After messing around recently in Training Mode in Smash Ultimate, I made an interesting and useful discovery regarding Mewtwo: a simple move I’ve begun to call the “Shifted Teleport.” 

How to Do It

In Ultimate, if you dash or run at a ledge or platform edge but let go a little before you actually hit it, you’ll stop at the ledge instead of running off the platform. As your character halts their forward movement, they’ll usually go through a small stopping animation, like a skid or similar. 

In the case of Mewtwo, it’ll either start to lean their body up out of a dash, or do a little spinning animation out of a run. During this animation, if Mewtwo performs a Teleport, the game will not consider Mewtwo to be starting the teleport from the ground. Rather, because of how Mewtwo’s body is shifted forward a bit, it’ll be as if Mewtwo is Teleporting from the air, and this influences how Mewtwo exits the Teleport as well.

In the video above, you can see the difference between simply Teleporting when teetering at the ledge (Mewtwo comes out of the Teleport grounded vs. using a Shifted Teleport (Mewtwo is considered slightly above the ground and therefore gets the extra bit of a distance).

The Second Piece of the Puzzle: Teleport Shortening

The extended Teleport is a practical utilization of the Shifted Teleport, but there’s more. First, let’s look at another technique available to Teleport characters called “Teleport Shortening” or “Short Warping,” as demonstrated on Youtube by a user named Kaiser:

Essentially, if you pick the direction of your Teleport using the c-stick instead of the control stick, you exit the Teleport at a slightly shorter distance, no matter which direction you pick. The timing is a little strict, but far from impossible to pull off. As demonstrated in the video guide, this can help with things like ledge canceling, i.e. using Teleports to slip off ledges as an advanced movement technique. 

Here’s a video I uploaded showing how Shortened Teleports can help out Mewtwo on Kalos:

Notice how Mewtwo was falling off and dying, but with Shortened Teleports, things turn out differently. Also note that the angle to do these was straight down on the c-stick, 270 degrees. No need for fancy obscure angles or anything, which is a huge boon for players like me who aren’t good at being so consistently precise on the stick.

Shifting + Shortening = Even More Possibilities

Now, what happens when you combine Shifted Teleports with Shortened Teleports? Here’s one result—an easy ledge-trump method from on stage:

If you tried this from a standing position and a normal Teleport, you’d simply stay on the ground. If you do the shifted Teleport but non-shortened, you fall to your doom. It’s only by combining the two that this is possible.

Going back to ledge cancels, Mewtwo has a much more difficult time pulling them off than Palutena, and often risks self-destructing when trying. Part of this is that Mewtwo’s Teleport is much more unforgiving in terms of the precision of angles required to successfully ledge cancel. For someone like me who’s bad at consistently hitting those angles, it can feel too daunting to even attempt. But in the video below, all you have to do is hit the c-stick straight down during a Shifted + Shortened Teleport, and you get this reliable ledge cancel down-air on Battlefield (also works on Small Battlefield). 

Advantages of Shifting your Teleport

Shifted Teleports take a bit of time to set up due to the necessity of dashing and stopping, but I think it comes with a lot of benefits even before you factor in all the tech possible. 

1. It allows for easy spacing of these techniques, because all you need to remember is “dash at ledge” instead of “stand at this exact spot, or else.” 
2. Prior to the Teleport, you’re still considered grounded, so there’s less of a risk compared to being in the air or off-stage. 
3. You’re facing forwards (as opposed to backwards), which can be helpful depending on the situation. 
4. If done from a platform, you can safely threaten the ledge from a farther position. 
5. You can always choose not to do the Shifted Teleport and do any number of other options: shield, jump away, etc. It’s fairly non-committal.

More Research Needed

I’ve only tested Shifted Teleports a little bit, so I think there’s a lot more to discover. For one thing, this isn’t exclusive to Mewtwo, and I’ve found that the shift you get from dashing at ledges affects at least Sheik and Pikachu. There are also other stages to practice on.

I’ll be uploading all future Mewtwo clips (including all of the above) into a Youtube playlist, so it should be easy to keep track. In addition all the Shifted Teleport stuff, I even have a couple other things:

Happy labbing!