SSBU/Ken/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.

It is suggested that you go to the Advantage page to see character exceptions for combos, and to the Strategy page to find the shield break strings for each character.

Aegis (Pyra/Mythra)
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Pyra
From Jahzz0:

I think Pyra is easy to fight, one of the easiest to parry in the game, one of the easiest sword characters to call out in neutral, she’s basically boiled down to knowing she wants that Side B. They go for grabs a lot to patten the neutral monotony, so be spotdodge those dash ins, because even if they do a tilt, it’ll cover the grab and tilt option at that time. If she’s holding ledge and using Up B, respond with an Up B of your own, Ryu can do it too, but with a lesser result. When she throws Side B and whiffs she’s either gonna roll or jump, keep in mind where she is on stage, because normally when she does throw it, she’s likely underneath a platform to mix her movement. Just keep that in mind.

Mythra
From Jahzz0:

If you are playing Ken and dealing with an oppressive Mythra, it will not kill you to dash bait. Dash back to call out DA or run up grab. Punish with, and do not overextend your combo, because she will foresight you. It’s very hard to call out the air dodge, especially considering that Ken’s air drift isn’t good once you’re airborne, but once you get the, keep it simple with going for or. I started doing that with a lot more MUs like Steve because he has a fast aerial combo breaking neutral air, I do it for Mythra because of foresight.

Banjo & Kazooie
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From Bean!:

Neutral
The key to this matchup is patience, and being able to weave around his projectiles to get behind him and really start dealing damage. Banjo has 2 projectiles: Down B and neutral B, both of which are decently fast and annoying to get hit by, which may coerce you into jumping in. These projectiles set up traps that Banjo can use to shield break you, deal around 55 percent if he hits, or if you run away, reset neutral. TL;DR: Banjo’s projectiles control the flow of the game, and try to mix up how you deal with them.

Banjo’s neutral consists of a few things. Grenade Spam, Egg spam, and using FAir and other chunky moves to whack you for approaching at all. What you’re gonna want to do is over his wall of projectiles if he is trying to wall you out, and to NEVER SHIELD HIS BOMBS. They combo right into FAir and if you keep holding shield its gonna get popped. Play it safe, play it patient, and approach with extreme caution.

Dealing With WonderWing: Its annoying, its huge, and its invincible. Wonderwing is an extremely volatile kill move, it 2 frames us very well, if Banjo does it to ledge and doesn’t instantly grab ledge consider your stock erased, and he can confirm into it. You can shield it and try to get a glimpse of the Banjo’s cover option afterward, since they usually chuck out an option to counter faulty punishes. Or you can try to tank it and get a Real Mans Punish but that requires an ultra hard read so stick with shield or hop over it for a  or cute little BnB.

Advantage
Killing Banjo isn’t rocket science, but most likely you’re only gonna be able to get a sliding tilt or aerial in on him when he doesn’t expect it. I recommend Ken HIGHLY for this matchup, since you can go full unga bunga without having to care much since kills him so early. The way you’re gonna work around his projectiles to get said kill is like the Samus MU. His projectiles have a small amount of endlag, so you’ll be able to punish them hard if you catch him in his endlag frames. I recommend sliding under him and doing a if he tries to do full hop grenade. Reasoning for this is because if he does grenade, he’s holding the control stick straight down, which means that he’s gonna get shot right up and die pretty easily.

Since he’s of decent weight, I recommend keeping strands to a decent length, straying from fancy aerial extensions and sticking to that closer more simplified ken. Best strand to use here is xx  >. A couple of these or trying for an >  xx  >  at ledge will secure you the stock. TL;DR: Keep it simple, keep it safe, don’t be a donut and in.

Ledge Trapping Banjo This is where Ken really gets to shine. Once Banjo is at ledge he’s most likely gonna do drop ledge grenade to get back on stage. Stay 1.5 roll distance away, throw out, and if they jump its money for the taking.

Disadvantage
How to climb out of Disadvantage Against Banjo You’re not. But in all seriousness, its veeeery difficult since this bear holds onto the stage tighter than Winnie the Pooh with a honey jar. Try your hardest to keep stage control, keep steady damage, and don’t get angsty or greedy, otherwise you can kiss your stocks bye bye.

Bayonetta
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Matchup notes from Bill Bill Bill:


 * Ken can condition Bayo by making her use witch time since her Jab is frame 9 and cannot punish . You can condition her to shield, jump, or attempt to attack, which you can all avoid and punish. Remember though, Ken  is pretty bad, and since she's slim and light, she can easily fall out of it.
 * can be low profiled with her Side B. Ryu will need to think of how to use his.
 * Ken struggles here a bit with combos as most of his strings are very untrue, and Bayo has a frame 1 air dodge. Ryu too, a bit, since her hurtbox is slim and she changes positions a lot during hitstun.
 * Ryu might have a better time recovering with, since both his legs have intangibility instead of Ken having just one. Plus, the hitboxes are slightly bigger and launch Bayo far enough to make her unable to punish Ryu.
 * Ken has a better anti air with his DP, but Bayo doesn't really approach in the air, unless it's with aerial side b angled down. The only way you'd punish that OOS is with a parry, since she bounces off your shield and pretty far, too. Force her to be in the air.
 * Her edge guarding game is pretty good, too. is deceptively good against us. It's big, lasts long, and can make us lose our jumps. Be careful with that.

Belmonts (Simon & Richter)
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From ImBad:

Neutral
Getting in on the Belmonts is going to be somewhat difficult due to our lower air and ground speed. We need to be able to make the most out of the openings we do get. I would recommend Ken for this reason, but Ryu can somewhat counter zone. Belmonts are on the heavy end weighing in at 107 units. Keep this in mind when going for kill confirms.

Belmonts neutral will consist mostly of FTilts(dash back or otherwise), FAir/BAir, and cross. These aren’t safe on shield per say being -6 to -8 depending on what move it is, but spaced well they are nearly impossible for us to punish on shield. FTilt will also eat through hado and has a trample effect so using tatsu to beat it isn’t reliable. RESIST THE URGE TO JUMP/RUN STRAIGHT AT THE BELMONT AFTER THEY HIT YOUR SHIELD WITH AN FTILT there is more than likely another one coming. When you finally close the gap to the point they shield watch out for upb oos its frame 6 and has intangibility on frames 5-6 (poor man's shoryuken).

Advantage
Lucky for us Belmonts are very susceptible to our combos. For Ken CK > DSmash will work. If you have a Belmont above you in juggle watch for them to do DAir. It has a poor hitbox and will be beaten out by HUTilt. The Belmonts frame data is bad so we can abuse that if they try mashing after being hit. If they are off stage all you have to do is intercept their recovery with NAir and they most likely wont make it back. When they are on ledge watch for ledge drop FAir or jump FAir. Both will hit us.

