Back again with a major update, I think I got our matchups down pretty much.
First of all, I think we beat these certain characters, around
55-45:
; the wall of projectiles isn't really as much of a problem because we can easily get in with our speed, and grabs are insanely rewarding. Still a character to watch out for because of their power, but Up B alone is a great approach, and they are as easy to combo as heavies
: Big target, relatively light but still easy for us to combo, hates Peanut Popgun, easily punishable and easy to predict most of the time, jsut gotta be aware on the ground for his dash attack and other long ranged stuff. Basically fight against him as if he's a swordfighter, but more easily punished. Due to size and weight, explosions of the Rocket Barrel also do 22-30%.
: Abuse your mobility and long range banana throws, and this will mostly be a piece of cake. I say mostly, because Incineroar is still a character to watch out for, but there's a clear advantage for us.
: So yeah, hear me out, I think we actually beat all 3 characters;
: we outrange him everywhere, and he's very light yet still able to easily hit with Banana, and doesn't like being walled in the air with Peanut Popguns.
; probably the most even character for us to fight, but has laggy moves on the ground which we can easily abuse, and Razor Leaf isn't a problem if we jump over them with Side B and kick Ivysaur. Peanut Popguns also make their recovery messy.
; probably one of the easier heavy weights for us to deal with honestly. He's mobile, but laggy. Takes a different approach, and most people use him out of desperation. Very easy to build damage against, and punish with a simple Banana > F Smash.
: Since people play him a lot now, all we gotta be aware of is gimps by his Remote Bombs and N Air. Otherwise, we got this. Easy to build damage against, easy to gimp, projectiles aren't as hard to deal with as say, Wolf's lasers because they're way slower, and of course, lag on ground moves and his low mobility.
: Kind of the same thing as in Smash 4 honestly. Confusion is more reliable against our projectiles though.
: See above, she's more laggy and easy to punish.
: Same as Mewtwo and Bayonetta, Power Suit Samus is harder to deal with for once.
: Because Jigglypuff is getting more exposure this time and she's buffed, basically play this as if you're fighting Squirtle. Watch out for Sing, keep a banana in hand if you're at Rest kill %. We outrange her greatly. Just watch out for aerial strings and being intercepted with recovery (which we should do anyway).
: Big fatty, but able to turn things around easily. Begin a match with a crashing Rocket Barrel do demoralize them because it does a easy 30%. Whoever ever said Diddy has no combos, try fighting Bowser and see how quickly their opinion changes. Takes a bit of a while to KO however, so keep the flow going -which should be relatively easy.
: High mobilty, but easy to punish. We can grab because of banana, he can't. And this alone should be frustrating for the Captain. Combo food.
: Just watch their longe range dragonclaw lance. Nothing else is really treatening. Punish their stuff with long ranged banana throws. And that's the ironic thing of this matchup, we have a clear range advantage if we play smart.
: Kind of like in Smash 4, we just win by character design alone lol
: Easy to lose a game against them, but in tournament settings, we will have the advantage. Just learn the playstyle of the Ganon you're facing and you'll easily punish them. Diddy and Ganondorf are both heavily reliant on a steady flow of strings, so these fights go rather quick. Just don't be too intimidated by them, watch the Flame Choke set ups.
: Few things to watch out for, many oppertunities to punish heavily. Be aware, but abuse the hell out of combo oppertunities. Nayru's Love protects against the Rocket Barrel explosion, so watch out with that. Also watch that Phantom. Other than that? It should be very easy to land KOs.
: All advantages she had in Smash 4 are kind of gone. Needles are less of an annoyance, and suddenly fighting Sheik is a cakewalk.
: Big target which is easy to hit with Banana, and combo food. We win neutral easy because of their rather laggy moves, and they don't have a real distinct range advantage. Attacks come out rather slow, and this makes this match play somewhat like a Smash 4 match.
: I overrated the bird pilot innitially. Slow enough to punish reliably. Rocket Barrels make his life harder. Blaster isn't all that oppresive anymore. Monkey Flip Kick is great approach, and we can KO them easily.
: If we beat ONE character reliably, it's King Dedede possibly. Peanuts beat Gordo y'all!
: Sure, Jr. and the Koopalings are buffed, but fundamentally they are still quite easy to read and predict, and slow enough to punish. Nothing should suggest we wouldn't beat them.
: Little Mac is just.. bad. But don't feel overconfident. He hits hard, but we win neutral.
: Would be a 50-50 matchup if he didn't have a slow and punishable tether grab which he overly relies on. When the Rope Snake is out, throw banana and ruin his day.
: Whilst buffed, there's just way too many room in PacMan's gameplan for us to punish them. And we can deal with hydrants easily.
