Ok, double post but **** it, there clearly aren't even any mods watching this thread anyway.
I'm gonna try and grab the reins here and suggest we get some MU discussion going. How about the characters that most people seem to consider the top 3?
. My opinions:
-50-50.
Diddy has an excellent kit for this matchup, and really makes sheik have to think about what she does more than usual in order to win. Diddy's fair will outrange hers and hit her before she can get into that optimal safe spacing zone to pressure shields. Additionally, jump cancel up smash out of shield can punish her fair pretty hard if she slips up on the timing or the spacing, which Diddy can make happen much easier than most with his great dash to shield. On the ground, Diddy's dtilt, dsmash, and ftilt out range her grounded options, and dtilt in particular makes it much harder for her to set up combos and kills out of her ftilt and dtilt due to its incredible range to speed ratio.
Monkey flip makes her think twice before trying to punish our landings with needles, as we can flip over them into her face for a punish of our own if she does it carelessly. Diddy with a peel in hand reduces the way she can maneuver around us safely, especially if the Diddy player knows how to use an aerial with banana in hand by z-dropping with an immediate aerial catch. If sheik thinks you cant sh fair with a peel in hand, punish her for it using this technique. Use glide tosses to punish and pressure from a farther range, and retreat from her spacing when shes close.
Our damage output and kill power is better than hers, point to Diddy. Get the most out of your banana confirms and throw combos, and kill with dtilt to up smash and glide toss to fsmash as with most matchups.
Shiek definitely keeps us honest with bouncing fish, needles, and her general speed and safety, which keeps Diddy from winning the matchup, but he has the tools to make this even for sure, which most characters certainly can't claim.
- 60-40, +1 for Diddy.
ZSS is a ridiculous character balanced with some key weaknesses that Diddy happens to be able to exploit very well. Her tall frame makes her easy to hit with peels and our short hop aerials, and her light weight means our kill setups kill quite well. Her grounded options aren't so good in neutral compared to Diddy's, so she is forced to rely on SH aerials a lot. However, she doesn't really have any aerials that will cover her very well as she rises, and is quite vulnerable until the apex of her jump. Diddy's SH fair and hyphen up smash can beat her SH aerial options most of the time for this reason. She also struggles to pressure shields safely from the air so hit her with up smash OOS when you can.
Diddy's good spot dodge and great rolls can get him out of the way of her grab quite well, and he punishes a whiffed ZSS grab hard. Use your lag free aerials like SH fair and falling bair and nair to bait the grab if you can, then get out of the way.
Like most ZSS matchups you have to play pretty on point or you die at like 40%, but if Diddy can play clean he wins this.
-35-65, -1.5 for Diddy.
I hate this MU. I posted this in the Pikachu thread a while ago and i think it sums it up pretty well, just add that thrown peels occasionally go right over his head which is really annoying. I think this is our worst matchup unless Luigi is worse than i think. They agreed that Pikachu is really bad for Diddy.
1. Pikachu's mobility is better than Diddy's so Diddy will not be able to get away and get 1 or 2 seconds to himself whenever he wants to safely pluck a peel in this matchup. Since the damage and KB nerfs Diddy needs to get in cleanly many more times than before and the banana is how he does this. You need to be able to stop Diddy from setting up by either patiently plucking it behind him and immediately jumping, z-catching, and fast falling back to the ground, or aggressively b-reverse plucking the banana towards the opponent from mid range and approaching with fair, dash grab, nair, and empty hop mixups as the banana falls and traps. If you can stop Diddy from setting this up successfully enough he will not get the damage output he now needs.
This is a lot harder to deal with than it sounds on paper. Even if you defend against the banana really well, say, by z-catching it and immediately throwing it away or back at Diddy, or quickly jumping and destroying it, you're still being forced into a situation where you have to do something and the grab/fair mixup is on the way. It's like how Dedede mains use gordo, it can be defended against but you have to do something, which allows Dedede to come at you the way he wants.
