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Information Regarding Nair Advantage/Disadvantage and Interactions + Combos

Rickster

Smash Master
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
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Faerghus
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Hellos! I decided to do some late night labbing with Nair since I was curious just how good Nair 1 is and just how bad Dragdown Nair is. There's a lot of uncertainty behind this move outside of "it has a confirm into kick/dragdown killed my family and burned my crops". First off...

Nair Basics and Interactions
  • It's a multihit move with 4 weak hits and 1 launcher hit.
  • There are hitboxes for grounded opponents and hitboxes for aerial opponents. This is important to know, because the grounded hits are the ones you want for combos and on-hit safety.
  • Dragdown Nair is always unsafe on hit. There is no landing hitbox. It can be a setup tool but if the other person isn't asleep/knows the MU it isn't gonna work.
  • The front hits do more damage, and thus, launch very slightly farther and have slightly more frame advantage.
  • The final hitbox is not accurate to her arms at all lol.
In short, grounded hitboxes = good and aerial = bad. But what actually happens during a dragdown that makes it so bad anyway?
  1. The first hit hits a grounded opponent, giving Zelda a large frame advantage. The opponent is popped up off the ground a bit depending on damage. They may also enter a tumble state.
  2. The second hit of Nair connects on the now airborne opponent. The previous hitstun is overridden, and Zelda now lands.
  3. The aerial hitboxes have very little hitstun on them. The opponent can now act before Zelda can, and they don't get pushed away. Many Nairs and UpBs can hit Zelda while she is still in landing lag. Zelda loses all combo potential she had previously.
  4. You probably died by now.
However, the interaction is different if the opponent's damage is high.
  1. The grounded hit lands. Zelda gains a large frame advantage. The opponent goes into tumble, but the move is so bad at connecting that they fly past the aerial hitboxes, and retain the long hitstun from the grounded hit.
  2. Zelda retains her advantage frames and deletes them with a kill move of her choice.
NOTE: This interaction is rather inconsistent; sometimes even at high damage the aerial hitboxes will catch the opponent and ruin the combo. This seems to happen more often if you misspace Nair or come from directly above. It's quite finnicky and the only real way to get the aerial hitboxes to miss consistently at high % is to space the Nair and hit them with the edge of it.

Obscure Combos and Frame Advantage/Disadvantage Numbers

Examples of a clean grounded Nair combo (former 2 gifs) and an example of how Nair acts at high %s (latter 2 gifs):
Using Imgur because apparently my 2MB gif is too large for the server here which is really dumb but ok
It's possible that this may work even better vs small characters since they're less likely to be caught in the aerial hitboxes.

So a "Nair 1" (as a lot of Zeldas call it) has a ton of combo potential at practically any %. The dragdown Nair is pretty awful except at high %s where it stops acting like a dragdown sometimes.

But just how good is Grounded Nair, and how awful is Dragdown Nair? I ran some tests vs Pit in training mode and used a second controller to measure the frame advantage and disadvantage.
nairisherbestandworstmovelol.png

nairisherbestandworstmovelolpart2.png
Btw please read the notes inside! Anyway, the Dragdown Nair seems to have this crazy variance that I can't quite figure out. One moment the disadvantage isn't awful, the next it's horrible. I eventually gave up as you can see. Dragdown is basically RNG until the opponent is damaged enough for the aerial hitboxes to miss, but even then it isn't 100% guaranteed. Even though it's RNG, the odds are still never in your favor since Zelda is at best at a -2 on a perfect landing (which is unlikely to happen every time you use it, so realistically you can expect about a -5 or worse).

In short, you want to aim for Nair 1 always, but other hits can work the same way at high %s, it's just risky.

Closing Questions:

1. How does rage affect this?

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure. From anecdotal experience it probably just increases the knockback, meaning lower %s will act like higher %s. The frame advantage is already so huge that Zelda should still be able to follow up with something. She can confirm a kick at 150! Or even Uair, one of her slowest moves! I can see rage really making these dangerous around the 50-70% mark.

2. What's the difference between "Grounded Nair" and "Nair 1"?

They're practically the same thing really. They both refer to hitting the opponent with a single hit of Nair that pops them up for a combo. However, this only happens to grounded opponents, thus the name "Grounded Nair". Then again, Nair 1 (the first hit on frame 6) is the most common way of getting this by far, so it's still an accurate term as well.

