imagine there are at percents where the opponent is in stun too long from the first hit in order to start crouching again in time. So like, maybe if Marth nairs an opponent at 100%, they can CC the first hit, but the second hit will connect before they are out of stun and able to hold-buffer a CC for the second hit. Not sure about this, but the important thing to know is that spikes can definitely be CCed.
Really? So the hitstun is still halved against crouching opponents, even if the attack is a spike or meteor? So is there no advantage to doing Marth Dair against cc'ers over just using Fair?

3. The game prevents you from SDIing into the ground or into the air when you are grounded (often referred to as "Forbidden DI") because it'd be possible to survive attacks at really ridiculous percents by teching, or you'd be able to SDI moves like Fox's drill into the air and land with no stun. The only SDI I could imagine being applied in combination with a CC would be CCing a move and then quarter-circle SDIing away or towards the opponent. If you are trying to CC grab, this could be very helpful for avoiding shine/jab followups after aerials. In general, this will be really difficult because CCing reduces the hitlag you receive so the window for SDIing is much smaller.
Yeah, I had CC-grabbing spacies in mind for this.
 

Bones0

Smash Legend
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So if you hold down during a recovery animation or dashing, right before you get hit, it's no different from getting hit but not launched? There must be very little hitstun against grounded opponents, then.

Really? So the hitstun is still halved against crouching opponents, even if the attack is a spike or meteor? So is there no advantage to doing Marth Dair against cc'ers over just using Fair?
1. I think you misunderstood me. It sounds like you think the hitstun is changing, but hitstun and KB are only reduced when you do a true CC (your character is visibly crouching). If you hold down during lag, while dashing, or even after missing a tech, you take the same amount of stun/KB as you normally would, but you will ASDI downwards because that is the direction you are holding.

You get hit into the air, but on the same frame hitstun begins, ASDI is applied. Since KB and ASDI start on the same frame, the game can tell you were supposed to be airborne, but can also tell you ASDIed towards the ground close enough to land, so you "land" (missed tech animation) even though you never really left the ground. This same effect can happen even when you DO get a true CC, it will simply only happen at higher percents where your character gets knocked over despite the crouch's effect of reducing KB.

2. Some moves are more powerful than others, so they may have more hitstun, but CCing a move will cut the KB/stun in half whether it is strong or weak, spike or not. For what it's worth, I see this in practice a lot. When playing Peaches especially, they CC-dsmash my dairs with about the same frequency as my nairs. They both deal 12% unstaled, but idk if they deal the same amount of stun. I think it's more complicated because it's dependent on base KB and KB growth values which change what moves are stronger at varying percents.

Here is a chart Kadano made showing Marth's KO moves. You can see Dancing Blade (DB) 3 and 4 start out with relatively little KB, but their KB growth is higher so at higher percents, they deal better KB than moves that were stronger at lower percents. Thus, it is possible most spikes are good vs. CCing, but if that is the case, it is because they all tend to be designed with a high BKB and has nothing to do with their trajectory. Someone would have to check the BKB of Falco's dair and compare it to his nair before determining if either was better, and at what percents. As far as Marth's fair vs. dair go, I think that is pretty similar to Falco's nair vs. dair. It feels like Marth's dair has stun, but that is probably a result of spikes having KB reduced by 20% with the same amount of stun. When you're talking about an opponent at 0%, it seems like he can reliably connect dair -> grab or fair -> grab on the same characters. This would suggest they have close or identical stun (at least at 0%).

 
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Monkley6

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Feb 19, 2009
Messages
356
How does one practice Dash Dancing alone? Does anyone have any good techniques or ideas? At the moment I'm just trying to DD in a specific area while moving in one direction or another, as precisely as I can.
 

Xyzz

Smash Champion
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The actual implementation of dash dancing in relation to an opponent is something that probably requires one of those. CPUs are of minor use, their attempts to hit you when you start dash dancing in front of them are always the same and rarely the ones actual opponents would choose (I rarely see Ganons throw out preemptive up-b's whenever somebody dashes towards them :D).

