Optimizing Charizard?

[Davregis]

Been on and off Smash for awhile now, looking around the boards of other characters. Latest was Samus, whose board is incredibly dedicated to pushing their character to the limits. Despite Samus not being very good(worse than Charizard for sure until her jank gets fixed which it probably won't), they've found crazy things to do with their character. Now, Charizard isn't Samus and he definitely isn't as flashy or a combo character, but his moves in general are great and I feel we could at least have more info on this board regarding the full uses of this guy's moves, his setups, and alternative purposes in general.

Sliding USmash as a dash attack alternative, Rock Smash after Flamethrower shield weakening and Rock Smash used for something besides the armor in general... What have you found works with the best ultraheavy in Smash?

Tips

• Dtilt (active 9-10) has IASA well before its FAF at 31. Use to escape, bait?
• Rock Smash shards can knock opponent inwards (how to get this reliably?) leading to combos/strings
• Pivot FTilt vs chases
• Charizard has the shortest(?) skid animation in the game! Use this to act immediately out of dash.
• Angle Flamethrower up on a grounded opponent to get an unreliable 1-2% extra damage
• Could offstage B-reverse Flamethrower be any use?
• credit Lyserdon
• RAR FF Nair as a delayed shield crossup. (Kumaru)

Combos
Bthrow -> Fair ~0-5%
Dthrow -> Fair ~0-65%
Utilt -> Usmash ~20% (Small % range, need to hit with grounded Utilt)
Jab2 -> Fly (Tight! Only works with antiair Jab1, opponent needs to be close. (-LzR-. Cecil St.Cyr, Charizardbro)


Prattacks/Jab Locks:
Jab Lock Kill:
Nair -> Jab1 close -> Jab1 close-> Fsmash starting at 60% credit Steeler

 

[Grizzlpaw]

Full Hop Fast Fall RaR Nair is a pretty hilarious option to cross up shields with.

 

[Lyserdon]

Been on and off Smash for awhile now, looking around the boards of other characters. Latest was Samus, whose board is incredibly dedicated to pushing their character to the limits. Despite Samus not being very good (worse than Charizard for sure until her jank gets fixed which it probably won't), they've found crazy things to do with their character. Now, Charizard isn't Samus and he definitely isn't as flashy or a combo character, but his moves in general are great and I feel we could at least have more info on this board regarding the full uses of this guy's moves, his setups, and alternative purposes in general.

Sliding USmash as a dash attack alternative, Rock Smash after Flamethrower shield weakening and Rock Smash used for something besides the armor in general... What have you found works with the best ultraheavy in Smash?



Samus' Filthy Bomb

This is a great idea. I've been thinking about this topic for a while because in all the Zard play I see, I see a lot of great things, but no one consistently synthesizing a good majority of his most powerful options. I think it'd be good to come up with some sort of centralized resource everything you're talking about.

Anyone can correct me if any of this stuff is wrong. My experience is local biweeklies, occasional online 3DS tournaments, and a ton of For Glory. That being said, things I've found work:

- Dtilt has great iasa frames. I bait with it a lot. Usually I just dtilt again if they run in to punish, but you could probably ftilt or Jab maybe?
- Rock Smash can set up a combo if the shards knock the opponent inwards.
- Flamethrower at the ledge against certain recoveries (Marcina, Falcon, anyone who has trouble ledgesnapping and recovers low can set up an fsmash. Someone like Falcon you can harass into continually upBing and then fsmash him if he mistimes it and lands onstage. Lil Mac you can hit when he pops above the ledge.
- Pivot ftilt when chased is always satisfying.
- Offstage b reversed Flamethrower looked like it had potential after seeing vaBENGAL use it at S@x.
- This is starting to get talked about more but Charizard's short dash skid is great for doing what are basically running smashes/jabs/tilts.
- This could be placebo, but angling Flamethrower up on a grounded opponent seems to lift them off the ground better than the default angle, and I think this negates some of the pushback.

