Okay time for my essay on this MU:
-Both Characters Ground/Air Game Against Each Other-
It is pretty much a well known fact that Snake has a very good ground game but he is terrible in the air. D3 in general has a good game and an alright aerial game (depends on the opponent). In this MU, we're going to actually want to take this in the air and off the stage as much as possible. Part of it is what Attila (Shmot) said but I'll touch on that in a bit.
The Ground
Snake is going to want to stay here. Snake is centered around stage control, strong projectiles and using them to limit your options to follow up and punish accordingly. A smart Snake will try to camp you and avoid mixing it up with in close quarters if possible. Snake's grenade game doesn't outright beat our Waddles but as a whole they are better for camping. They have to get very creative and wait for openings. If both characters just spam stuff, it's kind a of stalemate. D3 also has to wait for openings but has a slightly harder time exploiting them with Waddles. Waddle Doos can create some disturbance in his cooking grenades and Gordos scare the **** out of Snake but we can't count on that. Waddle his landing when you're too far to safely grab or when there's a break in camping. But in general, you're not going to want to camp the entire match. The real prize in grab range.
Here you have to be careful because if you do something laggy, you'll get F-Tilted for it. But you can bait this. Powershielding will help you a LOT in this MU against those pesky tilts. Or if the Snake hits your shield with F-Tilt 2 its pretty much a free grab. For the smart ones who stop when they whiff F-Tilt 1 or it hits our shield...you're going to want to Powershield. Also you can SDI out of the 1st hit of F-Tilt. I've done it plenty of times, personally. But I'm going to devote a section on the Chaingrab later so stay tuned.
Our F-Tilt in close range is actually really good in this MU. Space it out of course. But its handy because it can stop Snake from trying to rush in and grab you or if Snake holds a Grenade and is waiting for you to do something or if you read he's going to pull a Nade, you can throw this out and it'll mess him up. Spaced F-Tilts can be used liberally.
Pay attention to where projectiles are also. Good Snakes will follow up with aerials for ******** combos that really hurt.
Also avoid getting grabbed and tech chased. Our tech rolls aren't bad but its not a good situation to be in regardless. Snake has a pretty good grab range (not like ours but still).
The Air Game
This is frankly the last place Snake wants to be period. He's pretty bad here. His aerial mobility is bad like ours and his aerials are powerful but situational and some of them SDIable. If Snake uses any of these it'll more than likely be Neutral Air to wall us or Back Air for a surprise. Our aerials as a whole are better. Back Air is really good against airborne Snakes. Their Back Air can trade with us but its not something they'll just go for. And of course Back Air chains and Snake can take a lot of damage.
I'm also going to devote a section on Snake/D3 recovering as the edgeguard part of this MU is REALLY critical for both sides.
-Moves To Avoid And How To Avoid Them-
F-Tilt: It hurts when you take both hits. Play it very safe on the ground. Learn to Powershield or SDI the first hit consistently.
Up-Tilt This move is their bread and butter kill move. If you're playing it right, you won't get hit by this too often. Just don't rush in or airdodge into Snake. I generally don't approach via air against Snake because he has a strong anti air game so the amount of situations you have to worry about this is pretty small. Still this move ***** so it needed to mentioned.
Grab: Getting D-Throwed into a tech chase is bad for us. If you do manage to get in this situation it is almost best to never roll behind Snake. You WILL get punished with a Tilt and that **** will hurt. Mixup how you get up and when you do. Don't fall into a pattern or do the obvious thing. Pay attention to where C4 and landmines are.
Up-Smash/Mortarslide: The Mortar is pretty annoying for us off stage. Snake likes to use it to edgeguard and force a reaction. Our Neutral Air actually goes through it so remember that. It will save you some damage. The slide itself ..how often it is used depends on the Snake. Some use it liberally and others and really conservative with it. If you see a slide coming....pivot grab it. If the mortar is falling while you did this and you're in danger of being hit..Forward Throw is fast and still does good damage. Oh also if Snake hits you with the start up hit at low percents..up until 50% you can DI back towards him and get a free Back Air
Grenades: Its best to avoid them. Sometimes instant throwing helps for getting them out of your face but pay attention when you are grabbing the first grenade. Snakes like to do this annoying gimmick called Grenade Stripping where if they shield drop a 2nd grenade..the first one will just fall...no matter where it is. If its in your hands it will fall and you'll continue to do the throw animation if you're in the middle of throwing it. Don't fall for the ****. Also don't stay in your shield too long either...they do a good job of eating shields/.
