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Bowser MU discussion

Youngster Joey

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lets get straight to it. i personally dont think bowser has any mus worse than -2 but we dont need to get to that stuff just yet. so what character do you guys wanna discuss first? wario has his own thread so i guess we'll hold off on him. so any suggestions?

i would suggest naming the character you want and saying how you go about the mu.

sorry for the short bit of info. this is my first thread that i made and idk how to really start an mu thread. i hope this is a good start haha :p
 

geno

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I guess we can go classic and see how he's doing against his old rival Mario. Mario, to me, is probably one of the best in 2.5b. He's got it all: insane recovery, strong kill moves, good comboing options, etc. oh yeah, did I mention the cape?

In spite of all of this, I think Bowser is able to hold up pretty well against him. I feel like i can do pretty well throwing short hop fairs, dtilts, some grounded up b's. but Mario can just throw some fireballs for space, slide in with forward-a, do some utilts, and start a combo chain. Also, once you get off stage, it's pretty rough between the fireballs, cape, and general edge guarding.
All said, I personally think the mu goes slightly in Mario's favor. I'll see what other people have to say before I give out a number, hahaha.

Oh, and can you do that thing where you have all the mu's we've discussed listed in the op? Once we actually determine a general number I mean.
 

MegaGuy

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Mario is difficult in the same way as many others in that he combos Bowser hard. That being said, it's quite difficult for him to get in on our turtle tank due to Bowser's immense defense. Fireballs can be CC'd forever as far as I'm concerned, and FAir and Up-B stuff a lot of his approaches. I wouldn't recommend getting too aggressive in this MU, even if you have momentum. His combo-breaker NAir and stupid properties on his DAir make follow-ups from a cumbersome turtle even more difficult than usual. Most of our K.O.s are going to be outright kills, since going offstage against Mario's cape of despair is a foolhardy endeavor. Vice-versa, Mario going offstage against us is far less risky, especially if we've expended our second jump. Always recover high when possible.

That's all I really have to say. If I had to put a number to it, it'd be +1 Mario, but I can't say for certain.
 

Youngster Joey

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marios cape man -.- so if its so obvious he's gonna use it, then why dont we change direction on the control stick when recovering? will that point us in the right direction?

and yeah bowser can still outspace mario i think. the thing is nothing is safe on shield with bowser. i do worse against marios that spam cape than actually fight me. you can di marios combos a bit but nothing is worse than the cape. mario can try and camp i guess but i guess zoning is the way to go?

get mario backed against the ledge i guess and make him feel unsafe without actually having to hurt him. bowser is so big that mario cant really get away safely i dont think. CC marios combo starters and d tilt if he gets close i guess. up b if hes trying to approach and use it to grab the ledge. get up attack below 100% and you're pretty safe i think. mario is rough tho. of course he'll be. mario beats bowser in every game ;~;

and i just tried this on a CPU. idk how well it'll work with a human but i can CC marios up b. so when he's recovering low you can just d tilt him to death and if you mess up you can still d tilt. i think it covers the ledge grab too i think
 

MegaGuy

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marios cape man -.- so if its so obvious he's gonna use it, then why dont we change direction on the control stick when recovering? will that point us in the right direction?

and yeah bowser can still outspace mario i think. the thing is nothing is safe on shield with bowser. i do worse against marios that spam cape than actually fight me. you can di marios combos a bit but nothing is worse than the cape. mario can try and camp i guess but i guess zoning is the way to go?

get mario backed against the ledge i guess and make him feel unsafe without actually having to hurt him. bowser is so big that mario cant really get away safely i dont think. CC marios combo starters and d tilt if he gets close i guess. up b if hes trying to approach and use it to grab the ledge. get up attack below 100% and you're pretty safe i think. mario is rough tho. of course he'll be. mario beats bowser in every game ;~;

and i just tried this on a CPU. idk how well it'll work with a human but i can CC marios up b. so when he's recovering low you can just d tilt him to death and if you mess up you can still d tilt. i think it covers the ledge grab too i think


Mixing up your control stick input might work once or twice, but after that it becomes a guessing game on whether or not he even capes you, or lets you fall to your death, and even so it still redirects your momentum. I would recommend using Fire Breath against a campy Mario, the range is ridiculous, and you can stay mostly safe/unpredictable with Flame-cancelling. A final note: Up-B is your best friend in the world, don't forget that.

Also, for those who don't already know, Bowser's crawl armor ignores the knockback of moves that do 7% or less.
 

Ace55

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You outrange him by a huge amount, you CC everything except Fair which is slow enough to react to. I personally love down-b edgegaurding everybody Mario.

And yeah for the love of god recover high.
 

