Shelda/Zeik

[<π]

Zelda isn't bad you are just using her wrong.

I wanna start by talking about...

Din's Fire, AKA Dins.

There is no data on Din's fire from teh zelda boards as far as I can tell :/ but the move is significantly faster than you would think. Test it out and play around with it. Aerial Dins may end faster than grounded... but I'm not sure 100% on that.

At first glance Dins is a bad easy to read easy to punish easy to dodge projectile. This is because people use it very predictably.
Dins has tons of nice attributes, when used in the air I acts a a vertical stall. but you still maintain a lot of your horizontal momentum. this allows for powerful mix ups on landing (especially when combined with Nayru's Love) that give you an active hit box in front of you to further cover you landings against people running and/or jumping at you to punish your landing.
Another note: I strongly believe Dins is use at a zoning tool. think of it like a ranged version marth's fair. A huge disjointed hit box normally I put it off just in front of my opponent so that it will hit their shield. but you can detonate early late etc. Once you start reading habits you can use din's to punish them. for example if people always spot dodge once my dins gets to a certain range I'll wait and pass it through the and detonate to punish the spot dodge.
I'd also suggest as Dins moves further away you move it further up. this will help to cover jumping options better and if you pull it back down after you start to pass them they are in din's range longer than they would have been other wise.

Din's biggest strength is against opponents in the air. Dins (especially at higher percents) forces literally forces air dodge detonating early will often times give you the opportunity to punish these air dodges with moves like dash attack usmash and uair nair LKs etc..

your goal in using Din's should rarely be to hit your opponent but corral, condition, and contain their movements; to stop approaches you can't handle and force sloppy approaches and force better of two evils types of situations

Naryu's Love

Nayru's Love
Hitbox Active: 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28 (6 hits)
FAF: 60
Invincibility: 5-12
Reflects: 5-42
Damage: 1/1/2/2/1 (first 5 hits), 5/5/4/4/3 (final hit)

(<3 Note: I think every thing is off by 1 frame here...)

Back in the melee days we called this move Love... at least I did...
this move is good and bad... it'd be amazing if the invincibility and hit box over lapped... but they don't.

Love can be use in place of spotdodge although the invincibility window is significantly smaller you can sometimes punish things that you otherwise would be unable to, but thats rare and risky because of the lack of invul overlap... and the smaller invul window.

Spotdodge
Invincibility: 2-20
Total Duration: 25 frames

I use it a few different ways.
the main way is as a mix up for my landing. Though shield will almost always beat Love (Love can shield poke people with meh shields.) it is nice when people are expecting to punish you with a grab or short duration anti air move.

you can also use it as a very powerful anti air that'll beat pretty much anything spare stalls and nades. because of it's huge range it can cover many more options than usmash. the invincibility covers all landing attacks. So if say... falco is falling towards with no jumps you think he is going to try for a spaced bair or an air dodge in his landing you can throw out Love and beat both options and probably get him off stage at a low angle.

Defensive
Obviously Zelda has a very very powerful defensive game with moves like usmash dash attack jab and fsmash and Dins getting inside of her zone can be very difficult. What she lacks in ground speed she definitely makes up for in air speed. And though her air game isn't the most impressive with her air speed and mobility it isn't something to play around with because of the LKs and nair. When combines with Din's it allows her to very safely position herself how she wants even against very aggressive opponents.

Its your job, as Zelda, to force them into a position where they need to enter that zone even if you are behind in stocks or percent. How do we do this?... apply pressure walk up to you opponent and force them into that scary zone. use dtilts jabs and fsmash to safely apply shield pressure.

