- Game Versions
- Smash 3DS, Smash Wii U
Big Sean’s Guide to Bowser
Bowser is a super fun and unique archetype in sm4sh. Almost every move he has is a kill move. He arguably has the best OOS game in smash. He has a vicious off stage game. Who wouldn’t want to main one of the most hype characters in the game? While most guides focus on how to get up and running with a character, this guide will focus a bit deeper on what it takes to actually be a tournament level competitive Bowser. Even though it may seem quite long, these are what I consider the bare fundamentals of what it takes to be good with him. Alright let’s start!
Default Moves
The correct way to use the frame traps is with conditioning. For instance you can always do Jab 1 -> dash grab until they start spot dodging. Then you hit them with the jab 1 -> fsmash. If you aren’t confident with your read game or execution, jab 1/ jab 2 should always be preferred.
Important Customs
The Neutral
Bowser has the speed and power to play like a slower grounded version of captain falcon. Getting an opponet from 0% to 100% is very easy if you have momentum on your side. On the flip side, if someone were to make the mistake of going aggro against Bowser he probably has better tools than anyone to punish into something greater than 20% damage, frame advantage, and stage control. Matchups like villager require you to go in super hard. Matchups like fox require you to OOS punish and pivot grab like an impenetrable statue. Matchups like mario let you switch on a dime. In order to be a well rounded Bowser you will need to master both types of play.
Going Aggro
In smash 4 shielding is a very powerful thing. Bowser has a deceptively fast and long dash grab range similar to captain falcons. Still, everyone’s dash grab has crazy long end lag so it’s better as a punish move. The best option to open someone up in the neutral is to bait them into making a decision and punishing them for it. One tool that is fairly unique to bowser is that he has very little endlag after stopping from a dash. If you dash straight into them but outside of jab range, you can be sure that they will shield/roll/jab/jump/smash. All of those can be punished in a number of ways, but you should always be looking for that 11 frame bowser bomb punish. Jab frame traps are also another way to open up an opponent. The next most important move for the same reasons is dashing shield. Here you are hoping that they attack on shield. If you manage to perfect shield and react fast enough it’s usually a guaranteed bowser bomb.
The spacing you want to maintain depends on the matchup, but the most ideal spacing is at least at the tip of sourspot fsmash range. What you are looking to do is to out footsie your opponent. If they dash towards you, immediately jab1 on reaction. If you suspect dashing shield try standing grab, but if you are unsure try pivot grab. Bowser’s pivot grab is one of the best in the game so it will beat, trade, or be safe on basically everything they do. If they make a mistake and roll towards and land in front of you, dtilt or bowser bomb them. If they land in ambiguous cross up range, up smash or fortress. A safeish footsie poke that you can do is jab 1 or ftilt. The best option though is usually to stand still or make them sweat with a very slow safe walk towards them getting them into range of better pokes and getting more stage control. If you feel like going in though, dash attack is surprisingly quick. Retreating fair can work also work. If you whiff the autocancelled fair, a fortress can often get you out of trouble if auto cancelled appropriately. You can also whiff on purpose with the autocancel you can often get a jab1 or even a bowser bomb. Bair works similarly but I would recommend a reverse bowser bomb or pivot grab.
Going In Against Projectiles
If there’s one hard thing for Bowser to handle it’s campy projectile characters. Because of that it’s important it to make it your strength because it could completely change your win record and make unfavorable matchups into favorable ones (see villager.) There are actually a lot of common sense fundamentals that when mastered really make things a lot easier. Perfect shield and dashing perfect shield are the core of those. Always remember that even if you’re hit with 4 projectiles at 2% each, if you get one 12% grab + stage control + frame advantage you are way up in the exchange. Because bowser is so heavy and does so well with rage, even if you take 15% and give them 12% it still might be considered a favorable trade. There are a couple of unique tricks of bowser that can’t be relied on but can be used as mixups.
Punishing Falling Opponents
The core of understanding how to punish them is to understand that everyone is scared of up smash. It literally beats every move so they will do what they can to make it impossible to up smash them. If they make the mistake of air dodging towards the ground, they may still get with the second hit. If they find a timing to miss both hits, start doing charged up smashes. There’s no way they can win. There next hope is to DI as far away as they can. Note that they can aerial attack you so you that leaves you with a mixup between 3 options: dash grab, dashing shield, and fair. Its really hard not to keep an opponent in the air. The best hope they have is tricky landing DI or buffered rolls on landing. Buffered rolls can be beaten with tech chases, specifically dash slash beats all options. Tricky DI is hard to beat, you just have to be better than they are at making tricky reads.
Edge Guarding
Once an opponent is off the edge against bowser they can trivially die at any percentage. It’s important to mix up when and how you go off stage. When you condition your opponent for one kind of edge guard a whole new set of options become available to you. Learn them all and you’ll be getting 30% kills in no time!
