Angles, Spread and Patterns

overview on all available anlges, their spread and a short look at pattern types

Angles

high contrast version[i.imgur.com]
Every character has a vertical angle (bunt the ball into wall/ground) and a horizontal angle (neutral hit and most specials). The other angles are usually 3 unique ones distributed onto up, down and smash. The image above already makes a few shared angles obvious, such as Latch and Switch using the same smash angle, Sonata and Candyman using the same down angle on the ground, Dice having a special angle like Candymans aerial down angle and also using Raptors grounded down angle as his smash. Raptor, Switch, Sonata and Latch use their smash angle when aiming down in the air. Additionally quite a few of them are the same upon bouncing off a wall. Switch and Raptor share the same up angle, which is also the same as the down angle from Latch on the wall. Sonatas up and down angles for her special are the same, yet unique. And Latches up and smash angle are the same. This is important because the same angle, no matter which direction it is released in, will always create the same type of pattern. There are 14 different unique diagonal angles, resulting in 14 different possible patterns per background (about 3 per character).

Spread

Another thing to take away from character angles is their spread, how large is the angle between aiming up and down. This is important because a larger spread is harder to cover, making it easier to aim past the opponent and thus forcing him to deal with the resulting pattern.
Candyman has the smallest spread on his aerial swing and Latch shares the largest on his wall swing with Switchs aerial neutral and the special of Dice. Keep in mind that a special capable of making more angles available without delay can bump up the possible spread (applies to Switch/Candyman/Sonata).

Patterns

I will not directly explore all 98 patterns, but I will offer two criteria by which you can categorize them. This will help to quickly recognize what you are dealing with in case of missing a quick angle of your opponent.
First of all patterns can be divided by their traveling angle, is it steeper than the background diagonal (traveling between walls, left and right) or is it shallow (traveling between ground and ceiling, up and down). The first of these two categories is easier to deal with, because backgrounds have more width than height, which gives you more time to adjust. The second is highly deadly, because if the ball misses you it will be coming back at you rather quickly and you have to turn and swing to get it. If you swing air it is very likely you will not get out of your recovery before you get hit.
Patterns can also be categorized into stationary (looping or almost looping) and moving.
The stationary patterns are what I'd like to call safe patterns. They loop quickly inside the stage box, like a standing wave, which creates permanent (or long lasting) safe zones you can stand in without risk. If you watch the animation to the right closely you'll notice that it keeps hitting the same spots on the walls, which is a good indication for such patterns.
The moving patterns are dangerous, because they take a very long time to actually loop and have no permanent safe zones. They only loop upon perfectly hitting a corner as seen on the next animation. Notice that the animations use the same angle, yet one loops within 8 frames, while the other takes 262. The only difference on those two are the box dimensions. It may be helpful to know which character angles create which type of pattern on each background.
There is still one thing to watch out on the safe zone patterns: clashing. If you create a safe pattern and you see your opponent swinging inside a safe zone in panic, without actually hitting the ball, run up and clash the swing instead of hitting the ball again to push him into the pattern. If you ever get into a safe zone by missing your opponents angle, stay calm and either wait or make sure to hit the ball quickly without getting clashed. Don't swing aimlessly.

[YinYin]

That is the default smash angle. Being stuck in an overhead smash with a full special bar gives you the left/right flip and the normal smash angle (not using special) as possible angles.

[Sauvagess]

So it says there are 3 angles for the Quickflip, but how do you do it? I can only get the left or right, not the trick smash angle with it.

[Into the Amiverse]

Thanks, much appreciated

[YinYin]

I've made a version for that before: http://i.imgur.com/jiDf0O3.png
I'll include it in the guide.

[Into the Amiverse]

Could you please change the colors in the image above with all the angles of all he characters? I'm colorblind and find it extremely difficult to tell apart Latch Raptor and Dice :(

[YinYin]

Not yet, since they were not intentional and will hopefully be reverted to this soon.
If some changes remain I will update of course.

[TG]

Will this be updated to feature the changed angles?

[Yuri Densetsu]

Thanks for the guide dude helped me a lot

[Sumiteru Adachi]

You're The Guy I Played With Before, The One That Absolutely Destroyed Me But Also Helped Me Learn Somethings
Thanks

[YinYin]

Nope, his special angle is always the same.