SSBU/Ryu/Matchups

This page includes write ups and various other notes from Shotocord. This will include matchup notes geared towards Ken and Ryu. The names of who wrote the matchup write up will be listed.

Link
From ImBad:

SHOTO LINK MU

GENERAL

Link is a heavier character weighing in at 104 units. Something about Link to remember is that he has an incredible fastfall speed. While he can zone he also has some very good normals since he has a sword. Expect to see links be a combination of zoning and rushdown. This mu is best for whatever shoto you are most comfortable with

LINK NEUTRAL

Links like to use boomerangs and bombs to control space. Keeping track of where both these things are will keep you from getting reversed when you do finally get in. Some things you can do about boomerang is shield (not advised since even at point blank it can be as good as -6,) hado, nair through it, and if you’re really feeling yourself you can just jab it to negate it. Another thing to keep in mind here is boomerang has less faf than hado, but 27 frames of startup. This is quite reactable. Remember, Link can angle his boomerang to catch jumps. This is where nair (especially ryus) shines at negating it. Link has a good set of aerial moves with most of them being safe on shield. If not through numbers then it is through spacing. Links generally will approach with nair or fair. Nair is able to be huptilted or roundhoused depending on the approach angle, and I do not recommend shielding it since it’s -2/-3 and in practice it's very hard to punish oos even if they don't make it perfect. In regards to fair you can either preemptively air to air or try to force them to mispace and huptilt it as well. If this hits your shield your best bet will be to reset to neutral due to it being a large disjoint that is -7. Fair 2 is able to be parried reliably since link cant mixup the timing of it. Link will occasionally approach with bair. Both hits of this move are -3 and it’s a very good combo move. If you get hit with it expect another one into an up b. Huptilt and roundhouse will once again be very good at stuffing this move out.

SHOTO NEUTRAL

Neural against link is going to mostly be you trying to get in on them or anti airing their approaches. Jumpins work if you can call out the boomerang throw. Be weary of his uptilt, it is frame 8 and a very disjointed anti air. Walk and parry his projectiles till you get to a point you can use a jump in to open him up. If he shields your jump in, cancel into focus to knowledge check him. Spin attack will always lose to focus on the ground. Wavebounce focus to avoid being grabbed. Tilt spam on shield will be safe since his oos options are too slow to get a real punish on us. hado/ shaku can be used to catch his landings. Don't forget to use your intangible ftilt to poke.

ADVANTAGE

Our advantage state is pretty standard against link. Push him to burn his resources since his recovery isnt all that stellar. When recovering, his upb will have a blind spot directly above him where he is able to be spiked. Watch for him to try and use nair to break out of juggles. When at ledge keep in mind that he can b reverse upb and send you off stage from a deceptively large range. Link does not have much to get off ledge for free. Watch for ledge drop dj fair. If he hangs on ledge for too long dsmash will hit him. I cannot overstate this enough. Make sure you know where boomerang is when you're in advantage state. End your strings early or with a grab to avoid getting reversaled. One other thing to keep in mind, Link will high profile dtilt spam after the first one. Time your dtilt so they connect. If you can't do this use a different combo starter

DISADVANTAGE

Try to use focus as mostly a movement tool. Link will generally use fair to break it if youre trying to use it as a combo breaker. This is even more scary at ledge since he can (and probably will) upb to break it as well. His sex kick is stupid good at edgegaurding us. Hone your tsrk skills for recovery if you don't want to continually get gimped by it. Bomb will also be very dangerous to us while recovering. MAKE SURE YOU MIX UP YOUR RECOVERY. Otherwise you’ll be dying much too early. If ink chooses to stay on stage make sure you snap to ledge. He can use dtilt and dmash to hit our hand through the stage.

Little Mac
KO punch KOs shotos on FD at 26%.

From Kintuse:

Without many aerials options, they have to stay grounded and Ken has an answer for each of his approaches.

He has many great pokes and his frame data is amazing, but you can jump more liberally than Mac, just try not to jump on top of him too often. Use your jumps to space yourself and only double jump to get out of a sticky situation so you aren't caught in a string. If you are stuck in a u-tilt string, hold airdodge to buffer it on the faf so the next one whiffs. His utilt strings aren't a true combo and you don't have to repeatedly tap airdodge to get the timing right to get out.
 * Sliding F-tilts can be met with blocking into a simple punish
 * F-smash spam can be whiffed punished (if you block, don't try to punish it)
 * D-tilt spacing can be beaten by fading back and using hados
 * If they roll behind you after running a lot, keep spamming d-tilts to catch them

From Breck:

basic mac on shield overview


 * space a dtilt which is -13, this is good because it had decent range which got buffed, leads into his most damaging followup at mid percents being side b, and low profiles a ton of oos options, most notably basically every aerial oos
 * space a dfsmash because it's his most safe grounded option on shield at -12 (jab equals this and a charged neutral b that is released slightly early can be -5, the former has little reward and the latter has 2 seconds of startup). this is good because this and up angled fsmash both have good pushback in shield, already have good range, and down angled specifically is a shield breaking move. this requires more of a call out on shield, aka ranged oos options like fair oos for shotos iirc. if he can space it well which he usually can it's borderline safe for the pushback alone

everything else is either extremely minus or puts him point blank, including all other tilts, unangled fsmash and down smash

This gets the brecc seal of approval but I'll add a bit more commentary on Utilt strings Utilt is -6 on hit at 0; It's like -1 if he gets the back hit though

And also airdodging behind him after you're hit by one Utilt at 0 and he buffers a second, due to airdodging landing lag he has 4 frames to punish that, and since you're in range of Ftilt, he'll use that, since it's a frame 4 move, so def airdodge away

At mid percents Utilts are outright true and he usually goes into an Up-B after 2 of them; but just Utilt Up-B stops working when it'd actually kill so lol

Utilt when it's positive on hit is one of Mac's best positions to be in because he can hard punish basically every option you pick if he knows what you'll do

The -6 part isn't actually useful knowledge for punishing it but you'll just know that he doesn't get anywhere close to a guaranteed followup; you're contesting a move that gets less negative as the stock goes on that's frame 4 and already -6, so that's a 10 frame gap, and there really isn't a percent range where you can hit him with Nair, either you fall to the ground too quickly and eat another Utilt or your Nair doesn't come out fast enough

So yeah airdodge away and hold shield

BF and TnC is good for mac PS2 nice for mac SV is okay for mac Kalos and Lylat is divisive for mac FD and YS bad for mac

Lucario
From General Yi:

Lucario likes to stay mobile in the air due to their high air speed and will carry you along with nair and fair trains at low percents, similar to Majin Airlines. It's easier to get caught in these as Ryu due to the temptation to toss fireballs in neutral more often. I found keeping Lucario pinned down with close quarters strings was much more useful and it felt tricky to keep up pressure as Ryu. It became rather easy for my opponent to take advantage of Ryu strings sending them far away to camp out on a platform, charge aura sphere most of the way, and keep that in their pocket for any sudden brake-checks when I'd try and close the distance. Basically Ryu's defensive play is harder to utilize in this matchup, even when you're in the lead due to how aura works. You want higher mobility and more severe anti-airs as Ken rather than better fireballs.

Lucas
From Charles:

hey everyone, non ryu/ken main here, I typed out a document on the Shotos vs Lucas MU, from the perspective of a lucas main. I typed it out with the help of General Yi and maybe you guys could gain something from it. keep in mind it is from the perspective of a lucas main, so it's more like me telling what lucas should do against the shotos rather than vice versa. if anyone has a question on the lucas MU, i can help them too if they'd like https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XY0j-OFWLgFrXFAyQ2jZqGF9FOtGo7a3dlj80uKelXc/edit?usp=sharing

From Bill Bill Bill:

depending on how the pk thunder was angled, it may be best to get hit by it AND NOT JUMP. if you can, shoryu into it and react to where it sends you... hopefully rng sends you on the side instead of sending you down without kb

Luigi
From Skysong:

How to survive Luigi death combos!

Luigi's basic zero to death is down throw dair nair dair uair upb. You cant DI this combo because it doesnt send you into tumble, so to have any hope of escaping you're going to have to SDI. To sdi, you need to wiggle your left stick from diagonal up to diagonal down one direction. This has been a mechanic since smash 64 and is incredibly useful for escaping multihits so you should learn it either way. SDI can be read and reacted to by the luigi, but mixing up can help either way. SDI doesnt work for the down throw but it does for the rest of the moves. You can try to cross luigi up with SDI in to ruin the combo, and SDI in can also mess with up air into upb. However, make sure you also switch how you sdi every time you get grabbed so that the Luigi has to actively pay attention and put conscious effort into comboing you, as if you SDI the same direction every time, the combo is just playing dance dance revolution on your corpse. You can also change the direction mid combo to really throw them for a loop.

Also, dont use flick SDI! Its really bad and doesnt do anything. (Note from Lernonad: use this if you play on a box controller (Smashbox or arcade stick). You get better SDI because you are SDIing in one direction instead of two directions that then add up to one direction. Flick SDI is only possible on box controllers)

The combo doesnt have DI, but upb does, and it usually doesnt matter but DI directly away is the optimal DI for upb and will change the kill percent by 2-3.

Lastly, if the Luigi tries to style with fair>nair or the back end of up air strings, always sdi really hard away from them, as fair has much less control to follow the SDI.

Marcina (Marth & Lucina)
From Lernonad:

Neutral: They play just like Ike where buffered aerials are not safe while landed aerials are safe. if you see them jump to try and do a landed aerial then anti air them before the attack comes out. If they land an aerial on your shield and you don't parry then wait out to see what they will do after the aerial. Their tilts will beat out jumps and shield grabs. The biggest thing to look out for is if they do a buffered aerial they can do another aerial before landing if full hopped and just do double jump aerial if short hopped. their shorthop fair and shorthop bair covers full hops and shorthops. Parrying benefits us a lot but doing it too often against a good player can get us punished by mixups. Finally, look out for shield breaker and mix up how you try to avoid it.