Offstage
The main thing you’re going for offstage is fair. fthrow/bthrow->fair is great because they will be doing all the hard work of DI’ing towards you. If you suspect an air dodge do a slightly delayed bair. I’ve killed people on the opposite side of the stage at 80% because they are DI’ing exactly where I want them to go, and also because bair is ridiculous. If they decided to recover ultra low and in fair range there is actually a timing that is a guaranteed kill. If they choose to air dodge they lose because they went as low as possible. If they choose not to air dodge they lose because you fair’d them as low as possible.
When someone recovers low and not in fair range, then you have a few different options. Bair in the one frame of vulnerability can be quite easy on certain characters. It’s a bit telegraphed so expect good players to tech it. You can also dair either on stage or offstage for a super quick punish during the one frame vulnerability. A downward tilted ftilt can also punish the same spot. Finally the best and most important low punish, is a ledge trump back air. It almost always converts to a kill.
Punishing Ledge Get Ups
Bowser has two options that cover almost everything. Fortress and down smash at slightly different spacings but they cover the same things, namely everything but an immediate ledge drop without another jump, or just a delay. Note that if you are ledge trumping them hard, which you should be, they may not want to just sit on the ledge since a buffered get up is the only way to not be killed by a trump. So the delay should be conditioned out of them. If you know there will be no delay you can go for a much harder punish. There are only 3 things they can do to buffer out of a trump, get up attack, jump and roll. Jump and get up attack can be punished by up smash. Roll can be punished by forward smash.
Sometimes though you aren’t immediately in the position to trump. Sometimes you are between the ledge and the end of roll range. Sometimes you are at roll range or a bit outside of it. One powerful option for both situations is pivot grab. Pivot grab will trivially scoop people up trying to roll. It will also trivially get people from both a raw get up as well as a get up attack at the right range.
If you have a hard of a get up attack, up smash OOS is the best punish. If you know they won’t roll but you aren’t comfortable with the one frame vulnerability punish, try dtilt. It has so many active frames that you’ll often accidentally hit and kill them.
Finally the flashiest option bowser has available to him is often the bowser bomb. It beats jumps without air dodges, as well as get up attacks. The best part is you land on the ledge so you win if your right, and you can’t be punished if you’re wrong. You can also try to time it for a ledge trump. The ledge trump is unlikely to work against a good opponent, but if you are facing someone that doesn’t always snap to the ledge (hint hint shulk players) then you have two different opportunities to take the stock. Another way you can do it is with a yolo bowser bomb to land in front of the ledge. This covers most options and possibly breaks a shield. Try this when you’re significantly ahead!
On The Defensive
Bowser is known as a character who is laughably easy to combo. He’s also known as a character with super gimpable recovery. Although there is some truth to these stereotypes, really good Bowser’s have tools that allow them to never get spiked, and convert situations where he’s above a character, into ones that his aggressors fear. Since this can be one of Bowser’s weakest parts of his gameplay, it’s important that you make this into a strength. Fundamentals go a long way here, and you should never discount things like buffered rolls or fast fall mixup timings.
Landing
In smash 4 when you are above your opponent, it can be very hard to land without getting dash grabbed or up smashed or any number of things. Bowser has some unique tools that can force your opponent to play a significantly different game landing punish game then they are use to.
One of the more powerful but dangerous tools is actually dair. Traditionally when you are in the air, someone is either waiting to smash you when you get down, or just jump at you to combo you some more. Dair shifts upward causing aerials to whiff and then punishes them. Similarly on your way down if someone is thinking about up smashing and you dair, you will often punish their whiff. This is not a long term tool because it’s very punishable. It is a conditioning tool though and it forces aggressors to move beyond muscle memory and realize that there are certain zones where bowser is very safe. Often that can transition into an opponent respecting Bowser’s landing options too much.
Bowser Bomb high in the air is something that on reaction can usually be stopped. When performed ultra low to the ground though, it can be hard to do anything but just panic. Very low bowser bombs beat literally every option if they are directly below you. A person should be able to roll out of the way if there is a very low bowser bomb on their shield, but I’ve never seen it. It’s like they’ve accepted their fate for their shield to break. This move combined with dair should make it so that you’ve conditioned your opponent to just stay away from bowser and hopefully punish a dair or whiffed bowser bomb. Which is great because you’re good enough not to do that! (hopefully)
Firebreath is also an interesting mixup. The move theoretically is unsafe on shield but because very few people have experience with it, it can still be hard to punish. The interesting part of this move is the b reversal aspect of it. Now you can change how and when you land in interesting fashions.
Finally when all else fails and you are still horrified to land, always go to the ledge. Don’t feel bad, this is how bowser’s have been doing it since melee and is a staple of the bowser strategy. Simply fast falling and air dodging is usually good enough. We do have one more answer though for situations where we think an opponent might make a mistake and try to punish us on the way down, Bowser Bomb the ledge. The only situation I’ve found the move to be unsafe is against Falcons and Ganons up airs, but i’m sure there are other aerials that can hard punish this on reaction. Make sure to practice this move a lot since the timing can change based on your momentum. Every Bowser player has died dozens if not hundreds of times trying to flashily get back to the ledge this way, so don’t feel bad if you SD!
