water gun(neutral b)?

[Mtank]

So firstly I rarely see squirtle players use water gun, and even if they do, its almost never effective. But any who, for those who DO use water gun, do you see any benefits in charging it rather than keeping it uncharged? Charged water gun just has significantly more end lag and won't do damage or cause any hit stun unless they are close (closer than they have to be with an uncharged water gun.) Also while we're on the topic, does anyone have any suggestions for using water gun in general? I use it, but usually don't get much from it.

 

[~Dad~]

Watergun is actually a pretty useful move. It's great at cutting through projectiles, detonating Snake's mines, and can even be used as an approach.

Short hop > Uncharged watergun (if spaced correctly) leads into a very easy grab, and watergun can be used to interrupt people's recoveries and eat their jumps.

It's a super situational move but I definitely find myself using it more and more as of late.

 

[Daftatt]

Watergun is actually a pretty useful move. It's great at cutting through projectiles, detonating Snake's mines, and can even be used as an approach.

Short hop > Uncharged watergun (if spaced correctly) leads into a very easy grab, and watergun can be used to interrupt people's recoveries and eat their jumps.

It's a super situational move but I definitely find myself using it more and more as of late.

Agreed, my favorite way to approach with it is watergun b-reversal shellsling. It's a huge momentum shift and can bait out anti-air moves like nairs from the opponent, allowing for a great punish. Also, there is a particular timing you can use to avoid the b-reversal, while still turning in the air out of a shellsling to use watergun as an approach, this particular movement is a little easier to pull off with bubble.

Close-quarters watergun immediately followed by f-tilt is usually a very good option for spacing, particularly against opponents with high damage percentages (90+). Squirtle's movement options (shorthopped-perfect-shellsling, hydroplaned Usmash, perfect-wavedash) allow him to follow up on high horizontal launch speeds, making f-tilt at high percentages an important combo starter for more advanced squirtle players.

 

[Deleted member]

well i for one barely find it useful, the only characters I get good use out of it on are gimping roy, captain falcon, and ganondorf, but thats about it.

I hope to god they remove water gun and replace it with ice beam or something.

 

[Mtank]

well i for one barely find it useful, the only characters I get good use out of it on are gimping roy, captain falcon, and ganondorf, but thats about it.

I hope to god they remove water gun and replace it with ice beam or something.

Lawls ice beam? Wouldn't even make sense. Naw dude it def has its uses, they just aren't easy. First off don't charge it. You can use an uncharged as an approach that against many characters you can grab right after. These are things I've learned since this post.

 

[Deleted member]

^ wouldn't make sense? I'm assuming you didn't pick squirtle as a starter in gen 1 then. Ice beam was simply a staple.
If your not sold on that, they could easily make more water, and call it hydro pump, or last but not least water pulse could work as well.

 

[Mtank]

ice beam on blastoise im assuming, but this is squirtle. Water pulse is meh because it wasnt in the first generation lol. And i believe his up smash is hydro pump.

 

[Deleted member]

There was once an event squirtle with hydro cannon. That could work somehow lol.

 

[~Dad~]

Watergun is good though. I like it the way it is.

 

[Burnsy]

It's a nice twist on Sheik needles. I don't think there's anything wrong with the move in terms of design. It may need slight tweaking (or it may not, isn't for me to decide) but I'm pretty happy with how the move generally functions.

 

[straydoggywog]

I actually wish it angled when in the air like the needles or bubble. Other than that it's a mix up people don't expect so it can be fun.

 

[CBO0tz]

Here I was going to suggest replacing Water gun with Scald. But seeing Burnsy call it a twist on Sheik's needles, it's making me wonder..

 

[Burnsy]

One of the biggest weakness watergun has that needles dont is that the range on the damaging portion of the projectile is very short. Up close there's good stun that can lead into Shiek-esque combos, pressure and traps, but it doesn't do a great job of long range harassment, and gimps require more commitment and a bit better accuracy due to the range it covers.

However, watergun can still be a long range punish. Shellsling to a reversed watergun will make you face them and can put you in range for the damaging hitboxes.

Finally, another interesting tool unique to Squirts watergun is that when fully charged, he gets a "physical" portion of the attack that's actually very strong. It does 12 damage I think, and has very high base knockback, meaning that even at low percents it will hit them far. You can use it to start techchases on fastfallers at almost 0%, which is one of the easiest ways for Squirtle to begin racking up big damage.

 

[Chaos Archangel]

Is there any benefit to charging it? Everytime I use this move I fail miserably, should I be using the uncharged more than the charged?

 

[jaedong]

I've started using water gun a decent amount lately...it's definitely very situtional, for sure. And I pretty much exclusively use it uncharged, as charged seems to be worthless due to it's start up lag.

It's almost like a falco laser, in that it doesn't actually combo into a move outright, but you can most certainly pseudo combo it into a move. However, due to squirtle's less than optimal short hop height, it's isn't all that east to straight up approach with uncharged water gun.

The only real "approach" I've found when using water gun is shellsling water gun into dtilt. If done right, you should be landing at their feet and them getting actually stunned by the water gun, similar to a laser approach with falco. Dtilt is a super fast move with great combo potential, and with the little bit of stun from the water gun, this makes for a pretty solid approach if spaced perfectly. You can also do a grab if you find your opponent shielding the approach.

It isn't the easiest of set ups, but it works very very well in very situation moments.