Advantage: Up b has frame 1 intangibility when done in the air so good luck with the long untrue strings. Ledge trapping is pretty easy since they cant do buffered attacks off of ledge.

Disadvantage: Might want to try doing the up air true shoryu to beat counter off stage. Be careful using focus to stop juggling they can do multiple aerials in one jump. Dtilt and Dsmash can hit ledge stalls. If they do down throw you want to DI behind them to avoid the follow up aerial.

Mega Man
From Kresent:

Megaman has to commit to his projectiles, especially pellets. One pellet is 33 frames minimum commitment, 45 if he does two, and 57 if he does three. Pellets come out on frames 7, 19, and 31 and no other possible frames.

A lot of his projectiles get beaten by active hitboxes (Pellets, D.Air, Metal Blade, Crash Bomb). If you're close enough to be just outside of his SH F.Air range and you then predict he'll shoot pellets, Tatsu will win. If your aerial clanks with any of his projectiles, it'll extend your hitbox through the extended animation you go through so he has to be careful not to jump into it.

Leaf Shield is scary but he is committed once he pulls it out. He HAS to throw it eventually, so just shield. You can actually punish with heavy Up.B OoS but otherwise, just shield and force him to either retreat and throw, jump and throw, or just throw on your shield. All of them are punishable if he doesn't read which one you try to cover. Be aware that he CAN cancel his Leaf Shield if he has a Metal Blade in hand.

Don't be above him, Ken cannot do anything about Megaman's U.Air

Do not jump when near the ledge around 90%. His B-Air is frame 4, disjointed, kills at ledge, and is a multihit so Ken doesn't really have an answer if he spaces it right. All Megaman players want you to jump from ledge or jump when you're cornered so that they can hit you with SH/FH B-Air. Don't let them have it. In general, just don't jump because getting hit by his B.Air past like 40% means you're going to be put offstage

Play center stage as much as possible, don't force approaches. Once you can finally corner him, DO NOT GO OFFSTAGE. Focus on keeping him stuck in the corner and forcing out his disadvantage options (Up.B, Leaf Shield, Airdodge, Double Jump, and pellet spam mostly)

Mainly, don't get frustrated by pellets, they do such little damage. Avoid long range fights and fighting him in the air. Look for your opportunities to Tatsu through a projectile and hit him, with the ultimate goal of cornering him and keeping him there

Leaf Shield trading from Munekin: https://twitter.com/munekin_th/status/1132571260985044994?s=21

Meta Knight
FSmash can hit shotos' ledge hang.

From Bean!:

This matchup is extremely boring and tedious. You must accurately monitor the MK and make sure you know what they’re fishing for and be prepared to mash or SDI right out of their combos. Most of them are not true, and their ladders don’t work on us if we mixup our DI. An MK mains worst fear is something that can challenge them in the air, since they love to air camp and dance around us. I reccomend ryu for this matchup personally, he’s able to shut down MK’s approaches from air and ground with smart shaku use and can punch the stupid blob into the sky with huptilt if they try DA. When you’re offstage they’re most likely gonna try to 2 frame your recovery, so try recovering high or medium with hado hover + FADC. Tatsuing the stage is a death penalty. Good strands that work on MK are usually sniping him out of the air with uptilt and getting a kill/some damage with shaku that way. This is a matchup where you MUST NOT APPROACH. Approaching against meta knight is shut down extremely easily with his surprisingly absurd frame data and almost unpunishable specials due to his dsmash. Let him come to you, which is easier said then done, and take it away from there

TL;DR: Turtle him until he approaches then beat him up. Single strike, remember. Always watch what he’s doing.

Mewtwo
You can use to tank FAir after Side B. Just watch out for if they decide to start mixing up with NAir.

Mii Brawler
From a Brawler main in Bean!'s crew:

Ken is our best mu of the three. He needs to pressure up close, but we have the perfect tools to counter his pressures and we eat him up just as much as he does us. All of his tilts, and his Nair, we auto-punish with Thrupper. Landing up air is a good option against him too, since his oos options are lacking. Confirms just come naturally against him since he is always where we want him to be. His footsies game doesn’t seem threatening either since he’s not super fast. Ryu is a lot different tho, since he spaces so much more. He actually has zoning tools which can wall us out. This alone makes the mu even or slightly losing imo.

Mii Gunner
From Purpose:

Be careful landing, as Gunner’s up air will go through focus. Air dodge mix ups, hadoken over, and tatsu mixups will help with this.
 * Ryu is better in this MU as he can counter-zone gunner with hadoken / shakunetzu and throw out a surprise tatsu to kill early
 * Be prepared to play very patiently
 * Space well. You should in any MU but it’s a necessity here
 * Be sure to mix up recovery
 * Parrying is extremely helpful in close combat
 * Gunner’s roll is really good, prepare to bait them and punish accordingly
 * BAN PS2 AND FD!! Long stages make it easier for gunner to catch our landings and play keep-away.

Mii Swordfighter
From Bill Bill Bill:

Somewhat unconclusive analysis on Swordfighter after fighting 2 matches against a pretty good player.

Swordfighter is really good at keeping you in the corner, more specifically at ledge. Chakram is really good at guarding ledge and maybe make you choose jump, which SF can abuse by using uair. Additionally, a good SF can use chakram as a pseudo flamethrower if they angle it down (and use the slow version), as in... it can keep you from reaching ledge. This can ____ you over if you airdodge. But if youre far from ledge, they can use the fast version to keep you away from ledge and maybe take your jump. I highly recommend you dont use your 2nd jump until youre directly below ledge, and even then, if they jave the stock lead/ have more % than you, they might do a kamikazee dair, but its kinda inconsistent and not that strong at low percents, just be careful they dont read your jump.

Also, use heavy tatsu as a skill and moveset check. I think the only move thats fast enough to challenge any follow up after heavy tatsu (or light tatsu if it doesnt tumble)is their counter, which can obviously be baited and punished.

Very brief explanation of neutral Mii swordfighter likes nair, more specifically, the back hit of nair, it can start combos at low to mid %. Mii swordfighter also plays a bit like a semi-grappler since dthrow is an amazing combo starter for them, sinceit leads into bair or uair, both of which are stupid strong. They can also condition you to shield on ledge of they corner you, since their corner game is kinda good.

Mr. Game & Watch
From chase!?!:

1. GnW combos Game and watch has a very linear combo game but it is extremely good at building up damage. What you're typically gonna be hit by is a fast fall nair to a nair chain to an up air. There really isn't any specific way to avoid this properly, *when you start getting chained by nair you always want to DI up because it will usually only let the GnW to get two nairs which drastically reduces the damage (but you will still get hit by the last up air and avoiding the up air is so incredibly difficult with how bad our disadvantage is so I can't give too much here) Another thing that GnWs will do would be fair to nair chains. Forward air will always lead to nair if they are going towards you with fair, the only way to really avoid this is to either avoid the bomb or DI the nairs once you get hit by the nair. Up air chains suck, there's no DI to it you just have to avoid it at all costs. Advanced GnWs will use wave bounced chef to get nair chains, this doesn't happen a lot because not many GnWs know how to use chef but that is definitely something to watch for if they keep throwing out wave bounce chef. Chef at ledge can actually combo into f tilt which is an extremely good kill confirm because of the angle it sends at and how much knockback it does. Then there is up b combos, not much you can really do here other than DI the nair if they do that but usually they will use up air out of up b so just be ready to avoid up air. GnWs combos are not free flow at all, they are very flowchart so as time goes on you'll know the follow ups that they will fish for after their combo starters so its fairly easy to adapt to

2. Ledge traps and how to deal with chef Chef at ledge is very very dangerous, it leads to some really good kill confirms, chef to ftilt/chef to dair spike. When you are at ledge GnWs usually know the exact range to go to where get up attack and roll will be covered so these should not be constantly used but roll is still a very good mix up. Neutral get up is very iffy because sometimes you are able to shield and, and other times you just get hit by it, I recommend trying to shield and then mix up jump attack or roll out of shield. GnW also really enjoys reading your get ups at ledge after using chef, if you don't mix up he can cover every option at ledge. 1 - Chef /Fair/Nair/Bair for jump 2 - Dash attack/Fair/D-smash/Fsmash/Bair for neutral get up or get up attack 3 - Every smash attack for roll Chef at ledge is all about timing and mixing up your options at ledge

3. GnW neutral game GnW uses his disjoints to keep you out and his fair and other combo starters to get damage up, there really isn't too much advance things about his neutral. He will up b oos to get up air juggles started and use his smash attacks to catch a lot of things that you do (unlike most characters using smash attacks in neutral with GnW is pretty smart, don't try to constantly punish them because that might just lead you to getting hit by something else even worse) They want to keep you in the air as long as possible and keep you at the ledge for as long as possible, use your best anti airs like heavy up tilt up b or whatever you think would work best. Once you're offstage be extremely careful, back air/forward air/up b are all extremely good at edge guarding you. They can go as low as they want so be ready to mix up recovering high and keep the GnW guessing where you're going. Another smart thing to bait out is GnW at ledge dropping down and using nair to start combos, this very punishable but my favorite way to get this is to back up and f-smash since he is so light (kills at about 65-70)

4. GnW kill confirms This one will be quick and simple since he really doesn't have that much and usually kills off of reads. Chef at ledge to ftilt is amazing / Chef at ledge to dair is pretty good / Down smash f smash is disgustingly good / Drag down nair dtilt is pretty damn good / Up tilt to 9 (not good but its hilarious)

5. Who to use Honestly both Ken and Ryu do pretty damn good against GnW they have kill confirms that get GnW dead extremely early. Ryu's shaku against GnWs bucket really doesnt matter cause its a weak bucket that only does 20% and barely any knockback, however normal hado leads to a kill bucket so be very careful with it.

