SSBM/Advanced Techniques

Advanced Movement Techniques

Advanced Mechanics

Advanced Tech

Crouch Cancelling

Crouch Cancelling (often shorthanded as CC'ing) is an advanced defensive technique in SSBM that makes use of Automatic Smash DI (ASDI).

A property of ASDI is that with it, a player that has just been hit can transition from an airborne to grounded state while in hitstun via the movement. When this is done and the defender is to be hitting the ground fast enough to have a landing animation, the universal normal landing recovery of 4 frames takes priority over the current hitstun that they normally would have taken from the attack. This massively reduces the amount of advantage a move has on hit, turning attacks that may have been combo starters for the attacker into being disadvantageous on hit and highly punishable. It's referred to as "Crouch Cancelling" in particular, because the easiest way for a defender to perform it is to simply crouch, and upon being struck, the down input being held for the crouch will be buffering the ASDI and execute it immediately if it is still held when hitlag ends.

This technique only works at lower percents, as at higher percents the player that has been struck will likely be put into a tumble state where ASDI'ing downward will result in a knockdown instead of a normal landing, which may actually be even more disadvantageous than taking the attack normally. There are also some moves that simply cannot be crouch cancelled at all, because they do not incur the conditions needed to force a landing animation after touching the ground, and so the defender remains in hitstun while grounded.

Empty And Perfect Pivoting

Pivoting, not to be confused with turning around, is a technique that allows for stopping instantly during initial dash making tightly spacing moves in neutral or punish much easier.

Empty pivots are performed by first dashing in a direction, flicking to smash turn in the opposite direction for 1 frame and then allowing the stick to return to neutral on the next frame.

Perfect pivots require you perform a move within a 1 frame window between switching dash directions while already in initial dash.

Empty pivots are generally considered easier due to being able to let the control stick's springs perform the latter half of the input, though very controller dependent. They also still allow you to perform frame perfect actions, while allowing for considerably more leniency when exact frame timings aren't required.