If you are landing from a tumble state, never ever tech in place. You can tech roll, but if you want to tech in place, instead cancel your landing lag with Klaw. It will give you zero endlag unlike the incredibly slow Bowser tech.
Getting Safely to the Ledge
If you are reading this guide, there is a 99% chance that you are doing up B wrong. You either only press up + b and are learning now that you can mash it, or (most likely) you always mash it and are learning now that you can just up b. To get the ultimate height you want to press up b once, then at the peak of your jump, mash your heart out. The timing is interesting and you really have to go into practice mode to get it right but it’s really not that bad. If you’re good at this you can often recover from blast zones depending on your momentum. At the very least though it gives you a ton of options so that you can change when you actually press up + b. This is key to avoiding being spiked. Simply go as low as you can vs a captain falcon, and the next time he tries to spike, just start your up b faster than you need to.
In most situations getting back to the ledge isn’t about going as low as possible. In these cases it’s important to realize the fundamental rule of ABS, always be (ledge) snapping. You rarely want to mash unless you need to because you won’t need the extra height. It’s best to combine double jumps and fast falls with the knowledge of your fixed distance up + b to really snap the ledge as low as possible. If you are really advanced you can actually shrink the distance of your up + b with a fast mash to snap the ledge even faster.
If you jump off the ledge with your back facing the stage, up + b will not snap to the ledge until after the peak of your jump. The situation isn’t as dire as it seems because usually when you do this it’s because your opponent is off stage and they may not have time to gimp you. Still though it’s more important than ever that you follow ABS to minimize your chance of dieing.
Getting Back From the Ledge
The most important way to get back from the ledge is reading your opponent and situation and making a correct guess with one of the basic get up options. Bowser specific tech should be in your periphery. Still it’s important to understand the differences and the extraneous options you have available to you.
Bowser has a very long and awkward first actionable frame after he gets up from the ledge. This translates to a very long invincibility time. This means that if your opponent has mastered a timing for punishing get ups, they are likely to be wrong when it comes to punishing you. This leaves them open for all kinds of nastiness. Fortress, jab, and grab if you’re nice. Bowser Bomb if you’re evil.
Bowser has a few good options after a ledge jump. 3 of those are Klaw, dash slash, and auto cancelled fair. Klaw is a hard punish for shielding opponents. Dash slash can punish different things, and if can often cross up shielding opponents. Fair isn’t safe on shield but if you survive the possibility a shield grab you are in a baiting situation where you can often fortress, jab, or bowser bomb your aggressor.
One super advanced tech is SHADC from the ledge. It’s a situation where you are air dodging and then immediately going into any B move so it has the potential to be ridiculously powerful. For instance it can completely shut down certain types of diddy banana traps. The only problem is that it’s an incredibly technical move, and there currently aren’t any Bowsers doing this in tournament. You should be the first though!
Conclusions
Believe it or not, this giant document is the tip of the iceberg of things that are needed to be a good Bowser player. There are still also a ton of things that have yet to be discovered about the character as well. If this guide hasn’t satiated your appetite for information I recommend checking out some of my favorite posts from the bowser boards:
Finally I maintain a playlist of every competitive Bowser game on youtube. Hopefully you’ll be the next Bowser in Grand Finals on it! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLafWKd-RfF3dpCv8v1LSAZDb-k1a-_W2T
Bowser is a super fun and unique archetype in sm4sh. Almost every move he has is a kill move. He arguably has the best OOS game in smash. He has a vicious off stage game. Who wouldn’t want to main one of the most hype characters in the game? While most guides focus on how to get up and running with a character, this guide will focus a bit deeper on what it takes to actually be a tournament level competitive Bowser. Even though it may seem quite long, these are what I consider the bare fundamentals of what it takes to be good with him. Alright let’s start!
Default Moves
- Jab 1: frame 7 with intangibility on the arms. This is his second fastest move after up + b (which i’ll call fortress.) The move is significantly better because it’s actually +7 on hit so there are super crazy frame traps bowser can pull off, including a few easy kill ones.
- Jab2: guaranteed if jab 1 hits. Safest option and a quick 13% with jab1.
- Dash Grab: beats shields and slow moves. If jab 1 is blocked, this is the next best option. For that reason this is a bread and butter for a lot of Bowsers who aren’t comfortable hit confirming.
- Standing Grab: This only works on close heavies but is guaranteed.
- DTilt: Beats rolls and some spot dodges.
- FTilt: Easy to pull off. It has the same frames as DTilt but is a weaker move so this is usually worse than choosing DTilt.
- Pivot Grab: Beats or trades with most moves.
