A question of a competitive Smash newbie

[Deleted member]

I'm new to this whole competitive thing and I saw a lot of people in the Forums mentioning Spikes and Meteor Smashes, I just wanted to know what these things are and how important they are to the competitive scene.(if this is not the forum to post this I'm sorry, as I said I'm a n00b in this)

 

[Gardex]

Basically, both meteor smashes and spikes(aka pure meteor smashes) are moves that hit you downwards, just like Captain Falcon's down air, Donkey kong's forward air and Lucas' back air.
Now, the difference between a spike and a meteor smash is that you can cancel your downwards momentum after being hit by a meteor smash by jumping/using up b. A spike, on the other hand, will just force you to take the entire trip down before you can start recovering(IF you survive, that is).

I believe there's only one spike in Brawl, namely Luigi's taunt, every other move is a meteor smash if i remember correctly(correct me if I'm wrong).
In Melee there are a couple more, like Falco's down air.

What you should know about the competitive aspects of meteor smashes is to always try to meteor cancel(jump when you're being struck down).
There's a timing to it, of course; you'll need to wait for half of the hitstun to pass before you can try jumping iirc.
It's a situational survival tool

 

[TheGrunyan]

Basically, both meteor smashes and spikes(aka pure meteor smashes) are moves that hit you downwards, just like Captain Falcon's down air, Donkey kong's forward air and Lucas' back air.
Now, the difference between a spike and a meteor smash is that you can cancel your downwards momentum after being hit by a meteor smash by jumping/using up b. A spike, on the other hand, will just force you to take the entire trip down before you can start recovering(IF you survive, that is).

I believe there's only one spike in Brawl, namely Luigi's taunt, every other move is a meteor smash if i remember correctly(correct me if I'm wrong).
In Melee there are a couple more, like Falco's down air.

What you should know about the competitive aspects of meteor smashes is to always try to meteor cancel(jump when you're being struck down).
There's a timing to it, of course; you'll need to wait for half of the hitstun to pass before you can try jumping iirc.
It's a situational survival tool

That's more or less all correct. Technically a footstool is a spike as well, by the definition of a spike, but most people don't consider it a spike.

 

[Deleted member]

So, as seen from Mega Man's trailer, his down air(what seems to be his one) would be considered a Meteor Smash, right? I remember using Link's d-air and from what I understand is: Link's d-air=spike
Mega Man's d-air=Meteor Smash
Correct?

 

[infiniteV115]

That's more or less all correct. Technically a footstool is a spike as well, by the definition of a spike, but most people don't consider it a spike.

idk about a footstool being categorized as a 'move'

We don't know about Megaman's d-air yet because we don't know whether or not it can be meteor cancelled.

 

[Gardex]

So, as seen from Mega Man's trailer, his down air(what seems to be his one) would be considered a Meteor Smash, right? I remember using Link's d-air and from what I understand is: Link's d-air=spike
Mega Man's d-air=Meteor Smash
Correct?

Link's dair launches you upwards, so no, it's not a spike.

 

[2ndComing]

Link's dair launches you upwards, so no, it's not a spike.

Well we don't know that yet as Sakurai gave him a spike in the middle of the down air but he said if it was OP he might remove it but as of know all we know is that Link has a spike

 

[Gardex]

So all we know is that link MIGHT have a down air that hits people downwards.
We don't actually know anything for sure until the game releases.

When someone talks about Link, I'm instead going to assume that e's talking about a Link we already know about, like Brawl and Melee-Link