Meta Zero's Advice: General Matchup Q&A

[TriTails]

Huh, customs. Not really a fan of that lol XD.

Anyway... I think I have overestimated Mega Busters. Yeah, it's a good move, but what I am forgetting about is...

You cannot immediately shield after firing them, nor you can split them up and fire one at a time without taking the end lag.

In short, Luigi can, this is a theory since I have yet to see a so pellet-happy Mega Man, use the shots' end lag to roll in and occasional Cyclone mixups. The Mega Busters don't have much range either. He can keep trying and trying, helped with his own rolls and Cyclone. If he rolls in, you can't really do a U-smash or D-smash immediately because end lag. If you try, you might get grabbed (Luigi's grab is F6 I believe), or get D-smashed to F-tilt/F-smash. Shield gets beaten by grab, and rolling... you may be safe, but you can also run the risk of getting D-smashed (14%, and he can combo to another F-tilt or F-smash. That is 21% or 29% there).

Or, if he is real, jump. If Mega Man tries to N-air, he gets Cyclone'd. If he tries to U-smash/D-smash, get DJ'ed. If he try to aerial or Metal Blade, airdodge'd (And Luigi is floaty, I don't think he'll land on the ground fast enough to suffer from the end lag). This is where mindgames are important.

He gets in though... either chaingrabs or 50% combo. You guys already know about that.

Still, I see this MU as 65:35 in Mega's favor at the best for Luigi, 7:3 in worst, but something as 8-2 is like, unwinnable unless you are just plain better than the opposition. Metal Blades and Crash Bombers get eaten by Fireballs (If you aren't close to him, at least in Mega Busters' range, he won't be shy spamming his Fireballs there to force you to approach), but Mega still keeps Luigi out pretty nicely, and like I said, his melee options aren't feeble. So yeah...

And for gimping... Luigi will need to mindgames a lot. Recovering high or low ain't a problem.the problem is how Mega would act if he gets knocked off-stage...

Customs... I don't think Luigi would swap his original Cyclone there. Burial Header is pretty nice because you are most likely won't landing any FJPs. I have yet to see any great Iceball peformance, so no comments on Fireballs. Missile, definitely pick Floating Missile. It's almost a straight upgrade (Better accuracy, misfire only KOing 2 or 3% later, twice as fast charging, and fast charge means more damage! And the end lag is the least outta those three customs).

Oh God, what horror could Mega Man unveil in his customs? No, please, don't go to something like 'Curvy Metal Blade that can be controlled'.

(Yes, I don't know Mega's customs)

And also, 'perfect' pellet game on Mega's side is rather a flawed idea. That would immediately turn out to be an insta-time out, because Luigi is just going to sit there and perfect shield every single pellets because he is using the 'perfect' game idea.

 

[Peabnut Bubber]

I'm on the 7-3 boat for Mega vs Luigi.

Pellets - One stops the Fireball and the other two hit Luigi for free. His down B approach option is also stuffed with two-three pellets, but that isn't really optimal for Mega Man. Offstage, a single pellet cancels Luigi's forward movement from his side B. Sweetspot nair isn't even necessary to gimp him. His approach is limited to just rolling towards you or going for the dash grab during any moment of brevity of your pellet spam.

Fsmash - Goes right through Fireballs and hits Luigi on the other side. Stuffs down B approach entirely. I've never had better results throwing out an Fsmash in neutral than against Luigi. Great for edgeguarding as well. Luigis typically try to down B or DJ -> Fireball onto stage, both of which get beat by Fsmash.

Metal Blade - If Luigi does grounded Fireball, SH Metal Blade. If Luigi SH Fireballs, do grounded MB. Be patient if you have a MB in hand, you don't want it to hit a Fireball.

Crash Bomber - Against Fireballs, do the same thing you'd do with Metal Blade. Landing a CB always stop the constant flow of Fireballs as the Luigi tries to either approach you or retreat.

Leaf Shield - Yet another way to combat Fireballs. Great gimp tool against Luigi, as it also stops his side B in its tracks. Stealing his DJ off stage is fatal for Luigi.

