Raptor's Special: How 2 Kill

hit

Aerial Hit



Grounded Hit



Smash



Neutral Hit



Charged Hit

Aerial and grounded

only

Smashing

Charging

Instant release



Release right before the hitlag end and



Mid-hitlag release

Short spin time,



Maximum spin time and



something in between.

Short spin time

by releasing right before the hitlag ends

Instant Release

Long spin time

Releasing at some random point during the hitlag

spinning for a mid-long duration

BUNT

Anyway, let's get to the fun part.We basically have a LOT of ways to kill people with the special. But let's hop one step back before we even use the special.did you eventhe ball in the first place? You basically can differentiate between these factors:hitsmatter when it comes to choosing angles that can come out of the special (obviously). How does that apply to my killing thought process? EZ, Sherlock. Imagine you are facing the corner when neutral hitting the ball grounded. Your opponent would either try to intercept your special or cover "everything". "Everything" does not include your aerial down angle (usually) which you could normally not use. That's where jumping comes into play. Tap jump into neutral hit and choose down angle. Thatresult in a kill if the ball speed is sufficient (depending on stage, character height, positioning, blabla, you know the drill).The sad part is that these moves are incredibly obvious. That's where charged hits come into play. If you jump charge hit the ball in the air right above the ground your opponent has way less time to react to that kind of ... oh, wait. He actually can, if he already sees you jump charging at the ball!So what do we do then? Boom! If even we don't know what we are doing how is the opponent able to tell? Let's apply that idea to our situation: Jump charge into the ball and try to hit it right above the ground, but with some kind of error. Raptor could actually be on the ground or not depending on how you timed it! This creates a great pseudo 50/50 situation for you and your opponent. "But what if he tries to cover both down angles?" Well ♥♥♥♥, can he really cover all options apart from down angle then? Small hint: even then there is still the glorious timing factor of the special.Here is the difference:is only most often only viable in combination with a fast release at the end of the hitlag if you bunted beforehand. You can kill some people without having bunted before but seriously at some point people are not stupid enough anymore to just stand there and gamble whether you use special. They will in most cases walk away or towards you to intercept your special. So don't make it too obivous.incoming hits and following up with fast release special is also really strong. You would have to choose a fitting angle that your opponent can't cover (in time).The next important part that makes this special so sick is. You can choose betweenandThat alone with positioning make for 54 different situations times all the angles you can choose. Sounds sick, but in the end it's ok.is, like I explained in Smashing, used for. You can basically make your opponent think that you are simply gonna release the ball, but you are only doing so with a delay, which they won't be able to cover (actually in some occasions they can cover it with bunt spamming and the right distance, since the bunt hitbox uptime is higher than swinging and it has a faster "recovery rate"). This however is a very lame and obivous move and most players will just close the distance if you are in long hitlag.The other occasion where this is ok is when playing HAS in combination with. It creates quite the chaos at 100+ speeds.is good when your opponent tries to steal your ball out of your special and you are in midair. If timed well they will jump past you while you are still spinning and you can hit them in the back. Keep in mind that choosing the maximum spin durationthe speed, so you might consider whether you really wanna do it, depending on what speed you are playing or want to play on.orcan be devastating when you pay attention to your opponents movement. If they run to a spot where they try to cover a lot you can already just choose to release a bit earlier than they might expect. Especially when moving this is extremely painful (remember the rule of the first chapter?).You canout of special, hot damn.The most common uses are downbunts in midair into straight neutral (or smash into the ground if you messed up, but this can be quite benefitial sometimes, too) or bunting upwards into straight aerial neutral, aerial down-angle into your opponents face or up-angle to hit them on their head. For the last 2 options the bunt mechanic acts as an extra delay and positioning feature.Be careful when downbunting close to your opponent, that won't end well for you most of the time.