Luigi's worst matchups?

[The Carpenter]

I want some other opinions as to what the absolute worst matchups are for Luigi as I am not that great at judging matchups. Now when I say worst, I'm mainly talking about the ones you absolutely want to avoid.

I would have to say they are Samus, Link (not that you see many Links but still), Marth, and Gannondorf, in that order (Samus being worst.) I'm hesitant to list Marth because I've had some good matches against Marths of similar skill to me but it's hard to deal with his range which is why I list him. Thoughts? I'm interested to see who agrees or disagrees or if anyone has a character to list that I did not.

Aside from the general usefulness of this discussion, it is of particular interest to me because I play other characters besides Luigi (Young Link and Link) that I am considering dropping completely or at least using them only for specific counter picks. I'm starting to think it's more beneficial for me to focus on just Luigi but I'm thinking I may need Young Link to back up his bad matchups. For instance, I usually do much better against Samus with YL than with Luigi. I guess what I personally want to figure out is if I'm right about his bad matchups or if they are just hard for me because I need to improve with Luigi and/or get more used to those particular matchups.

Overall, however, I would like to see the Luigi community as a whole come to understand what matchups we need to be careful of. Perhaps it would also be valuable to discuss good stage counter picks for those matchups as well.

 

[Stride]

There is already a thread on this, though it is mainly specific to the top 8 characters: http://smashboards.com/threads/what-is-luigis-hardest-match-up-in-the-top-8.376969/

If you care about winning you should drop Link and Young Link, unless you really care about/like the characters to the point where it outweighs the penalty to your competitive performance that comes from investing time into learning/playing them (though you could also make an argument for dropping Luigi, or any non-top tier). Firstly: you don't want to be seriously learning multiple characters at the same time. Secondly: if you're going to be investing time into learning other characters, then they should at least be good ones (maybe with an exception for Young Link since he can kind of play the floaty matchups).

I can't see any matchup where Link is better than Luigi; unless you can prove otherwise, I suggest you drop him (you can mess around with him in casuals or whatever, but don't bother actively training with him). Of the relevant characters, Young Link has relatively acceptable matchups against Jigglypuff, Samus, Peach, and Ice Climbers. All of those matchups are at worst slightly bad for Luigi (and could be argued to be advantageous to varying extents), so you really don't benefit from learning another character since Young Link has at best a marginally better matchup and at worst has an even worse one.

Regarding the Link matchup: in my experience (that is, never playing an actual Link main because there aren't any, but playing people who can play Link), Link is not a bad matchup at all; combos and edgeguards are easy and have good risk/reward, he's too slow to really keep you out consistently, if you avoid being above him he struggles to kill you, etc. He's also a garbage character in general; no good character struggles with the Link matchup.

Young Link is different (and again, I haven't fought any main but have some experience with it at my low-mid level); if he has a top platform to camp you on then the matchup can get pretty frustrating, but once you get in you can punish him pretty hard which generally makes up for the chip damage he's getting on you, and you have the grounded burst movement to effectively catch him. I imagine this is the kind of matchup that looks bad at first but gets easier with experience; you have to play very patiently (as does your opponent). At worst it's slightly in Young Link's favour.

You didn't mention Sheik at all; that matchup is pretty horrible, especially in NTSC. Spacies are about as bad even though Luigi is good at comboing/edgeguarding them. Falcon I think is pretty bad (but not too terrible) because of his autocombos/kill setups/edgeguards on you (down throw->knee, easy up air strings, etc.) amongst other things, even if you can do punish him pretty well.

Samus is even or better if you're patient and don't keep running into missiles/down smashes; trying to play too recklessly is what makes the matchup look bad (I really struggled with it at first). If you position yourself outside of the range of her normals but close enough to punish her projectiles (which is perfectly possible to do most of the time) then it's pretty difficult for her to do anything safely.

Marth is bad, but the consensus seems to be that the matchup isn't that bad once you learn it (again, you need to be patient). You can combo/edgeguard/kill pretty well once you get in. Sheik and spacies are definitely worse matchups.

Ganon I'm not overly experienced with, but I can't imagine it being a bad matchup. Ganon can zone you to an extent, but his movement (and neutral in general) is extremely poor and your punishes on him are similarly hard. It's one of the many matchups where Luigi's neutral emphasises patience and positioning oneself safely while being able to reactively punish.

I don't believe that Luigi has any matchups that are bad enough to make it worth switching to a secondary, though some do come pretty close. It's just what you have to deal with when you play a non-top tier character; you might as well just main your top tier secondary since they're better in most-to-all matchups, but you don't because you want to play your main anyway.

 

[EddyBearr]

Matchups I don't think are in Luigi's favor, roughly from most to least disadvantageous:

1: Sheik (little worse than 40:60, little better than 35:65)
2: Falco
3: Fox
4: Marth (probably about 40:60)
5: Pikachu
6: Young Link
7: Falcon (little worse than 45:55, little better than 40:60)

I don't think Luigi loses to Peach, Ganon, or Jiggs, or at least, it's "about even".

