yo edit this

The Inkling Discord Faq
Forward
This document serves the purpose of getting many questions, inkling related and discord related, off of my shoulders and the shoulders of others.

Lately I, as well as some other members, have expressed concern with not only the amount of repeated daily questions, but the amount of blatantly wrong answers from community members who have not be properly informed by the lab team, and myself. Because of this I’m taking responsibility and creating this document to clear up conceptions, answer questions, and give the community a tool to answer them in the future.



Server information

Q. Where can I find information related to inkling?
A: take a look in the channels #Grizzco-Resources and #findings or other lab channels, and as a last resort ask in #metagame-mainstage, preferably pinging a lab team member, who can answer your question more well equipped.

Also we have a Resources Doc in #FAQ! You should check there first.

Q. What is the Q&A channel for then?
A: The Q&A channel is for asking questions! This much is absolutely true. Its original intention was for you to ask the Lab team questions but people have taken to it as a sort of community Q&A and it’s worked out well so far. This channel however is NOT meant for your basic knowledge, or the 20th time you ask for how up throw up air is performed.

Q. What’s the difference between Metagame Mainstage and Smash ultimate discussion?
A: Metagame Mainstage is a more serious discussion of mechanics and gameplay, and serves to move our meta along. Smash ultimate discussion is anything goes as long as it’s appropriate and also related to smash.

Q. Where can I talk about matchups?
A: #Musselforge-Matchups.

Q. How can I ask for help? I’m struggling to learn inkling and need help.
A: We have an analysis channel! Post replays there and we can help you learn your weaknesses and tell you what you need to do better.

Q. Cool can I post this 30 second clip of this play I made there?
A: We can’t stop you from doing this, but we can’t really help you from your fancy zero to death; in order to get REAL help you need to give us a clip with substance, preferably an actual replay. You can post your fanciest clips in #octo-clipyon too!

Q. I have something cool to show the lab team, I’m not sure if it’s been found yet!
A: Post it in #findings, preferably with some sort of proof.

Q. What exactly is this lab team you keep talking about?
A: We’re a group of hired volunteers who seek to expand the meta by testing the extent of inkling tech, Just a bunch of normal dudes who like inkling, and want to see them succeed. This opportunity has given us a lot of game knowledge and gives us a chance to work with the community and branch out!




Smash tech

Q. What is a RAR?
A: Rar stands for reverse aerial rush, and it’s a technique to get aggressive bairs in neutral and off of the ledge for edgeguard attempts. To do a RAR all you have to do is run forward, flick your Movement stick in the opposite direction, jump and flick your C-stick towards the direction you want to Bair! It’s a really easy technique once you get the timing down, and it’s infinitely useful.

Q. What’s an IRA then? I keep hearing it’s better, or just a RAR
A: This is a common misconception, IRA stands for Instant Reverse Aerial, and it’s not better or worse than a RAR. It’s a totally different technique entirely.
For starters, IRA has to include an attack. You can’t change that, it’s a fundamental part of its execution. This means unlike RAR, you can’t approach without an aerial, or a delayed aerial, making it less versatile.

The true strength of IRA comes from its speed, unpredictability, and combo potential. It makes combos that are either impossible or extremely difficult, a breeze with the required practice, it’s fast and gets you instant rising aerials of whatever you want, and at the full speed of a perfectly performed RAR.

Q. That’s cool! How do I use it then?
A: It’s fundamentally far more complex than a RAR in execution because it uses attack cancelling.

Attack cancelling lets you cancel the startup of an attack with a jump within the first few frames. This is typically before an animation of it even actually starts, Usually when this is performed with the jump, it will cause a buffered aerial on rising, which is the key to the technique.

To perform this attack perfectly, You must initiate a dash, cancel the dash with an attack within the first few frames of that dash, and then cancel that attack within the first few frames of that attack, with a jump. When you enter the air you’ll do an attack based on the direction of the Movement stick. Towards the movement direction will be a bair, away will be a retreating fair, down will be a dair, and up with be an Uair. If you return to neutral on movement it will be a Nair. If you get any other aerial than that, either you did not move the movement stick fast enough, you did not get an attack cancel, or you did not cancel the attack. If you do not get the attack you will also not turn around, which is a key proponent of IRA.

