| Zelda forward tilt hitbox visualizations. | ||||
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OverviewEdit
Zelda slashes horizontally with a magically produced blade from her hand. It has one of the slowest start-ups of her moves at frame 12, with moderate ending lag. Forward tilt is moderately disjointed, with three sourspots on her arm and two sweetspots past her hand. She also lunges forward before returning to her original position (similar to down tilt), giving the hitboxes good horizontal range. There is a slight disjoint between the blade visual and the hitboxes, however. The effect is attached to her root, but the hitboxes are attached to her arm. On frame 13, her body and the blade continue to move forward, but her arm swings back, causing the effect to have more range on frame 13, but the actual hitboxes not to.
When the sweetspot lands, it has excellent reward. It is the highest damage forward tilt in the game, and is one of her safest moves on shield at -10 with good pushback. Overall, it is the second strongest behind Incineroar's sweetspotted forward tilt; it can KO marginally earlier than Incineroar's at early percents, in particular near the ledge, on lightweights and/or with suboptimal DI, with its high base knockback potentially stealing stocks.
However, the sweetspot range is one of the strictest in the entire game. They require a very specific spacing that is arguably stricter than her Lightning Kicks due to their lowest priority. Forward tilt’s sourspots comprise a majority of the move’s range; they have the highest priority, are often unsafe on shield and are much weaker than the sweetspots, although still stronger than the average forward tilt. Angling it reduces the move’s overall horizontal range slightly, which may help with landing the sweetspot on opponents that are a bit too close. Zelda lacks practical setups into forward tilt's sweetspot; it is easily outclassed as a finisher by Lightning Kick, which is much faster, stronger, and easier to sweetspot due to dashes and jumps allowing better spacing.
All the hitboxes are exceptionally small (for reference, only 3/5 are larger than her kicks' sweetspots, and all are smaller than Luigi’s Super Jump Punch aerial sweetspot), resulting in the narrowest move in her kit. While angling up or down relieves its susceptibility to jumps and low-profiles, respectively, they naturally introduce new significant blind spots of their own. Forward tilt does fill a niche in her kit of being a strong and longer-ranged poking normal on the ground; it may be used to approach and challenge landings, for instance from a pivot cancel for extra sliding range. However, its slow startup, minimal active frames, strict priority and narrowness make it relatively situational, requiring careful use.
Update historyEdit
Forward tilt deals more damage (10%/12% → 11.5%/15%), with knockback scaling not fully compensated (70/70 → 68/69). This drastically improves its KO potential to the point where it is even stronger than in Smash 4, with the sweetspot KOing at around 120% from the center of Final Destination.
HitboxesEdit
| ID | Part | Rehit rate | Damage | SD | Angle | Angle type | BK | KS | FKV | Set weight | Radius | Bone | Offset | H× | SDI× | T% | Clang | Rebound | Effect | Type | G | A | Sound | Direct | Hit bits | Hit part | Blockable | Reflectable | Absorbable | Flinchless | No GFX | Heedless | ||
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| 0 | 0 | 0 | 11.5% | 0 |  |
Forward | 72 | 68 | 0 |  |
2.1 | arml | -2.0 | 0.2 | 0.0 | 1.0× | 1.0× | 0% |  |
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.png){kind=small} Slash |
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| 1 | 0 | 0 | 11.5% | 0 | |
Forward | 72 | 68 | 0 | |
2.2 | arml | 0.7 | 0.3 | 0.0 | 1.0× | 1.0× | 0% | |
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| 2 | 0 | 0 | 11.5% | 0 | |
Forward | 72 | 68 | 0 | |
2.3 | arml | 3.2 | 0.4 | -0.1 | 1.0× | 1.0× | 0% | |
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Slash |
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| 3 | 0 | 0 | 15.0% | 0 | |
Forward | 72 | 69 | 0 | |
2.4 | handl | 3.5 | 0.0 | 0.7 | 1.0× | 1.0× | 0% | |
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Slash |
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| 4 | 0 | 0 | 15.0% | 0 | |
Forward | 72 | 69 | 0 | |
2.5 | handl | 6.2 | 0.0 | 1.4 | 1.0× | 1.0× | 0% | |
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.png){kind=small} Slash |
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All | All | |
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TimingEdit
| Hitboxes | 12-13 |
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| Interruptible | 37 |
| Animation length | 54 |
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Hitbox |
Interruptible |
TriviaEdit
- The inner sweetspot uses the weaker slash sound effect of the sourspots, despite being identical in strength to the other sweetspot. This is a reversal from Smash 4, where the outer sourspot used the same sound effect as the sweetspot, despite being identical in strength to the other sourspots.
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