Needing some meat and potatoes! (Advice in bettering my toolkit with Rosalina)

[JAZZ_]

Hello Rosalina mains,
Jazz here looking to you for help in my learning to use Rosalina. I'm a Samus main, a Low-tier warrior as my friend would say. After picking Rosalina in a 4 player smash and creaming my friends I felt like I had to pick this character up as a secondary. However I've spent the last few months colaborating, researching, and training my Samus skills because I gotta think and play in such an unorthodox way with Samus. (In all my years playing smash I never thought I'd use less than 2 smash attacks per match, and use tilts and zair till the cows came home) I've managed to stay competitive with Samus with all this research and practice but I'm still working on it.
However when I want to pick up a new character all I do is play against my friends with them, nothing competitive yet because I haven't put the time into learning the core fundamentals of the character. And so instead of wandering around through the forums aimlessly picking up tech but missing the "meat and potatoes" as you will, I figured I would ask you guys.

So my question is, what should I Start working on to progress my knowledge of Rosalina and what are a few starter combos and approaches/counter approaches I should know? Assume I know nothing about the her strengths and weaknesses. Give me a core foundation to build on.

Thanks guys for any help you can provide.
Sincerely,
Jazz

 

[Kaishin]

Rosalina's only combos are pretty much throw combos. >_> At low percents bthrow to fair is guaranteed and knocks them off stage. Dthrow to uair is a staple. If they're floaty or close to it and their airspeed is comparable or worse than Rosalina's, start reading airdodges.

A big thing that isn't touched on much is when racking up damage, always try to hit with both chars if you can. But barring that, Rosalina does twice as much damage as Luma but has less knockback. When going for uair if you hit them with the luma close to the ceiling, they can die at extremely low percents thanks to the high base knockback but low growth. At around 80 or so Rosalina uair will push farther.

Rosalina has great edgeguarding tools, but there are just some chars she can't secure offstage edgeguards against (such as Pika). Regardless of character, outside of like Fox ans Pika, stand right behind the spot where their roll get up would end on a stage like battlefield or dreamland and you can lock them to the edge. You can and should do this to Sonic and Falcon, along with several other rushdowns.

Rosalina has a spike hit box on her dair that comes out frame 19 (but the move starts frame 18!). Runoff luma dair is also staple and it kills early, but good players expect it and will barely ever put themselves at the correct location. Back air is used for gimping Falcon after dtilt knocks him off at a low angle. It's also good for free damage against chars that you can't really gimp, but take a while to reach the stage (Kirby, for instance).

Rosalina's most rewarding approach option is usually the grab, but it's also a committal approach. Dash attack is great for catching falling characters as well as hitting Yoshi when he spams eggs. Dtilt knocks opponents offstage at a low angle. Nair knocks them offstage and has a nasty follow up hit box by Rosalina that like everyone seems to get hit by.

For counter approaches, don't listen to what anyone else tells you. In pretty much every matchup Rosalina stops any melee approaches cold just by holding down on the control stick. Dtilt has amazing range, little endlag, and hits twice so it beats cheese like Falcon's DA or Sonic's spin dash by tinking with it and then hitting again. Remember that Rosalina can crawl and that will get you stage control with very little risk. It can be punished by run up shield by fast characters, however. Use discretion and know that jab is useful in a lot of matchups as well because it has less endlag. Lastly, bair has massive range and should be used with impunity against aerial characters with great air speed, such as Wah Wah Wario and Jigglypuff as a spacing tool. Be aggressive with it.

A lot of people hate Luigi. Rosalina does not. Make sure you jab fireballs with luma and use dtilt and jab to stop approaches. Luigi can't get in other than run up shield and his down b.

Rosalina's biggest strength is debatable, but she has a ****ton of killing moves. You'll want to look up the frame data for this one. But as an example, Luma jab is frame 2 and connects into the 2nd and 3rd, which kills Yoshi at 140. Rosalina has the best kill power in the game and in terms of specific matchups only Captain Falcon beats her in that department.

Rosalina is a very large target (another reason to duck all the time!) and is very floaty so it's annoying to hit ground sometimes. She's also light, but nothing you can do about that. You'll just have to accept the fact she dies way earlier than Samus.

 

[Zonderion]

I would like to add that Luma is VITAL to your success. Rosalina can do well on her own, but she is a true powerhouse with Luma.

Learn all of Luma's moves. Luma can stop follow ups from grabs from characters like Sheik and Falcon. Learn to protect Luma, but not at a sacrifice of taking on extra damage.

Luma takes about 13 seconds to respawn, some players like to play defensively and stall, some like to turn the tables and put on pressure to mix up their opponents. Make wise choices.

Learn some ATs like Lunar Lands and desyncing Luma.