Talk:Neutral attack

Can someone tell me how to chose between Melee Link's two tipes of jab? User:Firewario user talk:Firewario 9th April 2009 23:24 (UTC)

Weak attack

I might be wrong, but I think I can recall it being called "Weak attack" somewhere officially. Anyone else recognising it? – Smiddle_T 07:22, 3 July 2011 (EDT)

In Melee, you got a bonus called "Wimpy KO" for KOing someone with a "weak attack", which was referring to KOing someone with your jab. Omega Tyrant 07:45, 3 July 2011 (EDT)

That's weird, I could've sworn that I've heard it somewhere more notable... – Smiddle_T 18:49, 3 July 2011 (EDT)

Meta Knight and notable neutrals

I just noticed that below the Brawl neutral aerials, there is a section about metaknight's infinite jab. It's not an infinite jab, the animation shows 10 slashes and You can keep it going if you hold the attack button. That's just a consecutive jab!

Also, I noticed that on some other articles, such as forward aerial, there is a section on notable attacks. Do we need that here?75.85.64.155 12:39, 26 January 2014 (EST)

MK's jab is an infinite in all its technical aspects, so that's how we should probably treat it.

I'm not sure we need a section on notable jabs (are there really any?). Toomai Glittershine The Frivolous 12:46, 26 January 2014 (EST)

Ike's jab is most definitely notable, especially in vBrawl. — Jigglypuff the Magic Dragon (talk) 14:45, 26 January 2014 (EST)

"Standard attack"

I thought "standard attack" referred to any ground-based A move, to distinguish them from special attacks. Am I mistaken? – Smiddle 05:31, 9 October 2015 (EDT)

I think it officially refers to a jab, but I have heard it used to describe tilts before. Not specials or smashes though. Serpent∞King (talk) 05:34, 9 October 2015 (EDT)

Officially, it means a jab. Unofficially, it means any attack you can do with the A button (i.e. jab, tilts, smashes and aerials). Zyrac (talk) 05:49, 9 October 2015 (EDT)

Move proposal

Hello, SmashWiki. It's been a long while since I was active here, but I've always felt this to be a necessary proposal. In order to better fulfill the wiki's purpose as an accurate, community-friendly encyclopedia, I strongly believe this page should be moved to Jab. Here are, in detail, my reasons why:

• It's much more widely used by the community. I'll open this with what I believe to be a cornerstone of any wiki on a scale comparable to ours, and an important point to remember going forward: SmashWiki is not a forum where the community decides what terms should be used. It's a hub intended to promote the community's process of learning and studying. SmashWiki editors constitute only a small portion of the Smash community at large, and thus the wiki should minimize throwing around terms that sound alien to this large portion of outsiders as if they were widely accepted. Within the more competitive, dedicated community - the one our documentation is predominantly centered around - you'll see "jab" resonate much better than "neutral attack". To prove this, I looked into some Smash-related Discord servers, including our own, and put both terms in the search bar. This is what I found as of the current date:
  • SmashWiki: 1162 results for jab - 79 results for neutral attack
  • Kurogane Hammer: 2394 - 10
  • Mario Discord: 4051 - 27
  • Luigi Discord: 3885 - 79
  • Belmont Discord: 2372 - 32
  • Mega Man Discord: 3642 - 45
  • Ridley Discord: 6911 - 70
  • Wolf Discord: 6266 - 40

Our server has the most proportionate instances of "neutral attack" by a significant margin, and even then the term is orders of magnitude less common than "jab". Uses of "neutral attack" are borderline negligible in the rest. Moreover, a fair number of the results for neutral attack are just Discord picking out the words "neutral" and "attack" from different parts of a message, not for the actual term. One could make the argument that jab is an actual word that can get used in non-Smash contexts, but these are Smash-centric Discords, so the usage of the actual Smash term is (and will be) much more common either way. And these are just a few examples. I can't provide concrete results for Smash communities in other media like Twitter or YouTube, since it's not as convenient to search results in less established places, but given several of the same members from the Discords are also there, you're bound to find very similar results.

