Dash Attack (Revisited)

[Xtra_Crispy]

I checked around the forums a bit and couldn't find anything about this but I'm pretty sure it's known (I would be utterly shocked if I was the first to find this). Basically, if you hold back while dash attacking towards ledge in 3.6 (don't remember it doing this in other versions) then you grab the ledge. Neat, right?

The reason I bring this up is that every mention of dash attack has been about how much it sucks lol. This might bring up some potential uses for it other than being a slower raptorboost ledgegrab. It sends the opponents at a pretty low angle offstage and puts you on the edge immediately after with invincibility (which is rare now in 3.6) for an edgeguard (got a Scar jump knee in friendlies off this yesterday). Here's pretty much the only two scenarios I could come up with for it
-If you are too late on a techroll towards stage to get a knee, this could replace regrab at high percents when you can't get a reliable followup off grab.
-Old school melee edgeguards had Falcon dash attacking to cover some illusions. Still works if your opponent goes to stage and you are mid dash and can't otherwise cover it

Obviously it's not optimal all the time but working it into my game has helped me pick up a lot of edgeguards

EDIT: I tried with a few other characters but falcon was the only one it worked with. I haven't tried the whole cast but I assume run speed is what makes him slide off backwards like this

 

[Venom_909]

Ive never seen any falcon dash attack to cover illusion. Its either grabbed / Ftilted or Jabbed.

Dash attack is pretty useless tbh and your better off wavedashing to grab ledge and work with invincibility

 

[Xtra_Crispy]

http://i.imgur.com/E9nlNnR.gif
^ Back before sweetspots were a thing that first hitbox could cover illusions to ledge somewhat decently. And yes I know RAR wavedashes are how I usually grab ledge and is way quicker but the point of this isn't to give you a way to grab ledge

Btw I'm talking mostly about spacies but it could work on other characters too.

But the purpose of this isn't to give you a bread and butter edgeguard that is perfectly optimal. The point is to give you another option when you are caught in dash or run(no time to WD jab/ ftilt) and need to cover an illusion to stage/ non-sweetspotted ledge. Generally I see people shield + regrab to cover this and try to convert with a knee off the grab. What DA -> grab ledge does instead is sends them offstage WITHOUT giving them a chance to get their jump back. It sends at too low of an angle to side-b back to ledge so they are forced to upB from below edge, which falcon should be able to cover EVERY time, especially since this puts you on the ledge immediately after so you are already in position.

The other advantage this has over ftilt/ jab is that the hitbox stays out for way longer. It's somewhat easy to miss jabbing an illusion (sometimes it even sneaks between hits of the full gentleman and you get Sakurai combo'd) and ftilt comes out slow enough where you have to input it before the *ping* of the illusion. Dash attack comes out on frame 8 (+- 2 frames or so, I'm just going off the image I linked) without the added 10 frames of WDing/ some other method to cancel your run so that you can jab or ftilt.

Even if they upB instead, you can option select to still drop to ledge and continue edgeguarding or stay onstage to cover the upB by either holding back or not during the dash attack. So basically, Dash Attack sucks but it is far from useless. Try playing around with this a bit.

EDIT: Also, this is very tech non-intensive. You will not screw up this input and blow the edgeguard. Though "it's too hard" never should be an excuse in smash, there is something to be said about reliability being a factor.

 

[Spralwers]

Dash attack is a great move actually. You obviously won't find many uses for it as a neutral tool, but it's terrific as a combo extender. Props up floaties so you can air wobble them, can set up for nairs and uairs on semi fast fallers, and extends tech chases on fast fallers. It's actually great for screwing up techs on fast fallers, gives you a free stomp/knee.

 

[Lil Bucket Hat]

Dash attacking when Yoshi is egg camping at ledge, changed my life and my belief in god himself, bruh