Bad Charizard Matchups (first impressions)

[YeahVeryeah]

Yeah I do well against sheik. You can get combod, but you can't get killed. Remember that unless it's FULLY charged, you can flare blitz through needles.

 

[GroundZero996]

Shieldgrab them. I don't think either of those two characters has a good matchup against Charizard.

Unless they do unsafe moves on your shield you can't really shield grab them. A good bit of their strong move push you too far away and most of the weak moves or strong moves that don't push you away have too quick a follow up for you to shield grab between. C.Falcons UAir, Bair, and Nair are all pretty safe on shield. I'm not sure for Shiek because most of the ones I've met online just space me out with Needles and try to punish Flare Blitz approaches or combo Utilts.

PK Thunder? More like FREE FLARE BLITZ

If they do it while you are airborne though it's pretty hard to deal with.

 

[underpowered]

Shieldgrab them. I don't think either of those two characters has a good matchup against Charizard.

I guess it's just because I'm bad, I don't feel like Zard's grab range is anything to write home about.

 

[Knee Smasher]

Charizard has one of, if not the longest-ranged non-tether grab in the game.

 

[The Real Gamer]

IMO these are the toughest MUs in the game for Zard atm. All of them can either effectively keep you out with their zoning or just flat out destroy you in neutral... or both.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

I think he has real problems with as well.

 

[The Real Gamer]

I honestly keep forgetting the Miis even exist sometimes...

Have yet to face a single one in a 1 v 1 setting.

 

[Knee Smasher]

IMO these are the toughest MUs in the game for Zard atm. All of them can either effectively keep you out with their zoning or just flat out destroy you in neutral... or both.

King Dedede is far tougher than any of those matchups, and Charizard VS. Greninja is definitely in Charizard's favor.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Charizard has one of, if not the longest-ranged non-tether grab in the game.

I cant confirm this right now, if it is him or D3, but yeah his grab range is bigger than most.

~

I don't think Sheik might be a bad MU actually, I've punished needles with Flare Blitz for kills at 80% and other ridiculousness. She has good gimps, I don't think she can gimp Zard consistently unless he is below stage level. She can't kill as well either, so Zard has a lot going for him in this.

Him beating her? I'm not certain of that. She still is fast and really good at unleashing damage, but we surprisingly have a lot going for us in this.

If we're scared of top tier characters Rosalina is the scariest of them all. Even when you learn her gimmicks, she still wrecks us.

Yoshi is also bad for us on a glance. He literally has so much power in all those areas were I don't think we cane exploit anything notable.

I play every Mii, Zard beats them all imo. Gunner might seem obnoxious that is really all he has at a distance.

Mac might be even with us actually, he does the same bogus super armor trades we do and has a very solid ground game. Yes we can exploit it, but a good little Mac is going to be hard to force into that position. The easy ones on For Glory are simple to edge-guard and beat.

 

[Knee Smasher]

Charizard VS. Rosalina is not too bad for Charizard actually. Rosalina is extremely light and a huge target, while Charizard's attacks hit extraordinarily hard. Out of the countless Rosalina I have fought as Charizard, only one has ever been a challenge for me.

 

[The Real Gamer]

How exactly is D3 considered a tougher MU than say... Yoshi or ZSS? Sure he gets more off of his grabs, has longer range, and has some nice traps with his Gordos but other than that I don't find him particularly threatening especially when he's in the air.

As the meta develops and people get used to Flare Blitz I don't see Zard beating Sheik simply because of how dominant she is in neutral. Smart Sheik players will purposefully try to bait out a Flare Blitz with needle harassment (people will stop fully charging them) which means Zard is forced to approach. Although she lacks Zard's range and power she more than makes up for it with her faster and safer options that lead to more damage output at lower %s. It just feels like a MU where the Zard player will have to legitimately outplay the opponent throughout the match and consistently make good reads since Sheik seems to have a solid answer to just about everything Zard can throw at her. Luckily she does have trouble landing the killing blow without a good read but is that enough to make the MU even? We'll have to see.

If customs are on I don't think RosaLuma is nearly as scary thanks to DR. As most of you probably already know it crosses up her shield and drags Luma offstage which makes it one of the strongest anti-Luma tools in the game. Also Rosa can't use Luma to zone since a SH DR will go straight over Luma's head and connect with Rosa since she's so tall. If she tries to send her Luma out and attack carelessly or start spamming Star Bits Zard can easily punish her for it with a good reaction/read. Combine this with Flamethrower, good ground speed, Rock Smash, and some nice poking tools in ftilt/dtilt and I feel like Zard is one of the better characters at dealing with RosaLuma's shenanigans. Her weight also makes her susceptible to getting KOed early. By no means an easy MU but I feel like Zard has the tools to make things difficult for her.

