Illusion Cancel - an unused source of possibilities (Warning: Wall o' text!)

[~ Gheb ~]

A month ago SSBB came to us Europeans and there was not a single day I didn't use Wolf. I mastered him more or less - I beat opponents I'm supposed to beat but I always played well against harder matchups too.
Today, I took a close look at a tech, with a lot of potential, that has yet to be truly revealed:

The illusion cancel

For those of you, who don't know, what it is: To do an illusion cancel you have to press B, while using his forward B move in it's opening frames (otherwise it will be just the standard illusion...).
If you do it correctly, the illusion will be - just as the name implies - canceled. If you do it in the air, Wolf travels a signifcantly longer distance. If you do it on the ground Wolf will travel an extremaly short distance. It's very hard to execute correctly - possibly, there's nobody, who mastered this tech completely.

However, this tech might give Wolf access to new possibilities in the future. I experimented around with this tech in some friendly battles and whenever I executed it correctly, it opened new ways for me to harm my opponent.

I know that my personal experience doesn't mean much but I still like to give you an exapmle of how I made use of it: I was fighting against a Mr.G&W in a friendly, with both fighters down to 1 stock and both at over 100%. I managed to use the Illusion cancel in a way, that decided the game for my favour. I used it to fake him out and make him use a smash attack (if I hadn't canceled it, he would have defeated my with his usmash). Having managed to cancel the move correctly, I was able to use my fsmash to defeat him, while he was still open for attacks and I won the match.

It really seems to be a useful tech for me. Using a canceled illusion to fake the enemy out and follow up with a move - depending on the distance - to punish him. In fact, while completely different, this move can be used for same purposes as WDashing - to do mindgames and to fake your opponent out.

The other particular use of illusion canceling is more obvious: Recovery
With an increased horizontal movement, Wolf can make it back from almost every distance, to make up for his poor recovery possibilities. GERM already made some good use of it and I really hope to see more of the same.

In a nutshell: Aside from the already known recovery options, illusion canceling could possibly used for mindgames, that might help against certain enemies (I haven't tried it against every opponent yet).

On a sidenote: If you have trouble to do the illusion cancel, here's a little tip: When using an uncalceled illusion, Wolf makes some weird sounds (like he always does basically). He seems to "moan" two times - once at the very beginning of the move and another time rather at the end. If you press B, when he "moans" the first time, there are good chances for it to work.

All in all it's a risky technique, that can made be good use of. Mastering is the key here because there are good chances to die if you fail to do it correctly. If players manage to do it correctly it could have a great impact on Wolfs gameplay and his place in the metagame, as he becomes very unpredictable...

Discuss!

 

[Ishiey]

Illusion cancel is something I can't pull off to save my life, but it definitely is useful for putting space between yourself and an edgeguarding opponent. In this post, Tenki pretty much sums it up.

The use for illusion canceling is what I just described above. Not only does it allow you to gain more horizontal distance when recovering, it more importantly allows you to mix up your recovery game in a variety of ways, making you unpredictable as you return to the stage.

Check out this video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Kgc3er21ilk

Go to about 3:40 or so. Note that Wolf illusions in a situation where he is easily punished. This is one of those cases where I think Germ intended to do a cancel and whiffed. If he had, he would have gone way over Lucario and landed with little lag. He couldn't have been hit. This would actually have been a more reliable way of avoiding damage than what most people would have done, which is attempt to air dodge or maybe shine. (Admittedly, he doesn't end up getting punished for the illusion in this instance, but only because the Lucario player missed his throw attempt.)

A few seconds later, basically the same scenario occurs, but Germ successfully illusion cancels, flies right overtop of Lucario and safely avoids all possible attempts at edge guarding. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. If the player DID anticipate this, Wolf could just drop safely to the ground without even illusioning in the first place.

As for it being too difficult: yes, it is VERY difficult. There are precious few frames in which you can cancel the move. With practice, though, you can get a lot better at it. I'm still not at the point where I can use it consistently enough for actual competition, but I am determined to get there. I don't actually spend that much time on it though. Really just about 20 to 30 minutes of practice most nights, and that's mixed up with some practice of other techniques I'm trying to get second nature. That's what I recommend. Don't beat yourself up over it, but do it for a little bit every day, and you'll notice that you can pull it off more and consistently.

When starting out, try to do the cancel JUST as Wolf seems like he is about to take off. He does a sort of "pulling back" motion first, and then seems to leap forward; it seems to me like the timing just just before he is about to do the leaping. Practice canceling it with either the short or long version first, don't worry about distinguishing between the two, just do either cancel as often as possible. Once you do it once, try to copy the timing you used exactly as quickly as possible and develop a rhythm so you can train your fingers to use that exact timing. Play a game with yourself where you develop a record of times you have done it in a row, and keep trying to break that record. That's how I know I did it 13 times in a row, it's currently my record.

I can often get it five or six times in a row, sometimes eight to ten. I whiff a little more than half the time. This is compared to when I first started practicing where I was lucky to get 2 or 3 in a row and I whiffed the vast majority of my attempts. So you can improve, and it doesn't even take THAT much effort, you just have to be patient and keep trying it over and over again, little by little.

So yeah, the illusion cancel is very useful for situations like in the video where you need to recover from above the stage and you want to put some space in between yourself and your opponent. DEFINITELY very useful since when wolf is left open after a full illusion against a chaingrabber, things really start to suck. I've always thought about using it to recover to grab the edge, but can't really illusion cancel properly so I never got to try. This is starting to look like the next big thing in wolf's gameplay though, so I'd suggest trying to learn it, even if you don't get to apply it in your gameplay now, it seems likely that later on something useful might pop out of illusion cancelling.

