Data Samus Match-Up Discussion Thread 2.0

[Vyrnx]

Why/how does Samus beat Ness? It just occurred to me how little I know about this MU. I've watched matches and played some decent Ness players, but what are the reasons we win?

 

[Hark17ball]

Why/how does Samus beat Ness? It just occurred to me how little I know about this MU. I've watched matches and played some decent Ness players, but what are the reasons we win?

I always save CS and a good old Nair to the face for them off stage. But I recently faced a very campy one who was rather infuriating to say the least.

 

[Wald0]

Why/how does Samus beat Ness? It just occurred to me how little I know about this MU. I've watched matches and played some decent Ness players, but what are the reasons we win?

Baiting out absorb is mostly how we win (at least for me). They can easily be tricked by either waiting for them to throw it out and punish accordingly, if they catch on just CS normally and you'll get easy 25%. Also I find it easy to DI out of his combos since we are so floaty (also his recovery is super gimpable, just nair will do)

 

[JAZZ_]

I find the campy Ness's do poorly in this MU. An aggressive Ness won't be so easily baited into Psi Magnet, and his aerials hurt. But even with an aggressive Ness I find even with my amateur play style I still get an opening for CS kills. Missiles actually help here I think, given that if Ness want to camp he has to worry about the varying speeds of all 3 of our projectiles, 2 of which hit him out of Psi Magnet leaving him susceptible to follow ups. If he chooses to bat them the speed change ups will keep him guessing, just like in real baseball, except Michael Bay sponsored this ball game. And if he shields them then it's just a matter of getting him to mess up his power shielding timing and break that sucker, bait out the miss timing with the crap missile then follow up with full spread of the good stuff.
Unfortunantely all my experiences with Ness in the past few months have been from the later hyper defensive type, and tend to be people scrambling for a counter pick to Samus. It's a shame only a few people know how to fight Samus properly, I could be getting better if people in FG would actually understand how to use Ness properly in this MU.

That's my 2 cents, and it's worth less than 2 dirty pennies. Please note this has been a post from your resident casual Samus noob and in no way do my opinions have any merit or solid basis. I base all my comments off of my personal experience playing FG

 

[Hark17ball]

I find the campy Ness's do poorly in this MU. An aggressive Ness won't be so easily baited into Psi Magnet, and his aerials hurt. But even with an aggressive Ness I find even with my amateur play style I still get an opening for CS kills. Missiles actually help here I think, given that if Ness want to camp he has to worry about the varying speeds of all 3 of our projectiles, 2 of which hit him out of Psi Magnet leaving him susceptible to follow ups. If he chooses to bat them the speed change ups will keep him guessing, just like in real baseball, except Michael Bay sponsored this ball game. And if he shields them then it's just a matter of getting him to mess up his power shielding timing and break that sucker, bait out the miss timing with the crap missile then follow up with full spread of the good stuff.
Unfortunantely all my experiences with Ness in the past few months have been from the later hyper defensive type, and tend to be people scrambling for a counter pick to Samus. It's a shame only a few people know how to fight Samus properly, I could be getting better if people in FG would actually understand how to use Ness properly in this MU.

That's my 2 cents, and it's worth less than 2 dirty pennies. Please note this has been a post from your resident casual Samus noob and in no way do my opinions have any merit or solid basis. I base all my comments off of my personal experience playing FG

See the one I faced took me forever to kill because he would Powershield, reflect and duck under everything. I also don't like to fire CS unless I hit him off a combo so that could also have been my problem haha. Granted I may also not know the match up like I do against Mario since my best friend and training buddy is him.

 

[JAZZ_]

See the one I faced took me forever to kill because he would Powershield, reflect and duck under everything. I also don't like to fire CS unless I hit him off a combo so that could also have been my problem haha. Granted I may also not know the match up like I do against Mario since my best friend and training buddy is him.

Try using the crap missile to bring out normal shield, very few people can power shield that thing (homing missile) once it gets close to target fire the Suser missile and CS for the shield break. I advise this strategy though after a test fire of the crap missile, see how they deal with it.

 

[JAZZ_]

Anything helpful you guys could suggest against fox? My friend picked him up making life so much more difficult, and 89% of my FG matches are fox. I know it's one of our worst matchups, but is there any way to set up or even bait a really good fox into playing into our hands? Just when I get to a point I get a handle on a MU I struggle on (falcon) another takes its place, deadlier than before.

