Easy combos?

[Im_Dad]

I just picked up snake and I'm learning some easy gimps and combos fairly quickly, some of the ones I'm using a lot are

- backthrow off stage to a fastfall bair
- obvious tranq-stick-upthrow-detonate
- downthrow-upsmash

I've only been playing him for a couple days and I can't really find any staple combos in the Professor Pro videos, or at least any that look like I could easily master

 

[Mischief]

How often does downthrow upsmash work for you? Never tried it.

 

[Im_Dad]

How often does downthrow upsmash work for you? Never tired it.

If they di well, i only hit with the initial startup and not the actual rocket, I'd say it's a 50/50 thing

 

[victinivcreate1]

Want a staple Professor Pro combo? Down air to grab/up air/nair/fair at higher percents/up tilt/forward tilt.

Something I've seen Pro do many times:
FF forward air on aerial opponent (to get the spike hitbox) to jab reset (force a get up) to Tranquilizer to C4 to down air to whatever after that.

 

[SSS]

If you want easy combos you're playing the wrong character lolololol

This is one of the hardest characters in the game.

That being said you can do UpB into a lot of stuff. Like UpB to Nair or Dair or Uair or sticky.

 

[Rubix.]

What is the ideal percent to up-b into sticky? Is it even a reliable setup because i can never seem to get it.

 

[0mart]

you can do it on low percents, but it depends too how the Up-B sends them ... if it sends them up , you can do it (the sticky) ...

 

[cisyphus]

Talked to Prof about some of this at TBH4: The only DI that escapes Cypher to Stick is DI behind Snake, so conditioning them with Bairs might allow for it if they're hip to it. Tends to happen a lot when you're stuffing an approach (because, well, they're naturally DIing that way) so it's better to go for that specific chain when they're pressuring your shield (especially if they're behind you). Cypher links into damn near everything (I think only Fair is sketchy because of its huge startup) regardless. Use it any time you're pressured in shield. It trades at the very worst. Cute things include Cypher-> Uair into the floating cypher hitbox-> [whatever grounded option you want because you SHFFL'd out of Cypher]*
*y'know, like jab, tilts, C4 stick, grab, another cypher—I've definitely done Cypher-> Uair-> Cypher reset-> Cypher-> Dair-> techchase tranq-> C4 Stick-> Grab-> UThrow-> UAir-> C4 KOs before. It's messy and top players can probably get out of it, but then just replace the dair (the most fraudulent part) with C4 stick and you've done good again.

As for the Fair business mentioned by victini: it (that is, tranq) works with any jab reset at all. The one Prof stressed I pick up is ftilt-> jab reset-> tranq-> C4 stick-> grab, but it works with any missed tech, including fair, apparently with the notion that it stuffs certain approaches (I'm hoping Squirtle's involved here). Fair links very well into mines, especially if they're careless with their DI/Tech options.

The final hit of Dair will meteor your opponent (which will send grounded opponents up) in a way similar to Falcon's Stomp, which means you can follow it up in much the same way: you can Fair spike them if it will KO, you can Bair them for edgeguard, or you can C4 them (Prof's preference). Hitting an aerial opponent will set up techchases.

Every character also has percents where u-throw to dair will set up a tech chase (which means jab resets or tranqs or grabs) or an effectual jab mixup (like Melee Sheiks use in no-chaingrab dittos, y'know?—the first three hits of dair are essentially jabs; the first two hits of nair are really similar but have spacing concerns*): floaties are at lower percents (not necessarily guaranteed—I'll need to test it) and fastfallers are at high percents (their hitstun is astoundingly long from u-throw).
*the Nair DOES have less ending lag, making its use more succinct for grabs. They are both, actually, as good or better than Jab, which takes 12 frames to be interrupted, whereas the l-cancelled lag of nair and dair are 8 and 12 frames respectively.

Crawl-Tilt to Grab is a Prof bread and butter and it works remarkably well (though I doubt it's a true combo—gotta test!)

