Imagine if we could SHAD nair, that would be completely broken.
That's why we have full hop air dodge ff nair~
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Shaya
Backwards jumping and air dodge short hop aerials are TOTALLY THE TRUTH.
"something something" TOLD YOU SO (kinda?)
I think the three match ups we have issues with other than Sheik:
Ness, Mario and Pikachu are all likely not bad for us, it's just our margin for error against them are a lot less than other characters. Customs make some of these match ups disadvantaged for sure, but otherwise... hmm.
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Nairo
Not sure if you're up for talking about your ESAM sets here, but I'll keep the comments to primarily the first set (second set you seemed so flustered).
ESAM really knew how to punish flip jump. Like 100% success rate almost. Based NickRiddle.
A ZSS who gets punished for using flip jump is one of the most defenseless characters in the game, it's crazy, she really cannot find a way out of danger in these situations right now. It's an area we should perhaps be looking into theorizing over, because we probably crutch too hard on flip jump and have little developed for what we're meant to do without it.
Otherwise Nairo tended to out play neutral, space nairs and bairs appropriately (like maybe 1 or 2 out of 10 whiffing, which half of those got punished, it's kinda the caveat of the match up I suppose).
Nairo was also predisposed to not using shield much, tis why we love him, but against Pikachu's buttons we usually have no other option (also landing with an aerial and shielding more often forces a bit more respect out of Pika I'd say), but most of pikachu's attacks on our shield aren't safe. My theory on this match up on why it's evenish is how good our shield can be, and we tend to underrate it because we don't have the 6 frame grab, but how do characters handle our shield? A lot worse than us dealing with many character's shields I'd say, especially with well spaced actions.
Now when it comes to Mario... like, I find it so easy for Marth although ZSS has better range, frame data, etc. I've been practicing a lot against Mario CPUs lately, I hope my spacing/responses are better for the next time I do this. Full hopping is actually probably one of the "truths" in this match up, mario's dash in shield or up smash (and dash up air is disgusting) is just so spooky and our immediate choice to that being an incoming possibility tends to always be jump. But how does Mario beat us then? Playing passive and punishing us out of desperation. We probably don't need to fear getting grabbed by him as much as we do, so just like PIkachu I think we should be thinking "hold shield" a lot more often than we do. Mario's neutral is strongest in the air, and we can get blindsided to this and try to be overzealous in areas we cannot and should not be in.
Also a point of "awareness", but Mario's up smash starting behind his head. If Mario is facing backwards your next action needs to always be holding shield (after an attack or just landing/etc). I think up smash out of shield will hit us out of all of our post-landing aerial options bar shield. We shouldn't be spot dodging either.
Now with Ness, well despite what ZeRo said I do currently think this is a solid "poor match up". Ness can definitely win with only grabs and the fact that we have to start being afraid to do anything near him by 100% EVEN CENTRE STAGE is a joke. Ness legitimately wins because of the stupid risk/reward involved with a character who only needs grab to win. We can't hold shield and be on parity (at worse) like a lot of the other complicated high tiers. Despite this, we destroy him when he's doing anything but mid-range shield holding and dash grab. Not sure what we're meant to do here tbh, perhaps side-b because of his poor mobility is a possibility (the move is good against the likes of Kirby because of his mobility) to not have as much risk in trying to pressure him as we do otherwise.
I usually like "hard match ups" that I can chalk up as still feasibly in our favour (in one area or another that can be exploited to win, not necessarily +1ing/etc) because of what us "outplaying" entails and how evenly we can run in neutral playing with a bit more passiveness.
Ness is probably the single sore thumb to my ZSS/Marth duo, but I'd still likely opt for Marth right now. Pika/Mario on the other hand seem pretty EZ at a glance with Marth atm, but I'd still prefer conquering them with ZSS.
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Oh and until I see it developing better otherwise, I think Olimar is probably our only other bona fide "counter". But that's completely fine in my eyes. I was an oli match up expert in Brawl so I hope an opportunity comes for me to develop ideas for it in the future.