[kozzm0]

The rolling scissors is one of my favorite moves, except when I fight Mirgervin, who does it better than me, and counters better when I try to start one.

Almost the sole objective of a rolling scissors is to minimize your forward velocity. It's not important to maintain corner speed, because you get angles by adding the 3d spiral element just like in a Lufbery. It's a way of getting a high degree-of-turn rate at reduced speed. It's almost like a battle of barrel rolls, and you can do those at almost whatever speed. Just keep the speed high enough to maintain the maneuver, and no more.

apply power on the climb, and reduce throttle on the dive. Make the climbs and dives as steep as you can without losing track of the opponent or allowing them space to attack. I can tell you one well-known trick that's supposed to work, but I've never quite been able to do it: at the start of the climb end of a rolling scissors, stop rolling when your plane is level, apply max throttle and pull up to a vertical climb, going higher than the scissors was; then roll 180 and pull the nose down so your plane is inverted horizontal. At this point you should see the opponent in the climb phase and slightly in front, because you momentarily reduced your horizontal V to zero. Pull the nose straight down (facing the direction the scissors is coming from), dive a bit, then roll 180 towards the opponent as they go over the top of their circle. At this point you should be able to keep the throttle low and simply keep rolling until they're in front.

If you can make this work, congratulations - I can't. It also may take more than one high climb to make some opponents overshoot. I just adapt the concept to the basic maneuver - try to move up and down as much as possible, instead of forward.