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Perfect Pivot, Foxtrotting, Dashdancing

Yoki

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After doing some testing, it appears that the combination of Smash 4's lack of tripunique dash dancing and pivot mechanics, combined with Foxtrotting, create some very potent options such as "wavebounced" FTilts and the ability to do *anything* out of a dash or foxtrot.

Glossary:

  • SSB4 dashdancing: Inputting a dash in the opposite direction in the first few frames of a dash. In SSB4, any dash inputted this way has no initial momentum, allowing you to make your dash however short you want by timing your release of the stick. If you let go of the stick after only a couple frames, you do a stationary dash. If you let go of the stick after only one frame, you do a Perfect Pivot.
  • Perfect Pivot: In the first few frames of a dash, inputting the opposite direction for only one frame (can be done by flicking the stick) will perform a regular, lagless standing turnaround animation that can be instantly cancelled with any move. You keep some momentum from the direction of the initial dash.
  • Fox Trot: Inputting a second dash in the same direction during a specific window towards the end of the initial dash animation. Combined with a perfect pivot, you can do anything out of a fox trot.
  • Turnaround tilt: Inputting a forward tilt during the run turnaround animation.
Applications, starring Little Mac. (he gets the most out of these, but the retreating ftilt is great for everyone):

Foxtrot + Brawl dashdancing:

Extended dashdancing:
Input: →, →←, ←→, →←, ...
Because it gives you no initial momentum, the dashdance length can be reduced to nil with fast enough fingers/a GC controller.

Perfect Pivot:
Input: →[single frame ←]

Fox Trot -> Pivot Jab
Input: →, →[single frame←] . A

Retreating FTilt/Dashbouncing (Fox trot, -> Dashdance -> Turnaround tilt):
Input: →, →← [wait for the dashdance window to end], →A
You can adjust the sliding distance with how long you hold left.

Foxtrot->FSmash (not pictured because this isn't new, but you'll do it a lot when trying the next one so I might as well point out there's an easier way)
Input: →, →A

"Dash-Canceled" FTilt (Foxtrot -> Dashdance -> Perfect Pivot -> FTilt):
Input: →, →[single frame←] [soft→] A
This is hard. You need to both do the input fast enough to do a perfect pivot, without hitting the stick so hard that you perform a FSmash. Possibly a good reason to wait for the Wii U version to play Little Mac, as I feel like this move will murder your opponents and your 3DS alike.
 
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Remzi

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This kind of dash dancing was immensely helpful in Brawl. I'm struggling to do it with the 3ds pad though. Definitely something I'll be using once we get that GC controller back, though.
 

Tristan_win

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And so, many 3DS died shortly after that day when dash dancing was found to be in the game.

Good thread, thank you for making it.
 
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Yoki

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You're welcome. I also want to point out that the most useful technique out of this is most likely the pivot and retreating FTilt - Little Mac's fox trot is good enough to do a good pseudo-dashdance with it, but most characters can't. With tripping being gone from the game, I expect fox trotting to be much more common and replace running for a bunch of characters. Retreating FTilt is easy and potentially useful for anyone with a decent fox trot, and perfect pivoting is a handy replacement for crouch canceling a dash. On the other hand, running does have RAR and shielding going for it.
 
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S2

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Great thread. The videos and input directions give a great look at movement possibilities and how they're performed.

This stuff will be fun to practice once I start playing the Wii U version. I've already accepted that I'm never going to bother getting good on the 3DS. Dash dancing and such looks like it's going to wear and tear the handheld down really fast.
 

Gidy

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I'm not gonna be able to do this until I get a controller, sry.
 

Signia

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Might be good to also incorporate this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDQoxMARFMk as a controllable movement option for characters with high traction.

The combination of these Smash 4 movement techniques are more difficult than Melee's combination, where flick-pivoting wasn't nearly as necessary. In Smash 4, instead of an instant, actionable stop in movement, empty pivot is a safer wavedash that turns you around. Foxtrotting and skid-cancelling also require difficult judgement in determining when you're allowed to do certain things or else you get messed up. And everything requires stick-flicks and annoying turn arounds that often require fast side-tilting to face the direction you want and then fast tilting up or down for dtilts.

Much less convenient than wavedashing, since you can always jump out of everything and airdodge into the ground, and wide initial dash dancing, where all you have to do is smash and hold directions. Also it was super easy to hold the tilt-direction during the wavedash's vulnerable frames if you wanted to move and do a tilt attack.

At least movement options are there, though. But imagine having to move using only full dashes, foxtrotting, long initial dashes to empty pivots (to simulate "perfect pivot" Smash 4 sliding) in Melee. Super hard and not as precise.

