1) Fthrow and Bthrow (other than putting them offstage) - Are there any sorts of mixups or strings that you can start with these moves?
f-Throw > f-Throw will
not knock down characters on new stocks (I don't recall the exact percents for
everybody where it stops working). Use this to catch people off guard and mix up into a different throw to keep them guessing. If anything else, you'll just give your opponent something else to think about, and anything you can do to slow down their gameplan is a
huge boost for the avid Link player.
I'm
fairly certain that the percent d-Throw knocks down will
still leave most characters
standing on f-Throw, so when you know your opponent wants the tech, go for that f-Throw. They'll come out shielding, which you can just get a regrab on (you will have repositioned them forward, which alone can be huge in more than enough situations). Depending on how low their shield is when you do this, you can probably get a free d-Smash shieldstab off of their tech-attempt-turned-shield which leads into all sorts of goodness for our boy wonder.
2) Zair (other than recovery) - This move seems to give you a LOT of aerial mobility, and I was wondering if this could be used in the neutral despite the small damage and kb. It's really easy to ledge cancel compared to other moves and its very disjointed of course. It also seems to break bombs?
Personally, I bust this out as sort of a 'last resort' when recovering. When the opponent has your other options locked down, and they're looking to punish your air dodge, start it up and zAir late to (hopefully) punish their spacing. You pretty much need to hope that they choose to combat you at your
max airdodge range, which you'll cancel with your zAir.
It's a risky gambit, but, you can catch some players off guard all of the time, and all players off some of the time. Just use it wisely.
3) Stab (jab3) - I guess this is the true combo ending of the jabs, but it also seems to be not worth it compared to other follow ups such as tilts or grab. Or does anyone know of situations to use this.
It can be used as a
frame trap and as quick edgeguard setup off of your jab confirm. Good trajectory which lets Link position the opponent similarly to an f-Throw. Can spell death for fast fallers. In case anybody doesn't know, a
frame trap is used to describe a gap between attacks that allows an opponent enough time to hit a button to
start an attack, but not
beat the next one you have planned out. Jab 3, when used properly, can punish shield-grabbing and other counter attacks on reaction to Link 'not' following Jab 1 and Jab 2.
5) Laying bombs on platforms/ground. Are there practical uses to this or is it more just for show.
Also does anyone know how to consistently get the bombs to roll along the ground?
Plenty of use for this. For one, other sword-weilders need to space much better against Link in order to
not detonate bombs in their own faces. On top of that, this gives Link the threat of transitioning from his grounded pokes to a quick jump into a toss to approach. On top of
that, more bombs means more control that Link can exert. Any opportunity you get to just
lay a bomb out, do it. Your opponent is going to have to respect your decisions if you hang around that thing.
Think Street Fighter here. Your bomb is an active hitbox on the board that you can choose to propel at any time. Until it's gone,
you maintain some kind of momentum that your opponent
has to be ready to respond to. If anything, you can stand right on top of it when people decide to go ham on you. Once your bomb is in the air, the opponent
has to respond to it in some way. And having a bomb on
standby while you're laying out your own pokes is a huge way to force those reactions.
Think about it this way: investing a little bit of time in the short term in laying out a bomb and pulling out another basically lets you get two
successive projectiles easily, instead of pulling > throwing > pulling > throwing. When you can put two bomb tosses very close to one another, you can open up a lot of pressure opportunities for Link, and anything he can take in the neutral game is good. Toss your first bomb, grab it off their shield and redrop it, double-jump back to grab your set bomb and toss it back again... I guarantee you that you're going to get a hit off an opponent trying to escape, or you're going to get somebody to turtle up more than they want to with scenarios like this one.