Greninja is more of a personal problem for me I'll admit. I've played against quite a few good Greninjas and I was trounced every time. Quite a few people think this is a good MU for Zard so I think I might be approaching the MU the wrong way. Any advice here would be much appreciated.

 

[Jexulus]

As someone who's fought a competent D3 multiple times (as in, they know how to use what he has very effectively), Charizard is not at a disadvantage when fighting him so long as you know what they're going to do. If you can predict what Dedede will do in a particular situation, Charizard is more than capable of taking him on. Just watch out for D3's rapid-jab attack, since Charizard can't escape from it.

 

[Coffee™]

IMO these are the toughest MUs in the game for Zard atm. All of them can either effectively keep you out with their zoning or just flat out destroy you in neutral... or both.

Out of these guys I can only see Zard having problems with Shiek, ZSS, Sonic and Greninja. All the others are definitely more than manageable.

 

[YeahVeryeah]

Mega mans projectiles can stop flare blitz. Like, metal disc plus lemons will stop it. However. We can charicide then if they sticky bomb us using our seismic toss. So even if we lose that matchup we win the style game.

 

[The Real Gamer]

Out of these guys I can only see Zard having problems with Shiek, ZSS, Sonic and Greninja. All the others are definitely more than manageable.

I disagree. Both Megaman and Villager flat out dominate Zard from mid to long range and have reliable answers to get out of CQC.

Yoshi is just flat out better than Zard in a lot of ways.

 

[Coffee™]

I disagree. Both Megaman and Villager flat out dominate Zard from mid to long range and have reliable answers to get out of CQC.

Yoshi is just flat out better than Zard in a lot of ways.

Megaman is annoying to approach but it's quite doable as long as you're patient. You're gonna get hit by a few projectiles here and there, because Zard's a fatass but for the most part Zard doesn't have a ridiculously hard time getting in on Megaman. Once there Zard is a lot better at CQC and Rush Coil gets predictable.

Villager I'm unsure as to why you think Zard has a hard matchup with him. Zard has to slow down a bit to deal with Villagers' playstyle but I don't see anything notably advantageous for Villager.

As for Yoshi I don't disagree with him being better at a ton of stuff. I just don't get what makes him so bad for Zard. I think Pikachu is worse than Yoshi tbh.

 

[RadianB]

For those struggling against Villager, Flamethrower completely messes him up and should be your main move against him especially when edge guarding. None of Villagers projectiles can go through Flamethrower.
Also against Mega Man, when he throws a metal blade use a short hop air dodge cancel to catch it. Charizard is really good at short hopping air dodge cancelling.

 

[GroundZero996]

How exactly is D3 considered a tougher MU than say... Yoshi or ZSS? Sure he gets more off of his grabs, has longer range, and has some nice traps with his Gordos but other than that I don't find him particularly threatening especially when he's in the air.

You can never get in on him and he's so hard to kill. You can't even spike him reliably.

As the meta develops and people get used to Flare Blitz I don't see Zard beating Sheik simply because of how dominant she is in neutral. Smart Sheik players will purposefully try to bait out a Flare Blitz with needle harassment (people will stop fully charging them) which means Zard is forced to approach. Although she lacks Zard's range and power she more than makes up for it with her faster and safer options that lead to more damage output at lower %s. It just feels like a MU where the Zard player will have to legitimately outplay the opponent throughout the match and consistently make good reads since Sheik seems to have a solid answer to just about everything Zard can throw at her. Luckily she does have trouble landing the killing blow without a good read but is that enough to make the MU even? We'll have to see.

Not only that but you can use well timed Rock Smashes to extend you life way past what it should be.

 

[ripa9]

Yoshi is just flat out better than Zard in a lot of ways.

As is many other characters that are less laggier and have just as strong moves/just as long range. And that's why you simply don't play as charizard. Well, maybe if you like challeging and beating noobs, as in, weaker players.

 

[The Real Gamer]

As is many other characters that are less laggier and have just as strong moves/just as long range. And that's why you simply don't play as charizard. Well, maybe if you like challeging and beating noobs, as in, weaker players.

You mean to tell me there are multiple characters that are... Better than Charizard?!?! *gasp* We should all just use Diddy/ZSS/Rosaluma and call it day.

 

[GroundZero996]

As is many other characters that are less laggier and have just as strong moves/just as long range. And that's why you simply don't play as charizard. Well, maybe if you like challeging and beating noobs, as in, weaker players.

Eh, Charizard has his strengths. Playing the top tier all the time is boring, and besides there are just so many Characters in Sm4sh that saying a character is bad feels a little silly. If Charizard has even one amazing MU against the higher tiers he's worth learning to "snipe" that character.