Ness
https://twitter.com/Strike_CVI/status/1133119053189586946

From Bean!: They can’t fair train you if you’re sdi’ing down and in

From G4RK:

Patience is everything in this mu, as ken/ryu have no clear advantages, you will mostly not be playing vs the character but more vs the player
 * Ness can Nair twice in a short hop, this also means that after nair he can choose to do a rising aerial like fair, bair or even dair, the last 2 can be parried way easier, expect this if ness does a rising nair or nairs at sh height
 * if he ff does ff nair/fair then expect either a grab (especially if ness is at the edge) or jab and spotdodge or wait for the jab to end
 * if after your shield pressure ness attempts a shield grab then you can preemptively spotdodge or even jump and pressure again or open him up with a nair
 * if after your shield pressure he sh nairs then just shield expecting it, if you can parry the move then your punish could be monumental
 * ness can be juggled easily (even moreso by ryu than by ken) so take advantage of that, but watch out for magnet mixups
 * Hanging from ledge, ness has the option to rising fair, shield accordingly and punish right away or watch his reactiom after his move is blocked and punish accordingly
 * Ness' yoyo at ledge really does screw us over, however we do have a very slight chance to snap ledge, yoyo starts charging on frame 12 and the charge hitbox starts every 6 frames so snapping ledge is an unfavorable gamble
 * Dthrow fair is not true just DI out
 * Maintaining center stage is crucial vs ness as his above average killpower gets nerfed
 * Up air to shoryu or gounded shoryu as anti air kills for ken
 * Shaku is free vs ness as he gains nothing from absorbing it
 * DO NOT CONTEST HIS AERIALS WITH YOUR OWN
 * you can outspace them with your ground moves though, namely light ftilt and RH but spacing is key

From Bill Bill Bill:

Combo-breaking Nair and Ken Tatsu will always hit him way too high almost every time, which makes tech situations extremely rare. Though, I think Ken Heavy Tatsu is really good at low percents since they (probably) can't do anything after it, so start a followup with Dtilt or something really fast. If you DO get a tech situation, somehow, always go for Ptilt x3 to jablock cause Ptilt x2 > Pjab only works if he's not facing you. You can notice and react accordingly, but you might as well go for Ptilt x2 every time for almost every character except heavies just to be safe. One last thing, Tatsu goes over grounded PK Fire, at least for Ken. Its really good for ken for starting combos and probably for Ryu too to punish and maybe even kill. Careful if you're Dtilt spamming when ledgetrapping. They can fall and jump Uair. Uair is stupid strong and is relatively safe. CK is also kinda bad here unless you try to kill with Fsmash. Their only choice would be jump or airdodge up or even in(?). Don't do Ken airlines or even TSRK because Nair.

Pac-Man
https://twitter.com/Bulbamike/status/1176536871138185218 https://twitter.com/Bulbamike/status/1183421178507137024

From SHORYUKEN:


 * PATIENCE. You will get openings from whiffed approaches, from whiffed grabs, from whiffed projectiles, from ledgetraps. But you get these openings with movement, not with blind aggression. Use jump feints to bait grab or projectiles.
 * You can deal with projectiles by clanking them with blue hado or just jumping (depends on which one, you’ll figure it out). Canceling one of his projectiles is a win. You will wear on his patience and make him want to do something, and you can walk forward a bit.
 * Don’t mindlessly wail on hydrant, he is more prepared to use it than you are. You aren’t clever, it’s a bait.
 * Be careful about extending your hurtbox into a whiffed grab, he will still grab you as it is active for a long time. Punish whiffed grabs with jump-ins.
 * At ledge, his most dangerous option is a ledgehop aerial so plan to punish that with shield, a fullhop or a back dash.
 * He has reasonably fast combo breaking options as well as hydrant to dissuade juggles. If you start a juggle, try to bait a defensive option and punish that instead.
 * You’ll learn new setups and how to deal with different projectiles over time. You aren’t stupid for getting hit, just inexperienced. Learn from it and you’ll begin to recognize the setups, like apple + hydrant or key through hydrant or z drop orange.
 * If you have a pac main willing to help, learn how to edgeguard him. He can be punished during the trampoline, the trampoline can be stolen, and you can hit the pellet, but this takes practice.
 * Be ready for low angle tech situations from his bair. Rolling in is usually bad as you will get fsmashed.
 * Focus is a good way to break through most projectiles and aerials but it will lose to his galaga, dash attack and dair. He will also just grab you. Use it to break through, but don’t rely on following through unless he commits to a smash.

Pichu
All HDTilt combos do not work on Pichu if he DIs correctly.

From Bean!:

Pichu is a pain in the ass because whenever they shield they will most likely grab you or aerial OoS if you even touch them so you’re gonna want to bait them into doing it so you can punish hard. Ryu is able to get his damage off well despite his dtilt hdtilt tatsu stuff not always working since pichu is so light. Most of the time this matchup is just about smart anti airing with upair dp and anticipating approaches from the pichu player and punishing appropriately. When put into a combo do not use focus since you will get punished the first time, and if you do it again you’ll probably get thunder’d. Don’t land and shield because pichu players play the “Landing Catch” game professionally. And when hit by tjolt offstage do not panic airdodge, instead up b until you get to ledge and figure out a proper way to get around the pichu players’ ledge trap. You can abuse the iframes on ledge roll, just make sure you haven’t done it a lot or you’ll get read. Pichu’s kill power got nerfed hard since his ftilt doesn’t kill at stupid percent but he can still most definitely kill you. Since he’s small most shoto players struggle to hit him, when in reality you can throw out a bair or something and just watch as the pichu player jumps into it.

TL;DR: This matchup relies on lots of antiairs, and not a lot of laggy fireball spam because Pichu will maneuver right over and deal 70% or kill you. Play it smart and beat out his linear approaches, also be sure to not mash buttons on his shield unless you’re spaced and can shield yourself then punish. Bait & Punish is really important, feint in, then get out to get the Pichu to approach and punish appropriately.

Pikachu
https://twitter.com/Tilted_as_fuck/status/1295148951826464768

https://twitter.com/penniniken/status/1237285791476396033?s=21

Mini-JMU Notes by General Yi:

Neutral:

General: Optimal Tjolt destroying moves are Collarbone and Roundhouse for Ryu and Ken respectively. Make sure after parrying an aerial you Utilt or TSRK. Pika's aerials have 5f gaps. Utilt will beat it clean (+3 advantage, 2f move buffered) and TSRK will beat it with invincibility. Ryu's Uair intangibility beats a lot of things. Thunder explosion from underneath, Skull Bash when his waist is below pikachu, and all aerials as long as he is even slightly lower than Pika. Rising Nair is pretty good in this MU. It destroys Tjolt which causes the hitbox to linger. Utilt will hit Pikachu on pivot cancel where it normally whiffs. You can punish Quick Attack onstage by spotdodge cancelling the second hit into run after shielding the first hit. Run up Dtilt will most likely net you a punish. SH Nair OoS will also just beat the second hit clean. Stand directly under Pika, that way he has trouble using Tjolt if at all. Follow him and be ready to HUtilt his landing. Try not to let him get far enough away to Tjolt you from the air. FADC can be used in this matchup, but it is suggested that it only be used at very high heights where he can only reach with Thunder or maybe DJ Uair. Grounded Tjolt > anything is often hard to followup on. Taking the hit and mashing Dtilt might catch the Pikachu. Keep in mind Tjolt's main use is to force a defensive option, Not fish for confirms. Similar to our projectile but literally better in every way. Make sure to mix up what you do after shielding/taking the Tjolt hit, they'll be watching your habits. Rising aerials can be Usmash’d OOS consistently. You will low profile the rest of the hits and what does stick up will be intangible. Ryu’s Ranged HJab will clank with Tjolt and put you in recoil. Use CBB. Do not shield Tjolt if at all possible. It can't be avoided sometimes, but try and use other options. Parry, jump over it, CBB or just take the hit. You have less lag from eating Tjolt than shielding it and shield dropping. Don't aggressively jump in. Jumping should be for MOVEMENT ONLY. Examples of this include jumping to avoid ground Tjolt, throw out Fair to cover airspace, to clash air Tjolt with Nair, or to stuff a falling aerial with Uair.

Neutral Win Conditions: Rising Fair is good too, particularly against Pika's aerials. It wins a lot.

Projectile Interactions: Tatsu can be used to beat Tjolt inconsistently. Will lose if Tjolt is at the bounce apex. (Calculated risk) Don't overuse your projectile. Don't get me wrong, Hado-Shaku is good. It should be used oppressively here. But be careful with your timing. You could take a lot of damage for it. Pika is able to reach us easier than a lot of characters on the roster. Mind your spacing when using Hado-Shaku.

Shoto Advantage:

General: Pressure shield relentlessly, but be safe. Be wary of OoS options like fadeaway Nair. Pika can be shieldpoked relatively easily, so take advantage of that. If you get a hit that launches him up, chase with Uair. This is by far the best move to use against him when in advantage juggle state. It beats a lot of his landing options. If you are on the ground after a juggle, follow his DI and HUtilt his landing. It will stuff aerials and other stuff, but be wary of Tjolt. Try to stay close enough that he can't hit you with it at that angle. When hit with Shaku, Pika often likes to mash out a landing aerial, particularly Fair. RAR Bair him if you predict this. If you can get him to do it, make him shield Shaku. It sets up for easy shieldpokes after. Be ready for jump OoS and smack him with TSRK anti-air if using Ken. Use combos on the iffy side regarding hitstun. Pika is one of the few characters with a frame 2 airdodge so he can break some strings other characters can't. Don't respect combo-breaker Thunder. If you can change your routing to affect that, like cancelling into Tatsu for horizontal movement in order to get out of the way, or cancelling into Focus to absorb the bolt, do that. Don't go for Dthrow, the followups and vertical advantage typically aren't worth it. Use Fthrow or Bthrow for stage advantage.

