The BIG MOVES of Smash - An Analysis

just a quick heads-up you can now find me as mala croc on patreon I've aimed to make the tears straightforward with very competitive rewards encompassing everything from exclusive content to community events to the assets I use in my own videos so if you're interested a links below the creator of Super Smash Bros Meza hero Sakurai has discussed his disappointment with the competitive smash scenes reluctance to use unsafe powerful moves when they play but why exactly is this the case today we take a deeper look at only the biggest of big move smash ultimate has to offer while I don't see much play on the tournament stage and what you can do if you are desperate to pull them off to clarify this is a bad idea for every move covered in this video all of which are unbelievably impractical compared to stronger options each character has access to if your goal is to win you absolutely should not be using these but come on don't you want to anyways [Music] you're likely familiar with the concept of risk/reward which emphasizes creating the strongest possible ratio and rewards favor in other words minimizing risk maximizing reward this principle applies to everything from a finance ears investment decisions to an oil company deciding how many human deaths would be appropriate for a given pipeline flow yep welcome to the world of risk management and it certainly applies to competitive games if a soccer player takes a shot from centerfield and they may score an important goal but are also in heavy danger of missing are being blocked and losing control of the ball high reward but also high risk in boxing chessboxing the Philidor defense avoids introducing early wheat is this into your rank but is unpopular among grandmasters because it doesn't seize control of center squares low risk but correspondingly low reward and like a surprising amount of combat sports principles this concept can be extended to traditional fighting games as well as their derivatives which includes platformer fighters like Super Smash Bros it doesn't take a mastermind to see the issue with throwing out a falcon punch your opponent has all the time in the world either to attack you first or simply dodge your blocking and punish you with whatever they want obviously extremely high risk risk in general is something competitive smash players try to avoid at all costs lower risk attacks are usually heavily favored even if the reward isn't particularly high and characters with plenty of low risk options that also offer high reward usually end up being the top tiers of their games on the topic of high reward though you may be thinking sure that falcon punch may not land all too often but when it does the reward is just so high that it must be worth it sometimes right in reality though the rewards for these kinds of big moves are often kind of underwhelming Super Smash Bros wasn't afterall originally designed as a competitive fighting game and although the modern titles do take the tournament scene into account is still very much designed around all sorts of game modes ranging from competitive singles to 8 player item parties to doubles two wacky custom games and the same moves need to be used in all of these formats not a factor that the Tekken or Street Fighter developers really need to worry about so while it wouldn't really be unfair to have say warlock punch kill you at 0% across the map and singles in fact the move would still be very weak that would likely be extremely frustrating in different game modes where there are other forces leading you into the attacks path as a result these big moves often tend to be heavily reined in ganador s warlock punch only kills one combos worth of damage earlier than his forward smash does for example while volcano kick actually kills later so not only is the risk always extremely high but the reward is also fairly mediocre more often than not overall not a good combination for anyone hoping to break these moves out in the serious game but what exactly are these moves what are these most big impractical moves and smash that we're talking about and if you are determined to use them what exactly would that look like Falcon punch is arguably the single most iconic move in smash but does that actually translate to being viable in a competition well no if it did it wouldn't be in this video we don't need any deep analysis to see the Captain Falcon can't use the attack as a reaction to anything about a paralyzed opponent it's obviously far too slow but what if we're not reacting but rather predicting to take a look at these situations we'll need a crash course and one of fighting games most fundamental concepts frame data competitive smash youtubers are in an interesting spot because our audience has ranged wildly from top players to people who play nothing but Kerby because his hats are funny so depending where exactly you fall on the spectrum you may know any amount of this information already as a compromise we'll do this quick but thorough so what you're watching right now isn't movement it's a series of still images being shown in very quick succession links sort is here then it's here this middle period never actually existed but our brains are still perfectly happy to accept the sequence as fluid motion exactly how quickly these images or frames are shown and changes based on the medium it doesn't have to stay constant hand animation generally runs to 24 frames per second but in practice often switches between 12 8 & 6 to keep the animators sane well high-end PC builders take great pride in shoving as many frames into any given second as possible fighting games including platformer fighters however don't do this they universally run at 60 frames per second every second and because of this the time between a frame appearing and disappearing is always the same technically about 16.7 milliseconds but yuck just call it a frame this number is constant and additionally the game only updates every frame there's no damage done our bodies moving between these two segments which means the frames are extremely useful for discussing time in a game like smash moving back to falcon punch and it's quick as the move comes out frame 53 almost a full second that's too slow to catch spot dodges almost any attack in the game jumps roll hmm rolls all right so let's be optimistic and say that you as a Captain Falcon player are facing Samus who I was one of the slowest