 

[-LzR-]

Competitively it's pretty much ******** to play anything else but the top3 characters anyways. The game has 49 so it's safe to say the majority are willing to go for it with a worse character.
I strongly believe Charizard to be among the worst 10 characters, not because he is ****ty, but because I feel other characters simply do similar stuff but better. His thing is super armor and almost always winning trades. Even so, I'm going to play Charizard and I'm going kick ass with it.

 

[Blade1125]

My thoughts on Rosalina MU.

First I want to get this off my chest. Playing a Rosalina is serious up-hill battle for Charizard.

I've logged over several hundreds of matches on the 3DS with Charizard and I love using this character to death, he does have many weaknesses.

While my last few Rosalina matches in For Glory, I have won, it feels like I could have easily lost. (Flare Blitz'd and Rosalina dodged the wrong way which made me squeak out a win.)

Some strategies I have been using against Rosalina:

FB - while very risky at times, one FB is all you need to knock Luma out of the battlefield. Once you get punished you by Rosalina, you'll have over 10 seconds to make some magic happen if not you're back to square one. I hate having to resort to FB just to get rid of Luma, (if I can hit both her and the damn star, then of course it was well worth it.)

Rock Smash -I never seem to have a use for Rock Smash against her since the amount of rolling the player would do just seems ridiculos. Maybe as a recovery option as long as you don't make it very predictable.

Up-B (I don't know the name) only used for ledge recovering

Flame thrower- is a great move that helps tremendously in this match up. Only downside to this is if she rolls behind you and you get downsmashed. I believe it's the most importantly tool we have to deal with her approach.

My problems I run into when facing against her is her damn rolling, downsmash, rolling, downsmash, spot dodge, downsmash, and A mashing. All of this on-top of having that stupid star nearby makes me wrack up way too much damage before I can lay anything on her.

Also a problem I'm facing is when Luma is out of the field, I tend to choke up and I know what Rosalina is going to do. I just can't hit her for the life of me, and then the star spawns again.

Hopefully I can record some videos and post them online, but this all I have for now. More experience to come.

 

[GroundZero996]

Competitively it's pretty much ******** to play anything else but the top3 characters anyways. The game has 49 so it's safe to say the majority are willing to go for it with a worse character.
I strongly believe Charizard to be among the worst 10 characters, not because he is ****ty, but because I feel other characters simply do similar stuff but better. His thing is super armor and almost always winning trades. Even so, I'm going to play Charizard and I'm going kick *** with it.

I completely disagree. If anything players who use the slightly less popular characters at a really high level are going to do better because the top 3 will always be the most practiced and well known match ups. Not only that but this game is one where I don't see a solid "top 3" ever happening. Nintendo has already shown they are willing to patch, and unlike Brawl or Melee there's already so little difference between the top and bottom tiers. Add in customs and bam you have a metagame filled with tons of different characters throughout the life cycle of Sm4sh.

As for Charizard he could easily be a much bigger threat with just a few tweaks.

My thoughts on Rosalina MU.

First I want to get this off my chest. Playing a Rosalina is serious up-hill battle for Charizard.

I've logged over several hundreds of matches on the 3DS with Charizard and I love using this character to death, he does have many weaknesses.

While my last few Rosalina matches in For Glory, I have won, it feels like I could have easily lost. (Flare Blitz'd and Rosalina dodged the wrong way which made me squeak out a win.)

Some strategies I have been using against Rosalina:

FB - while very risky at times, one FB is all you need to knock Luma out of the battlefield. Once you get punished you by Rosalina, you'll have over 10 seconds to make some magic happen if not you're back to square one. I hate having to resort to FB just to get rid of Luma, (if I can hit both her and the damn star, then of course it was well worth it.)

Rock Smash -I never seem to have a use for Rock Smash against her since the amount of rolling the player would do just seems ridiculos. Maybe as a recovery option as long as you don't make it very predictable.

Up-B (I don't know the name) only used for ledge recovering

Flame thrower- is a great move that helps tremendously in this match up. Only downside to this is if she rolls behind you and you get downsmashed. I believe it's the most importantly tool we have to deal with her approach.

My problems I run into when facing against her is her damn rolling, downsmash, rolling, downsmash, spot dodge, downsmash, and A mashing. All of this on-top of having that stupid star nearby makes me wrack up way too much damage before I can lay anything on her.

Also a problem I'm facing is when Luma is out of the field, I tend to choke up and I know what Rosalina is going to do. I just can't hit her for the life of me, and then the star spawns again.

Hopefully I can record some videos and post them online, but this all I have for now. More experience to come.

