Yeah, but you get a spurt of fast movement, and it's not even that laggy. For me, the cross-up ability is
imperative to its use.
Two of Samus' worst MUs are Sheik and Marth, and that's largely because of those chars' phenomenal grab games being pitted against Samus' defensive game. Sheik is especially bad, because on top of being able to out-camp Samus, all she really needs to do is shield everything, shieldgrab what she can, WD OoS for anything she can't shieldgrab, and avoid being grabbed herself. One important way for Samus to combat this is to somehow position herself behind Sheik so she may pressure the back of her shield, thus becoming impossible to be shieldgrabbed and hard to even be hit OoS at all. However, this position is hard to attain. Just trying to slip behind Sheik can often end up getting one grabbed. The crawl attack gives Samus a way to quickly slip behind her opponents while being tough to punish. On hit, the crawl attack combos into dash attack, smashes, and aerials at mid-high %'s.
One of Samus' inherently big problems is her weakness against shields. She can pressure them fairly well with jabs and pokes, but at the end of the day, if you just shield everything and react to the grab mix-up, you're golden against her. Now grab is a bit faster, so that's good, but the weakness is still there. I can pop off a missile and then throw out a tilt, but if it's all shielded, all I got was a decent position which won't necessarily land me a hit. Not only that, the opponent can WD OoS to get closer and 'defensively pressure' me back, or in some cases, I could just end up shieldgrabbed. To remedy this, sometimes, you need to go for the read and throw out a grab right behind the missile. This only works so many times, however, and people experienced in the MU will know it's coming (or at least know about the possibility of the mix-up) before it even comes out once. They could do something like roll behind me, and if I actually went for the grab (you have to do it preemptively or it will never work), I'm going to eat a hefty punish. One solution to all of this, especially against Sheik or Marth, is to throw out a missile and then crawl attack under cover of the missile. The missile and the crawl attack can both combo into things, but if they are blocked at the end of the day, then Samus is still safe and can now pressure the opponent from behind. It's a win-win situation, IMO.
I think the morph ball attack is overrated. I would rather do Ftilt/Dtilt/Dsmash out of the crawl if I'm at a range that the morph ball would hit and cross through them.
At that range, dtilt can easily be punished (it's -25 on shield), dsmash can easily be punished (it's about -20 on shield if you hit with the back of the move), and ftilt can easily be punished (it's -18 on shield). They can all be shieldgrabbed or worse. Meanwhile, the crawl attack will be nigh non-punishable because Samus will be behind the opponent with low lag.