What you can indeed practice is being in complete control of the technical side of your DD. Do you know precisely how long your character's initial dash is? Can you precisely stay out of the range of the expected responses? That sort of thing ;)
 

The Star King

Smash Hero
Joined
Nov 6, 2007
Messages
9,681
A friend told me about a video where someone put the sounds of Melee player's controllers with a video of stone crabs walking. Anyone know where I can find that?
 

Monkley6

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Feb 19, 2009
Messages
356
The actual implementation of dash dancing in relation to an opponent is something that probably requires one of those. CPUs are of minor use, their attempts to hit you when you start dash dancing in front of them are always the same and rarely the ones actual opponents would choose (I rarely see Ganons throw out preemptive up-b's whenever somebody dashes towards them :D).

What you can indeed practice is being in complete control of the technical side of your DD. Do you know precisely how long your character's initial dash is? Can you precisely stay out of the range of the expected responses? That sort of thing ;)
That's kind of what I figured. When you say "know how long" do you mean distance, or time? I assume both tbh. Anyway thanks for the response.
I'll have to find some good music to listen to, because practicing gets BORING.
 

Xyzz

Smash Champion
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They're the same thing; after all, it always takes the same amount of time to dash a certain length or vice versa. Probably it's still a healthy thing to intuitively know both.
Regarding music and practice... definitely helps, but unless you like eurobeat arranges of touhou or similarily bad ideas, I won't be of much help there :D
 

Bones0

Smash Legend
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How does one practice Dash Dancing alone? Does anyone have any good techniques or ideas? At the moment I'm just trying to DD in a specific area while moving in one direction or another, as precisely as I can.
A simple and useful drill for DD practice is just trying to go from one side of FD to the other with only dashes. A lot of people get stuck only using left-right motions with equal timing. A huge benefit of DDing in-game is that you can change your position, so being able to do a long DD one way and short DD the other is really important. Starting on the left side of FD, dash right, dash left, dash right, dash left, and repeat until you get to the other edge. As you get better at it, start trying to do it in as few dashes as possible. You will end up with a timing something like this (periods represent time gaps between directions obv):
RIGHT .......... LEFT ... RIGHT .......... LEFT ... RIGHT, etc.

Even average players are often unable to do this sort of motion consistently, and it shows in their gameplay because they struggle to get "double dashes" that are often necessary to get pivot grabs, avoid approaches, or cover all the options in techchases. If you want a good role model for DDing, M2K's Marth, PP, and Mango are all great. Here's a video where Mango utilizes the exact DD pattern I described above. The Armada clip is the best example; watch it at 1/4th speed:

 
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qSven

Smash Rookie
Joined
Mar 21, 2014
Messages
6
Hey friends. So I've been doing a lot of research on the smash community and the game in general. And I have come to the conclusion that I would love to take it to a competitive level. The only problem is that I am having difficulties with the techniques. I've been trying to follow this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vckV2MJgBzo but it is just so difficult. I was wondering if anyone was willing to help out a newbie in this glorious world of smash.
 

Bones0

Smash Legend
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Aug 31, 2005
Messages
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Jarrettsville, MD
Hey friends. So I've been doing a lot of research on the smash community and the game in general. And I have come to the conclusion that I would love to take it to a competitive level. The only problem is that I am having difficulties with the techniques. I've been trying to follow this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vckV2MJgBzo but it is just so difficult. I was wondering if anyone was willing to help out a newbie in this glorious world of smash.
Welcome!

Do you have any experience at all with Melee or Smash in general? If you are 100% brand new with the game or have only played a handful of times ever, even the most basic techniques will be a bit too advanced to begin with. If this is the case, you should start out just enjoying Melee for the game that it is. Play through the single player, unlock stuff, play event mode, target test, homerun contest, etc. This may not be as interesting as getting right into the hardcore stuff (it was more than enough for me for several years lol), but it will help you develop a sense for Melee's physics and just get used to general movement within the game. Knowing how to choose/time your attacks, how far you or the opponent will go based on percent, and other elements come into play constantly. They become your foundation for good fundamentals.