I wanted to point out that Fly (Charizard's UpB) is an excellent kill move, especially since it seems to have just a bit of armor during the startup.

The biggest battle against Rosaluma is dealing with her spacing. It's extremely hard to get in on her because her range is just absurd.

 

[Joshkip]

The biggest battle against Rosaluma is dealing with her spacing. It's extremely hard to get in on her because her range is just absurd.

I blame the fan service. The love for their waifu makes her strong!

 

[Coffee™]

Rosaluma vs Zard is easily in her favor if Zard isn't playing with Dragon Rush. That move alone makes the matchup way more manageable.

You can never get in on him and he's so hard to kill. You can't even spike him reliably.

Also, agreed on D3 being bad for Zard. The fact that Zard doesn't have any reliable way to knock away Gordos really hurts in a matchup where he already finds trouble approaching.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I cant confirm this right now, if it is him or D3, but yeah his grab range is bigger than most.

Dude, DDDs grab is BAD now. Charizard's standing grab is easily the best in the game though. It's noticeably better than most other grabs.

 

[-LzR-]

Dude, DDDs grab is BAD now. Charizard's standing grab is easily the best in the game though. It's noticeably better than most other grabs.

Agreed. Zards grab is not what it used to be but it's still amazing.
I actually consider D3 grab range to be terrible. I tried in training mode and you have to stand right next to them to grab them. It's like Ganon grab from brawl.

 

[The Real Gamer]

The fact that Zard doesn't have any reliable way to knock away Gordos really hurts in a matchup where he already finds trouble approaching.

Retreating Fair seems to knock them away just fine for me.

 

[Joshkip]

Retreating Fair seems to knock them away just fine for me.

What he said or just jab. It only takes 2% to bounce it back at him and Charizard's first jab does 3%.

 

[RadianB]

What he said or just jab. It only takes 2% to bounce it back at him and Charizard's first jab does 3%.

None stale Flamethrower knocks them back too.
Approaching Dedede with a jumping fresh Flamethrower is pretty effective.

 

[The Real Gamer]

Approaching a LOT of characters with a fresh flamethrower is a great option.

 

[Joshkip]

None stale Flamethrower knocks them back too.
Approaching Dedede with a jumping fresh Flamethrower is pretty effective.

Or you could have just said, "all of the above" since gordo is garbage now.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I actually consider D3 grab range to be terrible. I tried in training mode and you have to stand right next to them to grab them. It's like Ganon grab from brawl.

The majority of grabs are like this. Either that or they're bad for another reason. Charizard is one of the only character whose grabs AND throws are amazing. Diddy is the only other character I can think of.

 

[The Real Gamer]

Zard's throws are good but I'm not sure if I'd classify them as amazing. He doesn't get the guaranteed followups that quite a few other characters do.

 

[RadianB]

Or you could have just said, "all of the above" since gordo is garbage now.

They aren't garbage, they're still annoying. Especially when they use the slow ones to edge guard.

 

[-LzR-]

The majority of grabs are like this. Either that or they're bad for another reason. Charizard is one of the only character whose grabs AND throws are amazing. Diddy is the only other character I can think of.

I agree Zard has an amazing grab. However I don't agree with his throws being anything but decent. Uthrow is limited to 0% fair combos and those might not even work, Back and Forward throw are generic throw the opponent in a direction without much chance for followup and Dthrow is a crappy killmove with low damage.

 

[Knee Smasher]

I'd say Charizard's throws are amazing simply for two reasons:

1. Dthrow is a KO move, as you all know.
2. Fthrow and Bthrow are amazing simply because they throw the opponent off the stage, and Charizard has one of, if not the best edgeguarding game of all characters - even if Charizard does not prevent the opponent from ultimately returning to the stage, I find that a SIGNIFICANT amount of the damage Charizard typically deals to an opponent in order to get them within KO range comes from it throwing them off the stage before repeatedly attacking the opponent while they are trying to return to the stage, with a combination of Flamethrower, grabbing them and throwing them back off the stage as they climb or roll up from the ledge, hitting them back off the stage with Fair by reading a ledgejump, hitting them with Fair or Nair if they try to recover high, hitting them with an off-stage Fair, and shieldgrabbing them when they try to either attack Charizard as they get up from the ledge, or try to aerial attack it after ledgejumping.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

If you have throws that can kill your opponent then you have an amazing throw game. End of discussion.

 

[Coffee™]

Or you could have just said, "all of the above" since gordo is garbage now.

Yeah, I didn't realize it got changed. Been using mostly Jab to knock em' back now. Definitely helps but I'm still not a fan of the matchup.

Zard's throws are pretty good but I wouldn't exactly call them amazing. Really wish his up throw had some better uses though.