I'll start off with what's
bad about Shulk:
His recovery is pretty bad. It's because he has trouble ledge snapping with the recovery. This hurts a LOT and anyone can abuse this quite easily. It's also one of the easier recoveries to gimp in this game. The vertical recovery distance is decent, but the horizontal distance is garbage. This issue is solved though if you have jump (thanks to the increased jump height, additional air drift at the second slash and vertical recovery boost), and speed to a lesser extent (thanks to the additional air drift at the second slash)
He's combo meat. Being a semi-heavy weight, fairly medium-large sized fighter, and having horrendous aerial acceleration, yeah. This guy is prone to getting combo'd hard. This makes going into buster and jump fairly risky. Smash art and shield art alleviate this in different ways though. Shield art can reduce the amount of hitsun you take so you can quickly punish your opponents for actually hitting you. That, or it simply reduces the damage you take from getting hit. As for smash, your decreased weight allows you to get out of combos quite early
He's easy to juggle. For the same said reasons regarding him being combo meat, his traits make him easy to juggle. Because his aerials come out really late, he can't really act fast. His only solid option against juggles is a well-spaced n-air but you have to be precise with it. It doesn't help that n-air comes out at frame 13. Jump art or speed art help you in escaping juggles though. Also if you master MALLC, you can FF Air dodge then time MALLC to nullify the air dodge landing lag.
His frame data is garbage. This is no secret. His frame data sucks. It's comparable to Dedede's. Actually, Dedede's is slightly better so that just makes it worse for Shulk. When a frame 10 move is considered "really fast" for Shulk, we have a significantly big problem here with the numbers. Unfortunately, none of the Monado Arts actually do anything to fix this. Because of his horrendous frame data....
He's very bad at dealing with close range pressure. All of his moves come out really late. His only solid option is his jab or a pivot attack/grab.
All in all, his options at disadvantaged are limited (Jump art in general really helps you at disadvantaged state, but it's not like you have it off cooldown all the time)
Lastly, all his arts come with debuffs that you should be aware off. For all the mobility you get with jump art, you'll take +22% more damage. With speed art, you'll deal 20% less damage. Shield art gimps your overall mobility, your recovery, and your damage output (by 30%). Buster nerfs your defenses so you'll take 13% more damage. It's not much though but you'll feel the nerf against characters that generally hit hard. Smash art is ultra risky since you deal less damage which makes your attacks totally unsafe on shield, while your weight is also nerf'd.
Now that I got the bad out of the way, I'll cover what's
good about Shulk.
His physical attributes are decent. His dash speed, fall speed, FF speed, and air speed are good. He's also quite heavy (above average) at default. Most of the Monado arts have a positive effect on his physical attributes. Jump art is a direct upgrade for his mobility. Speed art is also a direct upgrade to his mobility. Shield art increases his weight. It should be noted that each art also has a negative effect on a certain attribute. Speed art nerfs jump height. Shield art massively nerfs Shulk's mobility
His disjoint is insane. It's obvious that Shulk has the best range in the game overall. He can easily out-range and out-space anyone with his attacks. There's a reason why his frame data had to be gimped really hard and it's because it's mostly compensated by his immense range. N-air and f-air cover a ridiculous amount of area. B-air's horizontal range is HUGE. F-smash's range allows it to be good for land chasing punishment. D-smash can catch rolls thanks to its range (and its multiple hitboxes). His tilts also have great range which players should exploit more instead of spamming n-air and f-air.
N-air. Yeah. We dedicate our God N-air to its own. N-air is pretty much Shulk's identity if we ignore his Monado Arts which I'll cover soon. Since the launch days of Smash 3DS, n-air has always been a staple to Shulk's gameplan whether he'd be on the offense or defense. Why? It has enormous range and it has great coverage. It also has 12 frames of landing lag. You can use n-air to lead into quick follow ups like n-air to jab, n-air to tilt or n-air to grab. You can also opt to space with it which is the safer way to use this move. I don't have to say much about this move. This move is Shulk's love and life.
His moveset in general is really solid. His throws function efficiently. F-throw/b-throw for racking up damage. U-throw for positioning. D-throw for combos/set ups. All his moves serve their purpose really well with the exception of back slash which is just a really bad special in general (the design is flawed and it will never work in a 1v1 setting). His u-air and d-air are fairly situational though. Otherwise, all his moves are solid. Most notably, his n-air, f-air, and b-air.
