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Sharking

From SmashWiki, the Super Smash Bros. wiki

Meta Knight sharking King Dedede on Halberd in Brawl.

Sharking is the act of going underneath a stage to attack opponents from below. While underneath the stage, a character can attack and/or damage shields relatively safely, while their opponent has few options to counterattack, being unable to pass through the stage floor. However, an experienced player can perform a meteor smash on a sharker which, if timed correctly, will usually result in an immediate KO.

Sharking can only be performed on stages containing either one-way semisoft platforms (which can only be passed through upwards), such as Delfino Plaza and Halberd, or thin hard platforms, such as Jungle Japes. It is best performed by characters with multiple jumps such as Meta Knight and Kirby, who are better able to recover after attacking.

Sharking has historically been considered a legitimate but risky strategy, because it is easy to make a mistake and self-destruct, especially on stages with hard platforms. Sharking is considered particularly risky in Super Smash Bros. and Super Smash Bros. Melee, due to their faster physics and falling speed than in other games. In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Meta Knight can shark with ease on many stages, thanks to his very fast and disjointed up aerial, as well having a choice of four quick recovery moves. For this reason, several players consider sharking to be cheap or broken on certain Brawl stages, although others limit this criticism to the Meta Knight character. Until Super Smash Bros. 4, which largely eliminated planking through its new edge mechanics, it was common to see players combine sharking with planking as a way to restore jumps and avoid vulnerability to attacks.

Sharking is also used to describe the act of attacking an opponent on a platform from below. In this case, the goal of the sharker is not to be evasive but simply to safely pressure their opponent and deny stage control. This application of the term is sometimes specified with the phrase platform sharking. Sharking is occasionally used to describe any attack from below on an aerial opponent, even without a platform involved, but usually, this would instead be referred to as juggling.

The term 'sharking' directly references sharks, which swim close enough to the surface of the water, so that only their dorsal fins are seen overhead. The technique has been mentioned on the official website for Smash 64 under a name that can be translated as "mole tactics".^[1]