Character Competitive Impressions

[Shaya]

I said invincible, not intangible.
It was interesting to see the few times Seagull would go right through DK's down-b.

 

[Teshie U]

@ Unknownkid I keep telling people, its almost exactly like iSDR in brawl. It IS invincible, but its still a grounded special and you can make it clash to stop it. Moves that outprioritize it will clash it out and continue, thus winning the exchange. It only goes through aerials and laser/explosion hitboxes.

Kong Cyclone being unsafe on hit is just plan B. Plan A is universal and viable for almost everyone (grab it when its level with your character), or punish the endlag or poor position DK puts himself in.

 

[Unknownkid]

@ Unknownkid I keep telling people, its almost exactly like iSDR in brawl. It IS invincible, but its still a grounded special and you can make it clash to stop it. Moves that outprioritize it will clash it out and continue, thus winning the exchange. It only goes through aerials and laser/explosion hitboxes.

Kong Cyclone being unsafe on hit is just plan B. Plan A is universal and viable for almost everyone (grab it when its level with your character), or punish the endlag or poor position DK puts himself in.

Okay... I am little confuse. Obviously, I don't understand the difference between a move being invincible or intangible. So moves that are invincible can be beaten/out-prioritized and the same character can take damage? Samus' Charge Shot beats BSD. It has been stated that Sonic's Spring Jump is invincible during the jump. So in theory I should be able to beat it with Charge Shot? Or is Spring Jump also intangible?

Well, it looks like some players did not know about Plan B. I will like to enforce as many options as possible.

 

[Shaya]

If you're invincible you can still have hurtboxes clinked or hitboxes clashed, which causes hitlag, if you come out of invincibility during said hitlag, you can still be hit.

No one said BSD was completely invincible, but something that travels horizontally to a point where their invincibility runs out? Sure. I could find you many moves like that. Doesn't mean they beat invincibility, just more like they have long hitbox durations and/or hit lag modifiers.

Best and easiest example is respawning, it's invincible, if someone throws an attack at you, you can see the hit lag occur. If you hit someone at the right time they can still be acting during invincibility and suddenly get walloped by the attack. You can clank attacks with someone having respawn invincibility too.

 

[Lavani]

Quick rundown on Burning Spin Dash for clarification:

- Sonic is intangible (transcendent hitboxes will move through him harmlessly), but the attack itself can clank (Sonic won't be hurt, but the attack will stop and he will be left vulnerable)
- Attacks that continue after clanking such as Jigglypuff's dash attack, Mac's ftilt, and aerials can both clank Burning Spin Dash and hit Sonic in the same use.
- Sonic loses his intangibility when he jumps or turns around.
- The move stops on shield while Sonic is grounded; he has to jump and give up his intangibility to avoid this.
- BSD's jump height is just high enough for him to airdodge autocancel by starting an aerial just before landing; Sonic can instantly act while landing out of the jump normally as well.

Intangibility means attacks pass through the character, invincibility means the character can still be hit but isn't harmed. For example, Megaman's fsmash will pass through Burning Spin Dash but vanishes when hitting Palutena's dash attack.

 

[Blobface]

If we're talking about Kong Cyclone, we should at least have the frame data.
from what I can tell, using Kong Cyclone goes like this. Not sure if all of it is exact.
Jump Squat: Frames 1-6 (note, this is moot if he's already in the air for some reason or offstage)

First hitbox: Frames 9-12 (note: also intangible, this applies to all of DK's Up-B's)

Empty startup during Frames 13-22

Windbox from frames 23-47

Super armor from frames 23-43

Second hitbox on frame 49

Endlag for 26 frames, provided it's autocanceled. Frame count is the same regardless of when you land.

 

[Teshie U]

Okay... I am little confuse. Obviously, I don't understand the difference between a move being invincible or intangible. So moves that are invincible can be beaten/out-prioritized and the same character can take damage? Samus' Charge Shot beats BSD. It has been stated that Sonic's Spring Jump is invincible during the jump. So in theory I should be able to beat it with Charge Shot? Or is Spring Jump also intangible?

Well, it looks like some players did not know about Plan B. I will like to enforce as many options as possible.

Yea, it is simply the hitbox that lets you exploit it. If it was simply rolling around invincible, nothing would stop it.

 

[Shaya]

Transcended priority moves had the knack of never clanking with hitboxes tied to bones during invincibility. Was like this in Brawl.
So no, Sonic isn't intangible, unless a separate entity is spawned that has some convoluted interaction based on that entity's actions. Your description of how the move works contradicts intangibility.