- Bowser Bomb: Beats slow moves, and can also beat shields but is unsafe.
- FSmash: Beats spot dodges and poorly spaced pokes.
- Jab2: guaranteed if jab 1 hits. Safest option and a quick 13% with jab1.
The correct way to use the frame traps is with conditioning. For instance you can always do Jab 1 -> dash grab until they start spot dodging. Then you hit them with the jab 1 -> fsmash. If you aren’t confident with your read game or execution, jab 1/ jab 2 should always be preferred.
- FTilt: Bread and butter of the neutral because when perfectly spaced it’s safe on shield, has crazy knockback, has intangibility, and kills at 119%. The move comes out frame 10 and does 12% damage. It can be angled but it has really limited uses that are almost always better served by another move.
- DTilt: Also a frame 10 move but a little less safe on shield. I say a little because it can push back opponents making it a bit harder to punish despite having worse recovery data. Other than that the move is strictly better than ftilt. It has two hits. If both hits connect (only at low percentages) it’s 25%. It also kills at 101%. It beats many spot dodges, is a great roll punisher, and is arguably his best edge guarding tool.
- UTilt: Recently buffed to hit in front of Bowser. The move is still struggling to find a niche. It can occasionally be used to catch a landing opponent, but Bowser already has amazing tools to punish landings. Since it hits in front, above, and behind bowser it can be used to cover options when your not sure if your opponent will dashing roll, dashing short hop, or dashing grab. The only problem is that it’s pretty slow at 11 frames so it can’t stuff dash grabs like jab 1 can.
- USmash: His best smash move by far. Comes out frame 16 but has invincibility on the shell starting at frame 14. Amazing for punishing landing opponents. Also kills opponents if you guess there get up option. It also has a second hit, so if you whiff say a spot dodger or someone landing with an air dodge, they’ll probably get hit anyway. The move can be used OOS to beat almost every aerial attack if they hit your shield high enough. The move is so versatile that I won’t go into every option, but just know that this is the move you should be using all the time.
- DSmash: Trash. The move is very laggy. It kills but so does every other move bowser has. The move has such limited range that if you can actually get the hit, then you could have also used every other move bowser has in his arsenal. The one specific use I know about about is that a well spaced dsmash can beat almost every get up option. This is a tech I don’t see any Bowser using but hopefully it will become more common as people figure out that’s an almost guaranteed get up kill at ~130%.
- FSmash: The second strongest smash in the game. A fully charged fsmash can be death ~19%. The move is intangible on his legs so it can be a tricky footsie tool even in the neutral. The most obvious use of this move is after breaking a shield but there are a ton of other usages, most of which I describe here: http://smashboards.com/threads/landing-bowsers-forward-smash.405715/#post-19373476.
- Firebreath: This move can be useful to help you land easier. It can be b-reversed to give you even more landing mixups. The move is also a great damage/gimp tool for characters recovering from the ledge, especially captain falcon and default ganondorf. In the neutral the move is mostly useless. It can be used as a spacing tool, but with Bowser you never want to play keep away, since every other move you have is a close range move.
- Fortress: Bowser’s best and worst move. The move is ridiculously versatile. It punishes rolling, spot dodging, and landing. It covers every option but attack when tech chasing. It covers every single get up option from the ledge except some ledge drops (but not all). It can even 0% gimp people who drop from the ledge and jump. It comes out frame 6 making it faster than the jab. You can also use it OOS. Since it hits all sides and you can move it combined with it’s speed and lasting hitbox, fortress is likely the best OOS option of any character in the game. It can even beat a perfectly spaced sheik fair by moving towards the sheik and jump cancelling the fortress as soon as she touches shield. At rage it can even be a kill move at ~130%! The reason the move is terrible is because it’s ridiculously laggy. At best the move does 13% damage, and scales down to 8% very quickly, making it basically his weakest move. An advanced Bowser will do everything he can to try to go for a stronger and/or safer punish. So even though it might be Bowser’s best move, you should try as hard as you can to use it as little as possible.
- Bowser Bomb: Hella.****ing.Hype. Comes out frame 11. Which means it’s one frame slower than Ftilt, except instead of doing 13% it does 24 ****ing percent. It punishes so much stuff it’s crazy. If sheik dash grabs you and you spot dodge it, you can bowser bomb that. If sheik ftilts you and tries to ftilt again, you can bowser bomb between the ftilts. You can also reverse it to trivially punish people who like to cross you up. The move is fast enough to chase a rolling opponent and often punish them before they can raise their shield. The move has 3 attacks. Two on the way up and one on the way down. If all the attacks connect on shield, and none of those are power shields then a completely healthy shield will get broken. This means that it’s not uncommon for bowser to get 0% gimps near the ledge with bowser bomb. When you break their shield the correct thing to do if your not near the edge is to walk them to the edge then do a forward smash. If they are above 70% and there is no fear of them DIing out of it, the correct move is to taunt, do one of these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYNUOkqzcVA, then charge forward smash.