 

[Vyrnx]

Does anyone have experience with the Mario MU? I really have no idea what to do. His fireballs stop everything I try to get going and there's nothing I can really do about them. He gimps Samus easily, whenever a Mario grabs me I usually end up taking 20% damage half the time and 90% damage the other half, I don't know what to do because Samus can't land. Shad and most of that stuff gets beaten by his dumb usmash, his nair has a huge hit box that takes advantage of our huge hurtboxes, we can't really edge guard him. I really have no idea what to do in this match up.

 

[Eskelsen]

Does anyone have experience with the Mario MU? I really have no idea what to do. His fireballs stop everything I try to get going and there's nothing I can really do about them. He gimps Samus easily, whenever a Mario grabs me I usually end up taking 20% damage half the time and 90% damage the other half, I don't know what to do because Samus can't land. Shad and most of that stuff gets beaten by his dumb usmash, his nair has a huge hit box that takes advantage of our huge hurtboxes, we can't really edge guard him. I really have no idea what to do in this match up.

That's how it goes, I know it's hard to admit, but Samus isn't a very good character. This is the life we chose. However, there a few things you can do in this match up. In Neutral (long range) you want be spacing zair and charging neutral B, Mario is not too fast on the ground, so he can't punish zair. If Mario is approaching with full jump fireballs, than you either have to aim zair in such a way that it breaks the fireball and hits mario, which can be difficult, or get out of the way. If you decide to shield the fireball, Mario is going to come down with a nair (spaced if your opponent is good) into the jab combo which beats out all our options. Of course, if the nair is not spaced, that is a free Up-B OoS. That's in the long range, in the mid range you can space very safely with ftilt/ pivot ftilt. Its 100% safe on shield against him, if spaced. Uptilt is also very safe. You want to avoid doing short hops or shad's in general (unless you are zairing him from long range) because he can usually just up smash. Marios are usually thirsty for that grab so I think jab 1 works well for disrupting that. It's also important to note that jab 1 breaks fireballs, so this is a good alternative to shielding them. When he does get a low percent grab, just DI away and take the 2 uptilts and then just jump away. He does not get too much off grabs. If he goes for that Up throw to Dair combo, just jump away right after the Up throw. Like you mentioned Samus has an incredibly hard time landing, so Mario is just going to be able to juggle you a ton, that's how he will get most of the percent, just DI away/off the stage and hope he messes up. From my experience trying to up air out of his juggles gets me juggled even harder, so be very reserved with your double jump and try to use it at the right time. Take a few hits and wait for that right time to finally jump out of the juggle and retreat to the ledge because Mario will just trap your landing with an Up smash. We can combo Mario fairly well, so there's that. Just do the usual stuff. If you find that you can't edge guard him, just play the ledge game and try to cover options. Uptilt is great for that, it covers the jump, regular get up and gets him if he holds on to the ledge for too long.
This is a losing match up, for you to win, you cant rely on your character. You need to thoroughly out play your opponent. My main advice to you is to be very observant of the types of options your opponent chooses and try to cover those options. Mario can just do safe things, and play his Mario game to get a win, because the character is good. We have to rely on our minds. Samus forces us to out-play our opponents hard, nothing is a given with this character, at least, against top to high tiers.

Just for reference, I play against MVD's Mario very often. This is the caliber of player i'm referring too when I say 'good' opponent.

Edit: Fixed a ton of grammatical errors. Wrote this as soon as I woke up lol.

 

[Wald0]

I picked up Villager a while ago...Is that a good choice or nah?

 

[White_Pointer]

I was playing a pretty good ZSS and I kept getting caught by the up air up air up b strings.

I know there isn't much you can do about it a lot of the time, but in the situations where you can, what's the correct way to DI it?

 

[Xygonn]

I picked up Villager a while ago...Is that a good choice or nah?

I used to secondary villager. I don't think villager is a bad character by any means. Basically only use him in the ROB MU (cause I got ROB problems) or if I feel like cheesing ness or lucas. The problem is that villager doesn't really cover any of our bad MU's very well, maybe diddy, but that isn't a terrible MU for us anymore.

 

[Wald0]

I know ZSS and Pikachu are the best candidates for a secondary for Samus mains but...I do wonder if there are others that can do it...(aka pacman with the infinites)

 

[Xygonn]

I know ZSS and Pikachu are the best candidates for a secondary for Samus mains but...I do wonder if there are others that can do it...(aka pacman with the infinites)

I think yes.

