Miracle Of Light - Palutena in SSB4 (Featuring Cereza from Bayonetta-series)

[Tailisu10]

I asked myself that same question when I took the photo. I just grabbed 5 controllers (two GCs, the Gamepad, one Pro controller, and a Wii remote) got them all in one spot, and hit the pause button to switch over to the other controllers.

I know how you feel

 

[Zediwonder]

I was playing for glory with Palutena and I felt so bad for destroying a Shulk player, I won every single match against them, a few doing some sick dair meteor smashes but I felt horrible when they couldn't figure out how to get past me bthrowing or fthrowing them off the stage and countering every time they tried to get back which eventually just led to them killing themselves trying something different.

 

[meleebrawler]

I was playing for glory with Palutena and I felt so bad for destroying a Shulk player, I won every single match against them, a few doing some sick dair meteor smashes but I felt horrible when they couldn't figure out how to get past me bthrowing or fthrowing them off the stage and countering every time they tried to get back which eventually just led to them killing themselves trying something different.

So, you were countering badly spaced Air Slashes
or desperate Fairs?

Hopefully he'll have learned to aim for the edge
properly or use Monado Jump since then.
Getting the most out of Shulk isn't easy.

 

[Zediwonder]

So, you were countering badly spaced Air Slashes
or desperate Fairs?

Hopefully he'll have learned to aim for the edge
properly or use Monado Jump since then.
Getting the most out of Shulk isn't easy.

A bit of both, they started using Jump but unfortunately they decided to pursue me off the edge when I went for a dair and killed themselves. They played a heap of matches with me so hopefully they learnt what I was punishing them for. They managed to win twice but I was playing Jiggs and whiffed rests and that was why I lost.

I never realized how large Shulks range was till those matches though, he's really hard to get close to even if he whiffs a laggy attack.

To keep this post about Palutena though, she feels way way harder to play online. It's probably just my laggy net but compared to playing Little Mac or Toon Link on for glory I have so much trouble with Palutena. I have a higher win rate with Little Mac despite being way worse at playing him and struggle a lot more to get KO's in for glory with Palutena than I usually would playing locally. It really drives home how much more of a demanding character she is to play well, you gotta work hard for those dthrow > fair combo's while still playing fairly defensively which is a lot more difficult in a laggy environment.

 

[meleebrawler]

A bit of both, they started using Jump but unfortunately they decided to pursue me off the edge when I went for a dair and killed themselves. They played a heap of matches with me so hopefully they learnt what I was punishing them for. They managed to win twice but I was playing Jiggs and whiffed rests and that was why I lost.

I never realized how large Shulks range was till those matches though, he's really hard to get close to even if he whiffs a laggy attack.

To keep this post about Palutena though, she feels way way harder to play online. It's probably just my laggy net but compared to playing Little Mac or Toon Link on for glory I have so much trouble with Palutena. I have a higher win rate with Little Mac despite being way worse at playing him and struggle a lot more to get KO's in for glory with Palutena than I usually would playing locally. It really drives home how much more of a demanding character she is to play well, you gotta work hard for those dthrow > fair combo's while still playing fairly defensively which is a lot more difficult in a laggy environment.

Not to mention being careful not to do a tilt
while trying to turn around and do a jab.

 

[Zediwonder]

Not to mention being careful not to do a tilt
while trying to turn around and do a jab.

That's really just a problem in general I have playing 3ds, the cstick on my gbc is never going to change from smash attack because of this.

 

[Death Arcana]

ive come to the conclusion that Tap jump in this game is too damn sensitive lol

 

[Zediwonder]

Going to a tournament tomorrow and I think I'm gonna try full Palutena, been feeling a lot more confident playing her lately but I'll have to pick my MU's carefully.

Last tournament I got 13th of 40 players and this time I reckon I can at least top 8 but I gotta aim for number 1! If I get anything recorded I'll put it on the video thread because I really want some feedback on how I play Palutena.

Edit: sad to say I didn't do too great, got stuck in a pool with the friend I came with who I've been playing smash with pretty much everyday for 7 years now so he knows my play style pretty good not to mention he plays Diddy Kong. Tried my best and gave him a hard time to get the win but in the end I lost 2/1. Taught a Megaman player why they should fear Palutena and Reflect in the loser bracket before having to verse my friend again and unfortunately losing again in another close match up.

