A glancing blow (チップ, chip), known in Super Smash Bros. Melee as a phantom hit, is the result of a hitbox making insufficient contact with a damageable object – that is, the attack's hitbox does not connect deep enough into the target's hurtbox to be considered a solid hit. Glancing blows are rather rare and almost always accidental. Depending on the game and circumstances, they can range from causing no damage to having no ill effect. It is believed that glancing blows only occur between hitboxes and hurtboxes, and not between hitboxes and reflectors or absorbers. Glancing blows can occur with any hitbox or hurtbox, including those of stage hazards or items.
The concept of glanging blows does not exist in the original Super Smash Bros. due to its hitboxes and hurtboxes being cube-based instead of sphere-based.
In Melee
In Melee, glancing blows are commonly called "phantom hits", as they weren't given an official name until Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Such hits occur when a hitbox connects less than 0.01 units through a hurtbox and do half damage with no knockback or flinching, with the attacker not subjected to any freeze frames (but the defender is). There is nothing indicating that a glancing blow was made and the damage dealt by a phantom hit is not applied until the defender's freeze frames run out, allowing the move a chance to connect fully on a later freeze frame. A phantom hit does not count as hitting the target, so this behaviour can cause the move to hit twice (once with the phantom hit and again with the proper hit) if full contact is made after freeze frames have ended and phantom hit damage has been applied - this requires the move to have a hitbox that lasts longer than the freeze frames it applies. It is possible to SDI during the hitlag, but only if already in a knockback action from being hit with something else. Phantom hits can never be ASDIed. A phantom hit will count toward the stale moves queue.
Some characters with enough multi-frame attacks happen to benefit from a glancing blow. Examples include Link's up special, as well as that of his clone, Young Link, to a lesser extent. Marth, Sheik, Peach, Captain Falcon, Dr. Mario, Luigi, Mario, Roy, and Bowser's down smashes also exhibit this trait.
In Brawl
In Brawl, glancing blows occur when hitboxes connect less than 0.1 units through a hurtbox, happening far more easily than in Melee, and make a very quiet "chik" sound as well as producing small orange sparks. They also deal no damage at all and do not produce freeze frames for the defender; this removes the double-hit effects that Melee had. As the "chik" and sparks occur on the first frame of the hit, it is possible to see an attack have a glancing blow on one frame and a solid connection on the next (as opposed to Melee, where this was undetectable at game speed). In general, glancing blows count as the attack not hitting, and have absolutely no effect other than previously described.
In SSB4
Glancing blows appear unchanged from Brawl in Super Smash Bros. 4.
Triggering a glancing blow
Despite glancing blows being quite rare, it is possible to purposely trigger them with some setups:
In Melee
- Go to Home-Run Contest and select Peach. Use a Down tilt on the Sandbag without pushing it, then go to the left ledge and start Teetering, then roll to the right. Peach can now Down-Smash to phantomhit the Sandbag as long as it is lying on the ground. This only works if the unit of measurement is meters (PAL version or NTSC versions with Japanese language setting).
In Brawl
- With Samus on Yoshi's Island, performing an up tilt on the unturned blocks at ground-level will always trigger a glancing blow. Here, the spark's positioning is higher than what one would normally expect.
- Some characters are set up for a glancing blow when on the Online Practice Stage.
- Jigglypuff starts exactly the right distance away from the Sandbag to achieve a glancing blow with the first hit of its standard attack (jab) or the third "hit" of Sing.
- One of Kirby's down tilts will put the Sandbag exactly the right distance away from him so that a repeat will result in a glancing blow.
- Peach's jab combo will put the Sandbag exactly the right distance away from her so that consecutive jabs will result in glancing blows.
- Other moves, such as Luigi's down tilt and Lucas's up smash, will result in a glancing blow as well.
Tool-Assisted Superplays (TAS)
The superhuman precision enabled by tool-assistance effectively allows a player to control much of the extreme difficulty inherent in forcing a glancing blow. This has led to the creation of gameplay videos, particularly of Melee, consisting almost entirely of glancing blows.
In TAS videos of the Home-Run Contest, strategies commonly consist of bat dropping while forcing a glancing blow (of the type that allows the dropped bat to hit twice) repeatedly, effectively allowing the player to inflict much more damage than otherwise probable in real time.