Disadvantage
Belmonts are going to look to put you in tech chase situations at low % by using FTilt(this starts at 0). They can cover multiple get up options with cross at one time. You need to mix up what you do here to avoid eating cross. If you roll in they can holy water you which will set us up to take 50% from falling UAir shenanigans. UAir is decent for keeping us in the air due to our lower air speed. It is possible to focus through UAir, FAir, and BAir. However, keep an eye out for crosses or axes. Belmonts have crazy ledge trapping and can force you off the ledge with many things.

Bowser
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Matchup notes by ICE | Torricane:

Bowser's armor is only broken if a single hitbox is stronger than the threshold, multiple hits won't break it even if delivered on the same frame. Damage-based Armor Compendium: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HZgiCY0ee7C8-yPBLo2rZVu4cZdMx_VauNafxZW3zDw/edit#gid=0 < Main doc
 * Every move Bowser can Armor in Ryu/Ken's kit

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HZgiCY0ee7C8-yPBLo2rZVu4cZdMx_VauNafxZW3zDw/edit#gid=1762814975 Ryu

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HZgiCY0ee7C8-yPBLo2rZVu4cZdMx_VauNafxZW3zDw/edit#gid=1711360161 Ken

Other notes by TeX:

Neutral
Neutral against Bowser will consist of long range harassment with Hadoken and Close range baiting. Things he will fish for are Up special and his command grab side special since they are his fastest grounded options our of shield and out of frame traps. Try to catch full hops, if a Bowser can full hop he has access to forward aerial, which is a strong neutral tool if spaced correctly. Like usual, it is a bad idea to mindlessly full hop in neutral or use a double jump to approach as Bowser has many moves to snuff aerial approaches.

USmash, DAir, and BAir break focus armor.

Disadvantage
Bowser has a good advantage state and you really have to look out for FAir to cover jumps and being careful about shielding because of their grabs. Bowser really wants to scare you into shielding or jumping in disadvantage so they can either grab you or hit you with FAir/BAir/Side B for the the kill. Your best option as Ken is to either back dash, mix up roll but just don't jump. Some risky but potential reversals are Tatsu or Shoryu; I would prefer the light shoryu as it could result in a bait and you could get a heavy off in time however generally you don't want to whiff tatsu. Every person is different and may bait some of these options but these are possible options that will help you out in disadvantage versus Bowser.

Out of Shield
The best thing to do if you think A Bowser player will up special when you hit their shield is to empty hop shield, special cancel Tatsumaki to reset neutral or try to run up grab.

Tatsumaki will be the safest as it resets neutral and you can get a punish if they go towards you. The other two options are very risky, especially at high percentage because of side special. It's a rock, paper scissors game of Shield, Grab or Spot dodge. Shield the up special, spot dodge the command grab or grab them before they up special.

Shield Pressure
Up tilt and down tilt with clank with both Whirling fortress and flying slam's command grab. Depending on whether you think they will jump OoS should determine which you go for. Both clanks will leave you in a frame advantage state for a few frames. Do not use Nata Otoshi Geri on shield, you will either get command grabbed or up special'd OoS. Even though is is technically frame plus for the command grab and will either beat or clank with it if buffered it's a 50/50 between shielding the up special or trying to beat the command grab. So you CAN use NOG on shield however it is very risky.

Advantage
generally Bowser's disadvantage is very bad outside of a frame 6 command grab however it will be easy to bait. He has up B, side B, jab and the regular defensive options that everyone else has. He's very easy to abuse since he only has 3 extremely effective yet easy to punish/bait options in disadvantage. Bait up b with shield out of a frame trap, side b with spot dodge and jab can be baited by just expecting it and getting creative. Be weary that nair breaks focus and they like to dair in juggle situations

Ledge Trapping
Do not stand near the ledge or you can get hit by drop off, jump up side B, nair, fair or if you're close enough, up air. If you are too close while they are recovering they can hit you with overshoot up B and still snap to the ledge. Stand about roll distance away walking in and out of their get up attack range which is 30 units (about Ken's ledge roll). Don't challenge jump from ledge with fair, try either catching it with short hop up air or catching their landing with a grab to throw them back to the ledge. Try to bait get up attack since bowsers are confident in it.

Offstage
Snip them with hadoken if you can. If you can get them to recover at about a 45 degree angle to the ledge you can drop down back air them. Other than that, stick too ledge trapping and ledge trumping.

As for us offstage it boils down to high or low since fair offstage unless you save your jump or they hit a focus attack air stall, it will kill you. Recover as low as you can and scrape the stage so you don't get hit by suicide dair. You'll trade and then you'll die. Try focus attack stall offstage and save your jump if you think the fair is going to happen immediately.

Bowser Jr.
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Matchup notes from RoyKoopa:
 * Cart armor only tanks moves that do 6%
 * Hadoken beats Jr Side B
 * Tatsu goes over mechakoopa
 * Jr struggles to get in vs Ryu
 * Rare matchup where going to Battlefield might be the play

Byleth
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Matchup notes from Lernonad:
 * Try to air to air FAir and BAir as Byleth can only combo off of it when delaying the aerial to land with it
 * Byleth's aerials are unsafe against shotos when unspaced
 * NAir is Byleth's main get off me option
 * It is unsafe on block but it hard to punish due to being a multihit

Matchup notes from Kusu:
 * Be careful in disadvantage due to UAir being a multihit
 * Aerial rushes are not recommended as Byleth can just space out FAir or BAir or use Side B when they read an attempt to approach from the air
 * Mixup recovery to avoid Neutral B snipes
 * Try walking to move in and out of range of DTilt

Captain Falcon
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Raptor Boost Armor Compendium from ICE | Torricane:
 * https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kw--b0JY1FA_h9f1fFSwuO-98T3LaaD0b68q3vfCRSU/edit#gid=0
 * https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kw--b0JY1FA_h9f1fFSwuO-98T3LaaD0b68q3vfCRSU/edit#gid=1762814975 Ryu
 * https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kw--b0JY1FA_h9f1fFSwuO-98T3LaaD0b68q3vfCRSU/edit#gid=1711360161 Ken

Recovering against Falcon
 * AHero: Tatsu is a last resort mixup option. Try using Focus to recover more. Falcons often attempt to go low and use their Up B to grab us offstage. With significant timing mixups, you can avoid it and potentially send them careening to their deaths.
 * Bill Bill Bill: If you're somewhat close to ledge, you can fair and maybe catch them with it and prevent a knee/some other move. Then you can recover with jump/shoryu.
 * SHORYUKEN: Hado hover ain’t bad either.

https://twitter.com/realHARTHUR/status/1400851215295057925?s=20

Chrom
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You can cancel tilts into to tank Up B OOS. Then, dash cancel away to not get hit by the landing hit.

Cloud
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From mo!:

If Cloud approaches: Cloud likes to shorthop a hell of a lot most of the time. The easiest way to avoid getting hit by this is to shield (or parry, even better) and follow up with a tilt, then wham on 'em. Be careful, don't wail on him too much because of Up B (frame 7). Stay grounded. you don't wanna get juggled against cloud it is NOT fun for Shotos.

