BONE...Straight? Shulk's Jab Loop

[Plain Yogurt]

Hello my fellow Bronados! The other day I noticed a quirk with Shulk's jab where if you hold down the attack button and his second attack whiffs, he will immediately cycle back to the first attack of the jab and start inching forward since he takes a step during his attack. Ike and some other characters apparently have been able to do this since Brawl and it is known as Combat Walking. I quickly decided it was fairly useless with how rare Shulk misses the kick of his jab, until I was playing a few friendly games online when...this happened (starting at 1:13).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URZKuCjYZes

That did 30% to an unsuspecting opponent in speed mode. Imagine if I'd been in buster, imagine if I'd known I was going to slide off so I might reverse an Air Slash. So I decided to blow a few hours testing it on different characters to see if this might be a viable tool to pull out every once and a while. The results were...okay.

Disclaimers and Initial Info

1) I first tested against a training dummy set to jump and simply tried to see how many times I could reset Shulk's jab on them before they either fell out or fell far enough to be hit by Shulk's jab 2, completing the combo. Depending on rage, you want to aim for their legs or below to pop em up high enough to whiff jab 2.

2) After a quick look I've found that rage effects how the opponent must DI in order to more quickly escape the string. (the following tests where done on Robin; optimal rage may vary per character)

2a) At earlier stages of rage (around pre-100% or so?) the string will eventually end naturally regardless of opponent's DI. Rage should extend the minimum, but the opponent can just as easily reduce it by DI-ing down or to either side in order to move themselves closer to Shulk's foot. Note that if they DI inwards Shulk's jab 3 will whiff when the string ends, so look out for that.

2b) When I tested with around 100% Rage (at least until 113%, if my vid's any indication), It took the opponent a significantly longer time to DI down/to the side towards Shulk's foot. From my somewhat minimal testing, this seems to be the ideal time to go for the string, but that might depend a bit on the character.

2c) When I tested with 130% rage (might start sooner), DI-ing out or down actually seemed to start being a bad idea, and instead your opponent should DI in or up because it starts popping them so high that jab 1 starts whiffing. I wouldn't recommend trying the string at this rage percent unless maybe you're in shield just in case they punish you.

3) This string can be jumped out of, so if your opponent has blown their double jump and especially if they've whiffed an up-b or something, keep this option in mind.

4) I'm actually a dummy and forgot to test if they could airdodge. I have to imagine they couldn't since my friend didn't, but I'll check this later/someone else can if they want. regardless, that just means you get a free jab combo.

5) When you reach the edge of the stage Shulk will slide off. I don't know if reverse Air Slash is guaranteed.

Minimum Reps with No Rage (Approximation)

This list is the amount of times I could loop the jab on a training dummy set to jump (so no rage). Basically this is a reference to which characters are most easily affected by this string. Note that characters with higher reps here can probably escape more easily as Shulk's rage builds, so plan accordingly. Also keep in mind human error is a thing.

Spoiler: Doesn't work on:

Spoiler: Floaties (they get popped too high after a few reps)

(~9 reps)
(3 reps)
(3 reps)

Falchions are weirdos (Couldn't get anything consistent cause their AI was good at getting out, ~4-6 reps Might test more later)

Spoiler: 1 rep

(Got up to 3 once, but its hard)

(SUPER inconsistent)

Spoiler: 2 Reps

(Super strict, more of a 1 rep)
(See Ike)

3 Reps

Spoiler: 4 Reps

5 Reps


6 Reps


7 Reps

Spoiler: Walked the dummy across the stage

Once again, keep in mind that rage will effect these. Maybe you can walk Fox across the stage at later percents. I dunno.

Hope you guys find a niche for this little novelty in your game plan. Mostly because it's super funny to look at. If you find anything majorly wrong or anything else cool about this, feel free to tell me and I'll fix it/add it in when I have time. Until then enjoy Shulk's best Reyn impression since Shulk Time.

 

[erico9001]

Combat walking is when you just walk across the stage with jab -> jab 2 -> jab 1 -> jab 2. What's described in this thread is Shulk's jab combo.

The opponent must be high enough to be hit only by the first hit and have the second hit miss. To plan for this, you would need to hit an opponent with jab and hold it when they're falling to you. If you do it right, congrats!

Anyways, thanks for the testing on different characters!

 

[Plain Yogurt]

Well I mean technically he IS walking across the stage with jab 1 -> jab 2 -> jab 1 -> jab 2, he's just actually hitting the guy with jab 1, so I figured it'd still be appropriate to call it a combat walk. I dunno.

 

[erico9001]

Saying it's a combat walk made me excited for a thread that was going to discuss what I understand as Shulk's combat walk. The standard I have observed is to refer to combat walking as the act of using jab 1 -> jab 2 -> jab 1 (...) as a movement option. In this case, the intent is to combo, so I think it is a jab combo. Fox's jab combo did also carry fox across the stage as he performed it, but the function was to combo, not to move, so it was referred as a jab combo. Like Fox's jab combo, the point is the damage, not the movement. In a similar sense, if you used Fox's jab 1 -> jab 2 -> jab 1 -> (...) to move Fox across the stage, you would be attempting to combat walk (and it would have been a poor combat walk). However, I don't think semantics should be the main source of discussion...

I'm not sure what to discuss, actually. Maybe you can do this if you read a tomahawk?

 

[Plain Yogurt]

You make a good point. I suppose calling it a jab loop may be more appropriate. I guess I just figured there's no way you'd use it for movement that I disregarded what the term meant. Sorry I got your hopes up. I'll edit the title to (hopefully) avoid further confusion.

As for discussion...yeah I don't know if there's much to talk about with it beyond any additional sorts of testing. I guess I just figured it was kinda big for the metagame thread. Basically as long as they don't have a double jump and you're in rage it's an option. Shulk does generally have better anti-airs, but if you have enough space/are in buster you'd probably get more damage out of this than using one of those.

 

[Berserker.]

Relevant to the discussion but here's another video of the jab loop

 

[TWILTHERO]

Oh wow, I actually got this (unintentionally) a few times before in different matches, but only got about 2-3 reps. Interesting find!