Approaching
I depends... Zelda's approach game isn't as terrible as people would like you to think. she is slow, but she definitely has tools to bait punishable and condition reactions. As zelda you really want to work hard to get the advantageous position, the won't always necessarily come in the form of an approach. mix ups and reads are going to be huge for zelda.
dash in fading dins
dash in grab
dash in sh nair
dash threw sh bair
dash in sheild out side of their range charge fsmash

be creative, zelda isn't sheik (or any character) you have to take time to fully understand her moveset AND her limitations, learn whats safe and more importantly what isn't. (Fsmash isn't safe on shield, Usmash isn't safe on sheild)

 

[SuSa]

Din's fire is slow and bad. It can only travel in one direction, and once she swings your arms all you have to do is shield/airdodge. Meaning watch Zelda (not the Dins) when she uses it and you should rarely, if ever, be hit by it.

Once it's past you/on your shield you can roll towards Zelda and not risk being hit. She still has to release the Dins.

In the air, it puts you into freefall.

It clashes with most (if not all?) attacks. A sex kick > aerial dins IIRC. So it doesn't force an airdodge. Also it's really hard to punish anything with Dins if your opponent isn't an idiot. (Many chars. can even B-reverse their way out of harm from Dins)



tl;dr
Zelda is bad and I will advocate that to the Sheik boards until I die

 

[<π]

aerials generally have more lag than air dodges Susa so thats fine.

and as I said many time through the post your goal isn't hitting but controlling space.

only thing MK has that clashes with it is tornado and glide attack :/
Zelda doesn't have anything that clashes with it :/ Love reflects it though.

@ Just watch zelda not din's
people can see snakes nades flying across the stage and know the timing for them but they still control space. Samus's horrible homing missiles still control space. even luigi's fire balls control space. Din's Fire does that wonderfully and has low enough lag so that you can punish a lot of the reasonings to these moves.


In short din's is a bad projectile its an amazing zoning tool. I didn't mention punishing land lag with dins.

I also wanted to post these:
http://www.youtube.com/user/GodAtHand#p/u/21/H4xD4m94bm0

scroll down and there are good matches versus fatal's MK and Snake. Zelda isn't nearly as limited as people like to think.

 

[SuSa]

The difference between most of those projectiles and Din's is that the endlag allows them to take action before the projectile is gone.

MK has transcendent priority, it can't clank with other hitboxes. That's why Mk only has tornado and glide attack.

Zelda is also transcendent (pretty **** sure)

EDIT:
$10 says Fatal doesn't know the Zelda matchup. Sorry.

Fatal was going for fair a LOT.
Suicided at 0% 2nd stock.
And still won.
:x

 

[Zankoku]

Zelda is bad and people are using her wrong.

btw, MK can also clash with Drill Rush, Dimensional Cape (lol), and dash attack (wat).

 

[<π]

Susa there are like 9 match up loaded and Riot suicides frequently too.
my point is this zelda was holding her own it realy has nothing to do with who is winning and losing because you'll see tons of big errors on both sides.
In the matches you see many examples of the things I was talking about use of dins as a stall and as a walling tool. Love used correctly.

AT people using moves to get through din's
My point is they have to commit to something and generally that something can be punished especially with the higher tired characters who are pretty laggy after their aerials and specials.

 

[Judo777]

Thank you <3 i have been saying some of this for a while. Zelda isn't that bad she is quite a bit better than she is rated. Zelda is just an absolute staple fundamental character.

I didn't read much of ur post but i got a gist and ur right. Dins is NOT a terrible prjectile its just average 1. It has 3 amazing redeeming qualities that make up for its terrible predictability.

1. It does 16%. So when you do finally land it it hurts. And most importantly omg its great for trades. I play some falcos (although its better for like wolf and mario/luigi) from time to time with zelda i love taking a time where they arent shooting lasers and and deploy dins from about mid range. They pop down and are like OOOO free laser. They shoot me with the laser and i hook it at the ground so it blows up after i have been hit. Then we trade 16% for 5 and ill do that every time.