If you feel you have a good amount of control over your character given your current tools (you should be comfortable with the original How To Play video), then just realize that it's normal to struggle when first practicing these advanced techniques. Melee has a ton of options for movement and attacking, but the more options you have, the more precise your controls must be. I would recommend training one advanced technique at a time. Sitting down and focusing on short hopping, even just for 10-15 minutes, will yield much larger improvement than if you try to practice all of the techniques at once over the course of a couple hours. Just go through the video like a checklist and practice each one. If you find yourself getting frustrated after a while, just take a break or switch to another technique. Sometimes you will practice a ton with poor results only to come back the next day and notice yourself doing way better. If you have more specific questions during your practice, feel free to post here for help. :)
 
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Xyzz

Smash Champion
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Haha, I remember that it took me like two or three sessions just to remember to use up-b when recovering :D (admittedly ssbm was the first time I touched a gamecube controller (or any controller for that matter))
 
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Alulim

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jan 15, 2014
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100
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Canada
I've heard that M2K has dissected character combos to their bare bones by dissecting each and every percent of a move (up to something like 100% or 120%) and seeing what links to what at certain DIs.

I'm wondering how he does this because CPUs don't DI or SDI away like humans do to escape combos. This is a long term 'strategy' that I'd want to ultimately incorporate into my gameplay to improve and max my punish game.

Does anybody have any thoughts pertaining to the topic?
 

Bones0

Smash Legend
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I've heard that M2K has dissected character combos to their bare bones by dissecting each and every percent of a move (up to something like 100% or 120%) and seeing what links to what at certain DIs.

I'm wondering how he does this because CPUs don't DI or SDI away like humans do to escape combos. This is a long term 'strategy' that I'd want to ultimately incorporate into my gameplay to improve and max my punish game.

Does anybody have any thoughts pertaining to the topic?
He doesn't remember all of the percents. He, like other players, simply remember the crucial percents or have done the combo so many times that you can tell when you need to use certain moves based on how far they are flying. I've seen M2K specifically test when Fox's bair will KO Puff from the center of Dream Land with upward DI. Sometimes he will be able to KO earlier, sometimes they might live a little longer with good SDI or if they go across the stage, but knowing that general benchmark gives him a good indication of when he can start trying to KO Puff with bair instead of usmash or uair which are generally harder to land.
 

SAUS

Smash Ace
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Aug 20, 2008
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866
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Ottawa
How do you deal with shield grabs and CC
The easiest overall method to beating those 2 things is to just space better. Land further away so that faster attacks cannot reach you. Approaching with grabs sometimes will also help you mess up your opponent as well.
 

Geranimo

Smash Cadet
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Dec 25, 2013
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60
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Montréal
I recently changed some graphics in melee, but when I go to tournament, it goes into debug mode. So I want to play when vewing my hitboxes, but idk how to enable hitboxes nor how to start the game when my parameters are ok. Is there a video tutorial or something to guide newbies with the debug mode?
 
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Kadano

Magical Express
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Feb 26, 2009
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I recently changed some graphics in melee, but when I go to tournament, it goes into debug mode. So I want to play when vewing my hitboxes, but idk how to enable hitboxes nor how to start the game when my parameters are ok. Is there a video tutorial or something to guide newbies with the debug mode?
The information you want is in here: http://tcrf.net/Super_Smash_Bros._Melee/Master_Debug_Menu

tl;dr:
1. Set DBLEVEL to DEVELOP
2. Enter a match in any way you like
3. Press R+↑ on the d-pad.
 
