Double Jump Protection

A relatively unknown mechanic of the game, Rivals has a tap jump protection feature on both Up Special and airdodge to prevent players using tap jump controls from accidentally burning their double jump unintentionally. To achieve this, the game allows you a 4 frame window after your double jump to refresh your double jump by either inputting your Up Special or an upwards airdodge, being within the range of upwards directional inputs without being completely diagonal. On most characters, this effectively allows you to double jump offstage multiple times before you use your Up Special or airdodge to gain some slight height.

With Jump Cancel Copied to clipboard

Characters with jump cancellable moves benefit offstage by effectively using double jump protection, as it allows them to jump cancel without actually consuming their jump!

Zetterburn Copied to clipboard

This technique can allow Zetterburn to jump cancel an offstage shine (both regular and fully-charged) and Up Special to the wall without burning your jump. Nothing too crazy, but it may make an aggressive edgeguard attempt just a little safer on your return trip to the stage. Since you can airdodge out of your Up Special startup, you can use also this technique to freely perform any other possible recovery method with a now saved double jump, as the initial Up Special input has already stored your jump for later. You’ll get a lot of mileage out of this one against characters with exploitable or poor vertical recoveries.

Wrastor/Ori Copied to clipboard

Both Wrastor and Ori have similar uses, with Wrastor’s Down Strong and Ori’s Down Air both being jump cancellable moves you can use offstage. These are both reasonably committal moves, and can leave you quite vulnerable on a whiffed attack, so being able to jump cancel out whilst refreshing your double jump (or in Wrastor’s case, one of his aerial jumps) for later in your recovery can be quite powerful. It is worth noting that Ori can cancel their Dair with Up Special directly, meaning this technique is not required to save your double jump.

Kragg Copied to clipboard

Kragg benefits slightly less from this technique at first glance due to his pillar, which creates a platform anywhere onscreen which can be used to refresh Kragg’s double jump on demand, but the potential of being able to freely jump cancel your Side Special at no cost offers quite a bit for the beetle. Uses offstage can be found primarily by using your rock in different ways to jump cancel your Side Special in combination with a pillarless Up Special to gain extra height or distance, all the while saving your double jump for extra usage later in your recovery. This is an extremely important technique to learn for Kragg mains looking to improve their recovery mixups.

Exceptions Copied to clipboard

There are characters who are unable to use double jump protection with Up Special in a traditional manner: Orcane and Ranno. Using Up Special within the 4 frame window after a double jump as Orcane instead results in the well-known Orcahop technique that is taught in the tutorial, which will always consume your double jump upon use. Ranno cannot use this technique to refresh his double jump after using it to jump cancel his divekick, preventing him from preserving his resources far longer than would be reasonable.