@@Smileyfacegreat Yes he can use aerials in some niche situations. Like an up-air out of up-tilt to set up for a platform tech chase sometimes. A neutral air (frame 2) to interupt certain combos or strings. (People think way too much of n-air just because it's frame 2) The most notable use is the d-air recovery boosting Mac can do. By down-airing after his double jump to gain extra range on his up-b by giving it more horizontal reach. And that's really about all viable options he has with his aerials. Yes, he can technically set up a tech-situation with back air like Peanut sometimes does just to troll his opponents. But f-tilt or daf-smash are way better at it and do more damage. F-air is sometimes used to knock people further off-stage. Thing is, Mac doesn't reallt belong that far offstage, he isn't made for edge-guarding that far offstage, he mostly stays really close to the ledge when edgeguarding. When he is unwillingly up in the air while the opponent tries to get him offstage, his best options in the air are almost always his specials. Side-b for a horizontal boost. (doesn't refill after getting hit tho) Counter for calling out obvious attacks, which also gains him horizontal momentum. Neutral-b for armoring through weaker attacks while falling back to the stage. Up-b if the opponent ends up above you for some damage and sometimes a kill. So yes like you said: He CAN use the aerials sometimes, it's just not that good.
I think you perfectly explained why Steve is top 1 with how broken jumping is. also you're godlike for using One Step From Eden music, love your stuff!
Fun fact: a grounded footstool grands you 21 frames of advantage over the opponent. Byleth’s down air is frame 22, and therefore one single frame away from working
I'm always astounded by how many things there are that contribute to the movement and physics of smash. You've got standard character air speed, weights, jumpsquat times, falling speeds, initial jump velocity, etc. there's just so much of it all it's pretty overwhelming. There've been lots of games that try to simulate more realistic physics but as far as I can tell smash is the ONLY one that's a somewhat serious fighting game. Even its competitors seem like they simplify the system with less physics mechanics in general and I wonder if they're better or worse off for it.
The problem with jumping is that eventually you have to land. If you catch every landing, jumping sucks. That being said, you still gain access to all of your strongest and safest moves, so it’s really up to you
That's true, and a big part of Ultimate is in catching landings - but that's exactly what makes jumping so impactful to the game: If you can't catch a character's landing, then you can't keep up with the game mechanic that is more than likely empowering them. A lot of the top tier also has extremely reliable landing options (Steve anvil, Joker's down-gun, Mythra's fallspeed), which either restrict the opponent's positioning options or require them to make decisions very quickly, or in some cases won't even give the landing-catcher time to make a decision.
Nah this is so true though. I got introduced to the game in Smash 4, so learning how to play the game in even a semi-competitive way meant that I had to learn to be patient, spam shield, and not fuck up. I was still playing smash 4 about 3 years after Ultimate came out, honing perfect shields and spacing, locking down defensive and patient play styles, and trying my best to break the low tier allegations (I was a Game and Watch main.) That's about 7 years of playing the game like this. Switching to Ultimate felt so alien and weird and I still struggle with it. It was all so fast, harder to react to and deal with. Suddenly, instead of being rewarded for patience and shielding attacks, I was being grabbed, comboed, and killed at ludicrously early percents. (Again, started as a Game and Watch main, so that's like at 40% against a roy spamming fsmash.) I hated the game for a while, because the play style I spent so long developing just got invalidated. I eventually learned the game and love it, this isn't a cope piece about Smash 4 (that game is good, but very boring compared to ultimate,) but the biggest hurdle to jump (get it?) was learning how to be more mobile, especially in jumping. (Fuck footstools, though. Those changed completely) I think another thing worth mentioning are airdodges. Having an infinite amount of them in Smash 4 made it exponentially easier to land/avoid edge-guards, especially with how lagless they were at the end. Having the airdodge mechanic be changed was huge for the aggression in Ultimate. you can't airdodge out of juggles anymore, because you only HAVE one airdodge, and the lag on it can be punishing if you get read. Not to mention it hurts your recovery,
3:58 Maiden and Spell music mentioned (Yes it says Duelists of Eden in the tracklist. Dreadwyrm is a crossover character _from_ MnS, her theme is a remix of a song from her original game)
In a game where jumps are important, not only does Steve exploit this with plenty of options that can stop said jumps, but can also force said jumps in the first place and do things like easy-bake juggle combos and Footstool Anvil.
I'm surprised the universal jump squat is seen as niche knowledge, back in the Pushblock Gaming days of pre-release analysis this was one of the most important and likewise most talked about feature in favour for why ultimate wouldn't be another smash 4. Aye, ultimate pre-release time was bonkers. I suppose enough time has passed by then. Wonderful video, the effect of Fox being buried by stock icons was very well animated.
