falln
Smash Ace
Hey everybody 
like i said in the kirby skype group one of my favorite things to do is talk about Kirby and how he fits into competitive Brawl.
So some quickies
1. Who are you?
I'm falln! I'm a SoCal Kirby and I've been ranked on SoCal's PR for about two years now
2. Chudat already has an AMA thread, so why are you making one?
Like I said above, my absolute favorite thing to do is discuss competitive Kirby stuff with people who care. If anyone visits allisbrawl they'd find that i have multiple kirby related info dumps in my blog that reflect my line of thinking at that point in time. Additionally, I'm pretty active on swf so I will get to all responses hopefully within a day of them being listed here (unless i have a tournament or something and am out the entire day)
3. What kind of questions can I ask?
Anything that relates to competitive smash is fair game. General Kirby questions (stuff like favorite kirby game or w/e) are fine too i guess but thats not really the purpose of me making this thread.
so with all that being said, ask away
------------------------------------------
[COLLAPSE="How do you deal with Ice Climbers?"]
Somehow there are [still] no ice climber mains in SoCal but i played several icies at genesis 2 and last year's wgf delux came and i got to play quite a few games with him.
The first thing you have to do is resign yourself to the fact that the match will be long. Gruesomely long. Probably a timeout type of long. This is because as long as icies have the cg at their disposal, the risk reward for any given approach is horrbily skewed in their favor. Because of this you'll want a stage like ps1 or smashville for you to sit on the happy platforms and get them to come after you.
If/when they do approach you still have to be very precise in your movements, as getting hit by 1 uair at an early percent is going to result in you taking like 40% from their uair chains. It is crucial that you do not take this damage up front because this matchup gets a whole lot harder if they get a sizable lead that makes you have to approach. When spacing to avoid these uairs you want to be slightly diagonal in front of them so you have the ability to drop in front of them after they whiff and either get a bair (uair if they're about to land on the platform) string or you gave yourself positional advantage and can pressure them a bit for some damage.
If you can, for these early percents try to just damage one of the climbers. Doesn't really matter which one, but you want a sizable difference in their respective %s to make it much easier to separate them with any attack. When separated, just remember that nana will default to ice block in the air and generally (sometimes she jumps at weird times) try to run to popo when shes on the ground. Do whatever is most applicable to take out nana but dont forget that popo can still hit you while you do this **** LOL.
If you kill the partner and have a good % lead, depending on how confident you are with spacing and avoiding getting hit, it can be a good idea to just try and clock the solo ice climber instead of outright killing popo. For this to work you have to play very technically precise because otherwise your % will go back up and it wont be a viable option. However if you get good at platform camping and keeping a wall between yourself and the solo ice climber then this is a particularly effective way for kirby to deal with icies.
^^^ everything above deals with not approaching ice climbers. If the **** hits the fan and you eat an early grab or even that early uair chain then you're going to have to approach. Landing behind their shield + turbo jab or dash attack into the back of their shield -> turbo jab are relatively safe and when getting out of these types of moves generally nana will **** up and you'll get damage on her. If the ice climbers are reacting to your spacing and not letting you quite get behind them then use this to get them to maneuver themselves close enough to the edge where you can start using kirbys safe edge cancelling techniques to try and get some pressure in without getting punished.
If they are walling with blizzard and whatnot then you have to get comfortable with the spacing of the attack. Fsmash outranges blizzard and with proper timing you can in fact punish a whiffed blizzard from the ground with most attacks. If it's being desynced and the hurtboxes aren't quite disappearing then you can go for a risky fsmash. Properly spaced this will hit a climber not performing x input and hit whichever one is still on cooldown from their last blizzard. In this scenario try and hit popo because going for nana means the player will just punish you. If you ever get the climbers off stage then you can keep bairing their side b until kingdom come. You could in theory dair the side b for a spike but that requires you to be in favorable positioning first and it gives the opponent too much time to react to your plans and get back to the stage accordingly, whereas just bair is reliable and will eventually gimp them, even if it takes forever (also anything that lowers the timer is good for your 2ndary win condition).
Ban fd. Learn battlefield like the back of your hand because that's probably where they'll wind up striking to/counterpicking you to. The edge is your friend (depending on your region's LGL). [/COLLAPSE]
[COLLAPSE="How do you deal with Game and Watch?"]GnW mainly requires you to be very technically precise. Avoid trading with his smashes (or just avoid conflict with his smashes altogether that **** kills early), but feel free to attack stuff like his nair and bair. Learn when key/turtle hitboxes fade and punish in between. Do not misjudge the landing hitboxes. Do not **** up the tech chase. When you approach kill % and you make it clear to your opponent that you're not letting yourself get grabbed or smashed, their most potent kill move becomes fair so thats when you need to watch for that.
GnW has a blind spot diagonally in front/below him so thats where you want to position yourself for most things. This is where uair/bair frame traps become your best friend and fsmashing airdodge landings become how you kill. To help you kill though you want to take GnWs to battlefield for early uthrow kills. Honestly just not messing up technically is how you beat GnW [/COLLAPSE]
[collapse="What can lead into an Up-Tilt"]auto cancelled uair/weak nair and sometimes bair (both strong and weak depending on the %. for bair you kinda have to get a feel for when itll work and when it doesn't but even then you always have the option of turn around grab if you think they can get shield out in time) and dair on fat characters (, ) that doesnt push them out that far can let you utilt. Those ones are the guaranteed ones.
