How to counter projectile spamming players?

[Captain Meta Knight]

I'm a Mario main with Cloud, Zero Suit Samus, Bowser, and Sonic as counterpicks.

While I was training with level 9 CPUs with the characters above, I notice that some CPUs have problems with spamming projectiles.

Some notable ones:

Mario & Luigi w/ fireballs
Peach w/turnips
Yoshi w/Egg Throw
Dr. Mario w/Megavitamins

Any tips on how to counter these projectile spamming strategies?

 

[Agitato]

Your cape/side-B will definitely come in handy. Perfect shielding and defending against their approach somehow (spotdodge if they grab, shield if they dash attack, etc.) should work in most situations as well.

 

[Lola Luftnagle]

I hope y'all are not using training mode for CPU sparring 'cause if so, the level 9 bots spam pretty often compared to other modes. The bright side is that y'all can easily predict their strategy and minor-counter accordingly. I remember recently I was practicing against and in training mode and they usually threw out projectiles and other certain moves while gradually approaching.

 

[Captain Meta Knight]

Your cape/side-B will definitely come in handy. Perfect shielding and defending against their approach somehow (spotdodge if they grab, shield if they dash attack, etc.) should work in most situations as well.

Good tip....... but when I reflect projectiles with Mario's Side-B, characters with reflectors can reflect it right back at me( if I'm not close enough). Any counter strategies to that?

 

[Agitato]

Good tip....... but when I reflect projectiles with Mario's Side-B, characters with reflectors can reflect it right back at me( if I'm not close enough). Any counter strategies to that?

Honestly, there are a lot of ways to avoid projectiles. You can jump over them and either attack or bait with an airdodge, depending on how slow the projectile is. Some moves have more priority than a given projectile, though I don't know whether there's a universally projectile-invulnerable move. For example, Falcon's down-B will clash with the hitboxes of Link's boomerangs and arrows, negating their effects. I'd recommend searching high-level matches on YouTube with your mains against characters you struggle with, or checking the Smashboards character discussion subforums for MU advice.

The CPU isn't that helpful of a training partner, as it only reads your inputs and doesn't actually adapt the way a human opponent does. It will follow the same patterns at 300% as it does with no damage. For that, there are online matchmaking sites like smashladder.com and Smashboards' own arena thread, or the regional subforums for offline play. You'll learn a lot more fighting a real person who can give you feedback than the AI, which won't teach you to adapt to a human opponent and can give you bad habits, like rolling too much.