3. Why are the numbers on Dragdown Nair so weird?

Idk, I tested for along time and got fed up with it. This move is strange. Regardless, it sucks and we should practice the timing for Nair 1 only.

4. Is this useful in a real match?

Yes! Zelda has been using Nair as a confirm tool since Smash 4. Ultimate's version is a little harder to execute but more rewarding, imo. Here's a trick: an opponent will be popped up from any grounded hit of Nair. So if they shield Nair but drop too early, they can be clipped and popped off the ground by one hit of it. You can use this to trick opponents by varying the timing of your landing, just like Byleth does. Bonus points if you do a crossup and land the back hit, since it confirms easier into Kicks and Usmash. Zelda is a relatively unknown character by most players outside of her specials, so this can catch many off-guard. Use it in your neutral!

5. Is the data on the notepad accurate for everyone?

No, it's not. I used Pit since he's a humanoid middleweight. Due to his weight, these numbers can be looked at as an average. For a lighter character, the numbers will be better. For the heavier ones, you'll need to pile more damage on to get the same results. However they also have larger hurtboxes, so the high % "dragdown" may work worse. On the flipside, once you do get a confirm, landing the KO move is easier.


I'm not sure how many Zeldas come around here anymore looking for serious discussion, but I wanted to post this here anyway. Feel free to share it!
 

stixie

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Nov 12, 2019
Messages
176
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Zelda main with 10K+ games with her.

Zelda dragdown nair is one of my absolute favorite combo moves in this game. I'm at work right now on break so I don't have time to write a long discourse on the different interactions but I'll be back on a bit later and post some stuff.

In short, if you don't connect the last hit of nair and the opponent isn't at 500% it should ALWAYS be a true combo into something else... just maybe not exactly what YOU want it to combo into. Sometimes up tilt into another full nair... sometimes tipper f-tilt... sometimes grab. Just depends on the percent and weight of the opponent.

There's also a bit on how close you are to the opponent whether they'll end up in front or behind you.
 

Rickster

Smash Master
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Feb 23, 2014
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It's been known since day 1 Ultimate that drag down doesn't combo. It was one of the most complained about things when the game came out.

You can literally go into training and count the frames. A Nair where more than 1 hit connects does not combo. Grab is actually one of the worst options you can choose because it's frame 10 on an already negative on hit move

Edit: It doesn't combo
Zelda main with 10K+ games with her.

Zelda dragdown nair is one of my absolute favorite combo moves in this game. I'm at work right now on break so I don't have time to write a long discourse on the different interactions but I'll be back on a bit later and post some stuff.

In short, if you don't connect the last hit of nair and the opponent isn't at 500% it should ALWAYS be a true combo into something else... just maybe not exactly what YOU want it to combo into. Sometimes up tilt into another full nair... sometimes tipper f-tilt... sometimes grab. Just depends on the percent and weight of the opponent.

There's also a bit on how close you are to the opponent whether they'll end up in front or behind you.
 
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stixie

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Nov 12, 2019
Messages
176
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philbusiness52@gmail.com
Ok, you're correct.

I did a bunch of testing over the last several days. Personally I've labbed out nair a BUNCH of times but I didn't ever get in depth with the true combo part of it.

I DID find out that OCCASIONALLY drag down nair will combo into jab but it's spotty and doesn't work all the time. Jab has 18(ish) hits and checking the combo meter I had 20-21 hits a few times doing nair into jab so... but I could only get that maybe 3 or 4 times.

Nair into jab or dtilt (into fair) work very well on drag down it's just not true.

I also discovered that I typically hit with only the first hit of nair by habit. I really had to try to connect the other hits of nair.

Also targeting the stuff you were doing in those gifs... I NEVER EVER try to landing nair on small characters like pikachu/pichu, kirby, jiggs ect... because it almost never hits and I eat an upsmash to the face. Personally I think Zelda has a fairly decent matchup v pika anyways. I've also never labbed on pit, I normally lab on capt or lucina.

So on the dragdown part of it... i DEFINITELY think this should be addressed by the dev team but for me it probably wouldn't make a huge difference because I almost never hit with multiple hits of it.
 