Shield Blockstrings: Ryu Shield Pokes/Breaks:
 * Nair > Utilt x3 > TSRK
 * Nair > Dtilt x2 > HDtilt > Light Shaku

Ken Shield Pokes/Breaks:
 * Utilt > HUtilt > RH
 * HUtilt > CK > IZ
 * Utilt > HUtilt > Tatsu
 * Dtilt x2 > HDtilt > CK > IZ
 * Nair > HUtilt > TSRK
 * Dtilt x2 > HDtilt > TSRK
 * Dtilt x4 > HDtilt > RH > IZ [Break]

Opponent’s Combo Breakers: If Pika is interrupted with hitstun during Thunder, the bolt will sail right past him, only a hazard to the other player without making him explode. However, he can still combo break with it if he mashes down special afterward. This is because Thunder puts Pikachu in a "cocked state." The bolt that hits him doesn't have to be the bolt he calls during that Thunder. It can be the one he called before. So a combo break would work like this:
 * 1) Pika calls Thunder
 * 2) He gets hit
 * 3) He mashes Down-B during a gap, this puts him in a cocked state for the first bolt to hit
 * 4) The bolt from the interrupted Thunder hits him and he explodes, breaking the combo and hitting like a truck to boot. Example: https://twitter.com/TheRealClayMeta/status/1211380442504544256

Edgeguarding: When Pika is knocked offstage and going for LEDGE, runoff Tatsu into ledge is a great edgeguard. By holding down you can delay the ledgegrab. It hits Pika’s Quick Attack rather consistently.

Ledgetrapping: When Pika is knocked offstage, be wary of Quick Attack onto stage. You can stop this by using Ranged HJab/Roundhouse (Ryu/Ken) and punish him for it, as his hurtbox gets really big.

Shoto Combos + Kill Options:

General: HDtilt Light Shaku is not true at anything outside point blank. However, if they pick any option that isn't airdodge away, it will hit meaty and grant massive frame advantage. Raw Pjab works on vulnerable pancakes but make sure it is a true punish. Don't use HDtilt roundhouse as Ken. Really. It whiffs a lot of the time on DI up and away and is inconsistent, it is recommended you do this after Light Dtilt instead. Don’t use Utilt Pjab. It is highly likely you will get a fallout from this, even if you can get it to hit. Actually, try not to use Light Utilt in general. Try for Light Tatsu tech chases as Ken. The window where they can't jump out is very small. Don’t rely on HDtilt Tatsu as a kill confirm as Ryu. Again, they can DI up and away to escape well before kill %. Light Dtilt Tatsu or Shoryu is the way to go. Grab punish a pancake. Start a combo with a whiffing move on pancake. Dtilts, Dsmash, and Pjab seem to be the most consistent starters.

Our Combos/Kill Options: For non-Tatsu combos for true damage, use Heavy Shaku off HDtilt and Light Shaku off Ptilt/Pjab. Use HDtilt Tatsu <50%, and stop using it >50%. This is when Pika is able to DI up and away to avoid Tatsu. Switch to just Dtilt tatsu then.

Shoto Disadvantage:

General: Uthrow kills shotos at 177% on FD, and 184% on Smashville. It sends directly up, so DI left or right depending on the situation. Do not DI in on literally anything. Don't let Pika force you to recover mid. If you are put below the stage, recover low. Do not try to Focus out of disadvantage. Do not panic airdodge. When in disadvantage, keep your head on.

OoS Options: We can stuff all rising aerials with Usmash OoS consistently because we low profile the attack frame 1 of our Usmash animation. This is useful because Pika's fair autocancels out of rising short hop.

Recovering: Recovering high is the way to go here. You can absorb Thunder and Uair with focus. Try to get at a height where pika can't Fair or Bair you, and land from there. Do not Tatsu to ledge. Ever. You will be spiked. Low recovery is dangerous too, since they have a lot of gimping options with bair, dragdown fair, and other things. Tjolt can also cling to walls. Always save your jump unless it is absolutely necessary, but burning it to get up high in the air is a calculated risk that should be considered

Combo Breaking: SDI Bair and Fair up and away. For nair loops, pick a side and SDI that way as hard as you can. Pika has to follow your DI, so try and mix up which side you pick so you have a chance to escape.

Shoto Stage Pick:

General: Avoid/Ban Kalos. It has the biggest average blast zones, the plat can be used to camp shotos out AND the stage shape makes TJolt mashing and camping a viable strategy for Pikachu. Recovery is tough on that stage due to this strategy and even once you do get in, nothing's killing for a while. Avoid BF. This stage isn't very optimal for Pikachu. The plats help people escape combos, get in the way of Tjolt and Thunder. There is less room to run away and camp with Tjolt when necessary. This means that BF is just a less optimal stage for pikachu, so while it's bad for us it's not exactly good for them. Makes BF a less optimal stage for Pika than most other stages. Yoshi's, due to its small size, forces more neutral exchanges. The slants enable an easier 2-frame. Lylat, it's important to maintain platform pressure. The side blast zones are fairly small so we can get some earlier kills. We can use the plats to get around Tjolt, as it makes it more difficult to hit the stage. Smashville, small stage length makes camping as Pikachu harder and forces more neutral exchanges (something you want). Every other legal stage is about even, rule of thumb being harder to camp on = better for you, avoid stages with walls.

Good Stages:
 * Smashville
 * Yoshi’s Story

Neutral Stages:
 * Lylat Cruise
 * Battlefield

Bad Stages:
 * Kalos Pokemon League

Pit
From SYMb0l:

The way I beat pit is anti-air the shice out of them. pit's neutral tools are either silver bow, stubby and grounded tilts/grabs, which shotos can beat out, and fast and/or spaced aerials. Shotos kinda cuck anyone grounded-buttons-wise, so expect lots of defensive play, spamming multi-hit moves, and especially aerials. The pits do play slightly differently, as their bows have different properties, but they both have the same game plan. Being smash's most honest characters, their advantage state is also simple; get the opponent offstage for edgeguards or above for uair juggles. DO NOT use focus to land, or to recover (for the most part). typically, abuse the fact that the pits have relatively poor airspeed and try to get as much distance as possible from them to land. Shoto's win condition is antiair the everliving snot out of them, keeping center stage, and mixup up your disadvantage without relying on focus. Other strategies do include ledgetrapping them, as they're very meh at ledge, and hitting their upb, but they have enough recovery mixups where this won't really work. For ryu, use slow fireball to bait reflect and punish hard. Same can be done for ken but it's not as effective if the opponent knows what they're doing.

Pokemon Trainer
From Bean!:

ledge trapping pt: pt's ledge options all suck, its either up b as squirtle and ivy, get up attack, drop ledge nair on stage, drop ledge fair, jump side b from ledge, or roll/neutral getup/jump. most of these options leave pt extremely susceptible to effective ledge traps so heres one that works:
 * stay 2 1/2 roll distances away from ledge
 * throw hado and walk back and forth baiting them into rolling, jumping, or doing something stupid
 * as ken, if they jump you can shoryu them
 * as ryu, you can try for upair, but if you know the jump is coming a spaced bair or well timed fsmash will definitely do the job
 * and if they try to do something like zard b from ledge just shield then punish.

Squirtle
From Bean!:

you can mash dtilt and uptilt to interrup his grab. squirtle dies easy but hes tiny making it tricky. if he side b's on your shield, you can either wait then parry his up b, or roll away, because side b to up b on shield with squirtle is a shield poke. squirtle will most likely be fishing for grab, so stay right out of their burst range and rough em up with spaced disjoints.

Ivysaur
From Bean!:

ivysaur is a beast, probably one of my most feared things in this game because of how massive his hitboxes are. his dair will give you the middle finger if you dont mixup your recovery, same with his up b. pt in general can punish you hard for not mixing up your di too, so do that. against ivysaur, if youre hitting their shield its usually gonna be a grab or a nair depending on where you are in relation to them, nair for ivy is really fast, so try to avoid the upclose shield pressure and focus more on spacing him out. ivy side b is a good projectile, functions like our fireballs. holds the neutral, lets him approach, but quite laggy, if you can jump over them and bait him into trying to nair you, you can get an up air tsrk. another thing, ivys endlag is nonexistent. so when you airdodge away from an upair that actually works in his favor because he can juggle you more, mixup your escape options. throwing hado against ivy is ill advised, your only choices against side b are to either clank, which is also bad, jump over, or shield. watch out for up b offstage. when ivy is on ledge they'll probably do drop ledge up b and poke you from 10,000 miles away somehow. dont worry about that tho, if you know they like to do that you can get a tatsu trump on them decently easily. when ivy grabs you are their a number of routes he can go, 90% of his grab combos involve dthrow into aerial. at low percent you can expect a nair, so di up and out to avoid followups that would cause more damage. thats about it for ivy.

Charizard
From Bean!:

although he sucks, hes a threat. his aerials are all gigantic, but they have pretty slow startup since their range is massive. when you're at >95% you can expect the pt main to switch to charizard and fish for bair, ftilt, fair, fthrow, or upthrow if youre at really high percent. when you're at 0 there is some massive cheese charizard can do to you, the has bthrow side b which kills you at zero if you jump so DONT do that. he has dthrow bair and then another bair which also kills you at 0, this one is only if you dont jump. zard ftilt is ginormous too, dont underestimate it, his fsmash is also good with range, and hes got one of the fastest if not the fastest upsmash OoS in the game, do not land on his shield at all, you will get grabbed or upsmashed and die. since zard is chonky, he gets hit by lots of stray fireballs and grabbing him is easy just be sure that you get your grabs the moment he puts up shield to avoid dying. zard's neutral b cucks our recovery so if youre recovering from the bottom try to save your jump, his dair and dsmash can hit us through the stage, same with dtilt and fsmash if you poke through enough. he most likely will try to bait you into jumping or rolling to hit you with ftilt, bair, or fsmash. to avoid this simply just try and wait or when you're on the ledge think about what you should do and what the zard has in mind. zard also has a shield break involving bair and side b, so if he hits your shield with bair then drifts away, he may be trying for that. zard is also susceptible to big damage combos, so you can try for aerial chains although I suggest sticking with grounded damage, since challenging zard in the air is a bad idea.

