Bury cancel to uair KO setup

[JSConrad45]

A direct hit from SDJ will bury then launch, dealing 26% base damage and killing Mario from the floor of Final Destination (3DS, training mode) at 168% (before the first hit). The second hit alone would KO at 93%, but buried opponents take a LOT less knockback.

If you cancel after burying but before the landing hit, you can leave people buried. There's plenty of hitlag to allow you to do this -- if you can buffer a grab out of shieldstun, you can bury cancel upon confirming the bury. Just takes practice. The problems with bury cancels are 1) buried opponents receive jack for knockback, and 2) the Super Dedede Pratfall means they're escaping from the bury before you can charge up anything strong enough to overcome that.

So you don't try to hit them when they're in the ground. A Wii Fit main recently clued me in to the fact that buried opponents always pop straight up for a fixed distance when they escape from burial. So you just hit them with a uair when they get out. This setup kills Mario from the floor of FD starting at 106% (prior to burial). If you can predict when your opponent will get out of the burial, you're guaranteed to hit them, since there's a fixed time before they can act. But the great part is that on reaction this is a 50/50, coming down to whether they buffer an airdodge or not. If they buffer an airdodge, you have to delay a uair-on-reaction-to-escape in order to hit them; if they don't buffer an airdodge, and you delay, they'll escape. Buffering aerials is as good as doing nothing, because no aerial beats a properly-spaced Dedede uair coming from below.

Yes, hitting someone with SDJ in the first place is the hard part -- you have to take them by surprise with recovery mixups, it's the only way to hit a decent opponent with SDJ -- but still, a setup for a 50/50 KO on reaction ~106%. In Dedede terms, that's amazing.

 

[JSConrad45]

And of course, some characters can escape by buffering an up-B -- Mega Man, Sonic, Pac-Man, probably G&W and Mario. ZSS could probably get out by buffering down-B. So you have to watch out for those.

(whoops, didn't mean to double-post. I thought I was appending this in an edit. My bad.)

 

[A Rogue Cop]

So what kind of percent do they have to be at for you to be able to get up from the pratfall in time for the uair?

 

[JSConrad45]

Level 9 CPUs set to "Attack" stay buried long enough as low as 95%, haven't tested lower yet. The human Ness in the gfy was at 95% when I buried him and I had juuust enough time. And of course if they don't mash out of the bury (many people don't expect you to leave them buried), you've got plenty of time.

 

[A Rogue Cop]

Level 9 CPUs set to "Attack" stay buried long enough as low as 95%, haven't tested lower yet. The human Ness in the gfy was at 95% when I buried him and I had juuust enough time. And of course if they don't mash out of the bury (many people don't expect you to leave them buried), you've got plenty of time.

Thanks.

 

[SalsaSavant]

This is interesting. Niche, but interesting.

I wonder what we could do with this...still, wish it was easier to set up.

 

[JSConrad45]

Yeah, "niche but interesting" unfortunately plagues much of our King's toolkit. But definitely nice to have up your sleeve.

I haven't figured out anything else for it yet, other than that you can kill up to 20% earlier with a bair by the edge, but that has three problems: you can't do it on reaction, there are attack options that can be buffered to beat bair, and the lower % means more of a chance of them getting out of the ground before you get done pratfalling. At high enough percents you also have time for a dsmash before they get out of the ground, but by then you could've killed almost anything else much more easily.

But there could be something! I figured out bury cancels within, like, a week after launch, and it took me this long to find a use for them.

 

[Eggggggggggbert]

Any kill setup that requires a 90%+ when you're playing Dedede is a bit rough I think. Especially when in more cases than not, our thing is about gettin' those early kills. It also seems like this is a lot of work to get an up-air. It makes me wonder what the stats behind being buried are and how much it can be reduced by mashing.
Although I will say this is some of the most disrespectful **** I've seen. To casually get up as someone is stuck in the ground and appear to have missed the forward smash opportunity, only to just up-air them out of it. That's pretty good stuff. It's also nice to see some more technical stuff.

 

[JSConrad45]

The thing about kills <90% as Dedede is that they require your opponent to do something stupid. Like, I can think of lots of ways to get an fsmash, but none that are legit -- they all rely on traps that stop working once the opponent has seen them. Even fsmash as a punish requires that opponents use really laggy moves at really bad spacing (if only Dedede had a good slide on his perfect pivot, then PP fsmashes might be more useable). Forcing a deep recovering opponent to hug the wall via Gordo pressure so you can stagespike them with bair is the most legit lower% kill setup I can think of (since teching the wall when you're already touching it upon hit is apparently impossible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8rpifNUEYo ). Dsmash kills early by the edge, but I don't know of any setups for that, just dodge/ledge punishes. (Edit: oh, there's jab-jab-dsmash, but that never works on floaties, and any character can avoid it with proper DI into airjump if they know it's coming.)

