Sorry for the delay. Inb4walloftext
How the tornado works :
Tornado generates permanant hitboxes until you touch it, which is when any clashing hitbox will be cancelled for 6 frames and then reappear. None of these hitboxes except the first one which touches you and the last one of the tornado have any hitlag. All of these hits have little to no knockback. I think the bottom of the nado pops you up a bit, while the rest brings you toward the center. I think each hit does 1 or 2 percent, depending on staleness. Tornado clashes with any hit that is non-transcendent, akin to how MK's dash attack works. Tornado always has 29 frames of lag, no matter where it is spent whether in the air or on the ground. Finishing your tornado in the air allows you to spend those 29 frames in the air while retreating, giving you more distance to prevent retaliation. Shield drains faster when nado is not hitting you than when it is.
Implications of these statements:
- You cannot DI the tornado's weak hits, since anything below a set knockback cannot be DI-ed at all. This excludes first and last hit.
- You cannot SDI any other hits except the first and last hit either since the rest has no hitlag, thus no SDI is applicable.
- Any hit that does over 13% and over goes through the tornado if my % are indeed correct. This is because hitboxes only clash with each other if they are within 10% of each other, if they aren't one will override the other.
- Since Popo and nana's hit are 5 frame away from each other, if you use an aerial that would reach MK exactly at the same time without you getting hit by the tornado, you can go through it. This is because your first hit will cancel, but then you will have a second hitbox out while he has none, but only for 1 frame. This is insanely difficult to time, but I think you can sometimes hit MK with b-air in his tornado.
- Someone who knows how to use tornado will scare you into using the shield without necessarily hitting you with it.
Punishing the tornado before it hits you:
- Whenever MK nados you from too high, you can upsmash him.
- Whenever MK nados you from too low, you can fsmash or pivot grab him.
- A well spaced nado can bait these moves and easily punish the landing lag.
- Whenever MK is nadoing from above, crouching will allow you to save some time before having to shield since he will have to move closer to you before hitting you. This allows you to prevent him from shield-poking early.
- Walking away does it it in a similar fashion, when coupled with crouching, it forces MK to nado at lower angles which puts him at risk.
- Pivot grabbing out of walk is very effective due to this.
- If MK tries to corner you near the ledge to nado your shield until you are pushed offstage, you have multiple options. The first one is to jump above in order to punish after the tornados lag as he lands.
- The second one involves rolling behind the tornado thus cornering MK instead of you. This works mostly because ice climbers have a roll that makes their hurtbox smaller.
- MK can bait the roll use the tornado to punish, so do not spam it.
- If you are above MK, you can use D-Air or ice block to hit him, but this will only work if you manage to hit MK, not the nado. Same goes for B-Air/F-Air if you can somehow land those. If you D-Air into the tornado you will get hit instead.
- If MK manages to hit your shield, tilt it up.
- Rolling towards a nado that is retreating is useless if you cannot corner it before hand, as running is a faster way of catching it. Rolling only allows you to go under it.
- You can roll or spotdodge whenever tornado is hitting your shield. but rolling will get you hit during the startup. If you wish to spotdodge or roll during your shield, use the C-stick while holding up on the control stick. C-stick inputs last only 1 frame, allowing you to spotdodge or roll without ever stopping from tilting your shield. This sometimes prevent shield poking.
- Whenever tornado is about to end on your shield trying to shield poke, simply spotdodge with the c-stick. You can only get hit by the tornado during the end of the spotdodge, which is why if you time it well it protect you from these shield pokes while allowing you to punish the end lag of the tornado.
- If a tornado starts to retreat as you are shielding, do not run towards it if you want to punish the ending lag. Walking is much safer as it prevents it from coming back to hit you during your dash animation.
- If a tornado comes back after retreating, it usually ends up being much closer to the ground, which is your chance to pivot grab it.
- If on the contrary it continues to retreat, usually you have 3 options.
- The first one is to try and punish with a running grab. This only works if the nado was mispaced and is usually very risky.
- The second one involves closing in to regain stage control and get in range and then bait either a shuttle loop, a tilt, a grab, a jump or a spotdodge and try to punish with grab or up air somehow.
- The third one is to dash attack, it allows you to get garanteed percent whenever dash grabbing is just slightly too late.
Punishing the tornado as it hits you:
- Whenever tornado hits you, SDI up to try and get above it, this is usually your best bet.
- If you are completely out of shield and tornado will shield poke you either way whether you spotdodge or not, spotdodge anyways. Since spotdodging always end at the same time, you can accurately predict when you are going to have to SDI upwards the first hit of the tornado.
- Once you are in the tornado, do not try to SDI, its pointless -.- .
The tornado will sometimes pop you up a bit, you then have the following options.
- Doing nothing. Advantage is you are not commiting yourself to any action, disadvantage is you are almost bound to get hit again.
- Jumping. The advantage is you are garanteed out of the nado. The disadvantage is you give up on any hope of punishing nado after it lands, you are in a slightly bad situation, cannot fast fall until the apex of your jump and no longer have a second jump.
- D-Airing. Advantage is you can hit MK during the tornado, but even if you do you have some bad landing lag. If you mess up, you get hit again by tornado. You also do not choose whenever you will fast fall. Apparently if you mash A while holding down, you can D-Air very quickly during the first frame of the pop up which makes it garanteed to hit. I cannot confirm this, the only player I have seen doing this was ambrose, but it seemed fairly effective and it really looks like you randomly dair out of tornado.
- Nairing. Quickest aerial for ice climbers, will not always hit MK out of tornado either I believe but allows you to fast fall directly after to hit. Incurs little to no landing lag and often sends MK at a bad position for him, one of my personal favorites. At low % can be risky if MK has little to no hitstun and can then punish immediately sometimes. My favorite punish is to jump+nair with white ice climbers, as the name tag disappears and only one of the two ice climbers will jump+nair, while the other simply nairs through nado. It is very hard to quickly identify which is which for the opponent, preventing any retaliation aimed at nana specificially.
- Airdodging. Can allow you to punish landing lag with a grab, but only works if the opponent keeps on moving upwards. You can no longer fast fall either.
Thats it iirc.
EDIT: I forgot to add these: Blizz goes through tornado obviously but has a slow startup which means no possibility to use it in close range on reaction. I believe side-B is transcendent too (only when with both ice climbers) so it goes through tornado but you can't realistically hit MK before the hitbox hits you unless maybe at the base of tornado. I know for fact single climber side-B is not transcendent and will clash and get you hit. Finally, after you get popped up by the tornado, you can jump>side-B to hit the tornado with single climber side-B from above, avoiding the clashing issue.
BTW if rubberbandman asks, this is all hoax.