Ridley
From Bill Bill Bill:

When Ridley's in disadvantage: When Ridley is on ledge, they might jump and immediately side b, bait. It. Out. Side b has a crap ton of end lag if it whiffs, so its a free kill. They can also jump and fair (or nair) which are the smarter options. All of ridley's aerials have very low lag (with the exception of dair). So they might grab or ftilt after you shield, especially with nair. If ridley is above you in centerstage, you can abuse that if they don't go to ledge, since ridley's only few options are dair (which is predictable, has lag and is not that strong) or up b directed down (ditto, but stronger and has startup). He can also try to fast fall and immediately nair when hes close to the ground. Honest opinion, dont challenge him off stage or when hes on ledge, bait something out.

How to make great use of your advantage: Ridley is huge, and also not super heavy. Ken really doesnt struggle here and Ryu neither. Ken can combo him for years and only has to worry about nair being an annoyance. Ryu can land hits easily, but has to worry about ridleys neutral b since he fires lots of projectiles and shaku clangs with everything, you know? Ridley also plays a bit like jigglypuff in how they float alot and abuse their aerials. Anti airs, especially kens shoryu are really useful.

Neutral, i guess: Ridleys neutral b is god awful, in my opinion. If you predict theyre gonna charge it, challenge it. Maybe not when theyre starting to charge it, its 100% better to jump over the fully charged version since it lasts quite a bit. It also serves to mention that you should almost always have a distance of around halfstage with ridley in this scenario. Nair is extremely annoying, it has no lag and it can lead into a ftilt if you shield it (then let go) or a grab if theyre actually smart. Most ridleys have a tendency to mash, so play around that. If you play on stages with platforms that are low (battlefield, lylat), be very careful, ridley can abuse the hell of out that. Nair also beats shaku, i believe. Try hadoken. Also, if you're not on footsies range (very close), zone him the hell out with hadoken or shaku if he doesnt nair. His only zoning option, neutral b, is very slow, so abuse it

R.O.B.
If Gyro is on ledge, Shotos can ledge jump and press grab to pick up Gyro.

From ImBad:


 * 1 Even without sdi Rob will get hit by the sour spot of ldtilt x2 tsrk. Stick to either 1 dtilt or a different confirm. With even a little sdi it will wiff entirely.
 * 2 while you can jablock Rob with ptilt x2 pjab, if he is on his front and you try to finish with pjab tsrk it will wiff completely. Ptiltx3 tsrk will hit the sour spot as well. Your best bet is going to be ptilt x2 tsrk. You can also hit him with uptilt so you could do ptiltx2 uptilt ptilt tsrk ( iadvise against this since uptilt is very sdiable). the good news is nair makes Rob land on his back so you won't have to worry about this too much

Robin
Unstaled Ledge Attack destroys Arc fire pillar

Ryu: Ptilt xx Tatsu whiffs if Robin is facing away.

Rosalina & Luma
From SYMb0l:

rosa relies heavily on stage control, as to not have luma die immediately, and because she can make a wall of hitboxes that is much more oppressive if she has more space to move around that you. This is a matchup you have to play patient, keep your head on straight, and smack luma. good luma-smacking moves are fair, rh (or hjab), and hado. Fireballs are less effective, and her disadvantage is very bad, so I would suggest playing ken. Your win condition will be ledge trapping/edgeguarding her, as she's big, slow, light, and floaty, with few options that can't just be shielded. play extremely patient and calculating, and absolutely smack her when you do get that one good hit. rosa's fastest option is airdodge, and she will almost never jump out of combos, as she's prone to getting juggled. dair is disjointed but laggy, and luma will cover her once she's landed, so smack her in the air and you'll do fine

Roy
From Mattias145 (summarized):

beats the armor of Up B. So it can be used as a callout. is not safe against Up B but is up to the 4th stale. If you block Up B you can jump OOS to then land on top of Roy with an aerial combo starter like. If there is a platform you can jump to that platform as well and either land on it or shark it and be able to punish Roy.

Samus
From General Yi:


 * Jump as little as possible
 * Stay at down-tilt length from ledge because they like to jump up and fair from it
 * Ken’s tatsu can pass through uncharged neutral b while Ryu’s can pass through that too along with both missiles
 * Be wary of pressuring their shield, as they can and will use up-b OOS to knock you away
 * Only use focus in disadvantage when they’re facing away from you since bair is only one hit
 * You can pass through her bombs using shoryu
 * Always ban tri-plat stages against her

From Bean!:

Samus’ missiles have Hado FAF which means you can slip right on over and hit them if they do one Mostly, the samus matchup is reliant on how well you maximize damage when you get up close because at most its only gonna be 7/10 times a match Getting in can be done with kara tatsu to burst through FADC’ing over the wall of projectiles Using hado to clank then doing KC Tatsu And once you get in you can get stuff like uptilt dsmash shaku since she’s clunky

Sheik
From Bill Bill Bill:

Neutrool: Sheik's needles deal no damage just like the rest of her kit. They deal like 8% fully charged at base damage, which is garbongo. It still doesnt mean theyre useless tho. I think theyre most useful when shes in the air and throws them downwards, since it will knock you upwards and allow her to follow up. Fair is extraordinarily weak which allows her to use it like 10 times in a row if you di it wrong. Fair can also lead to other moves, too. Also, shiek has a few semi-reliable kill options. She has tipper upsmash, bair(?), uair if youre really high and bouncing fish. Dsmash is really short ranged and really only useful if dragdown uair hits. Fsmash is basically any other fsmash, and its not super strong. Bouncong fish can confirm off of needles and fthrow, but theyre both extremely di able. Shiek is a character which their gameplan is severely neutered if the opponent di's correctly. Basically, the only confirm you need to worry about is needles to usmash and ftilt to usmash (usmash in general is really deadly). Also, shes really light and likea floating a lot, especially if she tries to use needles correctly. Ken DP is really useful.

Which shoto? I think both work fine but ryu might have trouble here a bit since i think shaku and hado might get cockblocked by needles. Otherwise, the heavy amount of damage is really good. Plus ryu tatsu is good at killing here. Try to avoid using ken tatsu here since shiek jab is really fast alongside her aerials.

From ImBad:

Speaking of di with sheik. Her ftilt dragdown uair loops look scary they kinda are. If you get stuck in one the proper di is away. Iirc she's guaranteed to get the loop twice if not 3 times. Don't get caught trying to di out of the loops only to get whacked by fsmash. It will kill dummy early if you're diing to get out of the loops.

From Ayako:

N-air confirms into kills on Ryu/Ken at around 101%, Drag down loops stop at 108%. Down tilt, two frame kills at 90%. IDJ up top platform (which confirms from below with a IDJ up air) kills Ryu/Ken at 70%. Needles is a combo tool and a measuring tool, it's not for damage at all. It's for seeing what you're gonna do and how you react to stuff.

Snake
https://twitter.com/Munekin_th/status/1105081618954215424

Mini-JMU Notes by General Yi:

Shoto Advantage Shoto Disadvantage Conclusions: Stages Selection
 * Hado can push grenades away and back onto Snake. Look for instances where hado will knock Snake’s grenades back into him and force him to either change his position, shield, or jump.
 * Tick throws are especially useful as Ken in this matchup due to Snake shielding his grenades often. Time your grabs to continue combos after the grenade’s explosion knocks him out of your throws.
 * Keep an eye out for combo opportunities that use the explosion of grenades to leave Snake in more hitstun than yourself. A combo example would be light uptilt–downsmash Snake and the grenade to pop both of you up, then follow up with light uptilt–medium shoryu. Combos such as these only work with significant percent leads, as you lack the frame advantage otherwise.
 * You can hit Nikita Missile with an aerial and special cancel as a means of pushing through it. Focus also absorbs Nikita. Tatsu’s hitbox can disable it for a brief period, but Snake is able to immediately release control of the missile and hit you in that case.
 * Snake is able to leave a grenade at ledge and pop you up into an aerial of his choice if shoryu recovery isn’t spaced/timed properly.
 * Some of the things Snake can do to work around the shoto’s movesets are: crouching underneath any hado/shaku variation, using downtilt to stuff grounded approaches, mixing up the cooking time of grenades to create variances in shield pressure, and drop Nikita missile at our feet to bait shield/focus in order to go in for a grab.
 * Grenades can clank with most of the shotos’ single-hit moves, but will instantly explode if hit again by anything. Moves that will pop grenades no matter what are RH and heavy uptilt.
 * Grenades bouncing off of shotos using focus breaks its single-hit absorption property.
 * Snake can have trouble landing, so a lack of platforms severely limits his options. Final Destination is the obvious example here, but Town & City can work out in this manner when the platforms leave the stage.
 * Yoshi’s Story is also a solid pick due to slants allowing hado/shaku to hit him, small blastzones + shoryu sharking the top platform, side-platforms extending over the ledge and protecting you from a falling mortar (Snake up-smash) while being ledge trapped, and the platform heights prevent Snake from planting C4 with a single fullhop as well as his uptilt not reaching them.
 * Visually darker stages like Lylat can obscure grenades and C4.
 * Wider stages allow an easier means of maneuvering to zone-break Snake, such as Kalos and Town and City, but also allow Snake to pester shotos at a further distance.
 * Smashville keeps things tight, which both shotos and Snake can take advantage of, but limits Snake to one platform to work off of.
 * Battlefield is Snake’s best stage due to platform camping, easy C4 setups, grenade combos, and continuous coverage for stage control. Always ban this stage.
 * Good for shotos: Final Destination, Yoshi’s Story
 * Neutral for shotos: Smashville, Town & City, Kalos, Pokémon Stadium 2
 * Bad for shotos: Battlefield (autoban), Lylat

Neutral:

General: Use uncooked grenades to throw them back at snake for shield pressure. You can just shield or hado/shaku the cooked grenades to keep them closer to the snake or not get hit by them Use back throw to get intangibility from snake grenades, even when you have one in your hands. Switch between shielding and throwing hadouken to stop grenades from entering your zone When C4 is planted on a platform don't stand near the platform it can still hit you Avoid standing underneath a platform if Snake's Mortar is in the air as the explosion on the platform can still hit you Light utilt pjab will get you grenaded until 60% Light utilt ptilt will get you grenaded until 23% Snake can crouch walk so avoid using fireball to out pressure him Snake's neutral doesn't revolve around crossing shields but rather to wall out their opponent, if snake isn't throwing grenades at you, he's gonna try to cross up your shield Snake has two “types” of grenades he can throw - “uncooked” Grenades are grenades that are thrown the moment he pulls them out, while “cooked” Grenades are grenades that he holds for a short time, so that when he throws them they’ll detonate quickly. Moves that won't break held grenade when drawn: Any hit will make him drop his grenade, thus adjusting its hurtbox, so planning your starter is key to finishing your combo in peace.
 * Light ftilt (spaced)
 * Light dtilt (can sometimes catch dropped grenade when mashed)
 * light utilt
 * Uair
 * Hadoken lol
 * Tatsu does not deal with grenade

Projectile Interactions: In response to Hadouken, Snake will often crouch and crawl underneath Hadoukens since his crouch/crawl is so low that it’ll always low-profile Hadoukens.