Mixups involve the traditional fthrow -> uair -> utilt if they don't DI up/away, dthrow -> utilt at early percents on fast fallers. You could actually probably do first two hits of fair -> turn around utilt if they fall fast and dont DI but idk theres probably better things you could do in a circumstance where that would be applicable.
Utilt can also be used as a decent boxing option and if the opponent is going for a dash grab that isnt guaranteed you can land an uptilt like that or anything similar to that will give you free utilts.
Also not sure if this counts for you or not but on fast fallers at early % you can do utilt -> utilt [/collapse]
[collapse="I was having trouble getting back onstage. Any tips?"]im assuming this is vs mk because other characters dont really edgeguard kirby that much. For non mk characters just as a rule of thumb:
1. conserve your jumps. each individual jump has respectable height/distance so dont clump them together.
2. avoid using up b. i tried experimenting with this a lot at recent tournaments but against anyone who knows the spacing then they'll abuse it and show you why the move is a piece of **** and itll get you gimped.
3. be wary of using hammer. if you're far away and dont have a lot of jumps then you dont really have much choice but using hammer gives you significant RCO lag and you'll have to plan accordingly.
against most characters you can simply recover high and land wherever and you're good or recover low and go for the edge. From there kirby has a lot of ledge drop options so just be patient and look for an opening to get back on stage and it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Against though theres a lot more things to be wary of. For mk you will first want to strike to/counterpick either battlefield or smashville. These two stages allow you to retain the option of recovering underneath the stage and grabbing the edge on the other side (experiment how many jumps you'll need for different scenarios)
. If you are going low and mk chases you off stage then this is what you'll want to do because mk can't chase you because his lateral movement isn't strong enough, and if he tries anyway you can just bair him and laugh. If you recover low and mk doesnt chase you then just go for the edge. Kirby does not have a means of auto grabbing the edge so you want to space your jump where your head doesn't stick out much. Sometimes mk will let you commit to jumping up to the edge (or maybe you dont have enough jumps/aren't on a stage that allows you to go under and around). If he mis-spaces the dair then you can respond with a uair but for the most part you just need that trigger finger ready to tech the stage when he dairs you. One tech jump and you're home free.
If you have his power you can just pick a good time to tornado back on stage LOL
If you are recovering mid height you have to react constantly to mk's positioning or you will get hit and die early to a shuttle loop and feel very bad. Here if he chases you you have a bit more ability to box back with fair/bair and hammer. Avoid committing to an airdodge and instead rely on your lateral movement to avoid his attacks.
If you recover high you can get back above stage pretty reliably and if you're on a stage like smashville or battlefield then its slightly easier to land because you have more options of where to land. Even so you'll have to just out maneuver your way to not getting juggled over and over by the mk because you'll be low on jumps. If mk chases after you while you are jumping straight up then he wil more than likely go for a shuttle loop so again just react to the spacing for that. If your reaction time is good enough then you can airdodge the up b and you're home free, but i find it to be safer to just avoid scenarios where you are at risk of getting shuttle looped altogether than to challenge it with your reaction time.[/collapse]
[collapse="What is the Gonzo Combo?"]Gonzo Combo is the traditional fthrow -> uair -> utilt -> bair combo. Technically you can DI up and away to avoid eating the utilt after the uair but there are other options you can do out of the uair (jump uair, dash grab, up angled forward tilt* [this one im especially fond of]) so you have all your options covered. Sometimes your opponent will DI to avoid one of your followups in which case the Gonzo Combo may become applicable again.[/collapse]
[collapse="Is Kirby's Pivot Grab as good as it looked when my master used it on me in Kirby dittos?"] probably. kirby's pivot grab is insane.[/collapse]
[collapse="Also, how often do you F-air?"]Fair has a lot of applications! there's 3 hits to it and not a lot of lag on the last one so you can use it to shield poke people by chipping away the first two hits and stabbing on the third, or if they're shielding on a platform or something and its not a character you can force a jab lock on (like or someone) then fair will reliably hit them by having the first hit or second hit knock the person off the platform and then the third hit will connect. Additionally its a solid aerial just to use for wall of pains because the move chains into itself at a lot of percents. If you're using it just outright to hit someone in the air then you're probably better off using uair or bair because those two moves generally allow you to space yourself in a position that is more difficult for your opponent to counter-hit you[/collapse]
[collapse="why did you choose to use white kirby?"]I initially took gray because white is the color i default to when im picking a skin i like on a character.
