Guide to Directional Influence (DI)
How to DI
You probably DI all the time; DIing is when you tilt the control stick a certain direction to alter the knockback when suffering from an attack.
Examples
If a Fox Up-smashes you, you can tilt the control stick left or right to travel mainly to either of the directions. If you DI to the right when Up-smashed, your character will travel more to the right than usual, making the probability of your survival much higher.
DI is essential for escaping many combos, especially chain grabs. A good DIer can also survive at higher percentages.
Smash DI
Immediately after you are hit with any move, there are a few frames in which you can input control stick directions which have a much greater effect on the trajectory of the attack than normal DI. It is possible to do things such as survive a Marth f-smash at greater than 100% using this tactic.
A subtactic is the quarter-circle DI, which involves crouch-cancelling an attack followed by smash DI towards the stage, resulting in a drastic decrease in knockback. Quarter-circle DI was introduced to America by Captain Jack and was known for a while as Japanese DI.
Another subtactic is Double Stick DI which involved pointing both the joystick and the C-stick in opposite direction so the player can DI in different directions. This was later found out to be false, and what players were actually doing was Smash DIing.
Links
- need link to Doraki's essay on DI or anything on DI for that matter since they're all more or less the same