Why use shffl attacks? *Discussion*

Someone in GameFAQs asked this question as to what exactly it is that makes shffl attacks special.

For those who don't know, shffl stands for the following:

sh = short hop
ff = fast fall
l = l-cancel

Pronounced "shuffle."

If anyone had any sort of question about shffl attacks, then I'll post my own reasons on why shffl attacks are so effective at racking damage and harassing your opponent.

First of all, shffl attacks are the quickest and the most efficient way of attacking your enemy. In a simple way of explaining how shffl attacks work, it allows a character to use aerial attacks as if they were on the ground. But one would ask, why not just use ground attacks?

Because ground attacks are limited, usually laggier, and forces you to stand still while using them, as opposed to shffl attacks, where you can control and move in the direction you want to attack, and L-cancel drastically lets your character move faster after each attack. The closest thing you have for a ground attack where you can still move is a dash attack, and even then, it's inferior to a shffl attack in that you have to deal with the lag at the end of the attack and is easily counterable.

As for the shffl itself, what makes it so effective? Let's take it apart piece by piece here.

First, what you want to do is a short hop, which helps you use your aerial attack at a range where he can still make contact against your opponent on the ground.

Your attack comes next. Your options are basically all the aerial attacks that you can use: N-air, F-Air, B-air, U-Air, and D-air. Each of the first letters correspond to the direction of your attack, with N being neutral. Generally, you'd want to use your attack right when you hop off the ground, but sometimes, it's situational. If I hop and I find myself initially out of range, I keep moving forward and attack when I reach my opponent, skipping the fastfall all together. Anyway, let's not complicate things: learn to attack right from the short hop.

Then you'd want to fast fall when you're at the peak or while you're descending. The point of the fast fall is so you can land on the ground as quickly as you can, which is where L-cancel comes in.

Finally, the L-cancel, which reduces the lag from your landing animation. The easiest way to tell the difference is with Link's D-Air. Without L-cancel, Link usually takes a painful long time to take his sword out of the ground. With it, you'll see the quickened pace. In competitive/advanced play, when you learn what you want to do next and instinctly train yourself to use that action after you L-cancel, you'll realize how much of a difference it'll make on your gameplay when you do or don't L-cancel.

For example, if you're using Fox and plan to shine after L-canceling, you'll find that not being able to L-cancel leaves you open for a few good frames, long enough for someone to grab you or jump out of the way before you can use the shine.

So what do we get without any of these components? Without a short hop, you won't be able to attack with your aerials close to the ground as you want to. Without a fast fall, you'll find yourself hanging in the air longer then you want to, especially since you'd want to make your next move right away. Without an L-cancel, you'll find that you're not moving as quickly as you should be, and the few frames that it takes for the animation to end could cost you the match.

Practice with characters that are easier to short hop with. Bowser and Ganondorf normally make good choices. Practice the essentials. Use N-air, F-air, and B-air first. Next, try attempting a D-air and then the U-air, which are normally the harder of the 5 aerial attacks to shffl. If you want, you can learn to shffl your attacks using the C-stick. I'll admit that I've been using C-Stick up to use a shffl U-air with Fox, but quite recently, I'm getting better at using it with just the control stick.

Eventually, you'll want to move on step by step to characters that are more difficult to short hop with, like Link or Mario. Then move on to Fox and Falco. Etc. etc.

Also, study each character and realize that shffl attacks aren't useful for every single character out there, or that there cn be some exceptions. For example, rarely do I see a Shiek use a shffl attack, but Fox uses it quite constantly. A Samus player normally wouldn't shffl unless it was out of a bomb jump. Some players don't fast fall Captain Falcon's N-air in a shffl to allow both kicks to hit. Learn these things about every individual character.

Any questions? Hope that helps out a bit.

Yeah... Shffls are useful for delivering fast painful aerial attacks with no lag

Also got to keep in mind priority. No air attacks "clank" with each other, so if you know that your shffld attack beats something else out, then you swoop in for it. Disjointed hitboxes are usually the dominant air attack, followed by range attacks. After that, it gets pretty ... different. Luigi's sex kick isn't disjointed OR long-ranged and yet has great priority

And I'm surprised you mentioned moving on to Fox and flaco when you get good at shorthops. Samus = Fox in sh difficulty :D Flaco's actually quite easy. Oh. And Samus' shffl isn't SO bad :P


/becomes the resident Samus of SC

What determines priority is really just the size and shape of the hitbox (except with disjointed hitboxes). For example, with Peach's bair, the hitbox isn't totally disjointed from her body (unlike Marth's sword swipes or Ness's fair), but the attack's hitbox does extend beyond Peach's hitbox.

This picture, extracted from SSBM using an AR, shows what the hitboxes actually look like when Peach is using bair.

http://smashinfo.com/peach/bair/02.png

The red hitbox is the attack hitbox and the yellow hitboxes are the various hitboxes of Peach's body. The red hitbox will deal damage if it connects with an opponent's yellow hitbox, and if an opponent's red hitbox connects with one of Peach's yellow hitboxes, she'll take damage. Attacks trade hits when both characters' red hitboxes connect with the opponent's yellow hitboxes. Her bair's awesome priority can be attributed to its obscenely large red hitbox - it's more likely to come into contact with the opponent's yellow hitbox than the other way around.

I like calling them collision bubbles.. Even if that isn't a proper term to be used.

I mentioned short hops in terms of practicing the shffl. You'll be using it more constantly with those characters than someone like Samus.

Helsing: thats very interesting indeed... that really simplifies priority.

so, in short:

Priority is the different between Hitbox size, and your own characters hit box size (as in the area that can receive damage.

The large the difference in size, the more priority. Exceptions would be attacks with invincibility frames.

