Glancing blow
A glancing blow (チップ chippu, 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 cause 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.
In Super Smash Bros.
The original Super Smash Bros. uses cubes for attack physics instead of spheres. As a result, the concept of glancing blows does not really apply, and so the mechanic does not exist.
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. It is unknown whether they count in the stale moves queue, though it is likely they do not.
Some characters with enough multi-frame attacks happen to benefit from a glancing blow. Examples include Link's up special, as well as his, Young Link (to a lesser extent), Captain Falcon, Sheik, Marth, Roy, Mario, Luigi, Dr. Mario, and Bowser's down smashes.
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 SSB4
Glancing blows appear unchaged 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 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; such videos are generally used to demonstrate a user's skill at TAS.
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.