Ledgetrapping is extremely useful in this MU since Cloud's recovery is not the best. If you time it exactly right, you can hit Up B with from below. is also useful but more risky. If you're gonna go offstage, wait until he jumps and then use or. If Cloud goes low try offstage.

If Cloud doesn't approach: Clouds like to spam Neutral B at the start of the match so they can bully you into approaching. You can use to stop the projectiles. You could also jump past the lasers but this puts you at risk of a counterattack. Defensive clouds might abuse Climhazzard OOS too. Roll and counterattack accordingly.

Which Shoto should I use? In my honest opinion you should pick Ryu for this one since his neutral game is better. You can shield poke with shaku and have a better time staying grounded and have stage control.

Corrin
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If you get caught in the charge hitbox, you can use to tank the FSmash when they release it, but it is still not the best as it does not tank a full charged sour spot FSmash on frame 1. But even then, you still take half damage and slightly less knockback. Bill Bill Bill also says that Ryu's clanks with the sweet spot of FSmash.

Diddy Kong
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From Notorious:

Ok so I played with a Diddy Kong for a while and idk if this will be useful information, however, I feel that Ryu is best for this MU. You can grab banana and hold on to it and still use both Shaku/Hado just be aware that if you press A you will throw banana so you'll need to use B to throw projectiles. When banana is in your hand you are unfortunately limited to your moves as you cannot use tilts (if you do you'll throw the banana). The Diddy Kong will be pressured to chase you down as they need banana for their combos so this is where you have to be smart with your projectile use. If you see an opportunity to do so you can use banana to extend a combo or start one but you will lose banana and have to start over. Depending on the type of side b they use (either grab or attack) Shaku/Hado will beat them out (I think it beats the grab variation of it). Hard up tilt will beat Side B, Tatsu will not, Shoryu timed well can also beat it out. Ledge trump double jump BAir can probably catch them. If they have banana be careful of your approaches, they don't necessarily need to trip you in order to combo with it. Offstage be careful with Tatsu or Hado usage as depending on how they throw it they can mess both forms of recovery. If they have banana at ledge just drop ledge jump NAir. They usually expect a roll or neutral getup. Getup attack will not grab banana. FTilt is useful in this MU as is roundhouse. If you have banana in hand and are spacing then out with projectiles just be careful. Your tools are limited since you'll only have projectiles, Tatsu, Focus, and Shoryu. They'll likely pressure you to throw banana and then grab it back. Basically be mindful of banana and hold on to it/prevent Diddy from getting it. They have a plethora of options to get it back or force its usage whereas you'll be limited so be mindful of that. Neutral wise use roundhouse, FTilt, and your projectiles. Their burst options can be overwhelming if you're not careful and they can combo you for a while. I haven't found any DI/SDI that's helpful for getting out of combos atm. You can pick up banana with just about any tilt (including collarbone) and aerial so if they throw it out just tilt or throw an aerial to grab it. As far as kill power is concerned its small, most setups are DTilts and banana setups but they're limited on how long they can hold a smash attack so its always a weak variation of the move. Fair is really good for edge guarding and banana into FAir can force you out of Focus.

Donkey Kong
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From Bean!:

This matchup may seem like a one and done, bing bang boom sort of thing but it isn’t. A good DK is gonna abuse their disjoints and out range the ever living %$&@ out of us. So don’t underestimate this matchup. Your best bet is forcing him to approach, since all of his approach options are very committal besides his bair. Once DK secures a grab you’re walking away with at least 35-45 on average, and may even lose a stock. So whatever laggy move you do better be worth it. Coil Tatsu trumping DK’s recovery by not immediately snapping to ledge but hanging there for a while cripples him. (As in not immediately pressing down when tatsuing the ledge to stall next to the stage for a while).

KO moves:

Shoryuken, or Medium Tatsu. He’s quite chunky so killing with heavy tatsu should be reserved for near the ledge interactions.

Ledge Trapping DK

DK has quite a few super armor gimmick moves like Giant Punch and Headbutt, so if you get too close for comfort you’re gonna get whacked. Most likely, the DK player will do a neutral getup since going in the air from ledge as DK is suicide, especially against us. To ledge trap him, stay around 1 1/2 roll distances away and walk back and forth with the occasional sliding tilt or pivot ftilt to try and catch him lacking. Make sure you do not overextend, safe spacing is very important.

DK’s kill options on us

DK can go offstage and down b us for free since the hitbox is disjointed and quite good for murdering recoveries. His dair, fair, down b, and side b spike, so watch out. But you’ll probably die to a bair, fsmash, ftilt smack due to a ledge poke, or a cargo throw of some sort.

Free Punishes

DK’s in the air? Free HUTilt. DK’s in shield? Free HUTilt focus or tomahawk grab if you know he’s not gonna do anything. The rest should be common sense.

How to DI out of his combos

DK is most likely conditioning you to DI down and out of his combos since he’s probably doing upthrow nair whatever move. Be aware of your DI, because if you DI the same way, he has traps for that, like the iconic dash attack to bairs to up b. Stay aware of your own DI and Do. Not. Try. To. Style. Offstage.

Dr. Mario
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From mo!:

Despite what the metagame tells you, fighting a good Doc is not an easy MU. Doc is essentially Mario but he's slower and hits like a truck.

The basics: Doc has a very good neutral game with pills. They're a slow, bouncy projectile that is easy to confirm into. The easiest thing to do would be to jump over it, but this puts you at risk for eating a kick to the face. Doc's nair is about the same as Mario's, so watch out for it. Fair doesn't spike but it hits like a truck. Up air is a good combo tool. Doc's jump punch is a good oos option, so be very careful shield poking. It kills at around 100-120%. Dr. Tornado is a very dangerous move in this MU. It's a multihit doc can combo into and kills offstage at ~70%. Good DI is very useful in this MU.

Kills: Doc is pretty average weight so getting a kill is not terribly hard. Up air > tsrk will do it at ~60%. Air tatsu also helps with Ryu. Due to his....questionable recovery, you can abuse the hell out of Doc offstage. Landing a dair or even a fair or nair will likely do it for him, unless he has an extra jump. You can also use down smash on ledge. Ledgetrapping doc is key. To recover against Doc is pretty simple. Make sure to avoid dair and cape. Mix it up!

Which shoto should I use? Ken can trip Doc up with his speed and Ryu can wall him out so either is fine for this MU.

From Bill Bill Bill:

Doc can also mix up Up Smash and Doc Jump Punch (Up-B) as an OoS kill option. Up Smash is a DI mixup and I think Behind and Down from Doc is the best DI? Jump punch sends you Forward and Up so if you do the DI for Up Smash, you'll die way earlier.

