Q&A Diddy's Q&A + Competitive Development - ASK QUESTIONS HERE

[Judo777]

You can peanut popgun cancel in the air without airdodging! You have to hold shield at the right time and not too long to do it. I'll try to practice it now.
Upsmash is a nice KO move... the first hit hits in front of Diddy and then combos into the upper ones.
I like the slide you get from the (especially smash) sideB when landing on the ground with it without lag. You can short hop it and land without lag and slide quite a distance. It's fun and could be used as a mixup (you can do anything out of it since you stand while sliding).

Diddy is really good... his bair seems to be faster. Uair has less endinglag... the much less vertical height of his upB is kinda hard to deal with I think, but the horizontal stuff definitely has great uses so it's okay as a tradeoff I guess. It's so fun flying around with it, lol.

edit:

It seems like you have to hold shield for like one or two exact frame(s) to not airdodge during the PPC :/

Do you think that is specific to Diddy Kong? I have been trying to cancel with Sheik for quite a while and can't manage to not airdodge? If you think you have the timing down would you mind testing it?

 

[Luigi player]

Do you think that is specific to Diddy Kong? I have been trying to cancel with Sheik for quite a while and can't manage to not airdodge? If you think you have the timing down would you mind testing it?

Hmm.. you can't hold shield before you start to make it cancel immediately like with Diddy, so you'd pretty much have to press the button for one frame (or whatever the window would be if it was there).
I tried it, but always airdodged. Not sure if it's possible with her.

As for Diddy, I'm getting more consistent with it, which is nice.

Nair is better than in brawl for sure. I wouldn't describe it as having low landing lag, though it's the lowest out of our aerials. I think it's 12 frames which is still pretty significant. I mostly use nair for combo starts, extenders and if my opponent air dodges past me while I'm juggling them then I can land into them with nair during their AD landing lag.

Bair has less landinglag than Nair. It's noticable imo, even though it's maybe just one frame.

(looking at these stats:

Diddy Kong13(nair)26(fair)12(bair)21(uair)28(dair)22(airdodge)

source: http://smashboards.com/threads/all-character-landing-lag-frame-data.371503/)

 

[Zef]

can you guys give me some basic BnB combos with diddy that are useful in neutral?

 

[Charhazzard]

That banana nerf really hurts

 

[Hoenn]

Dthrow Bair fastfall Bair Ftilt is a combo at 0%
I don't know what is guaranteed because of vectoring though

D tilt Dtilt -> Grab seems to work on some characters at low percents
Dtilt -> Grab seems to work on some characters at high percents

Is Dthrow Uair a guaranteed kill setup? I miss it a lot

 

[Corbyn Doty]

can you guys give me some basic BnB combos with diddy that are useful in neutral?

banana throw to dash attack to fair is good and easy, down throw to fair good and easy, if on edge of stage down throw off for almost guaranteed spike dair, if past around 30%-40% they usually cannot recover.

 

[Vyrnx]

Diddy's vertical recovery is kind of terrible. If you charge too much, you fall off the screen. If you don't charge enough, you don't even move as far as Little Mac's up b. His horizontal recovery is kinda okay with his side b. Any words of advice?

Also, Villager can cause serious problems for Diddy. If he pockets a banana, you can't spawn anymore until Villager unpockets it.

 

[Corbyn Doty]

Could someone list my options out of the hitstun popgun cancel. All I know so far it airdodge, and shield from Leffen's vid.

 

[Zinoto]

Diddy's vertical recovery is kind of terrible. If you charge too much, you fall off the screen. If you don't charge enough, you don't even move as far as Little Mac's up b. His horizontal recovery is kinda okay with his side b. Any words of advice?

Also, Villager can cause serious problems for Diddy. If he pockets a banana, you can't spawn anymore until Villager unpockets it.

