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Day 1 on release I thought this matchup was good for us. Then I realized that Cloud’s recovery while lacking, isn’t as terrible as we thought and his neutral is actually pretty good.
Seems like we get beat in neutral solidly. Cloud’s aerials are all really good, especially nair, and he doesn’t have the ending lag of Ike so it’s harder to find holes to poke through and around his disjoint in neutral. They’re still there, just not as easy to get in comparably. Have to be really creative. And his disjoint is so huge, he can throw out nairs and really space us out. And he can juggle for days with his upair. It can be really hard to land against a good cloud.
Blade barrier is no worry, bike beats it on the ground except limit blade barrier. We can even eat both limit and nonlimit blade barrier. Or just fair it to be honest. It’s easy to deal with on stage. It’s only a threat when cloud edgeguards with it.
I think we generally want to camp for waft when he has limit, we pretty much have to go in when he doesn’t so that he doesn’t get free limit charges.
The key for us in the matchup is to get cloud off stage and edgeguard him. That’s how we win. We lose neutral solidly so we’ve got to find ways to exploit his lacking recovery. Force him to up B onto the stage and then gimp him with dash attack and dair. Dsmash/Dtilt at the edge is pretty good as well when cloud doesn’t autosnap to the ledge. Also bike thrown off stage or a bike/waft at edge setup works well when you have time to set them up. Your edgeguarding needs to be on point against a good cloud.
To get better at this matchup I’ve practiced edgeguarding cloud constantly in training mode. Using dair is a bit tricky because his sword has a hitbox in front of his Up B sort of like Ike’s up B. Got to use your double jump to jump behind it and then throw out a lingering dair hitbox.
Waft isn’t all that hard to land on stage in this matchup. Cloud is decently big and tall, so falling upair to waft is a good option. Falls pretty fast too so sourspot nair to waft works in a pretty generous range.
It’s tricky to land a raw waft on his Up B off stage though I feel. Unlike Ike who stalls a bit at the start of his up B, cloud doesn’t so timing is much trickier. I wouldn’t go for it personally unless it’s a desperate situation. I’d generally save the waft when off stage and rely on dair instead, which will probably get the gimp anyway if it lands. Usually there’s no need to use up your waft. And in my opinion a lingering dair hitbox is much easier to land offstage than waft anyway.
I feel we should be avoiding platform stages in this matchup. Makes it easier for cloud to juggle with upairs, he kills earlier from finishing touch if he hits you with it on a platform, and he benefits from his big disjoint going through platforms. Makes it even harder to get in I feel. Also I’d avoid stages with low ceilings like T&C as well, finishing touch will kill even earlier. I think our best stages against cloud are duck hunt and FD for sure. Smashville is ok, although the platform helps his recovery.
I think the matchup is 60-40 in cloud’s favor because even though we win hard off stage, he wins neutral and has better kill options than wario. And we actually have to approach usually because of limit.
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Toon link is tricky. There’s a pretty good toon link main in my area who I’ve played a lot of friendlies with so I’ve got a good grip on the matchup.
TL is all about bomb setups. He fuctions sort how Diddy does with banana. So he’ll use a bomb to setup smashes, bomb to get a grab, ect. The rest of his spam (arrows and wind) loses to powershield really hard and aren’t much of a concern. Bombs are the real threat here. Got to have good item play. Work on catching them.
His smashes are super strong so be careful with FF upair. He’s a small character anyway, so it’s not the greatest option here. You’ll have to do a lot of safe pokes. I do a lot of living in the air in this matchup, weaving around projectiles to get in. I think staying in the air is the best bet here, makes it harder for him to use his projectile and bomb game effectively from my experience. He’ll be trying to catch your landings with a bomb to your face so he can get a followup, so be on point with mixing up your landings.
TL’s Up B is gimpable off stage. You can straight FF dair on his recovery and beat it if you do it right at the top of his head. There’s no hitbox there.
Matchup seems even or slightly in TL’s favor (like 55-45) mainly because of TL’s strong, fast, disjointed attacks giving us issues with our short range and makes going for waft setups like FF upair and nair prone to big punishes by the fast, strong get off me moves. You can get punished hard if you go in haphazardly. I feel like Wario has to work harder and be more creative here. But we do win off stage I feel and TL has to approach in neutral because of waft so it’s probably more like even.
For stages I really don’t think it matters much. Go wherever you feel the most comfortable. If you want to super camp then by all means go to duck hunt but if you aren’t willing to super camp with wario I don’t think there’s much of an advantage on any certain stage for Wario. TL kills both off the top and the sides. Personally I prefer smashville, T&C, duck hunt or FD for this matchup so I can better utilize bike, which I find more important in this matchup than the extra utilization of bite you get from platforms (bite is not as good in my opinion against TL as it is against other characters because of his fast, strong, get off me moves and disjoint beating it).
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Very little experience so I won't comment.