Doc also can't really abuse his grab except for killing, so DI out if he does Dthrow since he can probably only do an Uair as a true confirm. Fair can hit if he reads an airdodge or you don't do anything to counter it. Fair is incredibly strong too, don't get hit by it.

Don't corner Doc too much as a Back Throw will almost certainly kill (at around 120 or less with rage). I think its like #3 in strongest back throws.

Duck Hunt
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Frisbee beats light Hado. Med/Heavy Hado beat frisbee. If the frisbee hits a hitbox and a hurtbox at the same time, it will be deflected away. If it hits a hurtbox it will put you in hitlag/hitstun.

Hitting sheriff keeps him out for longer. They cannot use Down B until the sheriff goes away.

Falco
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From SHORYUKEN:

Hold shield against his aerials because fair is very tricky. Until you get the feel of it, don’t use focus basically at all - At least don’t commit to it, The only aerial it deals with is uair and bair but you’ll get fair and naired for days. Don’t worry about lasers and don’t let them force you to approach, the damage is so small as to almost not matter. Shaku is good as long as you don’t get jumped or are far enough away not to worry about reflect. He’s really light so it doesn’t take much to get him at kill %, just be patient. For the love of god don’t commit hard to offstage especially deep offstage edgeguards; hovering near the ledge is ok as long as you don’t get clipped by side b. Also at low percent he might fall to the ground fast enough to make HDTilt conversions untrue.

From mo!:

Like SHORYUKEN said, Falco is a very patient MU. Having a good tech game is good since Falco can tech chase easier with phantasm now. Falco is also in this really weird area where he's a floaty-fastfaller. Don't chase him in the air, that's bait. Wait for him to approach instead.

As said before, getting Falco to kill % isn't a big deal. You can kill him with Ken tsrk or Ryu tatsu rather easily.

The biggest things to watch out for in this MU is 1. Disadvantage. Falco is pretty much all advantage (lol) so getting out of this can be tough. 2. Offstage. Recovery mixups will be put to the test, also don't commit to this lol.

From Revbecca:

This is somewhat common but if you didn't know you can DI out of the up throw and back throw laser. If the Falco's extremely committal you can punish their follow up but don't stay in the air for too long because, yknow, Falco. You can usually DI/SDI up throw left or right, back throw down

Fox
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From mo!:

General stuff: Fox is very fast, but also very light. He will often maintain neutral or advantage with fastfall nair. Be careful in close encounters as Fox can rack up damage faster than a bad marriage. Fox's setback is having maybe 2 or 3 reliable kill confirms. What you should primarily look out for is up smash and up throw > up air. Killing Fox is not hard. He's light as a feather so medium tatsu or a raw tsrk will do it for him. Getting him to kill % is the challenge since he is very fast and can dogpile you very easily with his aerials. Fox also has a reliable jab lock tech chase that combos into down smash. Watch out for that. Tech rolling is important.

Specials: Blaster is really not an issue in this MU, in my opinion. If you're close enough, abuse the endlag. Fox Illusion is a reading challenge, since Fox can change the amount of startup, but once you adapt to the pattern, it won't be too much of an issue. You can also tatsu or shaku him out of it (recommended for Ryu) Fire Fox is his primary recovery option. While it's a pretty okay move, it's extremely predictable. Spike him offstage if you can. Reflector is the biggest issue in his kit. Bait it out with hado and attack afterwards.

Which shoto? Either works!! Personally I use Ken but Ryu is just as fine.

From Bill Bill Bill:

Do. Not. Tatsu. As. Ken. Ever. Actually, light tatsu may still serve its use here, its just that Fox's weight and fast falling properties may not knock him down when you expect him to. Also, the only way you'd manage to even hit a light tatsu is with a confirm, but you should probably go for something better like CK or something. Be prepared to tech often as Fox LOVES dragdown fair when will create a tech situation 80% of the time. Also, Fox's nair is absurdly good as a kill setup. I think of it as a better version of Ken's nair and it connects very well with upsmash for a kill. I think it can also create a tech chase at higher percents? Not sure. Hado is useful since they have no choice but to jump, shield or EVEN BETTER, reflect. Use slow hado as Ken.

Ganondorf
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From ImBad:

Ganon has a 50/50 on both shotos from flame choke if you tech away, in place, or miss your tech Ganon can dtilt you. If you tech in he can dash attack you.

From JMU notes made by General Yi:

