Struggling against Rosalina

[Bugsy]

I have had a great deal of trouble vs Rosalina, specifically in gaining and maintaining stage control. Allowing rosalina to set luma up at a set distance from her can allow them to be covering half the stage and I have a tough time getting around luma and close to rosalina. Rosa can continue jabbing and gain stage control through luma moving forward along with the jab. I'm also having a very tough time landing when I'm being juggled with up airs.

It seems like fair is a great option for quick punishes or approaches, often stuffing out rosalina's aerials and getting fair strings racks up some good damage. However, it seems like diddy's banana game is a bit lacking vs rosa compared to other matchups. Getting rid of luma can open the playing field up to set up possible banana confirms but I have a lot of trouble getting rid of luma. In addition, some confirms like down tilt up smash can get interrupted by luma.

What have you guys found to be successful strategies in killing luma? Dropping fair? Down tilting? Maybe side b command grabbing rosa near the edge? Also, it seems like rosalina has a vulnerable recovery. How do you go about edge guarding her?

What stages have you guys had success in vs her?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiyDiPuIpdE

Watching this set with jjrockets vs nite, it seems like jjr used peanut pop gun to get nite to shield and then punished with command grab. This seemed to get rid of luma well and rack up damage. He also seemed to understand when luma is able to interrupt combos and going for down tilt forward air rather than up smash or grab. He also seemed to like using up airs rather than forward airs at getting rid of luma.

 

[Sonicninja115]

I would suggest SH Fair, as it auto-cancels, And try using Banana from above, as it can hit easier that way, or SH Banana toss might work as well.

You can try baiting out Grav by throwing peanuts and bananas and remembering if he absorbs them or not.

 

[Dooms]

I disagree with banana from above because up air will cancel out the banana.

If Rosa down-b's the banana, watch out for her landing with nair if she short hops it, because luma nair will come out and it's relatively safe. Fair should do work against it, though. Same with side-b with the kick. Up air also works but it requires weird positioning and you're fighting Rosalina dair.

side-b with the kick gets rid of luma very well (better than fair) and generally has more priority than luma from what I've seen, so if you're in a position where you're close enough to where they won't be able to run back on reaction, throwing that out wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

[Bugsy]

Up air does require strange positioning but it does knock back luma and pops her up for follow ups even when luma hasn't taken any damage. With some more practice, I have found that nair does the trick much better than up air when luma is on the ground. Plus this lets you get up air follow ups right away. When luma is at 0%, fast fall nair to up air to up air works well to get her off stage. However, nair on rosalina's shield is pretty unsafe so be careful with this one.

Unfortunately, fair is pretty bad to get luma offstage. It only applies knock back to luma when luma has about half of her health gone. Back air applies knock back slightly sooner than forward air. It seems the main tools to get rid of luma are flip kick which can be very unsafe, command grab, neutral air, and up air.

 

[Diddy Kong]

JJ played that first set extremely well. And that's how we should play the matchup, far more patient than usual. Side B Kick is amazing vs Luma, so throw that one out whenever you feel Rosalina cannot punish you for it. It breaks through most of Luma's attacks, so that's amazing. I view this match up as similar to the Ice Climbers vs Diddy in Brawl, just separate the two and you'll be fine. But they definitely have an advantage when teaming up on you.