This decision was reinforced by red and pink already having been "taken" by chu and mogx respectively, yellow looking like a kirby that was pissed on, the green clashes with his feet a bit too much for me, and the blue was just kinda eh [/collapse]
[collapse="what's the best thing you can do against top level peach mains?"]I played him a couple times at LSC and sometimes on wifi when im not at college! Against peach it's important to not rely on any dodge mech. Spotdodging, rolling, airdodging will not work against peach, like, ever. She also has obscene shield pressure so if she's above you and coming down to attack don't rely on shielding until the float is burned because she'll just eat it for breakfast. Other than that if you play technically you can punish a lot of things oos (after the float of course!) with grabs and bair and utilt. If you want to juggle her just avoid the nair and outspace the dair and juggling is pretty easy. If she loses both her double jump and her float then she should never ****ing touch the ground again until she dies. Her airdodge is sooo bad that if you just use spaced bairs and uairs she cant do **** about it and if she has to land on stage then that is a free fsmash every ****ing time. If peach is on the edge she will always go for the edge jump -> aerial. Maybe not immediately, but eventually that will be the option peach picks, so just be patient and keep up a bair wall and you can punish it.
Again, because of peach's ****ty airdodge, wall of pains work very well against her. If she's floating and is close enough to you while still being diagonal (as in out of her dair range but within her fair range if she dropped her float and then faired) then you can jump up and try and bair her and if you connect then that's another 3 or 4 bairs that you get pretty much for free.
On the ground she'll throw a **** load of turnips. Just dodge them. Don't shield them and don't roll or spotdodge to avoid them. Just physically move out of the way as you approach peach. Do this and dont be hasty when you run in and there really isnt too much peach can do to you. You win most boxing trades because jab is always safe and the reward for kirby's grounded options (grab/utilt) are much stronger than peach's rewards (dsmash? grab? ftilt to kill at like 180%? oh no sooo scary).
Also like you probably saw in the video try and grab her stitchies if you can . Birthday hammers are also really strong but those are more read based and hammer is not one of my preferred moves on kirby but if you can get the read for them they really kill peach early.
Ban FD. Strike to smashville or battlefield. Platforms are your friend. [/collapse]
[collapse="Do you have any tips for Diddy Kong?"]For diddy kong it's just most important to have strong spacing. If you can grab a banana for yourself you can do spaced z drop backairs at max range without any drift towards diddy and its pretty safe. pick up the naner and just keep pressuring him like this to the edge of the stage and when you get him there you can start looking for where you can start up a combo. Diddy's recovery isn't particularly good either so if you ever see him go low after having exhausted his main mixup options then feel free to fast fall dair for a free kill. if he side b's then again what's important is that you know your spacing to not get hit by the stupid flip kick and instead get a bair or a hammer on him. Practice a lot with naners! It's important you have a feel for where you can catch them and kirby's throwing arc. If there's a banana on the ground a cool trick you can do is dash attack leading up to the banana without actually trying to grab it. Kirby slows down as he dash attacks so he won't actually trigger the trip which can catch diddy if he's going for the naner too.
This matchup really isn't too bad it's just not getting flustered when he has banana control and finding your way in when you can. When his wall is up just do your best to bait the naner throw and shield it and jump and catch it and then do w/e with it. Don't just throw the naner at him without a purpose though because that puts you back at square one.[/collapse]
[collapse="Do you have any tips for Lucario?"]I actually consider lucario one of my best matchups and my set vs pitbull i feel is very indicative of how the matchup should be played
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VgFx...f4FUAAAAAAAAAA
^^ watch that
to deal with its really just not getting predictable and having good spacing. If you can get an advantage and force him to approach you then thats good because that really hurts lucario's options. Lucarios in general like to roll so always take the time when you're spacing bairs to see if they roll or not. If they do then be ready to abuse the bad habit and if they don't then just its important to know the fsmash hitbox range and startup and when you can get a backair in and when you can't. Kirby destroys lucario offstage as long as you again dont mess up the spacing so when you hit him off be prepared to edgeguard him til his stock is gone. When you're juggling him you want to be a little diagonal of him so he can't dair you while still keeping your ability to maneuver and land bair or uair or w/e you want to use.
Don't get predictable with your landings or you'll eat an AS. Don't roll in this matchup because you really dont need it. Always be cautious when the aura builds up and if that requires you to be extra campy then so be it. It's worth it if you don't die early from some retardedly powerful attack. [/collapse]
[collapse="How do you beat Snake?"]umm for snake i personally like to play it super campy because if you get him to approach you then the matchup becomes 10x easier. With practice it isn't difficult to dodge all his projectiles and shenanigans and i guarantee you eventually he'll either blow himself up just once or try and swat you out the air which you must always be ready for.
if you do have to approach him though then try and avoid doing it on the ground. unless you have a strong read on a ftilt he just has more options that do more damage to you. if he's cooking nades then you can hover near him (outside of utilt range of course!) and he'll either roll away from the nade or sit in shield. if he's a roller then just pick up on the trend and drop down with a uair > utilt > bair > stuff or even just bair > grab (all depending on percents). if he likes to sit in shield then you can wait for the shield to get a lil low and then drop down and time it with a nearby nade or something to poke with dair and get a follow up out of it. When you hit snakes off stage and they do double jump -> cypher straight up then you know they're going to try and ff nair you so make sure you have the spacing down for that and then you can bair in between some of the hits.
If you ever have a chance to inhale him out of cypher then take it. It works the same as a grab release if you let him break out himself, which most of the time will be a free stock. Otherwise, hammer, bair, and uair all work for hitting through his cypher. If you inhale on stage and opt to take his power, then you can camp him pretty hard. Planking nades is pretty strong and if you have port priority you can always keep the look out for the omnigay. Omnigays sound really gimmicky and whatnot but ive landed at least 1 in tournament against every snake ive played over time. Free stocks are free stocks.
