cisyphus
Smash Ace
So I want a spot to put any of my half-baked ideas to see if we can't stew it together and see if we can't spit out something to digest. Everyone else can feel free to do that as well. If this doesn't work as a "social" this can be the "share nuanced tech stuff"
I've done a massive lab binge (literally sat and played Snake for hours seeing what works and what doesn't). Some curious things:
- Dash attack into u-tilt combos on fast-fallers at middle percentages. I can confirm it is a true combo on Roy at 30% w/ No DI. Might seem jank, but there's a certain value to turning a rushed dash attack (say, to cover a tech) into a well-timed up-tilt with an extra 11% on top of it.
- u-tilt might have value as a f-air spike setup. This is stemming from the above. I can find a bunch of percentages with only a few frames of activity for Roy, but nothing 100%. Still, could catch a jump or an unfamiliarity with u-tilt's hitstun. DI could also potentially change this, as it'll keep roy lower to the ground at higher percents, thus eliminating Snake's need for height (could potentially save a couple frames).
Anyone else do these odd jabs mid-combo? I never really picked up on it before, but it's a common feature for a lot of my characters—I see it in my Samus and Sheik in melee a bunch, in particular. But yeah, having realized this habit, I've also found some value behind it: jab's hitboxes are very similar to f-tilt's, u-tilt's, and grab's hitboxes, just faster. The situations where I find grab keeping my opponent a bit high, I started to replace with u-tilt or grabs, and lo and behold! the attacks fill in that blank space! I think I've been using jabs as an exploratory technique to see if I can still follow something up—the problem was that I saw the jab as the followup (which mind you, it still is very useful in some cases). So basically: use jabs when you get an unfamiliar branch of your combo tree growing, if the jab lands, it's possible other moves can also land in its place. This might've been where the above dash attack nonsense came about, but I didn't even think to start writing this stuff down until recently.
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I've been endorsing the down smash into wavedash to ledge edgeguarding system for a while, but am seeing really clearly that if the mine isn't good to KO your opponent, it's almost not worth doing. So I'm gonna revise that system a little bit to make it more inclusive and cover a lot more, mostly 'cause I found a totally swag way to cover some of the stuff:
1. That swag way is ledge jump* back air. The value I see is that your invincibility during ledge jump will set it off, that same ledge jump will occupy the ledge if you happen to be late to the trigger, OTHERWISE your mine explodes while you're invincible, hitting your opponent who is likely DIing for the mine, which means they're going STRAIGHT off the screen from the bair. It's a DI mixup, essentially, but oh it works wonders.
2. All of this is unnecessary if they're C4'd, though. Just do your standard ledgeroll to blow the mine, stagespiking the opponent if they're low and sending them up if they're high. Detonating the C4 should cover everything else from there.
3. Placing the mine on a platform shifts your responsibility to holding ledge and punishing their landing. This isn't so useful against spacies per say, but any relatively punishable on-stage recovery is choice. All you really gotta do at this point is knock your opponent up into the mine, which KOs 10% earlier on most stages thanks to its added height, and whatever punish you can imagine is another 10 or 20 percent, which means any edgeguard situation could turn into a KO this way. The only "rule" is that you can't up throw as it's really suboptimal, causing a forced grab-release that does 7% and the mine knockback. Stick with u-tilts, or turn it into a techchase with down throw.
3a. This leads to a little aside where I'm pretty sure that doing a No Impact Landing is faster than doing a waveland in this situation. I'm not well versed in the inputs for perfect wavelands, so I'd need help confirming that much, but No Impact Landing is really straightforward: Snake needs to reach the peak of his jump just as he's above the floor. You'll need to look for the dust clouds to know you're getting a NIL. The advantage is that NIL gives 1 frame of landing lag vs. 4 normal or 10 from a waveland, so this gives +9 over waveland in terms of landing lag, and Snake only needs to fastfall for 1 frame before NIL starts to work. It's really a matter of holding down and pressing jump a little bit afterwards.
*that is a jump input while holding ledge, for clarity's sake. It's a really bad melee option in most situations, but with PM pushing forward the IASA frames, it's really useful now.
AGT tech with grenades seems vastly unexplored for me. Can anyone bounce ideas around on that subject?
I've done a massive lab binge (literally sat and played Snake for hours seeing what works and what doesn't). Some curious things:
- Dash attack into u-tilt combos on fast-fallers at middle percentages. I can confirm it is a true combo on Roy at 30% w/ No DI. Might seem jank, but there's a certain value to turning a rushed dash attack (say, to cover a tech) into a well-timed up-tilt with an extra 11% on top of it.