As a general idea on optimizing Charizard play, I find that I can both rack damage and close stocks most reliably at the ledge. He can basically shut out certain recoveries and across the board he's pretty effective at keeping most characters from getting back onstage. He's also got offstage killmoves and ledge kill setups. As for getting them to the ledge, I like to either use Flamethrower and tilts mostly to slowly pressure them to the edge and then fthrow/bthrow/dtilt/ftilt/nair/fair to get them offstage, or if they're playing aggressive and can't zone me, I hang back, wall out ground approaches with Flamethrower or tilts, shield grab careless aerials, and get them offstage that way. Then I start playing my ledge game.

I have two questions for more experienced Zarders than me:

Do we have any good ways of punishing ledgesnap vulnerability?

And do we have any viable shenanigans to come out of this:
http://smashboards.com/threads/prat...ide-to-making-the-other-guy-fall-down.421168/
Jab1 and Nair are capable of it and if I understand it correctly it can do things like set up jab locks or spikes, but is it realistic to pull off?

 

[Steeler]

Prattacks aren't useful for Zard imo. The close hit of jab is actually really hard to purposely hit, and it's not really desirable because they can DI behind you and punish you for it. So I don't really see how jab 1 can set it up.

Nair should work pretty well, it's already good platform pressure...but the percent ranges on it are tiny.

 

[Dastardly Ridleylash]

I have two questions for more experienced Zarders than me:

Do we have any good ways of punishing ledgesnap vulnerability?

I've found that NAir, BAir and FAir work quite well at punishing ledgesnap vulnurability, depending on where you are in relation to the opponent. Shorthop DAir works as well, but that requires you to be quick, because there's no way someone'll let you set up for a normal jump-DAir.

And do we have any viable shenanigans to come out of this:
http://smashboards.com/threads/prat...ide-to-making-the-other-guy-fall-down.421168/
Jab1 and Nair are capable of it and if I understand it correctly it can do things like set up jab locks or spikes, but is it realistic to pull off?

Pratattacks aren't very useful for Charizard; I'd much rather use a grab-Dthrow-aerial combo onstage, and NAir works much better at covering offstage recovery anyways.

 

[Davregis]

Nair -> dair -> utilt -> usmash or
Jab -> dair -> utilt -> usmash work as prattacks off Battlefield. Nair starter does 45% and pops above while Jab starter does 41% and is very tight to dair. Jab locked Nair -> nair loses us damage, unfortunately : c

Against Jiggs, Fsmash or straight Usmash is needed, but that's not a difficult matchup : P

Can we get jablocks off on a flat stage at all? IMO it's worth learning even impractical stuff, going to use it eventually and it's worth the flash

 

[Steeler]

I've been able to do a jab lock with nair around middling percents. You dash up to their landing spot and, as close as possible, you jab them right when they miss their tech. That way you hit with the close jab and force the getup into a charged fsmash.

 

[Davregis]

I've been able to do a jab lock with nair around middling percents. You dash up to their landing spot and, as close as possible, you jab them right when they miss their tech. That way you hit with the close jab and force the getup into a charged fsmash.

Does it reliably KO at these percents? Sliding rock smash could be a good alternative for ~40%

 

[Steeler]

Yep, it hella kills unless you have to hit them the length of the stage. Nair starts sending people into tumble around the 50s, you'll deal at least 30% with nair jab fsmash.

 

[Cecil St.Cyr]

Sorry for the long post but i think this info's pretty useful
How about charizards double jab into up b? I haven't encountered anyone who plays charizard do this. It kills pretty well, and i believe it's inescapable on most of the casts. Like i think only super lightweight characters can escape this, like they end up at the last sourspot that has practically no knockback, i believe its at his head? Anyways ive still managed to pull it off on jigglypuff, but you might as well just go for the upthrow.

