Alternative Cypher Uses

[cisyphus]

Just playing around a little bit and had a bit of an epiphany with Cypher as a valuable positioning tool. There are four key factors here:
1. It cancels dash momentum
2. It is cancelable at a height lower than Snake's short hop
3. It is reversible
4. It creates hitboxes whereas short hop does not

Essentially what I'm getting at is that it's a highly effective RAR replacement as well as an important SH parallel in general.

The first point is easy enough to see but it's what got me started: dash and do a SHFFL nair, just for example. you'll see you drift slightly. Try and compensate for it all you want, but it's extremely difficult to do a nair without having some drift on it from you dash momentum. Now try it again, but instead of short hop, use Cypher: you'll stop all momentum and nair precisely where you took off from. I can see this helping with techchase jab resets via nair.

But I noticed the second point while doing that first experiment: when you nair on cypher on the earliest frame, only the first two hitboxes ever come out. Compare that with SH nair where you have to fast fall to do the same thing. Based on my training room testing, the Cypher puts snake at half the height that a short hop would. This is extremely useful for hitting lower to the ground. Which got me thinking...

The third point is where this starts to look better than a RAR. With the changes to Snake's Back Air (it's strongest at the tip) there's a greater incentive than ever to get the spacing on it completely correct. The added benefit is that Snake's bair hits really far away from his body meaning that he can bair a shield, land during the shield stun, and punish their baited reaction. This is normally tough because of how high short hop puts you in addition to the drift we talked about earlier, but when you reverse up b cancel a dash, you both stay in place and stay lower to the ground, which lets you hit the farthest horizontal part of their shield much more consistently.

Moreover, the Cypher creates hitboxes on frame 5 and 6 which have a modest disjoint, making it all around safer than a short hop alone.

The only limitations I've seen so far are that you're unable to air dodge out of it (so no wavelands) and you lose your double jump after using it. It also one frame slower than a short hop on startup (5 frame jump squat = airborne on frame 6) because the SpecialHiStart sequence takes 6 frames to complete, meaning Snake is airborne on frame 7. I do think that the overall benefits outweigh those disadvantages. The "Cypher Hop" (Is that a good name?) is a lot more consistent at putting a hitbox where you want it to be. It provides a lot of mixups (Tomahawk Cypher grab is the sickest mindgame I've ever seen).

 

[victinivcreate1]

You could do that.

But you could also just WD back and then do what you need to do.

My main use for Cypher is OoS and using the double shock hitboxes to combo into the first two hits of nair, which nets me a free sticky/grab.

 

[cisyphus]

Wavedash has 10 frames of lag. And you don't even jump. Like, that's really dumb.

 

[BND]

You could do that.

But you could also just WD back and then do what you need to do.

I think the main purpose of this is for a (relatively) safe poke, which Snake doesn't have all that much of barring grenades--think Roy ftilt, without the disjoint. Snake's back air outranges a lot of moves, and if you L-cancel it right, Snake should retract his body, making it not particularly shield grabbable or punishable (not to mention that it's safe on block if timed right). Wavedashing backward's obviously on average safer than back air given that you're retracting all of your hurtboxes, but it doesn't do all that much either unless you're expecting a move to punish.

Sounds pretty useful in certain matchups, though I usually use grenades in all of my approaches and there's other execution-based things that I need to learn first.

 

[cisyphus]

Yeah naturally it's best vs. tall characters. I figured this while doing Marth match up experiments, so that's definitely the initiator. Based on that, it's most useful vs:
Peach, Bowser, Donkey Kong, Captain Falcon, Zelda, Sheik, Link, Ganondorf, Mewtwo, Lucario, Charizard, Samus, ZSS, Pit, Dedede, Ike, Marth, Roy, Rob, Snake

Bolded the most difficult matchups that get theoretically ever so slightly easier with this. It's a good mixup, if nothing else. grenades are free damage a lot of the time (even if just 5% and forcing up a shield), so there's no real fault there, either.

 

[victinivcreate1]

If you're running up to someone and doing Cypher bair THEY SUCK. Just how it is. Snake is not Fox. He isnt meant to run up and Cypher.

 

[cisyphus]

You fail to realize the full extent of the usefulness of this I think. It helps in techchases since you can bait spotdodges, shines, grabs, jabs, getup attack, et al; it helps with tranq punishes since you can position yourself more precisely to get the strong hitbox of fair, which KOs ~15% earlier depending on stage (or to bait the tech chase stuff because tranq can turn into a techchase pretty easily); and it's a potentially fantastic bait in that it's distinctly something that someone doesn't expect Snake to do. And maybe you don't realize, but 3.02 Snake DEFINITELY could run up and Cypher people. In that case, it was run up, shield (baiting an attack) and then cypher OOS to punish and get a free stick, dair, bair, uair, et. al. It's the same base concept manipulated to work around cypher's lack of invincibility, but also to improve the RAR bair which Snake does actually use to good effect because of its great range. Imaginary limitations to a character are pointless and stupid.

 

[cisyphus]

Also started replacing my scrubby SHFFL Fair with SHFFL Nair and that turned into replacing SHFFL Nair with [Cypher]HFFL Nair and Reverse CHFFL Bair and it seems pretty good. Intermixing the two together is probably the best, given that Cypher halts most of your movement whereas it can be maintained with SHFFL. Think Falcon SHFFL Nair as an application, and add in that your jumpsquat has hitboxes on the final frame. Moreover, you can wavebounce the cypher to pull back your hurtboxes even more to set up the bair or a reverse grenade to set up a tech trap. Will update after the Wednesday KZOO smashfest that's apparently happening, as well as GVSU on Thursday and Rootfest on Friday.

Overall advantages I see as of right now for CHFFL:
keeps hitboxes lower

Clanks most projectiles (Falco and ROB lasers are the only ones I couldn't easily stuff)
better at hitting short/crouched characters (Kirby)
Faster landing overall​

Halts momentum for more meticulous spacing

Given Snake's long limbs, this can punish grabs and f-tilts that he outranges​

Covers the final jumpsquat frames

Good against pivot-grab happy players (there's actually a few Sheiks that do this in my area)
Probably trades with dash attacks and the like​

Flexible retreat options via wavebounce/reverse

Reverse CHFFL Bair has slightly more range and stays out longer than Nair
Wavebounce works a bit like Marth's reverse UpB in that Snake's body pulls back immediately​

 

[moonfolk]

I've taken to using cypher instead of a SH after WDing into a shield-dropped nade, then immediately canceling it with the throw, or gaining height first. It just covers more of the stage than jumping does, and I seem to throw the nade faster than when I jump lol. I've gotten so programmed with cypher aerials that it just helps me time the nade I guess. If they are under you on a plat or in the air, you can cypher up after them a lot faster and toss the nade up too. Usually it juggles them from the cypher right into the nade. And it looks cool.

 

[cisyphus]

Cypher is theoretically slower than jumping (longer jumpsquat = more uninterruptible frames), but it's surely interesting as a mixup option!

Thinking about it more I actually understand what you're saying now: the Cypher goes lower than a shorthop, especially if you cancel it via grenade toss, which means you land faster, which means you go through the whole process of throwing faster than jumping. Interesting stuff.