Picking up Samus.

[Omega Male]

Hey all! So I have been stalking this sub-forum for a couple days now because I am trying to pick up Samus. I find her incredibly fun to play because of her arsenal of tricks. However, there are a lot of threads explaining adv techniques and little things you can do with Samus, which is amazing. However... I seem to still lack the information of what her general play style is. I have watched a few videos and kind of can infer what to do but I was wondering if anyone could put it on paper for me. I play Ike as a main so I have a fairly aggressive play style and always am trying to be up close slamming freight trains into people so currently my Samus play style is pretty much the same, with the exception of a few missiles here and there. Anyways, anything you have to say helps! Thanks!

 

[Chesstiger2612]

Samus is rather defensive, using missiles and zair to fight from the distance as much as possible.
Let the other person approach until you get a hit, then you normally get between one and three followup moves and you start using missiles again.

However, there are of course fine differences in style.
Samus can do something like "ranged pressure" with Smash missiles and zairs, the idea is not to get to your opponent (you want to stay ranged) but pressure them to the edge while going to centerstage yourself. As you reached that position you go in a more campy style.

 

[Chevy]

I like to approach behind my missiles, and combo from there, but that's because I'm bad at playing defensively. Just play her however you want!

 

[Litt]

I like to approach behind my missiles, and combo from there, but that's because I'm bad at playing defensively. Just play her however you want!

lol yes you are bad at playing defensive xD I would camp you for 8 minutes if we ever had to play Chevy ;D

 

[Chevy]

Take a trip to Washington, I'll SWD into so many missiles.

 

[ph00tbag]

Samus is mostly a footsies character with a strong ground game. You can use missiles to force reactions out of your opponent, but by and large, it's tough to camp with them in 1v1 because they can't be fired rapidly and cover all attack paths without proper platform patterns (incidentally, this changes on the Stadiums, where the platform placement makes missile spam much more powerful). It's also pretty easy to just swat them away, and smart opponents will just attack you through them if you use them too close. You really want to learn how to use your tilts to force and punish bad spacing.

As for moves that Ike users will like for their power and utility in initiating aggression, dash attack work well for that purpose, as are ice usmash and ice fair. Plasma fsmash has good range and is disjointed. Dsmash can initiated edgeguards when your back is against the edge yourself, and is pretty quick and powerful. Lots of Sami like dair for being flashy, even if it's a tad bit telegraphed.

 

[pinkdeaf1]

I feel like Samus is great at punishing aerial approaches, but I say this only because not many people online punish my running plasma up-smash when they approach aerially. Sometimes I use plasma fair, but plasma up-smash seems so much better since it can catch them from further away.

But I rescind this comment when Ike is the opponent.

 

[Elza~]

I plan on picking up this character and beast on people