Guide to Meta Knight's Throws

[ItoI6]

When you play Meta Knight you might realize very quickly that his damage is absolutely terrible. His most damaging tilts and aerials do a max of 7%, and his only A button attacks that actually do more than that are his smash attacks. Thankfully MK's followups off of a grab do a ton of damage and some followups are inescapable.

Down Throw - Guaranteed Stuff​

When you land a grab, almost every time you should be using down throw. MK's other throws have certain niches but none are as reliable as this move. The guaranteed combos from this move vary depending on character and percent but for a rough estimate they are

0-10% - Dthrow-USmash - 16%
0-45% - Dthrow-Fair - 13%
0-80% - Dthrow-UpB - 22% if grounded from startup, 19% in air

Now as to why you would ever use the first two, Dthrow to USmash allows you to continue to juggle your opponent because it puts you directly below them and they have to waste their double jump if they don't want to get hit with an uair followup, while Dthrow to UpB has only barely has enough hitstun at low percents to allow you to fastfall and shield against some characters before they can hit you. If they just float away after the UpB there's no way to chase them. It's safer, avoids staleness, and is more profitable a lot of the time.

Dthrow to Fair works even if you get a grab on a ledge and they're holding away from the stage. You can just hop off and hit them without sding from an UpB.

You should also use these two if you think you're at angle where they'll fall out of the 2nd hit of upb. At higher percents dthrow to upb starts to get iffy, which is where you should be looking to catch airdodges with tornado.

Down Throw - VI Dependent Stuff​

MK has more rewarding and diverse dthrow combos but it depends on what the opponent's VI is.

20-40% - Dthrow-Tornado - 27-29% if they VI up or if there's no VI.
0-20% - Dthrow-Dash Attack-UpB, Utilt or Uair depending on weight - 20+% if they VI away
20-40% - Dthrow-Fair-UpB - 25% if they don't VI the fair
45-55% - Dthrow-Uair till you can't-UpB - 22%+ if they don't VI anything

Dthrow-Tornado is something you should always be looking for at almost any percent, it does an absolutely ridiculous amount of damage and even at percents where it isn't a true combo it's very easy to bait an airdodge to land the move, which does about 20%!

It's easy to land Dthrow to grounded UpB if they hold away, but again it's the same principle as dthrow to upsmash in that this will actually put you in position to juggle someone. Landing so many hits in succession makes them more likely to airdodge as well, which you can bait for a free tornado!

You need to dash into them and land fair so that they're extremely close to MK's body and then buffer UpB in the end lag of the fullhop fair. This is a true combo hitstun-wise, and unless they've seen it before probably won't be holding away to escape the UpB.

There's an extremely small percent window on most characters where up-air has enough hitstun to combo into itself repeatedly. You can finish with an UpB if they're too far away for the next one.

Down Throw - Swag Combos​

Wow! Mostly useless but still cool.

0-10% - Dthrow-Dair-Footstool-DownB - 29%

Down B is the only way to follow up footstool because it cancels the footstool's upward momentum by allowing you to teleport down instantly. Down B will whiff on any skinny human-like characters. It also works at a very specific percent, only does like 5-7% more than dthrow to UpB and won't work at all if they VI correctly. It's also tied with the most damage you can get off a grab with dthrow to tornado. Pretty cool! If anyone has some ideas feel free to share.

Forward Throw - Throw of Mystery​

MK's forward throw will do 3% or 9% depending on the character he uses it against and no value in between. It doesn't appear to be correlated to weight, fall speed, VI, or anything at all. What appears to be happening is that Fthrow is actually a 2 hit move, where the 1st hit does 6% and the last hit does 3%. Due to some programming error or oversight, the 1st hit fails to hit certain characters depending on their hitbox. It doesn't matter if I dashed while using the fthrow or if I was standing, the result was 100% consistent whenever I used the throw.

EDIT: Metaknight's fthrow has been patched, it now works correctly and does 9% to every character in v1.04

Forward Throw - When Should I Actually Use this Throw?​

You should use fthrow if you aren't confident you can continue a juggle vs your opponent from a followup after dthrow. It does 9% compared to dthrow's 7%, but the only move that will combo after fthrow is shuttle loop. After about 60%, you need to be sliding forward from a dash grab while using the move to have enough time to jump up and shuttle loop. I would recommend using this move instead of dthrow versus characters that are very difficult to juggle such as Yoshi and other Metaknights.

Back Throw - The Average One​

This throw is pretty good. It sends your opponent behind you and does 10%, so if your back is to the ledge and your opponent is little mac or something its probably more profitable than a dthrow. Bthrow to Dash Attack also is a true combo from 0-10% on midweight and heavy characters if they have no VI.

