Official Character Competitive Impressions - Tourneys, Tiers, Theories, Tactics

[Fatmanonice]

I'm still surprised the Pits aren't more popular secondaries. Still very easy to learn outside of some awkwardness on Uspecial and covers a lot of matchups... Rosa, Ryu and MK off the top of my head seem neutral at least.

Too vanilla I'd argue and, if you want to pick up an easier character with good matchup spreads, Mario and Falcon are always available.

 

[Deleted member]

Apologies if this is a really sudden shift in topic, but where do you guys think is at the moment? We haven't seen much of Game & Watch anywhere recently, do you think he has the potential to shake things up in the future?

 

[Yonder]

Apologies if this is a really sudden shift in topic, but where do you guys think is at the moment? We haven't seen much of Game & Watch anywhere recently, do you think he has the potential to shake things up in the future?

Honestly, I feel if Game and Watch had a stronger killing fair and forward smash, he could be high tier at the bottom of it.

 

[Deleted member]

Honestly, I feel if Game and Watch had a stronger killing fair and forward smash, he could be high tier at the bottom of it.

That, and if he didn't have the glaringly large sourspots on moves like down smash. G&W's combo and spacing game is decent as is, but sometimes it feels like I have to work to get a kill sometimes.

 

[C0rvus]

I think Roy's mobility, reach and far superior frame data, grab and throw combo game and edge-guarding game trump Marth by far. Plus, Roy's raw power allows him to KO opponents far earlier in a game where you need to get in your opponent's face. I think Roy trumps Marth basically, but he doesn't seem to be as viable as Lucas or Ryu, but somewhere way above Marth is where I believe he could be, maybe just a little bit (one or two places) behind Lucas in terms of viability. He's not as good as Link, Ike, MK, Toon Link or Cloud for sure, but he's not as bad as the other sword fighting characters in the game.

This reads like a Reddit post. I don't have the mental energy to address this properly.

Bottom line, Marth vs Roy is a pointless comparison because neither character is viable.

 

[Mario766]

I don't see G&W doing well in the meta. His approach options are mediocre at best, aerials aren't really safe on shield, toot toot is a semi-ok kill confirm that is heavily influenced by weight, rage and percent, he's super light/floaty so he dies early. He also doesn't kill really early. We've had 1 G&W do anything in big tournaments, we'll see how he does at G3. I personally don't think G&W does very well ATM.

 

[Fatmanonice]

Apologies if this is a really sudden shift in topic, but where do you guys think is at the moment? We haven't seen much of Game & Watch anywhere recently, do you think he has the potential to shake things up in the future?

I feel he's a lot like /, a character that could be pretty good and on their way to viable with minor adjustments. The elephant in the room is his weight and how he lost a lot of his attack power from Brawl. Basically give him a similar treatment to what Ike got earlier this year (harder hits/less landing lag) and he'd pretty much be golden. His weight will probably always be an issue though.

 

[LancerStaff]

Don't know about MK, but I agree with you on Rosalina (for Dark Pit) and Ryu. I think Ryu is interesting because he's got a great neutral and the insane punish game, but Pit's neutral is solid enough to keep up and disjoints work well in his favour. Three out of five aerials being multi-hits (to deal with FA in neutral and stuff FADC approaches) helps too.

I wish I had more firsthand experience with this matchup - I've played it a few times, but it'd be great to have material to study too. Does anybody know if there have been any good Pit / Ryu matches besides Earth's set with 9B?

GOs throw a big wrench in MK's gameplan, because now he can't afford to miss a Shuttle Loop without the risk of dying at even 0%. Especially if Pit plays it smart and lures him out further while being Uair'd.

With Ryu, I'm definitely thinking Dark Pit's the way to go. You know that Electroshock ruins Tatsu right? Well now especially if he has to use it offstage he's pretty much dead. This is important because now he can't afford to make mistakes, yaknow? Sadly don't have a lot of footage either, though.

Too vanilla I'd argue and, if you want to pick up an easier character with good matchup spreads, Mario and Falcon are always available.