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tauKhan

Smash Lord
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Feb 9, 2014
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2. That is extremely prevalent misinformation, but there is nothing about meteors or spike attacks that "counter" CCing. The only attacks (excluding grabs) that are able to circumvent CCing afaik are attacks with multiple hits in quick succession, such as Fox's drill. Idk for sure, but I think the way it works is the first hit is CCable, but the second hit follows up before the opponent has enough time to go back into the crouch animation so they can't CC it. This is why you can CC two hits of Fox/Falco's fair and Marth's nair, but not Fox's drill. Idk if any other moves are capable of the same effect as drill, but I'd imagine there are at percents where the opponent is in stun too long from the first hit in order to start crouching again in time. So like, maybe if Marth nairs an opponent at 100%, they can CC the first hit, but the second hit will connect before they are out of stun and able to hold-buffer a CC for the second hit. Not sure about this, but the important thing to know is that spikes can definitely be CCed.
Sorry for such a late response. I think you are wrong, meteors and spikes do counter cc, I remember a magus post about it. You can only cc attacks that put you in aerial state, as ccing is a result of landing. Meteors or spikes that don't cause knockdown won't launch grounded opponent in to air, and thus the hitstun can't be cancelled. Also crouch knockback reduction starts at initial crouch immediately, so a multihit move can be crouch cancelled unless it doesn't launch you in the air, or the hitboxes follow each other faster than it takes you to end landing animation.

Also if you land ASDIng down a move that doesn't force knockdown, you won't fall down, but will instead cancel hitstun with landing animation.

Edit: Found it.
Think of Crouch Cancel as 2 words. Crouch + Cancel. Crouch is... crouching, as in the animation your character goes into when you hold down, and being in that state reduces the power of the knockback. Cancel is ASDIing down to instantly land instead of going upwards, and the landing animation cancels the stun.

You can Crouch needles/Fox's shines/Falco's lasers/spikes/meteors to get reduced launch speed and stun time, but they can't send you upwards until they knock you down and go into a tumble, so you can't Cancel them by instantly going into a regular landing by ASDIing down.

An opponent that is shieldbroken/in stun/missed a rest/in up-B lag/etc can't Crouch to get reduced launch power and stun time, but for hits that have a trajectory above horizontal they can still Cancel using downward ASDI to cause an instant landing on the 1st frame of knockback and the landing animation cancels the stun.
 
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Signia

Smash Lord
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Feb 5, 2009
Messages
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What is the window for normal DI? After the hit lag is over, does DI affect anything?Does it do anything if you DI in different directions during the hitstun? I suspect that you're locked in to trajectory after the hitlag is over, or else we'd see curved trajectories.

Also, is this explanation of SDI correct?

"For smash-DI, you "smash" the stick in some area. But to get more SDI inputs, your stick has return to the neutral threshold or pass over the cardinal directions plus or minus 10 or so degrees from exactly north, south, west, or east. Only then is the next stick position read as an SDI input on the next frame."
 
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Xyzz

Smash Champion
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New inputs during the hitlag result in SDI.
The position of the control stick in the frame before you get launched determines the regular DI.
The position of the control stick in the frame you get launched determines ASDI. If you hold a direction on the c-stick that takes priority.

The SDI explanation is probably correct, I'm not too sure about the specific angle you have to pass (because multiple sdi inputs don't seem too practical to me anyways, haha).
 

tauKhan

Smash Lord
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I think its entirely feasible to do double input sdi on long hitlag moves or moves that you can react to before they hit you by inputting left, right, down, or up and then rolling the stick swiftly.
 

Xyzz

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Oh it is possible, for sure. It's just not something that I would consider all that helpful.

I can't recall a single doublehit move, where the first one would have a comparatively high amount of hitstun. Same for low knockback moves where you can avoid the followups by moving a certain way (e.g. falcos weak upair to whatever or the way Mango moves out of the way of puffs bair chains by SDIng up). We hopefully don't have to discuss that SDI just to have more room to fly after the hit hits and therefore not leave the boundary is so marginal that it's not going to win you more than one out of every 10000 games.

