Alright time to write a few thoughts on this cute yet annoying fat penguin clown. Rather than putting a regular matchup, I'll write a summary on how to fight King Dedede.
I believe this is our worst matchup, because both his ground game and his air game is better than ours.
If you have not faced an experienced Dedede player, you will most likely get wrecked hard. Because of his ridiculous grab range, you will be punished for things that your not used to being punished of. First thing you need to do is learn the range of that grab, its huge.
Both Snake and Dedede should rely on punishing in this matchup, cept Dedede can do it better than we can because of the cg and edgeguard. Your best chance of winning is to camp him until you find an opportunity to grab him or knock him in the air. Then you should do everything you can to keep him in the air and not let him reset. This is not easy however, as he has a few good options when hes above you:
1. Bair, never Usmash him, he will ff bair to outprioritize the mortar AND hit you in the ending lag, that move lasts a looonnggg time, longer than our air dodge iirc.
2. Double Jump Dair, you can shield it on reaction, and punish it with OOS uair if you are fast enough, Dair's hitbox doesnt last as long as its animation, so learn when its gone so you can punish it.
3. Stall with multiple jumps, because of his 5 air jumps, you cannot predict his landing as easily, so just stay under him and wait for him to land, dont hold shield because he can hit you when your shield gets smaller.
4. FF AD, Dedede falls like a rock, he can land on the ground really quickly this way, and if you dont react fast enough he can buffer a grab and grab you when he lands. It's best for you to stay on the ground, because if you jump, he can land before you can and punish you.
5. Inhale, Basically a grab that he can start in the air, it has some startup lag so you should be able to react to it. As long as you are playing it safe and not running into him you can punish it. Know that it has a grab hitbox and a wind hitbox that draws you in, you can shield the wind hitbox, then roll away from it or sometimes roll behind him.
Aside from keeping him in the air, you should try to put him offstage. When he's at high percents and you sent him off stage to the side, nikita immediately, if the nikita gets to him before he gets to the stage, he will have to airdodge it and use up b to recover. When he uses Upb he will either have to land on the stage or cancel it to grab the ledge. If you predict he will grab the ledge, get there before him and take that stock. If hes going for the stage you can time a uair/utilt or shield the hitboxes and punish his landing. You can also nair him, but he can get out with good SDI. Or if hes coming from really low, grab him as hes coming up, then dthrow ->ftilt and force him to upb again.
Thats pretty much it for keeping him in the air/offstage, I'll write summaries on what you should do to recover and what to do when your both on the ground laters.
btw, I think this matchup is 60:40, but I'm willing to take 55:45 if assuming that I'm a worse player than my playing partner DaWall.
As for stages, you don't want to play him on Rainbow Cruise, Delfino isnt good against him either. Other than that it's preference, none of the other stages doesnt really sway the matchup that much.
