Tap A Canceling

[Cort]

I'm not sure if this has been openly discussed before, I'm not sure how I would search for it...

Essentially, this allows you to rapidly do the first of multiple stage tap a's (Fox's two punches and starting kicks for instance). Basically you can do only the first punch/first two punches quickly without having the kicks start. Or rapid fire the first slap of Peach's 1-2 slap, which is suprisingly fast and leaves very little room to get shield grabbed. This pretty much works with all characters...

How to do it~

Essentially, all you do is tap a, then hold DOWN and BACK from the way you're facing (so in essence, diagonally back) before the tap A animation ends (this makes it very easy to setup). Then time quick tap a's depending on the character you're using.

Mixing up your timing of these tap a's further decreases your chance of getting shield grabbed (really good for Peach players that love to float cancel straight into people's shields). I'm not too sure how useful it would be with other characters.

Sorry if this has been posted before, but I've never seen it being used in any tournament play or friendlies that I've ever seen, including myself lol since I never remember to do it.

This works by interrupting the window on the follow up move with a crouch, which the window often extends well after the actual duration of the move, and holding down-behind doubles as being able to jab while crouched/getting into a crouching position. Some also have IASAs on the first jabs that shorten it further. Like Peach for example:

Slap 1

Total frames: 19
Hit frames: 2-3
Window of the second slap: 3-25
IASA: 16

If you were to time Slap 1's normally while standing, you wouldn't be able to Slap 1 again until the 26th frame by waiting out the 2nd slap window. By IASA'ing with a crouch (it also cancels the Slap 2 window) you can follow up with another Slap 1 on the 17th frame. That's a very big difference comparatively.

By holding down/away instead of tapping down you don't have to worry about timing the crouch as it's done the 1st moment you can, and you don't have to waste time to get the stick back into a neutral postition to do the jab, allowing you to do it slightly faster for the most part. It has to be perfectly diagonal though so make sure it's firmly pressed into the notch on the controller, or you will d-tilt or turn around f-tilt instead. A pretty obvious downside for doing it that way, however, would be if you were to get hit out of the jab by something you would be DIing it terribly.

 

[Brookman]

first post I win.


this is the coolest trick since the drill shine

 

[phanna]

As far as I know, Rohins discovered this. It's called Jab Cancelling, and you don't need to hit back, only down, between jabs.

 

[LemonManX]

Sounds like a pretty cool tech, I'll just have to try it out later on. Thanks for posting about it.

 

[Omadon]

If this works how I hope it works, then I love you o.o I aim to try this when I get into work.

 

[Cort]

As far as I know, Rohins discovered this. It's called Jab Cancelling, and you don't need to hit back, only down, between jabs.

I was playing friendlies with Helios when he told me about that way, actually. I showed him how you can hold down and back and do them as fast as your character lets you, and he said it was much faster as well as easier.

 

[Rohins]

I'm sorry, can you explain to me how it's easier to press down and back to jab cancel as opposed to just pressing down? To me, it seems easiest to just press down inbetween jabs but maybe that's just how I'm used to it.

edit: my bad on asking how far back, reread the original post

 

[Cort]

You don't need to press down after each tap a, you can just hold down and back. It's just much easier in my opinion, but both get the job done.

 

[Rohins]

Ah ok I just tried it with fox just now and it is pretty easy to do with the holding method. With Samus though (my main) I find holding down back a little less reliable. I end up doing a backwards low ftilt occasionally. Regardless, cool to know there's another way to do it.

 

[Zeee]

My God I will use this on my friend the next time i play him.

:O Thanks for the post someone get this in the sticky with the techs.

 

[Cort]

Haha, bumped my old *** topic.

I'd just like to say Forward has known about this for awhile, but his method is not like mine where you hold down and away, he says to just crouch between every tap a. I think my method is easier and a lot more effective.

 

[Helios]

I came up with this ages ago

WHO WAS FIRST OMG?!!?

 

[Doraki]

With this, if you mash A like crazy you won't ever do the rapid kicks with fox but instead he'll do jab-straight-jab-straight etc etc ... ?
If so, I've tried it and it didn't work at all.

 

[Cort]

No, you can't mash A like crazy, you still have to time them accordingly and figure out the fastest speed you can do it while holding down and away. It's just you don't have to crouch after each one with my method.

 

[Doraki]

can't you just tap A at the right speed without doing anything with the control stick,then ? It would be slower or something ?
Is it something like cancelling the end of the lag by crouching or begining to turn away and then cancelling that with a new jab-straight ?
I guess I'll have to try some more.

 

[Cort]

can't you just tap A at the right speed without doing anything with the control stick,then ? It would be slower or something ?
Is it something like cancelling the end of the lag by crouching or begining to turn away and then cancelling that with a new jab-straight ?
I guess I'll have to try some more.

Yes, it essentially makes you crouch for a very very small amount of frames and allows you to tap A faster than you could be able to normally.

Or maybe not, but it makes doing them very fast much easier.

