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Yoshi's new 3.6 Dair

Mumbo

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jul 13, 2014
Messages
227
Location
Wellington, FL
I've been hating on the Dair change recently and have been met by adamant arguments that the Dair change is a huge buff. After messing around with frame data in debug mode, I've realized that the new dair comes with its advantages and disadvantages. Dair's weak hitstun on grounded opponents is weight dependent and % dependent. I've done most of the testing on Fox, but will discuss vaguely how the numbers change for different characters.

I went into debug mode and tested Dair weak hitstun by landing single hit dair. If you would like to do testing yourself, shorthop, dair on frame 30 (24th airborne frame) and don't fastfall. You will land a single hit of dair and land on the ground immediately after hitlag. Hitstun is not dependent on how many hits of dair you land per-say, rather its determined by the % before you land the final hit. At 0%, all characters will suffer 7 frames of hitstun after hitlag. At all %s for all characters, hitlag is 3 frames. After testing on Fox, I've found that the hitstun he suffers from dair follows the formula: hitstun = Floor((p-1)/7) + 8, where p is the Fox's % before the dair connects. This means at 0% Fox suffers 7 frames of hitstun, at 1% he suffers 8 frames, and at 78% he suffers 19 frames. After lazily testing with Jigglypuff, Samus, and Bowser, I've found that at 78%, Jigglypuff suffers 20 frames of hitstun, Samus 17, and Bowser 16, suggesting hitstun scales inversely with weight, but not by a significant amount.

Since an L-cancelled dair has 12 frames of endlag, using dair any % below the % required to force the opponent into at least 12 frames of hitstun is ill advised because you give the opportunity to the opponent to punish you. This means do not use dair at 0%. Against Fox, this means you should not use dair until at least until 29%, and even then it is not recommended because Fox has the ability to put out a hitbox the first frame he leaves hitstun (shine) and you do not.

Since Jab is the fastest hitbox you can put out (frame 3) its suggested to only use dair after you can force 15 frames of hitstun (for Fox this means 50%).

You get your hardest punishes after dair using Down B (frame 5) or Downsmash (frame 7) so keep these in mind. For Fox, don't ever use down b because the strong hitbox won't connect, and use Down air -> Downsmash after 78%.

Keep in mind that these punishes are frame perfect and require you to land and L cancel the frame after the last hit of dair connects and input the punishes the frame immediately after your endlag ends. Try not to go for tight punishes until later % thresholds if you are not comfortable in your execution. Also keep in mind that dair is very easy to Smash DI, especially if you land multiple hits.

@ Scatz Scatz
 

Scatz

Smash Champion
Joined
Feb 28, 2011
Messages
2,593
Location
ATL, GA
Thank you for exploring it. It got a tradeoff, but we got a weaker version of 3.02 Dair, which imo, comes out to be better for us overall. Also, this makes things more dangerous when shielding Dair. It can shield poke even after wrecking a shield, and at those percents, the opponent can lose that situation really badly.

Can you check the frame advantage when Dair hits on shield?
 

Limbose

Smash Apprentice
Joined
May 6, 2014
Messages
88
Location
Dallas, Texas
3DS FC
0748-3141-7837
Well, also remember that your opponents aren't perfect. They probably won't be frame perfect with their responses, so depending on what they do, some stuff can be better than other stuff. You might have a couple extra frames to do something if they aren't ready for it, etc.
 
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Getsafe

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jun 20, 2015
Messages
94
Location
Appleton, Wisconsin
Well of course hitstun scales with weight lol. Hitstun is directly correlated with Knockback, which scales with weight/%

But I don't mean to hate/troll.
Overall very useful data
 
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theOVEN

Smash Cadet
Joined
Oct 17, 2014
Messages
31
Location
Champaign/Urbana
thanks for the data, Mumbo. Like Limbose mentioned though...most opponents aren't perfect, not even close imo until you get to very high levels of play. My opinion though is to play against your opponent as if they're perfect, and even at that point the only three characters that are going to beat a properly l-canceled dair into jab at >50% are spacies, and that's only with a frame perfect reaction. Once you land and get a jab out, you give yourself a frame advantage as long as you're behind your opponent and can go for multijab, grab, or dsmash reads...not sure how reliable those options are though.
 
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Mumbo

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jul 13, 2014
Messages
227
Location
Wellington, FL
thanks for the data, Mumbo. Like Limbose mentioned though...most opponents aren't perfect, not even close imo until you get to very high levels of play. My opinion though is to play against your opponent as if they're perfect, and even at that point the only three characters that are going to beat a properly l-canceled dair into jab at >50% are spacies, and that's only with a frame perfect reaction. Once you land and get a jab out, you give yourself a frame advantage as long as you're behind your opponent and can go for multijab, grab, or dsmash reads...not sure how reliable those options are though.
You should also watch out for Bowser and Samus because they are heavier (which means they suffer less hitstun later) and they have up b's which are psuedo-frame one in the sense that they have invinicble startups. But you are right, there are still work arounds to hitting down air at low%s, jab being one of the most consistent, spacing it well being another important factor.
 
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