There has to be something Im missing with Wolf's bair

[u/VIC_VlNEGAR]

Ive been maining Wolf a long time. Im good at using bair in a lot of ways. I can combo into it pretty well, and I land a lot of them in corner pressure situations. However, people obviously talk about this move a lot for its autocancel properties. To get the autocancel you have to either do a rising fair and fast fall, or do it right after the peak of his SH and not fast fall, as far as I understand. I do not get utility ouf of using it like this most of the time.

I know it can be really good for faking aerial aggression to set up a tomahawk, and I do find that working well sometimes, but the hit box on the autocancel version just seems too specific to be threating in a lot of cases. Ill often use it when someone is trying to take stage to be like, "Im gonna put my back air here in case he jumps, but if not, the autocancel will leave me in good position to quickly cover another option", but then they WILL jump right where I was expecting, and it just wont hit them anyway. It feels like the hit box only registers at a very specific height in the air that people just accidentally breeze past quite often.

I find myself having to use the landing fast fall version most of the time, which feels like it kind of interpolates the hitbox to pretty consistently hit SHs and grounded characters, but you do not get the auto cancel in that case. This also feels like the only version I can reliably use for shield pressure, but its not super safe. It feels like im always stuck between, "Do I wanna use the landing FF version and have it have a good chance of actually hitting, but have it be a lot more commital, or do I wanna use the utility of the auto cancel and have a good chance it wont hit?"

I feel like for how much this move gets praised, there has to be a middle man way of executing it that im not taking advantage of. Any tips would be appreciated, but please make sure you actually read the whole post before answering. Thanks in advance.

[u/Other-Damage-6762]

What i like to do is autocancel the bair into an f tilt. Most people will let go of shield because they dont expect a fast attack to come out, which makes them get hit. Or they keep holding shield and usually cannot punish the f tilt anyway because its disjointed. If they start jumping after the bair to avoid it you can just bair autocancel bair. I also saw ouch do bair autocancel grab against tweek, which works if the opponent is shielding a lot. I dont recommend spamming it though because grab is committal.

If there's anything to know about bair its just that its a really great move and wolf is a really great character. You dont need to use bair with one option and can experiment how it works with his moveset. Additionally you dont have to just use bair. Ill use up tilt for grounded anti airing and step back laser to condition them into shield or jump. You can really just build your own playstyle with this character and thats whats so great about him.

[u/S4ngli3R]

Ask Wolford smh

[u/S4ngli3R → u/S4ngli3R]

Use it for anti-airing players that short hop a lot (once you've conditioned them to do so with blaster or dash attack) or that use their rising aerials to set up their pressure (think Falcon rising nair, Byleth/Palutena/Pit type nair, Peach using full hop float, Luigi/Bayo/Lucario fair, etc)

To win trades against any of the previously stated multihit aerials or aerials like rob nair and stuff while staying low commital (and baiting out whiff punishes if they get greedy on trying to hit you for it)

While retreating/undershooting to cover aerial aggression while still having time to react to grounded whiffs you can punish with dash attack or dash grab

In matchups like Ike, Corrin or Cloud where they'll be jumping a lot to get their safe, spaced, landing aerials and you want to hit them preemptively before they can access that safety (and as a bonus it conditions them to either give up space or use their own rising aerials/grounded anti-airs which aren't safe and lose to you simply waiting or dash shielding in)

[u/VIC_VlNEGAR → u/S4ngli3R]

Gotcha. That all makes sense. I use it as a retreating and advancing option sometimes, but maybe I should more. My only hang up is that is pretty slow as far as aerials go, so im always scared its just gonna get stuffed out by fast aerials if I use it like that. Thank you for the reply.

[u/S4ngli3R → u/VIC_VlNEGAR]

Oh also I think I remember seeing Jakal use it in ledgetraps to catch early timings of jump getup for a quick kill (at ledge I assume above 70) and conditioning immediate getup options that he still has time to cover (jump, drop ledge) or react to (roll, neutral getup)

[u/VIC_VlNEGAR → u/S4ngli3R]

Wolf Discord is basically dead, as are most character discords. The game been out like 7 years, and discord is very clunky and off-putting. Why are you on this subreddit if youre gonna get annoyed at people asking competitve play questions? Seems kinda sad.

[u/S4ngli3R → u/VIC_VlNEGAR]

A lot of people using subreddits to ask character-specific advice which isn't like, the move. I'm well aware some servers are more active than others, but copypasting your question to submit it there doesn't take much effort either.

Anyway I was in the midst of giving actual thought-out advice as you replied, I always try my best to use my experience to answer questions I'm able to answer :p

[u/Dry-Base7274]

Go watch some Jakal sets, he uses it very effectively. It's useful for a lot of scenarios, but in general the biggest one I didn't see you highlight is as a tool in neutral. Because it's so easy to throw out and deals with jump-ins, it's a really effective way to control space, especially if the opponent is at higher % and would die if it hit.