BJN39

Smash Data Ranger
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To shed a little light on the annoyance of drag down NAIR; the move has 4 different hitboxes vs airborne targets (2 for grounded targets), for simplicity, there’s only 2 types of hitboxes vs airborne targets and 1 for grounded targets. For the moment I’ll focus on the ‘odd’ airborne target ones.

(I’m mobile so I’ll be lazy and just point y’all to the Fairy Fountain for reference) hitbox scheme for these hitboxes uses very narrow ‘bar’ hitboxes. The upper ones are the traditional “drag down” angle, and the lower ones—closer to her knees—have, actually, an upward angle. Common issue I see arising is how the hit advantage is not ‘consistent’ with these hitboxes, and the key here lies in their chosen KB coding.

In simpleton terms, the main influencing statfor each of these hitboxes is their ‘base’ KB stat, and these numbers are DIFFERENT for the upper and lower hotbox sets. The lower set has a base 30 KB (rather low, honestly. Not great for hit advantage) but the upper hitboxes only have a base KB of 15! This is utterly terrible for any form of hitstun. Pretty sure there are instances where characters have acted for at least 1 frame BETWEEN the hits. There’s a lot of gripes I have with this move’s hitbox scheme and the lack of KB that induces hitstun is one of the really bothersome ones.

you can try to aim for these lower hitboxes with slightly better hitstun if you know where to aim. The devs were kind enough to give them higher hit priority over the uppers. Iirc you should be aiming around her knees to hit with them.The move reaches notably above and below her actual arms. Again, you’re pretty much losing your hit advantage if these intercept after the better ‘grounded target’ hitbox.

TL;DR. It probably isn’t worth trying to test the hit advantage on these hitboxes because there’s no consistent way to guarantee you can hit with the lower set. The move is a general choice risk to use, but I guess there are defo some kill confirms, which, for Zelda, always helps.
 

stixie

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Nov 12, 2019
Messages
176
Location
philbusiness52@gmail.com
To shed a little light on the annoyance of drag down NAIR; the move has 4 different hitboxes vs airborne targets (2 for grounded targets), for simplicity, there’s only 2 types of hitboxes vs airborne targets and 1 for grounded targets. For the moment I’ll focus on the ‘odd’ airborne target ones.

(I’m mobile so I’ll be lazy and just point y’all to the Fairy Fountain for reference) hitbox scheme for these hitboxes uses very narrow ‘bar’ hitboxes. The upper ones are the traditional “drag down” angle, and the lower ones—closer to her knees—have, actually, an upward angle. Common issue I see arising is how the hit advantage is not ‘consistent’ with these hitboxes, and the key here lies in their chosen KB coding.

In simpleton terms, the main influencing statfor each of these hitboxes is their ‘base’ KB stat, and these numbers are DIFFERENT for the upper and lower hotbox sets. The lower set has a base 30 KB (rather low, honestly. Not great for hit advantage) but the upper hitboxes only have a base KB of 15! This is utterly terrible for any form of hitstun. Pretty sure there are instances where characters have acted for at least 1 frame BETWEEN the hits. There’s a lot of gripes I have with this move’s hitbox scheme and the lack of KB that induces hitstun is one of the really bothersome ones.

you can try to aim for these lower hitboxes with slightly better hitstun if you know where to aim. The devs were kind enough to give them higher hit priority over the uppers. Iirc you should be aiming around her knees to hit with them.The move reaches notably above and below her actual arms. Again, you’re pretty much losing your hit advantage if these intercept after the better ‘grounded target’ hitbox.

TL;DR. It probably isn’t worth trying to test the hit advantage on these hitboxes because there’s no consistent way to guarantee you can hit with the lower set. The move is a general choice risk to use, but I guess there are defo some kill confirms, which, for Zelda, always helps.
Yeah this is honestly unacceptable when you have characters like Palu that can chain nair you to 40%, or Joker with his drag down nair > dsmash kill confirm.

It's INCREDIBLY hard to consistently hit with those very small and janky lower hitboxes. This move should probably have ONE hitbox per swing with enough KB to keep the person in disadvantage so you can actually properly combo with it. For example Palu's nair has ONE hitbox per side of the staff and then a launcher at the end of the move.

Also I have that happen ALL THE TIME!!!!! People randomly either falling out of nair (even after the "fix") or acting out of it mid nair (usually only happens if you hit with the tips).

I didn't even know the KB differences. When can I find that info?
 
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