 

[derv]

i dont know if anyone else has noticed this but there seems to be 2 types of illusion cancels
one where its an immediate cancel
and another where wolf goes about halfway through the illusion and then it gets canceled, this one has about half of distance of the purple effect things compared to a normal illusion cancel, also when used on the floor you go a little bit further

anyone else notice this?

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Yes, I noticed that too but I don't think anyone has such a good timing to decide, which one he'll take

 

[leffen]

Seems usefull, trying to get the time myself too.
Btw, anyone to tried to amplify it into scarring?



-leffen

 

[teekay]

I'm planning on trying it out with scarring once I get better at the timing. I strongly suspect that it will not work, but it's worth a try of course.

 

[Ishiey]

If it works with scarring that would be really helpful since people would attempt to shield your predicted scar but if you cancelled it on the middle frame of the attack, you'd probably have time to grab them while they're wondering what just happened. It probably should work with scarring, as long as you're not cancelling it on the first frame, which would probably end up with you grabbing the ledge, but I dunno. Or maybe you'd slide behind them and they'd try to instinctively shieldgrab and wolf could punish them. If this works from the ledge, the ledge might actually be one of wolf's best spots on a level.

EDIT: Just tried some stuff, cancelling on the first frame from the ledge on smashville doesn't return you to the stage, and you die. If you do a little hop after you press back from the ledge (I do this a lot by accident, it puts you in a position similar to telestepping but you can still scar, its how I scar on FD from the ledge) you land on the stage though. The landing lag seems to be a little bit too much to follow up with an attack though, but thats just my two cents.

 

[leffen]

Alright, tried some stuff.
The first thing i noticed is that the " first frame cancel " also dmgs ( in the very beginning ). So if u get that in, u can combo it into a Usmash / utilt. I got the timing down so i can do often 5-6 times a row, so i figured i would try it against a friend.
The intresting is, if ur mid space ( just out of range for a forward smash ) u can use either first frame cancel -> Downsmash / front smash / shine, or if u get the longer cancel u can either use ur gun, front smash or Bair.
So even if u cant choose between the 2 different cancels, if u react fast enough it can be a very intresting mindgaming tech, as if ur opponent suspects it, even if he does, he must choose to either attack u with a utilt / u smash, or a forward smash ( Long cancel / First frame cancel )

I will try to uppload some footage later

 

[derv]

so we got the L illusion cancel and the FF illusion cancel? (could be a abbreviated to the max with LIC and FFIC )
i think with the L cancel illusion it could be possible to kind of scar but appear on the ledge and not attack with it, im gonna experiment.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Alright, tried some stuff.
The first thing i noticed is that the " first frame cancel " also dmgs ( in the very beginning ). So if u get that in, u can combo it into a Usmash / utilt. I got the timing down so i can do often 5-6 times a row, so i figured i would try it against a friend.
The intresting is, if ur mid space ( just out of range for a forward smash ) u can use either first frame cancel -> Downsmash / front smash / shine, or if u get the longer cancel u can either use ur gun, front smash or Bair.
So even if u cant choose between the 2 different cancels, if u react fast enough it can be a very intresting mindgaming tech, as if ur opponent suspects it, even if he does, he must choose to either attack u with a utilt / u smash, or a forward smash ( Long cancel / First frame cancel )

I will try to uppload some footage later

That basically sums it up. You can almost always make your opponent use an attack with a long colldown lag (i.e a finisher) and attack him b/c you canceled your illusion

 

[AlAxe]

There's actually three cancels. One is the first frame, one is halfway through and one is right at the end. The windows to do each of these cancels is very very small which makes utilizing this tech difficult. If you could master the timing I think it would be useful but that would be insane.

Lets examine a situation though where maybe you'd want to use this. You are fighting an opponent on FD and are a few character lengths apart. You get a first frame cancel and maybe this leads to an opening. If you get a middle cancel this can lead to you using DI because your opponent probably just ***** you. If you get an end cancel, well, lets just hope you haven't flown off the stage to your death.

2 of the 3 possible results could end very badly for you. 1 of the possible results could potentially have a good result depending on how your opponent reacts. In conclusion risk>>>>reward. Unless you have inhuman timing abilities and can control which cancel you get every time I would never recomend using this tech.

 

[leffen]

Really, AlAxe, u should try it.
If u use it middle stage, u can either come just in front of ur opponent ( differs with spacing ) , behind him or far behind him.
If the opponents knows what of those 3 ur going to get , then sure, u might be punished, but u cant be punished THAT hard ( not enough lag for that )
And thats where the randomness comes in. Most opponents dont even know that u can cancel it, and if u dont even choose what cancel u should do, as long as u have fast reaction its close to impossible for the opponent to punish u good ( if at all, most times not ) .
Yourself not knowing what cancel ur doing is the essence of the tech, basicly

 

[Gaki]

i use it because you actually fall on the ground rather then just dropping from the sky with lag frames.

 

[AlAxe]

If you miss the first frame cancel this pretty much makes you fly through the air without being able to attack or dodge. It's difficult for them to punish you because you're moving so fast but a good player will punish you most of the time. Even if they hit you for just 5 damage that's 5 damage that you pretty much gave to yourself. Wolf has better ways to approach/create openings. It's never a good idea to leave something up to randomness. Who needs luck when you can have skill.

 

[Ishiey]

It's never a good idea to leave something up to randomness. Who needs luck when you can have skill.

QFT.

Anyways, I don't really see this being too useful on the ground, even if it fakes out your opponent, they should be able to react quick enough to jab you on landing, its not like they'd be fearing you using the flash anyways since it won't hit them while they're just standing. The only real use I see for cancelling is how Germ uses it, by cancelling above your opponent while recovering so that when you land you slide outside of their reach and can't be punished by something that should normally never hit you like snake's fsmash.