Question about Puff Neutral Game

[Andrew Wiggin]

People always say that Puff is a very air oriented character because of her jumps, air mobility, and good aerials. But when I play Puff air oriented it seems like whenever I get in, I only get an aerial or two, then get hit or have to go back to neutral. When I try playing more ground oriented so I can get rest setups, grabs, forward smashes etc., I get better punishes, but my neutral game becomes horrible, because Puff's neutral isn't great on the ground. I've tried watching H-Box and Tekk, and they seem to balance the two really well. But the problem is that I can't seem to balance my air and ground game. So I guess my question is this: How do I balance playing in the air and on the ground, so I can have a good neutral, and punish game? Also, how do I get good follow ups when I get an aerial?

 

[ThatOneGuyLucas]

Puff is all about poking them while in the air to get their percent up, while the ground is meant for punishes. For the majority of the time, you want to be in the air, approaching/walling your opponent out with b-airs. Typically you won't be trying to hard to follow up that aerial because Puff doesn't have many punish options while in the air. Once your opponent is at a high enough percent, then you want to do more ground based play, shielding, short hopping and walling out with b-airs, going for grabs, etc, trying to go for a kill. To balance these two, I recommend just transferring between them a lot. If you watch Hungrybox, you'll notice that most of the time he is floating around between platforms and the ground, b-airing, and then landing on them before going back to floating. Basically, you can control your opponent by hovering around and fake approaching. Once you have center stage, then you can go to your more ground based play, where you'll be getting most of your punishes. Playing puff really is all about patience and keeping your opponent away with b-air. Charging in randomly won't work due to how light and easily punishable your character is.

 

[Ringedge]

Practice. Neutral game is something that develops over time from playing rather than something you can ask how to do I found. You can ask better players about what options would be good in certain situations, but you have to apply the mental game yourself.