(And MasterCore's "tagged" name for the function covers both states without clarifying it does so)

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

All of those players use a character with a projectile.

Then counterpick. You're apparently playing the one high tier character in the game who can't handle DK? Okay, I doubt that that's the case, but if it is, pick up Shiek! Customs or no, Shiek still ****s all over DK pretty easily. Play Diddy - you saw how easily LethalTrilogy dealt with Kong Cyclone. Pick Wario and just press B a lot. Play Ganondorf and watch as they die at 20% because you have Dark Fists and they aren't respecting you (or at least get free sideB techchases for days). Pick ZSS and combo his ass straight to the upper blastzone. Use Wii Fit Trainer and do a free 15+ damage every time he uses the move to recover. Use Luigi and pressure him with fireballs. The list goes on and on of characters who can and have beaten top level DKs abusing this strategy.

Or, alternatively, complain on the forum, ask to ban a move that isn't winning tournaments because other people have started to adapt to it, and then lose a lot.

I'm sorry, what are we supposed to tell you? "Yeah, sure, Kong Cyclone should totally get banned even though most of the cast can deal with it and DK players aren't winning with it"? I'm so sorry that you have a really bad matchup; I feel your pain. I mained T.Hawk in Street Fighter. But just because Dhalsim could just keep me out for free doesn't mean that I can ask to ban his stand medium kick.

Find out how to beat the strategy with sonic, find a counterpick you like for it, or watch as the meta passes you by. Complaining here does nothing. It's completely unproductive and a waste of your time and everyone else's. Next time you want to comment here about how broken Kong Cyclone is, don't. Instead, go to training mode and find the cracks.

 

[TriTails]

The more I think about it, the more I think Iceball is definitely an sueful side-grade from Luigi's Fireballs.

At sight, yeah. It fires slower, goes MUCH slower, and deals only 4%. BUT! It forces shields. Nope, you can just shield.
1. Once you are at freezeable percents (Last I remembered, Mario's was 42%), you CANNOT take the hit and get away with it (Hello LM with taking the hit and F-tilt the **** out of you when you approach). If you take the hit, you'll, well, FREEZE up lol.
2. It comes out slower than Fireballs and goes real slow, but it's actually a decent coverage tool against approaches. You can't just simply jump to the air because the slow speed of the Iceballs will catch you or at least give you trouble landing.
3. Spotdodging I figure won't work. Either the Iceball is so slow that it last through an entire spotdodge or you can spotdodge through it, but there's another Iceball coming at your way.
4. It gives people headaches on how getting through it. Like, get hit by an Iceball and you'll freeze up, giving Luigi some advantage on offense.

At least what I saw anyway. Haven't been labbing on it for too long, but I'd say it's an useful side-grade (Maybe even upgrade) from Fireballs and I can see being useful in not little MUs. Sure, people like Mega Man still don't give a s*** about it (Maybe. Probably still beaten by pellets), but it SURE going to give trouble to someone like LM to commit something like Side-b (Unless you are saying he can still F-tilt through them all, or bring in some wacky customs that counters it, in which case, RIP for those two MUs.

Okay, I think I was exaggerating on LM MU.

 

[Luigi player]

And yeah, I think Ganon can reverse-Warlock Punch DK while he's trapped in the Cyclone.

lol not sure how that's supposed to work, but if you're counting on superarmor then you're wrong, because if you reverse it he doesn't get SA. (and in the air he doesn't get it either way)

 

[ChronoPenguin]

My mind is blown that we're talking about Warlock Punch as a defensive option.
Is this the twilight zone?

 

[warionumbah2]

At least it isn't Dark fist. Smh

 

[wedl!!]

My mind is blown that we're talking about Warlock Punch as a defensive option.
Is this the twilight zone?

we used to complain about mac being op so it's not like this is entirely out of the ordinary.

 

[DunnoBro]

I don't believe sonic doesn't have the tools to beat custom DK, it's just sonic in particular has very mediocre, even poor platform pressure, which is what you need to make the most out of a character like DK's shaky ability to return to neutral.

On tall/wide characters especially, hammer spindash is absurd and gives sonic potent platform pressure.

Average Joe also had practice against burning spindash/sonic in particular by playing me, whereas Seagull didn't seem to have much cyclone experience due to Avj going unpunished so often, some of those punishes resulting in stock if done right.

Ex. Seagull Joe would've won the second game if he went for upsmash instead of a grab after the first failed upsmash. If not canceled, there's enough lag to get whatever you want on him pretty much if you just notice he's not canceling it.