Doesn't Falcon lose pretty bad to the top tiers? Mario's good, but everybody knows the matchup in and out. They still have some things clearly over Mario too.

I mean, it's hard to call Dark Pit vanilla anymore with what's arguably the best landing punish in the game lolol.

 

[Deleted member]

I feel he's a lot like /, a character that could be pretty good and on their way to viable with minor adjustments. The elephant in the room is his weight and how he lost a lot of his attack power from Brawl. Basically give him a similar treatment to what Ike got earlier this year (harder hits/less landing lag) and he'd pretty much be golden. His weight will probably always be an issue though.

Pretty much how I feel. G&W is designed as a glass cannon in a way, but there's not much validating it unlike what was done to as of the latest patch. Like you said, he lost a lot of his potency from Brawl, but with the right tweaks I can definitely see him being viable. His weight isn't much of an issue to me since it's part of his design philosophy, plus it does make sense considering he's flat.

 

[David Viran]

Don't know about MK, but I agree with you on Rosalina (for Dark Pit) and Ryu. I think Ryu is interesting because he's got a great neutral and the insane punish game, but Pit's neutral is solid enough to keep up and disjoints work well in his favour. Three out of five aerials being multi-hits (to deal with FA in neutral and stuff FADC approaches) helps too.

I wish I had more firsthand experience with this matchup - I've played it a few times, but it'd be great to have material to study too. Does anybody know if there have been any good Pit / Ryu matches besides Earth's set with 9B?

Nairo went dp against false's Ryu at the last ktar for 2 games.

 

[Plain Yogurt]

Game and Watch has always felt like discount Mario to me in this game since his disjoints got smaller. They both can sorta weave around in the air, can beat the tar out of you if you don't outspace them, and both have a knack for USmash fishing. But it just...works better for Mario, helped I'm sure by the superior frame data.

Gimmick and Watch is so fun though. I love keeping people airborne for no reason and setting up horizontal edgeguards with Chef is entertaining.

 

[MistressRemilia]

I think Game&Watch is a decent character.
He has both enormous counterpick potential, and enormous viability if the right buffs happen.
As a main of Game&Watch, i think a SH AC Stronger Fair would solve possibly every problem the character has encountered so far besides Lightness which is a natural flaw ( by design )

 

[Nidtendofreak]

If you consider the "Ike Treatment" to be for heavier characters and the "Mewtwo Treatment" to be for lighter characters...

What if G&W got the Mewtwo treatment instead of the Ike treatment?

Small(er) boost to mobility, slight tweak to a few hitboxes (slightly increasing their size in this case, lets say making the sourspots on some moves smaller and the sweetspots larger), knock off some frames of landing lag on aerials. Should in theory mean that G&W would get more combos, particularly out of throw maybe idk his throw data well though I know he has some already? Also means aerials are safer, potentially combos in there as well at least with Nair.

 

[bc1910]

It sort of depends what you mean. Ike was actually buffed to viability, Mewtwo probably wasn't despite being significantly better. His specific buffs might work wonders for other characters regardless of weight class but if you're talking about overall effect on a character, getting Ike-level buffs would be preferable for anyone.

I wouldn't restrict "Ike treatment" and "Mewtwo treatment" to characters by weight class, is what I'm saying.

 

[Latias]

It sort of depends what you mean. Ike was actually buffed to viability, Mewtwo probably wasn't despite being significantly better. His specific buffs might work wonders for other characters regardless of weight class but if you're talking about overall effect on a character, getting Ike-level buffs would be preferable for anyone.

I wouldn't restrict "Ike treatment" and "Mewtwo treatment" to characters by weight class, is what I'm saying.

I don't know how much it matters, but Mew^2 got 3rd at shockwave 63 and 4th and shockwave 62 which were 95 and 130 participants respectively. I'd say hes fairly viable. If you saw his matches you'd see that mewtwo is capable of some crazy stuff.