- Flying Slam: AKA Koopa Klaw, AKA Klaw, AKA the bug nintendo won’t fix. This is command grab that kills vertically at 130%. If you land on a platform it can even kill around ~80%. Despite all of bowser’s moves being kill ones, this should be the bread and butter. It comes out frame 8, one frame slower than a jab, but obviously beats shields. Even if you don’t kill with it it’s a grab that does 18%. It can grab in the air and even grab opponents shielding on platforms above you. Bowser’s tech in place is incredibly slow, but while you are in a tumbling state you can actually Klaw a few frames before landing to get 0 end lag. This means it’s always strictly better than teching in place. Definitely an under appreciated move that I think is better than even ness’ back throw.
- Throws: Down throw, forward and back throw all do 12%. Up throw does 10% but can combo into fair/uair against non-slow fallers at low percentages. Even after it stops working there are opportunities to bait an air dodge into an up smash by empty jumping. Forward/Back throw kill at around 135% but the real power of them is that they have crazy knockback, allowing you to immediately get stage control and move into a situation where you trying to punish a landing. This is a great place for bowser. Down throw is useful if you don’t want to stale out Back and Forward throw, but otherwise less useful than the other two.
- Nair: This move can hit up to 5% for each of his limbs but usually only does 10-15%. It has no kill potential but at low percentages can link into utilt. It’s knockback is low and doesn’t auto cancel so generally I only use it when i’m unsure whether to use fair/bair/uair and I know nair will work. Nair can also be good shield pressure for an opponent on a platform. Since it’s multihitting it can occasionally shield poke.
- UAir: The move kills at ~130% and the head is intangible. It’s really an underused move because it beats literally everything in the air. The problem is that you need to be super precise.
- Fair: This move is so cool because it comes out fast (frame 11), auto cancels, is intangible has a giant range in front, above, and below bowser, does 13%, has crazy knockback and can occasionally link into itself. If you can hit an offstage an opponent with this, it’s almost always death. Since it’s intangible it’s often Bowser’s best shot at trading aerial moves with an opponent. To get the most out of the move you always want to do a buffered rising fair.
- Bair: Comes out even faster than fair (frame 9), does 19%, kills at ~80%, and auto cancels. The move almost feels unfair it’s so good. As part of a ledge trump a 50% kill is not uncommon. Again you always want to do buffered rising bair to recover as fast as possible.
- Dair: This is an interesting move because it’s Bowser’s slowest move to come out, slowest move to recover from and arguably hardest move to get a kill from. Yet the move can actually be a core part bowser’s game and I forsee it being a huge part of 20XX Bowser. The move itself first travels upward then downwards, so the awkwardness of the timing will often bait people trying to catch your landing, or hitting you from the air. The hypest part of the move though is that it’s a spike that can kill at ~30%, and sometimes less. The tragic part about the move is that you usually die when you do it, but even that fear can be mitigated by certain moves trading with it, for instance sheik’s up b. The move timed correctly can also spike an opponent during the one frame of ledge vulnerability.
Important Customs
- Fire Roar: This is a replacement for firebreath. It is a much shorter burst of firebreath that takes up more than half of final destination and does a ton of damage. The correct way to use this move is watch the clock, and every 25 seconds, take your free and safe damage.
- Dash Slash: Klaw is replaced by a move that goes across the stage incredibly quickly and does between 8-12% depending on if it was sweet spotted. On the ground it’s mostly a punish move. If someone decides to roll it dash slash can punish it on reaction. It punishes landings well too. It can also kill at >150%. The reason the move is exciting though is because when done in the air, the move has no end lag. At 0% it combos into bowser bomb and up smash. At higher percents it combos into fair and even bair! To correctly use this move in the neutral you either want to cross your opponent up or land right in front of them.
- Cross Up: On hit you usually want to bair or fair. On shield your options are awesome. The coolest being reverse bowser bomb. Dash grab, reverse standing grab, reverse downtilt, pivot grab etc etc … You have no end lag so basically the situation is you are basically in neutral but they are in shield and think mistakenly think they can punish you when really you have the frame advantage. Now consider all the devious tricks that come along with that.
- Land in front: This is a situation where you whiff on purpose in order evoke some reaction from the opponent. The best 2 moves here are standing grab and dtilt. The reasons these moves are interesting is because the momentum of the dash slash. Standing grab suddenly has as much range as a dash grab but is also faster. This is a great way to punish opponents who think that shielding is the best option to punish dash slash. Dtilt is also an amazing move because usually only the first hit hits because of the knockback. However because of the momentum of the dash slash, both hits work at percentages they aren’t supposed to. So if your opponent isn’t shielding it’s a quick 25% and possibly death. If they are shielding it pushes the opponent away making it difficult to punish and opening the possibility of a shield poke.