I'm curious as to how jab links into the tilts:
If F-tilt links well, tranq set-ups (and thus, C4 and grabs) can be started from even a jab with jab-> f-tilt-> jab reset-> (tranq->) (C4->) grab
If U-tilt links well, that's a KO set-up akin to Fox's jab-> upsmash.
If D-tilt links well, that's a launcher for c4, fair, and bair (all resulting in KOs if played well) as well as dairs for techchases.
If C-tilt links well, that's a grab (and a mixup because jab grab is decent)

C4 to Fair spike works on low recoveries and fast fallers.

People talk about the static nature of Snake, but he seems to have a lot of unexplored potential with these fluid combo chains, and I think Prof's really tapped into some of these faucets already. When I'm not working and schooling constantly, I'll deliver some test results for all of this.

 

[aznasazin11]

I must be doing something wrong withe the Cypher setups. I can never seem to link a sticky into it

 

[aznasazin11]

The U-air is easy tho. At low percents against fast fallers you can combo for like 40+

 

[cisyphus]

The U-air being sub-optimal is the problem; if they're at low percents and you do that, they get damaged to the point that they can jump out of up throw to stick: a guaranteed set-up on the entire cast at low percents and therefore your most consistent stick method. If they're at mid/high percents, you still don't have that consistent set up, so Cypher to Stick is your most consistent option. Otherwise you have to techread or break a combo or get a random tranq or stick, all of which are highly inconsistent or unfavorable. Percents don't matter if you can't get the kill. You can clock in 150% on Marth, but he can still Back Throw -> Down Air you at 10% and KO you to take the lead.

If you could, elaborate on what is troubling you about the Cypher to Stick, because I've found it to work in every situation that I would habitually U-Air before Prof. sat down with me at TBH4. It should work at any low percent Cypher hit where the opponent doesn't DI behind you, and it can work any time they get popped above you because of the hitstun from the Cypher, but there you have to read their DI well, and even then it tends to work on floaty characters only. For reference, U-Air hitboxes come out at frame 10 and Down-B does its hit detection at frames 7-8 and sticks on frame 9. What a stick essentially is is a grab. Same frame data, same hitbox, same everything except that you can do it in the air—it even works on shield! Think of it that way.

C4 helps with literally every neutral game situation and literally every punish because it can be a combo starter, continuation, or finisher depending on where they are. It helps with edge guarding because it can eat jumps, stage spike, and set up for a fair spike, dair spike, or bair of screen if you can read the DI (which tends to be a bad angle because they're focused on recovering); it helps with launching opponents to get a U-Air juggle going, which can lead into a grenade KO or a U-Air/U-Tilt KO outright; it helps to finish out of any other launcher because the knockback is so good that it halves the damage needed to KO with up throw; it even helps with your own recovery because it puts the opponent into hitstun while they're trying to edgeguard you, which can very easily reverse the situation; it helps in the neutral game because it gives the opponent the anxiety of knowing that they can die really early solely because they get stuck (ask your opponents the scariest thing about playing Snake: every single person I play says "C4 sticks"). It's why Rolex jokingly suggests an opponent should spawn with a C4 attached in 3.5: it's good in every situation. That's your incentive to give away that 40% combo in favor of the "meager" C4 stick.

And also, I didn't notice this at first, but OP talked about looking for BnB combos in Prof Pro's videos: they don't exist. Watch his TBH4 interview: he does everything on reaction. That being said, there ARE certain things he does that always work, and I tried to outline everything he shared with me (as well as everything I know) in my previous post in this thread. The best thing you can do, honestly, is to play around with your character and figure out what does and doesn't work. Forget about trying to be Rolex or Prof Pro: this is Smash; nobody has all the answers. Moreover, this isn't Melee: nobody has most of the answers, either.