For kills you're looking for gimps, fsmash/dsmash when hes landing, uairs if you follow him up as he cyphers and if hes at a reasonably high percent, or desperate bairs if he starts going snake status and never dying.
Other than that you just have to space according to his attacks. His tilts as we all know are pretty ridiculous (when you're in kill %, do not attempt doing anything in his uptilt range. (You will get hit and cry)
As usual, turbo jab + dash attack are good for dealing with spotdodges, although you have to know when to cut out the turbo jab because if you hold it for too long then snake can get a ftilt out of it. The very last thing you need to note is figuring out when the snake player opts to dash attack. That move is wonky and hits kirby at weird times so you have to catch onto that pattern and then you can go in and deal with it effectively.
At risk of letting more people see my dog **** performance in games 2 and 3, this is the general idea of how i think : should be played
falln vs havok
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU4gVzsQZgE[/collapse]
[collapse="How do you beat Marth?"]for marth i have another video that is very indicative of the matchup
falln vs mikehaze
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WctGt8tMDZw
if marth goes into the air at all that is your cue to dash in/under him and shield. If you run far enough there is really not much marth can do about it so you can pick up easy grabs out of that. Once you pop marth into the air you can really go to town on the uairs and bairs if you keep diagonal spacing so you're always slightly below him while horizontal so your moves still connect but his takes a bit of time to reach you. Rolling behind marth very occasionally works, but i wouldn't recommend using it a lot because marth can take a step back and turn around dancing blade which covers a lot of options. Similarly, you dont really want to spotdodge because those are also very punishable by dancing blades.
Killing is pretty straight forward. Just fsmash a landing or land a solid bair or even a dair gimp. If marth isn't in the perfect autocancellable range to snap his up b onto the edge then you can actually fsmash it for a kill (that's in the video too).
If marth sits still and waits for you to come to him then you really just want to bait a reaction or just sit and be patient until you have a solid read and then going in. Things have to be impeccably spaced when approaching marth as kirby because they have similar ranges. Don't get scared into airdodging if he gets you into the air; just fly a way and reset the situation.
Actually just taking your time in general vs marth really works wonders. The last thing you want to do is just keep running in like the charge of the light brigade cuz then you'll just keep getting hit til you die.
luckily kirby is pretty small and annoying to try and attack as marth so his main source of damage (assuming you're not putting yourself in really punishable situations) is going to be fair and dancing blades. This also means it's quite difficult for marth to land a kill on you because his main killing moves in this matchups are somewhat slow and not in areas where you would be positioning yourself in the first place.
Also don't go for inhales. Another thing you can see in the video is that they dont work LOL [/collapse]
[collapse="How do you finish off an annoying Yoshi?"]killing yoshi is just being patient. as long as you're not throwing out smashes he can't do much to you, so just play safe and space yourself until you get a read on a landing or airdodge of some sort and then just dsmash/usmash/fsmash/bair depending on what's most applicable. typical yoshi gimps work too like inhaling him after he's used his second jump and then forcing him offstage but i'm interpreting this question as killing a yoshi at high %.
this is also a reason why i prefer battlefield to most stages because if worst comes to worst you still have the option to uthrow for the kill.
if you're going for a spotdodge punish on yoshi then you really want to go for moves that linger. dsmash is the most optimal choice in this regard but it's somewhat awkward to get yourself set up in a position to dsmash and then expect the yoshi to spot dodge, whereas fsmash can be used from slightly further away and usmash has the option of dash -> hold usmash and wait for the spotdodge -> release for kill.
at the higher percents, dair also has a tendency to pop characters back up into the air slightly instead of out to the sides, so if this happens it's a lot more reliable to dair -> fsmash or dair -> dsmash. that's not specific to yoshi either. it's pretty universal. [/collapse]
[collapse="How do you play against ROB?"]there are a couple annoying things to ROB. the first is that he can fair in between a lot of combos and it just comes out really fast in general so you always have to be prepared for that. he has pretty bad diagonal blind spots due to how slow his nair is, so when you pop him into the air you want to abuse that spacing with your uair.
learn to DI the dsmash (or just shield it and punish). if you get caught in a spotdodge battle with him and you're not confident on the read then you can just hold jab and get the guaranteed damage.
don't roll into him. don't airdodge into him. dont walk into his nair bair fsmash or usmash and he will be unable to kill you until like 170%. also try to avoid being predictable with your approaches because rob's tilts are an effective walling tool. like with most characters, the key is just spacing + patience.
rob's uair is a very strong anti-air. don't challenge it with dair until it's over.
if you inhale rob and he knows he can dair, then he'll try to do that if you take his power. if he does this then you can starshot and run for a usmash, but if he does dair and drift away then its unpunishable. if you really really want the power then what you can do is inhale and walk off stage and once you hear the opponent mashing then you take the power.