With a lot of effort and execution, Melee-like control might be attainable, though.
 

Shokio

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All of this seems extremely difficult to pull off consistently, not to mention in the heat of battle. Very unconventional.

And I'm guessing these are easier to do with Mac?

Things will definitely be easier on the Wii U version, but even then, I can't see these options being thrown out there as freely as true dash dancing and wavedashing are.
 
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Saito

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All of this seems extremely difficult to pull off consistently, not to mention in the heat of battle. Very unconventional.

And I'm guessing these are easier to do with Mac?

Things will definitely be easier on the Wii U version, but even then, I can't see these options being thrown out there as freely as true dash dancing and wavedashing are.
In the face of adversity, a smasher will rise up to the challenge.

As lame as that sounds, I really feel like people will master and be able to effectively apply these techniques.
 
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Ganreizu

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I found that when you gave a character all speed equipment they can do a dashdance much closer to the ones in Melee. However, it seems we probably won't be using equipment competitively...

Video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xe8sodCLskY
That's not a dashdance. That's just pivoting out of a run. It's faster, but it's not dashdancing.

Equipment forever banned.

Things will definitely be easier on the Wii U version, but even then, I can't see these options being thrown out there as freely as true dash dancing and wavedashing are.
People once said shield dropping was too advanced to use consistently and now we're seeing it in tournament play more and more. Techniques requiring skill isn't a bad thing for smash4 at all. Smash4 critics are also thirsty for movement options. These are a few extremely interesting movement options.
 
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C.J.

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Melee fox SHDL is a 2 frame window iirc. People consistently waveshine. Fiction is starting to be able to break shields off of multishines (well, was until hand problems). In street fighter people hammer out 1-frame links nonstop.

There's no excuse for people not being able to execute something THIS useful
 

Gabukin

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I agree with Shokio, This looks pretty difficult to pull of consistently while worrying about what your opponents doing.
Also they seem rather difficult. I've been trying them out in training mode with no success.
 

RanserSSF4

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this is a great discovery, although i do agree with a lot of people, these seem really hard to pull off on the 3ds. It might be different on a controller though, but now i'm really interested to see professionals use these movement options in tournament play :)
 

Signia

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And I'm guessing these are easier to do with Mac?
No, but it's probably the most useful for Little Mac. This allows him to actually use his amazing speed and amazing ground attacks at the same time.

It'll also be useful for other characters that have fast dash speed or good ground attacks. Though pretty much everyone is going to want to be able to "perfect pivot" (for fast/slippery characters) or "skid cancel" (for the others) to Fsmash or uptilt for whiff punishes and foxtrot/dd to bait those whiffs.

My only worry is that there's too many deadzones in the movement. Could you theoretically place an ftilt wherever you want, with these techniques? You have the empty pivot slide ("perfect pivot") distance, but no closer. You can foxtrot first, but that has long minimum distance. I think even a perfect player would have to do mulitiple stick-flick empty pivot slides and mix in some walking to get the spacing they want.

And then there's the problem that a lot of the standing pokes you want to do are tilts, but there's no inactionable period to get the stick into position like there is in Melee wavedash. People didn't do pivot uptilts with Marth in Melee for a reason. That ****'s hard.
 
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Ganreizu

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My only worry is that there's too many deadzones in the movement. Could you theoretically place an ftilt wherever you want, with these techniques? You have the empty pivot slide ("perfect pivot") distance, but no closer. You can foxtrot first, but that has long minimum distance. I think even a perfect player would have to do mulitiple stick-flick empty pivot slides and mix in some walking to get the spacing they want.

And then there's the problem that a lot of the standing pokes you want to do are tilts, but there's no inactionable period to get the stick into position like there is in Melee wavedash. People didn't do pivot uptilts with Marth in Melee for a reason. That ****'s hard.
Don't forget about skid-cancelling though. It's a little easier to position yourself with that than these are.
 

Signia

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Don't forget about skid-cancelling though. It's a little easier to position yourself with that than these are.
It's my understanding that fast, slippery characters have bad skid cancels since the transition window is dependent speed. It would be easier to tilt out of the skid, though, since you have to wait until you slow down enough anyway.
 
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trash?

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"this doesn't seem possible to do consistently" is a similar statement made back when people realized how hardcore fox's skill ceiling could possibly get

this will easily sound rude, but it doesn't matter if you can't do this, it matters if top players can do it. nobody can consistently super-wavedash with samus in melee, but everyone even remotely near top space animal play knows how to use waveshine tricks, irregardless of how silly fox players' APMs get in the process
 
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Onomanic

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interesting stuff, I'm currently testing this out with Marth since Link's extended DD is either straight ass or impossible.
 