Sonic
JMU Notes by General Yi:

Neutral Shoto Advantage Shoto Disadvantage Combos and Kill Options Stage Selection
 * Sonic will want to bait and punish options from his opponent in neutral using spins or spin fake outs.
 * In general, Sonic will never approach a shoto unless there’s a considerably wide opening for them to punish due to shotos’ heavy damage output capabilities.
 * Fair and bair are long-reaching options of Sonic’s that boast good kill power, while nair is a good get-off-me tool that Sonic can use in a scramble and connect into bair at higher percents.
 * Sonic’s homing attack is -16 on hit, with the angle of his knockback from the hit changing depending on the angle he hits you at. If Sonic lands on the ground after homing attack hits you or your shield, it will take him 74 frames to recover.
 * The overall goal for the shotos is to limit Sonic’s movement using hado/shaku and force out too much of a committal option or make too predictable an action. The best spots to force these results are when he’s at ledge or in the air.
 * True shoryu can be used to contest spindash so long as you properly time its i-frames.
 * Between the shotos, Ryu fares much better in this matchup due to his better fireball game and combo strings knocking Sonic away to reset neutral, preventing Sonic from pressing further advantage or counterattacking.
 * Tatsu will pass right over Sonic’s spin dashes without clanking if he’s also moving, but will hit him if he is charging.
 * If you shield Sonic’s homing attack and he doesn’t make an effort to retreat away, you can upsmash OOS to punish him.
 * Don’t try to parry any of Sonic’s spindashes, as Sonic gets to act 8 frames faster than you out of the parry animation.
 * Shotos are playing the matchup correctly if neutral positions of both fighters are on opposite sides of the stage and waiting for a punish window.
 * If Sonic uses spring jump on the ground, it’ll spawn a grounded spring that both players can use. A common trick Sonics will do is spawn a grounded spring and dair into it over and over to create a rapidly descending hitbox over and over.
 * Due to Sonic’s speed, advantageous moments for shotos are sparse in this matchup. The punish windows you’re looking for are when Sonic needs to land, when he whiffs homing attack, or when he’s locked into spindash.
 * Sonic’s ability to cancel his spindashes with jumps only work if he still has his double jump. Otherwise, he’s forced to commit to the spin until he lands, gets hit, or the move ends while he’s still in the air. In these instances, hado/shaku can punish him due to his i-frames not being present while he’s airborne.
 * Aerial spindashes have smaller hitboxes than grounded ones.
 * Constant movement, being out of range (roughly half the stage away), or the use of i-frames will prevent homing attack from locking onto you.
 * Heavy uptilt can stuff out homing attack, spindash, and nair if they come at you from above and if you’re quick enough.
 * Homing attack locks Sonic into using it at some point, so understanding your options depending on your location on the stage will help narrow down when they want to hit you with it.
 * Keeping a platform parallel between you and Sonic’s homing attack will have it bounce into the platform most of the time, opening up a potential punish window if you’re quick enough.
 * Getting caught up a spindash allows Sonic to follow up with fair most of the time, so be prepared to escape fair trains off stage.
 * Sonic fair comes out frame 5 and lasts for 10 frames.
 * Keep an eye out on what Sonic is doing at ledge when recovering low, as he can drop a spring down onto you and stage spike you with it, or angle his fsmash downwards to punish any option that doesn’t snap to ledge.
 * Any hitbox that connects with the spring will disable it from hitting you, so angling your shoryu recovery can allow you to pass through the spring if it connects with your fist first.
 * Pay attention to what direction Sonic is facing when he chases you off stage. If he’s facing forward, use FADC or a timed air-dodge to get out of the way before he uses fair. If he’s facing backwards, you can use focus to absorb the hit from bair.
 * While there are numerous risks to using tatsu while recovering against an edge guarding Sonic, Ryu’s can outright kill Sonic if he’s improperly spacing himself to punish you.
 * If Sonic uses homing attack to try and edge guard you, the best way to deal with it is to simply allow aerial drift to carry you back to stage. Don’t air dodge or use tatsu since those are easily punishable options on reaction. Eventually Sonic will automatically fling himself past you, assuming you haven’t changed your movement speed at all, and must recover or risk SDing.
 * Sonic’s fair trains aren’t true past 30%, so SDI away in general when being hit by them. If a Sonic fastfalls a fair, use SDI up + away to get out.
 * Similar to Megaman, Sonic can plant a grounded spring underneath the angel platform when you spawn in to fling you high into the air and waste your invincibility time.
 * Sonic’s early kill strings are falling nair–bair and spincharge–fair
 * His general go-to kill options are edge guarding using fair/bair or a dropped spring, or reading an option to punish with bair or a smash attack.
 * Falling nair opens up a wide window of combo opportunities for Sonic at low and high percents. At low percents, he can use tilts, fair + nair, up air, and sometimes grab. Mid-percent sourspot nair can sometimes lead into fsmash.
 * Sonic will use upthrow to start off combos using upair at early to mid percentages.
 * Sonic backthrow will start killing around 150%.
 * CK-downsmash-RH will result in the RH whiffing on Sonic every time unless starting at 0%.
 * Combos that pop Sonic upwards are much more consistent, such as light uptilt-prox jab-CK-upair-fastfall-TSRK.
 * Prox jab will whiff on a jablocked Sonic, so use triple prox tilt instead. Only one prox tilt will hit if you’re behind Sonic, and jabs will also whiff.
 * Platforms allow Sonic to camp you out, but this can be used against Sonic if you have the lead and throw hado/shaku to force an approach. They can also protect you from homing attack if properly angled.
 * Smaller stages such as Smashville and Final Destination do limit Sonic’s space to move, but they also allow him to rush you down quicker and capitalize on punish opportunities more consistently.
 * If shotos can hold Smashville’s center, they can make the matchup very tricky for Sonic.
 * The slants on Lylat’s edges force Sonic to take extra care when snapping to them with up-b. These slants, as well as the ones on the edges of Yoshi’s Story, allow him to have an even easier time punishing poorly-spaced shoryu recoveries with fsmash and downsmash.
 * Camping Sonic out underneath the PS2 platforms is a feasible strategy when in the lead and gives you room to retreat underneath the other platform if necessary.
 * Good for shotos: Smashville
 * Neutral for shotos: Battlefield, Lylat, Pokémon Stadium 2, Yoshi’s Story
 * Bad for shotos: Town & City, Kalos, Final Destination

Steve
https://twitter.com/nescartridges/status/1317965630230900737?s=20

Ledge Jump beats the Gimr ledge trap.

Ken Flame Shoryuken makes TNT explode. Don't hit the pressure plate with Shoryuken while recovering. Don't hit the TNT as well if using flame shoryuken.

From korkskrou:

after playing as steve and practicing his moves and learning his frame data and stats for a while i figured out that most people are studying the steve mu in a somewhat wrong way

steve's moves and mechanics make him play more or less the same exact way regardless of matchup, so learning how steve himself works and how his moves are helps way more for understanding counterplay than just fighting him a lot or watching vods

obviously the latter are mandatory for practicing the mu but steve is arguably the biggest knowledge check in the game for his entire kit because he has tons of openings that you can't see yourself while just fighting him since his animations convey nothing

the single most noticeable one is him mining, you should think of steve mining almost the same way as inkling refilling his ink

don't even bother punishing it unless he's doing it right in your face because it's not really going to make him stronger to mine, it just lets him actually play the game steve will get materials whether you like it or not, and getting overly antsy over it won't let you stop him from getting stronger as the game progresses, it only makes you more predictable and easier to beat in a dragged-out game

the most important effects that steve will get over the course of the game are gold and diamond, which he'll definitely get at least once in the match no matter what diamond is strong for obvious reasons but gold is arguably the more dangerous because it's going to have longer average uptime over a full match makes his trash neutral a lot safer with the tiny improvement to his frame data, while diamond keeps his weaknesses exactly the same but only improves his punish game even more than it is by default, you can treat diamond the same way as waft basically, don't worry about it until later in the match since he'll save it for a fresh stock and he'll almost always have it a couple minutes in

i said several times that his neutral is terrible and that should sound a bit off to most people who don't actually play steve- his moves are fast and decently large while being safe and mobile(ish), and his punish game is busted, but you need to focus on his stats for the most part before steve's counterplay properly clicks a lot of people compare him to kazuya because kaz also has super strong advantage and mediocre-ish neutral, but steve is even more extreme his moves will nearly never hit you if you know his burst range and don't let him near you- basically the only things he can do in neutral against shotos are mine to threaten you with buffs later and put up blocks to set up stage control- his approach game is damn near nonexistent outside of his exploitable minecart and he only fakes pressure with his tool buffs and material bar getting shinier

steve has a lot of minor and hard to notice openings that are very hard to know are there without playing steve yourself or directly seeing someone exploit them yes utilt on shield is basically always safe, but steve approaching you with utilt has a massive "poke low" target on him because utilt is very small