For example, if you just mash A with Ganon it's sort of hard to do his punch as fast as possible. If you time them instead, it seems easier to do them as fast as you can for some reason. But if you hold down and away and just mash A for some reason it's also easier (rather than timing them..)

I don't know <_<; That sounded a little confusing. Not really.

 

[wuthefwasthat]

i thought the whole crouching thing was only for if you have an a-a-a rapid jab thing.

so, instead of a-a-a, you do a-a-crouch-a, and you wont do the stupid rapid jabs, since it obvoiusly doesnt register as the combo

so, for ice climbers, you can even desynch their jabs, and time hitting a so that all their jabs are spread out, and insanely fast, and you can stop whenever you want... yeah

but... im gonna try this stuff with peach now

 

[Airo]

uh oh... i didnt know this 0o
thx a bunch!!!!!!!!

mewtwos dont jab you see 0.0

 

[Epsilon52]

so this essentially prevents being stuck in the rpaid a combo animations...
so i can aa..down..a with captian falcon and avoid his punching flurry after the 2nd a (or 3rd..cant remember)

 

[Pikaville]

Hey this works really good.It's good for mixing it up after Sheiks f air.(instead of dtilt etc)

 

[highandmightyjoe]

I've been doing this for awhile, if your talking about what I think you are. I find it is more useul for linking your jabs to tilts than for just doing more jabs. With Mario I'll do 2 jabs, then cancel into his Utilt. It really doesn't seem very useful to me to just keep doing a bunch of jabs, you need to link them into something more useful.

 

[marthsword]

Add this to the stickied techs.

This works well for sheik whe n you try to combo into a fair.

 

[Magus420]

This works by interrupting the window on the follow up move with a crouch, which the window often extends well after the actual duration of the move, and holding down-behind doubles as being able to jab while crouched/getting into a crouching position. Some also have IASAs on the first jabs that shorten it further. Like Peach for example:

Slap 1

Total frames: 19
Hit frames: 2-3
Window of the second slap: 3-25
IASA: 16

If you were to time Slap 1's normally while standing, you wouldn't be able to Slap 1 again until the 26th frame by waiting out the 2nd slap window. By IASA'ing with a crouch (it also cancels the Slap 2 window) you can follow up with another Slap 1 on the 17th frame. That's a very big difference comparatively.

By holding down/away instead of tapping down you don't have to worry about timing the crouch as it's done the 1st moment you can, and you don't have to waste time to get the stick back into a neutral postition to do the jab, allowing you to do it slightly faster for the most part. It has to be perfectly diagonal though so make sure it's firmly pressed into the notch on the controller, or you will d-tilt or turn around f-tilt instead. A pretty obvious downside for doing it that way, however, would be if you were to get hit out of the jab by something you would be DIing it terribly.

 

[Cort]

<3 Magus

Thanks a lot for explaining it thouroughly. I'll quote your post in the first post.

*has to remind self to +rep **** you later*

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

Thanks for the information.But is it possible to do just by hitting(or holding)down,or is that incorrect?

 

[Cort]

You'd have to press down in between each jab.

The method described in the first post describes how to do it just by holding down and away + timing jabs.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

You'd have to press down in between each jab.

The method described in the first post describes how to do it just by holding down and away + timing jabs.

Oh,i get it now,thanks. =D

 

[Magus420]

Something I've noticed with this is that it doesn't work well with a lot of controllers since it's pretty picky on the direction you're holding. I've found that if when you hold perfectly left or right on the char select screen the cursor slightly drifts upwards more than down if any you'll often get the turn around f-tilt when trying the technique. If it stays level or drifts slightly down it will work well as long as the angles on the analog are good. I tried out 4-5 of my controllers along with some friends' controllers and only one or two was able to do both directions consistently without turing around after the 1st jab. Some would only work when facing one way, and some wouldn't work well in either direction. As luck would have it, one that did work was my regular controller, though the faceplate was really worn down on the angles so sometimes it would feel like it was in the right spot when it wasn't (it's the original controller that I got with the GC when it 1st came out and I like to break out of grabs ). I swapped the front panel with one from a controller that had never been used (this one's guts drifted up in both directions and would always get reverse f-tilts) and now it works flawlessly all the time =)

 

[Airo]

fox: jab jab Upsmash!
peach: dair slap slap grab FThrow!

 

[Cort]

Something I've noticed with this is that it doesn't work well with a lot of controllers since it's pretty picky on the direction you're holding. I've found that if when you hold perfectly left or right on the char select screen the cursor slightly drifts upwards more than down if any you'll often get the turn around f-tilt when trying the technique. If it stays level or drifts slightly down it will work well as long as the angles on the analog are good. I tried out 4-5 of my controllers along with some friends' controllers and only one or two was able to do both directions consistently without turing around after the 1st jab. Some would only work when facing one way, and some wouldn't work well in either direction. As luck would have it, one that did work was my regular controller, though the faceplate was really worn down on the angles so sometimes it would feel like it was in the right spot when it wasn't (it's the original controller that I got with the GC when it 1st came out and I like to break out of grabs ). I swapped the front panel with one from a controller that had never been used (this one's guts drifted up in both directions and would always get reverse f-tilts) and now it works flawlessly all the time =)

Woah wall of text... but quite interesting indeed!