And he definitely took tons of damage challenging him off-stage with ftilt/fsmash that he didn't need to either. He refused/didn't know to respect the cyclone and got punished for it.

Cyclone is definitely powerful, polarizing, and potentially broken. But the JoeJoe match was not anywhere near the shining example of that.

Honestly they both used their respective "spin moves" about the same, and AVJoe seemed more familiar avoiding/punishing.

I've used sonic myself since week 1 of the japanese 3ds release, and a lot of the stuff people said/say about spindash applies to kong cyclone. Yea, it's hard to punish and generally only has character specific counters/answers, but sonic still has other weaknesses that can be exploited which prevents it from being "broken" And DK sure as hell has some pretty abuseable weaknesses.

Edit: also, sonic can often spring out of kong cyclone before the strong hit. Seagull could've avoided several deaths and lots of damage by using this.

 

[ZarroTsu]

The more I think about it, the more I think Iceball is definitely an sueful side-grade from Luigi's Fireballs.

At sight, yeah. It fires slower, goes MUCH slower, and deals only 4%. BUT! It forces shields. Nope, you can just shield.

OR you use Mii Swordfighter's Gale Strike, destroying the Ice Ball and hitting Luigi (Or, if the windbox catches him, pushing Luigi away and gaining stage control).

 

[Depth_]

I said invincible, not intangible.
It was interesting to see the few times Seagull would go right through DK's down-b.

Shaya, do you have a formula for shieldstun in Smash 4? I've seen you posting about it. This is really confusing.

 

[Judo777]

For clarity invincibility has nothing to do with clanking or the ability to clank. Most all invincibility in the game is "intangible" meaning moves won't interact with an invincible opponent. The only kind of non-intangible invincibility that I am aware of (there is probably more) is when you appear after just losing a stock, moves such as projectiles will literally hit your character and disappear or suffer hitlag but you won't take the damage. Most invincibility does not function this way. Invincibility is also COMPLETELY related to your characters hurtboxes being able to be hit and has nothing to do with your own attacks hitboxes.

That being said, while invincible, you can still sometimes produce hitboxes, and those hitboxes still function like hitboxes and are bound by all the rules of hitboxes. So any move that can clank normally, can clank while invincible and the converse is also true (there may be very obscure exceptions, but I don't know of any).

That being said the famous example that some people reference was DKs invincible helicopter in brawl on slopes. He was 100% invincible during the entirety of the move. However his hitboxes still are bound by clanking rules, you were able to clank his hitboxes (or beat them which is still a rule of clanking), which as the rule states, clanks that occur while grounded end the moves animation, thus resulting in DK losing invincibility (he is no longer performing the move) and getting hit by the following hitboxes.

So in most cases being invincible doesn't change the properties of your moves.

 

[Shaya]

There's at least one example, Zero Suit Samus in Brawl was invincible during her down-b with no hitboxes out but could be "hit", which resulted in her taking the attack after coming out of invincibility.
No longer the case in this game :>
But I may be misremembering, but I believe most non-up b's were able to be "hit" during invincibility to be punished coming out of it. Most of those moves hitboxes were transcended as well (Zelda's neutral b, Wolf and Fox's shines). Although Super Armor, Olimar's whistle would proc hit lag without hitboxes.

Unfortunately you would never notice these things unless you played Marth and tippered people and didn't get hit by their hitboxes in the interaction. But in short, I threw my sword out and laughed at the face of invincibility.

Palutena in this game seems to have opponents proc hit lag during her bair if you hit behind "in front of" her where she doesn't have a hitbox. It's weird, it kinda just absorbs everything around her, I've never seen her get punished coming out of invincibility for it though.
Bouncing Fish may only bounce off of hurtboxes? I'm just trying to think if I've seen it clash with a hitbox before...

Shaya, do you have a formula for shieldstun in Smash 4? I've seen you posting about it. This is really confusing.

Apparently it's the same as Brawl. Haven't personally retested since WiiU where I could do everything significantly easier. But I only got it recently and I'm only like THREE customs away from 100% special moves. Don't got time for science.

 

[TriTails]

OR you use Mii Swordfighter's Gale Strike, destroying the Ice Ball and hitting Luigi (Or, if the windbox catches him, pushing Luigi away and gaining stage control).

I hate you.

Bouncing Fish may only bounce off of hurtboxes? I'm just trying to think if I've seen it clash with a hitbox before...

BF bounces off shields as well.