You won't combo Luigi too well. Besides really early percents, Dthrow -> Fair won't work. Try running up and shielding below him after a Dthrow, or maybe try out ranging him with a Bair instead. At higher percents, Uair juggles Luigi really well since his aerial acceleration isn't that great.

I've faced very good Luigi players and have been able to beat all of them. Don't ever get lazy in the match up, though. Luigi really shines when the player gets creative. Then again, so does Mega Man.

 

[TriTails]

Just watch out since F-smash is telegraphed, he can jump over it with his amazing jump height.

Yeah, I guess 7-3 is fine. Luigi gets outranged and outcamped here. Missile get stopped by pellets too, and if you're real, Hard Knuckle.

Just don't eat a FJP .

 

[Locke 06]

Alright, sorry for being late. I've started watching Archer and... well, this is why we can't have nice things.

Special thanks to @ TriTails , @Glazed_Soul, and @1PokeMastr from the Luigi boards for stopping by and chatting.

-----------------------------------------------------
Our next one will be... interesting.

To take a step away from the top and most popular characters, we'll go to a character even older than Mega Man.
The 2D wonder

There's not a lot on this matchup on either boards except for some bucket talk. However, it seems like there are people who dislike this matchup and people who really like the matchup on both sides. Hopefully we can clear up the confusion.

In honor of the NBA all star game that just happened. The subtitle of this discussion is Get Buckets.

 

[Peabnut Bubber]

I believe we win against Game & Watch. There isn't much he can do against our zoning, but if he does decide to barge in he will do one of two things: Dash Attack or Fair. Both of which get beat by shield/spotdodge. Once he IS in though, he'll get off quite a bit of damage with his great grab game.

G&W is deceptive. Nearly all of his moves are disjointed and come out fast, but very few of them have hitboxes that stay out for longer than the first few frames. Mega Man doesn't want to approach without a Metal Blade in hand and/or a Leaf Shield up. Crash Bomber in this match up is less effective since it fills up G&W's Bucket. Only use CB if you are nearby to pressure him, so he won't be able to pull out the bucket.

Our pellets shut down G&W. People argue that he can get a full bucket off, but there are flaws in using bucket against our pellets. You can't just pull out the bucket in neutral. Who's to say we can't just run up and grab him, or fire off a Metal Blade? Plus, G&W would prefer to bucket our Fsmash instead of our pellets. Because of this, I wouldn't see any player wasting their time trying to catch the tiny sardines that are our pellets, and instead wait for the big haul of a bass, our Fsmash. Let's say G&W fills his bucket up with our 2% pellets. That means we can freely use Fsmash without worrying about it being bucketed. Also, a full bucket does not solve the problem of being unable to approach.

Finally, a note about G&W's weight. I believe he is the 2nd or 3rd lightest in the game. We are still able to combo him from Dthrow, but not for long. There aren't many ways for G&W to prevent himself from getting juggled, so he's going to rack up damage very quickly. His light weight combined with his susceptibility to our zoning means we should be able to kill him early.

 

[BBC7]

Ooh boy, I get to contribute in the Mega Man boards in what feels like forever. Honestly though, I haven't played Mega Man in a while so I'm really rusty. I think G&W F-Tilt beats out Metal Blade, Crash Bomber fills a full bucket so G&W willingly gets hit by it, and I've no idea if Leaf Shield has any use against G&W. Since his projectile already kind of sucks and his recovery is good, I'm willing to say Leaf Shield is not the greatest in this match-up. Contrary to what the person above me said, G&W actually has an incredibly easy time escaping juggles since he can act out of Up B and his light weight makes moves have more knockback as well. As for the pellets, I don't know if they actually do completely shut down the character so I'm not willing to talk about the match-up any further until I confirm that they do. 50-50 until further notice

 

[X3I]

I'm a G&W's player, but I've been against quite a lot of Megaman's mainers.

First of all, G&W nullifies Megaman's zonning pretty well, it's not that hard to approach.
-Bucket is filled with maaany things (basically, each time a Crash Bomber is set on me, I just jump offstage to fill it safely).
-When Bucket is empty (which is often, it's so easy to land now), it's too dangerous for Megaman to use his Fsmash.
-Ftilt/Dtilt beats Metal Blade, and Dash Attack/Nair are good to catch it.
-Leaf Shield is almost useless... I don't see any utilities here.
-But Chief isn't really good against Megaman either.

