Let's get the Scintilla talk over with:
Bottom line, Scintilla is really good. If you don't think it is, sorry, don't mean to be rude but you are simply wrong. Go watch MKLeo, Sharp, or the other top Sephiroth matches we've got. It's hardly a spammable move, but one that is more than usable and
very good at what it does.
Pros:
- Very tall activation box.
- MASSIVE range when activated.
- Great base damage, high knockback, can easily kill.
- 1.5x ratio in One Wing mode.
- Always attacks on frame 38.
Neutral:
- Frame 7 activation. Not good, not bad.
- Can be grabbed, like every other counter.
- Ordinary counter window length. (Note that this means there is a 10 frame gap before auto-activation where attacks land normally)
Cons:
- Breaks (with no harm to either side) if the attack does more than 25% base. (30% real 1v1 damage)
- Does not cover back.
- Is reflectable/absorbable.
- Because it always attacks, has a whopping 86 frames of commitment.
So the pros are REALLY GOOD, but the cons... are actually not that bad at all.
Breaking is super rare--VERY few attacks deal that much damage in a single hitbox. And so you can't counter those very-rarely-used-and-easy-to-punish-with-fsmash-anyway moves, so what? And if you DO accidentally counter one, oh well,
nothing happens. Literally no downside.
It doesn't cover Sephiroth's back, but who cares? You can b-reverse it. I've yet to see this matter, just like it never comes up for K Rool. This is actually only relevant for coming down DIRECTLY on top of someone with a narrow uair.
It's reflectable/absorable? Across the ENTIRE CAST, I can only think of six circumstances where this is relevant 1v1:
- Hero Bounce active
- Min Min usmash
- ROB Arm Rotor
- Zelda Nayru's Love
- Falco Reflector
- G&W fair -> bucket
Pocket's interactions with it aren't compelling AFAIK and nothing leads into PSI Magnet. I bet you can construct contrived scenarios where Mario or either Mii can get in range to follow a projectile with a reflect, but I have no idea why Sephiroth would Scintilla there even absent the reflect gimmick.
At worst, Sephiroth just doesn't throw out Scintilla against Zelda point-blank, grounded Min Min, horizontal ROB or Falco, Bounce Hero, or specifically G&W fair. OK; that's not actually that much.
Finally, that whopping 86 frames of commitment. That's even longer than Ike's 73! That sounds punishable as hell, and it sort of is. But on paper you are comparing apples to apples when these ain't apples.
Scintilla is -25 on shield. That's
a lot less than 73! Even if we penalize Ike's opponent 15-20 frames of human reaction time while treating the same as an irrelevant sunk cost for Sephiroth's opponent, that's still more than double! But that's still not fair--you might not even have been in shield to punish Ike (or Joker or whoever), but you HAVE to shield Scintilla, adding another 11 frames. Yeah, good luck f-smashing OoS Sephiroth for using Scintilla.
Maybe you intend to space out the attack, dash in, and then attack? Okay, let's assume Sephiroth tried it at a spacing that permits that, sure. The attack is active a hearty 15 frames, leaving you with 33 frames to dash in and punish him. That's a lot, but it's still less than
half what you'd get against Ike, and still way less than even Joker's. (And those don't have any particular spacing requirements!)
So scratch that too. Well, what if the opponent jumps or rolls past Sephiroth? Well, a forward roll or empty SH FF is about 30 frames. Once we subtract that... your punish window is on-par with punishing Joker down-b, which is the previous gold standard for a "safe" counter. So you gamble a cold empty movement into Sephiroth as a hard read, and the best-case reward is that you make his counter merely as punishable as Joker's? This is
not the usual level of reward that "hard read of a Counter" gets you! And never mind that both of these movement options are irrelevant in most off-stage use cases.
What if Sephiroth is coming down in disadvantage, and tries to Scintilla an aggressive uair or such, but the opponent doesn't take the bait? Sephiroth is sitting in midair looking like an idiot for 86 frames! Except, there's not really anyone with an unrestricted aerial punish they can do in 86 frames that they couldn't do in 73 or even 54. A knee is a knee. Barring edge cases where the exact spacing is perfect for a Palutena or Belmont u-smash, being vulnerable for long amounts of time in the air is far more binary than it is on the ground.
So we're left with only two main cases where Scintilla is actually more punishable than other counters:
- The opponent's best punish option outranges Scintilla and the spacing of the encounter allows them to promptly start it instead of shielding/rolling. (Typically ground opponent only.) So, Sephiroth merely has to be more judicious in the situations that he uses it against grounded Shulk, Mega Man, Byleth, Min Min, Belmont, ect, where their go-to punish would not be impeded by Scintilla's (inferior) range.
- The opponent is commited to other actions outside the range of Scintilla's attack, most commonly grabbing the ledge. This means that they are in no danger of Scintilla's attack, and their time is being occupied by something that could prevent them from punishing a normal vulnerable target (at least as much as they might like), but a 83 frame window is more workable. The most common application of this is Sephiroth failing a Scintilla above the ledge, and the opponent having enough time to ledge jump and bair him. (Where between falling past, grabbing the ledge for the minimum time, and jumping, they might not have had time to bair against a shorter Counter and might have had to accept a ledge drop fair instead.)
Scintilla is inescapeably a high-risk high-reward move, but its real-world applications have much more in common with Tetrakarn than Ike Counter.
's Waft should kill slightly later but still be very strong. That way it can't just let Wario get zero-to-death combos like Glutonny did against Nairo at Genesis.