Let's say for the sake of the argument we are worried about:



I've found G&W shuts down (though G&W mains seem to have big problems with Fox)


That's the top 5 worst plus ZSS. That's not bad. I actually don't have terrible Rosa, Sonic, or Yoshi problems with Samus. That only really leaves me with Sheik. Realistically that's a huge stumbling block in a tournament since there are a lot of those. I've just been working on my Samus vs. Sheik skills. I seem to do worse with every other character against a good sheik.

 

[Wald0]

I think yes.

Let's say for the sake of the argument we are worried about:



I've found G&W shuts down (though G&W mains seem to have big problems with Fox)


That's the top 5 worst plus ZSS. That's not bad. I actually don't have terrible Rosa, Sonic, or Yoshi problems with Samus. That only really leaves me with Sheik. Realistically that's a huge stumbling block in a tournament since there are a lot of those. I've just been working on my Samus vs. Sheik skills. I seem to do worse with every other character against a good sheik.

Well I do pocket G&W...I guess I'll find some other mains to consult on this subject. (I use TL vs Sheik)

 

[Xygonn]

Well I do pocket G&W...I guess I'll find some other mains to consult on this subject. (I use TL vs Sheik)

just remember to pray to RNGesus.

 

[Wald0]

I found out that Greninja covers most of Samus' bad MUs leaving only Sonic & Sheik...there aren't that many "good" Sheiks (meaning they don't get top 8 at big tournaments) and only a few Sonic players that I can think of. Should we consider Greninja as a viable secondary/co-main?

Edit: Fox is also bad (thanks KayJay)

 

[KayJay]

Funny, I chose Greninja as my absolutely secondary since yesterday. He's very decent against Sheik (he can actually EDGEGUARD Sheik), he has a good neutral against Pikachu, he destroys Falco and Sonic but I think he struggles against Fox.

 

[Hark17ball]

KayJay Wald0 ....you guys are reading my mind. The other Night I picked him up playing Friendlies and thought it covered the match ups well, so I was interested in him.

 

[FlAlex]

On the topic of Greninja, ya I'd have to agree he covers Samus' bad MU's well (from my short time playing him on FG).

On another topic:
Are we allowed to theory-craft here about Cloud? Cuz I suspect him to be one of our worst match-ups if he's anything like Ike.
Why?
1. A (seemingly) safe slide attack that allows him to slide past Zair and missiles.
2. Strong, disjointed, long, relatively safe Nair, Bair, and Fair (like Ike's)
3. A large, safe projectile, that can cover our landings (a big problem Samus has) and can win a projectile war (not including Full CS)
4. Limit break can be charged as we charge our CS (our only good move)

I'm not the only one afraid, right?

 

[meleebrawler]

On the topic of Greninja, ya I'd have to agree he covers Samus' bad MU's well (from my short time playing him on FG).

On another topic:
Are we allowed to theory-craft here about Cloud? Cuz I suspect him to be one of our worst match-ups if he's anything like Ike.
Why?
1. A (seemingly) safe slide attack that allows him to slide past Zair and missiles.
2. Strong, disjointed, long, relatively safe Nair, Bair, and Fair (like Ike's)
3. A large, safe projectile, that can cover our landings (a big problem Samus has) and can win a projectile war (not including Full CS)
4. Limit break can be charged as we charge our CS (our only good move)

I'm not the only one afraid, right?

We can't really say much about Limit Break since we don't know the full mechanics behind, like if he can hold it forever etc. (though a close analysis of his trailer reveals he might be able to build charge by landing specials). His throw game is also a huge blank.

Beyond that his combo game seems fairly limited (though somewhat offset by fairly high DPH), and I doubt the slide is safe on shield, he'll mostly be getting followups from fair spikes. One thing I can say for fairly certain, though, is that one good nair offstage will likely do him in, possibly even if he has Limit active as his recovery is mostly vertical.

 

[FlAlex]

His throw game is also a huge blank.

Beyond that his combo game seems fairly limited (though somewhat offset by fairly high DPH),

and I doubt the slide is safe on shield.

One thing I can say for fairly certain, though, is that one good nair offstage will likely do him in, possibly even if he has Limit active as his recovery is mostly vertical.

That blank on his throw game isn't very reassuring. Even if limited, I predict he would still dominate the MU.

Very few characters have long combos and are still competent (Ike, Yoshi)

Even if his slide isn't safe on shield, we don't have many fast CCQ options besides OOS Screwattack

While I do agree that his recovery appears to be easily gimpable, Samus still needs to win the neutral game, and guessing by Cloud's projectiles and disjointed, long attacks, that won't be an easy task.

