Just give up while youre behind, you don't know what zeldas I play nor do you know how easy the match up is for me. I am by no means an amazing smash player, but din's fire is the JOKE of the projectile world. Massive hitboxes mean nothing when you can just spot dodge the thing and it's over. If they blow it up early to avoid the dodge the hitbox is too small, if they blow it up late... well my shield is still up. It's the equivalent of quick draw, if you use it too much, just give up your stock.
Not exploding it too early is a spacing concern, a good Zelda will know when Din's fire is in range.
As for late... vulnerability frames exist in the spot-dodge, once you learn you can exploit it. Even if you hit the shields, Din's fire eats through shields like nobody's business.
Zig-zagging allows you to mix up the timing, making it more unpredictable, so it basically becomes a prediction game. Prediction games where you can't make the game have a negative consequence on the opponent are NOT good for you, so if you're a character without projectiles, you have to approach. Even if you only catch 1/16 Din's Fires, you're at a clear disadvantage, you'll catch 1/16 of however many attacks your opponent throws at you whereas your opponent will catch no attacks whatsoever. Not to mention the risk of getting shieldbroken if you're using spotdodge.
And for the last time, with projectiles, the number of uses doesn't matter for punishment, unless your opponent has an anti-projectile move (reflector, bucket, pk magnet, etc) or a projectile.
If your opponent is Marth and he's on the other end of final destination, you can throw Din's fires at him the entire match, if he stays there, he'll never be able to punish you, ever. However, if he's in range to SH fair, then using Din's Fire even once is asking to be punished.
Quickdraw however, is a melee move (we'll discount using it as transit between two areas outside of the opponent's attack range for the example), if you overuse it as an approach, it's telegraphed enough that your opponent can recognize it and do something about it, like shield and counter, or move forward and shield, or shieldgrab, or use a counter-attack, or spotdodge, or any number of other things. Because, once you use quickdraw as an approach, no matter what use you make of it, YOU'RE IN YOUR OPPONENT'S ATTACK RANGE. Thus, you will be punished if you get predictable.
The moral of the story is, if you're not in your opponent's effective attack range, a move is safe. Period.
There are other considerations about safety such as lag, inflected shieldlag, but this is by far the easiest to recognize.
Overall, Din's Fire is a precise projectile that requires a great deal of practice in order to use properly, not a useless one.
Lucas absolutely ***** Din's Fire spamming Zeldas. It's actually really really funny. Definetly not a broken character if you have a clue what you're doing. I honestly don't have a clue what you guys do against this matchup because I haven't come across a single Zelda player who can come close to my Lucas. Anyhow I really don't see how anyone can think Zelda is cheap at all.
Lol, very true, PK magnet is a nice move against Din's Fire.
In general though, Zelda has to utilize her superior melee range to win and her better defensive game. Neither side can really force an approach.
It's considered a Lucas advantage btw, but Din's fire is fine in the beginning of the match, can't heal 0 damage right?