Neutral Shoto Advantage Shoto Disadvantage Stage Selection
 * Shotos have fireballs to pester Ganon with at a distance, allowing them to wrack up damage and force an approach.
 * Ganon will utilize his longer-reaching attacks in the matchup, such as properly spaced nair and downtilt. Even his jab has a solid range to it and will be used to prod at a distance.
 * Ganon’s nair works best as an air-to-air attack due to its long range and double-hit.
 * Ganon’s anti-air game is lacking, so he’ll prioritize air-to-air combat when possible.
 * With both shotos and Ganon being punish-heavy characters, the tempo of the match will revolve around who can maintain a stock and percentage lead.
 * Ganon is one of the few characters in the game that shotos are unable to poke when he hangs from ledge.
 * Ken can force himself into an advantage state using tatsu to punish a whiffed move of Ganon’s, but be wary that it will leave him wide open should the Ganon be ready for it.
 * Wizard’s Kick (Ganon’s downB) will pass through shaku and all forms of Ken’s hado.
 * Wizard’s Kick will be stopped by a fresh heavy hado from Ryu. This will no longer work after hado has been staled with three uses on hit/on shield (and remember that hado/shaku share the same staling queue).
 * Shotos are at -19 frame advantage when tech-rolling in after Flame Choke (Ganon side-b).
 * Focus isn’t realistically strong enough to absorb Ganon’s fsmash or upsmash, do not try tanking these.
 * While ledgetrapping Ganon, be mindful of flame choke from ledge as a quick option that will beat light tilts and focus.
 * Ganon’s OOS options consist of Dark Dive (up-b) as a command grab and fair if a shoto is pressuring with downtilts.
 * While Ryu can pepper Ganon with hado and shaku at a safe distance, Ken is able to keep Ganon in a disadvantage state longer due to his long combo strings and Ganon’s weak OOS options.
 * Shotos do better at maintaining a horizontal advantage state rather than keeping Ganon above them.
 * A well-timed nair can gimp Ganon off stage fairly easily, so long as shotos bear in mind Ganon’s ability to retalitate using upair or Dark Dive.
 * The end of Dark Dive has a hitbox, so be wary of it sharking above the ledge when ledgetrapping Ganon.
 * Dark Dive will electrify you four times before launching you, and will not refresh Ganon’s double jump if it has already been used.
 * Shotos can utilize Rockcrocking (punishing the end-lag of Dark Dive by teching off the stage wall after being launched) to press the off-stage disadvantage state on Ganon.
 * The Shotos’ best Rockcrock tool is fair, though in some situations you can also use dair for a spike, and the best stages to use this on are Kalos and the Yoshi stages due to their straight sides.
 * Using tatsu to ledge is a free invitation for Ganon to spike you with dair, recover low when possible.
 * Ganon will watch your DI after he’s used down-throw and can use nair, dash attack, up air, rar bair, or even downsmash depending on if/when you use an air dodge or jump.
 * Tech flame choke by either reacting to the explosion of Ganon’s fist or the vibration of your controller, though bear in mind that still leaves you in an unfavorable state due to the option-select of teching in place, rolling, or choosing not to tech at all.
 * Due to shotos’ poor roll distance, tech rolling away from flame choke can still result in you getting hit by Ganon’s downtilt.
 * The list of Ganon’s options after flame choke are as follows:
 * Tech-roll behind: bair, turn-around upsmash (possible chance to shield this)
 * Tech in place/get-up attack/normal getup: dair
 * Tech-roll away: Another flame choke, Wizard’s Kick, downtilt (sometimes)
 * Ganon can auto-cancel Wizard’s Kick by flying off the ledge with it towards the very end of the move for a quick ledgetrapping movement option.
 * Shotos are forced into a 50/50 situation when grabbed by flame choke in the air onto a platform: normal get-up/get-up attack is beaten with a dair, while rolling will be hit by an upsmash.
 * Ganon’s late dash attack into upair or Dark Dive will be true at low to mid percents.
 * Platforms can allow Ganon to maneuver around fireballs, bypass ledgetrapping options, and set up 50/50s with aerial flame choke, so consider stages like Battlefield and Lylat only if you’re confident in being able to utilize platforms to your advantage as well.
 * Lylat in particular is a rough stage to fight Ganon on due to the low height of the platforms allowing him to cover their entire length with fsmash and upsmash.
 * A smaller stage like Smashville works in favor for both shotos and Ganon since there’s literally less room for error, but this does mean less room to pressure with fireballs for shotos.
 * Final Destination can work well for the shotos due to them being able to control the stage and air space at a distance while Ganon is forced to maneuver with limited options.
 * With Town & City’s moving platforms, shotos are able to benefit from long range stage control when the platforms are gone, and their height when present keeps them relatively safe from some of Ganon’s tools.
 * Bear in mind that any stage with a large width, like Town & City or Pokémon Stadium 2, will also allow Ganon to run away and stay out of fireball range longer when he has the percent/stock lead.
 * Pokémon Stadium 2’s length benefits fireball play, and the platforms work well for both shotos a
 * Kalos, despite having high walls that make rockcrocking Ganon easier, is the worst stage in this matchup due to how high the ceiling is and the side-platforms working better for Ganon’s defensive options than shotos’ offensive ones.
 * Good for shotos: Final Destination
 * Neutral for shotos: Smashville, Yoshi’s Story, Battlefield, Town & City, Pokémon Stadium 2
 * Bad for shotos: Kalos, Lylat

Greninja
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From JJDJ:

so Greninja is a very fast character with likely the best overall mobility stats in the game. He is exceptionally good at controlling space and he can sometimes be tricky to catch, but as long as you take advantage of his weaknesses, this matchup is still winnable

Because of his extremely terrible aggressive out of shield options, being able to get in against greninja, as well as invalidate his approaches, are key points to this matchup.

As for general knowledge stuff

-heavy uptilt, light ftilt and ryu upair 2 can all beat out greninja nair if properly spaced, but are still fairly high commitment options. if you miss, you’re probably gonna take 30-40% from a whiff punish so use them sparingly -hado and shaku clank with water shuriken, but for some reason uncharged shuriken can low profile fireballs so you can damage trade with heavy hadouken if they’re camping you out on the ground -In my opinion, Ryu has an easier time in the matchup than Ken since Ryu is able to cover landings with his controllable fireball speeds more easily than Ken and punish jump ins with upair and uptilt, as well as not have the problem of certain setups not working on him due to his size and good defensive options

often greninja mains like to play slow and patient and wait for a punish window. whenever Greninja is camping you out in the corner, try to avoid giving overcommiting and giving up stage control. instead, setup shaku or hado whenever safe and pressure him into the corner with low commitment tilts and aerials. many greninja players like to avoid pressure with defensive options, so whenever you’re pressuring greninja in the corner, expect them to choose a non-aggressive option such as jumping or rolling, and punish according to their most used option. (good options for punishing jumps would be ryu upair or light uptilt, and for covering rolls, use dtilt.)

Whenever greninja wins neutral, getting out of disadvantage can be very difficult. avoid mashing focus out of hitstun since the vast majority of greninja’s moves are able to bypass focus armor. try to mix up landings with either b-reverse focus, fastfall nair, or retreating to ledge. Whenever Greninja gets you offstage, you have to stay extremely aware of your positioning relative to the greninja since he can edgeguard shotos for free. avoid using raw tatsu to ledge other than for a mixup, and always make sure to properly space shoryu on recovery. even if you barely miss the ledge sweetspot, he can cheese you with hydro pump and still maintain stage control if he misses. Use hado as a stalling option if the Greninja goes offstage after you, and sometimes tatsuing gren bair can trade so that can be a viable option too.

So basically dont make your landings/ recoveries really predictable and you should be fine


 * DI dtilt>upsmash directly away on hit and the sweetspot will usually miss if you react quick enough
 * Always be ready for random techchase scenarios off of dragdown upair and up-angled ftilt
 * dont mash high commitment options in his face cus you’re most likely gonna eat a dash attack for it
 * Dash attack on shield is -14, so you can punish it with pretty much anything other than rising nair, since he can occasionally low profile with it
 * dont challenge greninja fair’s hitbox. ever.
 * abuse his mediocre frame data whenever you get him in the corner, and try punish the player’s favorite defensive options.

Hero
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RNG go brrrr.

From Bean!:

Hero Neutral:

Hero’s neutral state is usually initiated with him immediately going to a side of the stage and opening down b, doing fast neutral b, or ranged side b to get some space before using the down b command select. once hero opens up their down b, you’re stuck into a cycle with them. approaching means you have to be ready to counter their menu option, if that’s even possible, staying away means you have to be willing to get hit, and running or jumping in just lets him hit you away to reset neutral. the most important thing to remember in this matchup is patience, and to not run directly in on the hero.

Hero’s Advantage:

Absolutely MONSTEROUS. Once hero puts us in disadvantage we’re staying there for a while. Wasting MP means nothing to him because all he has to do is spam aerials and if they connect with your shield, he gets MP back, so its no committment for him. When stuck in disadvantage against hero, visualize a few different lines representing his burst menu options and normal special options. His ledge trapping is extremely vicious if you’re not thinking so stay aware of your own options as well as his to play this matchup corrrectly.

Hero’s Disadvantage:

Hero’s Disadvantage is having no MP and being off stage. We can expose this by letting him burn his entire menu of spells and other specials, then use an aerial or fireball to try and catch him off guard to secure a grab that could possibly be a game ender. COIL Side B works excellently in this matchup, and not instantly clicking to the ledge completely screws over Hero’s up b recovery.