- Cross Up: On hit you usually want to bair or fair. On shield your options are awesome. The coolest being reverse bowser bomb. Dash grab, reverse standing grab, reverse downtilt, pivot grab etc etc … You have no end lag so basically the situation is you are basically in neutral but they are in shield and think mistakenly think they can punish you when really you have the frame advantage. Now consider all the devious tricks that come along with that.
The Neutral
Bowser has the speed and power to play like a slower grounded version of captain falcon. Getting an opponet from 0% to 100% is very easy if you have momentum on your side. On the flip side, if someone were to make the mistake of going aggro against Bowser he probably has better tools than anyone to punish into something greater than 20% damage, frame advantage, and stage control. Matchups like villager require you to go in super hard. Matchups like fox require you to OOS punish and pivot grab like an impenetrable statue. Matchups like mario let you switch on a dime. In order to be a well rounded Bowser you will need to master both types of play.
Going Aggro
In smash 4 shielding is a very powerful thing. Bowser has a deceptively fast and long dash grab range similar to captain falcons. Still, everyone’s dash grab has crazy long end lag so it’s better as a punish move. The best option to open someone up in the neutral is to bait them into making a decision and punishing them for it. One tool that is fairly unique to bowser is that he has very little endlag after stopping from a dash. If you dash straight into them but outside of jab range, you can be sure that they will shield/roll/jab/jump/smash. All of those can be punished in a number of ways, but you should always be looking for that 11 frame bowser bomb punish. Jab frame traps are also another way to open up an opponent. The next most important move for the same reasons is dashing shield. Here you are hoping that they attack on shield. If you manage to perfect shield and react fast enough it’s usually a guaranteed bowser bomb.
The spacing you want to maintain depends on the matchup, but the most ideal spacing is at least at the tip of sourspot fsmash range. What you are looking to do is to out footsie your opponent. If they dash towards you, immediately jab1 on reaction. If you suspect dashing shield try standing grab, but if you are unsure try pivot grab. Bowser’s pivot grab is one of the best in the game so it will beat, trade, or be safe on basically everything they do. If they make a mistake and roll towards and land in front of you, dtilt or bowser bomb them. If they land in ambiguous cross up range, up smash or fortress. A safeish footsie poke that you can do is jab 1 or ftilt. The best option though is usually to stand still or make them sweat with a very slow safe walk towards them getting them into range of better pokes and getting more stage control. If you feel like going in though, dash attack is surprisingly quick. Retreating fair can work also work. If you whiff the autocancelled fair, a fortress can often get you out of trouble if auto cancelled appropriately. You can also whiff on purpose with the autocancel you can often get a jab1 or even a bowser bomb. Bair works similarly but I would recommend a reverse bowser bomb or pivot grab.
Going In Against Projectiles
If there’s one hard thing for Bowser to handle it’s campy projectile characters. Because of that it’s important it to make it your strength because it could completely change your win record and make unfavorable matchups into favorable ones (see villager.) There are actually a lot of common sense fundamentals that when mastered really make things a lot easier. Perfect shield and dashing perfect shield are the core of those. Always remember that even if you’re hit with 4 projectiles at 2% each, if you get one 12% grab + stage control + frame advantage you are way up in the exchange. Because bowser is so heavy and does so well with rage, even if you take 15% and give them 12% it still might be considered a favorable trade. There are a couple of unique tricks of bowser that can’t be relied on but can be used as mixups.
- Tough Guy: From 0-40% certain attacks don’t cause bowser not flinch. The most important attack in the current meta that does this is luigi’s fireball. It’s important that you punish luigis super hard for doing this move by bowser bombing every single time they make the mistake of using it. Fox trot fsmash is also a real possibility. At this percentage go as hard as you can and make the luigi super fearful. For some odd reason the distance luigi travels after getting their shield broken can be crazy so I’ve beaten people at 0% from the middle of the stage using this technique.
- SHADC: Short hop air dodge cancel. Usually after you land from an air dodge there are a considerable amount of frames before you can even shield. In the case of Bowser, all of his B moves are exempt from this rule. Sometimes you get to choose your B move before they recover or have a lot of frame advantage. Other times they will recover in time where it’s completely neutral but there is a giant bowser in the air about to make a choice that could easily kill them. In these situations there are no options that they can take that will cover everything if you are playing default bowser.
- Fortress: Fast and beats spot dodges and rolls
- Flying Slam: Beats shields
- Bowser Bomb: Can beat or trade with aerials and can occasionally beat a shield.
- Fortress: Fast and beats spot dodges and rolls
- Short Hop Firebreath: Firebreath can eat certain projectiles so this move will smother the move as well as the person throwing it. It can condition an opponent into thinking that at a certain distance you will always do it, meaning that dash grabs become a lot easier.
- Roll -> Reverse Bowser Bomb: Only works with slow projectiles like Robin’s fire. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that bowser’s roll is any good!