2. It HUGE. Its so big that if used right u are not allowed to spotdodge it everytime. If i blow it up at the earliest frame it will hit you sometimes then when u spotdodge i can hit you on the latest frame. This forces people to shield or aerial it. Now i have people jumping at me and aerialing........ which is a great spot for zelda since aerial clanks dont reset frames.

3. Its shield pressure. SInce as i stated you cant always powershield it because of the mix up timing. And aerial clanking and airdodging at the wrong ranges is quite dangerous now they have to just block it. Well everytime they mistime the ps their shield gets lower. And guess what zelda is great at shield poking.

Dins is very important for zelda because even if you cant hit people with it they HAVE to react. And if they react wrong..... zelda is one of the best punishers (or rather has some of the most painful punishes) in the game. I cant tell you how many time i fire dins to get an airdodge and lighting kick after the airdodge. If they clank it instead i go for an usmash while they are in lag. Dins fire is IMO zeldas only real tool. Nayrus is sort of one too but its way riskier.

 

[GodAtHand]

Namesearched myself for the first time lol (Didn't know how to do it before O_O)

There are some new vids of me from Viridian up if you want them?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXUDJjoq038

I know in one of them I suicide at like 0% but... that happens sometimes and I was working on 4 hours of sleep and drinking the night before... So I have mad johns lol.

I didn't read the rest of the thread, but maybe I will later. ^_^

 

[riocosta123]

I think there's a big difference between saying Zelda is bad (which she kind of is, although I don't agree that she's 3rd worst, LT tourney results partially back this up) and saying that Zelda is not useful when she has a percent lead in KO range and the enemy can not force her to approach (which is when you will be transforming most of the time).

The biggest problem is that people are impatient when really, they shouldn't approach/do anything.

 

[riocosta123]

Also, Dark Musician has a bunch of videos of him doing well against DEHF. You can learn a lot from his channel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjuCnoriszw

(he goes 1-1 in the vid)

 

[#HBC | Scary]

This thread makes me wish I had vids lol.

 

[GodAtHand]

If you are looking for tournament results we have a thread for that too: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=266165

It hasn't been updated recently so the front page is lacking in recent results. The most notable recent Zelda results are My 4th in teams at Viridian City, My 3rd in singles at Mass Madness. Scary's 4th in singles at FGCU. Scary's 3rd in teams at PNT dubz. and Veggie's 5th in singles at Play N Trade.

There aren't many Zelda's that are actually active so we have a hard time exchanging ideas, as well as getting frame data and stuff like that. Everyone just seems to overlook her.

 

[<π]

Ed is a beast... you should come up here so I can record.......

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

Din's fire is slow and bad. It can only travel in one direction, and once she swings your arms all you have to do is shield/airdodge. Meaning watch Zelda (not the Dins) when she uses it and you should rarely, if ever, be hit by it.

Once it's past you/on your shield you can roll towards Zelda and not risk being hit. She still has to release the Dins.

In the air, it puts you into freefall.

It clashes with most (if not all?) attacks. A sex kick > aerial dins IIRC. So it doesn't force an airdodge. Also it's really hard to punish anything with Dins if your opponent isn't an idiot. (Many chars. can even B-reverse their way out of harm from Dins)



tl;dr
Zelda is bad and I will advocate that to the Sheik boards until I die

what about characters with out a sex kick/ that have transcendent priority? Whatever close mindedness gets you everywhere in smash apparently. Also who cares if they cancel dins out with a move? They worse that can help is the move cancel or they AD or you get a surprise kill. How is that bad again ? Oh you don't know.

tl;dr fail logic is fail.

 

[SuSa]

you get a surprise

So you get a kill because they don't know the matchup.

what about characters with out a sex kick/ that have transcendent priority?

Name 1.

Nice logic.

Placed 9th using Sheik/Snake/IC's. Lost to DSF (Snake vs MK) and C. Beef (IC's vs DDD and Snake vs DDD)

Weee for Sheik rep.

 

[riocosta123]

Depending on how long it's out Din's can beat a few aerials (between 4-7%)

 

[Judo777]

So you get a kill because they don't know the matchup.


