Actually, we outcamp Samus... if Samus isn't going in, she should be losing. Powershielding stuff from both sides can happen, and she can catch bombs, but she has to actually catch or shield them. If she's shooting missles, we can SHFFL any of nair, fair, or even uair to clank them out, or we can jab, and I've even seen moments when someone jumps over the missile and dairs it. We can also block super and sometimes homing missiles by just standing still [duck or walk forward occasionally to make sure you don't get that annoying idling animation that makes our shield not work].
Link's jab pressure on Samus [jab, jab, or jab jab, jab, jab] where you potentially do another move [dsmash, fair, nair, grab] but also could just keep jabbing, if spaced, is insane, because Samus lacks a proper answer. Grab is way too slow, I don't THINK nair reaches [she'd have to move closer], fair might reach but CC that, and up+B definitely doesn't reach, meaning her best option is to roll away [since you should just about be able to react to cross-up roll with spin attack]. Our fair/nair/bair are safe enough on shield that she can't hit us with up+B OoS if we buffer shield as we land, so if you cross her up she can't do much [slow bair], and if you land in front of her and are trying to, you can spotdodge her grab on reaction, then punish with fsmash, grab, spin attack, or dair.
Our projectiles can be surprisingly effective at racking damage while she's recovering offstage, though to gimp her we almost certainly need to hit her with bomb or rang while she's firing the tether, since nothing except arrows will knock her downwards, and arrows are hardish to land. You could attempt to use nair occasionally, but if you miss, she's probably on the ledge or onstage and you have to recover - that's a good look vs precisely zero characters in this game.
Dthrow, while good in almost every single MU, seems bad in this one. I know I'm not perfect at it, so it may very well be me, but it seems like dthrow is negative on hit, or at least the difference in actionability after the throw between Link and Samus is such that our only safe option is shielding(@
SAUS
if that person perhapsman or whatever would be willing to help test that, it would be great to see if I just need to really grind out that dthrow -> X punish, or if I'm right to not dthrow). Uthrow, however, is good, since she has bad air speed and we have an amazing uair [and nair].
All her aerials are fairly safe on shield, but she can really only follow them up on the ground with dsmash [punishable] or jab stuff [which you can almost always safely roll away from if she doesn't have charge shot, though of course not always rolling away is a good idea because you don't want to be predictable]. If your timing is perfect, you can spin attack out of jab1 pressure, unless that happens to be the exact time she goes for jab2, at which point you take like 6% and minimal knockback [not enough to KO until well past 200% if memory serves].
Samus is really heavy, so KOing with uair and dair is much easier than other aerials. Fsmash can also help somewhat [the second hit has a nice angle that will help KO her off the top], but fair won't KO until after 150% in this MU unless right by the ledge.
I can write more up if people want later. I did a huge write-up on this MU on the Samus boards a while back as well [it was longer than this though].
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