Punishing Falling Opponents
The core of understanding how to punish them is to understand that everyone is scared of up smash. It literally beats every move so they will do what they can to make it impossible to up smash them. If they make the mistake of air dodging towards the ground, they may still get with the second hit. If they find a timing to miss both hits, start doing charged up smashes. There’s no way they can win. There next hope is to DI as far away as they can. Note that they can aerial attack you so you that leaves you with a mixup between 3 options: dash grab, dashing shield, and fair. Its really hard not to keep an opponent in the air. The best hope they have is tricky landing DI or buffered rolls on landing. Buffered rolls can be beaten with tech chases, specifically dash slash beats all options. Tricky DI is hard to beat, you just have to be better than they are at making tricky reads.
Edge Guarding
Once an opponent is off the edge against bowser they can trivially die at any percentage. It’s important to mix up when and how you go off stage. When you condition your opponent for one kind of edge guard a whole new set of options become available to you. Learn them all and you’ll be getting 30% kills in no time!
Offstage
The main thing you’re going for offstage is fair. fthrow/bthrow->fair is great because they will be doing all the hard work of DI’ing towards you. If you suspect an air dodge do a slightly delayed bair. I’ve killed people on the opposite side of the stage at 80% because they are DI’ing exactly where I want them to go, and also because bair is ridiculous. If they decided to recover ultra low and in fair range there is actually a timing that is a guaranteed kill. If they choose to air dodge they lose because they went as low as possible. If they choose not to air dodge they lose because you fair’d them as low as possible.
When someone recovers low and not in fair range, then you have a few different options. Bair in the one frame of vulnerability can be quite easy on certain characters. It’s a bit telegraphed so expect good players to tech it. You can also dair either on stage or offstage for a super quick punish during the one frame vulnerability. A downward tilted ftilt can also punish the same spot. Finally the best and most important low punish, is a ledge trump back air. It almost always converts to a kill.
Punishing Ledge Get Ups
Bowser has two options that cover almost everything. Fortress and down smash at slightly different spacings but they cover the same things, namely everything but an immediate ledge drop without another jump, or just a delay. Note that if you are ledge trumping them hard, which you should be, they may not want to just sit on the ledge since a buffered get up is the only way to not be killed by a trump. So the delay should be conditioned out of them. If you know there will be no delay you can go for a much harder punish. There are only 3 things they can do to buffer out of a trump, get up attack, jump and roll. Jump and get up attack can be punished by up smash. Roll can be punished by forward smash.
Sometimes though you aren’t immediately in the position to trump. Sometimes you are between the ledge and the end of roll range. Sometimes you are at roll range or a bit outside of it. One powerful option for both situations is pivot grab. Pivot grab will trivially scoop people up trying to roll. It will also trivially get people from both a raw get up as well as a get up attack at the right range.
If you have a hard of a get up attack, up smash OOS is the best punish. If you know they won’t roll but you aren’t comfortable with the one frame vulnerability punish, try dtilt. It has so many active frames that you’ll often accidentally hit and kill them.
Finally the flashiest option bowser has available to him is often the bowser bomb. It beats jumps without air dodges, as well as get up attacks. The best part is you land on the ledge so you win if your right, and you can’t be punished if you’re wrong. You can also try to time it for a ledge trump. The ledge trump is unlikely to work against a good opponent, but if you are facing someone that doesn’t always snap to the ledge (hint hint shulk players) then you have two different opportunities to take the stock. Another way you can do it is with a yolo bowser bomb to land in front of the ledge. This covers most options and possibly breaks a shield. Try this when you’re significantly ahead!
On The Defensive
Bowser is known as a character who is laughably easy to combo. He’s also known as a character with super gimpable recovery. Although there is some truth to these stereotypes, really good Bowser’s have tools that allow them to never get spiked, and convert situations where he’s above a character, into ones that his aggressors fear. Since this can be one of Bowser’s weakest parts of his gameplay, it’s important that you make this into a strength. Fundamentals go a long way here, and you should never discount things like buffered rolls or fast fall mixup timings.
Landing
In smash 4 when you are above your opponent, it can be very hard to land without getting dash grabbed or up smashed or any number of things. Bowser has some unique tools that can force your opponent to play a significantly different game landing punish game then they are use to.
One of the more powerful but dangerous tools is actually dair. Traditionally when you are in the air, someone is either waiting to smash you when you get down, or just jump at you to combo you some more. Dair shifts upward causing aerials to whiff and then punishes them. Similarly on your way down if someone is thinking about up smashing and you dair, you will often punish their whiff. This is not a long term tool because it’s very punishable. It is a conditioning tool though and it forces aggressors to move beyond muscle memory and realize that there are certain zones where bowser is very safe. Often that can transition into an opponent respecting Bowser’s landing options too much.
