Zelda (SSBU)/Up aerial

Hitbox visualization showing Zelda's up aerial.

Overview

A large overhead blast of fiery magic generated from Zelda's fingers. It is the strongest up aerial in the game and deals high damage. The late hit is moderate in power and damage.

It is very disjointed, being positioned high up. While this gives it good coverage above Zelda, allowing her to shark stages, it lacks horizontal range and cannot hit most opponents at level with her. The hitbox has a deceptively moderate duration relative to the explosion visual. Furthermore, despite its appearance, it is a direct move attached to Zelda herself. Therefore, moving will cause the true hitbox to follow Zelda away from the visual.

It is Zelda's only aerial to have a large, strong and lingering hit. This makes it noticeably generous in covering techs on platforms, calling out jumps and catching landings, which her other aerials can struggle with due to stricter timing and/or hitbox sizes.

Up air has relatively low landing lag for its power at 12 frames. This makes it safe on shield if falling below opponents on platforms. At low percents, it can combo into neutral aerial, Lightning Kick, or into itself. However, it will quickly launch too far for true follow-ups due to its high base knockback. This also means that it will always send into tumble and can KO especially early near the top blast zone.

It is transcendent and cannot directly negate projectile hitboxes. Therefore, even Peach's weakest turnips, for example, can counterintuitively travel through the explosion completely unaffected. This makes the move unreliable in challenging opponents with landing projectile options. It also has slow startup, high ending lag and a late auto-cancel window, making it a bit risky to use if not falling.

Update History

7.0.0

Up aerial has a bigger hitbox (8u → 9u), increasing its range.
Up aerial's clean hit has more knockback scaling (70 → 73).
Up aerial has a new late hit that increases its duration (frames 14-16 → 14-19), and deals less damage (17% → 12%) with knockback not compensated.