implementing DI

[elliotnz]

I've done some crouch canceling against my friends smash attacks but he's more casual and won't play as much.

I've crouch cancelled against level 7 strikers and I've noticed I'm less efficient in battle

tbh I don't really know what I'm doing with DI

 

[Vestboy_Myst]

tbh I don't really know what I'm doing with DI

tbh i don't think anybody knows what youre doing with DI

 

[Vino]

I made the OP into a haiku because why not


cc friends attacks well

less effective in battle

do not understand

 

[elliotnz]

what's the best way to practice and best way to implement into play

 

[Stride]

What are "level 7 strikers"? "What does "less efficient in battle" mean (do you mean you end up losing more often)?

Don't try to crouch cancel attacks that have too high of a knockback for you to stop yourself from being sent into the air. Don't DI wrong. You'll get into the habit of using both just from playing a lot, so long as you don't completely forget to try to implement them when you play.

You can't really practice DI on your own; it's a matter of building situational awareness of when you should be ready to DI and what direction you should be ready to DI in (i.e. you have to recognise what attacks your opponent is going to do and prepare yourself to DI them correctly). This requires playing humans.

A rule of thumb is that you should try to crouch cancel when you're hit with weak attacks or when you're at low percent, and try to DI when you're hit with strong attacks or when you're at high percent.

When most people say "crouch cancelling", they could be referring to any combination of 2 separate mechanics: multiplication in knockback strength and hitlag duration by 0.667 when in the crouching animation (i.e. reduction in knockback and hitlag while crouching), and ASDI down to make you move into the ground and cancel the knockback of a move rather than being sent along its normal launch trajectory.

See these for explanations of crouch cancelling and DI/SDI/ASDI:
http://smashboards.com/threads/rest-and-shield-break-punishing-strategies.206995/page-2#post-6019525
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RP3sbS7Dm0

 

[Deleted member]

I have no understanding about what you are trying to say?

 

[kingPiano]

If you're facing level 7 strikers my advice is to sweep the leg. If that doesn't work run for your life.

But I digress....
The most common usage of DI is survival DI. Basically just holding a direction as you incur hitlag (freeze frames) and the resulting hitstun as you fly off toward the kill zones.

You want to hold a direction perpendicular to the direction you are going to be knocked back, so when Fox up-smashes you hold left or right as you are hit and fly away. Most great players are prepping to use DI when hit or when they think they are about to be hit by a KO move. i.e. Fox's Upsmash is too fast to react to and can be dashed or WD into, so you will have to be preemptively thinking about using DI before you are hit by it. But most KO moves you can DI on reaction since you can see them coming.

Combo DI is also very common; same as survival DI but it's used to change which way you are hit when an opponent is trying to combo you (can also add in SDI). Most of the top 25 use this almost religiously in random directions, it's why you see them survive so long since they can't be comboed very easily.

SDI (and ASDI) are a whole 'nother thing and it can used to wall tech, Amsah tech, escape Fox/Falco's Up-Air, etc.

 

[Vestboy_Myst]

I made the OP into a haiku because why not


cc friends attacks well

less effective in battle

do not understand

first line has 6 syllables lol

 

[Y-L]

Here's my explanation of DI. Basically, for survival DI you want to aim for the corner because that's the furthest distance you can fly without dying, see this picture. 3 different possible angles for DI, you can see the green path is the longest and will let you survive the longest.

Now there's also combo DI which is just a fancy way of saying DI away when you're getting combo'd to escape the combo quicker. You want to adapt your DI, usually combo DI when hit by combo moves and survival DI to survive kill moves.

 

[AirFair]

As mentioned above there is survival and combo DI

To put it simply, if the control stick is like a clock, then survival DI is maybe 1 or 11 o'clock, because it's up near the corners.

Combo DI is usually away, but there are mixups for that. Most notably for Marth, one DI mixup when going for a ken combo, is to forgo that for fair to upB instead.