Going from my previous post about Kirby's significant jump boost from using Hammer Bash, I've worked on it a bit more to find actual uses for this outside of recovering. Some things were obvious, others were not. I'm almost certain this'll help Kirby out, whether it be minor or significant.
Hammer Bash with Meteor Stone
Quite possibly the most interesting and useful find, is that I now have a solution for using Meteor Stone. To inform those who don't know, Meteor Stone is one of Kirby's stone custom, and as the name implies, meteor's opponents. There's a few difference with this meteor smash than others, though. For one, it's one of the strongest meteor smashes in the game, killing basically every character at 10% while hanging from the ledge. Along with that, it's a falling, lasting hitbox. This makes it easier to challenge recoveries, as Kirby is falling down while the opponent is rising up, making it MUCH easier to land this meteor than others. Lastly, Kirby is completely invincible while falling, so he can go straight through recoveries. The only way to knock Kirby out of Meteor Stone is by using a move that does 20% or more in one hit, in the air, while he's falling, without getting hit yourself.
Now, there's one catch that completely ruins this custom. If Kirby full hops off the ledge and uses Meteor Stone, if he doesn't hit the opponent... he's dead. The added transformation time takes so long to get out of that Kirby can
not escape, even if he mashes out. This can be seen here:
http://i.imgur.com/yo2hC3Z.gif. Of course, by that this'll seem like there's no reason to use Meteor Stone, hence the "
if he doesn't hit the opponent". This is because a new system was added in Smash 4 with Kirby's Stone. If any of the Stone variants come in contact with ANYTHING while falling, whether it be an opponent, projectile, or the ground, he can get out of Stone instantly, letting him survive Meteor Stone. This made the move have an incredibly high risk:reward ratio - if you land it, you survive and the opponent is dead, no matter the %. If you miss, you're dead and the opponent lives.
We now have a solution to this. As should be relatively obvious, Hammer Bash comes into place. If Kirby jumps off the ledge and boosts his jump with Hammer Bash, he can
survive Meteor Stone if he misses the opponent! This can be seen here:
http://i.imgur.com/R8DU1tX.gifv. Along with that, to remove any risk of being killed from being a bit low, there's a few things that come into place. First, is that the opponent is either still recovering, or just got on stage, which reduces the likelihood of Kirby being punished while getting out of Stone. Adding to that, and probably reducing the most risk, is that Kirby can buffer Upper Cutter to
immediately grab onto the ledge from the height he gets out of Meteor Stone at. The height is, quite literally, right where Kirby needs to be to Upper Cutter back to the stage without using any jumps. If that becomes too obvious, he also has the choice to back away from where he was using Hammer Bash jumps, and Jumping Inhale back to the stage, or just use Hammer Bash jumps to get back and save his recovery in the case that he does get hit.
What this means for Kirby is that he now has a relatively low risk, yet high reward way to destroy recovering opponents. Obviously, characters such as Pikachu and Greninja that can quickly change the direction of their recovery can avoid this. However, characters such as Marth, Link, Villager, Olimar, and Duck Hunt, who either have recoveries that go straight upwards (Marth and Link) or recoveries that are slow yet go great distances (Villager, Olimar, Duck Hunt) will suffer from this. Similar to his recovering options, Kirby can easily mix-up his edgeguarding game, too, so he doesn't have to resort to Meteor Stone all the time. He has his D-Air, which can lead into another D-Air to secure low percent kills, or a footstool to send opponents tumbling into the boundaries. He has Upper Cutter and B-Air, both of which are amazing, fast, high-powered stage spiking attacks. He can also use F-Air to create a WoP (Wall of Pain), and can use B-Air walls to exhaust people's jumps and destroy them.
Hammer Bash with Burying Stone
This one, while quite situational, allows Kirby to rack up quite a bit of damage in an instant. Against CPU mashing, which is basically god-tier mashing, Burying Stone (which buries opponents, obviously) can combo into Hammer Bash at any percent, although 0 to 10% is a bit harder and requires basically frame-perfect timing. This is an easy 37%, and at higher percents, such as 100%+, two Burying Stone's can be used for around 53% total. This is because Burying Stone adds on transformation time by completely removing the ending lag, letting Kirby act out of Stone instantly.
Air Chasing with Hammer Bash
This one was pretty obvious, but helps quite a bit. After launching opponents upwards, Kirby can easily chase them up to continue juggles, kill with Upper Cutter, and can help add on to strings. This is because Kirby's full hop height is significantly increased with Hammer Bash, so he can get up in the air faster than usual. Using this, it greatly increases Kirby's ability to continue juggles. Also, as Kirby rises while swinging the Hammer, he can catch opponents who try to fast fall away.
Ledge Hop with Hammer Bash
This one is actually a bit more useful than others. Kirby can add another mix-up to his ledge options by cancelling the initial frames of a ledge hop into Hammer Bash. This is similar to how Ganondorf/Captain Falcon can cancel into their down specials, of Marth/Lucina/Ike can instantly counter on the ledge. The main difference is that Kirby carries his momentum up with the ledge hop, sending him incredibly high above the stage. This allows him to easily dodge any attacks from ledge hops that are read by the opponent. He can then fall down with Stone, D-Air, or another attack and punish the opponent. Along with that, if the opponent reads the ledge hop and tries to punish Kirby by jumping into him and attacking, they'll be hit into the air with Hammer Bash, knocked straight into a juggle as Kirby follows upwards.
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There's still more I could go into, but I'm still exploring viable ways to use this. So... that's the end of this post!
Also, I forgot to mention it in the last post I made. After a bit more testing, due to the lack of height on Kirby's last mid-air jump, using that jump withing any Hammer Bash boosts will actually let Kirby go around one Kirby higher than before. As a comparison, when going from Palutena's Temple bottom platform to the bridge, Villager's Balloon Trip ends around two Kirbys higher than Kirby lands.
yes I used Kirby units as a way to measure