Here, let me also bring rapid jabs into the debate. This term is even more widely used than the "neutral infinite" name we seem to have analogous to neutral attack, and especially more than the official name of "flurry attack", to the point our own wiki pages use it a lot more often. Just to corroborate, here are once again results from the same Discord servers, searching "rapid jab", "neutral infinite", and "flurry attack":

• • SmashWiki: 173 - 6 - 7
  • Kurogane Hammer: 340 - 2 - 2
  • Mario Discord: 177 - 1 - 0
  • Luigi Discord: 145 - 1 - 2
  • Belmont Discord: 126 - 3 - 4
  • Mega Man Discord: 128 - 2 - 2
  • Ridley Discord: 670 - 1 - 8
  • Wolf Discord: 216 - 2 - 3

Even more significant ratio here, right?

• Official terms aren't the law. Jabs are indeed given the official name "neutral attack" in Ultimate. But this is where one of our most essential and ubiquitously-influential policies comes into play as a counterargument: SmashWiki is not official. We do not call techs "breaking your fall". We do not call DI "launch shuffling", nor SDI "hitstun shuffling". For that matter, we've made it clear that the "hitstun" in question – the freeze period upon a hit – is to be called hitlag, while actual hitstun is a character's inactionable period during knockback. Likewise, we never abided closely to calling tilt attacks "strong attacks" when the latter was an official term. We do not call forward tilts "side tilts", which I'd even argue is a more common term in the community at large than neutral attack or any of the aforementioned. When our continuous use of "neutral attack" is not in line with one of our most important policies, that we base such a large part of how we convey information here, I hardly believe it's a tenable position to hold.

• Jab has also been an official term. That's right, Ultimate actually has one instance of using jab as a term for this move! The description of the Skills in World of Light that enhance jabs states "Increases the power of neutral attacks, such as jabs". It's not quite conclusive since it strangely uses both terms in the same sentence, but it does give an idea that a sizable amount of "neutral attacks" can be referred to as "jabs", which at least acknowledges the term as used by the community to some degree, even if not directly.

That sums up my points. With everything laid out on the table like this, I hope this is as clear a proposal as it can be. DrakRoar the game design dragon 20:49, January 14, 2021 (EST)

I support this move. ...I honestly don't think I've seen/heard a whole lot of people say "neutral attack" in favor of "jab" myself. Aidan, the Rurouni 02:30, January 15, 2021 (EST)

Support: Not much else to add, considering jab is somewhat official now. Omegα Toαd, the Toαd Wαrrior. (BUP) 03:25, January 15, 2021 (EST)

You are correct that the community at large uses "jab" far more frequently. However, consider the following:

1. Unlike your other examples of us moving things to less-official names, thie one is part of a "set" of all the normal attack names. Currently (as of SSBU officializing "tilt"), we use official names for 21 of the 28 moves (see Template:Attacks), and of the non-official ones 3 have no known official English term to use instead, so we're 84% official. The idea of decreasing this percentage, and increasing the inconsistency, feels wrong. (In fact I wouldn't straight-up oppose moving "forward tilt" and "forward smash" to "side tilt" and "side smash", although that would cause even more disruption than this would and thus is still quite bad, and "pummel" and "grab aerial" have to stay regardless to avoid the confusion of official terms calling them the same thing.)
2. We have never seriously considered moving "Reflector (Fox)" to "Shine", or "Vegetable" to "Turnip", even though it's obvious that the fan-preferred terms far eclipse the official names in usage. How close are "normal attack names" to "individual special move names" in terms of "unofficial names should never win just for being popular"? (Although admittedly the naming of some Final Smashes being a debate rather than a clear-cut case shows even this isn't as tight as it probably should be.)

Overall I oppose because I don't think the change will buy us anything compared to the effort required. Remember, normal attack names are tightly integrated with thousands of pages, templates, and images, and while a bot can do some of the work, editors still have to set it up and check all that it does afterward. Compare to the payoff - "jab" will be the page instead of the redirect? Tons of articles use "jab" in the text anyway and it's no big deal. You put "smashwiki jab" or "smash bros jab" into Google and it hands you this page anyway. I'm just not seeing the reward for such a disruptive change. Toomai Glittershine The Indescribable 08:07, January 15, 2021 (EST)