 

[Christopher Rodriguez]

Can somebody tell me something useful about the sheik MU I don't know

Because I can't even against her

 

[Zediwonder]

Sheiks a tough character to beat, really fast and a lot of good options. Any matchup with a character with decent range attacks is a good excuse to use Reflect, Sheik has needles and the grenade both of which are fairly easy to read, a lot of players charge and immediately throw needles on approach so you can fake out approaches and reflect, the grenade is a bit more difficult since you can't reflect explosions but you can reflect it while it's coming out back at her. If you Reflect safely and correctly your opponent will probably stop using them for the most part and you can start approaching a bit more aggressively.

Sheik is good at close combat as well so you can't be too aggressive. Shiek is pretty tall so sh to fair is pretty easy to pull off and applies good pressure from a safe distance. Once you get Sheik into the air you really don't want to let her get back, Palutena's aerials are her best moves and her smashes are also best used on airborne foes or foes returning to the stage because of their range. If you're in a tournament setting you can counterpick, stages with platformsand make it a lot easier to approach and Palutena has good options when approaching from above with aerials, FD is your worst choice in this situation but if you're playing for glory you don't have much choice. I don't know much more than this because I don't have much experience with the Match up, my friend plays her a little bit but it's not his best character.

Maybe there should be a proper Match up and Advanced technique thread set up for Palutena, a lot more people are asking about MU's lately and it's an important thing for all players to know, new players to the competitive scene probably also want easy access to learn her AT's and they're all kind of scattered right now as few as there are right now.

 

[Cap'nChreest]

Palutena's worst match up is against people who roll. I can 3 stock someone who rolls with Falcon but with Palutena I can barely scrape by.

 

[Admiral Pit]

I myself do find roll spammers annoying. F-tilt and infinite jab leaves you open if you miss, and D-smash has too short duration of a hitbox to be too reliable. At least she's still okay in the mobility department.

 

[Yoshi Kirishima]

Actually I feel that rolling is very easily punishable with Palutena. Your run speed is insane and you can dash attack and dash grab.

 

[JayWon]

I myself do find roll spammers annoying. F-tilt and infinite jab leaves you open if you miss, and D-smash has too short duration of a hitbox to be too reliable. At least she's still okay in the mobility department.

I've noticed Palutena has a hard time dealing with people who roll behind her as well! Turn around Jab and nicely timed Bair works well. Uncharged D-smash, for me, never worked to punish rolls In general, for some reason I seem to land D-smash much more if I charge it a bit. Uncharged D-smash just never seems to hit the right timing.

 

[Rashid]

I find it better to use down smash to punish laggy air dodge landings, like how @AeroLink_the_SoulMaster baits them out, fastfalls and down smashes opponents.

 

[Zediwonder]

I tend to punish rolls with fsmash since it has a bit more range than dsmash, the hitboxes are deceptive on her wing moves especially with the surprisingly large windboxes. If I know where they're going to roll then the fsmash will hit anyway, if they were going to spot dodge the dsmash would miss anyway so I'd get punished either way. Her Dsmash isn't great for punishing rolls because it's not like a lot of other character dsmashes, it hits both sides at once where to punish a roll you really want the one that hits both sides separately, I play Toon Link and punishing with his Dsmash is great since both strikes hit making it the best option.

Palutena does also have the advantage of speed and can punish rolls with grabs like Diddy Kong and a lot of other characters can, I personally think it's one of the best chances to get a grab so long as you aren't at the edge of the stage where logic stops working.

 

[Cap'nChreest]

Maybe I'm just playing people on wi-fi. but even if I have a read it still misses. its impossible to make those kinds of reads for an entire match. Single jab leaves me open too much as well. If I try to punish anything I try to do an instant dash attack since it comes out the fastest. but even then if it misses you're left with end lag.

 

[xnine]

I actually think that Palutena's jab 1 is great against roll spammers and for reads. It's pretty quick and it has range. I'm usually not confident enough to punish rolls with a smash. The end lagggggg

 

[ChivalRuse]

I myself do find roll spammers annoying. F-tilt and infinite jab leaves you open if you miss, and D-smash has too short duration of a hitbox to be too reliable. At least she's still okay in the mobility department.

Palutena's worst match up is against people who roll. I can 3 stock someone who rolls with Falcon but with Palutena I can barely scrape by.

You guys are silly. Jab 1 doesn't have to go into the rapid jabs; you can jab 1 > grab hit confirm or simply abort any follow up if jab 1 whiffs.

F-tilt is not worth using enough to mention in this discussion (i.e., if you're complaining about people rolling behind your f-tilts, it's because you're f-tilting too much - it's not worth using 99% of the time). D-tilt is a much more useable move, and still I don't like to use it much.