Jab: Jab by itself..not scary. But they can Jab-Cancel into an F-Tilt or a Grab. Be careful.
Landmines: (Down Smash) Don't lose track of these. If you must you can destroy them with Waddles
-King Dedede's Moves To Utilize In The Matchup-
F-Tilt - Harasses Snakes that are trying to camp you with Nades in close range. USE IT.
Back Air - Wrecks Snake in the stage and off the stage.
Grab - I'm going to cover this next.
Forward Air - This ***** Snake off stage if you have him on the ropes. I will also cover this next.
Waddle Dee Toss - Not to be relied on, but they do interrupt Snakes that are trying to camp you. They will help you get inside in many a situation.
Swallow - A great mixup here when you do decide to approach via the air. It can also put Snake in a really bad position off the stage..don't worry children this is all going to be covered
Up-Tilt - Very useful for when you've read a Snake trying to recover back on the stage correctly. Used outright its not that useful here. Snake will never willingly put himself above you.
SPECIAL SECTION 1: The Glory that is Chaingrabbing
This is one the reasons Snake hate us. One read can lead to at least 20-40% (stage dependent) from a Chaingrab. Chaingrabbing Snake isn't really hard but you do have to be pretty frame perfect (not hard with a dash grab) or else Snake can pull a Grenade and if you D-Throw you will blow it up and both of you will get hit. You can't Shield Cancel CG him also..it HAS to be the Dash Grab CG. It's not hard to pull off though honestly. But anyway once you have Snake to the ledge you have a BUNCH of options that lead to him taking a quick additional hit ...or him losing his stock or an immense amount of damage. Let's look at the options here:
Down Tilt: Spaced at the ledge Down-Tilt is guaranteed from a Down-Throw I generally save this if Snake is at REALLY high percents (very possible in this MU) and its fresh so it kills. Its still good for a quick hit but honestly at low percents you have better options. This is my back up plan.
F-Tilt: This move can be a god send in this situation. If Snake decides to jump to the ledge and you hit with this...his jump is gone and he has to Cypher...and from there.....PROFIT. If Snake Cypher's toward you...grab release him and he'll have to C4 back on the stage or die if his C4 is already on the stage. If he Cyphers away..you can wait for him to attempt to C4 or if hes at high percents Forward Air that ***. It will kill handily around 150% or so. At low percents you can Back Air chain him as well. If he's out of Cypher, sourspotted Back Air *****.
Up-Smash Its guaranteed on Snake if you buffer and Jump Cancel the Up Smash. Another good fallback plan for killing.
Swallow: lol Snake off the stage is Swallow bait once he's in Cypher. If you're up in stocks or really behind on the same stock..no shame in using this. Also you can grab release Snake with Swallow if you don't spit. The trick is they HAVE to mash. But the other trick is that you can pretty much force them to if you go for (or act like you're going for) a Dededecide.
Also Swallow spaced at the ledge puts Snake in some terrible spots. If he manages to grab the ledge, you can severely limit him. There's a thread on this as well. Also Swallow's vacuum effect can seriously screw with his ability to Cypher correctly towards the ledge and can suck him under the ledge.
Forward-Air: Sometimes you can just fast fall off the stage and throw one of these out if the Snake decides to recover low in attempts to avoid getting F-Tilted. Also I touched on this earlier but if you manage to get Snake off the stage and low or mid percents and hit him out of his Cypher with Forward Air, you can do it again. You can completely trap a Snake like this.
So yeah Chaingrabbing to the ledge is kind of a big deal. You have the potential to take a stock at any time if you read the Snake correctly.
SPECIAL SECTION 2: EDGEGUARDING
Well I just kind of explained a bit about how to harass Snake off the stage but we can go a bit further. If Snake has escaped your grasp off the stage and you are forced to come back on you can still reset the situation. Snake has very few options when recovering. As a rule, Snake will always Cypher high and then upon landing play a big game of Rock Paper Scissors. After Snake begins to fall he can do any of these things
-Pull a Grenade and fall with it.
- Pull a Grenade a soft throw it so it falls with him.
- Nikita and then cancel it so it falls and covers him.
- B-Reverse a Grenade before he lands.
- Just fall regularly (hey it works sometimes)
- Back air or neutral air when he lands.
- Drop a C4. He may or may not detonate it.