 

[FallofBrawl]

Just some info on new patch Mew2

Following up on what Latias said, watching his match vs Denti made me realize how her 50/50s mean very little to him (great air speed/floatiness/great AD to get away from the situation all together). As well as her needles (punished with shadowball or confusion) not being as polarizing as I first thought.

 

[MewSquared]

Yeah I definitely don't think Mewtwo struggles vs Shiek. If anything Mewtwo struggles against needle camping, but it can be managed. The problem was that during the buff they messed around with Mewtwo's tail so although some moves strengthened, his (jab) utilt upsmash kill confirm doesn't work the same on Shiek. I need to continue relearning all of it again but from what I've seen it doesn't work if you try to do it normally on her.

 

[Y2Kay]

Apologies if this is a really sudden shift in topic, but where do you guys think is at the moment? We haven't seen much of Game & Watch anywhere recently, do you think he has the potential to shake things up in the future?

All I know is that Japan thinks he's better than greninja for some reason.........

 

[Jamurai]

I think MK beats Pit slightly at least, because the difference in their rewards for winning neutral is heavily in MK's favour, and Pit does not compensate enough for this with his slightly better neutral game. Also edgeguarding Pit should be pretty easy as MK. I don't really have anything to back this up because has this matchup been played like ever at high level? Maybe there's an old Salena vs Earth set somewhere or something...

As for MK being a good secondary, I've talked about this in a bit more depth before but here's a shortened version of my opinion: I think MK requires too much dedication to be a good secondary against good players.

 

[HoSmash4]

Yeah I definitely don't think Mewtwo struggles vs Shiek. If anything Mewtwo struggles against needle camping, but it can be managed. The problem was that during the buff they messed around with Mewtwo's tail so although some moves strengthened, his (jab) utilt upsmash kill confirm doesn't work the same on Shiek. I need to continue relearning all of it again but from what I've seen it doesn't work if you try to do it normally on her.

A lot of people wont believe it, but mewtwo is one of the harder characters for sheik to kill. Add that to the fact mewtwo can kill siginifcantly earlier than sheik can, Mewtwo does alright. Yeah Mewtwo gets blown over by fair combos at low % but lets not kid ourselves, the entire cast does.

 

[Y2Kay]

I find harder than while playing as . I remember @RayNoire saying a while ago that and take the glass out of glass cannon, but they still hard to fight.

 

[ReRaze]

I think MK beats Pit slightly at least, because the difference in their rewards for winning neutral is heavily in MK's favour, and Pit does not compensate enough for this with his slightly better neutral game. Also edgeguarding Pit should be pretty easy as MK. I don't really have anything to back this up because has this matchup been played like ever at high level? Maybe there's an old Salena vs Earth set somewhere or something...

As for MK being a good secondary, I've talked about this in a bit more depth before but here's a shortened version of my opinion: I think MK requires too much dedication to be a good secondary against good players.

Pit is actually one of the few characters who can beat metaknight offstage. Fair beats metaknight's up b, drill and tornado. Metaknight may have dimension cape but pit has superarmour side b. And in terms of 1v1 offstage pit's disjoints > metaknights. Both edgeguard each other hard though, it's slightly less devastatting for pit though since metaknights aerials have quite a bit of endlag offstage.

Also it may be true that MK get's a better reward but the punish for missing that reward is devestating, He may kill pit at 30% but the guardian orbitars can kill MK at 0%.

The arms also kill metaknight considerably early, Pit's usually around 85% and Dark Pit at 50% with average rage in a favourable position.

Oh and I'm speaking from experience, a good mate of mine mains MK

 

[valakmtnsmash4]

Speaking of low tiers vs top tiers and having decent MU's, I heard some Rosalina mains say that shulk wins the neutral against them, but loses off stage. Shulk actually barely loses this match up(55:45) for Rosalina imo. Thoughts?

 

[MistressRemilia]

Speaking of low tiers vs top tiers and having decent MU's, I heard some Rosalina mains say that shulk wins the neutral against them, but loses off stage. Shulk actually barely loses this match up(55:45) for Rosalina imo. Thoughts?