wait for the landings and fsmash. that's how you kill rob. bair stales awfully in this matchup and he'll live for a long time if you don't get a smash (or hammer! don't forget about air hammers too!)[/collapse]
like i said in the kirby skype group one of my favorite things to do is talk about Kirby and how he fits into competitive Brawl.So some quickies
1. Who are you?
I'm falln! I'm a SoCal Kirby and I've been ranked on SoCal's PR for about two years now
2. Chudat already has an AMA thread, so why are you making one?
Like I said above, my absolute favorite thing to do is discuss competitive Kirby stuff with people who care. If anyone visits allisbrawl they'd find that i have multiple kirby related info dumps in my blog that reflect my line of thinking at that point in time. Additionally, I'm pretty active on swf so I will get to all responses hopefully within a day of them being listed here (unless i have a tournament or something and am out the entire day)
3. What kind of questions can I ask?
Anything that relates to competitive smash is fair game. General Kirby questions (stuff like favorite kirby game or w/e) are fine too i guess but thats not really the purpose of me making this thread.
so with all that being said, ask away
------------------------------------------
[COLLAPSE="How do you deal with Ice Climbers?"]
Somehow there are [still] no ice climber mains in SoCal but i played several icies at genesis 2 and last year's wgf delux came and i got to play quite a few games with him.
The first thing you have to do is resign yourself to the fact that the match will be long. Gruesomely long. Probably a timeout type of long. This is because as long as icies have the cg at their disposal, the risk reward for any given approach is horrbily skewed in their favor. Because of this you'll want a stage like ps1 or smashville for you to sit on the happy platforms and get them to come after you.
If/when they do approach you still have to be very precise in your movements, as getting hit by 1 uair at an early percent is going to result in you taking like 40% from their uair chains. It is crucial that you do not take this damage up front because this matchup gets a whole lot harder if they get a sizable lead that makes you have to approach. When spacing to avoid these uairs you want to be slightly diagonal in front of them so you have the ability to drop in front of them after they whiff and either get a bair (uair if they're about to land on the platform) string or you gave yourself positional advantage and can pressure them a bit for some damage.
If you can, for these early percents try to just damage one of the climbers. Doesn't really matter which one, but you want a sizable difference in their respective %s to make it much easier to separate them with any attack. When separated, just remember that nana will default to ice block in the air and generally (sometimes she jumps at weird times) try to run to popo when shes on the ground. Do whatever is most applicable to take out nana but dont forget that popo can still hit you while you do this **** LOL.
If you kill the partner and have a good % lead, depending on how confident you are with spacing and avoiding getting hit, it can be a good idea to just try and clock the solo ice climber instead of outright killing popo. For this to work you have to play very technically precise because otherwise your % will go back up and it wont be a viable option. However if you get good at platform camping and keeping a wall between yourself and the solo ice climber then this is a particularly effective way for kirby to deal with icies.
^^^ everything above deals with not approaching ice climbers. If the **** hits the fan and you eat an early grab or even that early uair chain then you're going to have to approach. Landing behind their shield + turbo jab or dash attack into the back of their shield -> turbo jab are relatively safe and when getting out of these types of moves generally nana will **** up and you'll get damage on her. If the ice climbers are reacting to your spacing and not letting you quite get behind them then use this to get them to maneuver themselves close enough to the edge where you can start using kirbys safe edge cancelling techniques to try and get some pressure in without getting punished.
If they are walling with blizzard and whatnot then you have to get comfortable with the spacing of the attack. Fsmash outranges blizzard and with proper timing you can in fact punish a whiffed blizzard from the ground with most attacks. If it's being desynced and the hurtboxes aren't quite disappearing then you can go for a risky fsmash. Properly spaced this will hit a climber not performing x input and hit whichever one is still on cooldown from their last blizzard. In this scenario try and hit popo because going for nana means the player will just punish you. If you ever get the climbers off stage then you can keep bairing their side b until kingdom come. You could in theory dair the side b for a spike but that requires you to be in favorable positioning first and it gives the opponent too much time to react to your plans and get back to the stage accordingly, whereas just bair is reliable and will eventually gimp them, even if it takes forever (also anything that lowers the timer is good for your 2ndary win condition).
Ban fd. Learn battlefield like the back of your hand because that's probably where they'll wind up striking to/counterpicking you to. The edge is your friend (depending on your region's LGL). [/COLLAPSE]
[COLLAPSE="How do you deal with Game and Watch?"]GnW mainly requires you to be very technically precise. Avoid trading with his smashes (or just avoid conflict with his smashes altogether that **** kills early), but feel free to attack stuff like his nair and bair. Learn when key/turtle hitboxes fade and punish in between. Do not misjudge the landing hitboxes. Do not **** up the tech chase. When you approach kill % and you make it clear to your opponent that you're not letting yourself get grabbed or smashed, their most potent kill move becomes fair so thats when you need to watch for that.
GnW has a blind spot diagonally in front/below him so thats where you want to position yourself for most things. This is where uair/bair frame traps become your best friend and fsmashing airdodge landings become how you kill. To help you kill though you want to take GnWs to battlefield for early uthrow kills. Honestly just not messing up technically is how you beat GnW [/COLLAPSE]
[collapse="What can lead into an Up-Tilt"]auto cancelled uair/weak nair and sometimes bair (both strong and weak depending on the %. for bair you kinda have to get a feel for when itll work and when it doesn't but even then you always have the option of turn around grab if you think they can get shield out in time) and dair on fat characters (, ) that doesnt push them out that far can let you utilt. Those ones are the guaranteed ones.