: Inhale > Banana. Yet, it doesn't leave for many problems. We can even win this without Banana because Kirby's range is pitiful. Yet, he can combo us well. We just have small strenghts over him, and we can KO easier than Kirby. Very light as well. If we beat Jigglypuff already, then Kirby automatically loses as well I feel.
: Winning neutral makes us win this easily, doesn't have the range to keep us at bay as other swordies. Easy to KO as well.
: Everything they ever had over us in Brawl is removed. We can seperate them easily with Monkey Flip, or Rocket Barrel crashes.
Characters I feel we have a even
50-50 match up against:
: We both combo each other hard. What advantage we have with Banana, Pikachu counters with easy gimps and Thunder.
: Can get in hard, but easy to punish honestly because they can get careless quickly. And that is a thing our little buddy can abuse. D Tilt outranges a lot of Pichu's attacks, and throw the banana from a shorter distance to get in hard. Honestly, I would say we actually BEAT Pichu honestly, but seeing his combo potential I kinda move Pichu here. The rest is basically as Pikachu. What advantage we have with banana is neutered with Thunder and easy kills for them.
: Kind of the same situation as above, I actually think we have the potential to BEAT Chrom, but gimps make it harder for us. Quick fights as well these, watch for EVERY punish oppertunity. I believe we easily beat Chrom on-stage, but off-stage is where he beats us, and badly. As long as we keep stage control, we win.
: Basically the same as above, yet we don't have to worry much about his range advantage. Yet, this is countered by him potentially killing us even earlier. Keep your toes and play footsies real well, abuse Banana Throw range buffs, combo whenever possible. On stage, we win. Off stage, we lose badly.
: What has been said before basically, but less extreme. She still will ruin your day with combos however.
: If we would beat one of the Fire Emblem Sword Lords, it would be Marth first. Yet, tippers can ruin our life easily.
: Only 50-50 because of Pocket, and how it can keep our Banana. But at least in this game, our Banana is back when we land a KO. We should be beating them, but they have options against our stage control, so I kinda keep it safe and say 50-50.
: If we can land a solid hit, we have a combo flow, but his air speed makes this a lot harder than it should. I used to struggle with this, but once you find a way around the matchup and find exploits for punish, we build up damage FAST! Don't be demoralized, and keep patience while you search for a misplaced act of courage of Yoshi by throwing in a punishable move.
: Lives forever, and theoretically, we should win. But; King K.Rool has way to deal with our usual way of getting stage control. Neutral is harder to play against K.Rool than most other characters. And again, he lives till forever. And that's bad for us, because a good K.Rool player will find it easier to adapt to our game plan because he just won't die. We also can't damage his belly armor very well. I much rather play DK against K.Rool than Diddy honestly.
: Luma is annoying, but easier to deal with than in Smash 4. Gravitational Pull is still annoying because it always pulls in the Banana. Forces us to play different, but is still managable to fight against without Banana. And if we have the Banana in hand, Monkey Flip is still VERY effective against Rosalina and especially Luma.
: Don't get hit by PK Fire, punish whenever you can, can challenge us in the air and KO much easier, but we find openings way easier. 50-50 is my estimation because I'm not 100% confident we beat Ness, but it's not all that much of a challenge. Just keep a good and steady flow against Ness.
: They are harder than average to deal with in neutral, and in neutral we shine the most. Relatively fast for a "swordie", and that hinders us outside of the projectiles and orbitors.
: Harder to punish than normal because of insane mobility. We could potentially win, but Sonic is the only character am kind of worried about to leave our Banana on the ground. However, grounded Banana also hinders his mobility. I'll just say 50-50 because I'm not too confident and don't have the most matchup knowledge because luckily, not many people play Sonic this time.
: They can get a lot out of this match by forcing us to approach. Harder to deal with than Link because of their speed. Not all that hard, just annoying. We could easily beat them honestly. Young Link is probably a bit harder to deal with than Toon Link, because in general we combo floaties badly and N Air on Young Link can hinder our combos.
: Their projectiles alone make this matchup annoying. We beat Samus solidly otherwise. But because playing Samus is 70% dealing with their projectiles, I think we should rank it around this?
: Kind of has a lot of things going against us, but we can KO them very easily. They could theoratically beat us however, but I haven't struggled too hard against Fox despite him looking majorly buffed from Smash 4.
: Keep away from the Blaster range. Monkey Flip Kick from the air is a great approach tool against a blaster spamming Wolf. But he hits hards and has a reflector. So, kind of hard. We have equal advantages and weaknesses on both side I feel. Just, watch out. As he can be kinda scary at times.
: We lost this before, now we don't. Because he can't just camp us out as badly, and his sword range has been nerfed allowing us to punish easier. Because Banana Throw is also longer ranged. We can now kinda oppress him instead, but Limit Break still neuters a lot of our fun.
