Lolz, I totally missed this thread before! I just found it for the first time, thanks to Xenforo uncovering a bunch of old stuff.
These should probably be revived. They were pretty helpful.
I've played against Dabuz once or twice, and my friend, DarkPkmn/Decoy, mains Oli and we've played a lot against each other, so I think I know a couple of things about this MU, but I'm still mostly confused on how we're supposed to win. I agree with a -2 for this.
1. How does Dedede's ground game fare versus Olimar?
I personally think Olimar beats us on the ground. Between grab (especially pivot grab), fsmash, and usmash, Oli controls the RPS game pretty well. As TC said, our ftilt and dtilt can break his grab IF we predict it, but, well, we have to predict it.
2. How does Dedede's air game fare versus Olimar?
Conversely, I'm pretty sure we solidly beat Olimar in the air. Our attacks out-prioritize his, I believe (my friend told me that Pikmin have almost no priority, although I don't know how true this is). In addition, due to his weight and his recovery, he loses out on pretty much all air trades. If he wants to get to the ground safely, he often has to give away free damage via Whistle, and I'm pretty sure we can still punish Whistle pretty hard (frame-traps, possibly?).
3. Can Dedede gimp or disrupt Olimar's recovery? How does Olimar fare offstage versus Olimar?
This one's quite obvious.
Olimar's tether-dependent recovery makes him
very gimpable. One successful read from us can equal a gimping aerial or an edgehog. If we hit him out far enough at the start, then it's just an easy ledgehog. If anything, we can get free damage through frame-traps or hitting him during Whistle. I also feel that Olimar has a somewhat hard time getting off the ledge against DDD because we can punish his landings with a grab or a tilt.
Olimar is just in a
very bad place when he's offstage against DDD.
4. Can Olimar gimp Dedede? How does Dedede fare offstage versus Olimar?
Olimar can make recovering annoying with his Pikmin throws and smashes, and I personally am a little afraid of his dair meteor, but in the end, we should always be able to recover against him. Olimar kinda sucks trying to do anything offstage, and he doesn't have Falco lasers. In addition, I feel that Oli can't really do much about our ledge options. Ledgehop allows us to cover ourselves with dair and when landing, we can throw out Inhale mix-ups, which work pretty well.
5. Is Olimar easy to grab and/or chaingrab? Can we chaingrab him?
I wouldn't say he's easy to grab (and he's impossible to CG) but we have some pretty good grab 'set-ups' on him. For one, we can grab his landing pretty well. Oftentimes, he's gonna whistle to avoid suffering KB which could send him offstage without his DJ, so we can just grab that. Our tilts send him into the air, and so does our b/fthrow. His techroll is also pretty bad, so we can land another grab from a dthrow TC.
6. Can Dedede shield pressure Olimar, and with what attacks can he do so with? Can Olimar also shield pressure Dedede?
DDD's ftilt is decent pressure in this MU. I feel like Inhale is also pretty good pressure. Olimar can definitely pressure DDD with Pikmin throws and smashes, especially fsmash, and if we try to shield those attacks too closely, he can just grab us anyway.
7. Can Dedede punish Olimar's attacks easily on shield? And vice versa?
If Olimar mis-spaces his attacks, or we PS them, I think we can always punish them with a shieldgrab. However, on the other side, I could almost swear Olimar's usmash OoS is one of the
dumbest things in the universe. I mean, if you're at kill %'s, think TWICE about doing something stupid on his shield, because between shieldgrab > u/bthrow and usmash OoS, Olimar can definitely make us regret our unsafe shield pressure.
How should Dedede optimally deal with:
Pikmin Throw
Shield them at a distance, especially the purples. If they latch onto you, you can take them off with nair. I wouldn't worry about this move too much, though. DDD has the bulk to withstand a bit of residual damage, as long as he keeps it to a minimum by continuously going in.
This move is annoying as HECK! I
think our ftilt out-spaces this move, but I'm not sure. I think we should just counter this by reading it and jumping over it. Eventually, Olimar will run out of space. That's my 5 cents.
stupid aerials
It's mostly the
nair! This move sets up into SO MUCH garbage for Olimar, it's ridiculous. I'm fairly certain that nair > usmash > uair > DJ uair (depending on Pikmin) is a true combo at low %'s. At death %'s, this move hit-confirms into his usmash for the KO. We have to be
extremely careful about this move, because it, alone, can be responsible for a huge portion of our stock disappearing before we can even realize what happened.
All his other aerials can be out-prioritized, I believe, or punished on shield. I
tbink we can punish Oli's nair on our shield, but I'm actually not sure at all. That move is just stupid.
Are there any other moves that Dedede should be aware of?
Lolz, how can you froget about his smashes? They're such BS!
Usmash kills, has a ton of priority for no reaason, and it punishes so many things OoS. Fsmash, along with pivot grab and Pikmin Toss, makes up Olimar's main meat in the neutral game, IMO. Both of these moves really help Olimar's keep-out game. One kills, is pretty fast, and has decent use as an anti-air tool, and one has just sooooo much range.
This is obviously all IMO from playing against my friends Olimar a LOT.