SSBU/Dark Pit/Strategy

Gameplan
Dark Pit is a character that can fit ALMOST ANY playstyle: You name it, Dark Pit can probably do it. However, his win condition remains the same no matter how you choose to play Dark Pit: make the opponent whiff something in neutral (or condition them to shield for an easier access to Dark Pit's very good grab game)
 * Many Dark Pit playstyles are viable
 * Many Dark Pit playstyles are viable
 * Many Dark Pit playstyles are viable
 * Many Dark Pit playstyles are viable
 * Many Dark Pit playstyles are viable

Whiff punish
Dark Pit is an excellent character when it comes to whiff punishing. All of his buttons (except for and his specials) comes out in 10 frames or less, which lets Dark Pit whiff punish a lot of moves, with varying degrees of reward. Here are his most common whiff punish tools

How to create a whiff?
Dark Pit makes his opponents whiff by throwing out moves with low endlag (such as a rising or a ), abusing his very good dash and using general movement. Dark Pit has the privilege of having 3 aerial jumps, which makes anti-airing him trickier than for other characters, as he can easily bait them before punishing with a combo starter

It is worth noting that his  is pretty good in neutral, since the inverted momentum also helps with baiting moves

Defensive play
In MUs such as, , , or , Dark Pit is required to stay at a distance and not enter close range too much, because that'll get him killed. Thankfully, Pit has access to good disjoints that allows him to wall his opponents out with hitboxes

Movement
As Pit's air stats are pretty poor, Pit generally wants to stay close to the ground when moving around. However, THIS DOESN'T MEAN DON'T JUMP!!! Pit is still pretty good in the air, he is just way slower than on the ground

Disadvantage
Dark Pit has one of the better disadvantage states in the game. His recovery goes very far, he has an excellent OOS option and his alone makes him one of the best characters in the game when it comes to landing

Recovery
Dark Pit's recovery allows him to go very deep before having to recover. His covers a great distance, so don't be afraid of going deep offstage as Pit. You might find that despite the myriad of options Dark Pit has at his disposal, he can get easily edgeguarded. This is because you need to keep mixing up your recovery options in order to not get predictable. This is very important, because if you don't, Dark Pit suddenly becomes way easier to edgeguard. Here are Dar Pit's general options he can use to recover:
 * His 3 aerial jumps

Contrary to, his is less useful for recovering becaues of it being stiffer

timing mixups
On stages with walls, Dark Pit can make his go slower by hugging the wall (make your  go in the direction of the wall). Change up the timings and angles in order to keep your opponent on their toes when trying to you

Landing
As said earlier, Dark Pit is one of the best characters in the game when it comes to landing. On top of having 3 air jumps, he also has the privilege of being the only character in the game to have access to a pseudo-aerial shield

Getting off ledge
Dark Pit can struggle very hard when getting out of the ledge against some characters, due to his poor air mobility. However, this doesn't mean that being at the ledge is a hopeless situation. If Dark Pit wants to use a button when escaping the ledge, here are his smartest options. This won't list universal options such as Ledge Attacks

Combo breaking
Dark Pit isn't that good at escaping combos. He relies on universal options such as his airdodge or jumping, and his fastest aerial option comes out on frame 4, making it not ideal for mashing out of combos

Great

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Good

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Volatile

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Meh

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Bad

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Neutral
Dark Pit's neutral is flawed in two main ways:
 * He is mostly grounded due to poor air stats
 * His hitboxes are rather short and not that dangerous

These two flaws makes his neutral somewhat predictable, so the opponent can easily play around his options. Most Dark Pit players will try to bait you into whiffing by dashing around before punishing you with one of his combo starters. The opponent can play around this by:
 * Throwing out a move that is safe on whiff; at worst, he gets a in
 * Not interacting at all and continue to camp him; Dark Pit generally struggles against characters who are very mobile in the air

Overall, your goal is to make Dark Pit whiff at a comfortable range for your character before going ham on him. Here are the moves you need to look out for (in order to whiff punish them):

Dark Pit's best move, and as such the move you should be wary of the most. This move has two major weaknesses:
 * It has short range
 * It has a long animation

This makes it particularly vulnerable against whiff punishing. Keep in mind that Dark Pit players might try to autocancel this move in order to bait a punish, so be careful

Dark Pit’s best grounded neutral tool, and his main poke at lower percents. Despite having little recovery, you can still whiff punish it, although it is harder to do so on reaction

 Dark Pit's projectile, and this his main way of attacking at long range. Contrary to, Dark Pit's is particularly useful in neutral, due to the better knockback. The lack of controlability makes this move's main weakness even worse: jumping (or dashing, for the aerial version). Indeed, while Pit can somewhat cover these, Dark Pit can't really do that, unless he uses another move. This makes it way more commital at mid/close range

, he will usually go for grabs more often. Grabs usually are easily punishable on whiff, so take this chance to go ham on him

Combos
Mix your DIs up. This is the biggest piece of advice any Dark Pit player can give in the MU against his advantage state. His combo game is heavily DI reliant, so knowing when to mix your DIs will add mental stack in the Dark Pit player's head, which can make them mess up. Of course, this is universal, but this is particularly useful against Dark Pit for reasons cited above

However, if you don't want to do that and stick to a single DI, then DI up and away most of the time. This is Dark Pit's hardest DI to follow, so chances are you'll take less damage after being opened up. Still, remember to change things up if Dark Pit grabs you at the ledge at high percents (it's a DI trap 50/50)

Juggling
Dark Pit isn't as good as juggling as his counterpart, but he can still do some work

A common Dark Pit strategy when juggling is to throw out his  in order to bait an airdodge. If the opponent airdodges, Dark Pit can easily hit them out of their airdodge with moves such as. The best solution against this is to either challenge Dark Pit's  with one of your own moves (proferably one that outranges him, such as 's ), or simply move sideways, and potentially grab the ledge

Edgeguard

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Ledgetrap

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Landing
Dark Pit is one of the best characters in the game when it comes to landing, thanks to his. However, he is also very easy to juggle if he doesn't have access to it. This rarely happens, but if Dark Pit ends up losing his somehow, make sure to capitalize on it when juggling him

For the rest of the time, learn what moves can consistently hit Dark Pit's feet when are out. For example, 's is a godsend against this move, as it's a purely vertical move. This is a case by case scenario, so this page won't list every single tool each character has. For that, please refer to your character's MU section

Another good countermeasure to is to simply treat it the same as you would treat a shield. Contrary to a regular shield, Dark Pit can't cancel its endlag, so he'll always be vulnerable once he drops it. Alternatively, you can also use your  if Dark Pit gets close to the ground with out
 * This solution isn't extremely consistent, due to the presence of

Recovering
Dark Pit has a lot of tools to mix things up while recovering. This can make edgeguarding him quite difficult, but that doesn't mean his recovery is flawless. The biggest issue with his recovery is that his doesn't have anything to cover him while moving. A good starting point when edgeguarding Dark Pit is to wait until he's out of options or goes low enough, since these are the two scenarios where he is more likely to use his. Be wary of walls, however, because Dark Pit can use them to his advantage when recovering (angling it the right way makes Dark Pit ascend slower, making him a bit harder than other characters (unless the Dark Pit player is being predictable with his angles)

Tips & Tricks

 * Trading with Dark Pit is almost always very good for the opponent, since most of his moves are multi hits