D-smash is at best useable as a punish move (shield something laggy, d-smash out of shield); and even still, Palutena usually has better ways to punish (grab). You shouldn't hope people run into that move considering how laggy it is. If you whiff, forget losing to roll, your opponent could WALK up to you and punish before you come out of the recovery animation.

The difference between Falcon and Palutena's dash grab ranges is not as massive as you are claiming. Palutena is actually amazing at punishing rolls. You just have to be intelligent enough to know when your opponent will roll and take note of which way they like to roll (behind you or away). Players usually roll right after they whiff a move (or a grab). Typically, a beginner will roll away from you, especially if they use a character with a projectile; this stems from their unfamiliarity with the game - being near an opponent is unfamiliar territory - they would rather be midscreen where they can throw projectiles comfortably. More experienced players will roll behind you; they aren't afraid to be near you because they know that something called "lag" exists and they will be greedy and try to land that big move on you.

As you become better at judging your opponents' emotional state and the urgency of a situation, your consistency at punishing rolls will increase exponentially. It takes some getting used to, but once you master this psychological aspect of the game, you will never again lose to people who overly rely on roll.

 

[Christopher Rodriguez]

says it's offline

 

[Hydde]

add me guys to have some match ups!

NNID in my siog

 

[Death Arcana]

been having a bad week with my girl Palutena
Cruel Temptress man...

 

[Zediwonder]

I agree that Jab1 is great, much better than jab spamming especially. however

been having a bad week with my girl Palutena
Cruel Temptress man...

Same here, today I've misplaced warp at least once a match and killed myself or warped and been staged spiked by Diddy Kong several times.

Diddy Kong is such a bad MU for Palutena, he beats her in almost everything except range though he's equally as likely to kill himself as I am with warp. I've actually found the worst thing about this MU is Palutena's size, Diddy Kong has no trouble hitting such a large target but Palutena's size means she throws items directly over Diddy Kong most of the time and because he's fairly small it's hard to come down on him with a fair or bair and then if you dair they'll tech it and punish you. I'm getting a capture card soon so I'm gonna start recording matches with my friends Diddy Kong, I'm sure everyone wants some footage of the Diddy kong match up regardless since he is the so called "Metaknight of smash 4" and I need it myself to learn.

 

[ChivalRuse]

Biggest problems (outside of banana obviously) in the matchup are Diddy's d-tilt and sh fair. D-tilt will out-footsie you for days and fair has enough priority to challenge Palutena's own great fair. Sometimes you can't avoid getting hit, and in those instances, it's good to have the presence of mind to counter - but you have to have very keen awareness of your predicament and not start countering as a habit, but as a reflex. It's not difficult for Diddy to bait out counters, either, by threatening with his presence.

To have any success in the matchup, you have to make good use of dash in to shield and knowing good times to beat Diddy's moves with dash attack. Get grabs, combo him, try to gain some control of the flow of the match. Understand Diddy's meta. Play the character a lot to familiarize yourself with him.

 

[Zediwonder]

My friend plays Diddy Kong so I'm familiar with the match up. Diddy's fair is really good, before knowing the match up it just seemed like it came out of nowhere, and even after knowing the matchup the fair comes out so quickly you're likely to get hit once unexpectedly and if you block it grounded Diddy will just grab you the moment they land. Rolling seems to be easily punished by Diddy, especially with his deceptive fsmash. I only recently noticed how good Diddy's dtilt is when I was punished trying to roll behind him, it's also great for ledge guarding.

I have a lot of trouble winning but it's certainly not impossible to win, you have to play it really slow and carefully though because one mistake is guaranteed to get you punished by Diddy Kong. Approaching with sh fair is a good option, mix up with retreating fair and bairs because if they get the chance they'll grab you the moment you hit the ground and equalize any damage you've done with a dthrow combo, making yourself hard to read and predict is pretty much essential for all MU's of course. Palutena is really good with dealing with Diddy's side special with autoreticle from a decent distance and if you use reflect he'll bounce over you and give you a free punish if he's kicking. It's better to avoid approaching Diddy if you can, use bair and dash attack to deal with his approaching fairs, Palutena's fair won't work unless you perfectly space it so bair is simply a better option. Diddy kong is also a character that's also really easy to gimp, bthowing off the stage and going for a dair is risky but they'll have a lot of trouble recovery from it and with Diddy's recovery being kinda broken in all the wrong ways (hitting the ledge sometimes just sends him flying away from the stage at the wrong angle) it's your best bet for an easy stock, Diddy will win uair against dair most of the time but it's very easy to bait out and although uair has really fast recovery the best chance to hit your dair is right after they use it (if you bait it out). Don't take the game off stage if you can though, if you need to warp back to stage Diddy can stage spike you, I'm not sure if you can tech the hit but it's worth trying. My friend baits me off the stage sometimes to get these stage spikes, it's my fault for falling for them but still be careful there.

