For Mario... Never fsmash. The cape is such a safe reflector that it's really never worth the risk. It's also a bad idea to Z-drop a metal blade and stay above him, as it arcs when he reflects it and can hit us like 10 times... pretty crazy.
Although anecdotally this has been a harder matchup for me, I really think Mega Man should win it slightly. 55-45, etc.
Dthrow > Bair > 2nd Bair does work on him and kind of counteracts his 30-50% combos.
This is how I feel about Mario. We "should win" but Mario seems to have a way of being better than I think of him. A lot of Mega Man users have expressed how hard the matchup is while thinking it's in our favor. I don't think we should ignore the results of how hard the matchup has been for Mega Man users.
Learning how to play around the cape is important. Knowing your fsmash spacing (if it's reflected it disappears before it hits you) will help a lot allowing you to keep that option somewhat available and baiting the cape should lead to grabs. The cape reflects on frame 6 and is active for 15 frames but only flips you around on frames 12-14*. When its IASA frame is, I don't know, but knowing that the turning hitbox is only active for 3 frames makes me think differently about the reflector. I don't think it's much safer than Falco's reflector and it's not Palutena status.
In
SSGuy's match vs Denti he had a lot of trouble against fireball camping which is similar in practice to Pikachu's thunderjolt camping. Getting in the range where they like to jump>fireball to take advantage of the diagonal trajectory should be your goal, as you can trade fireball with fsmash as they land. Time it right, and they won't be able to cape. When they're not using the diagonal, you should be fine to cancel them with pellets/use pellets to get into the
range when they start doing that.
- With customs, Marios might run fast fireball, which is probably in our favor since we cancel them out so well, but we might think about running skull barrier so that we can discourage fireballs in neutral. Just a thought. I have no experience against Mario with customs (note: this is clearly a biased opinion since I don't use LS well off stage/in general).
What gets me a lot (and this happens with Luigi & Doc too) is that I underestimate the range of his upsmash behind him. It's a 9 frame move that can be used OOS, so cross ups on shield are not a good idea against a good player who can do this quickly. Meanwhile, Mario cross ups are quite effective with DAir and NAir, which can lead into the upsmash. I'd rather be in front of him than behind up close, even though that means being at risk of his f2 jab, f5 dsmash, and grab.
What I think we should be doing is challenging his aerial approach with anti-air. BAir poking his aerial approach and, if you see him commit, I wouldn't be too scared to throw in a utilt/usmash to challenge him. FAir can also be used to wall him out, but I think it might start too high & be too slow to challenge approaches. I haven't played this matchup in a while, but I honestly want to try out the idea of abandoning shield for any aerial approaches.
Meanwhile, his ground approach is only okay. He relies on the fireball to cover his approach and get in since he has such poor range on his moves. Dash attack on shield should mean utilt punish. Leave no DA unpunished. I think you have enough time to shield drop, pivot, utilt if he DA's behind you. Make him abandon that move as the risk reward for him is skewed way out of his favor.
While I want to call this 55-45 in our favor, the results speak for themselves. I'm going to be bold and put this as
35-65 in Mario's favor until Mega Man users can prove that we can handle this matchup consistently. It's been said too often that Mario is one of, if not is, our hardest matchup (with Palutena & Samus being mentioned along side him) so I think we should treat him as such.
*Sources:
reflect data &
Frame data
- ZSS I think is one of our best matchups. In addition to eliminating her paralyzer, we're short, safe, and heavy. She struggles to land kills. 70-30 for us.
- Playing Yoshi feels like playing a good character, much like Diddy or Sheik. Rushing under the arc of the eggs is important, as is learning how to punish his attacks. His aerials are not lagless, but are hard to punish due to his mobility. Yoshi players like to throw out kill moves somewhat blindly to put KO pressure on you since they're fast and have low ending lag for moves that powerful. Learn the utilt as I think it's the most important move in the matchup. 50-50.