Melee Flash Cards

What's the fastest way to do an aerial attack?
SHFFL
Short Hop - Fast Fall - L Cancel


What is a SHFFL?
Short Hop, attack, Fast Fall, L Cancel


What are the grounded movement states?
idle/standing, walking, standing turnaround, initial dash, run, run turnaround, crouching


What is L canceling, and how is it performed?
L canceling stands for Lag Canceling. It can be performed by pressing R or L after doing an attack in the air, 7 frames before you hit the ground. Doing this successfully will halve the duration of your landing animation after doing an attack, allowing you to act more quickly after doing an aerial, making it safer when shielded.


What is a frame?
A frame is the smallest unit of time possible in a game. All the Smash Bros games run at 60 frames per second. 1 frame is instantaneous, 3 is close to instant, 7 is perceptible to the eye, but unreactable, 15 is peak human reaction time, 20 is average human reaction time.


What is wavedashing, how is it performed?
Wavedashing is sliding along the ground in an idle standing state, performed by jumping, then airdodging diagonally into the ground, so the momentum of your airdodge is transferred into sliding momentum, allowing you to slide quickly across the ground. Different characters can wavedash different lengths (luigi is longest, peach is shortest). Wavedashing has at least 10 frames where you cannot act, from the jumpsquat to the 10 frames of landing at the start of your movement.


What is a shorthop and how is it performed?
There are 2 jump heights, short hop and full jump. Before jumping, every character squats for 3-5 frames. If you release the button before these frames are over, you get a shorthop. If you hold it until after they're over, you get a full jump. It's easier to shorthop on characters with longer jump squats (bowser, ganondorf) and harder on characters with shorter ones (fox, samus, ice climbers).


What is fast falling and how is it performed?
Fast falling allows you to instantly accelerate to 130% of your max falling speed any time that you are falling. You can fast fall by tapping down any time you are falling, such as after the peak of your jump.


What is sweet spotting the ledge?
When recovering, characters have a rectangular box that they use to grab the stage. This box reaches up a bit above their head. Sweet spotting refers to jumping or using your up B so that you will grab the ledge at the lowest height possible, so that your head won't peek above the ledge, allowing opponents to hit you with on-stage edgeguards.


What is a move's sweet spot?


What is Edgehogging and how is it performed?
Only one character can occupy the ledge at a time. If another person tries to grab the ledge while one person is holding it, they will not grab it. To edgehog effectively, you want to grab the ledge right before your opponent attempts to, so that you will be invincible for the whole duration of their recovery. You can extend this further by rolling on-stage, during which time you are counted as still occupying the ledge.


What is Shieldgrabbing and how is it performed?
Shieldgrabbing is shielding an opponent's attack, then pressing A to grab them from shield (since Shield + A counts as grab). Most attacks in Smash Bros are minus on shield, meaning they recover slower than the shield stun inflicted by the attack. This strategy is especially strong versus opponent's using jumping attacks.


What is a Dash Dance?
Dash dancing refers to dashing back and forth quickly in order to adjust your positioning with all the speed of a run, and no turnaround animations. By dashing further in one direction than the other and always turning back before dash would transition into run, you can move across the stage while staying in the initial dash state, meaning you won't get any long turnaround animations.


What is Dash Dance Grab?
When someone comes at you with an attack, you can dash away when the attack would hit you, then dash back as it ends, and grab them to punish them. This is a way of beating attacks by making them miss, called Whiff Punishment. Good players can maintain a steady distance from their opponent, just outside their range, only attacking when their opponents miss pokes.


What is a Run cancel?
When you transition from dashing into running, you are allowed to cancel this run into a crouch. Crouching, then dashing in the opposite direction is faster than doing the run turnaround.


What is a Meteor Cancel?
When a move hits you straight downwards, you can cancel the downwards knockback entirely by jumping or using up B. You need to wait 8 frames before you can meteor cancel. If you attempt a meteor cancel during this time, you'll be locked out from performing a meteor cancel.


What's the difference between walking, dashing, running, and wavedashing?
-Walking is the slowest, but you have access to all your grounded attack options, including tilts and smashes, at any time for no commitment. Turning around is slower during a walk than a dash, but faster than a run.
-Dashing is the start of a run, it can cancel into a dash in the opposite direction instantaneously, and thus is the fastest way to turn around. You cannot crouch during a dash or use tilts or smashes, except up smash.
-Running is the state you enter after the initial dash animation. You need to go through a long turnaround animation during a run rather than turning instantly. During run and dash you can only use dash attack.
-Wavedash is faster than walking, but slower than dashing/running for most characters. You need to invest up front with the wavedash by jumping, then airdodging. The landing animation takes 10 frames and cannot be canceled, so you are vulnerable at the start of  a wavedash, but it allows you to move around in an idle standing stage, granting you all of your grounded movement options. Wavedashing also lets you move backwards without turning around.