Which leaves edgetechs. Sure it might help, but I think the huge majority of the cast gets by just fine trying to hog the wall with their up-b (and never need anything besides the trivial ASDI input and decent timing on the tech input) or occasionally trying to outspace the attack entirely (I'm looking at you, tentacle-armed man with the Tiara).
In the second case it might help, but it's a lot harder to time (you probably have to hit the first part of the move, and if you end up missing that you end up with SDI that's inferior to the one somebody who just tries to get a single one in the appropriate direction in the first place). I just don't think it's worth it.
Maybe if you're crazy fast but horrible at timing, and can just sort of mash inputs to hopefully get some SDI haha :D
 
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tauKhan

Smash Lord
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Feb 9, 2014
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I occasionally get double sdi when trying to escape fox's uair. The way I input, if I miss time the first direction, the second could still register, so it is kind of back up also. Also you don't have to be crazy fast, as after axis input any other direction will register as sdi input:

It's a little more complicated.

The SDI is re-read only if the direction is changed from one quadrant to another, OR from one axis into any other angle.

Or put in another way,
- You can't SDI in the same quadrant twice in a row (without going to neutral inbetween).
- When you're strictly inside a quadrant, its edges (the axes) are part of it and therefore similarly forbidden.
- When you're on an axis, you can go anywhere else.

When TASing, it's always better to start the SDI on an axis, because it doesn't really limit your next SDI. After that you will have to alternate between two quadrants for the rest of the SDIs.
 
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Bones0

Smash Legend
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Sorry for such a late response. I think you are wrong, meteors and spikes do counter cc, I remember a magus post about it. You can only cc attacks that put you in aerial state, as ccing is a result of landing. Meteors or spikes that don't cause knockdown won't launch grounded opponent in to air, and thus the hitstun can't be cancelled. Also crouch knockback reduction starts at initial crouch immediately, so a multihit move can be crouch cancelled unless it doesn't launch you in the air, or the hitboxes follow each other faster than it takes you to end landing animation.

Also if you land ASDIng down a move that doesn't force knockdown, you won't fall down, but will instead cancel hitstun with landing animation.

Edit: Found it.
All that post says is that you CAN crouch cancel spikes the same as any other attack, but the ASDI portion of crouch cancelling won't happen until you start getting knocked over (because there's no way to ASDI down when you are standing/crouching on the ground). Good find on the post though, as that clears everything up since I wasn't 100% on that.

As far as multihit moves go, I still don't think you can when the multiple hits are in quick succession. Yes, Falcon's nair or Marth's nair can be CCed for both hits most of the time, but I believe Fox's drill has hitboxes coming out too fast for you to get back into the crouch animation. If hitstun is only reduced when you're visibly crouching, then I'd imagine you CC the first hit, but because of how fast the next hit is, you don't have enough time to get out of stun even with reduced stun from the crouch. So you end up getting hit by the second hit of the drill before you can crouch, thus preventing you from crouching for the rest of the drill. That's how I think it works anyway. You can probably replicate the effect with Falcon's nair at really high percents with a light character. If a Fox at 200% CCs the first hit of Falcon's nair, I don't think he's able to CC the second hit because he'll still be in stun by the time the second one hits.
 

Xyzz

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If one SDI is worth it, why not two? You get more distance, that's clearly of use.
the hell, your general usecase for SDI is to get out of a double hit attack or to reach a wall to tech on (neither tends to require more than a single SDI input), not make a journey around the stage (although that admittedly looks hilarious... much love to the perfect control videos).
 

tauKhan

Smash Lord
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Feb 9, 2014
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All that post says is that you CAN crouch cancel spikes the same as any other attack, but the ASDI portion of crouch cancelling won't happen until you start getting knocked over (because there's no way to ASDI down when you are standing/crouching on the ground). Good find on the post though, as that clears everything up since I wasn't 100% on that.