-Airdodge into the ground.
Don't be afraid of his projectiles when they are falling. Stay on his *** and try to chase him down. Sometimes if there's multiple projectiles falling it may be best to back off or just throw a Waddle and possibly get in the air. If he aerials, you can pivot grab him and reset the situation. Honestly you want to grab him if you can. Getting him right back in the air is always nice. If you read a B-Reversal Grenade you can Pivot Grab him out of that also.
Now Snake on the other hand is actually pretty good at putting the pressure on us when we're off the stage. Generally what is going to happen is they will charge mortars and time it to where by the time we get to the ledge, the mortar is about to fall on us. This can be threatening but do not panic here. Neutral air can stop mortars as well as Back Air. Generally we want to go for the ledge but they know this. They will grab the ledge if they think we're going to and that forces us to either Up-B through **** or airdodge. Either way its not the best spot we can be in. If we Up-B Snake can take advantage and throw us off the stage again. Its annoying. C4 and Landmines can also help him limit our options further. Especially when there are platforms near the ledge (Battlefield...). Now sometimes you may have to Up-B and power your way through Mortars to get in a better situation...this is okay. Just as always be very careful and mix up your landings. Oh and one trick I do when I'm off stage if that if I'm recovering high..I'll save the jumps and just start throwing Waddles. They can force a reaction like a shield and gave them less time to setup for their edgeguarding. They also blow up landmines that are waiting for you. Definitely use those Waddles when you can.
Stages:
Neutrals: (Assuming we're using Unity)
In order from best to worst imo (for D3 obviously)
Castle Siege PS1, FD, SV, Lylat, Yoshi's, Battlefield
(Just reverse the order if you're a Snake)
Counterpicks:
Delfino ***** in the MU. 99% of Snakes know this though...so don't expect to play here too often. Snake isn't terrible on this stage but he's not that good either. Then lets combine the fact we can wall infinite, we can walk off CG for death..and the stage is changing so establishing good stage control can be hard for Snake. Yeah I would ban this is if I were a Snake. You do not want to play a good D3 here.
Now let's talk about stages we'll actually get to play on:
Rainbow Cruise: This is good but me personally I don't like this stage. Yeah Snake sucks in the air but stages that force us in the air aren't good for us either as a whole. This stage kind of ****s over both characters...Snake more so than D3 by far but still. I mean yes, we can wall infinite but still. Its still a good stage though if you don't like the following options:
PS2: Very underrated imo. This has turned into a new staple CP for me recently against Snake. PS2 is great for us because we can abuse so many parts of the stage.
Ground phase = Wall infinite.
Ice phase = Dash Grab > Down Throw > guaranteed kill move of your choice while sliding.
Electric phase = Down Throw > Guaranteed kill move of your choice while on the conveyor belt.
Flying phase = A better chance to chase Snake in the air and edgeguard him even better.
I love this stage.
Castle Siege: This stage is pretty good also. Not amazing. Phase 1 is good because its smaller and prevents Snake from camping us effectively. This also means smaller CGs but you get more chances to get the grab so you try to get the free damage. Phase 2 is obvious...the walk off. This should not be relied on but if you get it..its so nice. Snake will more than likely try to just camp you the entire time on this phase though. Phase 3 is pretty much a tilting FD. Nothing special here. You get good CGs off on this stage and no platforms to worry about his C4 and Landmines though. Overall a good stage.
Ban:
Halberd if you don't like this. I mean its not bad for us either. Our Up-Tilt will kill here pretty early as well. We can get some good CGs off on the stage as well and we can abuse the top platform with auto canceled Dairs for some interesting setups. I don't like it when Snake camps really hard under the platform though..its hard to get in.
Battlefield: This is what I would ban. We're not good on the stage really and Snake is. he can establish maximum stage control here and make it very hard to get inside his range. And the platforms give him more options for recovery while giving him more options to limit ours. I do not like this stage against Snake at all.
Verdict: Snake punishes really well, edgeguards us, and camps us like a pro. He also has an easier time killing on stage. We benefit greatly from a simple read though. Some say its even..some say its slightly in our favor and others say its damn bad for Snake. I think its slightly in our favor. I feel like Snake has a lot of options against us. its just D3's options revolve mainly off of a grab..but to an a potential extreme degree. They both live forever so its really a battle of patience. Its not uncommon for this MU to go to time at all.
Its hard for both sides but I think D3 benefits just a bit more.