Basically, yeah.

Also, ground attacks clank when two red hitboxes of similar power (I don't know the exact difference, sorry) connect with each other.

For the most part, red hitboxes disappear upon clanking, and they'll also disappear if the character gets hit in the middle of the attack. However, some red hitboxes will stay active even after clanking or getting hit, so it can deal normal damage and knockback even if it clanks with an opponent's attack. Examples are Mario's fsmash (the fireball sweetspot), Ness's dash attack (the sparks will continue to appear and damage even if you hit Ness out of the attack), and Zelda's uair (the explosion, obviously).

Grabs don't clank or trade hits with anything. Nothing happens if a grab's hitbox connects with an attack's red hitbox. If the grab's hitbox connects with the opponent's yellow hitbox, however, the opponent will get grabbed even if his attack was supposed to connect. This needs to happen on the same two or three active grab hitbox frames, though, so it doesn't occur all that often (unless you're Marth ;_;).

Oh yeah, and calling me helsing on these forums will confuse all the non-GFAQers ;P

sorry, just that this whole dizzy foowayuhwahtsits is too fruity for me <_<

This went from a shffl discussion to a hitbox discussion. ;_;

shffl=phale-yur
hitbox=winnar

On 22-Jun-2005 XIF said:

sorry, just that this whole dizzy foowayuhwahtsits is too fruity for me <_<

Yea, I automatically register you as helsing when I see that name...

EDIT: Really good post, WoZ. Expanded nicely on the one you posted in that thread at GF.

On 22-Jun-2005 XIF said:

Helsing: thats very interesting indeed... that really simplifies priority.

so, in short:

Priority is the different between Hitbox size, and your own characters hit box size (as in the area that can receive damage.

The large the difference in size, the more priority. Exceptions would be attacks with invincibility frames.

well exactly...priority is a lot more intuitive than people make it >_<. i just don't like using the term, and if i do, i usually pair it with range (because that's what priority is - range beyond defensive hitbox). almost all attacks (or maybe all attacks, though i wouldn't know) have some attack hitbox extending beyond the defensive hitbox, some moves more than others. it's just that some moves have readily visible priority (like marth's attacks) and some moves have "invisible" priority (like jigg's fb).

i never did buy much into the standard gamefaqs definition of priority (if two people are attacking and both their attacking hitboxes are overlapping their opponent's defensive hitbox, by some strange property, one attack will "override" the other)....although i never really brought this point up, because i didn't feel well enough versed in the technical aspects of the game. it's nice to see my suspicions verified ^_^

edit: concerning shffl'ing, i like how you state that not every short hop attack ought to be fastfalled - however, i'd like to see that reinforced, because there are plenty of situations where *not* fast-falling is necessary (double fairs/bairs with marth/zelda, ending up on the opposite side of the enemy, letting multiple hits of a certain attack connect, spacing in general).

yeah, shffling, though generally the best way to do aerials, isnt always the best do to.

sometimes fastfalling isnt the way to go. Perfect example are marth's double fair's, which would be impossible if you were forced to do 2 shffl's in a row. Luigi also has many benefits to using double aerials without fastfalling. Jigglypuff shouldnt ever be shffling, and use the extra air time to DI away from the opponent. Sometimes short hop isnt even your best best. Jigglypuff once again, you can ABA throught the opponent, AFA, ff, l-cancel, and grab immediately. Very good for fast fallers, cause a grab can lead to a rest.

Peach is probably the only character where you are not going to use shffl's more than other aerial attack methods. Even the other characters who can Double jump cancel will use Shffl's sometimes. but peach has DJC, float cancels, and her ADA leads STRAIGHT into an ANA, with no escape. Its sick.

Luigi also has many benefits to using tornado or a wavedash instead of 'FFLing. Everything but the sex kick finishes fast enough for it. He also has the luxury of falling a shorthopped aerial with sex kicks when your opponent shields. You pop someone with a short hopped aerial and they shield... sheild diminishes, sex kick kicks in just above the ground and hits. It's cool. I kinda need to do it more.... It should also deal with shield grabs sometimes, I think.

I've noticed something strange when playing Marth. Sometimes, when I shffl a fair, I'll get grabbed just before the attacks hits, and then the attack hits anyway, releasing me from the grab. Why does this happen? (This is kind of on topic, since everyone seems to be talking of hitboxes)

"edit: concerning shffl'ing, i like how you state that not every short hop attack ought to be fastfalled - however, i'd like to see that reinforced, because there are plenty of situations where *not* fast-falling is necessary (double fairs/bairs with marth/zelda, ending up on the opposite side of the enemy, letting multiple hits of a certain attack connect, spacing in general)."


Indeed.

On 22-Jun-2005 WarriorofZarona said:

"edit: concerning shffl'ing, i like how you state that not every short hop attack ought to be fastfalled - however, i'd like to see that reinforced, because there are plenty of situations where *not* fast-falling is necessary (double fairs/bairs with marth/zelda, ending up on the opposite side of the enemy, letting multiple hits of a certain attack connect, spacing in general)."


Indeed.

monocle'd! o_q

<__>

how come these discussions inevitably become discussions between people like us who already know ALOT about shffling, and ends up being like this:

person a: blah blah blah *insert some sage advice/insight here* blah blah blah.

Person b: blah blah blah "indeed, but" blah blah blah *insert more more sageful/insightful comment here* blah blah blah.

Person C who doesnt know what else to say: yo d00d, I liek, totally agree and stuff.

we're phale-yurs =/

>_>

Heh. Yea really, we need the non-gameFAQs/SWF crowd posting. >.>

Which they normally don't post anything worth commenting on because of lack of trying to push and make their game better.