Name 1.

Nice logic.

Placed 9th using Sheik/Snake/IC's. Lost to DSF (Snake vs MK) and C. Beef (IC's vs DDD and Snake vs DDD)

Weee for Sheik rep.

Um all of MK and Ikes aerials are transcendent and mario, luigi, sheik all have nairs that can be beaten by dins if dins is far enough away or hits the weaker hitboxes.

 

[phi1ny3]

I'm going to say that switching to Zelda v. MK, while making din's remotely useful, is pointless since he can still air dodge/shield them away, and you have air release -> DACUS as your kill setup which pretty much negates the need for Zelda imo. Zelda's going to be mad booty for MK unless they are really bad imo lol

Ike isn't too shabby an idea to use Zelda for, but also a bit eh. I can see this working out well if pulled off :D

Zelda's a horrible, horrible character, but a decent tool when you set up for the scenarios that make her decent, which can normally NEVER be achieved by herself lol. That's how I see it, anyways.

 

[#HBC | Scary]

I cannot stress this enough. If you do not actively practice Zelda, and try and go to her for a kill, 9/10 times you'll get it after eating a stock's worth of extra damage.

You can know what every move of her's does and such but if you don't put it to heavy-duty practice, the end result will not be a good one.

 

[Judo777]

I cannot stress this enough. If you do not actively practice Zelda, and try and go to her for a kill, 9/10 times you'll get it after eating a stock's worth of extra damage.

You can know what every move of her's does and such but if you don't put it to heavy-duty practice, the end result will not be a good one.

^^^ this. Also i wasn;t recommending zelda for any of those MUs per say i was just listing what he said to list lol.

 

[choknater]

idk i feel like zelda isnt as bad as a lot of u are saying

depends on the matchup

like, i feel i can even use her against falco if necessary (though its usually not)

i really like her vs ddd, sonic, sometimes meta. characters that sheik just has a hard time getting a kill vs, i just dins camp and space smashes and stuff

you have to practice extensively and EQUALLY with both characters if you wanna use them both. it can hinder your improvement, but it's kinda like maining PT where you're essentially traning more than one character. i actually use solo zelda vs pikachu and ic's, and it pays off because it helps me space when i do transform.

its all about knowing how to space with her, really. fsmash too good

 

[Judo777]

idk i feel like zelda isnt as bad as a lot of u are saying

depends on the matchup

like, i feel i can even use her against falco if necessary (though its usually not)

i really like her vs ddd, sonic, sometimes meta. characters that sheik just has a hard time getting a kill vs, i just dins camp and space smashes and stuff

you have to practice extensively and EQUALLY with both characters if you wanna use them both. it can hinder your improvement, but it's kinda like maining PT where you're essentially traning more than one character. i actually use solo zelda vs pikachu and ic's, and it pays off because it helps me space when i do transform.

its all about knowing how to space with her, really. fsmash too good

yea i usually go solo zelda for ic's and pika although once i play better pikas i might have to start switching after 50

 

[Kuro~]

Rack up damage with sheik switch to zelda read for usmash game set match >:O


>>...renki u zelda abusing nooooob


























jk...u do need to know her moveset,the spacing of her moves, and when u can punish

cuz when i fought renki a while bk when ever he switched to zelda it basically let me catch up to him % wise cuz i knew what he was aiming for...but then zeldas broken smashes smash my reality and get the kill ;D

 

[Wolfric]

Zelda/Sheik in my opinion are a great duo, I've done great with them, pretty much. BUT, there's no comparing Sheik with Zelda of course, but knowing Sheik is better doesn't means Zelda's roll is unneeded.

MU wise, as Zelda is an unpopular character on Tournaments, that's a vantage (your argues are about the Experienced players not knowing the matchup, but perhaps thanks to that little experience over this MU using Zelda COULD get you the victory), I, at least, will keep using both, it gives me more options as to how to beat my opponent.