His edgeguarding game is fantastic. F-air and b-air are what come to mind with Shulk's edgeguarding. Both attacks have enormous range. Because of that, don't expect anyone to actually try contesting your edgeguarding attempts unless you input either of the aerials while you're within their range. Oh, you shouldn't do that by the way. F-air comes out at frame 14 and b-air comes out at frame 18 (front hitbox lol), so expect it to get beaten to the punch most of the time. You still need to space your edgeguards. This is further improved with the help of jump art since you can chase them off stage and possibly KO them with some jump art combos (n-air > f-air > f-air or n-air > f-air. You name it). You can also recover back safely because your recovery options are improved with jump art
The Monado arts mixes up his gameplan/spacing and allow him to adapt to certain scenarios. The Monado Arts are what make Shulk in general. Jump art allows Shulk to escape being at a disadvantage rather quickly. It also grants him better recovery options, and the increased mobility allows you to be able to bait your opponents with empty hops, FF grabs, tomahawks, etc. Your edgeguarding game becomes much safer for yourself and scarier for opponents. Speed art is Shulk's most used art for several reasons. Despite the reduced damage output, you can still rack up decent amount of damage with it since speed art. The increased ground speed, air mobility, and somewhat (?) improved air acceleration allows him to break into zones with more ease. He's also granted with some fantastic mix up options while in speed (boost pivot grab, dash dancing, perfect pivots, SH n-airs, etc. etc). Buster art allows him to space efficiently and it's also a nightmare for shields to deal with due to the increased damage output. The sheer damage increases shield pushback and eats up more shield health. Shield art and Smash art are the only arts that are situational because they serve for only a few but crucial purposes. Shield art increases his weight so Shulk will be much more difficult to KO. Smash art increases Shulk's KBG which allows his attacks to KO at a relatively low percent.
Once he's at an advantage, you're going to make your opponents FEEL it. Shulk's reward from being at an advantage is greeeeat and for added variety, it varies depending on which art you're using. With jump or speed, you can combo the hell out of your opponent. You could possibly kill them while you're at it especially with jump art activated. Buster art speaks for itself because you're going to be racking up insane amount of damage in a few seconds.
Alright, so how are his match ups?
So far, we've identified a few negative match ups:
![Sheik :4sheik: :4sheik:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
![Fox :4fox: :4fox:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
![Sonic :4sonic: :4sonic:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
These characters are considered Shulk's hardest match ups because they specialize in punishing. They can easily bait Shulk into pressing buttons which allows them to go in and rack up a lot of damage. Although it's not an unwinnable mess, you'll have outplay your opponent to win for this one
![Diddy Kong :4diddy: :4diddy:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
Because he's Diddy
![Robin :4robinf: :4robinf:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
Shocking right? Ba-dum-tss. Seriously, this is surprisingly difficult because Robin is one of the few characters (actually, it's just her and D3) that can contest Shulk solely because of the Levin Sword. Her control of the stage also makes it a pain for Shulk to get in. This match up could become much easier at the long run but for now, it's difficult
Other characters that are probably trouble for Shulk (not confirmed, just from the looks of it):
![Zero Suit Zamus :4zss: :4zss:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
![Olimar :4olimar: :4olimar:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
So yeah. Those are his negative match ups. As for the rest, some positive, some even, etc. blah. He's not HARD countered by any of the top tier but he's solidly countered by 2 (IMO, that's Sheik and Fox)
So what do I think about the character? Is he good? Yeah, he's good. No where near being bad or subpar at all. Having range while having a ton of mobility with two arts really says things.
Does he require a lot of work? Yeah, he does but the pay off is wonderful. Shulk, without doubt, has the steepest learning curve in this game because of how masterful you need to be with utilizing the Monado arts while spacing precisely. The Monado boy is all about spacing, and precision. There's also the appearance of the MALLC which is still being implemented into Shulk's meta game. This tech is quite difficult to execute consistently.
Where do you think he ranks among the cast? I'd say top 20 or top 25 at worst. Is he viable? I don't think you can win a tournament with Shulk alone. Not saying it's impossible. You can place well, but winning will be tough. You might need a secondary to handle his other bad match ups. Of course, that's the case for the whole cast, sans the top tiers. The Monado boy's got potential to become much better as we tinker more with the Monado arts, and that janky activation animation (lol).
Edit: Forgot to cover his neutral. It's fairly situational, but it's solid. His arts (except shield and smash) help him at gaining control of the match but they all operate differently. It all comes down to using your range/spacing anyway for a good percentage of a match so whatever. You can tell that I got lazy here, and yeah. I got lazy. Lol