back row Lana missions in the game at 39 total frames and it's only invincible from frames 5 to 20 Vulcan punch comes out frame 53 significantly too late to catch the raw animation after it started but if you began a falcon punch with Samus world 14 frames were later afterwards she would get caught by it now of course the obvious counter for Samus would just be not to roll once she sees the Falcon punch starting but things aren't quite that simple for a start it's not immediately obvious what Captain Falcon is doing his shot only becomes audible and the fire of the punch only appears 6 frames into the attack this makes things easier for sure but still leaves a pretty nice 8 frame window for Samus to notice the attack and decide not to roll except she's being played by a human with human reactions which aren't actually all that impressive if you're interested in a more comprehensive look at how reaction time affects gameplay I'd highly recommend checking out the beefy smash dudes or Corey Gaming both of who have made excellent videos on the topic but to keep things simple people take about 250 milliseconds to react to a visual stimulus and 174 audio since Captain Falcon does shout we'll go with audio and because frames are a fixed amount of time we can drop the milliseconds then and says say that when a human hears a sound it takes about 10 frames to react to it since your everyday samus player can't tell you're throwing around a falcon punch until frame 6 they'll take at least 10 frames to react to it and they'll be hit if they start rolling 14 frames after the punch starts up bingo tossing the extra few frames it'll take to realistically recognize the shout and how do you land a falcon punch like this this actually works on shorter roll animations as well because of a phenomenon called input lag again check one of the videos I mentioned to learn more but essentially if your opponent decides this is the right time to roll they won't actually begin that all until 6 frames later which moves the window closer to Falcon so problem solved right we found a solid practical use for Falcon punch well not exactly even with the leniency we talked about this is still a pretty tight window if your opponent rolls even a bit earlier late you're going to miss or be blocked and of course the elephant in the room if your opponent chooses any option besides exactly rolling backwards you're stuck doing a falcon punch and are gonna be hit by the hardest punished they can throw at you disguising your intentions while discovering your opponent's is one of the biggest contributors to playing good smash and rolling is one of the first habits most players learn to break so you're not likely to run into many actual competitors predictable enough to make this a risk worth taking what we've really been doing is demonstrating that yes it is possible to land a big move that doesn't entirely rely on your opponent making a mistake and using the same frame counting method we can come up with more but in practice the margins for these setups are still so thin that strong players can't and don't rely on them for landing falcon punch or really any move like it instead it tends to be used in environments where your opponent is required to make a mistake but you're guessing that the odds for doing so are at their highest or simply in cases where your opponent has few to no options left and their actions are forced to be fairly predictable even then many of these situations could just as easily have been answered with a less risky equally rewarding attack although as we mentioned falcon punch is one of the smash series most famous moves and there's a kind of badge of honor that goes along with landing one that means you'll see them thrown out far more often than they should be if we're going purely by practicality yeah sure you might have eaten two forward smash the last ten times you tried to land one by hitting it on the eleventh that's where the glory is alongside falcon punch luigi's downtown was the other original big disrespectful move in smash and he's proudly carried on that tradition in every game sentence so how do you use it well to begin with even by the standards of big moves using downtown against granite opponents is a very bad idea it comes out on frame 45 which gives it a bit less risk than Falcon punch but it's still extremely risky since it can't be taught canceled and unlike its og cousin the reward isn't even in the ballpark of being justified true it does combo into most of Luigi's move set thanks to his low knock back in high hits done but this doesn't really accomplish as much as you'd expect his aerials aren't especially powerful particularly upwards Luigi cyclin won't generally kill until passed 100% and his best option and super jump punch is still fairly tame in the air on the topic of which there isn't a single set up against grounded opponents we're using down taunt is a better idea than going for super jump punch this tool in Luigi's Arsenal is also stylish and flashy kills much earlier than any of his downtown follow-ups and also comes on frame eight instead of 45 which means you've got over half a second to position yourself compared to down Tarzan eternity by competitive smash standards and if none of this is convinced you yeah our damn talk combos hilarious of course they're clearly supposed to be but it's about the worst risk/reward ratio we're gonna be looking at today which is saying quite a bit the alternate primary use for downtown is attacking opponents hanging at the ledge unlike the gentle upwards blow it dishes out two granite characters Luigi hits airborne and hanging opponents with a brutal spike that will quite literally ko at 0% the 45 frame wind up though remains the same which means that lining it up with the two frames of vulnerability characters hobble grabbing the ledge is extremely difficult and even in a regrab situation without invincibility this is still well past the minimum for human reaction time and most of the roster has plenty of ways to stall dodge or even attack Luigi for attempting it which is all fine even in the earlier smash games where characters couldn't automatically grab the ledge the attack was clearly intended more as an easter egg than anything else and of course in reality of Luigi players are gonna go with their amazing down tilt spiking down air or even unique edge guarding tether grab over down taunt still the second most useful of the