That's why I gravitate to characters that can zone. It's easier to keep opponents at bay and give me time to think and react. I'm very bad with combo and close range characters because I can't seem to keep up with all the DI and micro movements to play them. I don't think changing characters will help either, I think this is a pretty fundamental issue.
I don't really know how much this will affect my potential though.
I don't really know how much this will affect my potential though.
Same thing with aggressive aerial spam. It's not necessarily reacting to the first hit, it's the subsequent ones that are the issue. I can barely pull of shielding a Roy Fair, so I'm not prepared or able to handle the other options. If he continues attacking I can keep shielding, but if he mixes up with grab, I'm pretty much doomed. I just have lot of trouble processing all the information of his spacing and DI. It's also why I struggle significantly against characters like Mario, Falcon, Yoshi, Ness, and all the Links.
In Smash 4 I just had to worry about some characters being able to mash and blitz all over the place. It seems to be an actual mechanic in Ultimate. I'm having trouble keeping up with all the sheer amount of options in this game. It isn't the first option or the second buffered one, it's the third or the fourth. Having them dodge my Up-air into a landing that I attempt to punish only for them to have buffered a roll, then do a frame 3 Nair or something right after that. Being able to think ahead and keep up with all of that is difficult.
Not just defense, I can have trouble reacting to my own setups. Baiting an option OoS like a jump or spot-dodge, only to not be able to react to the option and miss an opportunity or even get punished for it. It becomes this really silly thing where I do the hard part of laying the trap and then fail at the easier part of executing it. Or even just capitalizing on my opponent's mistake.
It's not like this happens every time, but it's frequent enough to affect outcomes of games. There have been countless games where I've built a two stock lead, only for my opponent to go hyper aggressive mashing and running all over the stage and that lead then quickly vanishes and it's up in the air whether I can clutch or lose to a random Fsmash. Like I can do well against skilled opponents, but not the common masher or skilled opponents that notice my issues. I can handle most of the cast, but not the ones that can easily spam and DI all over the place.