Up Throw - The Throw That's Supposed to Kill but Really Doesn't​

This throw really does not kill until 190% with VI against midweight characters. I'm not saying that won't happen since MK sucks at killing but it's really disappointing how weak it is. If you're on a platform stage its probably killing around 10-20% earlier but I wouldn't hold your breath. In practice you can kill much earlier if your opponent does something dumb like hold up and to be honest its probably more useful than I'm making it sound lol Against Rosalina, the luma can hit you out of dthrow so you should use the back throw and upthrow against her. MK's upthrow sends luma flying very far away on the hit back down.

 

[DiggersBoy]

Good stuff. I would like to add that I'm a big fan of Meta Knight's Back Throw, mainly because he has a "pseudo-infinite" with it. At lower percents (Can't remember off the top of my head, probably around 0% to 80-100%. Anyways, it's dependent on where you are), if you Back Throw, and the distance is short enough so your opponent does not go off stage (Works best on FD stages because of the large, flat stage), try to look for an air dodge. If they air dodge, they will have enough lag so that you can dash up to them and back throw them again. You can keep on doing this until they stop air dodging or get to around 80-100%, in which you can start Down Throw strings to kill. However, unless it's a CPU, they will not just randomly air dodge, so you must bait it out of them. Dash-RollBack-DashGrab is one string of inputs I do, as well as Dash-ShieldCancel-ShieldGrab. Stuff like that, you just gotta bait.

This also works with heavy-lag aerials. This is why my personal favorite MU is vs Zelda, because I can always string Back Throw Pseudos together. My sparring partner also plays a lot of GnW, and when I Back Throw him, he will try to catch me with his Dair. I often just bait the Dair and follow up with another back throw until he realizes the Dair is useless against me.

So yeah, Back Throw is amazing.

 

[ItoI6]

Good stuff. I would like to add that I'm a big fan of Meta Knight's Back Throw, mainly because he has a "pseudo-infinite" with it. At lower percents (Can't remember off the top of my head, probably around 0% to 80-100%. Anyways, it's dependent on where you are), if you Back Throw, and the distance is short enough so your opponent does not go off stage (Works best on FD stages because of the large, flat stage), try to look for an air dodge. If they air dodge, they will have enough lag so that you can dash up to them and back throw them again. You can keep on doing this until they stop air dodging or get to around 80-100%, in which you can start Down Throw strings to kill. However, unless it's a CPU, they will not just randomly air dodge, so you must bait it out of them. Dash-RollBack-DashGrab is one string of inputs I do, as well as Dash-ShieldCancel-ShieldGrab. Stuff like that, you just gotta bait.

This also works with heavy-lag aerials. This is why my personal favorite MU is vs Zelda, because I can always string Back Throw Pseudos together. My sparring partner also plays a lot of GnW, and when I Back Throw him, he will try to catch me with his Dair. I often just bait the Dair and follow up with another back throw until he realizes the Dair is useless against me.

So yeah, Back Throw is amazing.

A pseudo-infinite is something like zss in brawl where she could dsmash-dsmash-upb repeat, i think of it as something that has enough hitstun to combo but can be escaped by di. What you're referring to does not work at all. the only way that would actually work is if they air dodge. they can just jump or attack or do anything really to get out of that. What you've discovered is that shielding underneath someone is an effective way of covering some options. You could say that for any attack in the game that sends someone up in the air lol

i did find an effective use for fthrow in that in the yoshi and dedede matchups i just always do fthrow-upb at like 0-60% and it does more damage than any other option, and i dont really care about positioning afterwards because these two are like impossible to juggle. its a true combo even from 0. ill add it in later but its definitely the best option out of a throw for both of them.

 

[DiggersBoy]

Aight, not that great on the whole "vocab" thing of smash. Lots of terminologies, hard to understand it all XD

I dunno, I really like Back Throw, though. Down Throw is still MK's Bread-And-Butter, but I feel like Back Throw is a good mixup option, considering that F-Throw is useless 90% of the time and Up-Throw is complete trash in singles (collision does dmg, pretty good in doubles imo). If I was playing against another Meta Knight, and they grab me, I'll be DI'ing for a Down Throw.

 

[Katakiri]

I just noticed that Olimar's Pikmin will follow Olimar during an Up-Throw but they are considered alone and vulnerable once Olimar is taken upward. Pikmin always gather below MK (following Olimar) so the Up-Throw will damage every one of his Pikmin and puts them into a stunned knock-down state upon landing in a cluster right at MK's feet.

Our Up-Throw does 7% to the Pikmin meaning White Pikmin are killed by the Up-Throw itself, Red, Blue, & Yellow Pikmin are killed by a D-Tilt after the throw, and Purples are killed by 2 D-Tilts or an F-Smash after the throw.

So in one swift motion, we kill all of Olimar's Pikmin before he even lands from the Up-Throw.

Edit: Video~

 

[Ulevo]

Poor Olimar.

 

[busken]

down throw-->dash attack-->fair is a true combo at low percents.