Diddy's vertical recovery is amazing. In this game you have to charge it. I think Player-1 posted in this thread, but Diddy's vertical recovery isn't affected by traveling horizontal with up b. So if you choose to go horizontal 99% of the way and for the last portion of your up b choose to go upward, you will go the full length of whatever you charged in the upward direction. In brawl you honestly didn't have to charge your barrels that much (or at all) to get back to the stage most of the time. It's a new up b, my best advice is to just go to training mode and test your limits. See exactly how low you can go and how soon you need to start charging your barrels. Recovering horizontally shouldn't be a problem. Diddy's side b does all the work for you and even if you get hit, you can just side b again.

As for villager, I think you are relying on bananas too much. In brawl, they were absolutely ******** because not only did they have transcendent priority (meaning that the banana can't clash or be cancelled out by other hitboxes) but there were 2 of them and they were solely on a time system. The only way you could get rid of them was to let them time out (which could be circumvented by just picking them up) or throwing them offstage. The amount of pressure generated by just that is insane. You could just lock off certain parts of the map and force bad recoveries just by putting bananas in areas where your opponent had to land. Couple that with a command grab and you have a top tier character with that alone.

In this game, the bananas don't have transcendent priority (meaning that they will clash with other hitboxes), they are on a timed system (they go away significantly sooner than in brawl just by being on the ground), and a count system (2 throws and their gone). On top of that you can only have one out at a time. The pressure from bananas just isn't there. You're opponent doesn't really even have to shield anymore as they can just hit the banana and their hitbox will probably just flat out beat it. This makes side b weaker as well because they won't be forced to shield nearly as often.

The point I'm trying to make is that Diddy's pressure game isn't caused by bananas anymore. Villager taking that option away isn't that detrimental because our strength isn't in our bananas; it's our tilts and grabs, and aerials that make us so strong. Dtilt is sooooooooooooooooooo good. Dtilt combos into itself like 4 times at like 10% on just about everyone. It also causes people to reactively shield meaning you can get a free grab --> destruction. At 140% you can also dtilt --> uair (or fair if they are near the ledge) and I promise you most people will die from it. Nair has about the same knockback as in brawl, but because there's more hitstun you can pop people up with it at kill percents and follow up with uair to take easy stocks. Ftilt actually has 2 hitboxes now, one being at the tip of his hands (does 7%) and the other near his elbows (does 10% with much more knockback) and catches sloppy airdodges or ledge campers well. Utilt is still a good anti air/kill move. Fair is ********, still having a crap ton of priority and can be spammed from a short hop. Uair is a godsend from Sakurai himself. SH uair can sweep even Metaknight from off the ground and is a viable kill option. No one expects it and it is way to quick to DI properly. It combos like crazy, it breaks jab combos, you can dtilt --> uair for a kill, the possibilities are insane. I honestly think it is the best uair in the game, hands down. If having no banana is your problem versus villager, you need to abuse diddy lol.

tl;dr Charging up b is how you recover now in Smash 4. Bananas =/= pressure. Force shield with dtilt, grab/side b, and spam uair. We are now god with it.

Could someone list my options out of the hitstun popgun cancel. All I know so far it airdodge, and shield from Leffen's vid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf3Qu38MNM4&feature=youtu.be&t=1m50s

You can legit cancel that into anything (any b move, airdodge/shield, any aerial, etc.). I'll post a video a little later to demonstrate it.

 

[Player-1]

Well I think after a certain point in your travel with the barrels the vertical/horizontal components get limited meaning if you go 99% of the way horizontally you won't go a full length up-b. I think the point is a little over half.

Also, I think dtilt might be frame 3 now instead of frame 4 like it was in brawl. Diddy's jab I'm also pretty sure is frame 3 so if that's true there is basically never a reason to use jab anymore instead of dtilt because Diddy's jab sucks in this game.

And ya Zinoto is right about the Villager thing. Villager has more burst horizontal range than diddy with his slingshot projectiles and such, but those are commitments Villager has to make. Diddy overall has more range with better frame data and safer. I'm trying to comain Villager so I think I know a decent amount about him (for the current meta, that is), although I haven't played the MU on either side yet.

 

[DeLux]

Just a couple of things I've noticed -

You can also use grab to pop gun cancel.


Early Auto Cancel Dair > Grab is still in the game.