attacking times less so the snakes boxes but wildly more dangerous than greninja yikes camera flipped let's Kirby pull out a giant flaming hammer and start swinging it around wildly which is awesome but as with every attack on this list usually not the best idea but of all the attacks we're looking at though this is among the more practical since it can create genuine pressure if your opponent is trapped in the corner just not as effectively as other moves Kirby has access to everything we've looked at so far has been extremely static once Captain Falcon starts to wind up his punch he has a small window to decide whether or not to turn around but other than that simply has to wait for the animation to go through where Luigi doesn't even have this to work with in comparison Kirby's hammer can be primed ahead of time and during the priming he can move and jump which is slow but does allow for a degree of interactivity and prediction and very importantly he can also turn around it takes one frame for the turnaround animation and 11 more to actually swing the hammer and using the same in force for falcon punch we see hey this actually lets us react to the sound of an opponent rolling behind us now we can just barely do it it's a quiet sound and the easier reaction to the role animation doesn't work so in a competitive setting doing this consistently seems kind of questionable but definitely a lot better than nothing the same statement applies to the armor and intangibility Kirby gets during the swag it's not gonna do anything unless your opponent Allen geing the giant flaming weapon that deals 42% which they won't but again nice to have unfortunately though this is where most of the utility of hammer flip ends its areal use is extremely poor compared to Kirby's other options you're forced to take to the air and commit even harder if you want to go for a shield break and it doesn't hit below ledges which brings us to King Dedede truth be told DVDs jet hammer doesn't really belong in this video it falls more into the same category as moves like slow smash attacks moves that you certainly won't see often but have too much of a niche to be talked about alongside Luigi's down taunt but since we're already covering a giant hammer swing from the kirby series may as well do a comparison in which case jet hammer compares very favorably to Kirby's hammer flip it comes out faster deals more damage breaks full shields has Arbor even when it's not charged and most significantly hits below the ledge which actually makes it a pretty solid - framing move this is something a lot of people don't seem to know mainly because DVD has notoriously strong ledge trapping and edge guarding tools already and giving those up to charge up a swing isn't really his style in the hands of another character though Jen hammer may actually see regular use making it overall much more impressive than hammer flip but not nearly impressive enough to beat out Gordo and down smash it it'd be a shame if the character who spent years being too big for smash didn't have anything on a list of big moves and yep skewer absolutely delivers dishing out by far the most damage a single move has ever done in the series at 60% the startup of 30 frames also isn't too bad by the standards of this video only being one frame slower than ganondorf's forward smash which does see play at the competitive level of course ganondorf's forward smash is dangerous here while skewer is dangerous here but the speed still does give it a few useful applications one of the simplest of which is be reversing it to catch opponents trying to roll behind you this isn't even close to a reaction but your opponent also won't be able to react to the skewer making it a passable hard read but it's important to note that the spacing gets very tight impractically tight on characters with shorter rolls with good spacing and timing you can also use skewer detect chase although even if you've got a read on your opponent's habits you still need to have a great sense of how far each character travels off their tech roll and things get messy when we start including missed X this improves on a platform which restricts tech roles to one of three fairly predictable positions although we're also talking about a character with an up smash that covers every tech option on paper up smash to 17% all the time we're skewered a 60% a third of the time so you could argue for skewer being better to go for in the long run but in practice up smash is far easier to execute can catch missed text and put you in a much better position if you mess up then again knocking your opponent down on a platform puts you in a better position than launching them into the air so it's not a totally crazy idea and probably one of the more practical uses for the move finally if you're a fan of smash highlight videos you've probably seen this setup before it's not as good as it might first look your opponent isn't gonna get hit by analysts say specifically air dodge in place try to hit you with a short-range move or do absolutely nothing there is a bit of footage out there of good players falling for it but it's telling that it's pretty much all from the early days of ultimate not really the kind of thing you get caught by twice overall skewer stills in a move you're gonna see often particularly on a character like Ridley who specializes in covering multiple options at once with Swiss Army knife style moves but at the very least the reward does hold up its end of the risk/reward bargain and its speed isn't the worst we've seen by any meetings making it one of the more practical entries on this list of wildly impractical big movies was there anyone else to close the video with Ganondorf is the one character with multiple big moves to pull from fitting for his status as the most heavy hitting glory or death fighter smash has to offer nothing representing this better than his iconic up tilt the volcano kick Ultimates iteration of the classic move is the fastest we've seen by far coming out at a speedy 60 frames a full second this unfortunately means that it can't catch any of your opponent's actions whatsoever off pure frame data although the blow is softened a little bit by the surprisingly powerful wind Ganondorf pulls opponents towards them which means every now and then you may surprise someone trying to space their own volcano kicks wind up but this is hardly a reliable strategy the two small redeeming