-At the beginning of a stock, G&W can 0% > 74% Megaman from a Dthrow (Dthrow > Footstool > Dair > Repeat...).
-While Megaman can't combo him well because of his weight (he just has to UpB out of the juggle for a safe escape).

-Megaman can't edgeguard G&W because of his Bucket Jumping and his UpB that is probably the best in this game.
-G&W can edegeguard Megaman easily because he has better hitboxes, and Megaman's recovery trajectory is easy to read.

-G&W's UpSmash beats every Megaman's move, including his Dair. So he can punishes everythink OoS with his, EVEN JABS.
-Megaman is maybe the only one that can beat G&W's key, with his Uair, though.

-Due to G&W's range, Megaman needs a HUGE mistake if he wants to kill from a Smash. So his only good options is his Bair, that is beaten by G&W's Bair/Fair. But Megaman kills him VERY EARLY... So one mistake, and G&W takes an Usmash.
-G&W can kill him with early edgeguarding and Usmash, but it's difficult too because of the zonning. He needs to approach.

IMO, 55 - 45, or maybe 60-40. Megaman has to zone G&W in order to win because G&W has the upper hand in CQC.
But, G&W has these great tools to counter his zonning... So, it's definitely in G&W's favor.

 

[Diamond Octobot]

Little fancy question about Oil Panic mechanics : does the kind of projectiles absorbed has any influence on how strong the move is ?

 

[BBC7]

Little fancy question about Oil Panic mechanics : does the kind of projectiles absorbed has any influence on how strong the move is ?

Yes

 

[X3I]

Yes !
Megaman's Fsmash is a kill at 0%, while Jab/Crash Bomber kill later and does like 25%.

 

[Sorichuudo]

Yes !
Megaman's Fsmash is a kill at 0%, while Jab/Crash Bomber kill later and does like 25%.

What about the pellets? At wich percent a bucket filled with pellets would kill?

 

[Fenrir VII]

Yeah I'm wondering that myself. So in theory, G&W can "stop" us from pelleting by bucketing the shots, but then he's vulnerable again to it and he has a bit of trouble getting thru it to land the downB. I'd like to know the damage and killpower of the bucket with 3 pellets.
Also a bucketed crash bomb = a free hit for us, so that's not exactly safe.

Idk I really don't have much exp in this matchup, but I could see it going either way. downward angled metal blades are great, though... I do know that. G&W has trouble guarding from that angle, and his rolls aren't great.

 

[Blade Knight]

G&W is the matchup I personally stuggle the most with. His recovery makes him briefly immune to Blade, Hard Knuckle, and basically anything else we could throw out to edgeguard him, we basically have to kill him from on stage. This isn't terrible because he's so light, just don't go anywhere with tall ceilings.

Comboing him is difficult because he's so small and so light too, he just really limits our options heavily even beyond the obvious bucket.

He really does limit our ability to ever use a lot of projectiles and it's deeply annoying, but air shooter, hard knuckle, and metal balde are still usable. Even fighting him up close is difficult because his aerial disjoints can stuff a lot of our moves. Back Air is a good option as always, but other than that we're very grounded in my experience. His attacks on the ground lose out to Dash attack, Dtilt and Utilt pretty universally though, so that's nice. I personally don't have much advice in this matchup except be ready to up tilt anytime you can land one. It and Up Smash are our best kill moves in this matchup imo.


Anybody got advice to help me out with this?

 

[X3I]

Also a bucketed crash bomb = a free hit for us, so that's not exactly safe

Run offstage > Bucket > Recover freely

His attacks on the ground lose out to Dash attack, Dtilt and Utilt pretty universally though, so that's nice.

Never forget that his Usmash is invincible.

 

[Fenrir VII]

Run offstage > Bucket > Recover freely

This is assuming we can't just chase you offstage and at-worst put you at risk of a bair gimp. That's not a good assumption.

 

[X3I]

Well, you can't, I promise.
I play a lot with a MM mainer, you can't.

And if you try Bair, you get stagespiked.