So if you want to avoid the lag on landing of accidentally air dodging into the ground, you could opt to dair to give yourself a buffer window to hold your shield so it comes up on the first possible frame.

I say this because I think/feel like (haven't confirmed) that Air Dodge has an IASA that is earlier than the frames in which it auto cancels. So it might be beneficial to at least attempt to buffer airdodge > dair > shield since it might save frames.

Did some more testing and I suspect that Air dodge does have an IASA earlier than it's auto cancel frames lol

DeLux Dair Cancelling

 

[Dragoomba]

Just a couple of things I've noticed -

You can also use grab to pop gun cancel.

Yeah, especially amazing with b-reverse shenanigans.

 

[DeLux]

You can lagless banana pickup on landing with Dair.

Have fun

 

[Player-1]

Oh something I forgot to mention. Apparently you can directly go into a pick up animation out of a dash instead of it forcing a dash attack. Charizard particularly has a really fast pick up animation.

http://gfycat.com/HonestUnpleasantFairybluebird

So you can go directly into a toss or JCT or w.e

 

[Zinoto]

You can legit cancel that into anything (any b move, airdodge/shield, any aerial, etc.). I'll post a video a little later to demonstrate it.

Hitstun Cancel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9fz29zuuoI&feature=youtu.be

Here's the video I was talking about. Leffen used side b, but I brought it a bit further. Diddy's popgun can cancel into just about anything. I think we can break Mario's utilt combo string with this if we cancel it into uair or nair. Any other low percent combo strings can probably be broken as well by this. I'll try and get frame data running for this so we can see exactly what strings we can and can't break

 

[DeLux]

It's possible to scrooge with barrels on battlefield from simply ledge dropping, charging, aiming horizontal and shoot to the other side and curling back to the stage LOL

 

[GWOODgg]

I don't know if this is a known thing (first smash game in years) but you can side b grab someone during their off stage recover then foot stool them to their death then re-recover, I personally find this useful, need to sweet spot the side b though, can be a great gimp

 

[Lex Jewthor]

Oh something I forgot to mention. Apparently you can directly go into a pick up animation out of a dash instead of it forcing a dash attack. Charizard particularly has a really fast pick up animation.

http://gfycat.com/HonestUnpleasantFairybluebird

So you can go directly into a toss or JCT or w.e

This is really useful actually, and I didn't know this. For clarification to others, this is done by canceling the 'sliding' animation into a pick up. So out of a dash, just let the stick go to neutral, and press A. Sadly, Diddy Kong's pick up this way is much slower than the 'Zard in the gif, and much slower than his standing pick up as well. But it's better than a dash attack, that's for sure.

Random note: I really, really hate our new jab.

 

[Vyrnx]

@ Zinoto , thanks for the great reply. It was very helpful. I'm starting to learn to combo better and can actually beat some people in for glory without losing a stock now.

While bananas don't have the pressure they used to, they still have some uses. I find that they are easy to spawn, sh, grab, and then side b into the opponent when they try to approach. You can still use them to start combos and popgun/banana in front camping.

 

[Dragoomba]

https://gfycat.com/GoodnaturedScaredIsabellineshrike

Yo, Yoshi's Island a Diddy counterpick!? (lol jk, just some stupid situational tech)

 

[NaPKiNG]

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but Diddy can Popgun reversal on the ground into shield or roll. Might not be super useful though. Also dthrow into back air is really useful. Depending on the percent, you can get two hits in, three if they forget to airdodge.

 

[The_SMILE]

I found the inputs to do pop gun cancel easily and consistently!

You press b (and hold it down), then right after you press and hold shield. Hold them both until the cancel is over.
(and do a wavebounce or b-reversal if you like)

It's just like Zinoto's tech of holding shield before you pull out pop gun, accept you press shield right after instead of before.
I would guess you have a frame or two to press shield after b, but since it's a quick one after the other, it's still easy to pull off.

