- She's looking to have some pretty favorable MUs against characters that are either ubiquitous or meta relevant, such as Game & Watch and Ness. ESAM personally believes she also does well against Peach, Olimar and every zoner in the game.
You should take what ESAM says about the
-
match-ups with a grain of salt.
Keep in mind that he WANTS her to do well against them because that's what he is looking for in a secondary.
I have been exclusively playing
since her release, and these are far from good match-ups, especially
, who WILL kill you at any % offstage, due to B-air being a multi-hit and thus being impossible to challenge with ARMS (they will clank and unlike single hits, you can't use the other ARM to punish after clanking).
You can't outmanoeuver him due to the huge difference in airspeed so challenging with N-air is really situationnal, leaving her with only a 50-50 between neutral airdodge and double jump. At higher %, you'll have more time to cover yourself with Dragon Smash Laser fastfall at very long range or any combination of RamRam and Dragon tilts and smashes at a closer range, so you're less likely to get gimped, but you'll still struggle to get out of the ledge alive against
, despite
good get up attack and roll (probably the worst ledge jump of the game though).
also CANNOT land against
's U-air/N-air spam.
She does not have "deceptively good landing options". In addition to having a below average fall speed, she has an atrocious horizontal mobility that prevents you from covering yourself properly with a N-air like
can do. D-air is her only option but then again it's not something great, it can be beaten very easily (outside of the first 4 active frames which have a great hitbox), and it has a lot of landing lag (as it should) if not autocancelled (and doing so will make the hitbox disappear before reaching a short hop height).
Her best options remain the global ones : phantom footstools are super useful with
and MUST be abused, but obviously it won't work against disjoints. Fastfall airdodge remains the best landing tool for her, but you need to be able to fastfall in the first place, which isn't always possible, and since she doesn't fall quickly, she can't get away with non-fastfall airdodge as much as other characters (
).
Speaking of her airdodge, it's frame 3, which is standard for her weight. Her best offensive combo breaker is U-air at a pretty slow F7 start-up (D-air can make some hits whiff and punish them in certain situations).
All of this makes her incredibly easy to combo and get offstage after only one interaction. Her offstage game - while not good - isn't as bad as people thought it would be. But her global disadvantage state is absolutely awful and it WILL hinder her viability (keep in mind most people haven't played offline again, it's a lot easier to abuse advantage state offline, which isn't necessarily a nerf for
, more like a double-edge sword).
Despite what I have said, I do think that
will get easier for
as time goes on, because she really has the tools to shut him down in the neutral. It takes a lot of time to master her movement and keepaway game (it's not always wise to use ARMS attack in certain match-ups, conditionning with N-air often does the job better against characters that like to operate in the air). His UpB can be played around quite consistently, so that's a big thing in that match-up.
- Min Min's combo game is actually pretty decent. Setting aside the fact that at a mid-ranged distance she generally keeps comfortable with minimal (and still strong) interactions, her NAir and UAir give her very strong combo options that in most optimized situations perfectly set opponents into off-stage disadvantage, and can completely cheese opponents with kills in a few other instances.
Optimized Min Min is pretty scary, she can get quite a lot of % and insanely good positioning out of certain hits, be it with true combos or guaranteed tech chases.
Landing U-air is extremely situational, and even then it doesn't start a solid combo in 90% of the cases, there's just one very good string that starts with it that only works on a handful of characters).
- For the kind of character she is her general frame data is dummy strong and she's well equipped to handle even closer quarters engagements. Up Smash alone is practically a button for how good it is (fun fact: this move and DSmash are not only as fast or faster than Fox's equivalents; they're less punishable, have superior range, and are safer on block), granting her nasty whiff punishing capacity even at point blank range - something that Byleth and Simon are notably a little less fortuitous in having. She also sports some all around solid burst options with moves like dash attack, and her anti-airs cover a whole lot of her conventional blind spots. Marss pretty notably said on stream that her strengths became a lot more apparent once he realized the character should be played as a "Smash" character rather than an "ARMS" character, and I think that rings true; she's pretty privileged among the distance demon archetypes.
Heh, I disagree. Good examples of characters having good enough frame data to handle close combat would be
, who have a spammable button in D-Tilt despite wanting to play at mid range.
really doesn't. Jab is pretty slow at Frame 5 and does nothing special, U-Tilt is a very bad move despite being Frame 5 as well, she does not have an F-Tilt, and her D-Tilt, while pretty good, is quite slow at Frame 10 and not exactly safe (but you'll get away with it most of the time against a lot of characters).
Dash attack however, is very valuable, hitting higher than D-Tilt (which is very important in Ultimate, anti-ground moves aren't that good outside of situations where a shield has been hit and the flow of the game has stopped / slowed down, it's a very aerial game. Frame 7 and its general animation makes it a really good dash attack to whiff punish, it can be hard to react to if you cross up a shield, and while it doesn't start a combo or kill very well (it can at higher % though), it does decent damage and gives a good position.
U-Smash while absolutely excellent as an out of shield option (Frame 7), SH/FH punish and even reflector, can't be considered a button at all. It's really unsafe (which is standard for a smash attack, not complaining). Having less endlag than
doesn't make it better, keep in mind he has some confirms and pseudo-confirms (tech chase) into it, while
doesn't, and
's is extremely laggy even for a smash attack, so it's not really a fair example.
Same goes for D-Smash, although I specifically want to mention that it's a key move in her moveset, as it covers the huge blindspot she would otherwise have behind her after a successful spotdodge / parry (since she has no F-Tilt).
absolutely can defend herself without her ARMS, but it would be lying to say that she can keep up with the rest of the cast at this range (let alone saying she is strong). Match-ups that force her to avoid abusing ARMS make her pretty awkward to play as, mostly because you know that one punished mistake will take you offstage/in the air, which you really don't want.
- Has obscene shield pressure.
While she does have some good shieldpoke / shieldbreak set ups, shield remains an excellent option against her. Her grab is OK to punish stuff, but not to punish shields. It can be reacted to and spotdodged if it's not used at close range. Smart use of shield will make her cry. I also want to mention that N-air is extremely hard to time if you want to avoid being shieldgrabbed, and you can't afford to delay it as much most of the time, so you'll want to space it.
- Between her powerful range and frame data, she's a monster at punishing landings and techs, and she reaps a pretty hefty reward from her grab.
Yeah her throws are surprisingly useful, her B-Throw deals 60+% (yeah, I know, it only does 17-18, but have you ever made it back onstage without taking at least an additionnal 40%?). Power Dragon is insane, it really is.
She's not really good at juggling, though, that would be her biggest weakness in advantage state, U-air is decent but not spammable in the air, does low damage output and kills pretty late (although it does kill, so there's that). U-Tilt is the same, pretty long endlag. U-Smash is a great tool, but it's committal.
You'll find yourself using N-air a lot to juggle because you want them to get sent horizontally (Megawatt and Power Dragon N-air can be used to kill during juggles as well).
Overall I think the character is pretty strong, but very match-up and stage dependant. Due to how unique she is, we're going to need more time to put her in a tier list. No one can come close to mastering her kit after only 2 weeks.