 

[choknater]

true dat

im tryna put more practice into zelda

cuz my sheik is already gdlk

 

[thexsunrosered]

what are zeldas fastest options OoS?

/toolazytotestmyself

 

[-Mars-]

dtilt is frame 5. Usmash frame 6. Dsmash frame 4. Bair is frame 6 but you have to account for the jump frames.

Not a terribly slow character just extremely unsafe.

 

[<π]

dash attack is frame five.

 

[SuSa]

And add the 9 frames of shield drop (7? I forget..I think it's 7) and all of her options are now much slower.

READ:
Her fastest option is equiavelent to Snake's ftilt OoS, but lacks the same range.

 

[riocosta123]

11-12 frames isn't bad for a tilt/smash option OOS, and of course 6 is pretty good for upsmash. It's not like many characters can go much faster.

Her jump is in the Wario below average 7 range though which makes aerial timing that much stricter.

 

[<π]

And add the 9 frames of shield drop (7? I forget..I think it's 7) and all of her options are now much slower.

READ:
Her fastest option is equiavelent to Snake's ftilt OoS, but lacks the same range.

sheik punishes OOS with her dash attack and it's the same speed. zelda's dash attack has compareable range to snakes ftilt

 

[-Mars-]

Zelda isn't bad you are just using her wrong.

Nope. She's bad.

At first glance Dins is a bad easy to read easy to punish easy to dodge projectile. This is because people use it very predictably.
Dins has tons of nice attributes, when used in the air I acts a a vertical stall. but you still maintain a lot of your horizontal momentum. this allows for powerful mix ups on landing (especially when combined with Nayru's Love) that give you an active hit box in front of you to further cover you landings against people running and/or jumping at you to punish your landing.
Another note: I strongly believe Dins is use at a zoning tool. think of it like a ranged version marth's fair. A huge disjointed hit box normally I put it off just in front of my opponent so that it will hit their shield. but you can detonate early late etc. Once you start reading habits you can use din's to punish them. for example if people always spot dodge once my dins gets to a certain range I'll wait and pass it through the and detonate to punish the spot dodge.
I'd also suggest as Dins moves further away you move it further up. this will help to cover jumping options better and if you pull it back down after you start to pass them they are in din's range longer than they would have been other wise.

Din's biggest strength is against opponents in the air. Dins (especially at higher percents) forces literally forces air dodge detonating early will often times give you the opportunity to punish these air dodges with moves like dash attack usmash and uair nair LKs etc..

your goal in using Din's should rarely be to hit your opponent but corral, condition, and contain their movements; to stop approaches you can't handle and force sloppy approaches and force better of two evils types of situations

All of these things you just mentioned work only against below average players. Even the average Brawl player isn't the least bit scared of Dins and if yor using Dins when you are airborne your doing it wrong.

Defensive
Obviously Zelda has a very very powerful defensive game with moves like usmash dash attack jab and fsmash and Dins getting inside of her zone can be very difficult. What she lacks in ground speed she definitely makes up for in air speed. And though her air game isn't the most impressive with her air speed and mobility it isn't something to play around with because of the LKs and nair. When combines with Din's it allows her to very safely position herself how she wants even against very aggressive opponents.

Its your job, as Zelda, to force them into a position where they need to enter that zone even if you are behind in stocks or percent. How do we do this?... apply pressure walk up to you opponent and force them into that scary zone. use dtilts jabs and fsmash to safely apply shield pressure.

Getting inside of her zone is difficult until you realize just standing outside of her fsmash range and her defensive game becomes non-existant.

Jab is the only move that you can realisticaly whiff or use to space. You also don't want to jump into the air with Zelda. She's horrible up there....the airspeed is tempting but anyone who understand how to zone or not get hit by random lightning kicks should be thrilled to see Zelda take to the air. She gets eaten alive up there.