 

[cisyphus]

In reference to my October 8 post (specifically the f-tilt combo bit):
F-tilt will link into any tilt on certain (floatier) characters. I've so far confirmed it to work on Marth and Kirby and confirmed it to not work on Lucas and Meta Knight. F-tilt is also comboable off of d-air as victini pointed out, so considering the potency of tilt+c4, this is death to a wealth of characters below 70%, which is amazing. Kirby, for example, dies to 1st hit d-air -> f-tilt -> u-tilt -> C4 detonation at 43% with no DI on FD from that true combo. This is KO potential right here, folks. Floaty matchups are about to get a hell of a lot easier. Consider as well that if you get a grab at any early point, you're guaranteed a C4 stick, so it's far from uncommon to work this into your repertoire (it's actually ridiculous not to). I also imagine one could also use this to f-tilt -> d-tilt -> C4 stick at lower percents, but that's almost certainly DI dependent. It sorta seems like they can DI out of it after the f-tilt, and almost certainly Smash DI would help (but you'd need godly reaction for that), but it's a really powerful tool overall.

 

[BND]

Was thinking about posting this later, but here's all I know about ftilt to save you guys some work:
1. Snake can ftilt -> jab reset. This is obvious, though it requires a no-tech.
2. Snake can ftilt -> jab -> ftilt again against certain characters, with the ftilt unblockable due to landing lag. This is susceptible to air dodging and mashing out against most characters; I haven't tested this enough to see when this works and when this doesn't. Works for one or two iterations, but it's main purpose is to mess up the opponent's projected tech timing for a jab reset.
3. Snake can ftilt -> utilt. Utilt has 5 frames of startup.
4. Snake can ftilt -> grab (notably vs Marth). Grab has 7 frames of startup.
5. Snack can ftilt -> dair (requires some timing). Dair has 8 frames of startup.
6. Snake can ftilt -> sticky. Sticky has 9 frames of startup.
Ftilt gives snake 10 frames to do whatever on hit. The opponent gets out of hitstun on frame 11

Ftilt vs. Jigglypuff is usually suboptimal, not only because she can duck under it and because she's always airborne, but because she can rest you if you try to stick her. This may have been my own imagination, but I believe she can also DI away from the stick by frame 9, causing it to fall off before it actually hits. Usually the tilt of choice would be a utilt.

DIing Ftilt away for most characters (I.E. not jigglypuff; she gets knocked into the air, if I remember correctly) causes stun/wobbling, and is negative on hit (when I tested it, it was -3. Forgot who I tested it against). This is the only on-hit instance in which you should use ftilt's second followup barring a KO attempt. This was why I thought Snake was a gimmick character of sorts, since holding away trivializes most viable followups, though I forgot that Ftilt isn't Snake's only move.

DIing Ftilt in any other vertical direction allows for more airtime, meaning that you can potentially stick people like Marth if you catch them trying to jump with the control stick.

DIing Ftilt down results in knockdown for most characters (I.E. not jigglypuff; she gets stun/wobbling). This causes bounce and can be followed up with a jab reset if they don't tech.

Ftilt theoretically works great as a techchase if you can get it (I.E. on a platform), since they can only DI down (causing knockdown, and teching this isn't particularly easy), or get hit without any sort of DI whatsoever. I haven't tested this though.

Most people have tech animations too slow to capitalize on one's inability to tech 40 (or was it 60?) frames after an inputted shield command. Fox may be an exception.

Because Ftilt is a meteor smash on grounded opponents, the opponents can't really influence their aerial trajectory until they're out of hitstun.

Here are the Ftilt times (in terms of frame advantage before knockdown) from an excel sheet, without any DI. This means that Marth is 1 frame away from being able to be ftilt -> C4ed:
Yoshi 6
Wolf -2
Wario 4
Tlink 3
Sonic 8
Snake 6
ZSS 3
Samus 14
Roy 3
ROB 11
Jiggs 16
Icies 11
Squirtle 6
Charizard 7
Ivysaur 11
Pit 8
Olimar 7
Pikachu 6
Peach 12
Ness 9
Mewtwo 14
Meta Knight 3
Marth 8
Mario 9
Luigi 14
Lucas 3
Lucario 3
Link 5
Giga 0
Bowser 4
Kirby 14
Ike 6
Ganon 3
G&W 9
Fox -6
Falco -2
Donkey K 6
Diddy K 2
Dedede 8
Flacon 2
Sheik 6
Zelda 16
Trivia: Giga Bowser gets 11 frames of landing lag, meaning that if the Giga Bowser forgets to crouch (At least, I haven't tested this), Ftilt -> ftilt's a true combo.