Mixups involve the traditional fthrow -> uair -> utilt if they don't DI up/away, dthrow -> utilt at early percents on fast fallers. You could actually probably do first two hits of fair -> turn around utilt if they fall fast and dont DI but idk theres probably better things you could do in a circumstance where that would be applicable.
Utilt can also be used as a decent boxing option and if the opponent is going for a dash grab that isnt guaranteed you can land an uptilt like that or anything similar to that will give you free utilts.
Also not sure if this counts for you or not but on fast fallers at early % you can do utilt -> utilt [/collapse]
[collapse="I was having trouble getting back onstage. Any tips?"]im assuming this is vs mk because other characters dont really edgeguard kirby that much. For non mk characters just as a rule of thumb:
1. conserve your jumps. each individual jump has respectable height/distance so dont clump them together.
2. avoid using up b. i tried experimenting with this a lot at recent tournaments but against anyone who knows the spacing then they'll abuse it and show you why the move is a piece of **** and itll get you gimped.
3. be wary of using hammer. if you're far away and dont have a lot of jumps then you dont really have much choice but using hammer gives you significant RCO lag and you'll have to plan accordingly.
against most characters you can simply recover high and land wherever and you're good or recover low and go for the edge. From there kirby has a lot of ledge drop options so just be patient and look for an opening to get back on stage and it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Against though theres a lot more things to be wary of. For mk you will first want to strike to/counterpick either battlefield or smashville. These two stages allow you to retain the option of recovering underneath the stage and grabbing the edge on the other side (experiment how many jumps you'll need for different scenarios)
. If you are going low and mk chases you off stage then this is what you'll want to do because mk can't chase you because his lateral movement isn't strong enough, and if he tries anyway you can just bair him and laugh. If you recover low and mk doesnt chase you then just go for the edge. Kirby does not have a means of auto grabbing the edge so you want to space your jump where your head doesn't stick out much. Sometimes mk will let you commit to jumping up to the edge (or maybe you dont have enough jumps/aren't on a stage that allows you to go under and around). If he mis-spaces the dair then you can respond with a uair but for the most part you just need that trigger finger ready to tech the stage when he dairs you. One tech jump and you're home free.
If you have his power you can just pick a good time to tornado back on stage LOL
If you are recovering mid height you have to react constantly to mk's positioning or you will get hit and die early to a shuttle loop and feel very bad. Here if he chases you you have a bit more ability to box back with fair/bair and hammer. Avoid committing to an airdodge and instead rely on your lateral movement to avoid his attacks.
If you recover high you can get back above stage pretty reliably and if you're on a stage like smashville or battlefield then its slightly easier to land because you have more options of where to land. Even so you'll have to just out maneuver your way to not getting juggled over and over by the mk because you'll be low on jumps. If mk chases after you while you are jumping straight up then he wil more than likely go for a shuttle loop so again just react to the spacing for that. If your reaction time is good enough then you can airdodge the up b and you're home free, but i find it to be safer to just avoid scenarios where you are at risk of getting shuttle looped altogether than to challenge it with your reaction time.[/collapse]
[collapse="What is the Gonzo Combo?"]Gonzo Combo is the traditional fthrow -> uair -> utilt -> bair combo. Technically you can DI up and away to avoid eating the utilt after the uair but there are other options you can do out of the uair (jump uair, dash grab, up angled forward tilt* [this one im especially fond of]) so you have all your options covered. Sometimes your opponent will DI to avoid one of your followups in which case the Gonzo Combo may become applicable again.[/collapse]
[collapse="Is Kirby's Pivot Grab as good as it looked when my master used it on me in Kirby dittos?"] probably. kirby's pivot grab is insane.[/collapse]
[collapse="Also, how often do you F-air?"]Fair has a lot of applications! there's 3 hits to it and not a lot of lag on the last one so you can use it to shield poke people by chipping away the first two hits and stabbing on the third, or if they're shielding on a platform or something and its not a character you can force a jab lock on (like or someone) then fair will reliably hit them by having the first hit or second hit knock the person off the platform and then the third hit will connect. Additionally its a solid aerial just to use for wall of pains because the move chains into itself at a lot of percents. If you're using it just outright to hit someone in the air then you're probably better off using uair or bair because those two moves generally allow you to space yourself in a position that is more difficult for your opponent to counter-hit you[/collapse]
[collapse="why did you choose to use white kirby?"]I initially took gray because white is the color i default to when im picking a skin i like on a character.
This decision was reinforced by red and pink already having been "taken" by chu and mogx respectively, yellow looking like a kirby that was pissed on, the green clashes with his feet a bit too much for me, and the blue was just kinda eh [/collapse]
[collapse="what's the best thing you can do against top level peach mains?"]I played him a couple times at LSC and sometimes on wifi when im not at college! Against peach it's important to not rely on any dodge mech. Spotdodging, rolling, airdodging will not work against peach, like, ever. She also has obscene shield pressure so if she's above you and coming down to attack don't rely on shielding until the float is burned because she'll just eat it for breakfast. Other than that if you play technically you can punish a lot of things oos (after the float of course!) with grabs and bair and utilt. If you want to juggle her just avoid the nair and outspace the dair and juggling is pretty easy. If she loses both her double jump and her float then she should never ****ing touch the ground again until she dies. Her airdodge is sooo bad that if you just use spaced bairs and uairs she cant do **** about it and if she has to land on stage then that is a free fsmash every ****ing time. If peach is on the edge she will always go for the edge jump -> aerial. Maybe not immediately, but eventually that will be the option peach picks, so just be patient and keep up a bair wall and you can punish it.