 

[The Carpenter]

Good input Stride. You are right about the matchups that are good for YL (I still need to really determine if Link is better in any of them, it's very likely I'll drop him) I think I'm definitely keeping YL at least, though. As far as the Sheik/Luigi matchup, I've seen a ton of controversy about it. Some say it's awful for Luigi and some say that he has a disadvantage for sure, but it's not really that bad overall. I tend to agree with the latter stance but that's coming from someone who hasn't fought many good Sheiks yet so I'm just going off matches I've watched really. I can definitely see it being really bad against a very frame perfect, methodical Sheik like M2K, though. As for Marth, I'll agree that some aren't all that awful once you'r used to it but I definitely think that we get torn apart by a Marth with an extremely aggressive play style as it's really hard to get past his sword range.

 

[Kale.]

@ EddyBearr Don't you think that at a high level Falco would be easier to deal with because of powershielding and his gimpable recovery? Plus the shine spike on Fox... I agree with your list for the most part except for Falco over Fox...

 

[EddyBearr]

@ EddyBearr Don't you think that at a high level Falco would be easier to deal with because of powershielding and his gimpable recovery? Plus the shine spike on Fox... I agree with your list for the most part except for Falco over Fox...

At high level the shine-spike won't work as you can pretty much always insta-grab ledge or not recover in an easy to gimp way, especially since the Luigi would probably DI well. Fox is easier to tech-chase, crouch-cancels only lower percents, and would be gimped in basically the same way as Falco (back-air endlessly). Luigi has enough moves that beat Fox's stationary fire, and power-shielding will probably never be very reliable imo.

Falco combos Luigi harder than fox can, has shine kills off the top on a few stages (which can't really be countered if they're set-up like shinespike can and can be set-up by the Falco without Luigi's consent, unlike unavoidable shine spikes), has kill combos easier to set-up than up-tilt->up-air, and has a better edgeguard tool (for Luigi at least) with his dair and bigger back-air.

With that said, Fox has tons of strengths against Luigi, but while Fox loses much of his core gameplay against Luigi, Falco retains his.

 

[The Carpenter]

EddyBearr what would you say the ratio is against Falco. Against Fox? I feel it's somewhere in the ball park 40:60 for both but what do you think? By the way, I've come to realize that Fox/Falco are much harder for Luigi than I had thought when I initially made this post. I've also realized that Ganon isn't really a problem where I thought he might be before. As Stride mentioned, my bad impression about Samus is likely due to inexperience against Samus. What do you think about that matchup in terms of a Luigi who knows the best ways of dealing with her? I still feel like it has to be at least a little bit of a disadvantage since Luigi cant move as freely because of missles.

 

[EddyBearr]

Both spacies should be somewhere between 35-65 and 40-60 IMO. I think at 35-65, it stops being very competitively viable, but 40-60 can still compete. I think Luigi can compete with both spacies, but it's close.
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I think Luigi has an advantage on Samus, but I don't know how much. Luigi has a rare treat in that he is actually able combo Samus pretty well and can cover many of her options with his floatiness.
-Missiles should not hold a player back very much unless it's Bowser on Pokemon Stadium, but Luigi in particular has a few tricks against missiles.
--Luigi in general is very fast, so if he get past one missile, he should be able to get close enough to Samus to not make a new missile be a threat
--Luigi's nair will eat missiles relatively easily, so practice that when you're falling and a Missile is on its way towards you
--Luigi's grounded down-B will cancel-out with missiles quite often, while letting Luigi retain momentum he may have had from it. This means that Luigi can down-B straight into a missile, have his down-b animation cancelled while destroying the missile (and without harming himself), and retain his horizontal momentum thus going straight to the Samus for some surprise pressure.

To quite myself from an earlier thread:
"Samus: Just bait & punish. Your moves are so fast compared to hers than you can just punish her openings. Tornado trades with missiles and let's you act out, and nair beats missiles when trying to recover. Combo her diagonally and kill her off the top. Don't try too hard to follow-up or you will probably get naired. Thankfully, there's Abate vs Duck and Eddy vs HugS to look at."

I'd also like to note that looking at how Luigi combos Peach might help with getting combos against Samus.

 

[Kale.]

I think Luigi has an advantage on Samus, but I don't know how much.

Yeah, Duck has said in the past that he thinks that Luigi wins the matchup. I've heard before that the best way to play against Samus is really lame - since Luigi can deal with missiles pretty well, you can sit back and play a reactive/defensive game with wavedash in ftilt and even some cheeky upsmashes.... Fireballs are also really nice to use when Samus is recovering.

 

[Verda Stelo]

Eddy just put on a clinic versus Samus in his most recent set versus HugS. You can punish Dsmash with a wavedash SJP out of shield. Fireballs can be good just remember you're playing against a character with much stronger projectile zoning--referring to both their actual options and their understanding of the concept (most likely if they're choosing to play Samus at least).

I would say Luigi's top 3 worst match ups overall are Fox, Sheik, and Marth. Fox is doable at practical level thanks to the strong punish game but versus an experienced Fox Luigi struggles both to recover and neutral. Sheik straight up outspaces Luigi, destroys his recovery from range and up close, and has a guaranteed kill from throw at high percents. Marth similarly outspaces him and can juggle forever. Next in tier of difficulty I would put Falco and Falcon.

Peach and Puff are hard to figure out. In theory their edgeguarding strength should be too much for Luigi but he can seriously compete in neutral. These are also my two favorite matchups.