This video revealed so much as to why things work so well; i feel like this will unlock a lot of potential in lower/intermediate levels of the community
i mean jumping is overpowered in every platform fighter I'd say... aerials are just so much better than ground moves 'cause you can land with 'em and be such little total duration. You can also move while attacking
I hope the next smash games combines the dominance of shields and jumps so that there can be a variety of viable offensive and defensive characters/playstyles instead of finding a 3rd thing to buff to oblivion and define the whole game.
yeah I DID NOT KNOW that phantom footstools had freaking intangebility for 4 frames, that's way too good for something that happens accidentely 98% of the time
Thanks for watching. I know I've been out for a while, so I'll see if I can put something a little more casual out in the next few weeks. Nothing for certain, though! This one just took me a while. Also, reminder that I have a Ko-Fi page if you'd like to support me. The highest tier just had a price reduction, so you can get your name featured at the end of the videos for cheaper now! LINK: ko-fi.com/FireThePyro
I feel like Nintendo could combine both smash 4 and smash ultimate's metas into one, like I love the fast jumps and quick attacks and escially the fast gameplay, but sometimes I feel like shielding feels literally like it's worse to do sometimes, I just want a rewarding block from time to time, and not be a sugared up mf throwing out like 20 billion aerials.
Man I never actually cared to look into the jump squat data and always complained Ultimate is just every character spamming their best aerial options until kill % or offstaging the opponent, now I know why.
i'm really enjoying this content for shining light on mechanics i wouldn't even give a second thought - there's always more to this game than i realise especially for footstools, because i didn't know how wildly broken they could be the phantom footstool elevator is _hilarious_ to me
I do like some things about foot stalls, apart from having simply having some strong tech in the game, which is how they give a role to the game's lineup of terrible stall and fall ariels several of which I would personally like to see get axed for selfish reasons. I get your point, but I would still like to see foot stalls have some role in the next game even if it was very different. Like maybe giving you some resources back when offstage IDK.
I always know shielding is not good and jumping + movement is much better in Ult, but I never know in depth. Thanks for the educational video on this(and what mechanics are meta in Smash 4)
this is interesting. I've been around labbers so I've been passively aware of, just about ALL of this but never put together just how much smash is around jumping. I play luigi what do you expect lol love this video pyro!
My guy you make such good videos, this is fantastic! I also got a better look at smash 4's competetive side, it was my first smash game I played and I have tons of nostalgia for it but never really knew how it played out at a higher level once I started getting into ult (and VERY recently, melee). I'm glad it is this way, I love being in the air an ANY game, its a lot more fun and in fighting games it feels rewarding out outmaneuver your opponent. It's also interesting to see this game now that I've gotten into playing melee, they feel so different to play it's actually insane, but I find both incredibly fun.
Jumping is really powerful in a platform fighter? Who would have guessed??? 🤷♂️ Fr tho, I do feel like how good a fighter in Smash Ultimate really depends on how good their air game is.
Shield poking shouldn't even be a mechanic, like ah yes I love when my dedicated block button just decides it's not in the mood to block today. Would arguably make shielding more dangerous because then it's either you block the hit or you get shield broken.
No this is silly. The whole point of shield losing health, getting smaller, and getting poked, is to prevent you from shielding for ages, and adds another level of skill expression in the form of shield tilting (something ult doesnt want to lose since the series has systematically removed most tech over the last 20 years). Poking still typically requires good spacing, even if it can occasionally be jank. Its like complaining the blue pikmin needs a buff in pikmin 3, when the real issue is a lack of use cases in the games levels. If shield poking is too good in ult (not really) thats not the mechanics fault. Tho fuck airborn footstools tho lmaooo
I never knew phantom footstooling gave the jumper 4 frames of invincibility starting on frame 1. Genuinely kinda shocked right now considering it seems like something that could make a difference unintentionally in casual games. And while we're talking about phantom footstool's frame 1 invincibility, does that mean that any character could escape Inkling up throw up air assuming the Inkling spaces it so that they're directly below you considering it's one frame from being a true combo?
Thank you for explaining to me why I hate ultimate so bad. Personally, if I have to make a choice, I'd rather have an overly defensive game than an overly offensive one. It used to be a bad habit to jump without reason, now it's the safest choice you can make.
I can see faster jumps but please give us strong anti-airs (that aren't up smashes). Just whipping out an up tilt with upper body intangibility and getting 12% would be enough, even when the reward for a landing aerial is 6 times more mortal
love the video! I do have a couple questions about 8:46 , like how you say that characters are better based on how much a character can counter strong jumping. do you think there's any reason as to why someone like Marth and Lucina are as far apart as they are? And what about weird cases like duck hunt where they have enough projectiles to feed a family and punish jumping? just wanna hear you thoughts :))))
I'm not as confident about the Marth/Lucina differences, my best guess is that because Marth's tippers are considered difficult to hit, his potency for punishing jumps goes way down. I also hear that those two are far more spec'd into edgeguarding and ledgetrapping, but i could be wrong about that. Duck Hunt is interesting. He mostly falls into the category of "Zoner that struggles to cover jump-ins", but clearly he's more equipped than say, Zelda with his Up-Air, which is an extremely reliable anti-air when it hits. His main problem in the verticality department is his own air mobility, Being a low-gravity fastfaller is bad for the reasons I mentioned in "Smash's Secret Stat", but in this scenario it basically means that Duck Hunt's jumps are more committal than other characters, so a bad jump from him is easier to punish than a bad jump from a character with a higher gravity value. It doesn't help that while his aerial frame data is all pretty good, there's nothing there that's overwhelmingly good at letting him land, due to startup/hitbox size/hitbox placement/landing lag. That being said I think he's better than the current tier list would lead on, but not by much. Tl;dr idk about lucina, duck hunt's problem comes down more to his disadvantage state rather than his advantage state or neutral.
![[SSBU] Jumping is Overpowered](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