Anyways, the more interesting part is that on some characters i believe are true comboed off of a grab, and what i mean by this is charizards grab release. Opponents are released at a distance where charizards grab can reach them. One character i believe this will always work on is roy. So you basically pummel them, and when they're released you doible jab then up b, which is a lot of damage. Some characters this doesn't work on at all, like luigi who gets sent out of range, and other characters who are in range, but can act before charizard, which leaves it up to your opponents reaction time, like mario or DDD who can jab you himself. Even then characters like mario who can't reach you with his jab i like to punish with a forward smash or flare blitz depending on which direction they roll, but after im sure he wouldn't shield as an option.

anyways would anyone want to test which characters could escape from a grab? Cause i think it's pretty awesome to rack up damage from like 90% or so and ending it with a ko

Edit: Forgot to mention of course i only use this at high percentages/kill percentages, to keep up b fresh and because at low percentages double jab won't lift opponents that high off the ground, and they'll pretty much be able to escape

 

[-LzR-]

Jab jab upB only works if they don't know about it. It's very situational and the risk/reward is very much against us.

 

[Cecil St.Cyr]

Jab jab upB only works if they don't know about it. It's very situational and the risk/reward is very much against us.

Are you sure, i know it doesn't register as a true combo, but straight through a jab I've repeatedly landed it on the same opponents (even skilled oppoments). Bar the situational lightweights like jiggly puff who sometimes jump out, but even then sometimes they get caught in the last hit

 

[Davregis]

Jab jab upB only works if they don't know about it. It's very situational and the risk/reward is very much against us.

Didn't you say something awhile back about it being fine if you got an antiair jab? Unless they have an aerial faster than Fly armor

 

[-LzR-]

Are you sure, i know it doesn't register as a true combo, but straight through a jab I've repeatedly landed it on the same opponents (even skilled oppoments). Bar the situational lightweights like jiggly puff who sometimes jump out, but even then sometimes they get caught in the last hit

With downwards DI you can just shield the fly before it comes out, assuming it even hits. I know it can and will sometimes work, but my success with it has been getting worse and worse to the point of not using it much anymore. There are way too many things that can go wrong without rewards to make it worth it.

Didn't you say something awhile back about it being fine if you got an antiair jab? Unless they have an aerial faster than Fly armor

Yes, this is true, however I noticed with good DI not even this will help it as they can SDI it to avoid the fly. Even if the fly hits, they are likely to avoid the strong hit, making it not worth it even on hit.

 

[Cecil St.Cyr]

Hmm. I guess that could be an issue, but I've never come across that issue. I don't think the majority of players would SDI a standard jab but i guess there are those who do. When you try double jab to fly how close are you to your opponent? Because I've noticed being as close as possible makes a huge difference. But idk, we're at completely different view points because personally myself I've had a huge success rate. So maybe someone here would like to help try it and tell us their results or any findings?

 

[charizardbro]

Didn't you say something awhile back about it being fine if you got an antiair jab? Unless they have an aerial faster tha

With downwards DI you can just shield the fly before it comes out, assuming it even hits. I know it can and will sometimes work, but my success with it has been getting worse and worse to the point of not using it much anymore. There are way too many things that can go wrong without rewards to make it worth it.

That is only true if you use jab 2 -> Fly at the wrong percent. It should never be used unless you can kill with it and the opponent can't touch the ground after jab 2. You also shouldn't use Jab 2 -> Fly when they are on the very outside of jab's range. It's not "not worth it" as much as it is highly situational.

Yes, this is true, however I noticed with good DI not even this will help it as they can SDI it to avoid the fly. Even if the fly hits, they are likely to avoid the strong hit, making it not worth it even on hit.

SDI has so little impact that I don't see it making a difference in landing Fly itself unless you are right on the edge of being too far away to land Fly (which you shouldn't be risking in the first place). Also, if Fly is SDI-able, how are they SDI-ing it? I've never had someone SDI it on me but I have had people just fall out sometimes without SDI.

 

[Davregis]

Wow, nice to get the Jab2 -> Fly mystery cleared up.
Do you guys think we should start looking at a "move of the week" in addition to regular shenanigans?