Youngster Joey

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so it doesnt really seem like we got much on mario. who are our best bowser players and have they gone up against the best marios yet? and who are the best marios?

lets talk about peach tho. theres peaches everywhere from what i see (on wifi at least) and its my most common mu and im sure it always will be.

so i go about peach by just playing so far. trying to bait an aerial but its always followed up with d smash which seems to just beat all of bowsers attacks. bowser gets combo'd hard by her too. the mu goes kinda even for me and then when i start winning the peach goes back to turnip camp. we cannot crouch cancel these. idk how to approach this because usually the peach ends up walling me except for above. i jump over to do something and she punishes. thats how my experience usually goes.

and it seems i get punished most from side b so i dont do it much anymore. but peach can also float over fire -.-
 

Ace55

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To be honest wifi is a horrible way to judge matchups, so much lag. I don't have that much experience vs Peach but her standard fair to dsmash shield pressure doesn't work nearly as well vs Bowser as usual. If she goes for Fair -> jabs just upB after the jabs. You outright beat her fair with yours and with down-b jumpcancel you can catch her pretty easily when she recovers high. If she's turnip camping (which she should be) you can punch them away (catching them doesn't help much with Bowser's bad item tosses) and gain space. If she is approaching with them you can intercept her with upB OoS either after the turnip or after the aerial on shield (see first part).
 

Youngster Joey

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actually ace i think peach could be the best wifi character too. but i cant really go to many tournaments because of my money situation. i wouldnt say its a horrible way to judge mu's since the better player still usually wins. and i dont feel PM lag is all that bad compared to brawl. at least it doesnt seem like it affects as much. it more depends on the player him/herself. like the opponent and your connection.

all my peach experience is wifi and i lose to peach hard and i do in fact feel some of it is wifi because of camping and not being able to react properly.
 

Ace55

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Like I said no offense but I think the difference is pretty huge. Absolute minimum lag is three frames which vs Peach could mean the difference between UpB'ing out of shield or getting ***** by dsmash.
 

MegaGuy

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I thought the minimum lag on Wifi was something like 7 or 8 frames. Regardless, I agree with most of what you said. In my mind, she can't really approach us safely, but we can't really approach her safely either. A small stage would most likely be an advantage for us. Honestly though, Peach isn't really my forte, so everything I've said should be taken with a grain of salt. I only know what both characters are capable of.
 

Ace55

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Hmm, I googled it because I really had no clue. According to smashwiki minimum is 3 frames.
 

Youngster Joey

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i also play on an hd tv so im always playing in lag. i think its 3 frames of lag. then theres the additional wifi. and now that im getting more technical im starting to notice the lag a lot more. so since the minimum is 3 frames on an hd and 3 frames on wifi does that mean i get 6 frames at least on wifi? :O

and this mu discussion just turned into bowser (or anyone) vs wifi
 

Ace55

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Agreed, let's talk about Bowser's matchup average. From my experience I feel like he outright loses to Fox, Falcon, Sheik, Zard, Wario, ZSS, possibly DK, possibly Mario, probably Ike. Not that any of those are unwinnable. But I feel like there are very few matchups Bowser wins once the opponent knows to play campy against him (Squirtle and Falco are the two exceptions I can think of, and Squirtle is whack).
 

MegaGuy

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Characters I believe solidly beat Bowser:


:fox: :falcomelee: :sheik: :falcon: :charizard: :snake:


Characters I believe possibly beat Bowser:
:zerosuitsamus: :ike: :mariomelee:



Even:
:warioc: :dk2:



Possible advantage:
:pikachu2: :wolf:

Solid advantage:

:dedede::ivysaur::toonlink: (:bowser2: :awesome:)




Unknown:
Everyone else. There's a few on here I'm not 100% on, but these are my impressions from my time with Bowser.
 

Youngster Joey

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I disagree with wario personally. But this is from a wifi stand point once again. But it's still my hardest mu I think. This is because everytime you're on the ground or tech, wario most of the time can jut side b and punish. If you tech or roll away while getting up you get hit with the stronger part of it.

Wario has stupid combos on bowser too I believe. Unless you guys know something I don't then I'd love to hear it. I know bowser should keep him out with spacing but all wario needs to do is not over commit and do his aerial wave dash away and back at us real quick and punish any of our attacks

This was directed towards megaguy. I agree with ace
 

Chaos_Blasta

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Having a lot of Mario experience, i can tell you that the only possible way to beat that guy is to avoid going on plain stages/stages with limited recovery options in general (FD, SV, GHZ). You absolutely need the possibility of being able to recover safely into a top platform without getting caped to your death trying to sweetspot or just recovering in general. It's worth noting, however, that with the proper momentum, Down B is a very safe way to recover, as you can grab the ledge backwards with it and be safe from caping.

It's true, Mario combos Bowser hard and for a few specific %s he can even chaingrab for a decent amount of time. Spacing out and crawling/PSing his fireballs to keep him from approaching and being a threat are things you must practice in this MU.