 

[Blade Knight]

G&W's Up B is immune to attacks, as he's fulling intangible while being lifted for several frames. It's very difficult to punish that option with Mega Man.

@ X3I that's why I said 'pretty universally' rather than just universally. Up Smash is a huge bother in this matchup and it would be foolish as Mega Man to forget about it.

Personally I think we've went straight from one of MM's best matchups to one of his worst in discussion.

 

[Fenrir VII]

I'm assuming this is high level play... so we can tech an upB if hit.

point being, bucketing the crash bomb is a movement that G&W has to commit while Mega Man can move freely. Depending on spacing and situation, this should equal SOMETHING for Mega Man (even if just adding pressure) in all cases except possibly when crash bomb is stuck from near max range.

 

[X3I]

You get a recovery janken, I get an attack that kills and deals around 25%...

 

[Blade Knight]

We weren't (or at least I wasn't) implying that the Up B itself is a problem. Being hit by it is no big deal, techs are easy. You are completely right in saying it helps our positioning and pressure, but what I was saying is that the tradeoff is G&W having a bucket which I personally wouldn't put any price on in this matchup. Next to no amount of stage control is worth giving him that bucket. The mental aspect of the game changes completely after that and it makes MM players play more safely, it makes them play worse.

 

[Kofu]

I personally think the MU is in Mega Man's favor, though I don't know by how much. Yeah, we can bucket lemons, but the existence of Metal Blades make that hard. I think a bucket of them kills around 100% (could be a little off though).

IIRC we just have a hard time getting in and finishing off Mega Man outside of gimps thanks to his weight and projectile walls, while Mega Man can send us flying easily, especially with UTilt, which'll kill around 70%.

I'm going to say 60:40 Mega Man's favor. It's not a free fight for him but Game & Watch has to work harder.

 

[Greward]

We don't really have to use Crash bomb. It's a bad subpar move anyways.
Nor Mega Man does really use Fsmash a lot, it's a situational move. We will probably try to use it to punish landings or get ups at kill %. It's actually safer to use it in this matchup than against Mario or other reflector users.

Mega Man has an ok close combat game actually. Frame 7 SH nair, Frame 6 huge hitbox grab, frame6 uptilt or frame 5 dtilt are good options. Frame 8 upsmash has a wide hitbox at the first hit so it's a good close combat option. Most of these moves are laggy but we will simply use nair / grab / dtilt if we think it's risky.

MM wins it by simply shieldgrabbing imo. MB are a pain in the ass to G&W too, and he has no real approach nor good killing options. We beat everything on the ground with plain shieldgrab. Air game gets a bit more messy but we have a lot of tools to punish landings like Dtilt and MB so if we have enough room we win the neutral game. Pellets are good, specially at closerange with the punch hitbox because I don't think G&W can punish it. Even if they are bucketable, bucketing pellets is punishable and they really annoy G&W.
Fair might be a good tool to punish a full hop but otherwise it's a bad move in this matchup. Mega Man should stick to the ground where he's safe. Bair can actually contest G&W in the air so he should be wary of that. It's also a good kill move.
G&W is not gimpable so our kills come from reading the get up options, usmash read or simply back / up throw.

I feel like G&W has a lot of tools for this matchup but he's a weak character overall so we should win. Kinda like Olimar vs Peach in Brawl, where Peach had a lot going for her but olimar won the matchup by simply being a better character. Just like in Brawl, G&W has no real and realiable approach and I think that's his doom here. Grabs and metal blades really make our matchup and I don't think G&W can work around that.

Can G&W bucket tornado? He might get a full weak bucket out of a tornado, but i'm not sure. If he can't then this move becomes godly in the matchup, if he can then we shouldn't use it too much.

 

[Fenrir VII]

yeah Mega utilt kills G&W starting at 72% without rage. dsmash would kill lower but is less viable

Reference: http://smashboards.com/threads/mega-upper-minimum-kill-for-up-tilt.373357/#post-17805931

considering bthrow does %12, uair does 10-20%, metal blades do up to 10%, etc. it doesn't take much to put on the damage, and utilt combos out of metal blade (which again seems to work well against G&W for a few reasons).