factors Ganondorf Southfield has are at shield damage and the fact that it hits below the ledge the attack breaks full shields immediately which is virtually a guaranteed stock but technically should always be avoidable in terms of two framing volcano cake does have a fairly generous hitbox and is quite powerful but as we mentioned earlier is actually less powerful in Ganondorf forward smash which even at slow mine's up twice as fast part of that wind-up can be stored for later and it also hits below the ledge completely outclassing volcano kick and that's not even getting into one of the most powerful spikes and smash which is also an iconic move the hits blow of the ledge while Kano kicked baby the most useful it's been since ledge napping recoveries were introduced but make no mistake it was never really useful and still isn't but it is at the very least unique to Ganondorf which brings us to warlock punch now in the final moments of this video we move more away from analysis and towards opinion because honestly there really isn't too much to say here the quickest this move comes out is 70 frames well over a second which is so slow that you can read your opponent's role and they still have plenty of time to roll right back it's so slow they can hit the armor on the grounded punch realize what you're up to and stop it outside of shield breaks in moments where your opponent has absolutely no options left warlock punch is funny but has no actual purpose which is problematic because well Ganondorf already has a move like this he began life in melee as a Captain Falcon clone and over the years some of that clone aspect has always remained because it came to represent Ganondorf in Smash even if it didn't represent Ganondorf The Legend of Zelda character and one of videogames most iconic villains which for the most part is alright ganondorf's Danner and volcano kick may have originally been recycled animations but they become so ingrained as part of Ganondorf aside Andy and smash that the decision not to change them over the years is understandable however the flipside of this is that many people are upset that such an important character isn't represented the way he appears in his own series very well most characters in smash only get four special moves which are the most freeform in terms of what they can be designed to do so our absolutely pivotal in bridging the gap between a character's Canon and Super Smash Bros iterations when we look at Bayonetta aggressively darting through the air as if she never left her home series or the heroes mana gauge and vast arsenal of magic spells it really paints warlock punch in a bad light Ganondorf has had an incredible array of powers over the years in Smash has relatively few opportunities to express the full scope of those powers and yet almost twenty years after his debut as a last minute addition to melee were still left with a move that's both inferior to and has heavy design overlap with attacks from not just another character but also his own moves source material issues appear in a lot of the older roster but a balance always needs to be struck between keeping the character familiar to longtime smash fans while moving them forward into modern standards for character design ganondorf's balance doesn't seem quite right especially since he's often struggled to find a home with players looking to push the series to his limits and has been burdened with multiple awful moves game after game ultimate took the largest step yet towards giving Ganondorf his own identity moving him into his most enduring timeline and properly giving him the sword he's been denied for two decades and I think there was a missed opportunity here to finally retire warlock punch for good an attack inspired by ocarina of time seems most logical and we've seen multiple fan projects offer their takes on this idea but he could also a reference to Mies or calamity Ganon or Hyrule warriors among many others to offer a more complete picture of this horrific entity reincarnated throughout history the exact details aren't so important right now but why not indulge in any of the countless possibilities that a series of long lasting and influential as The Legend of Zelda has created big moves are an expression of smash at its most explosive well they're never good and we're never intended to be it's great to have them in the game because the ability to express yourself through chaos and laugh at the odds is exciting challenging and above all fun exactly what Smash should be if we're looking at someone who can already do this though I think training the weaker of the two options available to him for something that strengthens both Ganondorf is a character as well as his ties to one of the greatest creations in the history of video games seems like a very worthwhile deal thanks for watching everyone and hey if you liked it why not leave a like what are your thoughts on big moves in Smash do you think warlock punches due for a replacement or would you miss it too much for anything else to fill its role but before you answer that be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell for more smash content and follow me on twitter at mr. ma crock if you want to see what I'm up to oh and clumsy last minute patreon plug should probably pick a graphic for that later people [Applause] there's a crazy amount of information to keep track of in my floor matter well I try very hard to do diligent research every now and then something does slip through the cracks so here's my chance to clear the air on all of it alright and in the final video to update my pre-release content we're taking a look at the five most improved smash for veterans now that we've had the game in our hands for a few months now listen very very carefully

Channel: MockRock

Views: 1,318,585

Keywords: Smash Ultimate, Review, alpharad, Nintendo, little z, super smash bros ultimate, smash bros ultimate, tier list, nintendo direct, arlo, esam, hungrybox, fall guys, age of calamity, among us, ssbu, kirby fighters 2, alpharad deluxe, Nintendo Switch, PS5, IGN, Super Mario 3D All Stars, Gameplay, Speedrun, Lets Play, Fire Emblem Heroes, Pokemon, Pokemon Sword and Shield, 2020, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Meme, Memes, T1, kirby, minecraft, minecraft steve, minecraft smash, minecraft steve smash

Id: J5YInWndvBI

Length: 21min 5sec (1265 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 18 2019