dtilt on shield is plus, but he needs to somehow get near you and catch you shielding for that to happen- don't bother standing back and shielding within his burst range, it's less dangerous to throw out your own move that will likely beat all his safe options- for shotos that would be lftilt, dsmash, rh for ken and blue hado for ryu to cut him short, and these options will only really lose to ftilt as a grounded approach (which is between -10 and -8 on shield and can be punished with upb, usmash, or shieldgrab depending on his tools and its staleness), and his fairly slow grab that doesn't have all that much effective range because of steve's pathetic ground speed steve can't approach safely period, he usually has to deal with your defensive options by making you approach by threatening with mining or slowly accumulating stage control with blocks and fake approaches

steve placing blocks is another small opening that's hard to see and harder to know when you can punish him for it- steve block placement is 15 frames per block + 3 frames of jumpsquat, so for example if you see

that he's placing a 2 block tower you have 33 frames to punish assuming you know your strongest option that can close that distance and assuming you know where he'll be standing after he places the blocks (usually standing on top of the 2nd one, but he can be either in front of it or behind it as early as frame 22 of the tower's start, you need to know/react to his habits to correctly punish this and all other block placements)

another common thing is people getting punished for attacking his blocks or trying to stop him from building

blocks can look scary or inticing to attack but really the only blocks you should bother going out of your way to break are ones blocking you away from centre stage or ones that are setups for steve to do future combos/confirms with- any wall keeping steve near ledge or otherwise placed randomly around while he was mixing up approaches is basically useless to him since he's so slow and clunky that he can't actually make use of the random leftover blocks while you potentially can use them against him be it with with superior range, mobility, or to maintain a lead by stalling with them yourself

steve typically puts up a barrier of a few blocks and blocks himself in near ledge to give himself time to mine or craft, and this is the time that he's the least vulnerable and least dangerous- the risk/reward of attacking him through a known safe wall setup is abysmal for shotos because either you'll just stale your strong moves breaking the blocks and get nothing or you'll get severely punished by steve during hitlag of hitting the blocks/endlag after breaking them- it's like approaching a mii gunner behind his mine while he charges a charge shot and trying to break the mine so you can hit him out of the charge- you'll just get punished for trying to interfere with a safe activity that doesn't actually do as much as it looks like it does while even if you succeed you won't get much out of it

dirt/wood block walls are common near ledge for steve to mine behind because he'll usually not have many strong resources if he's needing to mine badly enough to give you the whole stage by choosing to go near ledge himself, and it's extremely dangerous to approach his block walls here because 1. you won't get much off of breaking them even if he messes up his punish, 2. you are within range of a bunch of approach setups after the bottom block breaks that use grounded elytra or minecart to hit you while he's safely setting up said approach by getting materials, and 3. you are near a safe steve who is near ledge and are an easy target for huge damage off of setups that use the stage's length to extend his combos with ftilt

so just let him mine while you keep stage control until he's satisfied with how many attempts he gets to minecart/set up block combos before his materials go dry again the concern that he'll just mine forever behind the blocks and keep getting stronger materials and tools isn't that big a deal since 1. he's going to get that anyway and 2. he can't mine forever near ledge behind one block setup because of how the orientation is on his actually safe block formations not allowing him to put the blocks back up in the same spot when they break again: the 3 wide base 1 block high walls are going to break from the outside in, top blocks first, meaning when they break in a few seconds he'll have to either push for stage control or retreat another few steps to get another safe wall up to mine more, both of which benefit you via either forcing him to approach you for a bit from a usually unfavourable position or by giving you even more stage control from retreating, so just prepare for what he'll do when he gets out of the blocks rather than trying to force him out yourself and getting punished hard

again, this is another situational awareness scenario that will happen at least a dozen times every match with a lot of incorrect choices for you to mess up on and knowing when and how you can push in on a steve's block wall mining depends on the wall he built, type of block he built the wall with, its position on the stage, who has the lead, what your and steve's %s are at, how long the blocks have until they go out, and what you've seen the steve do in this situation before- it's raw steve character knowledge rather than specific matchup knowledge since the same walls are safe on most characters and the same openings are always there for any character to exploit if the other guy knows them, so to really learn the steve matchup you need to know steve's setups, options, and major flaws inside out from the steve's end rather than relying on your  character's knowledge of what move is often good where, since steve is so different from anyone else in stats, mechanics, and options that you'd be surprised what moves of his are actually unsafe from what positions  and what aren't

i'd go into more specific details on his most dangerous moves, setups, and options like minecart's specific gimmicks and counterplay to his combos or specific combos shotos can do with blocks but those are already mostly covered in pins by other steves or shotos who've fought a lot of steve, but the most useful piece of advice i've found against steve is to actually play as and study steve yourself and figure out his weaknesses and how to exploit them since i mostly see counterplay to his absurd strengths in this channel rather than actual methods to exploit his equally massive weaknesses, and i believe steve is by far the hardest character in this game to get a proper grasp on without learning him directly

some specific interactions to always keep in mind if you don't feel like playing as steve to learn the mu or reading the 4 page essay up there:
 * 1. when you die and respawn at 0% with steve at kill% mining near the ledge behind a block wall, do not mess with that wall, your halo invincibility will wear off before the blocks do and steve will carry you across the stage with ftilt and get a free 40-70% inescapable combo, just chill and wait for him to refresh his resources enough to feel like attempting to approach, which you can then punish
 * 2. do not stand near the block wall when he's mining despite having plenty of resources, it's likely bait to approach with an instant upb or minecart setup once the bottom blocks break and it's hard if not impossible to reactively punish it when steve does this trap correctly

then there's some less common and braindead steve approach options that will knowledge check you to death
 * 1. grounded upb slide under a block- just don't stand too close to steve behind walls about to break, the hitbox on upb wears off about 40 frames in and you can punish him afterwards
 * 2. steve approaching from on top of plat: he will dtilt you and it is plus on shield and links to a lot of stuff if it's not shielded, don't stand in front of him within dtilt range and if he whiffs dtilt it's as laggy as most smash attacks, just beat his ass for it
 * 2.5: steve can do the same dtilt approach as mentioned before from plat-height blocks instead of an actual plat, and this is much safer because blocks can't be jumped through and will break from under him during dtilt's endlag making it safe on whiff: just get behind him from under the blocks
 * 3: very very common approach option by steve to cover the stage is to minecart then jump out while letting it slide under him, minecart stops grounded anti airs ans grabs out out of shield and can frametrap dodges while steve covers you from jumping over it by threatening an aerial. optimally you should run in and jump fair him before he gets to let out a strong aerial to cover the air, but if you're too far to do that just dsmash the minecart to break it and special cancel into something instead of risking an air to air
 * 3.5: if you break the cart, a good steve will usually try to avoid disadvantage by standing on a block above you then either retreat (which you should just let him do because he can threaten to safely dtilt you as mentioned in 2.5) or approach you by building blocks in the air. here he can do a bunch of stuff depending on the blocks- dirt is the most dangerous because they break very fast and let him punish your positioning instantly with anvil if you're under the block or dtilt if you're on either side of him. here is where i'd say to learn the timing on steve's block placement vulnerability and punish him while he's adding blocks, but just gtfo from under steve until he has to land if you don't know the timing to punish him mid-building

other than that, his aerial approaches suck dick because his jumps are trash (parry his big aerials and punish hard or anti-air his fast little aerials with rh if ken or blue hado if ryu) and his grounded approaches are super linear to beat- just shield and upb/usmash/grab ftilt on shield, poke low if he's walking towards you while utilting/looking up, and don't let him get within dtilt range or utilt range of your shield or you're more or less _____

this is mostly basic knowledge you can figure out from ufd or whatever but it won't carry you hard enough against a decent steve, you will need to know how steve works as well as a steve player if you want to beat a good steve

Terry
From Bill Bill Bill:

for disadvantage: a good terry player will abuse the __ out of your disadvantage, ESPECIALLY if youre above the stage. i highly recommend for this reason to go on battlefield or horizontally small stages with platforms (but no platforms is fine, just more dangerous). if youre up and above and they have GO, get the hell out of there immediately (and go to ledge!), do NOT challenge them until your feet touch the ground. terry WILL buster wolf you with every chance they get. i think ken's shoryu beats aerial crack shoot. also, only challenge power dunk if its whiffed from the ground, and even then, it has very little lag. 80% of the time they use power dunk in the air, especially if its the light version, it will cancel all lag and you will get a hefty punish if you challenge it. also, as a terry player myself, try to avoid normal ledge getup and ledge roll at high percents. terry can use power geyser or raw burn knuckle and kill you for it.

From lean (Bean!'s alt account):

SDI up and in or up and out to ruin his combos, by no means easy but its definitely doable and is something you should be doing all the time (be sure to mix up sdi)
 * learn to parry TKPD, both light and heavy. this grants you automatic +3 frame advantage against heavy pd which is +-0 or -1 at best and it makes the usually +2/3(????) light tkpd +-0 which you can abuse.
 * mix up recovery offstage, terry has lots of kill options to use that just zoom him offstage with no accountability so recovering the same way is death. this is a must-do in almost every matchup in the game.
 * resetting terry is decently easy, he doesn't have f1 options like shotos or like ZSS so you're able to get more damage off resets by abusing his size since he's quite chunky.
 * play a low commitment neutral. stick to fireballs from 1/2 to 2/3 screen distance because this keeps you out of TKPD and CS range. after that you play regular footsies. PW is a free parry to let you close the distance and you can use it like a reverse rps to see what option the terry mashes. basically you want to use his neutral against him.
 * ledge trap carefully, especially when he has go!. if not you'll lose countless stocks to seemingly "braindead" wakeup supers that YOU just weren't ready for.


 * final notes and suggestions:
 * i suggest either shoto against terry, they both perform well and, as most people begrudgingly agree, ken does better
 * the overall rule of thumb against terry is just patience and slow gameplay. the true shoto way
 * most important tip is to not be a dumbass

Toon Link
From XzibitA:

In neutral, you want to start off by advancing slowly. He'll be using bomb and boomerang to cut off aerial approaches most likely, so you get free space to advance into, but don't commit to dashes. Once you're in sh ff fair range, you can use that (or nair) to punish bomb pulls or boomerang throws. Mix in empty hops over his projectiles to advance so he doesn't know what to cover. If he makes an aggressive move, spotdodge will avoid both dash attack and the unlikely dash grab.