Again, I make no claims of fully understanding this matchup, but I have trouble calling any matchup that we can conceivably kill in the 60-70 range all that bad.

Can G&W absorb danger wrap? Normally I don't discuss customs, but in this case, having another good kill move for spacing would be a fairly significant buff.

@ Greward Regarding tornado, I don't think G&W can bucket it. I know Ness can't absorb it, and those moves react in similar ways... also Tornado isn't listed on the G&W bucket thread.

 

[ChopperDave]

I have some experience with this matchup against a pretty decent G&W main.

I'm not really seeing how G&W has a safe approach against MM. Yeah, he's got a bunch of disjoints, but many of his aerials are pretty unsafe. MM's grab range often means that he can grab G&W OOS, and usmash OOS is painful as well. Pivot fsmash can be a nasty punish as well given how bad most of G&W's auto autocancels are. Chef is trash.

The bucket does render Crash Bomber pretty useless in this MU, and MM does have to be more careful about throwing out fsmash. G&W has to be careful not to get faked out with the bucket, though, as all it takes is one Metal Blade to Usmash/Utilt string to end a stock. In general it's not worth throwing out a bucket unless G&W really reads an fsmash or has a Crash Bomber on him.

I've never seen that 0-74% combo discussed above, but that sounds pretty bad for us if G&W can pull it off easily and consistently. I also agree that our offstage game generally suffers in this MU.

One thing I'll add to the discussion, though: MM benefits a LOT from customs here. Danger Wrap is a terrifying threat for G&W, and can kill him at super early percentages. (I once killed a G&W at 45% with DW on Halberd.) It also hits through his dair, like MM's uair, and in general it's a good anti-approach against G&W.

Tornado Hold is actually pretty handy as well. Because of how long the attack is and the windbox, it's perhaps one of the only attacks MM has that can consistently edgeguard against G&W's UpB. If MM gets a clean hit with Tornado Hold, he usually gets a free bair or DW, which often ends a stock. TH does make MM's recovery worse and more predictable, but this is somewhat balanced out by the fact that TH has a hitbox that can sometimes stage spike greedy edgeguarders.

 

[Blade Knight]

Yeah, in customs largely because Danger Wrap really does throw this matchup into our favor, it's a very good move which he can't absorb. Personally I have trouble throwing out any ratio for this matchup, but I'm starting to think I just have a mental block on this one. I should put in more work on it.

 

[Sorichuudo]

So i did some testing on FD and here is what i got:

Bucket of CB or lemons doesn't kill at 100% in the middle of the stage, kills at less at the edge of the stage (70% or something). This not considering DI since im testing alone and i just wanted to test the average kill percent, and with rage it can kill at 100% center stage but again, can't test if DI helps. So yeah, it can be bad if we get hit with a bucket of lemons in those circumstances, but if i can quote another post:

I wouldn't see any player wasting their time trying to catch the tiny sardines that are our pellets, and instead wait for the big haul of a bass, our Fsmash.

If G&W has a bucket filled with lemons or CB wich won't kill us till later percents, what's to stop Megaman from trapping his landing with a fully charged Fsmash? Even disconsidering that, bucket is full? Here, have anoter CB and more lemons.
Also about "jump offstage>bucket>recover" when stuck with a CB, we can throw a MB or just get him with an aerial if he tries that depending on the distance.
My point is that the argument seems to be that the bucket nullifies our zoning but it really doesn't seem to be the case. If G&W gets in on MM, he will kick some *** that's for sure, but i don't see how the bucket will make it any easier for him to to do that.

Also: BUCKET ABSORBS DANGER WRAP and it kills earlier than a bucket of CB or lemons, kills at about 70/80% center stage without rage. So i really don't think DW helps here.

He cannot use bucket on Ice Slasher however. So that's a thing.

 

[Locke 06]

Ice slasher. There is maybe a 2% chance you can punish G&W running away/offstage to bucket a crash bomb. I really don't think there should be much of a debate.