Dealing with Down B:

I know what you’re thinking, “his down b takes up the whole stage and if I don’t approach he gets buffed up and I die at -18,765%!” The key here is to be pseudo aggressive. you’re trying to mask your approach and your real gameplan, because once the hero catches on, consider it curtains. Each of his long range down b projectiles: Bang, Kaboom, Sizzle, Sizz, Whack, Magic Burst can be dealt with accordingly. Stay out of the range of Kaboom, or at least above its suction hitbox, and you’re a-okay. hero has quite a fast, large nair so challenging his menu up close will most likely get you hit by nair or fair.

Dealing with Roided Up Hero:

So lets say you made a serious mistake and tried to turtle against Hero. He’s got Accelerattle, Oomph, Psyche Up, and invincibility from Hocus Pocus. What are you supposed to do? Wait it out, or let him tap your shield to wear it off VERY CAREFULLY. Hero has some ridiculous shield break potential, and the buffs only make them even more insane. Wait him out, and when you’re ready, start closing the gap to deal with him face to face. Ideal Character, Strands, and Playstyle:

I highly reccomend Ryu for this matchup. He’s got a good enough projectile to play a semi-decent game of keep away against Hero. But mainly I choose Ryu since he’s my favorite his damage output is solid, consistent, and doesn’t inherently make you want to fish for fancy stuff. I reccomend playing simplistic, pseudo aggressive, and tricky. Keep your movement ambiguous and keep the hero guessing with B Reverse focus and all sorts of movement mixups you can throw in.

Dealing with Bounce:

Bounce does affect our neutral, but it doesn’t destroy it. Instead of relying on fireball to get your chip damage, you can use aerials and sliding tilts to catch the Hero off guard to inflict decent damage with tatsu, or if you cat h him at higher percents a kill with dtilt shoryu.

Hero’s Kill Moves on Us:

Hero can kill us the same amount of ways you can skin a mongoose, which is infinite but if you’re a busy man its around 37. All his smash attacks are volatile BEEG no no zones, if you find yourself dancing around his smash attack range, death shouldn’t be a surprising outcome in that scenario. It helps to pretend that Hero is a bomb that’s armed and ready to explode, and poking, agitating, and forcing him to come over is the only way to keep him from going Kaboom at any given time.

TL;DR: Play Ryu, Pseudo Aggressive, Mysterious Playstyle, Keep it simple, Heavy focus on Ledge Trapping, Heavy focus on mixing up landing, ledge options, OoS options, and options out of hitstun. DO. NOT. NAIR. IN

From Tytaneum:

magic burst has trash priorty. try to hit hero at the beginning of the move where the radius isnt that big. if you cant, just fireball him. all projectiles go straight through. if hero has oomph and / or psyche up, do not let him shield break you. heres a few ways hero can delete your shield: https://twitter.com/aperfectcreatio/status/1237549851698581504?s=21

Ice Climbers
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From Lernonad:

Blizzwall is a pain. You have to preemptively jump over it to air-to-air it from above. But if they got a platform to hide under then GGs. If you shield blizzwall I guess I’d say best bet is abuse the fact that you get a fully intangible roll after 11 hits on shield and if you’re close roll behind and dtilt. -\(‘_’)/-

They got ToDs for days. Don't get hit by blizzwall or grab and you're all good. Focus doesn't work if Nana is around.

Down Throw breaks shields so you can use it to grab and throw Popo and disable Nana for a little bit. Up Throw has an external hitbox so if Nana is not shielding, use this to knock her away. Then you can go edge guard Nana. Ken's Back Throw has a long roll before throwing the opponent. This is good for separating the two.

This matchup is even to slight winning for Ken until the ICs player decides to camp. Then, it is losing.

Ike
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From Lernonad:

Neutral
Because of Ike's range, releasing shield trying to parry and doing tilts can easily be countered by out spacing us then using dtilt which can combo and kill confirm, so try parrying with caution. The only other option that is good is anti-airing, or because of his range, air-to-airing. You can do so with both Ken and Ryu by doing full hop immediate nair, fair, or short hop buffered uair, which then you can combo off of. If he sees that you are consistently going for full hop air-to-airs he will start doing short hop reverse up air, which you can just beat by doing short hop buffered aerial then combo or by doing a grounded anti-air. To do this you have to jump at the same time Ike does. You can practice by turning the CPU to jump in training mode. Or, if you have the training mod pack, set the CPU to do falling NAir. You should mostly be doing these in neutral. If you get caught in shield you gotta mixup what you do. You can parry and do a tilt but it might not reach. Releasing shield into tilt will not work, so keep in mind that you can also jump OOS or after a parry and do an aerial.

Advantage
When juggling Ike he can double jump out or air dodge through. He might also try using side b to try and go to ledge. When going to ledge Ike can do side b to recover high and get to center stage or use up b to get to ledge. To counter side b you can do bair to hit him or hado to force him to go lower. If you hit him out of side b then he is forced to go to ledge with up b. To counter up b you have to throw a hitbox when Ike throws his sword. By the time Ike rises the hitbox will be out. Dsmash is easiest to counter up b. When Ike is at ledge there aren't a lot of Ike specific mixups. I've only seen drop off double jump side b. Be careful when attacking his shield since his up b has armor and has good knockback to kill at around 100%. Shotos can counter with doing a tilt string canceled to focus to tank the Up B then dash cancel out of the way and punish. If he doesn't Up B then dash cancel away before he reacts and grabs.

Disadvantage
If you are being juggled you can jump out as Ike is about to uair, then you have to fast fall neutral air dodge to get past up air again and get below Ike. If you do get below Ike via this then you can get a chance to hit him as he lands, but shotos add another option of FADC. It works the same as air dodge most of the time. If you're going to ledge from below Ike has DAir and eruption. Once on ledge NAir, DTilt, and DSmash can hit shoto's ledge hang. If he is spamming NAir then aair-to-air with a ledge jump aerial. Its the same timing from ledge as it is anywhere else.

Incineroar
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https://twitter.com/AMegaLance/status/1209617492408061952?s=20&t=hjOqIyRGrmk-6pInbBIWcw

From Bill Bill Bill:

Incin's down smash is not as bad as K. Rool's. Bait Down-B as much as possible, especially when playing Ken. True tatsu is actually useful here for this reason if they mash OR/and don't know how to fight the shotos. Don't spam Hadokens/Shakus unless off of a confirm/its very unexpected. Be mindful of Dtilt. Its an amazing combo starter for Inci and a good Inci will abuse the hell out of it. Jumping is good here and there since Inci has very few moves that are very strong in the air (if you're above him) you can avoid his attacks and maybe start a combo or something. Command grab only works if you play dumb and they catch on. Force them to use their revenge on something else, like a dtilt. How? Trivago. Or just grab them. Normal grab will still do like 30+% with Revenge depending on their throw so you should be careful with your shield. Keep your distance, especially if you're Ken If you do untrue combos and strings the first hit of the untrue part (like lets say after a Heavy Tatsu if you DARE use that move) should be weak, like weak Utilt or Dtilt. Or just don't do a move and see what they do after and condition them to use a punishable move, especially Revenge!!!

