D3v's quick and dirty guide to Dr. Shoals

[d3v]

Welcome to D3v’s quick and dirty guide to Dr. Shoals. The goal of this is to get players quickly up to speed on playing the good doctor at a reasonable level. No, to get this out of the way, here’s a summary of Dr. Shoals moves from the [Shoals GD thread](Dr. Shoals Overview and General Discussion Thread

Dive
A good normal jump. It has no special properties, but it takes Shoals pretty far up. For reference, her jump height is close to Mr. N’s, and slightly higher than Dive’s.

Kickback
Unlike most characters, Shoal’s kickback resembles a backdash as seen in other fighting games. It has a great range, and does not move her upwards. This is very useful when the opponent divekicks at her from above; a diagonal-upwards kickback would still get her hit in the feet, but Shoals’ kickback gets her out of the way without exposing herself. The downside of the kickback’s horizontal movement is that she gains no height to divekick from. This makes Shoals’ kickback unfit for punishing whiffs, or building meter.

Divekick
Shoals has two divekicks, both a bit on the slow side. She starts out with a shallow one, and this divekick can be canceled into a steeper one mid-flight. The shallow divekick is useful for covering ground or hitting characters that position themselves in the air a lot (like Stream, or Shoals herself). It runs out after about 1.5 seconds, leaving her falling towards the ground and unable to do further divekicks or air specials. Her steep divekick is useful for coming down on enemies after she’s positioned herself above them using her shallow divekick and air special. It’s also her fastest way to the ground, should something dangerous come in from overhead. It’s good to note that both divekicks generate meter, though this is somewhat canceled out by the fact she can’t simply kickback -> divekick to build meter due to the nature of her kickback

Ground Special - Brilliant Escape (Fly Away)
Activating Shoals’ ground special will send her flying diagonally backwards, not unlike a normal kickback. The longer you hold the buttons, the further and higher she’ll fly, but beware that her meter is drained continually. The ability needs about 20% meter to activate, but will not immediately cost meter; the only cost in the gradual meter drain from using it.

Air Special - Death From Above (Hover)
Shoals can activate this after jumping, or cancel into it from either divekick. She will enter a hover mode, which will keep her in place in the air and will gradually burn meter while doing so. Like her ground special, the ability needs about 20% meter to activate, but will not immediately cost meter. You can press dive or kick to slowly glide backward or forward, respectively. To exit the the hover mode, press both buttons again and Shoals will start falling. From this state, she can still perform her divekicks, even if she has done them before entering the hover mode.

Now to the meat of this thing.

Why should you play Dr. Shoals
Winning in Divekick is all about height. To put it simply, the player who is higher on screen during a confrontation usually wins out. In relation to this, Shoals is a character who is able to remain pretty high on screen quite easily. Aside from her decent jumpdive height, her shallow dive kick and float air special allow her to stay relatively high longer than most other characters. Her ground float special on the other hand can eventually put her higher than most of the cast can dive. He shallow kick is important since she can do it higher than any other character with a similar shallow kick and, more importantly she can cancel it into her second, deeper kick. Meanwhile, she can move forward and backwards during her float unlike MarnMr.N.

What should you be doing to maintain height
Simple don’t do anything lower than your opponent. Use her float to stay high and gain some ground while your opponent falls or kicks downward. For her shallow kick, time your jumps so that you hit it’s peak later than your opponent does theirs. This way you’re guaranteed that your shallow kick will come out higher than your opponent. Don’t worry if it seems too high as you can simply cancel into her deep dive to get the hit.

If you do make a mistake and do her shallow dive too low, quickly cancel into a float and float backwards - the only exception to this would probably be against characters with shallow kicks and the Baz where you would probably want to deep kick instead depending on the angle (if the Baz sets up for a shallow kick, definitely deep kick as soon as possible to try to avoid the lightning).

What are her weaknesses
First up, her shallow kick ends after about 1.5 seconds if it doesn’t hit the ground, after which she drops like a rock. Dealing with this depends on how you read the angles available to your opponent. Your options to deal with this include simply cancelling into a deep kick, float canceling then doing another shallow kick, or simply letting Shoals fall if you think that your distance is safe enough.

Unlike most characters, Dr. Shoals low kickback does not allow her to quickly build meter by kicking out. To build meter, a good Shoals player will have to be creative in getting as many kicks out as possible during a dive while remaining safe. One recommended option is to dive low and then kick twice to get back into the ground, kickback as soon as you’re on the ground to keep safe. You can also float cancel a deep kick early, then let go of the float to kick again.

Quick tricks you might want to learn

Float Cancel - Basically cancelling a kick into a float. As mentioned above, the most basic use for this is to stop yourself from losing from a badly angled kick. You can also use this to keep yourself up in the aid to set up for another shallow kick (in case your opponent dives up again).

Quick Deep Kick - Cancelling a shallow kick as early as possible. Now, most of the time, using a shallow kick as a punish is better since it tends to hit higher. In addition to this, there is still some delay between diving and kicking since Shoals still has to go through some frames of her shallow kick animation. However, there are times where being able to quickly kick deep will be useful, especially when a nearby opponent thinks that they’ve gotten away by kicking early(low). If timed and spaced right, it can be used to setup surprise headshots on opponents trying to land quickly.

[d3v]

Reserved for if I ever want to add more.

[tataki]

[FORSALE] Custom Arcade Joystick(s)

Winning in Divekick is all about height. To put it simply, the player who is higher on screen during a confrontation usually wins out. In relation to this, Shoals is a character who is able to remain pretty high on screen quite easily. Aside from her decent jumpdive height, her shallow dive kick and float air special allow her to stay relatively high longer than most other characters. Her ground float special on the other hand can eventually put her higher than most of the cast can dive. He shallow kick is important since she can do it higher than any other character with a similar shallow kick and, more importantly she can cancel it into her second, deeper kick. Meanwhile, she can move forward and backwards during her float unlike MarnMr.N.

Thing is that with her slow divekick speed the opponent (who is usually faster) can maneuver around it easily, so you don’t want to be “too high” in order to block more of the possible areas the opponent can escape towards.

Her kickback can’t whiff punish, but it can evade in situations where other kickbacks can’t. It also allows her to create space to safely generate meter from afar in some matchups. (Not against KP) For whiff punishing her ground skill into shallow dive works well but requires meter.

[Elson]

Which gem do you usually prefer? Or does it depend on the matchup?

[jay_red]

I use the kick gem all the time, dive is not really useful IMO as she jum…er dives so high already, and I don’t depend on meter with her very much, just to mix things up and throw people off with a random special.

Does anyone else notice that landing a headshot pretty much guarantees you the kill next round? Everyone I play, I get the dizzy and the next round just do a kick across the screen and they cant get out of the way in time. I did it to a Dive player last night, but I got a head shot every time and won the round (he had 1 round on me, so it wasn’t a fraud). It seems most characters are subject to this, a couple are fast/high enough to evade it when dizzy but many are not.

[Atmapalazzo]

I use the kick gem all the time, dive is not really useful IMO as she jum…er dives so high already, and I don’t depend on meter with her very much, just to mix things up and throw people off with a random special.

The yolo gem is actually viable for Shoals to use against Jefailey, as it maxes out his head size and she can chain headshots together after the first one, making the match a double yolo match more or less.

[jay_red]

yeah i noticed it only takes 2 wins by jafailey to be a very easy headshot target, I doubt you could lose with the yolo gem, as long as you get thet first head shot.

[d3v]

Which gem do you usually prefer? Or does it depend on the matchup?

As most people have stated, Dive Gem tends to be better thank Kick Gem.