Backup characters to Link?

[Drexel]

I have gotten pretty good with Link, but I feel like I should pickup another character(s) who can deal with what Link struggles with. Which characters would fit as to what I am looking for?

 

[DarkDeity15]

Link by himself is great against most characters. I have a poket Marth. He's great against spacies, Shiek and Falcon, which Link has some trouble with. I'll need to look more into his matchups though. He's pretty easy to pick up, too.

 

[NickRiddle]

Mewtwo .

 

[GoldHazard]

Mewtwo .

Because Woop.

I run both fox/falco as secondaries on PM since I've been playing them for years on melee, but spacies aren't for everyone and take a good chunk of time to learn. Link is good pretty much on his own, but if you need a secondary, Nick pretty much said it. Mewtwo is pretty solid at the moment. Watch Emukiller play him and study him constantly so you can take advantage of everything the character has to offer while maintaining a "high" speed of play with mewtwo. He can be rather fast if you work with him a bit. The main thing link struggles with is getting death gripped by combo heavy characters since he's the perfect weight to just completely abuse. If Mewtwo isn't your bag, just experiment with the roster and find a character that suits your tastes.

 

[Drexel]

Because Woop.

I run both fox/falco as secondaries on PM since I've been playing them for years on melee, but spacies aren't for everyone and take a good chunk of time to learn. Link is good pretty much on his own, but if you need a secondary, Nick pretty much said it. Mewtwo is pretty solid at the moment. Watch Emukiller play him and study him constantly so you can take advantage of everything the character has to offer while maintaining a "high" speed of play with mewtwo. He can be rather fast if you work with him a bit. The main thing link struggles with is getting death gripped by combo heavy characters since he's the perfect weight to just completely abuse. If Mewtwo isn't your bag, just experiment with the roster and find a character that suits your tastes.

Well, Mewtwo was my character of choice when I was playing Melee casually and I did try him in PM. I really like what he has. But later on in Melee I started using Fox/Falco, the first I now main in Melee because of you know why. As for characters on the roster I like/tried, so far after experimenting with 10 characters I have Lucario, Ivysaur and Ganon as potential secondaries along with Mewtwo. Would any of those first three also work to go along with Mewtwo?

 

[GoldHazard]

Out of those, my personal choice would probably be lucario, simply because of his speed and decent combo game. He still gets juggled fairly easily though. I'm not very partial to ivysaur, and ganon, although powerful is slow and fairly easy to punish for simple mistakes.

That's just an opinion though. Keep experimenting. I think hylian seconds lucario though, so it could be beneficial to speak with him as he probably knows more about the character than myself.

 

[Drexel]

Out of those, my personal choice would probably be lucario, simply because of his speed and decent combo game. He still gets juggled fairly easily though. I'm not very partial to ivysaur, and ganon, although powerful is slow and fairly easy to punish for simple mistakes.

That's just an opinion though. Keep experimenting. I think hylian seconds lucario though, so it could be beneficial to speak with him as he probably knows more about the character than myself.

Well, I am also learning Diddy Kong in Brawl so maybe he could be considered as a secondary? Lucario is good but I'm not quite as comfortable with him as some of the other characters I like. When I finish my character search, I can post a list of who I like and maybe then you guys could help me select from those.

Hylian? Forgive me for being kind of uninformed but who is he?

 

[Deleted member]

Link has a hard time with peeling enemies off of him, so a good secondary choice would be a character that can do this easily. Fox, marth, sheik and MK are some of the stronger choices. Falco is a great secondary because Link and Falco share the same kind of lock down zoning gameplay.

 

[menotyou135]

Link by himself is great against most characters. I have a poket Marth. He's great against spacies, Shiek and Falcon, which Link has some trouble with. I'll need to look more into his matchups though. He's pretty easy to pick up, too.

Marth is good against Sheik? No. Better than link against sheik? Yes/maybe. Marth sheik has always been a bad matchup for marth, and it is the only character marth has a disadvantage against.