Q. That’s cool, I’ve also heard about grabs, dash grabs, and roll cancel dash grabs, what are those?
A: Well grabs are self explanatory. Dash grabs are similar to this except they use the startup momentum of a dash to achieve a much further range.

Roll cancel dash grabs are a bit more wild. To perform one you’ll start up a dash, cancel the startup of the dash with a roll, and cancel that roll with a grab. This gets you INSANE amounts of range, at the cost of being pretty difficult to execute properly, and situational.

Q. Wow! Another bit of tech I’ve heard about that I don’t get is foxtrotting, or dash dancing. What’s that?
A: This is actually two things, though the misconception is easy enough to get.
A foxtrot is simple, You continuously dash and stop the dash after startup to keep using only the initial startup of the dash This is very useful for fast characters like Pichu, Inkling, and many others, as well as characters with high dash startup speed but abysmal run speed.

A dash dance is the act of dancing back and forth so fast you hardly move forward or back at all. You can change how far you move by adjusting how fast you do it and can even move forward and backwards in a controlled manner. This is more useful on inkling than many others but is still a good tool for when you’re playing a more passive game and waiting, as it can be hard to get a read on where you’re going to be.

Q: That’s really helpful, but I’m having trouble performing a lot of these techniques. There’s gotta be a shortcut!
A: There isn’t one, but you can adjust your controls to make it easier! For example to do an IRA you need tilt stick on C stick, and it’s difficult to perform without jump attached to a trigger button or alternatively, using a claw grip motion. Adjusting your controls and how you hold the controller can greatly benefit your ability to perform these techniques.



Picking secondaries

This is something that’s asked about an awful lot in the discord and around the discord: How do I pick my secondary for Inkling?

Well First you need to decide what you’re trying to get out of Inkling in the first place, and what you as a player are struggling with. Inkling as a character is versatile, There’s a lot of playstyles that you can use with Inkling and each one has its own strengths and weaknesses. What this means is that while there are specific matchups that every Inkling is bound to struggle with, There’s also a lot of matchups you simply as a player will struggle with despite them being even, or even in favor of Inkling.

This is pretty much the way it is with most top tier characters who rely on versatility in their game-plan, but what does it mean for picking secondaries? Well everything, of course!

Basically, If you’re going to pick a secondary, it has to be one that will beat not only the bad MUs you have, but Inklings as well. Some key characters to look out for are Shulk, Olimar, Peach, Pikachu, and ROB. These are the only 5 matchups where Inkling loses in the worst case scenario.


So when it comes down to it, all you’ll need is a strong character who has a general shift in playstyle that lets you approach those difficult matchups in different ways.

But there’s another rule: your secondary has to be easier than your main to master. This is a weird rule at first glance but consider you’ll be playing Inkling for the majority of your time, Your secondary has to be easy enough that you can learn it and keep it practiced with just a few games here, there, and everywhere. You’ll probably play them a lot for a few weeks, then play them at the start or end of every session, and this means they have to be simple. This rules out a few characters
Peach
Ice Climbers
Ryu/Ken
With that in mind, You wouldn’t want to play these characters due to the skill cap, as well as the major shift in playstyle which would potentially hold you back. Some other characters you may not want to secondary due to power issues and strength overall are:
Piranha plant
Incineroar
Little Mac
Kirby
The reason I list these characters is because they’re not gonna help you with anything other than potentially the player MU. At a certain point a lack of knowledge ends up petering off, and doing less for you.
At the end of the day, make sure the secondary is fun, fits you as a player, and helps you vs universally difficult matchups.

If you still are lost as far as secondaries, a few good choices are:
Snake (Beats some bad matchups and at worse goes even)
Pichu
Pikachu
Lucina
Cloud


These characters for the most part will help with MUs, are generally easy, or are smooth transitions from inkling (with the exception of Snake, who plays differently than most characters, while still rewarding fundamentals). Or all of the above. Good luck!




Inkling questions

Q: Inkling has a lot of cool combos! How do I do them?
A: well we actually don’t have a lot of combos. Outside of the ones you’ve probably heard of, most of our combos are actually ‘strings’ and they come from understanding a character's moveset and your own advantage state. These come with practice and every player performs them slightly differently, so I recommend watching every inkling player you can find, from Armada and Cosmos to Myself or any fellow inkling player in the discord who streams. This will give you a foundation for strings.

