AutoCancel Characters Have it Easier? Is it balanced?

[Artmastercorey]

In your opinion, do the character who's have auto cancel/ or nearly lagless aerial attacks have it a bit easier in a match? Character who can perform attacks in the air, land, and shield/dodge before you can punish their landing? Your marios, luigis, yoshi's warriors, (pretty much all the main mario characters I suppose).

Also Do you play a character who performs an aerial attack then lands and has massive landing lag, and do you think its balanced? Like for example I notice a light character like say toonlink has crazy landing lag, while a much heavier character like Link does not. Or a heavy(I think he's heavy?) wario can perform a down aerial attack diving head first towards the ground yet suffers 0 landing lag. What are your thoughts

 

[Big-Cat]

The aerials are only one part of the game. Characters like my Bowser are not dependent on aerial attacks like some might be. That said, you have to look at the aerials as part of an overall toolkit. The characters that have great horizontal airspeed and low lag aerials tend to not be as hot on the ground when it comes to the neutral game.

 

[Xuan Wu]

Auto-cancelled aerials and specials are definitely a plus, especially for heavies. As for them being balanced, it depends on the character and what moves have this property. I emphasized heavies because these characters, like Bowser and Charizard, have attacks that are generally very powerful but often come at the cost of high startup and/or ending lag.

My main character, Ike, for instance has three auto-cancellable attacks:

- F-air
- B-air
- Quick Draw

In my opinion, auto-cancellable attacks help some characters with their viability in a competitive environment. For example, had Ike's F-air not auto-cancelled (which was the case during the pre-1.0.4. update), using it would be much more of a commitment than if it did, even as a retreat.

It is balanced because auto-cancelled attacks do not have the same effectiveness in every situation. In order for characters, like Ike, to auto-cancel F-air or B-air during a short-hop, the player has to input the command at about the instant Ike leaves the ground. He would swing his sword at the apex of his jump; however, it would miss characters like Kirby and Pikachu on the ground with their smaller frames.

Auto-cancels, while useful, are but one aspect of a character's meta. ^-^

 

[TL?]

Whether or not a move autocancels from certain heights is only one aspect of that move. In general it's a good property to have but a move can still have other downsides or upsides. There have been plenty of low tier characters with short hop autocancel options, so that alone won't necessarily make a character good.

 

[outfoxd]

If duck hunt could kill landing lag on his moves it would go a ways toward fixing his issues.

 

[PUK]

If duck hunt could kill it would go a ways toward fixing his issues.

fixed

 

[sWiTcHeRoO [疾~斬]]

wario can perform a down aerial attack diving head first towards the ground yet suffers 0 landing lag. What are your thoughts

Wario gets noticeable landing lag from dair though. Granted I don't remember if you can autocancel it on SH but it's not like you can FF and get no lag like, say, Mario when he lands with a nair.

 

[Doval]

I'm not understanding how autocancel is supposed to be a big deal.

As far as I know there's generally two points where aerial moves might autocancel: in the first frames (before the hit box comes out) or right before the first actionable frame.

The first case is irrelevant except for doing things like avoiding the landing lag for air dodges.

The second case avoids the move's landing lag but forces you to wait for the move to play out instead of landing as soon as possible. You also still incur a small amount of landing lag (the same as landing from a jump). It's a trade-off that varies from move to move, not a clear win in favor of autocanceling. I'm betting in many cases you break even or the autocancel ends up being slower than fastfalling.

There's also no such thing as an aerial with "0 landing lag"; off the top of my head the faster aerials are around 10 frames of lag.

 

[Shaya]

The aerials are only one part of the game. Characters like my Bowser are not dependent on aerial attacks like some might be. That said, you have to look at the aerials as part of an overall toolkit. The characters that have great horizontal airspeed and low lag aerials tend to not be as hot on the ground when it comes to the neutral game.

I guess basically half or more of the high/top tiers?
Meanwhile may not have great aerial mobility but their aerials do tend to auto cancel favourably.

I feel auto cancels are pretty significant to a character's success, at least in how we play and perceive the game now.

Auto cancelled aerials is a feature that by its numbers give meaningful applications. Marth for example doesn't have meaningful auto cancels on any of his aerials (he used to in Brawl), none sync up with his fast fall jumps or from the apex of his jumps, match the ending of an elongated hitbox duration, full hop aerials landing on platforms don't exist either anymore. Other meaningful auto cancels tend to be Hitbox ending + their landing lag, which makes sense in ensuring a move takes a somewhat standard end lag between two primary aerial usages. Marth received a lot of nerfs but the most critical (that we still all pray for redemption for) are his gutting of his auto cancels.

Diddy and Sheik have the most absurdly low auto cancel frames in the game, most being nearly very shortly after their hitboxes end. I can assure you that this standard applied liberally to the rest of the cast would significantly raise any character's viability and strength; and if either of those two characters were applied the same rulings as Marth does they would be towards middle tier at best, much like where Marth is seemingly stuck at for his meta's maximum potential.