 

[White_Pointer]

Seems we have a hell of a time competing with Ryu in the air. All of his aerials seem to have weird disjoints on them and beat out/out prioritise pretty much all of our aerials. Combine that with the fact tatsu beats out everything but a full charge shot and it's not a very good matchup it seems. At least we have some multi hit moves that can beat out a focus attack, that's the one saving grace, but the rest of this matchup seems horrible. What are everyone else's thoughts on it?

 

[Hark17ball]

Seems we have a hell of a time competing with Ryu in the air. All of his aerials seem to have weird disjoints on them and beat out/out prioritise pretty much all of our aerials. Combine that with the fact tatsu beats out everything but a full charge shot and it's not a very good matchup it seems. At least we have some multi hit moves that can beat out a focus attack, that's the one saving grace, but the rest of this matchup seems horrible. What are everyone else's thoughts on it?

I literally dance around the stage, leaving bombs and Zair a lot.I try not to stop at any point if he's within dash range. As you said his aerials just straight up beat us. I know a lot of Ryus like to Shoryuken just above the stage to hit people trying to guard so I've been inclined to clip CS through the stage some times to try and hit them. Though lately I'll fire CS at the wall off stage to catch them.

Edge guarding and running in and out is what I tend to focus on. I just know like Lucario with Rage he will kill you at absurd %

 

[DungeonMaster]

Anything helpful you guys could suggest against fox? My friend picked him up making life so much more difficult, and 89% of my FG matches are fox. I know it's one of our worst matchups, but is there any way to set up or even bait a really good fox into playing into our hands? Just when I get to a point I get a handle on a MU I struggle on (falcon) another takes its place, deadlier than before.

I actually would like @DanishButrCookies to give us his input on this matchup, since I still feel it's a counterpick given priority of moves in general (I don't care about reflector). My regular sparing partner basically only counterpicks vs. me (it's like playing a toddler on for-glory... ) and so I know the matchup very well in my own mind but I would love some additional insight from someone who legitimately thinks its positive.
Some recent advice I haven't seen posted:
The d-air can be beaten by up-air if you're off-angle, example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er3eVCqVu80#t=89 - you don't want to be directly under him to juggle, his foot will otherwise win out.
His f-air can be SDI-ed / DI-ed up and above him to fall out if he doesn't land it flush, this leads to a spike, not a guaranteed spike but it's close. I have a clip of that I haven't posted yet.

White_Pointer Ryu has no answer to up-air? Do you mean when you're above him? I find his falling physics and hitboxes are all in our favour. Ryu struggles enormously to land vs. Samus in my experience. He's going to focus attack cancel or do a tatsu to land because up-air beats out his d-air, his f-air, his n-air, his focus attack, essentially his everything.
Chase him with an up-air and then just grab or CS his landing. Missile / super-missile -> CS works extremely well vs. focus landing.
You can grab tatsu, or shield grab tatsu, the lag is huge on the move. You can headshot his tatsu as well with super-missile. He has to tatsu his recovery beyond say 75% and so you after him offstage with a CS, even half loaded = win.
I really love this matchup because it's going in and trading combos like no tomorrow, we can often DI, SDI out of his little attacks so he misses the big follow up, we're one of the few characters that can do that most everyone else is full on screwed.

 

[Wald0]

Seems we have a hell of a time competing with Ryu in the air. All of his aerials seem to have weird disjoints on them and beat out/out prioritise pretty much all of our aerials. Combine that with the fact tatsu beats out everything but a full charge shot and it's not a very good matchup it seems. At least we have some multi hit moves that can beat out a focus attack, that's the one saving grace, but the rest of this matchup seems horrible. What are everyone else's thoughts on it?

What I do this retreat with zairs to keep him away and when I'm edgeguarding him I put a bomb right where the Shoryuken would clip through the edge and get a free dair kill. If he sweetspots I lay bombs covering roll and neutral get up, and if he gets hit by them it's another dair kill. If they stay out you can grapple to ledge trump them into reverse CS or bair.

EDIT: does zair cancel his Focus Punch and Tatsu?

 

[Xygonn]

EDIT: does zair cancel his Focus Punch and Tatsu?

Yes. For focus attack you need to hit both hits.

 

[White_Pointer]

I don't think zair cancels tatsu. Tatsu just powers straight through it from my experience.