From JJDJ:

I'm pretty sure Incin only counters the first hit [Shakunetsu]. I've played matches vs Incin where they tried to counter slow Shaku and got punished for it by the ending hits of the same fireball.

From SHORYUKEN:

Shaku only triggers a tiny bit of revenge. Jumping is good but it can get Whipped if they start getting the read on you

From MALASA:

Zoning with Ken Hado is dangerous because of Revenge. So you just have to play super patient, pretty sure Ryu is much more comfortable in this mu. The command grab is also dumb; it will catch falling Nair. One hadoken makes [Revenge] do at least 50 percent.

Inkling
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Ken and Ryu die to Booyah at 119-147

From Lernonad:

Neutral: Inkling plays by using bair which is safe on shield and mixing up with full hop landing bair, shorthop landing bair, rising bair, and rising or landing nair. Then they continue pressure with another aerial, tilt, or grab. Best thing to do is read what watch what they do after hitting your shield the first time and read that with the proper oos option. Parrying isn’t the best since a perfectly landed bair is still safe on parry. The tilts are not safe on shield but short ranged attacks won’t hit after inkling uses one on shield. If they try to hit your shield with landing bair you can meet them with an anti air. They also use bomb to pressure you to shield to get a grab or jump to anti air.

Advantage: Inkling can wall jump and bair ledge to hit you if you stand directly on ledge. They can also use side b to stall their recovery or boost their horizontal recovery. As for OOS options nair is fast but since our shield strings do decent push back it shouldn’t hit.

Disadvantage: You gotta save your double jump and mix up going high or low. Inkling edgeguards are too good. And don’t spam double jump out of hitstun when they do up throw. As for beating ledge traps go to 18:05 in IzAw's Art of Inkling and watch til the end.

Isabelle
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You can special cancel off LLoid trap. DSmash and FAir break it.

Jigglypuff
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Anti-air and air-to-air her.

Joker
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From Bill Bill Bill:

Anyway, one thing I realized about joker is that most of his get off me tools have some startup, except for rebel's guard, which has counters. Dont immediately jump if he guns you down off stage. Grab often since pummel and grab takes away a lot of the rebels gauge if he has arsene.

From Renin:

Down Tilt on Rebel's Guard is super safe because you can react on hit into Focus Attack. and if Joker lets go immediately, Focus Attack will not get hit out on cancel. and will get hit by Focus Attack 1 if they don't shield fast enough by not Rebel's Guarding fast enough. even on shield is it nice due to being able to FADC on hit. if Joker holds Rebel's Guard longer, he can get FA3'd or just straight up punished for endlag.

Kazuya
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From Bean!:

Ryu can be a good defender in this matchup but he needs to hold midrange down well as well as mixup his fireball placements bc Kazuya crouch dash shenanigans. Its a safe bet to try and fake out the kazuya player using kara shaku/hado since the threat of a charged dsmash or a kara will keep them somewhat at bay. If they don’t respect that then mix up your grounded spacing with backdashes to keep yourself at least 1 roll distance away at all times. You’ll be able to react to everything he does and punish from this range with relative ease.

YOUR BEST FRIEND VS A RUSHING KAZUYA IS HDTILT/LFTILT

at least from what i’ve seen when playing vendetta, a well spaced backdash hdtilt or sliding hdtilt will mean the difference between life and death. keep your spacing sharp.

NEUTRAL VS KAZUYA (RYU)

neutral vs kazuya isn’t super long range and it isn’t close range either. like i mentioned previously ryu is able to be a somewhat decent midrange defender with proper fireball placements, mixups, and spacing. But you can try to play neutral against kazuya from further away. just know that every second of endlag you’re in. he’s only getting closer.

HOW TO MAKE KAZUYA HURT (RYU)

kaz’s fastest options in the air are his upair which is f4, and while its not the fastest, down b with rage and without will be able to win scrambles if you try to frametrap him with nair. once he’s in rage he becomes invuln on down b on frame 1-3, and from frames 4-13 he has super armor so don’t go trying too frame trap happy on him later. However, pre rage percents are free for frametraps as his neutral airdodge is frame 3. So for ryu, things like uptilt > nair aren’t impossible to loop before kaz gets rage. He can also frame trap using things like uptilt > hdtilt for a little bit more damage. the uptilt > dsmash frametrap will work too if they aren’t buffering neutral airdodge.

HOW TO KILL KAZUYA (RYU)

ryu can kill kazuya in all sorts of ways but mainly you’re gonna want to avoid light jab. as that can be tanked by fsmashes, rage drives, and just avoided by his CD. confirming off of spaced hdtilts in this matchup seems to be crucial, and landing kill confirms off of spaced lftilt will also be very important. Controlling space and ensuring that you are the one forcing setplay on kazuya and not the other way around is essential. ^ examples of kills:

just try to minimalize the amount of light damage you do as tough guy can tank it and you’ll not have a great time
 * hdtilt xx h.tatsu
 * hdtilt xx m.tatsu (mixup)
 * hdtilt > read escape option > ldtiltx1 xx h.dp
 * lftilt > bair
 * lftilt > dair
 * lftilt > upair1 xx dp
 * lftilt > read escape option > ptilt/ldtilt xx dp

Ken
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Optimal Shoryuken DI by Hades: https://twitter.com/HadesSSB/status/1135684783365709824?s=20

King K. Rool
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From Sydän:

Important thing to remember is that Kannonball goes through Shakunetsu but clanks with Hadouken. I'd recommend zoning using Hadouken over Shakunetsu and reserving that for hover combos and alike.

From Bill Bill Bill:

Crown loses its hitbox after it clangs with a projectile (or any hitbox, really) so if you hit the crown when its coming toward you with a projectile, you may have enough time to shield it on its way back. Also, this may already be common sense by now, but if the krool does falling nair alot, you should probably hold shield until after he does his next move after it, thats what most krools do. Be mindful of grab, tho.