 

[DarkDeity15]

Marth is good against Sheik? No. Better than link against sheik? Yes/maybe. Marth sheik has always been a bad matchup for marth, and it is the only character marth has a disadvantage against.

I see. Thanks for saying something. I'll need to look into his matchups more, as I said before.

 

[menotyou135]

I see. Thanks for saying something. I'll need to look into his matchups more, as I said before.

Yeah, if the sheik/marth matchup weren't as bad for marth as it is, then marth would probably be 3rd on the tier list in melee. The biggest reason he is lower is because he gets stomped by a good shiek.

Granted, shiek is nerfed in PM with the lack of guaranteed Dthrow chaingrab, so it isn't as bad as melee.

 

[Drexel]

Okay I finally got around to playing around with each character and here are my candidates for secondary choices:

Roy
Wolf
Ice Climbers
R.O.B
Fox
Mewtwo
Kirby
Squirtle
Charizard
Lucas
Mario

Which ones would work best to give me the best advantage in match-ups?

 

[A_Phoenix_Down]

Personally, I'd go with Ike. I use Link because he's my favorite character in Nintendo but he happens to be a pretty all round character. I tend to use a more balanced character in any game I play with a powerhouse backup to compensate and change things up.

But out of your list? Charizard or Roy

 

[menotyou135]

Fox doesn't really have disadvantageous matchups. His worst are marth, roy, and lucas (I think). Link deals well with the FE boys so you don't have to worry about that. Idk how link matches with lucas.

 

[Heero Yuy]

I definitely think Falco is the best choice of a secondary in P:M. Falco does amazing against Link's hard matchups like Marth, Sheik (though I personally love this matchup as Link), Falcon, and other spacies. Falco has a solid ground game which complement's Link's aerial game as well. Plus both characters have easy neutral games and great zoning ability. I don't use Falco however because I'm just too used to Melee Falco, but we'll see how 3.5 turns out.

Mewtwo is also a great choice because he's arguably the best in the game now.

However just note there are two paths you can take:

1. Which character outside of Link am I most comfortable with?
2. Which character handles Link's bad matchups the best?

I lean towards 1 but it's up to you.

 

[menotyou135]

Link shouldn't have a hard matchup against marth on anything but a super small stage. He can zone out marth better than any other character including mario. If you don't spam projectiles against marth it can be hard, but the boomerang and bombs make this matchup elementary. You can rack up so much damage and marth can't approach. You can automatically shut down marth's greatest asset: His spacing game.

 

[Heero Yuy]

There's a difference between Marths and good Marths. Good Marths will just Fair all the projectiles away like swatting flies. Also Marths who do know the matchup will be very aggressive. He can put pressure on Link without too much trouble in addition to spacing the projectiles properly. Marth's punishes on Link tend to be harder than vise-versa due to Link's size and weight. I can agree that Link is one of the best as zoning out Marth, but it still doesn't favor him.

Even matchup or 55:45 Marth if you ask me.

Sheik is an underrated matchup for Link which I actually think favors Link. However any more discussion about this should be in the matchup thread.

 

[J3f]

Working on a Back up Kirby right now. Kirby's able to dictate the pace of a match like Link does, but without using projectiles. He's also harder to combo and has god like recovery.

One of the biggest reasons I'm going with Kirby is because he bucks the meta. I don't think Falco/Fox are good counter picks because everyone is already prepared to deal with them, especially Fox mains. Picking Space Animals to deal with Link's bad match ups is trying to beat someone at their own game.

 

[JesteRace]

It really depends on what you personally struggle with. Going just on paper, Link barely even has bad matchups(I don't think he has anything worse than 40:60. MAYBE 35:65). And I think the ones that are bad are almost all either covered by or at least evened out by Mario. But, again, it depends on the matchups you're comfortable with. Some Links hate Falcon, I personally have no problem with him. I hate Kirby, but my Luigi handles the matchup fine. It just takes time to figure out which of your secondaries covers your Link's struggles best.