Sakurai: All I want for christmas is a patch with high-priority D-AIR

[DungeonMaster]

I'm really enjoying Samus in this game. The single thing I miss is a threatening DAIR. Right now the D-AIR is beaten by WAY too many moves. All the spikes changed to these kind of weird hit-boxes, and you know I'm ok with that - it sucks because it forces very careful play but I'm ok with saying "you have to be good to land this".
What I'm NOT OK with is when you ARE good and the move DOES land well timed, and other moves go RIGHT THROUGH it and nail Samus.
Please, I don't speak for all the Samus players of the world, but at the same time I know I do: Please please please if we line up this move correctly, let us win the exchange. We are floaty and quite slow give us victory.

 

[camzaman]

Yeah, if D-air has insanely hard timing, at least the priority should be decent. Especially now that Nair can't get you out of juggling scenarios and shriek's U-air out-prioritizes the D-air.

 

[n00b]

i don't understand your complaint. Do you take issue with Samus's d-air trading with other aerials? You can trade and still have it be in your favor, especially if your opponent is at high percent and you are at low percent. They shouldn't survive the dair and you should just take a few percent.

If you feel you've set up and timed the dair properly but you are outright beaten by an aerial, then you likely didn't actually have a good spike opportunity. If you are losing a stock and not KOing in these trades, then you should take into account that risk or just avoid this particular KO option and opt for something disjointed (zair gimp, Charge Shot KO, Fsmash, etc).

 

[Xyro77]

Brawl Dair beat out lots of aerials.

Smash 4 dair does not.

I REALLY dislike this.

 

[DungeonMaster]

@n00b Not-trading with pretty much anything. Grounded tilts, up-smashes and up-aerials. Anything from Mario's up-smash to Sonic's up-aerial to freaking pika's dash attack. There is no trade, they all win, Samus loses. It's not a timing issue, it's flat out priority. You can slow the animations down and see it, time and again.
Air to anything-below-her is just plain extremely bad right now. It is so un-safe right now I've all but given up. There's no point to even trying if your opponent has good reflexes. They stick out pretty much whatever and it works.

 

[n00b]

Oh, I get what you mean now. I suppose that's true, so much so that I don't even dare to dair against grounded opponents or to meet air-to-air with it, I pretty much only throw it out when the opponent's main priority is to recover, where it would be just as risky for them to throw out a move rather than double jump or up b. It's definitely not the same kind of punishing tool that it was in Brawl.

 

[Los4Muros]

I'm kind of disappointed that no patch will be coming any time soon, probably never. I'm guessing Samus will stay once again with the Low Tiers. I've been using her as much as I can, but no matter how much I use her, other characters have so better options. Right now Ness, Zero Suit Samus and Link are taking the spotlight. Her D-air was a thing I was hoping to get patched, placing a meteor can be very hard and risky. When I'm not sure if the D-Air will have priority, I avoid the chance.

 

[Grambles]

It's more of a punishing move, than a standard attack. If you're coming down from above, her options are limited. You can usually psyche your opponent out with some tricky down-bs, faking your landing direction, and get back on your feet without much trouble.

Use it sparingly in mid-combat, and you'll start to see the better opportunities. It's still great for punishing and meteoring vertical recoveries. But all her other air-attacks are really good, and vital for getting KOs.

 

[BlackCephie]

use dair to punish, not contend attacks. I take much more issue with the lack of missile cancel. Of all the characters, Samus SHOULD be the one able to fire multiple projectiles in rapid succession. Then again, its also strange to me that Samus never had a move with super armor frames (super armor on downb or fair would be amazing), considering she is covered in futuristic alien technology. Sometimes it seems like Sakurai didnt even research Metroid, let alone play it.

 

[LightlyToasted]

I mean assuming competitive play, can't they just ground tech then get you back making down attack too risky to use anyway?

 

[BlackCephie]

depends on how high you are at the point of impact. It could go the same way if you got meteor smashed by Falcon. teching is way easier in this game.