From Rolo35_: https://twitter.com/Rolo35_/status/1312178235292049410

King Dedede
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From Bill Bill Bill:

Slow projectiles from far/mid range. Especially shaku. Dedede has really bad airspeed and gordo just gets reflected if they get greedy. Honestly, just be very patient, even with ken. Play their game and edge trap them with the edgeguard with no brain power using shaku. Since hes so big and heavy, dsmash will combo into everything and deal huge damage, take advantage of that. Only problem is killing. Tatsu is reliable if theyre trapped at ledge/commit to a laggy move, but is also very unsafe and hard to land since most ddd's play lame when theyre losing. You can try and approach to land a dp or a setup to it, but its risky. You might as well wait for them to approach you since ryu punishes approacing super well. If they approach with nair, parry it and its gg's. Be mindful of bair since they can space it out and punish. Get the hell out of ddd's up air range asap, you dont always have to approach when youre up in the air and in disadvantage. Its a very annoying move because you basically have to predict which hitbox youre gonna get hit by and what di youre gonna have to use. Its robs up air but more DIable ish. Dont ledgeroll if theyre trapping you, thats what they want you to do. Jump or normal getup and attack with something quick (if the gordo isnt super close to you already). Dont stay too long on ledge, they can use dash attack and get an early kill. One thing to add: play ken. Zoning is very hard with ryu because inhale can just spit shaku and hado back at ya. Even if you use it for edgeguarding or ledge trapping, it isnt really useful there since ddd has a decent recovery that we cant really challenge. The multiple jumps ddd has is something to keep an eye out for in neutral. They can stall in the air waiting for you to challenge them or predict them falling. Best not to challenge it unless youre ballsy as hell. Also, avoid gordo, dont focus it especially if youre close to ddd. The hitlag gordo has plus the singular hit it deals means it leaves you wide open to an usmash or dmash or anything ddd has. One thing ddd struggles with is pressure, which is why ken imo is better here. Heavy tatsu at mid% might leave them open to dtilt combos which you can use since they dont exactly have a get off me tool. Hado here is good for chip damage and reflecting gordo from a distance. If you play ryu, resist the urge to shaku in neutral or ledgeguarding. Do hado instead. Dtilt works wonders here for ledge trapping but be mindful of drop ledge up air. You can shield that and dsmash him away to restart his disadvantage (when he loses ledge invincibility)

From Lernonad:

Neutral So dealing with gordo in neutral is easy to deal with if done correctly. Don’t shield for a long time try and shield as the gordo is about to hit. And don’t shield if the ddd is close to you they can grab. You can hit the gordo with hado or hutilt. Those seemed most reliable. As for nair if you don’t parry then you gotta jump or shoryu or else dtilt will hit you or you can just hutilt or rh

Disadvantage Read above post by Bill Bill Bill

Advantage There is a lot of variety for combo game since he’s super big and you can try and start your combo by hitting gordo into ddd. You can easily hit him if he ledge stalls with hdtilt if spaced right.

Kirby
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Vendetta on how to not get succed: https://twitter.com/Vendetta_FGC/status/1409275969920245762?s=20&t=OjY8wg4EQ6wAq8_tN7_mPw

From Bean!:

Going Ken for this matchup is suicide unless you plan on out spacing and out disjointing the kirby. I’ve had a lot of experience with this matchup and learned it the hard way. Most common strand is grab loops with fthrow and dair, these can kill you instantly due to how much aerial space they take up, so Ken is not the wave for this matchup. Kirby’s worst weakness is projectiles. If the kirby player has more than 1 braincell they will not eat our fireballs and instead crouch under them, which is a free sliding tilt/aerial/combo starter/kill move. Ryu for this matchup all the way. If he absorbs you, his shaku is going to be a lot more annoying than ours. If he hits you with dtilt at high percent mash outwards and press shield. Most likely they’ll try for a trip confirm with angle down ftilt and try to get an fsmash like that too.

Recovery: kirby absolutely demolishes our recovery with stone and dair. To avoid this the most important thing is recovering horizontally and not vertically. Kirby can’t cover horizontal distance that fast, so FADCing and recovery mixups are essential. If therr was one rule I had for this matchup it would be NEVER LOSE STAGE CONTROL. Kirby’s recovery is quite bad and if they misspace it just throw a hadoken to keep them uncomfortable. Ledge trapping kirby for damage is essential since his options from ledge are awful.

Punishes. Kirby will most likely approach from the ground or if they catch you offguard approach from the air. Outspace him in the footsies game with light ftilt far, heavy down tilt, and down smash. You can not jab him, so keep all your confirms to dtilt or uptilt upair TSRK if you catch him jumping.

Ideal combos: Ryu is going into this matchup, so the classics like dtilt hdtilt tatsu and dtilt dtilt shoryu are key. Kirby’s don’t usually recover low, but if you condition them too you can get empty dtilt hdtilt at ledge into dair for a cheap kill. Kirby’s most common ledge options vary, but its usually a jump nair, drop down fair, or neutral getup in my experience.

TL;DR: Another no approaching matchup. Let him come to you and deal decent damage over an extended period of time. Losing stage control against a good Kirby is your entire stock, and jumping in at kirby is also a free stock. Take your time, and stand your ground.

Link
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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)
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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.

Mario
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From Lernonad:

Neutral: Mario plays neutral by doing full hop fireball and drifting in to pressure you to doing an option and punishing that option with an anti air for jump, grab for shield or hit or an aerial for a combo or more shield pressure. He then plays to read how you will get out of his combos and punish you for doing so. You can anti air him before he throws out fireball to prevent him from pressuring you. This won't come at a cost for attacking a little late since all aerials will destroy the fireball though too late and they fire ball will hit you before you attack. Attacking the fireball is definitely useful if Mario is throwing it directly on shield so that you can jump oos and attack the fireball. As for aerials just anti air them with aerials or utilt. Mario's nair, bair, uair are safe on shield and fair is only safe spaced. Dair would be safe crossed up but that doesn't matter with shotos. If they hit landing down air and land directly on top of you then you won't get hit by the landing hit allowing you to get out of a combo.

Disadvantage: Try your very best to not get any part of you to go over the ledge when recovering, and hope fludd doesn't push you away. You gotta be very careful where you use your double jump. You don't want fireball to steal it away from you. When being comboed you gotta DI away then mixup what you do to get out of any untrue follow ups.

Advantage: When recovering high Mario can throw fireball to cover him. He has side b to stall him in the air. When going to ledge his up b can shark if done right.

He's a pretty straight forward character where played correctly he is hard to beat in neutral, has a good, rewarding advantage, and a good disadvantage but he is beatable.

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

Mii Brawler
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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
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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
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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.

Min Min
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Mr. Game & Watch
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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
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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.

Olimar
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Pac-Man
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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.

Palutena
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Peach
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Anti-air

Pichu
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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
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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

Piranha Plant
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Pit
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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Unstaled Ledge Attack destroys Arc fire pillar

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

Rosalina & Luma
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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
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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.

Ryu
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Optimal Shoryuken DI graphic by Hades: https://twitter.com/HadesSSB/status/1135684783365709824?s=20

Samus
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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

Sephiroth
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Parry kinda cool

Sheik
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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.

Shulk
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Snake
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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
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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

Sora
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Steve
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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
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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.

Toon Link
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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 committment 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

Villager
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Wario
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Wii Fit Trainer
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Wolf
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Yoshi
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Young Link
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Zelda
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Zero Suit Samus
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