In terms of edge guarding, we can't unless we get G&W before he can up-B. Understanding his recovery (dair, bucket jumping, fire parachute, DJ after an action post-fire) is important as understanding our own recovery (DJ after up-B). Since the up-B does not hit above the ledge (I think), trumping is likely the stronger option. And if you call a buffered ledge roll/attack, you have your punish. That said, we are also susceptible to ledge trumps, but I do not think G&A's BAir is not as suited for the trump game as ours is, nor is his punishes as hard as ours (except at low % combo/judge)

Bucketed oil comes out f2 according to some quick looking around the g&w boards, so giving your opponent an f2 giant disjoint no matter how strong is not advised (can g&w b-reverse it?).

Just some of my thoughts from what I've seen being discussed. Glad to see input from the G&W boards.


Edit: Jeez... just saw the downthrow>footstool>Dair>grab combo string. http://smashboards.com/threads/mr-frame-data-frame-data-information-ko.383626/ has the info for people interested. I'm surprised I missed this thread when looking at the G&W boards. It's a gold mine of information.

 

[X3I]

but he's a weak character overall so we should win

He isn't. I think you just don't know him well !

 

[meleebrawler]

G&W is like Mario in that he has good, not mind-blowing, but good mobility on most
fronts. He'll most likely be constantly moving around and using disjoints to maximum
effect to stay safe. Chef is also a lot better than people are used to. Megaman is also fairly
vulnerable to juggles since his dair is slow and everything else is beaten out by scuba helmet.

A grueling battle of patience to be sure. Neither side wants to commit too hard (Megaman
because G&W's dash attack is second to none at punishing as well as his juggle game, whereas
G&W just dies very easily to Rock's vertical finishers), so the winner will be the one who makes
fewer mistakes really.

 

[Locke 06]

Dash attack on shield though gets you a utilt. Not to say that it's a fantastic move with low lag, but you have to be more careful with it vs Mega than most other characters due to the f6 kill move.

How much lag is there on the bucket? Playing @ Kofu , I remember pelleting forward once to fill 1 level of the bucket and then having time to walk and utilt.

Edit: Utilt is the mega upper for the G&W players who don't know.

 

[Kofu]

Dash attack on shield though gets you a utilt. Not to say that it's a fantastic move with low lag, but you have to be more careful with it vs Mega than most other characters due to the f6 kill move.

How much lag is there on the bucket? Playing @ Kofu , I remember pelleting forward once to fill 1 level of the bucket and then having time to walk and utilt.

Edit: Utilt is the mega upper for the G&W players who don't know.

Assuming it's unchanged from Brawl, it's 72 frames when not fully filling the bucket (that's 48 frames if I recall). He has invincibility for the first part of it (24 frames) but it's still very punishable.

 

[meleebrawler]

Dash attack on shield though gets you a utilt. Not to say that it's a fantastic move with low lag, but you have to be more careful with it vs Mega than most other characters due to the f6 kill move.

How much lag is there on the bucket? Playing @ Kofu , I remember pelleting forward once to fill 1 level of the bucket and then having time to walk and utilt.

Edit: Utilt is the mega upper for the G&W players who don't know.

That's why DA is a punish move. It's also good at catching landings.
Bucket lags fairly badly unless it fills completely, so weak low endlag projectiles are
awkward to absorb (aka Pikachu or ZSS). The custom Efficient Panic helps with this
filling completely with anything. Oh, and Short-Order Chef is good at getting people
to jump.

 

[Kofu]

That's why DA is a punish move. It's also good at catching landings.
Bucket lags fairly badly unless it fills completely, so weak low endlag projectiles are
awkward to absorb (aka Pikachu or ZSS). The custom Efficient Panic helps with this
filling completely with anything. Oh, and Short-Order Chef is good at getting people
to jump.

On this note I'd like to give your Mega Man another shot, @ Locke 06 , once I get a few more customs on my Wii U. I think that Efficient Panic may help in the MU but I haven't had a chance to test it.

 

[Locke 06]

Yup. I'm also interested in those dthrow combos. They look devastating, and honestly changed how I think about the character. It looks like you might be able to DI away and then interrupt/spot dodge the regrab, but it may be guaranteed if you do it frame perfectly (in which case, don't get grabbed. Lol)

Edit: I still want to warn G&W users from focusing on bucketing pellets. Even with efficient panic, a baited bucket can be 17% or more and a kill ~70%. Spacing your aerials and moves on Mega's shield is important as to not get utilted.