Though, it'd be hillarious if it didn't.

 

[Ffamran]

Lavani looked into Bouncing Fish for a bit.

 

[Meru.]

The balance patch is coming near:

"Noooo, I don't want to die!! *Uair* "

(From Twitter)

 

[Ulevo]

The balance patch is coming near:

"Noooo, I don't want to die!! *Uair* "

(From Twitter)

Plot twist: Diddy receives no nerfs.

 

[wedl!!]

Plot twist: Diddy receives no nerfs.

plot twist: becomes so overbuffed he brings the Dongbender Meta, which mostly involves spinning or windboxes. are all top tier.

 

[mimgrim]

If I had a nickle for every time I ever see someone call Greninja's neutral bad (This isn't directed at anything in particular but just a general misconception I see come up often in multiple places).

 

[LiteralGrill]

Plot twist: Greninja is buffed so hard Meta Kight looks like Melee Kirby by comparision.

So uh... how about that pre patch meta eh?

Actually came in here to see if this can go past low percents, Peach Infinite?

 

[Ulevo]

Plot twist: Greninja is buffed so hard Meta Kight looks like Melee Kirby by comparision.

So uh... how about that pre patch meta eh?

Actually came in here to see if this can go past low percents, Peach Infinite?

You know, I'm kinda waiting for the Smash Wii U version of Armada to come around and just wreck everyone at a national at this point. Stuff like this doesn't surprise me anymore.

 

[Blue Ninjakoopa]

plot twist: becomes so overbuffed he brings the Dongbender Meta, which mostly involves spinning or windboxes. are all top tier.

Talk about a plot "twist". Eh? Eh??

 

[Lavani]

Actually came in here to see if this can go past low percents, Peach Infinite?

Uair's first two hits are weight-based knockback, it works the same at 999% as it does at 0%.

 

[Nabbitnator]

Plot twist: Greninja is buffed so hard Meta Kight looks like Melee Kirby by comparision.

So uh... how about that pre patch meta eh?

Actually came in here to see if this can go past low percents, Peach Infinite?

Its something you can probably use to punish dash attacks and you can possibly switch from this into a turnip lock.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Umm. I know its pretty hard to not speculate but aint shaya handing out strikes for this kinda conversation?

 

[Sinister Slush]

Honestly the move is incredibly good already, why does it need invincibility on start up Nintendo.

 

[Nabbitnator]

Honestly the move is incredibly good already, why does it need invincibility on start up Nintendo.

Can this move be used to get out of combos because of its invincibility?

 

[Ffamran]

Honestly the move is incredibly good already, why does it need invincibility on start up Nintendo.

Yay, my sig can be used for stuff.

Can this move be used to get out of combos because of its invincibility?

Not invincibility, but probably intangibility. Fox and Falco's Down Smash make their legs intangible and lets them challenge some weird things, but not as much since their legs are the only things intangible. It looks like Sheik becomes intangible since she just passes through the explosion or there's an insane disjoint. ZSS's Flip Jump is also weird, but I think you can hit her during the move. I'm not sure, though.

The thing is startup, I don't think Bouncing Fish is anywhere near frame 3 and the way it moves could cause an issue.

 

[David Viran]

Yay, my sig can be used for stuff.


Not invincibility, but probably intangibility. Fox and Falco's Down Smash make their legs intangible and lets them challenge some weird things, but not as much since their legs are the only things intangible. It looks like Sheik becomes intangible since she just passes through the explosion or there's an insane disjoint. ZSS's Flip Jump is also weird, but I think you can hit her during the move. I'm not sure, though.

The thing is startup, I don't think Bouncing Fish is anywhere near frame 3 and the way it moves could cause an issue.

Can confirm zss is completely intangible during down b and can't really be hit until it goes away.

 

[Jaxas]

Can confirm zss is completely intangible during down b and can't really be hit until it goes away.

ZSS is completely intangible for the first 1/3rd of Flip Kick, but not the whole thing.

 

[Lavani]

ZSS is completely intangible for the first 1/3rd of Flip Kick, but not the whole thing.

There's a pretty good visual cue for it too; the intangibility starts when the first afterimage appears and ends when the second one appears.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

There's a pretty good visual cue for it too; the intangibility starts when the first afterimage appears and ends when the second one appears.

i believe there are more after images in the wiiu version.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

i believe there are more after images in the wiiu version.

There are, but only one more between the two Lavani pointed out.

 

[Antonykun]

So did you know you can drop a Timber counter by the ledge for ledge set play?