Once you get an opening, Tink doesn't have many options. In shield, his UpB doesn't come out fast enough to deal with dtilt spam, so he'll have to jump or roll away. Just spam dtilt and chase the roll at lower %s because you get more damage. That way, you'll condition him to jump out, and when he does that at kill % you can immediately shoryu and kill him.

Tink's bad at landing in general, so make good use of pivot cancelling ftilt and hard uptilt to mess him up.

If Tink's on ledge with bomb in hand, he's probably going to drop off and throw it as he comes onto the stage. Shield it and UpB him. He may also ledge jump and throw it down; UpB. If he neutral getups, grab him. If he rolls, react and grab>bthrow to reset the situation. If he doesn't have a bomb, his options are largely the same (replace ledge dropoff bomb with ledge dropoff zair, which is even more unsafe), but it's safer to spam tilts to get bigger damage.

If you're on ledge against Tink, don't linger or you'll get ftilted. He's not great at covering multiple options at once, so just mix it up well. If his back is against you and he's shielding, he wants to grab your options and bthrow you for the kill, so just jump out.

Villager
From Adventuring Hero:

Play Ryu. Then use rising nair a lot. I haven't seen a villager come up with an adequate solution to rising nair. Rising nair completely nulls slingshot, a pivotal part of villager's neutral. Within the same short hop rising nair, you can null a slingshot and punish villager with the same nair because Ryu Rising Nair is active for 30 frames. The difference for landing lag between slingshot and ryu nair is around 9-10 frames, favoring Ryu. When you are able to null slingshot, Lloid becomes a non-issue as that projectile's capabilities come entirely from Villager's ability to anti air. Once you take that away with Ryu rising nair, it's a linear projectile with 52 frames of startup.

Wii Fit Trainer
From mo!:

How to deal with camping wii fit & header cancels: a short guide by becca

ball camping: wii fit likes to camp with header. a lot. here's how to deal with that.

Preparing: don't take wii fit to high plat stages like battlefield or yoshi's. you will not have a fun time. try ps2 or FD. if the wii fit bans those, you might wanna try kalos. it's not optimal but it's 3rd place.

Method A. if wii fit likes to stay in one place on one side of the stage after hitting the ball, try dashwalking up to them, shielding the ball. in the rare case that you're close enough to where you can safely catch their landing, react with a heavy up tilt or an up air. otherwise, you might wanna bait them out with a hado or a fakeout shoryu the closer you get so you can catch on to how they react, then punish them accordingly.

Method B. you can simply not approach and stay center stage, baiting them out with hado. at some point, wii fit will probably go for deep breathing and then approach you, playing aggro from that point until deep breathing runs out. while deep breathing is dangerous, you know what to do. punish bad approaches.

header cancel

what is header cancel?: wii fit has this thing where if you shield during side b startup, you won't hit the ball. instead the ball just bounces in front of you. you can do whatever you want with it after that. there's many different techs you can get out of the ball cancel. here's some of them and how i propose we react:

header cancel (the regular one): the immediate thing you will notice is that wii fit did not hit the ball with their head. after that, the ball will go at varying different speeds depending on what attack wii fit uses to hit it. in my opinion, the best thing to do would be to tatsu through the ball and then follow up with another punish.

a downside to header cancel for the wii fit is that it has a little bit of endlag. ken will usually be fast enough to punish that endlag. ryu is a gamble unless he distances himself.

header cancel shield: wii fit can cancel the ball and then shield directly after it, which can negate shield pokes if you aren't careful. this could be a prime opportunity to sour fair-> tsrk their shield if they end up doing this, though be wary since the ball goes over their head on the first bounce.

headwhiffing: this tech is really situational and you probably won't see most wii fits use it but i'll mention it anyway. if WFT gets heavily launched and then header cancels, they can dair the ball downward. it takes a long time for this one to startup so 9/10 you could probably catch it with up air or simply not react to it at all.

header getup: the most effective header cancel tool imo. drop from ledge -> idj header cancel. this lets them use the ball on the ledge almost immediately. if you see them drop from ledge, react with a nair. he ball usually will only hit at ground level so you should not get hit by the ball. note that wii fit likely will not be on stage at the same time as the ball so in the event that the nair doesn't hit them you can tilt them instead.

Wolf
To the top of the page

From IDA447:

For those who are interested, Down Smash is true punish OOS against Wolf dash attack - hits always but is frame tight If too late, cancel into RH for a true blockstring, doesn't matter If he crosses you up or not Up-B can miss tho if he crosses up and is too far

Don't fight him in the air, his stuff is too disjointed some people can be challenged in the air, our fair is not too bad, but Wolf Fair has better range

other than that Wolf has no good OoS options but is negative double digits on everything his Up Smash has good range but its slow

Young Link
https://twitter.com/ssb4_saboten/status/1188236320214138880?s=21

From SHORYUKEN:

Focus is bad. Punish whiffs with your fastest move because his grab, dair and grounded up b don’t have as much lag as you think. I wasn’t able to focus in time to beat up b > uair so it might just be a true combo at kill percent, should probably DI it diagonal up.

Low recovery from too far away will get you naired and you die.

Hadoken is pretty good at the right distance for canceling his projectiles or chipping on damage, which matters since he’s light.

Ryu is obviously better than Ken for having reliable combos, tatsu kills, a better projectile war and collarbone to punish excessive defense.

Drop down nair against his recovery before his up b can come out.

Response from Bill Bill Bill:

Focus is bad here, yes, but it can help a lot in juggling here since it can make upb miss by only hitting once, always tanks through uair and will avoid dragdown fair (last one is less consistent). Though, this only really applies of you are falling down and not in a combo. In those situations, you might as well airdodge.

Zelda
From mo!:

in general: zelda is a very patient MU for the shotos, all about keeping your distance. imo you should time your approaches and keep center stage. don't challenge zelda in the air unless you're in advantage. recommended stages: small battlefield, ps2

specials: din's fire is really not a problem at all. it's slow, can be focused through, and very easy to punish. dashwalk and you should be fine. nayru's love is annoying but not a huge issue if you know what you're doing. you can bait it out with a light hado and then punish her for it. also be careful when approaching her as she can mess you up with this. farore's wind is not a huge deal either. it can be difficult to deal with offstage if that's what you're going for, but if you can read teleports you can read farore's wind. despite that said, be careful challenging this move on shield. it's 6 frames. phantom is where this MU becomes a bit of an issue. phantom can eat focus 3 when fully charged (it has 6 stages) so its optimal to destroy it as soon as you see it. if not, spotdodge or FADC through it before it's fully constructed. zelda can also RAR dair to make the phantom appear in front of her.

standard stuff & aerials: zelda is a rather slow character on the ground, with a 15-frame dash startup and only a little faster dash than dr. mario. that doesn't mean she's not a threat. she has a rather long and disjointed pivot grab and dash grab (see tornado's hitbox image above) but it barely goes above her head, and has a 14-frame startup, meaning you could punish it with a sh jump-in if need be. her forward smash is also rather disjointed, so watch out for that. really, zelda can be rushed down quite easily on the ground unless she buffers a shorthop.

it's when zelda gets in the air where the MU becomes pretty problematic. zelda's aerials are very good, have huge hitboxes, and two of them have a sweetspot. combined with her up smash and up tilt, they are also potent juggling tools. DI and SDI as best as you can and make sure you get back on the ground. you can FADC but watch out for nair on the way down.

zelda is also very dangerous on shield. her oos options are very good and fast, and she can catch you off guard with a sh fair. don't try and break her shield and instead poke. which shoto? both shotos can deal with her in different ways. ken can rush her down on the ground and ryu can challenge her in neutral. either way, they can get the job done.

From Bill Bill Bill:

For ken: condition the hell out of zelda. Heavy tatsu works well at mid percents since its like -2 on hit at most? Maybe? Dont do it early percent, ever. They may instinctively neutral b and if you shield it, its a free punish. Obviously, dont spam it, cause their grab game is pretty good. Light tatsu isnt super good here because her floatiness makes it easy for her to tech if she gets into tumble. Mix up your recovery OFTEN. Dins fire is extremely strong (sweetspot). I think it may break early focus too, not sure. Her edge guarding isnt super great but she cant get punished for it. Do not ever tatsu immediately when recovering unless you read their dins fire somehow. Focus or recover low. Though i dont see many zeldas do this (fortunately), their dair is really good for spiking us, since the sourspot also spikes. Time your ledge options right if they use phantom, roll or even attack might work against it. DI out might mess with her upb and may make her miss the 2nd part of the move if she uses it oos. It kills really early too if you DI it wrong, so be careful

Zero Suit Samus
From Beek: https://twitter.com/DVN_Beek/status/1212508677418209283

From Nito:

Can roll under her Zair approach for big punishes.

But avoid tech rolling into her down smashes cuz you'll get big punished, typically tech rolling away is best because she'll only get a dash attack on you which wont kill you until like 150+ or something dumb.

You'll have to shield a bit in this match up because of her Flip Kick (you can punish in between but not start up of it with things like fair/back air or up air) and potentially out of shield punish if she lands on your shield aggressively with it.

If she starts running away don't chase her too hard. You have a projectile and so does she, the thing with hers is the end lag she has after using it is almost as bad as ours and is very telegraphed so you can punish it by jumping over and down airing her (However if you mistime it and hit her shield you need to special cancel so you don't get Up B'd punished so Tatsu away or try to poke her with Shoryu special cancel.

She doesn't have any kill throws until like 170 either so eating a grab is fine she doesn't have true combos out of them, however if she does grab a lot if you're able to dodge it you get big punishes on it every time. Super light, should be killing her around 70-80 all the time.

Make your punishes worth it and you'll kill her in 2 exchanges.

She can do the Shulk edgeguard on us if you don't time it, where she'll drop down and reverse up B facing away from stage so be aware of that and stall when you need to with Focus/Hado to avoid it, or just wait on your Shoryu to meet her halfway through her Up B and force a stage tech situation on her.