 

[BBC7]

Yup. I'm also interested in those dthrow combos. They look devastating, and honestly changed how I think about the character. It looks like you might be able to DI away and then interrupt/spot dodge the regrab, but it may be guaranteed if you do it frame perfectly (in which case, don't get grabbed. Lol)

Edit: I still want to warn G&W users from focusing on bucketing pellets. Even with efficient panic, a baited bucket can be 17% or more and a kill ~70%. Spacing your aerials and moves on Mega's shield is important as to not get utilted.

They are pretty crazy, one D-Throw is basically 21% if you do D-Throw to Nair, or 20% if you do D-Throw to Uair. It gets even more crazy with a Game & Watch custom(Up2) that trades off vertical height for damage. This basically grants you an largely inescapable combo(unlike D-Throw to Nair/Uair) that does 14%, and you can do D-Throw -> UpB 2 -> Fair for a guaranteed 25%, not to mention it puts Game & Watch in a pretty comfortable position. D-Throw to Judgement is OK, although it is inescapable for certain characters. Mega Man is not an exception, as D-Throw -> Judgement will hit Mega Man from 43%-51% with no way to escape according to the training mode combo count, although I am positive that you can DI out of it on the higher ends of the percentage spectrum such as 50% or 51%. Nonetheless, every form of Judgement will kill at that percent if a 9 is landed. There's the infamous guaranteed D-Throw -> Oil Panic so you want to keep down your F-Smash and Crash Bombs.

Also, about the bucket being unsafe, I'd still opt for Efficient because you can Bucket Jump backwards, catch one pellet, not be in range for a U-Tilt and be able to have a decent attack at your hands. Or, theoretically, you should be able to do this.

 

[CopShowGuy]

I've had really good success gimping Ness with leaf shield, as it can steal your very important second jump and lead to a footstool. Then you have to startup PKT which can be challenged before it hits you, you just have to be confident that you'll get there before you get hit with PKT2. Because of Leaf Shield, Mega Man gimps Ness better than most of the cast. Also, projectile DAir spike allows you to line up the shot while being semi-safe. However, making PKT2 collide with a blade is great.

I play against a regular Ness main. He always recovers very low unless put in a terrible position. So low that I can't possibly leaf stool or dair meteor without putting my self in terrible danger of not making it back.

*EDIT*
Sorry for being WAY late to that discussion. I was catching up on the topic and felt like throwing that in after forgetting this topic moved on.

 

[X3I]

We don't really have to use Crash bomb. It's a bad subpar move anyways.
Nor Mega Man does really use Fsmash a lot, it's a situational move. We will probably try to use it to punish landings or get ups at kill %. It's actually safer to use it in this matchup than against Mario or other reflector users.

Mega Man has an ok close combat game actually. Frame 7 SH nair, Frame 6 huge hitbox grab, frame6 uptilt or frame 5 dtilt are good options. Frame 8 upsmash has a wide hitbox at the first hit so it's a good close combat option. Most of these moves are laggy but we will simply use nair / grab / dtilt if we think it's risky.

MM wins it by simply shieldgrabbing imo. MB are a pain in the *** to G&W too, and he has no real approach nor good killing options. We beat everything on the ground with plain shieldgrab. Air game gets a bit more messy but we have a lot of tools to punish landings like Dtilt and MB so if we have enough room we win the neutral game. Pellets are good, specially at closerange with the punch hitbox because I don't think G&W can punish it. Even if they are bucketable, bucketing pellets is punishable and they really annoy G&W.
Fair might be a good tool to punish a full hop but otherwise it's a bad move in this matchup. Mega Man should stick to the ground where he's safe. Bair can actually contest G&W in the air so he should be wary of that. It's also a good kill move.
G&W is not gimpable so our kills come from reading the get up options, usmash read or simply back / up throw.

I feel like G&W has a lot of tools for this matchup but he's a weak character overall so we should win. Kinda like Olimar vs Peach in Brawl, where Peach had a lot going for her but olimar won the matchup by simply being a better character. Just like in Brawl, G&W has no real and realiable approach and I think that's his doom here. Grabs and metal blades really make our matchup and I don't think G&W can work around that.

