Aggressive skill dunk needs better integration with standing dunks

[Krucialist]

Thanks to anyone who reads all this. Ended up being much longer than I intended.

I dont want to be too critical, since this is the first year of the move and i like the idea of it. That being said, it feels pretty obvious that standing dunks were not really considered when this was implemented.

Ive looked for tips and suggestions about using the dunk meter with standing dunks, but haven't really found anything. So i have been doing my own testing and the results arent great.

1. Dunk attempt reliability

I have a decent sense of the spacing requirements to attempt dunks. So when I am running my slasher, I feel that I will succeed in ATTEMPTING a dunk around 70% of the time, thanks to the dunk meter. Im not that great at timing the dunk meter properly online in traffic, so I miss way too much for it to be viable in close games, but im very confident in my ability to have my player ATTEMPT the dunk. For standing dunks, I have no faith hes even going to try it most of the time.

You have to be either standing on, or right behind the No Charge line, in order to even trigger the dunk meter. If you are underneath the hoop, he basically wont ever do it. If you are a step away from the line, then youre more likely to get a standing layup. This might be due to my own confusion about what the game considers to be a standing dunk vs a driving dunk, but I would have thought that the one dribble-power step dunks would be considered a standing dunk, but perhaps the game counts those as driving dunks. That would explain the meter not triggering, since your gather was not sufficient enough.

If I go to the practice gym and stand around/under the hoop, I have a much wider range of dunk attempt options without the meter than with it. Using just R2 and Square, I can attempt to dunk the ball 90% of the time as long as im stationed anywhere under the hoop, all the way out to about a step outside the No Charge circle. For the dunk meter to trigger consistently, I have to be right on that No Charge line.

To me its just a bad look that the dunk meter is supposed to allow you to effectively "force" your player to attempt a dunk, but in practice it feels like im more likely to attempt a dunk when I dont use the meter, than when I do.

2. Dunk meter timing

Others have complained about the timing on the dunk meter, as its very odd and not intuitive. You would think the optimal release point would be right before you dunk the ball, but its actually closer to around 60% or 70% of the way through the animation. This problem is made much worse on standing dunks, due to the relative speed of the standing dunk animation.

For a driving dunk, it feels like you have about 1.5 - 2.0 seconds from the time that the animation starts, to the meter showing up on screen and starting the release timing, to the release point on the dunk meter for a successful release. For standing dunks, this feels closer to .7 - 1.0 seconds, due to the speed of those animations (which is made even more difficult due to Fast Twitch).

My mental process after I attempt to use the dunk meter generally looks like this: Confirm the dunk animation has begun and meter appears on screen > Notice the dunk meter has begun to fill > Calculate the release point, based on the speed that the meter is filling > Release the stick

I can get through that whole process without issues for driving dunks. I still miss too many of the driving dunks online, but thats an issue with my calculations (specifically the problem is the unintuitive timing that i mentioned above but moving on). For standing dunks, I dont have the time to mentally get through all of those steps. To compensate, I have to basically abandon the "notice dunk meter has begun to fill" and "calculate release point" sections of the mental process. To prevent from always being late or very late on the meter I had to truncate the process to the following: Confirm when the meter appears on screen > Release stick

Its also worth pointing out that the dunk attempt reliability issue mentioned above, makes the meter timing harder as well. For driving dunks, since im confident the dunk attempt will trigger, Im ready and simply waiting to see the meter. For standing dunks, since im not even sure its going to trigger, I am half expecting it to not trigger at all and im mentally preparing for whatever its going to give me instead of the dunk attempt i was going for (a standing layup, an awkward one foot fade, a pump fake, etc). This in effect, adds an extra step to the dunk meter process for standing dunks, that doesnt exist for driving dunks, so it looks like this: Did the dunk trigger, or am I doing something else? > OMG it actually triggered. Oh no the meter has started! > Release stick

3. Integration with the post game

For bigs, the playstyle I most immediately associated with the dunk meter, was power post scorers like Shaq. The first time I tried to use the meter with a big, I failed to get the meter to pop up even once, which made me conclude at the time, that the dunk meter was only for driving dunks, not standing dunks. This was because I was trying to combo the dunk meter off of post moves, while being right next to the hoop. I could be wrong on this, but based on my testing, there really is no integration between the post game and the dunk meter.

Slashers just need to have a driving lane to the hoop, and about 2 steps worth of full sprint, to trigger their meter. This can be achieved through a whole host of options (triple threat blow bys, size up blow bys, ankle breakers, good off ball movement, etc).

From my testing, there is no natural move from the post that puts post scorers in position to trigger the dunk meter. It seems the dunk meter can only be triggered when youre facing the hoop from a neutral stance (neutral stance = not currently engaged in some other animation). So this means that at best, you would have to do a post move that completes with you facing the hoop, and then you would have to wait an extra second or 2, to ensure you aren't still engaged in the post move from the game's perspective, and then attempt the dunk meter. Because of how close you have to get for the standing dunk, and the way you have to be facing to trigger the meter, I havent come up with a combo that can do this out of the post, unless you turn off the offensive 3 seconds rule. I have not found any way to use the dunk meter off of a dropstep, hop step, backdown, or up and under.

Ive only found 2 moves that work sometimes, and neither are great. You can do the post spin and do it once you get past the defender, but that just makes you a less effective slasher, as you will trigger the dunk animation on a driving dunk, and bigs have worse driving dunk ratings on average. The other option is to back the man down underneath the hoop, and then exit the post up animation to force your player to turn around and face the hoop, at which point you can try to trigger the dunk. In practice, your player will usually do a dribble move when he comes right out of the post like that, so youre ripe for a steal, and also the move makes you take a step which can carry you out of the favorable post position that you just earned, leaving you too close/far to trigger the dunk meter.

Your best bet for dunking from the post, is to give up on the meter and continue praying to the RNG gods for their blessing, and then pressing square after a successful post move, or doing the post dunk attempt where you push the left and right sticks up at the same time (which they should have replaced with the dunk meter now that it exists)