Frame Data
Dash attack is a normal burst attack that gets you a little bit of scrap damage.
However, it becomes super useful if you can get a tipper. When this happens, the character will either pop back towards you or go straight up, making combos especially easy. I don’t know any other moves that defy the laws of physics like this.
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Note on DI in training mode
The DI here was not intuitive to me. When you hit the tipper, the character pops up back towards you. So, in training mode, if your opponent is to your and right and you set DI away, it makes the character hold all the way left (instead of right as attacks normally do). This makes DI away mean they pop even more in your direction.
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How can we get more consistent on landing tipper dash attacks? I decided to turn on grid lines in training mode to get a sense of how far dash attack moves you.
I’m measuring distance between characters as the distance between the front of clairen and the front of the other character.
From Standing Position (or dash dance)
If I do an instant dash attack from standing position (dash + attack or dash + right control stick), the opposing character must be 6 grid units (I’ll call this gu to make this shorter) away to get a tipper. Let’s say a stage is 18 units long (Merchant Port is only 16), this means the character should be around 1/3 of the stage away to get a tipper.
The above dash attack takes a lot of horizontal space. This was because we have to account for both the initial-dash distance and the additional distance dash-attack lunges you forwards. Lets look at each of these more closely.
The same logic applies if you’re dash dancing in place since you’re constantly doing initial dashes back and forth.
Anatomy of a dash
If I baby dash (super small flick of the control stick forwards), I generally move 2 grid units forwards. The smallest normal dash is slightly over 2.
Generally I get 3gu when doing a short initial dash. At the end of my dash attack, my character has moved another 2gu forward and the sword extends 1gu.