D

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I can dash dance with Greninja consistently. The easiest way I found is to flick the stick to only about half way to the edge and then immediately flick the opposite direction.

One thing I'm having trouble on though that I hope someone could help me out on. Once I'm in a dash, when is it possible to dash dance again? Maybe I'm messing up the inputs but when I dash and try to dash dance the opposite direction I always get the skid.
 

JediLink

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I never thought I'd see the day where Smash 4 might require more tech skill than Melee. Why can't we just have regular damn dash dancing, Sakurai?
 

SonicZeroX

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Logsmash

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I never thought I'd see the day where Smash 4 might require more tech skill than Melee. Why can't we just have regular damn dash dancing, Sakurai?
That's kind of an ironic question, don't you think? For many people, the main complaint against non-Melee Smash games is that they don't have enough of a technical skill requirement to really be able to separate the good players from the bad ones. Now that it's looking like Smash4 may have an even greater technical skill requirement than Melee, you're asking Sakurai why he didn't just make the game easier? If anything, this should be considered good news for "hardcore" players who were worried that Smash4 would have a low skill-ceiling that catered only to "casuals", since players who put in the time to master these skills will now have more movement options available to them than players who only pick up the game every now and then.

This isn't Melee, and it's never going to be Melee. And that's a good thing. Just play Melee if that's your preferred Smash game, but stop trying to make Smash4 something it isn't and shouldn't be.
 

JediLink

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For many people, the main complaint against non-Melee Smash games is that they don't have enough of a technical skill requirement to really be able to separate the good players from the bad ones.
That has never, ever been the case. If we're talking about Brawl here, I don't see how lack of tech skill has anything to do with tripping, chaingrabs, Meta Knight, planking, defensive gameplay, etc.

This isn't Melee, and it's never going to be Melee. And that's a good thing. Just play Melee if that's your preferred Smash game, but stop trying to make Smash4 something it isn't and shouldn't be.
Dafuq again. Being intuitive and accessible, the whole point of the series in the first place, is "something it isn't and shouldn't be"? Are you high?
 

Yoki

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Doing forward-facing FTilt pivot out of FTilt is the only one significantly difficult for Little Mac, the rest can be done consistently even on a 3DS. Pivoted tilts will probably be hard but consistently doable with solid training with a GC controller

No, but it's probably the most useful for Little Mac. This allows him to actually use his amazing speed and amazing ground attacks at the same time.

It'll also be useful for other characters that have fast dash speed or good ground attacks. Though pretty much everyone is going to want to be able to "perfect pivot" (for fast/slippery characters) or "skid cancel" (for the others) to Fsmash or uptilt for whiff punishes and foxtrot/dd to bait those whiffs.
On top of his amazing dash speed, Little Mac also has by far the best fox trot in the game, as he can input a second dash during nearly the entire animation. With Little Mac, you *can* do all of these techs at any point during your "run" (fox trot) with enough training - other characters' options are much more limited, and doing these techs after a single dash will probably be the most useful.


My only worry is that there's too many deadzones in the movement. Could you theoretically place an ftilt wherever you want, with these techniques? You have the empty pivot slide ("perfect pivot") distance, but no closer. You can foxtrot first, but that has long minimum distance. I think even a perfect player would have to do mulitiple stick-flick empty pivot slides and mix in some walking to get the spacing they want.
Little Mac has nearly no limitations and can place an ftilt pretty much wherever, whenever he wants. Other characters can only fox trot at specific intervals of time, but not specific distances: dashing out of a dashdance gives you no initial momentum, so you can shorten any dash by inputting a quick 1-frame dashdance before it and letting go of the stick. Good to shorten Little Mac's extended dashdance, probably not that useful for characters lacking his godly fox trot.

And then there's the problem that a lot of the standing pokes you want to do are tilts, but there's no inactionable period to get the stick into position like there is in Melee wavedash. People didn't do pivot uptilts with Marth in Melee for a reason. That ****'s hard.
There kind of is, actually: unlike melee pivots, perfect pivots put your character in its idle animation, so nothing stops you from pivoting, waiting several frames then doing a tilt. Still freaking hard, but not that impossible to do imperfectly.

That's kind of an ironic question, don't you think? For many people, the main complaint against non-Melee Smash games is that they don't have enough of a technical skill requirement to really be able to separate the good players from the bad ones.
Not really. Tech skill is a skill floor, but what matters competitively is the skill ceiling. What separates good players from worse players is spacing, decision making and reaction time, not techs that every high-level player can perform. Tech skill is a pointless (but mostly accidental) barrier to entry that stops mattering once you get actually good at the game.
 
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