- u-tilt might have value as a f-air spike setup. This is stemming from the above. I can find a bunch of percentages with only a few frames of activity for Roy, but nothing 100%. Still, could catch a jump or an unfamiliarity with u-tilt's hitstun. DI could also potentially change this, as it'll keep roy lower to the ground at higher percents, thus eliminating Snake's need for height (could potentially save a couple frames).
Anyone else do these odd jabs mid-combo? I never really picked up on it before, but it's a common feature for a lot of my characters—I see it in my Samus and Sheik in melee a bunch, in particular. But yeah, having realized this habit, I've also found some value behind it: jab's hitboxes are very similar to f-tilt's, u-tilt's, and grab's hitboxes, just faster. The situations where I find grab keeping my opponent a bit high, I started to replace with u-tilt or grabs, and lo and behold! the attacks fill in that blank space! I think I've been using jabs as an exploratory technique to see if I can still follow something up—the problem was that I saw the jab as the followup (which mind you, it still is very useful in some cases). So basically: use jabs when you get an unfamiliar branch of your combo tree growing, if the jab lands, it's possible other moves can also land in its place. This might've been where the above dash attack nonsense came about, but I didn't even think to start writing this stuff down until recently.
- - - - -
I've been endorsing the down smash into wavedash to ledge edgeguarding system for a while, but am seeing really clearly that if the mine isn't good to KO your opponent, it's almost not worth doing. So I'm gonna revise that system a little bit to make it more inclusive and cover a lot more, mostly 'cause I found a totally swag way to cover some of the stuff:
1. That swag way is ledge jump* back air. The value I see is that your invincibility during ledge jump will set it off, that same ledge jump will occupy the ledge if you happen to be late to the trigger, OTHERWISE your mine explodes while you're invincible, hitting your opponent who is likely DIing for the mine, which means they're going STRAIGHT off the screen from the bair. It's a DI mixup, essentially, but oh it works wonders.
2. All of this is unnecessary if they're C4'd, though. Just do your standard ledgeroll to blow the mine, stagespiking the opponent if they're low and sending them up if they're high. Detonating the C4 should cover everything else from there.
3. Placing the mine on a platform shifts your responsibility to holding ledge and punishing their landing. This isn't so useful against spacies per say, but any relatively punishable on-stage recovery is choice. All you really gotta do at this point is knock your opponent up into the mine, which KOs 10% earlier on most stages thanks to its added height, and whatever punish you can imagine is another 10 or 20 percent, which means any edgeguard situation could turn into a KO this way. The only "rule" is that you can't up throw as it's really suboptimal, causing a forced grab-release that does 7% and the mine knockback. Stick with u-tilts, or turn it into a techchase with down throw.
3a. This leads to a little aside where I'm pretty sure that doing a No Impact Landing is faster than doing a waveland in this situation. I'm not well versed in the inputs for perfect wavelands, so I'd need help confirming that much, but No Impact Landing is really straightforward: Snake needs to reach the peak of his jump just as he's above the floor. You'll need to look for the dust clouds to know you're getting a NIL. The advantage is that NIL gives 1 frame of landing lag vs. 4 normal or 10 from a waveland, so this gives +9 over waveland in terms of landing lag, and Snake only needs to fastfall for 1 frame before NIL starts to work. It's really a matter of holding down and pressing jump a little bit afterwards.
3ai. This is also a decent way to test how fast you're doublejumping from ledge: if you're getting NIL from normal ledgehops, you're wayyyy too slow—without fastfalling, NIL take 6 frames of hangtime between the ledgedrop and the double jump.
3b. All of THIS, however, could be mitigated by setting up a C4 under the mine beforehand. DI and ASDI doesn't seem to be that big of a factor, but Smash DI WILL save them. This could depend on the size of the character model as well—I'd imagine this completely wrecks ROB or Ganon just because of how big they are.3bi. All of this is said assuming one knows that the C4 detonation animation is short enough to fit into a ledgehop and regrab ledge. Give it a try: same inputs as the NIL, and just down b instead of going onto the stage. This also works with the any of the C4 planting animations (wall, ceiling, character, etc) so you can even do this to catch a high% edgeguarder off guard (remember to stagetech!) or to get a cheeky stick on a whiffed f-smash before a punish. ledgehop C4 in general is a fantastic punish option if you still need a stick, 'cause it can easily lead into a u-tilt or grab if you're just punishing an on-stage recovery.
*that is a jump input while holding ledge, for clarity's sake. It's a really bad melee option in most situations, but with PM pushing forward the IASA frames, it's really useful now.
AGT tech with grenades seems vastly unexplored for me. Can anyone bounce ideas around on that subject?
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. And how do I force an approach on him?