Except Dedede's are explaining why Gordo isn't trash. Diddy's use this strategy to make bananas the best projectile in the game. There are dozens of of ways to approach with bananas in Smash 4 because now we can repluck a banana out of our hand after the initial spawn pluck, in addition to four directions to throw and a z-drop. Different setups require different defense maneuvers. Because the Diddy player will know which way he will approach out of many setups and the opponent has to guess or react, skilled banana approaches are the most free mix up in the game. And Diddy gets a lot of reward for getting in. So use your superior mobility to either catch or destroy the banana on aggressive plucks you can punish and get in Diddy's face on patient plucks to stop these mixups before they can be set up.
As far as taking the banana away goes, air speed is good but foot speed trumps it. Because a foot speed character can just sprint across the ground as far as he needs to before jumping and z-catching the peel if its in the air. Additionally "z-scooping," or z-catching an item that is on the ground, is now a thing. Simply running up as close to a grounded banana as you can without tripping and jumping with an immediate z-scoop is a fast, lagless way to pick peels up off the ground. But it's going to be a bad idea if you have slower foot speed than Diddy, because again, Diddy's entire playstyle now revolves around using bananas to force the opponent into situations where he has the advantage. He will use grounded bananas as lures and you will get faired if he catches you going for this.
Characters like Fox, Pikachu, Falcon, Sonic and such are better at taking bananas from Diddy off the aggressive pluck and off the ground for this reason. Someone like Falco probably cannot handle this situation like that. A Diddy who knows how to get the most off of every banana and setup as many times as he can will actually force an approach himself. Which he can also use to lure people into hits, so watch that too.
You're other option is to overpower Diddy's neutral by approaching while simultaneously destroying the bananas Diddy tries to pull out to set you up. Someone like Pikachu can do this well, destroying aggressive b-reverse plucks with jumping thunderjolts and fairs on the way in. But again, if you're too telegraphed with how you try to destroy bananas the Diddy Kong will cover it and you will get faired or worse.
2. Pikachu is good enough at disadvantage to not get bodied too hard when Diddy does get in cleanly. Nair is fast enough and QA helps with landing and escapes in general in a lot of ways. You don't have to worry about getting comboed and juggled for days like some other characters do. So that's good.
3. Pikachu now beats Diddy in terms of kill power and ease of kill setups. Since the patch, Smash 4 Diddy's Achilles heel is the fact that he has terrible kill power outside of hard reads and perfect banana setups. He has reasonable moves for this though, in his F-smash which is now only a little bit more unsafe, and the second hit of his D-smash which is actually quite powerful. With customs on rocketbarrel attack is a risky yet brutal coin flip mixup that will destroy people early if Diddy can bait an air dodge, but Diddy will get hit if he misses.
If you can avoid these three things and draw stocks out for as far as you can and use your superior kill power to close stocks before Diddy lands his kill you will have a much easier time.
4. Many characters can gimp Diddy fairly easily if he has to charge the barrels because he is too low to recover with monkey flip, the hard part is actually forcing Diddy to recover low.
What I've been practicing is using Pikachu's B-reverse thunder just off stage to create a disjointed wall which will block the monkey flip from reaching the ledge and force Diddy to charge the barrels low where he is easily gimped by thunder jolt and quick attack.
But even that's hard. Monkey flip is a fast, safe, and confusing recovery since Diddy can wait to leap halfway into the stage and back to neutral where he dominates for as long as he wants. Coupled with the fact that the peanut cancel makes his movement even more crazy, I don't think most characters will be able to stop this recovery enough to put Diddy under the stage where he's screwed. Pikachu has a real shot, but you'll have to practice and have reasonable reads.
I thought Pikachu may have ended up winning this matchup pre patch if the Pikachu mains really nailed it down. Pikachu is one of the few that can can expose both Diddy's poor recovery and the banana's awful durability well, and Pikachu is also more mobile. Post patch i think Pikachu definitely wins, at least 65-45, as now Diddy has to work significantly harder.
Sorry for the walls of text. In any event this thread has been dead for too long.