What's a projectile landing cancel?
Many characters can cancel their projectile shots by landing during the animation for their projectile, such as Fox and Falco's lasers, Samus's missiles, Lucas's PK Freeze, Mario's fireball,


What is a waveland?
Waveland is when you airdodge diagonally into the ground as you are landing from the air. If you do this exactly on the frame you land, you can perform a perfect waveland, where you airdodge perfectly parallel to the ground, sliding really far. You can use wavelands when jumping up through platforms to land on the platform faster than waiting to come down from your jump.


What is a chaingrab?
A chaingrab is when a throw attack can lead into another grab. Examples include many characters' up throw on fast fallers, sheik's down throw on floaties (and back throw in project M), marth's forward throw chaingrab on floaty characters. Most chaingrabs can be escaped with good DI.


What is Directional Influence (DI) and how is it performed?
DI allows you to change the knockback angle of an attack by up to 18 degrees. It is performed by holding perpendicular to the angle of knockback for the maximum effect. DI can be used to survive strong hits by aiming for the corners of the screen, or to escape combos by DIing to move as far away from your opponent as possible.


What is a hover, how is it performed? What else can it be used for?
A hover is a state that Peach and Mewtwo can enter where they can hover in the air. It is performed by holding the jump button and tapping down at the height you would like to hover. If you attack from hover and land, it will cancel your landing animation from the one specific to the attack into the normal landing animation, called a hover cancel.


What is a double jump cancel?
Double jump canceling (DJC) refers to canceling the start of a double jump with an attack, allowing you to cut your jump short, performing an aerial low to the ground.


What is Teching/Ukemi?
When you are in knockback or tumble and hit a floor, wall, or ceiling, you can tech the impact by pressing L or R within 20 frames before impact. If you press too soon, you will be locked out of teching for 40 frames. If you tech against the ground, you will either stand up immediately, or roll left or right. These all have the same amount of invincibility, but rolls have a longer vulnerable recovery. When wall teching, you can hold up to do a walljump off the wall, even if your character does not have a walljump. Wall techs are invincible.


What are your options out of shield?
Dropping your shield takes 15 frames, way too slow for normal use. From shield directly you can grab, roll, spot dodge, or jump. Since you can jump, this means you can do jumping attacks out of shield immediately. It also means you can wavedash out of shield. And jumpsquat cancels into up B and up smash, so you can do those out of shield as well.


What is a jump cancel grab?
The jumpsquat state cancels into grab. When running, you will get a dash grab instead of a standing grab, which is slower for most characters. So by jumping, then quickly grabbing, you can guarantee you always get a standing grab from run or dash. Some characters like bowser or samus have better dash grabs than normal grabs, so they want to avoid this technique.


What is a DACUS / Boost Smash?
Dash Attack Cancel Up Smash. By performing an upsmash within the first 2 frames of a dash attack, you can slide an extended distance while performing your up smash. The most common technique for performing this is dashing, tapping down on the Cstick, then immediately smashing the control stick to up and pressing Z for the up smash. It can be performed entirely with


How do you walljump?
Some characters can walljump by tapping away from a wall when they make contact with it. You are invincible at the moment you walljump. The characters that can walljump are fox, falco, captain falcon, diddy kong, mario, lucario, samus, young link, sheik, squirtle, wolf, and zero suit samus.


What is Edgehopping and how is it performed?
Edgehopping is the fastest way to attack from ledge. Edgehopping is when you directly jump onstage from ledge. You can edgehop by letting go of the ledge by quickly tapping back, then jumping and holding forwards.


What is ledgedashing?
Ledgedashing is wavelanding onstage from an edgehop. To do this, you need to edgehop, then airdodge into the stage when your feet are above the ledge. If you do this quickly after grabbing ledge, you can do an invincible ledgedash.


At what percentage do your ledge options change?
At 100% your ledge options all become slower and more vulnerable, usually also having a longer startup animation. This means over 100% ledge options are better for edgehogging, but worse at getting back on-stage. Edgehops are unaffected, making them one of the best ways to get back on-stage from ledge.


What's the basic rock paper scissors loop of fighting games?
Attacks beat throws with their range, throws beat blocks, blocks beat attacks.


What is the rock paper scissors loop of footsies?
Pokes > deep pokes > whiff punishes > pokes


What is footsies?
Footsies is the process of jockeying for position and trying to control your opponent using stray hits.


What is Tech Chasing?
Tech chasing is the process of trying to predict or react to the tech option of a knocked down opponent in order to punish it.


What is a jab reset?
If an opponent fails to tech a knockdown, they will be left in a knocked down state on the ground. If hit with a move that does not inflict knockback (such as a jab), it will force the opponent to perform a regular getup.


What are your options from being knocked down (missed tech)?
Regular getup, roll left or right, getup attack. All of these are invincible, and you can delay when you perform them, but you are vulnerable to attacks and jab resets when laying knocked down.