I'll see how this is with some of my controllers.

 

[purekorea]

Is this a viable technique for captain falcon? I seem to be unable to do it and I checked SDM's frame data on falcon and he doesn't seem to have a IASA on his jab...does that mean he can't do it?

edit- It seems to be the case. Just tried with fox and I can do it perfectly (although I have the controller hitch that magus described- to jab cancel facing left I have to be slightly more down than away.)

edit 2- nevermind works with falcon was just doing it wrong.

 

[phanna]

Is this a viable technique for captain falcon? I seem to be unable to do it and I checked SDM's frame data on falcon and he doesn't seem to have a IASA on his jab...does that mean he can't do it?

edit- It seems to be the case. Just tried with fox and I can do it perfectly (although I have the controller hitch that magus described- to jab cancel facing left I have to be slightly more down than away.)

You can do it with anyone, it's just that some characters have a much more noticeable impact from doing it. More specifically, for Captain Falcon, just doing The Gentleman will give you much better jabbing results.

To practice jab cancelling with any character in general, however, simply hold down, releasing it only when you tap A, and resume holding down. Slowly speed up the cycle of doing this, until you get to the point where you are doing your 2nd jab if you do it any faster. Practice doing it at this speed, it's the fastest you can jab cancel with that character.

 

[Magus420]

To practice jab cancelling with any character in general, however, simply hold down, releasing it only when you tap A, and resume holding down. Slowly speed up the cycle of doing this, until you get to the point where you are doing your 2nd jab if you do it any faster. Practice doing it at this speed, it's the fastest you can jab cancel with that character.

You don't have to release the analog stick back to neutral to do the jab. If you hold down and away (the method described in the 1st post) you will jab even though you're holding a direction. Since it also counts as a crouch you get the same effect but can instantly go into another jab the 1st moment possible pretty easily.

As for Falcon... he does benefit by it, though not as much as some others do. The jab doesn't have an IASA frame, but you are still interrupting the window to do the 2nd jab. It cuts off the 4 frames the Jab 2 window extends past the Jab 1's animation.

 

[EdreesesPieces]

This is awesome, thanks!! I knew it existed for Falcon and such but I didn't realize it worked for everyone (Peach).

 

[Endless Nightmares]

I remember someone making a similar thread and calling this the "Lv Tap", complete with a diagram on what to hold. Here's the quote because I quoted it on a different forum.

So basically this is like the speeded up single jab -> repeat: Most people know that if you crouch right after a single jab you can do another single jab at a fast rate. This method is inconsistant becuase you have to time both the tapping down for the reset and pressing A. The new method only recquires you to time the A, and I'm quite certain that it has an instant crouch cancel.

How to do it: Simply hold down to the bottom corner of your control stick, and then slide it to next corner opposite of the direction your character is facing. Then with proper timing start single jabbing like a maniac
For example:

It's very simple and can be buffered by nearly anything, such as wavedashing, dash canceling, spot dodging, shuffled aerials, etc. I'm not sure if it helps every character, ones like marth, roy, ganondorf, pikachu, and pichu (It did seem like it helped to me, but I don't have AR so I can't test)

I think someone like Phanna or Superdoodleman might know about this already or even had posted about this already, please forgive me if this is stealing your thunder.

If you are down tilting you are holding down too far and if you turn around and forward tilt, you are holding too far to the side. It's much easier to consistantly do it with a newer controller as well

BTW it was created after this thread, but I thought it might be useful.

I use this a lot with Samus, and tend to forget about it with other characters...

 

[Nintendude]

Someone posted something similar in the IC Board ages ago I think. He called it duck-canceled jabs.

It's funny how HRCers like to refer to jabs as tap-A because of BT-up tap-A in the Peach/Sheik strats >_>

 

[Cort]

Calling it a jab just seems so weird to me.

 

[B0mbe1c]

0.o this may help me up my game and get a good amout of % on my oponent.

 

[purekorea]

You can do it with anyone, it's just that some characters have a much more noticeable impact from doing it. More specifically, for Captain Falcon, just doing The Gentleman will give you much better jabbing results.

To practice jab cancelling with any character in general, however, simply hold down, releasing it only when you tap A, and resume holding down. Slowly speed up the cycle of doing this, until you get to the point where you are doing your 2nd jab if you do it any faster. Practice doing it at this speed, it's the fastest you can jab cancel with that character.

Yea but sometimes people predict 3 hits and grab after... this is a good way to change that. I can add as many first jabs to throw off their timing. With 4 jabs they'll try to grab when the gentleman comes out. I think I have it down, just need to be able to find the down and away direction when I'm actually playing.

 

[<π]

maybe you can cancel jab with a duck animation? I know you can cancel Samus' bomb form's animation by crouching, but not by anything else.

But yeah away and down = a jab from the crouching position. I do jabs out of the running animation like this.