That's about all I can say on the matchup without going through a match, unfortunately I always forget to save replays after games so I don't have anything to go off besides my experiences. Only other thing is don't sh dair, it's tech-able and you'll get punished if they tech it, it's happened to me numerous times, not 100% but it happens often enough that I don't encourage it at all.

 

[ChivalRuse]

You can SH dair and fade away with it afterward to avoid punishment if they tech. It's not even techable until mid percents anyway I believe.

 

[Cap'nChreest]

You guys are silly. Jab 1 doesn't have to go into the rapid jabs; you can jab 1 > grab hit confirm or simply abort any follow up if jab 1 whiffs.

The problem is that the grab isn't confirmed on jab in certain matchups. some characters can roll behind. So I'll get the jab and miss the grab. There's no data on it yet so I'm not entirely sure when is the safest opportunity is. I know at least Falcon can roll behind a jab>grab.

 

[Rashid]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtMBrKq_iCE

Do you guys think Paluturnip would benefit from this?

 

[TheRealPalutena]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtMBrKq_iCE

Do you guys think Paluturnip would benefit from this?

Hmm...Maybe this could be could for like faking a ledge trump and catching their ledge roll with a smash attack or something. But I guess thats more anyone and not just Tena. If i'm not mistaken im pretty sure charging her Dsmash kills all movement momentum too

I'm not 100% sure though

 

[ChivalRuse]

The problem is that the grab isn't confirmed on jab in certain matchups. some characters can roll behind. So I'll get the jab and miss the grab. There's no data on it yet so I'm not entirely sure when is the safest opportunity is. I know at least Falcon can roll behind a jab>grab.

In those matchups, then, just go for the grab without the jab. I don't jab much anyway.

 

[Zediwonder]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtMBrKq_iCE

Do you guys think Paluturnip would benefit from this?

I don't really see it being helpful for Palutena, the moves it works for aren't great moves for Palutena, dsmash is a fine move but only if you can guarantee the hit and a whiff is pretty much just asking for your opponent to come up and hit you hard, the same applies to her tilts, utilt is really good while sliding I found when using it from super speed so that might make it a better move if used with this tech. I won't say anything for certain until I can practice it and pull it off in a match though.

 

[Cap'nChreest]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtMBrKq_iCE

Do you guys think Paluturnip would benefit from this?

It doesn't even work for her. She looses all momentum with her d-smash.

 

[Beastmegs]

over the past few days i have forced my self to use only Palautena when playing for glory with this i have done my best to use all of her tools to asure victory tho i tend to lose more often with her but i think i have found syneregy with her after long 4 hour play session i think i can safely say now she will be my main for life what small issues i have with her are mainly becuse i'm still playing smash 3DS not sure when i will get a Wii-U so i'd like to ask do any you guys feel she plays much better on a controller then a circle pad i need to confirmed this

 

[Rashid]

It doesn't even work for her. She looses all momentum with her d-smash.

Pretty sure you can use jabs out of it.

 

[ChivalRuse]

so i'd like to ask do any you guys feel she plays much better on a controller then a circle pad i need to confirmed this

Of course a controller is better. It's more accurate, more precision.

 

[Zediwonder]

Is it just me or is Palutena's warp one of the worst in the game? I think it has slightly more vertical distance but it doesn't deal damage, ledge warp cancelling is cool but I think Zelda and Sheik are also able to do it?

 

[ChivalRuse]

Worst of three amazing moves does not equal a bad move

 

[Zediwonder]

Worst of three amazing moves does not equal a bad move

True, just seems odd, the girl who borrows a goddesses power has a better move than a goddess herself. Palutena is just too kind and has to level the playing field.

 

[ChivalRuse]

Haha. Nevertheless, it's very useful for getting out of juggle situations and even warping back to the stage by jumping from the ledge is okay sometimes.

 

[Zediwonder]

My personal favourite of her recovery moves. I've never tried warping from ledge onto stage, never occurred to me, I'll have to try it out next time I'm playing, I've been getting predictable with my warps and my friends are just punishing me every time I use it now.