That's why I made such a deal about this being a 50/50 on reaction -- it doesn't require that your opponent be an idiot, merely that you out-yomi them once you get the bury. Which, SDJ in the first place is the hard part, but SDJ onto stage from offstage is a legit mixup:

1. It can frame trap people who buffer their ledge options
2. The super armor (frames 5-13, and frames 52-59 or until landing, whichever happens first) and butt invincibility (frame 52 until landing) gets through many (not all) attack options (frame 52 being the same frame that the hitbox comes out)
3. It's hard to dodge because the hitbox is too big plus you run the risk of dodging the falling hitbox only to get hit with the more-lethal landing hitbox (the optimal dodge is to jump and airdodge through it, thus avoiding both hitboxes and the stars, but that's jumpsquat + airdodge startup, so it's less available than other dodges)
4. Although it's unsafe on shield, it does enough shield damage to make shielding suboptimal most of the time: shielding it leaves you open to shieldbreak via smashes or dash attack, or shield stabs from ftilt or Gordo, for several seconds, and if your shield is already damaged then SDJ can easily break it (if you shield a Gordo just before SDJ starts, then shield SDJ, that's a shieldbreak).
5. Sneaky hooks -- hugging the wall so your opponent can't tell whether you've SDJ'ed straight up or stageward, making it harder to guess whether you're going to grab the ledge or land on stage -- help get around the Falcon Punch-level startup before hitbox comes out, because the opponent can't do anything on reaction (only on read) until seeing whether you've skipped the ledge or not.

So as long as you don't overuse it, SDJ can still hit people that aren't stupid.

 

[JimmyTheCaterpillar]

WELP

Time for me to spam this at everyone at every tournament I go to for the next week and a half.

 

[JSConrad45]

WELP

Time for me to spam this at everyone at every tournament I go to for the next week and a half.

If you can remember, let me know what kind of counter plays people come up with!

 

[Axel311]

Like you alluded to in your original post - people can just avoid or shield the up B on stage in the first place. So this isn't really practical. I'll have to test, but are you sure people always pop up after being buried? If opponent is mashing shield or roll instead are you sure you still pop up? I'll have to test later.

 

[Eggggggggggbert]

If you can remember, let me know what kind of counter plays people come up with!

Actually as you said that I'm realizing counter is one of the things that really would really cause issues. While if you hit someones' regular shield, it does enough shield damage that it may be worth getting shield grabbed or punished. Landing on a counter close to the edge of the stage on the other hand, is very dangerous, even for our fat penguin.
Of course this D3 strat isn't one that is necessarily meant to be done to people who see it coming from that far away, it would be something to consider.

 

[JSConrad45]

That's why the sneaky hooks are important. If you SDJ toward the stage (as in the gif) the opponent knows that you're either going to grab the ledge or land on the stage, so they can be prepared. If you SDJ straight up toward the ledge, they know your're going to grab the ledge. But if you SDJ toward the stage while hugging the wall, the opponent can't tell whether you've SDJ'ed sideways or straight up, meaning that their reaction window doesn't really begin until you pass the ledge. This is especially good on stages with slopes under the ledge, since you can SDJ stageward, ride the slope apparently going the opposite direction, then resume stageward movement as you clear the ledge, which messes with people's heads. Like this:

But even then, this has to be a mixup. If you do it every time then people will see it coming. It's also best not to do it cold -- do it when you're chasing people to the ledge with aerials, and/or pressuring the edge of the stage with Gordo, etc; make sure they've got more to think about than just the SDJ.

(When playing against characters with counters, you have to be especially careful and sparing with SDJ as an attack. You also have to be watching them and ready to cancel -- you'll probably get punished anyway, but at least you won't get hit with a counter coming off a 15% damage hit. Unfortunately the falling armor doesn't seem to apply once the hitbox has connected, so you can't just armor through counters. But on the plus side, none of the countering characters have a good matchup with Dedede in the first place. Edit: except Peach. But her counter sucks.)

I'll have to test, but are you sure people always pop up after being buried? If opponent is mashing shield or roll instead are you sure you still pop up? I'll have to test later.

Well, I'm going off what a Wii Fit main told me. WFTs bury people on the regular, so I took their word for it. I haven't seen anything else happen yet, though. Mashing shield just seems to buffer an airdodge.