As far as multihit moves go, I still don't think you can when the multiple hits are in quick succession. Yes, Falcon's nair or Marth's nair can be CCed for both hits most of the time, but I believe Fox's drill has hitboxes coming out too fast for you to get back into the crouch animation. If hitstun is only reduced when you're visibly crouching, then I'd imagine you CC the first hit, but because of how fast the next hit is, you don't have enough time to get out of stun even with reduced stun from the crouch. So you end up getting hit by the second hit of the drill before you can crouch, thus preventing you from crouching for the rest of the drill. That's how I think it works anyway. You can probably replicate the effect with Falcon's nair at really high percents with a light character. If a Fox at 200% CCs the first hit of Falcon's nair, I don't think he's able to CC the second hit because he'll still be in stun by the time the second one hits.
I think we are getting confused about the term crouch cancelling, which is really vague. When players normally talk about the cc, the important part about it is actually the cancelling: landing via asdi to completely cancel hitstun. I think it would be wise to adopt new term for the cancelling part, and talk about crouch reduction or something. Meteors and spikes are good versus crouching opponents because they won't be able to cancel the hitstun and immediately retaliate, even though the hitstun will still be reduced by 1/3. Like you can combo falcos dair to shine on crouching opponent at percents where you wouldn't be able to combo nair into shine. Also foxes drillhits aren't ccable cause they are meteor.

If you real cc aka hitstun cancel first hit of falcon's nair you will be crouching before the second unless the second hit comes in 4 frames after the first, which I doubt.
 
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tauKhan

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I discovered something new about crouch canceling: Even many low knockback attacks with above horizontal trajectory can't be crouch cancelled by crouching in low percents. For example foxes nair into shine against crouching fox at 0% is a true combo* and so is foxes weak nair into shine at 24%. Foxes bair seems reasonably safe on crouch at 0% and his ftilt becomes ccable only after like 20%. Sheiks bair at 0% isn't either ccable. Most jabs aren't either ccable by crouching at low percents, but the hitstun is so low that the attacker is at disadvantage.

I suspect the reason for this is that there is a knockback threshold for launching character into air, and if a hit causes weaker kb, the character simply stays grounded and thus cannot land cancel the stun. Thus at low percents only asding down can actually be better than crouching, since crouch reduces kb. I believe many semi weak moves with low endlag are good vs crouching opponents, but it is always really difficult to judge at which percents, since it depends heavily on opponents weight, and even gravity might affect it.

*Tested in PAL training mode with 1/4 speed with two foxes, one of which holds down. It's easy to spot the difference between land cancelling stun and remaining grounded.
 
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KingDozie

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jan 19, 2014
Messages
456
I discovered something new about crouch canceling: Even many low knockback attacks with above horizontal trajectory can't be crouch cancelled by crouching in low percents. For example foxes nair into shine against crouching fox at 0% is a true combo* and so is foxes weak nair into shine at 24%. Foxes bair seems reasonably safe on crouch at 0% and his ftilt becomes ccable only after like 20%. Sheiks bair at 0% isn't either ccable. Most jabs aren't either ccable by crouching at low percents, but the hitstun is so low that the attacker is at disadvantage.

I suspect the reason for this is that there is a knockback threshold for launching character into air, and if a hit causes weaker kb, the character simply stays grounded and thus cannot land cancel the stun. Thus at low percents only asding down can actually be better than crouching, since crouch reduces kb. I believe many semi weak moves with low endlag are good vs crouching opponents, but it is always really difficult to judge at which percents, since it depends heavily on opponents weight, and even gravity might affect it.

*Tested in PAL training mode with 1/4 speed with two foxes, one of which holds down. It's easy to spot the difference between land cancelling stun and remaining grounded.
Wow you seem to know alot are you new to smash
 

tauKhan

Smash Lord
Joined
Feb 9, 2014
Messages
1,349
Wow you seem to know alot are you new to smash
Depends on what you mean by new. I entered my first tournament just six months ago, but I've been lurking these boards since 2006. I'm terrible at most of frame data and the actual game though.
 
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