Again, because of peach's ****ty airdodge, wall of pains work very well against her. If she's floating and is close enough to you while still being diagonal (as in out of her dair range but within her fair range if she dropped her float and then faired) then you can jump up and try and bair her and if you connect then that's another 3 or 4 bairs that you get pretty much for free.
On the ground she'll throw a **** load of turnips. Just dodge them. Don't shield them and don't roll or spotdodge to avoid them. Just physically move out of the way as you approach peach. Do this and dont be hasty when you run in and there really isnt too much peach can do to you. You win most boxing trades because jab is always safe and the reward for kirby's grounded options (grab/utilt) are much stronger than peach's rewards (dsmash? grab? ftilt to kill at like 180%? oh no sooo scary).
Also like you probably saw in the video try and grab her stitchies if you can . Birthday hammers are also really strong but those are more read based and hammer is not one of my preferred moves on kirby but if you can get the read for them they really kill peach early.
Ban FD. Strike to smashville or battlefield. Platforms are your friend. [/collapse]
[collapse="Do you have any tips for Diddy Kong?"]For diddy kong it's just most important to have strong spacing. If you can grab a banana for yourself you can do spaced z drop backairs at max range without any drift towards diddy and its pretty safe. pick up the naner and just keep pressuring him like this to the edge of the stage and when you get him there you can start looking for where you can start up a combo. Diddy's recovery isn't particularly good either so if you ever see him go low after having exhausted his main mixup options then feel free to fast fall dair for a free kill. if he side b's then again what's important is that you know your spacing to not get hit by the stupid flip kick and instead get a bair or a hammer on him. Practice a lot with naners! It's important you have a feel for where you can catch them and kirby's throwing arc. If there's a banana on the ground a cool trick you can do is dash attack leading up to the banana without actually trying to grab it. Kirby slows down as he dash attacks so he won't actually trigger the trip which can catch diddy if he's going for the naner too.
This matchup really isn't too bad it's just not getting flustered when he has banana control and finding your way in when you can. When his wall is up just do your best to bait the naner throw and shield it and jump and catch it and then do w/e with it. Don't just throw the naner at him without a purpose though because that puts you back at square one.[/collapse]
[collapse="Do you have any tips for Lucario?"]I actually consider lucario one of my best matchups and my set vs pitbull i feel is very indicative of how the matchup should be played
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VgFx...f4FUAAAAAAAAAA
^^ watch that
to deal with its really just not getting predictable and having good spacing. If you can get an advantage and force him to approach you then thats good because that really hurts lucario's options. Lucarios in general like to roll so always take the time when you're spacing bairs to see if they roll or not. If they do then be ready to abuse the bad habit and if they don't then just its important to know the fsmash hitbox range and startup and when you can get a backair in and when you can't. Kirby destroys lucario offstage as long as you again dont mess up the spacing so when you hit him off be prepared to edgeguard him til his stock is gone. When you're juggling him you want to be a little diagonal of him so he can't dair you while still keeping your ability to maneuver and land bair or uair or w/e you want to use.
Don't get predictable with your landings or you'll eat an AS. Don't roll in this matchup because you really dont need it. Always be cautious when the aura builds up and if that requires you to be extra campy then so be it. It's worth it if you don't die early from some retardedly powerful attack. [/collapse]
[collapse="How do you beat Snake?"]umm for snake i personally like to play it super campy because if you get him to approach you then the matchup becomes 10x easier. With practice it isn't difficult to dodge all his projectiles and shenanigans and i guarantee you eventually he'll either blow himself up just once or try and swat you out the air which you must always be ready for.
if you do have to approach him though then try and avoid doing it on the ground. unless you have a strong read on a ftilt he just has more options that do more damage to you. if he's cooking nades then you can hover near him (outside of utilt range of course!) and he'll either roll away from the nade or sit in shield. if he's a roller then just pick up on the trend and drop down with a uair > utilt > bair > stuff or even just bair > grab (all depending on percents). if he likes to sit in shield then you can wait for the shield to get a lil low and then drop down and time it with a nearby nade or something to poke with dair and get a follow up out of it. When you hit snakes off stage and they do double jump -> cypher straight up then you know they're going to try and ff nair you so make sure you have the spacing down for that and then you can bair in between some of the hits.
If you ever have a chance to inhale him out of cypher then take it. It works the same as a grab release if you let him break out himself, which most of the time will be a free stock. Otherwise, hammer, bair, and uair all work for hitting through his cypher. If you inhale on stage and opt to take his power, then you can camp him pretty hard. Planking nades is pretty strong and if you have port priority you can always keep the look out for the omnigay. Omnigays sound really gimmicky and whatnot but ive landed at least 1 in tournament against every snake ive played over time. Free stocks are free stocks.
