Jabs are always a true 3 hit combo on the CPU if you hit people with the edges of the claw hitbox. The interior hitbox only seems to have a true combo on hits 2 and 3 at low percents. This may differ with different percents, character weights, and DI but I'd say your best bet is to use the outer part of the hitbox. Mess around in training mode if you want.
I think that competitive tournament matches against projectile heavy characters seem genuinely hard to deal with but if you're just trying to hang out on FG without losing to campy projectile spammers, that's definitely well within reason if you have your mind set on using Charizard. And speaking from personal experience, I'd say Zard has the one of the steeper learning curves for learning how to beat projectile spammers as a beginner because almost all of his options are high lag and his horizontal aerial mobility is deplorable.
Charizard has the means to get in on campy projectile players like the average FG Link, DHD, and Bowser Jr. but I think Charizard's problems with Pikachu, Fox, and ZSS come from the safe, low lag options and very good low percent combo potential that these characters have. Getting around the latter 3's projectiles should be the least of your problems, really. I mean, the Utilts, my god.
My advice for playing against projectile campers:
Keep your cool and play
safe!
We Charizard mains have about seven things going for us when approaching the average roll-happy, projectile-flinging FG player.
- A pretty good dash speed.
- A pretty good grab.
- A somewhat inconsistent jab combo (but hey, it gets them in the air).
- A lingering/strong dash attack.
- An enormous shield.
- A high weight.
- A Nair that ACs but has terrible priority.
...which means you're usually safest staying on the ground and shielding/powershielding until you can get in on them with a grab/jab or hit through a projectile with dash attack (like DHD's clay pigeon or occasionally Villager's gyriod). AC Nair is fine if you're right in their face while they're charging a projectile of some sort but otherwise it's not very safe for approaching. Dash attack is great at punishing rolls as well. And luckily enough for us, it's really hard to kill with a projectile other than Charge Shot and Aura Sphere. We might time out but at least we won't get camped to death. We keep stocks for a while. We also have a big shield so we can take small projectiles all day but powershielding is still definitely the way to go.
I don't even include Flare Blitz because you can't take full advantage of it before you make the most out of these aspects of what Charizard has to offer. Flare Blitz is best used when your opponent least expects it. If it's one of your main options, even the FG spammers will learn to bait and shield it after a game or two.
But more importantly, what shouldn't you be doing:
- Approaching with Flare Blitz
- Approaching a grounded or nearly grounded opponent with any aerial ever other than AC Nair
- Using Flamethrower midstage
- Rolling (especially when you need to avoid more than one projectile)
- Jumping over projectiles that aren't fired from over about 3/4 stage or under a short hop's horizontal distance
And I see a lot of these things in the videos @
Splooshi Splashy
posted. Granted, both of the games were close and fun to watch but I really do think the Charizard player should have or at least could have won/won by a wider margin. I don't really look at these matches and think to myself that DHD or Bowser Jr. was really all that creative with the projectiles. Sure, they applied pressure but I don't see any wild frame traps or custom combos that might make me think it's an unavoidable, terrible matchup for Charizard.
However, I will take the cop out response for defensive characters in general. Rosalina, Shiek, Fox, Pikachu, ZSS, and company are all really tough to deal with if they just wait for Charizard to come to them. There isn't really a separate group of things I can suggest to do against these characters other than "play safely and don't **** up." This isn't to say you won't be able to beat them on For Glory but the better players can punish a single laggy mistake with a huge combo (and Charizard's moves lend themselves to a lot of those). That's just the way things are as far as I know.