This thread is about all Bowser MUs though, so:

Fox absolutely wrecks Bowser. His worst MU in the entire cast, as long as the Fox plays properly and camps/baits you out well.

Sheik is rather similar, specially with how easy her grabs and tilts chain together and make your life miserable. Fair is an awful awful move and will get you killed very early on.

Link can be very painful, but the MU is eased somewhat if you can PS consistently. Even then, a good Link will learn to not throw projectiles at you but rather use them to block options and limit movement, and he can easily keep you in a combo all day with Grabs/Tilts/Aerials if you aren't careful.

The 4 MUs i mentioned above are the only ones i genuinely feel are very bad for Bowser. Some others like CF or Wolf are also hard but slighty more manageable, i feel.

When it comes to easy/positive MUs, I would say some stuff like GnW, DK or DDD (Bowser wrecks Bowser, just like Bowser wrecks almost any other big, heavy character.). Even Falco, since his speed is nowhere near as good as Fox's and one of his main approach methods are fairly easy to deal with when using crawl armor or PSing.

Btw, i've mentioned it many times but every Bowser player that wants to get better should master PSing, it's actually a much easier mechanic to perform in PM and it helps you in a lot of MUs that would otherwise be very painful because of projectiles.
 

Youngster Joey

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Characters i think solidly beat bowser
:diddy: :fox: :sheik: :sonic: :link2: :warioc: :peach: :snake::falcon::marthmelee:
Characters that might beat bowser
:mariomelee: :luigimelee: :falcomelee: :zeldamelee: :ganondorf: :pit:
Characters i think are even with bowser
:dk2: :squirtle: :wolf:
Characters i think bowser beats
:jigglypuff:

i have little to no experience with any other character to judge. i dont have experience with sonic but i assume its bad. i've seen what diddy can do and it looks like he can combo bowser forever. take this list lightly since for now all of my predictions are based on wifi. any character with a projectile suddenly gets better on wifi

and with jiggs i feel like she shouldnt ever beat bowser. dies incredibly early, gets outspaced hard. if she lands a rest we can usually come down and f smash right after. it just seems to me like we cant really lose it from my experience.

and when i say the character solidly beats us i mean they do beat us. maybe not hard but we dont win it.

when i say they might beat us it means i struggle but i feel like we can do something about it.

with squirtle i feel like he's a faster bowser for the most part and combos us but it doesnt take much for us to get the kill. although i think it might be pretty slightly in squirtles favor since we have to chase him around and he's small and hard to hit. feel free to criticize this
 

MegaGuy

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Sonic's not as bad as you'd think. Yeah, you'll take a lot of damage from lolololspindash but you can tank it with Crawl Armor and punish with Up B and the like. Not saying we win, but it's much more manageable than it is for, say, the space animals. Additionally, in the rare occasion you get to approach, Sonic's lackluster defense won't be much of a problem. Bowser's so well-equipped in P:M to deal with rushdown and shield pressure, and that's what makes me feel that this MU is far from unwinnable.

/2cents
 

geno

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Yeah, but even with all the little tricks, I feel like a halfway decent sonic still plows straight through everything I do as bowser. But, I just switch to other characters when I play against sonic.

As far as the spacies go, fox is a tough one, but I don't think Falco and wolf are all that bad. In comparison at least.
 

MegaGuy

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Yeah, the fact that you can Crawl Armor through Wolf's shine makes him much less intimidating. Of course the problem is that he can Side B cancel us when we're just standing there since Bowser's a big fatty. Nonetheless, Wolf's probably the easiest of the spacies to deal with as Bowser, at least from what I can tell.
 

Youngster Joey

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so i just fought a sonic and a diddy kong. i was able to bring the sonic to last stock both games even though it was my first time with the mu. i lost tho. those were game 1 and 3. he went diddy game 2 and i 3 stocked it. he seems to beat a lot of good people on the ladder too but idk how good the diddy was. so idk if diddy is as bad as sonic or if it wasnt as experienced. whats the diddy mu supposed to be like? i always thought it was combo city on bowser
 

geno

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I think the Bowser/Diddly matchup goes in Bowser's favor, but I've only ever played one good Diddy. I feel like our brute force beats out Diddy's tricky agility. Plus Diddy is easy to edge guard with Bowser's ledge attack
 

MegaGuy

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Edgeguarding Diddy is pretty free. It's difficult for him to sweetspot due to the fact that the distance his Up B covers is always different. Oh, and in case you didn't know, you can crawl over bananas without tripping. Pretty demoralizing if you ask me :awesome:
 

Youngster Joey

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Okay um wow. Crawling over bananas is gonna be my new thing XD even if its pointless I'm just gonna do it to show them. All this time I thought bowser just got destroyed by everything :p
 

geno

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So what do you guys think? Matchup goes 95:5 Bowser's favor due to ability to crawl over bananas?
 