 

[cisyphus]

I don't know about those numbers, because f-tilt->u-tilt definitely is a true combo vs. Wario (and I think 4 means the window is too tight but that's just not the case). The rest of the options seem kinda pointless (snake has better options for getting a C4 stick, dair->grab is a TC, etc.). In my testing (I was too excited about this lol) I found that the f-tilt->u-tilt is a TC (barring crouch cancel) on:
Really tight timing: Wario, Yoshi, Dedede, DK, G&W, Pikachu, Pit, Charizard, Squirtle, Snake, Sonic
Pretty lax timing: Zelda, Kirby, Luigi, Mario, Marth, Mewtwo, Ness, Peach, Olimar, Ivysaur, Ice Climbers, Jigglypuff, ROB, Samus

I found these through 1/4 speed in training mode. If they hit the ground it's considered a no go (this gave my false positives when I did it full speed I found out). Our findings tend to agree but some of yours seem just a little off, to the point that they're actually misleading about what follow-ups are possible. Ike and Sheik doesn't seem possible whereas Wario definitely is. Those I find to be "tight timing" seem to be those closest to 5 on your list, though, so it's good work overall. I don't really think it's useful against the top portion (some of them like DK and Snake actually surprised me) because of how difficult it is to execute, but characters like Zelda, Mewtwo, and Samus die to this SO EARLY and they're some of Snake's tougher matchups, so simply getting a quick C4 into a dair->f-tilt->u-tilt combo could certainly make it a lot easier. I actually made predictions before on these and only got one (Pikachu) wrong so it's pretty intuitive as well. All about fall speed, most likely.

 

[BND]

I don't know about those numbers, because f-tilt->u-tilt definitely is a true combo vs. Wario (and I think 4 means the window is too tight but that's just not the case). The rest of the options seem kinda pointless (snake has better options for getting a C4 stick, dair->grab is a TC, etc.). In my testing (I was too excited about this lol) I found that the f-tilt->u-tilt is a TC (barring crouch cancel) on:
Really tight timing: Wario, Yoshi, Dedede, DK, G&W, Pikachu, Pit, Charizard, Squirtle, Snake, Sonic
Pretty lax timing: Zelda, Kirby, Luigi, Mario, Marth, Mewtwo, Ness, Peach, Olimar, Ivysaur, Ice Climbers, Jigglypuff, ROB, Samus

I found these through 1/4 speed in training mode. If they hit the ground it's considered a no go (this gave my false positives when I did it full speed I found out). Our findings tend to agree but some of yours seem just a little off, to the point that they're actually misleading about what follow-ups are possible. Ike and Sheik doesn't seem possible whereas Wario definitely is. Those I find to be "tight timing" seem to be those closest to 5 on your list, though, so it's good work overall. I don't really think it's useful against the top portion (some of them like DK and Snake actually surprised me) because of how difficult it is to execute, but characters like Zelda, Mewtwo, and Samus die to this SO EARLY and they're some of Snake's tougher matchups, so simply getting a quick C4 into a dair->f-tilt->u-tilt combo could certainly make it a lot easier. I actually made predictions before on these and only got one (Pikachu) wrong so it's pretty intuitive as well. All about fall speed, most likely.

I retried ftilt -> utilt on debug mode: It's off by 1 frame without DI on Wario. If you hold up while the ftilt hits, there's a larger window though. Did you try inputting the tech for the training mode CPU?
On the other hand, for Ike and Sheik, I took a look at the debug mode hitboxes. Apparently Ike's just skinny enough so that the utilt hitbox misses. It obviously misses for Sheik, since her hitboxes are ridiculous (Ftilt misses on Sheik if she lands, so no ftilt punishes there. Still can't wrap my head around that matchup).
As for C4 sticks, I don't have trouble getting them on most people (which is why this problem doesn't show up in tourney barring nerves), but I have a really bad habit for fishing for sticks while autopiloting, and some people intentionally bait my sticks in obvious scenarios with a spotdodge (Namely tech on platform above -> spotdodge) for an opening so that I'd have to blow it up before another attempt. Recently I've started to bait the spotdodge for a tranq or a dair depending on percentages, but overall that requires too much work for a simple stick. On the other hand, versus certain floaty characters that you can't uthrow -> stick, ftilt -> stick -> jab reset/techchase makes short work of their stock if you manage to get the ftilt in the first place.