 

[epm425]

Im not sure if anyone noticed, but Dair (I think,I may be wrong) cancels out completely if you touch the ground before the hitbox comes out. Ive been trying to use this for mix ups, such as Dthrow > Bair > FF Dair(no lag) > FH Uair or SH Uair, depending on how high they are. This may not be the best example, but I see alot of potential in this. Its a perfect fake-out kind of thing too, meaning you can make it look like youre gonna do an ariel and instead FF Dair( canceled) into fsmash or another ariel. Not sure if this has been broughr up before but I thought I would put it out there.

 

[Dragoomba]

Im not sure if anyone noticed, but Dair (I think,I may be wrong) cancels out completely if you touch the ground before the hitbox comes out. Ive been trying to use this for mix ups, such as Dthrow > Bair > FF Dair(no lag) > FH Uair or SH Uair, depending on how high they are. This may not be the best example, but I see alot of potential in this. Its a perfect fake-out kind of thing too, meaning you can make it look like youre gonna do an ariel and instead FF Dair( canceled) into fsmash or another ariel. Not sure if this has been broughr up before but I thought I would put it out there.

Yeah, it auto-cancels before the hitbox comes out. However, strangely enough, you can't do this after a successful monkey flip command grab, it will never auto-cancel the dair, so your best bet is probably uair to cancel the landing lag after monkey flip.

 

[Luigi player]

Just a couple of things I've noticed -

You can also use grab to pop gun cancel.


Early Auto Cancel Dair > Grab is still in the game.

So if you want to avoid the lag on landing of accidentally air dodging into the ground, you could opt to dair to give yourself a buffer window to hold your shield so it comes up on the first possible frame.

I say this because I think/feel like (haven't confirmed) that Air Dodge has an IASA that is earlier than the frames in which it auto cancels. So it might be beneficial to at least attempt to buffer airdodge > dair > shield since it might save frames.

Did some more testing and I suspect that Air dodge does have an IASA earlier than it's auto cancel frames lol

DeLux Dair Cancelling

Oh god, thanks. I wanted to test grab but somehow I never got around to it and just assumed it would be the same as dodging.
It's weird, I played around with Breversing again and sometimes I didn't airdodge even though I held shield without letting go, so that seems to be somewhat "random". With grab you never airdodge (as long as you press it really fast after B)... that's such great news!

Good call on the dair after airdodging.


Btw, you can nocharge-upB to the battlefield platforms and you'll explode while landing on them. If both hits connect your opponent will receive 6-10+18 %, which is pretty good (it can combo if they're at ~0% and on the platform, not sure how "true" the combo is though). Could also be a surprise attack to KO someone standing on / falling to the platforms.

 

[DeLux]

Oh god, thanks. I wanted to test grab but somehow I never got around to it and just assumed it would be the same as dodging.
It's weird, I played around with Breversing again and sometimes I didn't airdodge even though I held shield without letting go, so that seems to be somewhat "random". With grab you never airdodge (as long as you press it really fast after B)... that's such great news!

If you are holding shield prior to pressing B when you popgun and continue to hold shield, Pop-Gun will cancel itself automatically into neutral state. I think Zinoto discovered this. That might be what makes it "random" since you might not be consciously pressing the button at the right time?

Good call on the dair after airdodging.

This is also useful if you want to invincibly get to the ground and then pick up a banana laglessly. You can also hit grab to pick up bananas laglessly, the only issue being if you mess up, you are going to either lag terribly and/or trip over a banana that isn't yours depending on the situation.

Instatossing on landing seems to be possible if you pick up the banana with air dodging into the ground, cancelling the air dodge lag as well.

Btw, you can nocharge-upB to the battlefield platforms and you'll explode while landing on them. If both hits connect your opponent will receive 6-10+18 %, which is pretty good (it can combo if they're at ~0% and on the platform, not sure how "true" the combo is though). Could also be a surprise attack to KO someone standing on / falling to the platforms.

Up Speciall OOS option maybe?

 

[Player-1]

I've been doing the up-b thing on BF, but it's sorta specific. The hitbox is only big where diddy's head is which is pointed up instead of down so you won't hit people below you :/, it can work at specific percentages if you hit them while rising up and combo into it.