What is crouch canceling?
When crouching, knockback is decreased, and you also are ASDI-ing downwards (automatic smash DI). These effects combined can reduce the knockback of an incoming attack, and push you into the ground so you land instantaneously after being hit, allowing you to absorb attacks and hit back.


What is B-Turnaround?
When in the air, you can turn your neutral B attacks around by tapping backwards, neutraling the stick, then hitting B. You can do the same for up Bs by tapping backwards after tapping up B, or by up Bing diagonally backwards.


What is a powershield?
Power shield is the first 2 frames of a shield, which can reflect projectiles.


What is a perfect shield?
Perfect shield is the first 4 frames of a shield, which can block attacks and take no shield damage. In Project M it also lets you drop shield instantly or cancel shield into any action instantly.


What is Smash DI (SDI)?
Called Positional Influece by Smash 64 players, SDI lets you slightly move your character during the freeze frames when an attack connects with your character by tapping the stick to the 8 cardinal and ordinal directions. Most useful for escaping multi-hit moves or moves with longer freeze frames, like electrical attacks. You will also be moved a bit further at the end of the freeze frames by ASDI, automatic smash DI, in the direction you're holding when the freeze frames end.


What is the neutral game?
The phase of the game before anyone has landed a hit, when neither player is at advantage.


What is the punish game?
The phase of the game where one player has landed a hit on their opponent and can press their advantage further with followups to get more damage or a positional advantage.


What is the offstage game?
The phase of the game where one player is offstage and is trying to recover while the other player is trying to prevent them from recovering. Recovering successfully involves using good survival DI, and hanging onto your recovery options for when you need them.


What is ledgeguarding, what methods of ledgeguarding are there?
Ledgeguarding is the process of preventing an opponent from recovering from offstage.
-on-stage edgeguards
-Edgehogging
-edgeguarding


What's an on-stage edgeguard, what are its advantages and disadvantages?
On-Stage Edgeguards are where you stay onstage and use a move that hits the area by the ledge. The advantage of this is it's fast to set up, low or no risk, but it will usually not reach into the sweet spot range, unless you do a jumping move that reaches down into the sweet spot, which requires more precise timing than other methods of edgeguarding.


What is Edgehogging, what are its advantages and disadvantages?
Edgehogging is where you hold the ledge to prevent your opponent from getting on. The advantage of this is that it will deal with sweet spotters, but it takes longer to set up, and you can only hold the ledge for as long as your invincibility lasts, so if the opponent air stalls or has an extra jump, they can out-wait your edgehog or recover sooner to hit you as you're setting it up. They can also recover to stage instead of ledge, which means you'll miss out on a punish if you try to edgehog with a roll, or they can fake you out into thinking they're recovering to stage and going for ledge instead if you try to ledgedash to cover an on-stage recovery.


What is offstage edgeguarding, what are its advantages and disadvantages?
offstage edgeguarding is where you go offstage to attack your opponent as they recover. This is dangerous as you can end up being the one who gets edgeguarded, but if you hit them it is practically a guaranteed kill. This can be evaded by jumping pre-emptively, going under the opponent's edgeguard, or attacking pre-emptively.


How does Knockback work in Smash Bros?
When you get hit, you are knocked back relative to the angle of the attack, some hit up, some hit down, some hit diagonally. The amount of Knockback is proportional to the percentage of the target, their weight, and the power of the attacking move. Hitstun scales directly proportional to the amount of knockback.


What is Frame Advantage?
Frame Advantage or Advantage Time is the difference in time between the attacker and defender of who recovers first, and how soon. When you hit an opponent, they are in hitstun, or shieldstun for a certain amount of time, and you take a certain amount of time to recover. This difference in recovery times is called advantage time. Whoever recovers first is said to be at frame advantage.


How does Frame Advantage work on Shield?
Shields take shield stun relative to the percentage damage that the attacking move inflicts. Moves that deal more percentage damage will inflict more shield stun. Shielding an attack almost always puts the shielder at frame advantage, they have less shieldstun usually than the attacker has recovery. This means that shielding attacks usually means you are capable of acting first, letting you shieldgrab the opponent usually. Grounded attacks always have the same amount of frame advantage, air attacks have differing amounts based how low you are to the ground before you attack.


How does Frame Advantage work on Hit?
Hitstun is directly proportional to knockback. This means that higher knockback moves inflict more hitstun, and moves inflict more hitstun as the opponent is higher in percentage. So there's a sweet spot. At lower percentages, you don't have enough hitstun to combo, at middle percentages it's just right, and at high percentages you have a ton of hitstun, but the opponent is being pushed so far away, you cannot catch up with them in time to follow up the combo.


How do you determine if a move can combo?
By looking for moves, usually ones that hit diagonally or straight up, where your character recovers fast enough that they can move forward to hit the opponent with another attack before hitstun wears off, and which don't hit the opponent so far away that they cannot be chased after.