 

[cisyphus]

There's not really a floaty you can't uthrow stick, though. That only happens when you get their percent too high too soon. Your #1 priority oughta be grab. The toughest is puff who only really has a guaranteed setup at like 15-25%. That's why dair->c4 is so good though: it works on everyone and you can mix up the number of hits to keep it less predictable. . But puff is so easy to beat with snake anyway when all you gotta do is get that one stick and then toss grenades and mine everything until you get a free KO. Everything else is really just mixing it up, though. I personally make C4 stick my #1 priority in general, so it's not often that I don't have one set.

 

[BND]

That's the problem; you're stuck fishing for grab until you get to 15-25%, which limits you to a few hitconfirms only (namely the aforementioned grab, ftilt, dair, *maybe* dtilt, possibly nair, and if you're really lucky in terms of positioning a grenade thrown downwards). If your opponent's wary of your sticking tendencies, things are probably going to go downhill pretty fast.

There's also the dilemma of Snake being at high percentages and your opponent being at low percents without a stick. Would you try racking up damage, or would you go for sticks?

...Also, probably silly question, but how do you deal with Jiggs? Is it grenade camping all day, or are there other tricks to it? (since sticks are too rare to rely on)
EDIT: Never mind, missed the assumption about getting a stick on Jiggs.

 

[cisyphus]

Well I mean, yeah you camp her out. That's always been how to beat jiggs: Sheiks' gameplan is literally, "needlecamp and throw out bairs"; Samus mains say the matchup goes from 70-30 to 50-50 with charge shots; Ivysaurs will fade back seed bomb, razor leaf, and bair all day vs. puff and not even care. Jiggs is a high mobility character and mines and grenades limit that mobility greatly. You can rack up damage really easy with DACUS, grenades, and mines alone. As mentioned before, a single dair can lead to a stick or a KO pretty easily as well. You can always downthrow techchase too. Play the mindgame of dragging them close to an edge: they'll almost always roll in after which means you can tranq the roll and then you have a free C4 -> f-tilt -> u-tilt KO at ~40%. I'd honestly compare Snake vs. Puff with Ganon vs. Puff in a sense. They're close to the same weight and fall speed so all the combos are really similar and getting hit with a forward or back air from either of them hurts puff a lot. The difference is that Snake has the ability to lock down puff's movement while Ganon needs to constantly win the neutral. Snake also has a lot more upward KO options than Ganon (who only really has dair on grounded puff (which just doesn't happen).

I'll usually play a bit more defensive while I'm at high percents honestly. I won't go for sticks because you can use those as a way to get down after a strong upward launcher, you can use them to edgeguard, and you can use them to zone. Snake's back air, up air, forward air, u-tilt, mines, and grenades can all KO puff pretty easily with proper placement.

But on that note: I need to figure out how to hit puff with the DACUS mortar. It always seems as though she fades far enough that it misses her after the base launcher. Do I just have to tilt the up smash? Charge it? Both?

 

[BND]

Not next to a Wii right now so I can't test anything, but if the Jiggs was doing it right, most of the time she'd fade back after a Bair. Fairly sure that Bair beats out Snake's DACUS, so Snake'd have to throw out the DACUS hitbox either before or after the bair hitbox. Before the hitbox comes out seems fine; I remember landing at least one or two DACUSes, so something must've gone right, but if it's after the hitbox comes out, chances are that she's retreating-> the mortar would probably miss.

In any case, I think we're better off grenade camping and hoping Jiggs bairs the grenade by accident.

(Found a silly grenade tech that might be applicable here a month or two back; hopefully I'll be able to get a video up or write something comprehensible about it)

 

[cisyphus]

Do tell. Grenades seem to have all kinds of untapped mysteries.