Despite my lack of knowledge on both charas, i highly doubt this is true.
Rosalina being such a wall, such a lacking character vs Shield as Shulk might encounter a strong struggle.
Then again, i'd ask good Rosas players with knowledge on it, just that it seems unreasonable to me.
That's how, if you take a look at Ganondorf's Boards Matchup Spread, it might seem like he has a niche for counterpick.
Yet, he most likely doesn't. So i wouldn't jump to conclusions if few Rosas said Shulk/Rosa wasn't that bad for Shulk.

 

[Nobie]

Even pre-patch, I would much rather fight Sheik as Mewtwo than as Mega Man. It wasn't a good matchup or anything, but it felt more manageable because of Mewtwo's qualities. In particular, being able to work towards up throw or back throw as KO options was a lot more comfortable than having to get a hard read uppercut or up smash.

 

[wpwood]

Shulk has a lot of range with the Manado and the less landing lag helps a lot. Shulk could probably space himself at safe-ish distances to kill Luma and then rush in on Rosa. Speed manado makes Shulk much better at rush down, smash manado for killing, buster for damage, etc. Buster destroys shields, and players need to be careful when shielding moves from a buster Shulk. Rosa's current meta has her being a wall who uses Luma to wall and then play keep away until Luma comes back. Shulk can out space Luma and probably rush down Rosa once Luma is dead. I agree that Shulk probably wins the neutral, but he has an exploitable recovery. Jump helps very well with recovery but unless he can jump on stage Rosa can easily dair his very linear up b. Rosa also as an exploitable up b though. Considering how the MU is currently and the learning curve of Shulk and the constant development of the meta I can see the MU changing to be in Shulk's favor.

 

[DanGR]

There's no results or vods of meta defining RosaLuma vs Shulk play anywhere, so we have no concrete way to judge the matchup as it stands today.

I think in theory he could have the advantage, but I'd have to be a fool to say I understand the character's full potential. Shulk is criminally underrated.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

All I have on Shulk is For Glory experience, where opponent quality is a mixed bag, to put it lightly. Sometimes it's nearly impossible to get in because the Monado outranges everything Rosalina can do, which puts a crimp in her Great Wall of Luma plan. Not to mention Jump/Speed making him harder to pin down or Buster giving him horrifying damage on a punish. But other times he's basically a punching bag because dat frame data.

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the matchup is heavily based on momentum. Whoever first gets a solid advantage state will likely go on to take the stock unless they mess up.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

All I have on Shulk is For Glory experience, where opponent quality is a mixed bag, to put it lightly. Sometimes it's nearly impossible to get in because the Monado outranges everything Rosalina can do, which puts a crimp in her Great Wall of Luma plan. Not to mention Jump/Speed making him harder to pin down or Buster giving him horrifying damage on a punish. But other times he's basically a punching bag because dat frame data.

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the matchup is heavily based on momentum. Whoever first gets a solid advantage state will likely go on to take the stock unless they mess up.

Seems accurate enough.

Speed and Shield Monado are really important against Rosalina. Speed Monado allows Shulk to navigate around Luma and take care of it from safe positions and sometimes Shulk can use Shield Monado in close range [!] to rambo his way through some of Rosalina's stuff. He doesn't really need Monado Buster a whole lot in my experience as he can kill her at relatively early percent and basic stuff like nair -> jab is slow enough to get intercepted by Luma anway.

It's really just dudes like Sheik, Fox, ZSS and Sonic that wreck Shulk, every other matchup is fairly manageable to varying degrees.

 

[LightLV]

Spoiler: falllllcooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Compare this with Melee's.

I couldn't find one for Captain Falcon for Brawl or Smash 4, but knowing it can hit through ledges while Falco's can't... There was a reason why it was called the Nipple Spike in Melee.