As for actual combos, a combo doc is on the way! So do not fear, the answer will be within your grasp soon.

Q: How do I use splattershot?
A: Apart from basically being free damage and ink, it stops momentum from the enemy, can cancel some attacks, and is generally annoying to have used against you. Splattershot is a great tool for when you wouldn’t win this neutral and want to get something out of that. It can also be a useful gimp tool vs worse recoveries!

Some characters also have very few tools that can outrange Splattershot. Heavies like Ganon for example, need to use a smash attack to outrange splattershot meaning you can bait and punish laggy moves.

There's also some creative ways to use splattershot. The move is relatively safe on shield (-7) as long as you fire it for the minimum amount of time, and becomes safer the further you are from your opponent, giving your opponent little time to react to a dash grab. It's also one of our best ledge getup options if you space it right. The move locks people in shield and on hit you can follow up with a grab > backthrow sometimes.

Q: How does inkling Kill? I’m struggling with this.
A: Okay well, Here’s the thing. Even for good inklings it can be hard. We have the Upthrow up air combo, we have roller setups, we have smash attacks, and our off stage gimps and kill moves. The thing is, none of these kill true particularly early like you may see from a pichu or peach who can sometimes eat a stock at 80 on ledge. We struggle for that, and landing our true confirms is even harder.
Roller is a solid move at what it does but its not particularly easy to land, And even then it’s easy to mash out of so it wont true confirm until around 120%, and while we’re still developing tech to deal with the issue of up smash pop out for heavier characters, it’s still difficult for them.

Upthrow up air is hard with rage, and is DI dependent, but is still useful, even then.

And our smash attacks aren’t exactly swordies smashes. Using them in neutral is hard, but rewarding. They’re not particularly fast, and don’t have huge hitboxes, but they aren’t slow either, and aren’t as small as other characters. The real issue is how unsafe they are. Up smash OOS is actually really fast at 9 frames, but if its blocked we eat an optimal punish. Our Dsmash is a great two frame, and can catch roll techs but is similarly unsafe.

Inkling does REALLY well off stage though, and our gimp game is strong. Fair, bair, Nair and the like, are all great off stage tools. We have great string to side carry, we have amazing recovery to go a lot deeper than other characters can, with roller extra jump and just a long up B in general, And we have some good gimp tools! Up B, Nair, Dair, splatbomb, splattershot, etc, are all great tools to gimp.

We also have good twoframe with splatbomb shorthop, Dsmash, and Dtilt. Use these tools and it will help you kill.

It’s not to say that inkling struggles to kill on stage, we aren’t the best at it but new setups are still being found, and roller setups are getting more and more consistent!

Remember that Inkling damage output is off the charts, and as long as you keep playing neutral, the kill will come to you eventually.

Q. I keep being told to low profile projectiles, I don’t get it and I’m struggling vs projectile characters, can you explain?
A: Basically, You can dash under projectiles. Our run, foxtrot, and dash dance all low profile a large majority of projectiles. If you’re struggling vs a character see if you can get under them! This will also go under some Tilts, so keep trying things!

Q. What should I use for anti airs?
A: Utilt isn’t generally that good, so instead you can rely on upsmash reads or Splatbomb.

Q. I’m having trouble with sword characters! How do you beat them?
A: Long story short, Inkling struggles with this type of character, but not as hard as we originally thought. You have to out space them, wiff punish them on landing. Use bair, dash attack, and a lot of splattershot, and stay outside of their range. A stabbed inkling is a dead inkling, and you don’t want to upset Marina. I think. A key point to understand, is that a lot of these matchups are HARD but not particularly out of favor. I mean that they’re harder to learn but generally once you’re better at the game they become easier.

Q. How do I deal with zoners?
A:  Zoners are some of our tougher matchups, but you can still get through them easier than other characters in our boat. Low profile what you can and approach slowly. Don’t throw yourself at them, that’s what they want. Take your time, punish them when they get antsy. It won’t be easy, but you can do it! I believe in you to the fullest extent of the law!

Q. Is inkling strong?
A: anyone who denies inkling being top tier at this point is probably trying to get you not to play a solid character. Inkling is very good and rewarding to play.


Q. You didn’t answer my question!
A: In the event that I didn’t cover a question, or a tool you think is very important, feel free to ask important questions in #q-and-a.

Q. Woomy?
A: WOOMY!