dair isn't bad at all. it has good range below and can auto cancel from a fulljump. but it does take a long time, and while often you can get away with it cuz ppl are scared to get hit by it, many good players know how to space their aerials to trade or just beat the dair as soon as they see it's out. So use it sparingly. Unfortuanately, doc doesn't have many good options coming down
utilt is pretty amazing, i def recommend using it a lot as an anti-air. its also a good move to use if you want to cover yourself after lag quickly since its starts up fast and has decent range. also sometimes the fact that it pushes shields out of range can be useful to give you some breathing room.
i actually like the dual nature of the uair hitboxes and prefer it to mario's uptilt. the horizontal hit can knock down spacies and lead to a techchase. also it's great for edgeguarding vs spacies illusions, if you hit with the horizontal part it sends them at a great gimp angle, if you hit with the launcher part, it combos easily into fair/bair/fsmash etc.
While it's a good move, like shieks tilts it can be baited n punished.
im not the greatest at pilling, but I think you'd want to be intimately aware of the pill trajectory and be able to place a pill at any point on the ground by doing a FH / quick double jump pill.
here is how i use them:
- to limit options. often you can pill in a way so your opponent can dash in or they'd be hit by the pill, and they can't jump from where they are otherwise they'd be hit by the pill. this forces them to swat the pill or give up some stage control by moving backwards.
- to cover movement. FH pill to cover dash away sometimes or dash towards. usually if you can pill them out of movement it can mess up their rhythm a bit
- to approach. you can FH pill (to waveland) and space the pill and yourself so that you're in attacking range right after the pill invades your opponents space. for example, approaching FH pill to land right in front of their shield where you can jab them and set up that mix up. You can also do this with FH -> waveland pill, you just have to get used to the pill spacing and understand how you can folow up the pill aggressively.
- just for pressure. pilling forces them to do something about the projectiles, also if I call them retreating after a close corners interaction, i will pill to keep up the pressure.
top doc players like OTG think nair should be used sparingly in neutral and others like me and Kevorkian have been bitten many times by abusing nair. Here's something I wrote yesterday on the subject:
nair is pretty solid for edgeguarding vs things like spacies illusions. I often do a double jump nair back onto the stage to edgeguard vs spacies illusions akin to sheik
maybe not edgeguarding, i've not played around with it. it can be really useful for gimping though, there's some dair gimp jank that boss came up with way back when that shroomed rediscovered on his own
(this forum has so many gems)
use cape often vs projectiles imo. still debating/experimenting with cape direction
sh instant uair is docs best approach by far. you can combo it into many things and follow knockdowns pretty easily after it