When you think about it, Brawl and, assuming, Smash 4 Falco's Dair hitbox is fair, but like I said, speed matters since you're now aiming with a small hitbox that takes 16 frames to come out and you're in the air. 16 frames is fine on the ground when you're mostly dealing with lateral, more linear movement vs. aerial movement. Oh, and let's not forget that Captain Falcon's higher air speed would let him drift in faster even if his air acceleration is worse than Falco meaning he can't control where he's going as easily, but what are you going to do as he drifts into you and you have really no idea what he's going to do? People panic air dodge and that's when he Fairs or Dairs you. Falco can't do that when people are outspeeding him in the air and drifting out faster than he can drift in.

I disagree with speed being the biggest problem with his Dair. I mean, it IS an issue, but it's nothing compared with the fact that he lost the full actives on the attack, but retained the tiny hitbox. Nobody else with a "charge" Dair spike has hitboxes that ridicuously tiny AND actives that pathetic. Captian Falcon doesn't really have to aim his Dair in Smash 4....he just has to be near you. It's easier for the attack to strike the hurtbox of the opponent in every way. Same for Gannon, same for Yoshi.

The closest Dair i can compare Falco's to now is honestly Mario's...but again, Mario's hitbox is larger, and he doesn't have nearly as hard a time recovering as Falco does if his edgeguard attempt goes sour. This is the same problem with Phantasm as a spike move. It leaves you too vulnerable if you miss or screw up. Falco falls way too fast and his recovery is way too poor.


As for Falco and getting overnerfed, yeah, the "slingshot nerf" is a pretty common issue with balance. they could have kept his laser autocancels and tweaked their balance in all sorts of ways. They could have lowered the hitbox size, they could have removed the hitstun with range falloff limiting his ability to zone with them, they could have given them a recharge period like with Robin's specials. Instead, they nerfed the range, they gave the attack cooldown frames so massive that you can get punished for shooting someone half a stage away...it's silly.

And about his Uair...it's not that it's a bad move, it's just that there's no reason for it to be weaker than, say Cfalcon or ZSS's. No reason at all. Not when Sheik has none of these issues, zones better, fights better, recovers better and will easily take your stock with an Uair that is chocked full of active frames.


Falco just lacks potent tools. Like every other midtier character, but his faults are way more visible because he has fallen so far since Melee/Brawl.


Marth is the same way, honestly. He has noticeably shorter range and the game is less lenient with his sweetspot. Fsmash Tipper is basically all he has going for him, but its never been harder to land and Lucina kills 20% faster than him without it.

Not to mention, on the topic of Marth, the removal of shieldpokes and ledgeslip (and yes, shieldpush) has pretty much removed all the elegance of his space control game. He lives and dies by a handful of safe attacks now, in a game where his range is now only slightly better than average and even characters like MARIO can approach better. He can take 90% of your shield with a single shield breaker now, but he gets essentially no pressure off the resulting shield damage.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Seems accurate enough.

Speed and Shield Monado are really important against Rosalina. Speed Monado allows Shulk to navigate around Luma and take care of it from safe positions and sometimes Shulk can use Shield Monado in close range [!] to rambo his way through some of Rosalina's stuff. He doesn't really need Monado Buster a whole lot in my experience as he can kill her at relatively early percent and basic stuff like nair -> jab is slow enough to get intercepted by Luma anway.

It's really just dudes like Sheik, Fox, ZSS and Sonic that wreck Shulk, every other matchup is fairly manageable to varying degrees.

Buster vs. Rosalina does have the extra utility of killing Luma faster. The reduced knockback means you won't be sending it offstage very easily, but when Buster lets him deal, what, 12% damage at minimum on basically everything he does? Rosalina can't afford to let Luma get hit at all. And shielding won't help her.

 

[LancerStaff]

I think MK beats Pit slightly at least, because the difference in their rewards for winning neutral is heavily in MK's favour, and Pit does not compensate enough for this with his slightly better neutral game. Also edgeguarding Pit should be pretty easy as MK. I don't really have anything to back this up because has this matchup been played like ever at high level? Maybe there's an old Salena vs Earth set somewhere or something...

As for MK being a good secondary, I've talked about this in a bit more depth before but here's a shortened version of my opinion: I think MK requires too much dedication to be a good secondary against good players.