MegaGuy

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Bananas are but stepping stones in the path of King Koopa's destruction.

But on the real, I think we can keep Diddy out pretty well, as we can with most opponents. His projectile game is negligible due to CA and being able to simply swat peanuts away with FAir. I'd say +1 us, but I could be persuaded to say even if there's something I'm not seeing.
 

Youngster Joey

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Seems good enough. What about the pk kids? When I face a good ness I usually lose but an average ness I win pretty hard. But then again idk the mu. And I never played a Lucas before
 

MegaGuy

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CC 4evr. Seriously, you ignore Ness' FAir, PK Fire, Dash attack, U/DTilt, jab combo, and other stuff. BUT WAIT, there's more! Lucas' NAIR, PKT2, AND PSI MAGNET all lose to that adorable crawl. In terms of actually fighting, we have a massive range advantage, but with their horizontal and vertical mobility, it can be hard to catch the buggers. (Not like chasing people around is anything new to Bowser.. Do some cardio, dammit!) Kind of want to do some testing with Flame Breath and PKT2, though I doubt it stops it, **** has CRAZY priority. On the offensive side, Flame cancels and grounded Klaw could work as approaches, along with the staple FAir, and something that I've taken a liking to lately; RAR BAir. I don't really have enough experience to say if we win or lose, however, these are just things that stand out to me.
 

MegaGuy

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I could see that. I can't recall ever seeing that MU, but I can't even begin to imagine how I'd approach ZSS.

#unviable
 

DvarakElt

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Bowser also seems free to Ness.

PK Fire Spam... If he crouch cancels it, Dair. (somemetimes Nair or bair)
Though maybe all the Bowsers in Canada suck. IDK.

This is actually kind of disappointing if the matchup is so one sided.
 

MegaGuy

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Sound like bad Bowsers. If they keep getting hit by it, then clearly they aren't Up B-ing/crawling away/using any of Bowser's defensive capabilities. Wouldn't recommend spamming PKF against a Bowser who's got any sense either. Out of curiosity, what else works for you against Bowser? Obviously you do more than PKF.
 

DvarakElt

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Normally just use fire to get him of balance and in the air. Fair is great if I can get him off the ground. Bat, Dair, and Bair are all useful if he tries to armor it... But really it's all a atter of getting bowser off the ground so I can combo him. Just keep backing up and hitting him with fire, he'll just keep eating damage until he gets impatient and tries something risky and I'll slug him with the bat or a quick PKT2.

I have never lost to a Bowser. I'm normally 2 stocks up. I fought one in the 3rd round at Impulse, it wasn't even close.
 

MegaGuy

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Hm, okay. Sounds like they just kind of run into whatever you want to do. Obviously it's nigh-impossible for Bowser to dictate the pace of a match, but CC and fortress can shut down many an approach. You wouldn't happen to have any videos against said Bowsers so I could see exactly how you approach and how they respond?
 

DvarakElt

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Nope. Unfortunately... I don't have a capture card, and only the top 8 was recorded I think. I'm not saying there's no way for Bowser to win, I just haven't seen it yet. I need to start breaking into the part of tournies that get streamed...
 

MegaGuy

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Oh, that's too bad. I can understand what you're saying, but I have no way to validate it unfortunately. I don't really think Ness has a strong enough projectile game to shut Bowser down completely, but if the player utilizes it well enough, I could see Boozer having a rough time. Thanks for the input, I definitely want to get some Ness exp to really see what it's like!
 

GoblinGamerKid

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What do you guys think of the Bowser vs Snake mu?

Well we can use our crawl armor to go right through a few of his attacks (mostly his grounded attacks) His recovery is pretty easy to predict where hes gonna go and probably punishable (but ours is to) in fact once we are offstage its going to be really hard for us to get back and if not im pretty sure we are going to take quite some damage we are also easily comboed by him and we cant really get around his projectiles.

I can go into more greater detail of this matchup but im only listing some things I know off the top of my mind. but from what im guessing snake has more advantages over us and is a pretty scary opponent for us.
 

MegaGuy

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Snake's rough due to a couple of things. For one, his camp/projectile game is pretty strong, so defensive play becomes very difficult and not optimal. Additionally, his up close options are great, and you WILL get stuck by a competent Snake since Bowser's gigantic. Don't over-commit on your approaches. Your spacing really has to be on point since I think we just out-range him. If you can get him offstage, you make him eat a ton of damage, if not just outright kill him. Down B edgeguards are pretty effective against Cypher. Flame Breath works okay when spacing, too.

All in all, we don't have the mobility (or small enough frame) to approach Snake without eating a lot of damage. Again, if you can somehow work yourself into that sweetspot where you can out-space Snake, it should go well. Barring that though, I think we lose pretty badly.
 
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