 

[Luigi player]

If you are holding shield prior to pressing B when you popgun and continue to hold shield, Pop-Gun will cancel itself automatically into neutral state. I think Zinoto discovered this. That might be what makes it "random" since you might not be consciously pressing the button at the right time?

Ah, interesting, but I'm definitely pressing shield after initiating the popgun or else I'd airdodge (and I'm not covering the airdodge through other attacks or holding it since I jumped or something) instead of using the popgun.

With grab you can definitely do it after initiating it and you won't airdodge, as long as you press it very few frames after you press B. I'm going to do it that way from now one. Though it's weird since in Brawl I always used shield, but whatever, I'm going to get used to it.

 

[DeLux]

I've been able to do it with both shield and grab. Maybe it could be on default controls, you're using multiple fingers to hit the button so the timing is off (R for shield B for special) while with grab you're using different hands?

Could be a bunch of things lol. Just do whatever works, but I do know it works with both

 

[Dragoomba]

Alright, so this is something that's been troubling me recently. How are we supposed to punish people who regrab ledge with no invincibility? Most characters can dsmash, but ours unfortunately whiffs on most of the cast (characters like Luigi who's head is sticking up slightly will get hit though).

Dtilt works, but it's such a lame punish. I've been experimenting with a perfectly timed dair on the ledge for a quick spike, but the timing on that (especially with 3DS controls) is pretty difficult.

 

[DeLux]

Dtilt isn't lame, it kinda combos into kill moves lol

 

[Player-1]

Ya dtilt to fair or uair seems solid to me, I'm surprised dsmash doesn't hit.

 

[Dragoomba]

Dtilt isn't lame, it kinda combos into kill moves lol

I'm not saying dtilt is lame at all, I'm just saying it isn't really the best option when the opponent is hanging on the ledge because it doesn't pop them up like it does when they're on stage. It kind of just pokes them away.

I've landed a couple of more dair spikes upon opponents' ledge regrab, but it's still extremely iffy.

 

[GroundZero996]

Is SideB off stage into Jump a viable "spike" option?

Alright, so this is something that's been troubling me recently. How are we supposed to punish people who regrab ledge with no invincibility? Most characters can dsmash, but ours unfortunately whiffs on most of the cast (characters like Luigi who's head is sticking up slightly will get hit though).

Dtilt works, but it's such a lame punish. I've been experimenting with a perfectly timed dair on the ledge for a quick spike, but the timing on that (especially with 3DS controls) is pretty difficult.

Could you do a run-off Bair?

 

[Zinoto]

Is SideB off stage into Jump a viable "spike" option?

It's viable, but not effective unless it's at the bottom of the stage (or against like ). The side b grab breaks like twice as fast if you grab them in the air and we have some crazy lag if it does so it's really risky now if you wanna go that low.

Could you do a run-off Bair?

Idk why that option wasn't said, but thats what I do 90% of the time.

 

[DeLux]

Today I learned that Diddy's grab range is actually shorter than Ness's grab range. And then I died to Bthrow. @Shaky

 

[Player-1]

run off bair is definitely viable against most people, but teching is a thing.

 

[Maestro_]

run off bair is definitely viable against most people, but teching is a thing.

I totally thought this was Zinoto saying saying the same thing he just said.

Thanks, misleading avatar.

 

[Dragoomba]

Is SideB off stage into Jump a viable "spike" option?

It's really situational. There's hardly any hitstun after it unless they're at a really high percent, so you won't be using it for gimping anyone (unless it's Mac, of course).

 

[GroundZero996]

It's really situational. There's hardly any hitstun after it unless they're at a really high percent, so you won't be using it for gimping anyone (unless it's Mac, of course).

I've been testing it and it's actually fairly decent against characters with poor vertical recovery, such as Bowser. You push the opponent down pretty far, and if they've burned their Double Jump it's impossible for them to get back. You also propel yourself up pretty high, and I think you get Monkey Flip back as well so it's pretty easy to get back to the stage and set up.