Against MK I don't think the difference in neutral strength is slight... And the vast majority of the time you'll get Pit offstage he's going to Fspecial to the ledge and not Uspecial. I mean, Pit wouldn't be completely unviable if his Uspecial just dropped him into the abyss, although he'd suffer from slight Ike/Cloud syndrome where he wouldn't be able to recover from awkward spots. And yet he has it on top of his Fspecial, and if you're catching a Pit's Uspecial even a third of the time he's doing something wrong.

MK lacks any proper spikes, right? Couldn't Pit just theoretically Uspecial straight at him without using a jump, get hit and then ledge snap with Upperdash EZPZ?

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

There's no results or vods of meta defining RosaLuma vs Shulk play anywhere, so we have no concrete way to judge the matchup as it stands today.

I think in theory he could have the advantage, but I'd have to be a fool to say I understand the character's full potential. Shulk is criminally underrated.

Shulk is pretty bad tbh. There's a reason why you don't see him despite him bekng played by players like Ally Johnnumbers Trela and 9b. His frame data is just too bad and his vanilla stats are really mediocre.

 

[warionumbah2]

Also it may be true that MK get's a better reward but the punish for missing that reward is devestating, He may kill pit at 30% but the guardian orbitars can kill MK at 0%.

I assume this is based off top level play not mid level friend/local MK at your scene. This scenario seems sketchy for 2 reasons.

1. That means the Pit is DI'ing towards the ledge hoping MK whiffs Shuttle loop, meaning the Pit player isn't mixing up their DI and making it extremely easy for the MK to finish the combo(not like Pit is getting away with his airspeed).

2. You're implying the MK user can't purposefully force you on stage with the back of uair and continue the combo backwards.

This whole scenario will rarely happen, unlike Ryu falling down then doing SH Dair --> Jab/Utilt --> SRK like 9B did to Abadango(actual top level evidence).

Edit: All ZSS has to do is FF onstage then Boost kick or even down smash to whatever she wants. Cloud with Limit can FT.

 

[L9999]

Shulk is pretty bad tbh. There's a reason why you don't see him despite him bekng played by players like Ally Johnnumbers Trela and 9b. His frame data is just too bad and his vanilla stats are really mediocre.

Every time Ally takes Shulk out it gets rekt and he focuses on Mario, JohnNumbers is Wii Fit Trainer, 9B never won anything until he threw Shulk to the garbage for Ryu, and I think he never played him since (could be wrong), and Trela no longer played him since forever, he picked up other trash tiers until Ryu was released. My point is that none of those you mentioned are dedicated Shulk players.

 

[Sonicninja115]

Yeah I definitely don't think Mewtwo struggles vs Shiek. If anything Mewtwo struggles against needle camping, but it can be managed. The problem was that during the buff they messed around with Mewtwo's tail so although some moves strengthened, his (jab) utilt upsmash kill confirm doesn't work the same on Shiek. I need to continue relearning all of it again but from what I've seen it doesn't work if you try to do it normally on her.

the kill confirm doesn't work as well? interesting.

Have you tried Jab-step-Utilt-Usmash? It counters the proper DI for the kill confirm while still allowing it to work. It could fix your problem.

 

[ReRaze]

I assume this is based off top level play not mid level friend/local MK at your scene. This scenario seems sketchy for 2 reasons.

1. That means the Pit is DI'ing towards the ledge hoping MK whiffs Shuttle loop, meaning the Pit player isn't mixing up their DI and making it extremely easy for the MK to finish the combo(not like Pit is getting away with his air speed

2. You're implying the MK user can't purposefully force you on stage with the back of uair and continue the combo backwards.

This whole scenario will rarely happen, unlike Ryu falling down then doing SH Dair --> Jab/Utilt --> SRK like 9B did to Abadango(actual top level evidence).

Edit: All ZSS has to do is FF onstage then Boost kick or even down smash to whatever she wants. Cloud with Limit can FT.