Bowser Bomb high in the air is something that on reaction can usually be stopped. When performed ultra low to the ground though, it can be hard to do anything but just panic. Very low bowser bombs beat literally every option if they are directly below you. A person should be able to roll out of the way if there is a very low bowser bomb on their shield, but I’ve never seen it. It’s like they’ve accepted their fate for their shield to break. This move combined with dair should make it so that you’ve conditioned your opponent to just stay away from bowser and hopefully punish a dair or whiffed bowser bomb. Which is great because you’re good enough not to do that! (hopefully)
Firebreath is also an interesting mixup. The move theoretically is unsafe on shield but because very few people have experience with it, it can still be hard to punish. The interesting part of this move is the b reversal aspect of it. Now you can change how and when you land in interesting fashions.
Finally when all else fails and you are still horrified to land, always go to the ledge. Don’t feel bad, this is how bowser’s have been doing it since melee and is a staple of the bowser strategy. Simply fast falling and air dodging is usually good enough. We do have one more answer though for situations where we think an opponent might make a mistake and try to punish us on the way down, Bowser Bomb the ledge. The only situation I’ve found the move to be unsafe is against Falcons and Ganons up airs, but i’m sure there are other aerials that can hard punish this on reaction. Make sure to practice this move a lot since the timing can change based on your momentum. Every Bowser player has died dozens if not hundreds of times trying to flashily get back to the ledge this way, so don’t feel bad if you SD!
If you are landing from a tumble state, never ever tech in place. You can tech roll, but if you want to tech in place, instead cancel your landing lag with Klaw. It will give you zero endlag unlike the incredibly slow Bowser tech.
Getting Safely to the Ledge
If you are reading this guide, there is a 99% chance that you are doing up B wrong. You either only press up + b and are learning now that you can mash it, or (most likely) you always mash it and are learning now that you can just up b. To get the ultimate height you want to press up b once, then at the peak of your jump, mash your heart out. The timing is interesting and you really have to go into practice mode to get it right but it’s really not that bad. If you’re good at this you can often recover from blast zones depending on your momentum. At the very least though it gives you a ton of options so that you can change when you actually press up + b. This is key to avoiding being spiked. Simply go as low as you can vs a captain falcon, and the next time he tries to spike, just start your up b faster than you need to.
In most situations getting back to the ledge isn’t about going as low as possible. In these cases it’s important to realize the fundamental rule of ABS, always be (ledge) snapping. You rarely want to mash unless you need to because you won’t need the extra height. It’s best to combine double jumps and fast falls with the knowledge of your fixed distance up + b to really snap the ledge as low as possible. If you are really advanced you can actually shrink the distance of your up + b with a fast mash to snap the ledge even faster.
If you jump off the ledge with your back facing the stage, up + b will not snap to the ledge until after the peak of your jump. The situation isn’t as dire as it seems because usually when you do this it’s because your opponent is off stage and they may not have time to gimp you. Still though it’s more important than ever that you follow ABS to minimize your chance of dieing.
Getting Back From the Ledge
The most important way to get back from the ledge is reading your opponent and situation and making a correct guess with one of the basic get up options. Bowser specific tech should be in your periphery. Still it’s important to understand the differences and the extraneous options you have available to you.
Bowser has a very long and awkward first actionable frame after he gets up from the ledge. This translates to a very long invincibility time. This means that if your opponent has mastered a timing for punishing get ups, they are likely to be wrong when it comes to punishing you. This leaves them open for all kinds of nastiness. Fortress, jab, and grab if you’re nice. Bowser Bomb if you’re evil.
Bowser has a few good options after a ledge jump. 3 of those are Klaw, dash slash, and auto cancelled fair. Klaw is a hard punish for shielding opponents. Dash slash can punish different things, and if can often cross up shielding opponents. Fair isn’t safe on shield but if you survive the possibility a shield grab you are in a baiting situation where you can often fortress, jab, or bowser bomb your aggressor.
One super advanced tech is SHADC from the ledge. It’s a situation where you are air dodging and then immediately going into any B move so it has the potential to be ridiculously powerful. For instance it can completely shut down certain types of diddy banana traps. The only problem is that it’s an incredibly technical move, and there currently aren’t any Bowsers doing this in tournament. You should be the first though!
Conclusions
Believe it or not, this giant document is the tip of the iceberg of things that are needed to be a good Bowser player. There are still also a ton of things that have yet to be discovered about the character as well. If this guide hasn’t satiated your appetite for information I recommend checking out some of my favorite posts from the bowser boards:
- Frame Data: http://kuroganehammer.com/Smash4/Bowser
- Miscellaneous Tech: http://smashboards.com/threads/bowsers-moveset-data-discussion-update-3-27-15.368511/
- Punishes: http://smashboards.com/threads/deal-with-it-a-guide-to-punishing-wip.381907/\
Finally I maintain a playlist of every competitive Bowser game on youtube. Hopefully you’ll be the next Bowser in Grand Finals on it! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLafWKd-RfF3dpCv8v1LSAZDb-k1a-_W2T
