How does Puff's neutral work?

[Little ShOcKeR]

I generally learned to play melee with Marth where everything seemed to be easy to answer regarding neutral, get in tipper range. Now with puff it seems a lot more theory based(?) I'm just not as understanding I guess. So how are you supposed to think and "approach" the neutral game as puff? Are you supposed to play to get poke with back air? It's just whenever I play Puff I feel like I don't have any control over neutral. Has anyone struggled with this before? Sorry for all the questions. I may know some of the answers somewhere in my mind but I would like to know how you guys approach this. Thanks in advance!

 

[GenNyan]

This question is really broad, so I'll just say that you should stay right outside the opponent's range.

 

[Little ShOcKeR]

This question is really broad, so I'll just say that you should stay right outside the opponent's range.

I'm just kind of curious of how you think of neutral. Not like your definition but how you "bend" it to your advantage. So are you looking to just hold your space? Or are you trying to take space? Are you relying on reads or reactions?

 

[GenNyan]

I'm just kind of curious of how you think of neutral. Not like your definition but how you "bend" it to your advantage. So are you looking to just hold your space? Or are you trying to take space? Are you relying on reads or reactions?

You can't really just hold space (Vs. fox, at least, you didn't specify so I'll talk about him I guess) because he can just laser camp you all day. Though a more passive strategy can work against some types of players. Even if he doesn't laser, he still has the advantage because he gets to dictate the pace of the match and when he approaches. A lot of what puff does is bait and condition the opponent into overextending. Puff isn't fast enough to react to everything fox does, so you do need to read a bit and preemptively throw out moves sometimes to make sure fox can't just have his way with you. You also need to be able to recognize and react to mistakes that the opponent makes so that you don't miss those few opportunities you do get.

Vs Marth, you will need to approach and take space, because marth can just wall you out forever. Run up shield is great. Also vs everyone, WD back is quite good.

I guess that's kinda my take on it. Oh and here's this guy's blogpost that might help you with this.