 

[KayJay]

I have something to add, Greninja may be a good counter to Metaknight. Greninja's Side B (Shadow Sneak) ignores the hitstun from MK's U-Air 'til ~40% so he can't chaincombo to Up B that early.

 

[MintyBreeze]

Well, this is a random contribution, but I'll go for it anyways.

How do you all think the match-up against Charizard goes? Unlike Bowser or DK (the other huge characters) I feel like Charizard gets a lot out of being able to play defensively, but I wouldn't know how that goes against Samus.

 

[Wald0]

I was told by some "knowledgeable" people that Samus win against Falcon now...I mean I do win that MU a lot but we have it as one of our worst...am I missing something?

 

[Swamp Sensei]

Well, this is a random contribution, but I'll go for it anyways.

How do you all think the match-up against Charizard goes? Unlike Bowser or DK (the other huge characters) I feel like Charizard gets a lot out of being able to play defensively, but I wouldn't know how that goes against Samus.

Funny you say that...

http://smashboards.com/threads/charizard-matchup-discussion-samus.425290/

Because the Charizard boards are actually discussing the matchup right now. If you're interested in talking about it, c'mon over and have some fun talking about it with us.



But to answer your question.... Zard can't really afford to go defensive on Samus. Zard's gotta go midrange which is just in that awkward zone for Samus. Not far enough to reliably use/charge projectiles but not close enough for physical attacks/combos to thrive. Zard loves that zone so you guys gotta figure out how to get him out of there.

 

[DungeonMaster]

Zard is the "super rare" pokemon online for me. The mythical dragon, finding an actual zard main rather than someone just dabbling is a blue moon event.
I don't claim to know the matchup in anywhere near the detail I know many others, so I'll let others comment.

A couple of tips from my super rare encounters:
Zard upsmash is faster than his tilts. Aerial approach even fast-fall up-air = very bad idea. The hitboxes are huge, disjointed, and deceptively fast.
Zard flopping around after flareblitz cannot be grabbed it is a weird prone hurtbox. Always dashattack or CS.
Up-air properly angled into his aerials beats all of them.
Don't try to random up-B kill zard in aerial pursuit, his rock is a threat high up.
We can shield grab any of his aerials, and pretty much any of his attacks.

We combo zard like a ragdoll. His recovery is slow and we can knock him out of horizontal flare blitz attempts.
Swamp Sensei Samus actually works best a mid-range. She's not a projectile spam character. I feel Zard struggles enormously in this matchup.

 

[-_ellipsis_-]

Zard flopping around after flareblitz cannot be grabbed it is a weird prone hurtbox. Always dashattack or CS.

After a shielded flare blitz, I recommend running up and jab1 for a jab lock. It'll work until around 100+%. Then you can do whatever. Full charged fsmash or upsmash.

 

[Shadó Chimera / シャドーキメラ]

Wouldn't homing missile work better? I imagine PS > Homing Missile would be the way to go.

 

[Xygonn]

Wouldn't homing missile work better? I imagine PS > Homing Missile would be the way to go.

Nah. Not only would it require a power shield instead of a normal shield, you have way worse follow ups for the jab lock because of the horrible end lag on missile. I've been using run up jab 1 -> fsmash.

Also, just to add to the discussion, the proximity hit + normal hit of bomb stops flare blitz.

 

[Wald0]

Anyone have a good idea for the mii Brawler MU?

 

[Wald0]

Can we talk about the Ike MU? I'm going to be fighting MVG | Ryo on Wednesday and the one we have in the original post is good but I'd like more info

 

[White_Pointer]

You know, I used to think the Pac-man MU was horrible for Samus, mostly due to the fact that every fruit clanks or even beats a charge shot. However, I've changed my tune on this MU recently, even though the fruit plays havoc with our charge shot. We actually have good ways to take the hydrant out quickly, we can nullify the fruit with missiles, and our up b beats out a dropped hydrant. I actually think the matchup is pretty good for us, at worst it's 50/50 but I believe it might actually slightly be in our favour.

 

[FlAlex]

Can we talk about the Ike MU? I'm going to be fighting MVG | Ryo on Wednesday and the one we have in the original post is good but I'd like more info

Ryo? Good luck (not sarcasm). All I can suggest is study Depth's matches with Ryo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDH0TuI3cV0
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckXfLEB4coU

I don't remember battling any good Ikes, and considering this is Ryo, you're beyond my reach. Better send a distress signal towards the Ike boards.

Happy hunting the Radiant Hero....