I've been playing around a lot with Doc lately and I guess because my other characters are Peach and Samus I picked up a few habits from them and they've sneak into my Doc. Still I'm not fully used to this character and movement/timing is all things I need to work on.
First off, wavedash f-tilt is really good. Of course it does not have the same range as Samus but it works the same. Not sure about shield pressure with Doc's first jab like you can with Samus. His initial jab seems faster but I'll need to test it out a bit more. Another thing I liked to do with Samus was falling drills into f-smash or whatever. With Doc I pulled off a cool combos with auto-cancel down-airs into up-tilt into another auto-cancel drill into another tilt. You could probably get a F-Smash if they DI into you.
As for edgeguarding I've been trying to get firefox to trade with Doc's nair, much like you do with Peach. You have a bit more maneuverability than with back-air. Works especially well when they recover low, not sure what's more effective going out there with the nair or simply get my cape timing better.
Down-air can combo into jab and grab I believe... I've messed around with it but i'm not sure if it's perfect. I'm doing combo study right now so I'll get back to you eventually.
I don't think f-smash is fast enough to combo.
going out their vs cape timing? Going out there. Why? waiting by the edge gives them the option to choose their recovery which means you either guess, read, or react. Going out there doesn't give them an option. Here's my rule of thumb.. if I know I can get out there before the firefox goes off... I go out. If not then I stand by the edge.
Now there's two factors that you need to take into account. High or low recovery and high or low percent.
Lets break it down:
- Low percent + low recovery: cape if you have time if not f-tilt or d-smash
- Low percent + high recovery: read it with a cape, down-smash when they land, or grab when they land and throw off stage. If they land on platform it gets tricky. I would try to get a grab but if you don't have time then back air off stage and try again.
- High percent + low recovery: cape, f-tilt, down-smash
- High percent + high recovery: read it with cape, down-smash when they land, f-air when they land, f-smash when they land.
Now there is a way to cover all if not most of these options options regardless of percent or height: go out in front of them and time your cape right after the firefox goes off.
To help you visualize it... think of spacies up-b as a circle. The further away from the circle the large it is... but the closer you get in the smaller the circle becomes. So the closer you are to a spacey the more space you cover.
This theory is applied in soccer... when a player breaks through the defense and it's just him and the goalie, the goalie gets closer to the player to make it harder for the player to score.
I hope this helps
Also... to all the players who struggle in the puff match up... just pill
Seriously... jiggs struggles against well placed pills.
Since Jiggs is so floaty and struggles to maneuver around them in the air, she has to b/f/n/d-air to defend against them and since she has some lag after those moves she has to back up. If she keeps going forward after hitting a pill then punish with an aerial that is not d-air and try to get as much as you can out of it.
Use pills to make openings to dish out damage and get kills.
Only downside with this is that it leads to long matches.
Kill her with a well placed smash or if you get her to a high percent trade with a n-air since her attacks have little to no disjoint.
Up-smash works better in the Jiggs match up compared to the others. If up-smash hits a grounded opponent it will meteor. If in the air, it's a regular smash so they will go higher. This is great because Jiggs is almost always in the air.
If you're struggling to kill, just trade with n-air.
This doesn't make Doc better than Jiggs but it debatably makes them even and it comes down to who spaces better and plays smarter.