Can G&W bucket tornado? He might get a full weak bucket out of a tornado, but i'm not sure. If he can't then this move becomes godly in the matchup, if he can then we shouldn't use it too much.

- You can't shieldgrab FFNair/Bair. +Empty jump also exists, you know ? G&W's grab game is waaay better.
- You're not better AT ALL in the close game/mid range. Chair/Usmash beats every move, basically.
- G&W can punish your pellets game easily, actually. No one will bucket them, btw.
- Bair can't contest G&W in the air. Fair/Bair out-priority it. Only Uair is good.
- G&W is definitely a strong character. It's just everyone sleeps on him.

It's too bad that I'm not American and my Online is a bit laggy, because I would have loved to show you how strong G&W is.

 

[Greward]

- I think we can punish landing nair. Bair i'm pretty sure we can't tho, altho most of the landings will be punished by retreating metal blade.
- MM close range is actually retreating nairs most of the time, so yeah i think we do. Chair needs you to be standing still in front of us which shouldn't really happen a lot in neutral game.
- Don't really think so but whatever
- Bair will win when you are higher than us. Bair has a very huge hitbox that will hit at Mega Man's head which means it can win in a diagonal angle. It's also a very fast move so we can punish after aerials.
- I think he is on the lower half of the tier, but I guess only time will tell. Anyways Peach wasn't actually a bad character in Brawl.

I'm actually european, not American. If you are european we might play, although wifi sucks

 

[Kofu]

Killing is probably our hardest aspect of the MU because our smashes are slow and Mega Man can generally cover his landings, when we'd be most apt to connect with them. DThrow to UAir works at limited percents, though so he wary of that.

Talking about pellets, we could also try ducking under them, since our crouch is really low. Unfortunately I don't think we can do the same for Metal Blades.

 

[Locke 06]

They are pretty crazy, one D-Throw is basically 21% if you do D-Throw to Nair, or 20% if you do D-Throw to Uair. It gets even more crazy with a Game & Watch custom(Up2) that trades off vertical height for damage. This basically grants you an largely inescapable combo(unlike D-Throw to Nair/Uair) that does 14%, and you can do D-Throw -> UpB 2 -> Fair for a guaranteed 25%, not to mention it puts Game & Watch in a pretty comfortable position. D-Throw to Judgement is OK, although it is inescapable for certain characters. Mega Man is not an exception, as D-Throw -> Judgement will hit Mega Man from 43%-51% with no way to escape according to the training mode combo count, although I am positive that you can DI out of it on the higher ends of the percentage spectrum such as 50% or 51%. Nonetheless, every form of Judgement will kill at that percent if a 9 is landed. There's the infamous guaranteed D-Throw -> Oil Panic so you want to keep down your F-Smash and Crash Bombs.

Also, about the bucket being unsafe, I'd still opt for Efficient because you can Bucket Jump backwards, catch one pellet, not be in range for a U-Tilt and be able to have a decent attack at your hands. Or, theoretically, you should be able to do this.

"Bucket Jumping" is when you take out the bucket for the second time while in the air to become super floaty/jump higher (like Robin/Pacman charging their projectiles when jumping). Right? I don't know much about it... but I skimmed a video about it.

And yeah, you can probably jump backwards to catch a pellet. In theory, I'd probably pellet spam without thinking about the bucket if you ran efficient panic. Taking a quick look, 1 pellet nets you a 10% panic while 3 get you 18%. I'd probably give you the 10% bucket in exchange for free use of fsmash and pellets, but that's just theory based.

Re close range discussion: chair is a disjointed f10 move and usmash is f4 head invincible and hits on f24. Pellets are f7 and dtilt is f5, which both "beat" chair and retreating pellets can move away before usmash hits while dtilt doesn't care about head invincibility due to the hitbox being so low. That said, dtilt is super punishable on block although it can cross up ambiguously to help keep it "safe."

The "good" or "bad" character debate should either be explained more to make it relevant to the discussion or should be dropped.

How does G&W punish the pellet game?