For kills you're looking for gimps, fsmash/dsmash when hes landing, uairs if you follow him up as he cyphers and if hes at a reasonably high percent, or desperate bairs if he starts going snake status and never dying.
Other than that you just have to space according to his attacks. His tilts as we all know are pretty ridiculous (when you're in kill %, do not attempt doing anything in his uptilt range. (You will get hit and cry)
As usual, turbo jab + dash attack are good for dealing with spotdodges, although you have to know when to cut out the turbo jab because if you hold it for too long then snake can get a ftilt out of it. The very last thing you need to note is figuring out when the snake player opts to dash attack. That move is wonky and hits kirby at weird times so you have to catch onto that pattern and then you can go in and deal with it effectively.
At risk of letting more people see my dog **** performance in games 2 and 3, this is the general idea of how i think : should be played
falln vs havok
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU4gVzsQZgE[/collapse]
[collapse="How do you beat Marth?"]for marth i have another video that is very indicative of the matchup
falln vs mikehaze
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WctGt8tMDZw
if marth goes into the air at all that is your cue to dash in/under him and shield. If you run far enough there is really not much marth can do about it so you can pick up easy grabs out of that. Once you pop marth into the air you can really go to town on the uairs and bairs if you keep diagonal spacing so you're always slightly below him while horizontal so your moves still connect but his takes a bit of time to reach you. Rolling behind marth very occasionally works, but i wouldn't recommend using it a lot because marth can take a step back and turn around dancing blade which covers a lot of options. Similarly, you dont really want to spotdodge because those are also very punishable by dancing blades.
Killing is pretty straight forward. Just fsmash a landing or land a solid bair or even a dair gimp. If marth isn't in the perfect autocancellable range to snap his up b onto the edge then you can actually fsmash it for a kill (that's in the video too).
If marth sits still and waits for you to come to him then you really just want to bait a reaction or just sit and be patient until you have a solid read and then going in. Things have to be impeccably spaced when approaching marth as kirby because they have similar ranges. Don't get scared into airdodging if he gets you into the air; just fly a way and reset the situation.
Actually just taking your time in general vs marth really works wonders. The last thing you want to do is just keep running in like the charge of the light brigade cuz then you'll just keep getting hit til you die.
luckily kirby is pretty small and annoying to try and attack as marth so his main source of damage (assuming you're not putting yourself in really punishable situations) is going to be fair and dancing blades. This also means it's quite difficult for marth to land a kill on you because his main killing moves in this matchups are somewhat slow and not in areas where you would be positioning yourself in the first place.
Also don't go for inhales. Another thing you can see in the video is that they dont work LOL [/collapse]
[collapse="How do you finish off an annoying Yoshi?"]killing yoshi is just being patient. as long as you're not throwing out smashes he can't do much to you, so just play safe and space yourself until you get a read on a landing or airdodge of some sort and then just dsmash/usmash/fsmash/bair depending on what's most applicable. typical yoshi gimps work too like inhaling him after he's used his second jump and then forcing him offstage but i'm interpreting this question as killing a yoshi at high %.
this is also a reason why i prefer battlefield to most stages because if worst comes to worst you still have the option to uthrow for the kill.
if you're going for a spotdodge punish on yoshi then you really want to go for moves that linger. dsmash is the most optimal choice in this regard but it's somewhat awkward to get yourself set up in a position to dsmash and then expect the yoshi to spot dodge, whereas fsmash can be used from slightly further away and usmash has the option of dash -> hold usmash and wait for the spotdodge -> release for kill.
at the higher percents, dair also has a tendency to pop characters back up into the air slightly instead of out to the sides, so if this happens it's a lot more reliable to dair -> fsmash or dair -> dsmash. that's not specific to yoshi either. it's pretty universal. [/collapse]
[collapse="How do you play against ROB?"]there are a couple annoying things to ROB. the first is that he can fair in between a lot of combos and it just comes out really fast in general so you always have to be prepared for that. he has pretty bad diagonal blind spots due to how slow his nair is, so when you pop him into the air you want to abuse that spacing with your uair.
learn to DI the dsmash (or just shield it and punish). if you get caught in a spotdodge battle with him and you're not confident on the read then you can just hold jab and get the guaranteed damage.
don't roll into him. don't airdodge into him. dont walk into his nair bair fsmash or usmash and he will be unable to kill you until like 170%. also try to avoid being predictable with your approaches because rob's tilts are an effective walling tool. like with most characters, the key is just spacing + patience.
rob's uair is a very strong anti-air. don't challenge it with dair until it's over.
if you inhale rob and he knows he can dair, then he'll try to do that if you take his power. if he does this then you can starshot and run for a usmash, but if he does dair and drift away then its unpunishable. if you really really want the power then what you can do is inhale and walk off stage and once you hear the opponent mashing then you take the power.
wait for the landings and fsmash. that's how you kill rob. bair stales awfully in this matchup and he'll live for a long time if you don't get a smash (or hammer! don't forget about air hammers too!)[/collapse]
) that doesnt push them out that far can let you utilt. Those ones are the guaranteed ones.