: Get around Neutral Air and win. That's mostly it. Yet, Neutral Air is really, really, really good against us. Slow and easy target which is easy to combo, but ironically, it's HIM that has the more combo confirms against us. That puts everything in perspective easily. Just... don't get hit by Neutral Air.
: Ironically, it's kind of a similar situation and Mr. Goddess Slayer Ike, avoid Neutral Air and punish whenever possible. Watch out for reflection stuff and her projectiles. She gets easy advantage on hit, but so do we.
: Gets in our face rather uncomfortably at times. Makes neutral hard to play, and I still think having a solid neutral advantage is our ticket for a easy matchup. Yeah sure he can't grab us as hard anymore, yet the matchup kind of remains the same from Smash 4 despite our buffs and nerfs. Punishing is also harder. These little annoyances change a matchup up that we are actually supposed to be winning.
: Grab is slower now har har har. We can abuse that. Recovery is now bad for him, but he can still combo us hard. We might even win this honestly, as we now DO win neutral and Banana is easier to land now that we have increased range on it, but still.. rather uncomfortable to fight against.
: Tornado is bad for us. Can kill us early, and has the standard Mario Bros. annoyances, but a bit easier to deal with than Mario however. Still, neutral isn't easily won, and he can kill us stupid early.
: Just a stupid matchup for us. Whoever is even responsible for making that bucket a reflector!? That alone changes stuff. Then again, am not too knowledgable about this matchup.
: Gyro, laser, Side B, repeat, and he does surprisingly well agaisnt us with this. Neutral is harder for us, and again, this makes things harder. Still, once we get in, damage comes easily. Approach with a crashing Rocket Barrel from time to time once he starts to feel comfortable.
: Kind of similar to the rest of the sword RPG hero gang. Can't say much more about it.
: We used to beat them, but now Aura is more stable, and since we take long to get our KOs, this makes Lucario scarier by default. Aura Sphere is also annoying, and Lucario now has strings on us, and kill throws. Other than this, we remain to have our advantages over Lucario as we did in Brawl and Smash 4. Which is solid enough to counter it as 50-50.
: Smash 4 matchup basically, but we get more reward on hitting them out of their comfort zone. So that makes the matchup less annoying.
: This was always a quite even matchup I feel. But now, they are buffed.
: They are good at keeping us at their desired range, but if we land a Banana, it's a problem for them. Peanuts beat the volley ball, which is fun. Still, am not too confident fighting them for some reason.
: This was very hard for me to rate, because I actually think DK has some SOLID advantages over us. Yet, we can get in easy like against all heavies. But he has super armor on a lot of relevant moves, and edgeguard us amazingly well. Just gotta keep on your toes all the time, and try to play almost perfect because he can punish us as hard as we can punish them.
Now, here come a few matchups am quite sure we're losing.
45-55 from here on:
: Aerial oppression, hits hard and reliable, great mobilty, and this makes it hard to get our Banana game going. His moveset and playstyle just requires a lot of adaptation, and he can abuse this. The motorcycle also makes landing a Banana harder. He can eat our food projectiles, and that makes his Wario Waft charge up faster. So... yeah, a surprise losing matchup.
: His explosive arsenal just turns the stage into a real life minefield. Hard to keep our neutral going with this. While it's not impossible to get in, he just has these mind tricks on us, and he wins by trading hits, and can live forever. And like the K.Rool matchup, living long is bad for us because he can adapt to us easier. He's predictable maybe, but has a lot of small advantages over us all over. Might just be a bad matchup for myself honestly.
: Yeah, this dude beats us. Maybe even our worst matchup. We just can't play neutral as usual, like all our losing matchups so far. Lands KOs easy, small target, but lives longer than us. Rocket Barrel explosives are almost needed to deal some damage in.
: I still struggle against them. Can build up damage easy, is fast enough for us to not being able to abuse our speed like we do against most zoners, and that DAMN ROLLER! I hate it. I dislike fighting them.
: He's fast, and can KO us easy. For a change, we do actually win neutral. But he has other stuff going in his advantage, as his overall frame data, and gimping, as well as disjointed attacks, and he's faster I feel. Approaches very easily from the air, and each hit on his leads for easy damage. We have to try harder against them, and that alone makes it feel like a losing matchup honestly.
: Turpins are annoying, and we kinda won this matchup in Smash 4 because F Air walled Peach. I don't think this matchup is terrible by any means, and easier to deal with than the others mentoined, yet the Princesses have certain strenghts that just come in very handy against us. And I hate recovering agains them. Gotta be careful with them.
Hope this is helpful for you guys!
