Nair: Combo-starter. Fast, very small landing lag, short range. Soft nair at low-mid percents can combo into something (usually utilt). Useful for starting combos, platform tech-chasing, and coming down from the air with fastfall (or not) as a mixup. Almost always used when going down, not up.
Fair: Edgeguard. Covers a lot of area in front of
, but has a short enough range that you can't use this willy-nilly as a commit in neutral. Good in an aerial battle, and aggressive edgeguarding. Only kills at very high percent, unless it is an offstage hit.
Bair: Kill. Has an initial delay, but you can time it easily after a while. Landing lag isn't too high, so you can shffl it liberally if spaced well. I'd rather save it till kill percent, to avoid conditioning the opponent to be ready for it.
Uair: Juggle. Great range, can kill at very high percents. Is used often, and will rarely be contested when threatening this move. You can sneak it in edgeguards as a mixup since you can fall so fast past the opponent. It also has potential as a drag-down combo move (like
nair), so I encourage labbing this.
Dair: The least used aerial. You can still occasionally sneak one in there though. There are three main uses outside of edgeguarding: 1) My favorite, SH dair OoS to punish laggy hard-commits on your shield. This can kill light characters surprisingly early. 2) Hitting tall characters through platforms, much like a Falcon stomp in Melee. Pretty easy to punish you if expected, though. 3) Mixup for coming down from the air (I prefer nair).
Jab: Not much to say, decent damage and knockback. No clear situations of when to use. I think the first two hits can jab reset.
Dash attack: Sloooow, but can kill very early. It's a very hard-commit move, so use it very carefully. Easy to use versus roll-heavy players, since if you predict a roll away it will connect. I really wish this move had super armor as a buff, to increase the number of scenarios where it is useful.
Ftilt: Amazing move, that makes using tilt-stick almost obligatory for
. Long range, sustained hitbox. Can cover multiple ledge options. Great in neutral for controlling space, albeit unsafe if used close-range on shield.
Dtilt: The oh-****-let-me-breathe move. Since it comes out very fast (6f), you can usually use it to catch the opponent's attempt to whiff punish you. Sort of laggy ending, so I would avoid using it too much. At very low percent, it can combo into utilt depending on opponent weight.
Utilt: Solid move that scales knockback well, comboing at low-mid percents and killing at very high percents. The hitbox isn't Brawl-like, so you can't hit opponents from anywhere, requiring good positioning. The back hit (7f) comes out faster than front hit (10f). This is probably the main tool to start an airborne sharking situation.
Fsmash: Surprisingly threatening on covering ledge options. Can easily break shields that aren't at full size. Even though it's a clunky move, I feel that mastering positioning/timing to use it is an important tool in
kit. Just by charging it near the ledge will force an option change for the incoming opponent. Don't overuse it though.
Usmash: By mixing up the juggle game,
can net a LOT of kills with this below platforms. Usually safe to use below a platform, and even if shielded is a good chunk of shield damage to take advantage of in the next few seconds.
Dsmash: After changing to tilt-stick (see Ftilt) I underuse this move because of muscle memory, so I can't say much about it. It is a competent move that has applications especially for ledge options coverage.
Up-B: Not much to say, besides being a top-tier recovery when combined with
multijumps. Oh and it kills, but seems competitively unapplicable. Maybe by intentionally missing edge sweetspot at the apex of the Up-B and landing onstage.
Down-B: Seems to be useful only after shield-breaks. But maybe there are more applications to it, and the occasional catching someone off-guard.
B: Great tool to discourage projectiles, a
will think twice about boomeranging in neutral after being inhale-reflected once. The threat of this move is greater than the move itself, since it can be so laggy to use. Also, if the opponent can spam projectiles quickly enough, you will get hit (
fireballs). Using it to inhale opponents does not seem to net followups. Suicide inhale is always an option to catch an edgeguarder off guard (no pun intended), so keep it in the back of your mind, but avoid using this.
Side-B: A huge part of neutral and edgeguarding! At point-blank it can do a massive 30% by double-hitting. A long-range shot can catch opponents off guard and can kill when opponents are far offstage. The main usage is the short-range shot with bouncy Gordos. They threaten so much space, especially on Battlefield stages where you can be ambiguous about whether they will bounce under or over platforms. And you can even mixup by inhale-reflecting the Gordo you just threw! For edgeguarding you can also be ambiguous about the amount of bounces it will have before going offstage, by positioning and platforms. Beware, it is trivial to reflect Gordos. Use it a lot, but with this downside in mind! Even an uncharged
arrow will do the job. Remember that you can inhale-reflect it back, but it usually requires predicting the inhale, which can leave you open to punish. Which is why I like it better to use it mid-range. The point-blank hits usually happen when I use it mid-range while the opponent is overextending.
Fthrow: Isn't very useful unless you want to throw them offstage, and you're facing that way.
Bthrow: A kill option at higher percents! Otherwise, same as Fthrow.
Uthrow: The go-to throw for either comboing Uair, or start sharking from below.
Dthrow: After mid-high percents, replaces Uthrow.
