Staff Backlip & You

[Lessen]

here's the definitive facts of how to input Staff Backflip, from testing.

So the rules are:
- During the first few moments of a jump (but not a backflip)
- you have to be holding both backwards + jump
- and then you click.

These are actually the same input rules for forward or sideways butterflies. What makes inputting staff backflip hard is: if you just hold backwards and then jump, you'll do a backflip. And you can't do specials in the middle of a backflip.

If you hold Use and then jump backwards, you won't backflip. So if you just want to do backwards staffflips, that's the easiest way. Hold use and do a regular backwards butterfly input. This actually makes it extremely easy to do a glitched staff backflip where you leap up in the air but you don't animate at all. Which looks very silly.

But if you wanna do cool flashy forward or sideways jumping backflips like what's-his-face, that guy with the Sev'rance Tann profile picture, here's what you gotta do.

Hold the direction you want to go and then very quickly
- hit and hold jump
- hit and hold backwards
- click attack.

So like to do a forward advancing staff spin flip thing with default controls, you hold W and then do this sudden quick cascade of spacebar > S > click, holding spacebar and S before the click.

It looks super flashy and is situationally useful when the enemy has the high ground. And it costs no FP.

 

[SeV]

Yeah this information is correct. I didn't actually think this was such a big deal for ppl lol. Perhaps I should include it in the updated version of the guide despite its limited usefulness. It is kind of cool, though for me its very easy to perform and I rarely if ever play staff. Perhaps there are more uses for it than I see since I dont have staff on hand in most situations.

The use+staff backflip does appear to glitch the anim, definitely a bug.

 

[Penekowski]

Yeah I tend to do it pretty often too but I have yet to find a practical use for it. It's really situational I guess, I managed to kill a flying mando with it once but it's so rare. Maybe we should give more pratical uses to it, any ideas would be great because, right now, it's nothing but a fancy move with few advantages.

 

[Lessen]

I didn't actually think this was such a big deal for ppl lol

The problem is more that there wasn't previously clear documentation about it. You can't input it the same super EZ way that you can input the butterfly attacks.

It's not like it's hard to perform with a little bit of practice, it's more that it's not clear how to do it without a bit of experimentation, so I did that bit of experimentation and then figured I'd post the clarification for everyone else's benefit.

(plus I think you can technically input it by just holding backwards and then doing a frame perfect jump+attack, but that's suuuuper hard. Believing that that was the only way to do it kept me discouraged from using staff for a while, so I was actually surprised in my experimentation to realize that there was an easier way to do it.)

(I know it's overall not super useful, but I still would rather not use Staff if there's some aspect of it that I don't know how to do, that COULD be useful.)

Also: making sense of all the rules like this made me realize that it's possible to, for example, jump sideways and then start a forwards butterfly midair.

@Penekowski If you just reduced the end-lag on it so you could act out of it faster then it would be a lot more appealing as an absurd approach option.

Also if you're in a room with a low ceiling and you staffflip forwards, you'll bounce back to the ground while still in the middle of the attack and then sorta bounce back towards where you started. It feels like it has some potential usage as a really goofy-looking but maybe legitimately useful way to pressure someone, but I haven't tested it much. It's cool-looking, like you jump up, jump off the ceiling and slam down on your spinning blades, then bounce backwards off them.

Also as it is right now, it's a 0 FP high jump, so it has some practicality for a Jump 2 or even Jump 1 build, just for getting up places.

 

[Sammy]

I just use it to meme. Once you get the control for it down it becomes muscle memory. Usually, I'll use it to do flips around sith to disorient them, then pb them until they die xD.

 

[Lessen]

Once you get the control for it down it becomes muscle memory.

I feel like I must have wildly mis-explained the problem if people keep feeling the need to mention that it's not physically difficult to do staff backflips with a little practice.

It's wildly unclear how to do staff backflips. The documentation is ass. Not even a very good ass.

 

[S o l d i e r]

I don't know why it is so hard to do in MB2. I think in JKA it was much easier, you could basically activate it like a butterfly.

I can confirm that it's doable in all 4 directions, as well as in all 4 diagonal directions and while standing, you just have to have perfect timing when standing or moving backwards to execute it. You will often fail, though, to activate it, so use it only when the circumstances are perfect for it and don't spam it around.

It's useless if the target is on the ground, on the same level as you, both at the start and at the end of the animation. It hits only in the aerial middle part of the animation when the blades swirl in the air. You can use it on jumping enemies, enemies that are above you and enemies that are on higher ground than you are as to surprise them, as the attack is very rapid, much more rapid than jumping where they are and slashing.

It drains BP, but it doesn't drain FP, so you can use it as a jump when fighting gunners, as it jumps higher than no-force Jump. It drans more BP than no-force Jump, though, but that's reasonable.

I don't know how much BP it drains when it hits an enemy saberist, but it can hit them when they are not prepared when they are jumping, maybe even not holding block. Judging by the BP drain of other special attacks, the BP drain must be reasonable, if not even high or very high. I also don't know how much HP damage it does, but, again, it's a saber attack and should kill most enemies in one strike, and being a special move it probably does more HP damage than a regular staff swing.

 

[Tempest]

I think it has something to do with your forward velocity when you're trying to do the input (code for the specials is really janky and what actually allows the red hop functionality. Will edit with further information after some poking around in the code.


Edit:
Requirements (straight from code in order of checks):

• not moving left or right
  • have backwards movement
    • have jump 2
    • be on the ground OR be <= 40 units off of the ground
    • have forward(?) velocity >= 0
      
    • have jump input sent in
    • not be in a transition or attack of any kind

 

[S o l d i e r]

Just checked it in JKA, it's definitely much easier to activate this move there. The input is the same, but the window for activation is much larger in JKA, so you don't need to be so precise and perfect with your input to click it in a minute fraction of a second to execute it.

 

[Lessen]

I think it has something to do with your forward velocity when you're trying to do the input (code for the specials is really janky and what actually allows the red hop functionality. Will edit with further information after some poking around in the code.


Edit:
Requirements (straight from code in order of checks):

• not moving left or right
  • have backwards movement
    • have jump 2
    • be on the ground OR be <= 40 units off of the ground
    • have forward(?) velocity >= 0
      
    • have jump input sent in
    • not be in a transition or attack of any kind

wha? But you can do staff backflips forward/sideways/in-place, you just need to be holding the back (S) key. I guess by "movement" you mean the key input, not the player position/motion? Cuz yeah, the requirements straight from my ass are:
- Need to have juuust jumped
- Need to be holding S
- Need to jump and attack (in that order).
- Need to not be in a backflip (so if you just hold S and then jump, it won't work)