Let me rephrase myself, can be devastating. Not saying that it will always happens but it can and does. top level or not it is a possibility. http://youtu.be/txHyyyZoU4A

1) Who said anything about always DIing to the ledge....there are multiple opportunites to choose where to DI, the pit could choose to mixup any one of those uairs, although in some cases DI isn't as big of a factor in escaping that combo (if it were that easy to escape that combo it wouldn't be so feared) so may as well go for all or nothing.

2) Mk doesn't have the best aerial mobility in the game either, I know metaknight can't switch up between the front and back hits of uair as easily as you make it out to be especially not with proper DI.

Even then, from that high up there is alot of room to work with the MK doesnt have to be right next to the ledge.

Anyways don't wanna focus too much on this, it doesnt happen every MK vs Pit match, like I said its just a possibility.

 

[Jamurai]

Against MK I don't think the difference in neutral strength is slight... And the vast majority of the time you'll get Pit offstage he's going to Fspecial to the ledge and not Uspecial. I mean, Pit wouldn't be completely unviable if his Uspecial just dropped him into the abyss, although he'd suffer from slight Ike/Cloud syndrome where he wouldn't be able to recover from awkward spots. And yet he has it on top of his Fspecial, and if you're catching a Pit's Uspecial even a third of the time he's doing something wrong.

MK lacks any proper spikes, right? Couldn't Pit just theoretically Uspecial straight at him without using a jump, get hit and then ledge snap with Upperdash EZPZ?

Well that's cool and all but I think it is. I'm aware Pit's neutral is very good but MK is not far behind, he has a lot more options than people give credit for. I can't comment on Upperdash Arm since I am admittedly inexperienced in the matchup (I find it hard to believe it's a foolproof ledge-snapping option though). However I can say that catching Pit's Up-B should be pretty simple given that we have a long lasting Nair we can cover the ledge with, and excellent vertical coverage with SH/FH Uair and also our own Up-B in case you shoot past the ledge instead. You could Up-B straight at us, but taking 10% every time you recover isn't exactly ideal... For the record MK has no true spikes but Dair has a nasty semi-spike angle.

This is all theory anyways, we could debate about situations like this for days. I know I am among other MKs when I say I think we beat Pit, and that's all I can say after giving my reasons above. Fact is there are no high-level sets to analyse so hey ho.

Out of interest though: is side-B a practically unpunishable ledge-grabbing option? The super armour frames aren't long-lasting, I thought anyway. Also if you could explain why Up-B isn't a free punish when the opponent is prepared for it that'd be interesting too.

 

[ReRaze]

Theoretically speaking how does MK force pit into a situation where he has to use his up b anyway? He doesn't have a spike and dair's launch angle isn't so bad such that pit's jumps can't bring him back to stage height so Pit can side b. Unless it's at those high percents where pit's jumps alone can't carry him back to the stage but at those percents MK's aerials could probably kill anyway.

Jamurai prettty sure you can still get the two frame punish on the ledge snap

 

[Wintropy]

I can't comment on Upperdash Arm since I am admittedly inexperienced in the matchup (I find it hard to believe it's a foolproof ledge-snapping option though).

You have to be precise with it. If you hit the ledge dead-on (i.e. at the same height as the top of Pit's head when in the dash animation), you'll auto-snap instantly; if you hit it too high, the animation continues for a few frames before it auto-snaps. It's a small berth pf vulnerability, but definitely something that can be taken advantage of.

However I can say that catching Pit's Up-B should be pretty simple given that we have a long lasting Nair we can cover the ledge with

Can confirm that this works. No Pit worth their salt will deliberately overshoot the ledge (unless they've got hella chutzpah), so if you know he's going to go for the autosnap, covering that space is a good option.

Out of interest though: is side-B a practically unpunishable ledge-grabbing option?

Not really. It's armoured during most of the dash animation (f19 startup in air, armoured from f11, armour active for 19 frames), meaning most attacks won't beat it out, but timing the punish isn't too difficult if you know when the armour wears off. It's something Falcons do very often to get the spike. Don't know if MK can do the same thing (punish side-b, I mean, not spike), but in theory he should be able to.

Hope that helps!