Cloud: Thoughts, Theories, Ideas, and Matchup!

[MisterDom]

The poll is for fun because some of it is just based solely on opinion and of the character himself.

Welcome!! Come near, come here, for this is a thread just to say some thoughts on Cloud!! Not of the character (other than the poll), but in his relation to Jigglypuff!

Theories, thoughts, ideas, and even some solid matchup knowledge may be shared in this thread.

I know he hasn't been out long, but we should honestly have something to say, othere than you might not have him. The Cloud matchup is a long way before the official matchup discussion, so starting to discuss should be legal right?!

Have fun!!

 

[Kalierdarke]

Cloud can bait and punish almost as well as puff. the differences is cloud doesn't have most of puff's weaknesses(although still having his own) and he can force puff to be the one to approach by charging limit. Cloud's punishes have a lot more KO potential than most of puffs, giving him the upper hand when on stage.

Off stage, as long as you avoid being meteored, puff has the advantage and can easily gimp cloud's recovery.

The match is sort of like Puff vs Mac, if mac had a projectile and could charge KO punch without being hit.

 

[drakeirving]

I don't get why people need to compare LB to KO Punch, since the way I see it, LB is clearly not as good for the simple reason that it can be shielded, even if it is a better utility and has various uses.

In general with Cloud if you have good shield management and make sure you can bring it out in time against potential punishes, a lot of stuff is in the clear. A lot of Cloud's kills seem to come from dropping shield early, not shielding fast enough, getting hit while trying to punish after shielding, baiting, misjudging range, etc. Being patient and having good shield use goes a long way.

I also don't have any problems with Blade Beam really. At worst I get booped offstage because I mistimed falling into it. It doesn't have much hitstun, no weird knockback angle, is kind of slow, has enough endlag, and doesn't really help Cloud outside of hitting you as far as I can tell.

A lot of things that I end up having trouble with against Cloud from some matches I just have to stop playing and think about how/why they work, and usually there's a pretty decent way to stop it. I fought one Cloud who after several matches I figured was solidly beating me (~3:1), but I know them and they're just better than me as a player, learning quickly as we were playing and abusing things I wasn't catching on to at the time. Nobody else yet has been all that bad.

 

[CHOVI]

I think the matchup is pretty bad. From my experience, the only time we can really beat Cloud is offstage. He has good, strong and fast, long-ranged attacks that are very hard to deal with. So far, Finishing Touch has been easy for me to dodge, I doubt the usual setups will work with us which is good, and the attack isn't that great, even though it also isn't as easy to punish as say... KO punch.

 

[Kalierdarke]

I don't get why people need to compare LB to KO Punch, since the way I see it, LB is clearly not as good for the simple reason that it can be shielded, even if it is a better utility and has various uses.

I wasn't comparing LB to KO punch, I was comparing Puff vs Cloud to Puff vs Mac. both Cloud and Mac beat puff on stage, puff wins offstage. Cloud just has Finishing Touch, Cross Slash, and Climhazzard as major KO threats with LB up, not to mention LB Cross Slash has heavy shield damage, if you have shielded anything else before getting hit by it, good bye puff.

 

[drakeirving]

I know, but I still mean that it isn't the same as charging KO Punch would be, because you can't shield it. One of the main reasons why a competent Cloud wouldn't hit you with a LB is because you shielded it, whereas with a Mac it's more often that it was knocked out of them. Having KO punches as often as LB, and also being able to force the opponent to approach Mac through charging it, would be hilariously good. Anyways it wasn't that important so let's drop it.

LB Cross Slash does do 26 damage, but you still have quite a bit of room before a shield break. You can retreat after all attacks that would threaten shield below that, enough to regen shield to be safe. Mainly I'd be wary of getting shield worn down, then trying to punish that move but immediately putting yourself in a position where they can hit your shield. Also you need to make sure that you let go of shield once the last hit connects or else you're adding extra hold damage. Like I said, proper shield management is important here for the exact reason that you will break if you're too liberal on shield without taking care and you will get slammed if you're too conservative on keeping it up. But I don't think it's too much to deal with at all, at least with what I've seen so far.

Another important point is that Cloud's midrange tools, i.e. dash attack and dtilt, are both fairly easy to Rest punish. Like many other characters, Cloud has a box, and if you space around that box properly you're pretty safe. He can reach outside with dash attack, dash grab, dtilt and Blade Beam, and if you're looking for them you can get punishes. Dtilt has the extra advantage that he has to commit before actually getting close.

 

[CHOVI]

From my experience, Dash Attack can rarely be punished with a Rest. Most of the time, it doesn't get him close enough. It's really weird because sometimes it does... maybe only with bad spacing(?)