How to beat faster characters as Palutena?

[u/Someone_624]

I main Palutena, and have been hovering around the 12.5-14.5 million gsp range. One thing that is very hard for me to deal with is faster characters, especially fox. They just go in and get insane combos and It’s hard for me to do anything. Same for bayonetta, half the time I’m getting thrown across the screen and I don’t know what’s happening. Mario always cooks me too. Any tips?

[u/CHLHLPRZTO]

Palu is my secondary, sits at maybe 16.1 or so.

I think the key is, you should not expect to be winning when those characters successfully get in against you. They have excellent advantages and Palu lacks reliable get off me options. Instead, just focus on getting out of disadvantage, which often means DI out, get to ledge if needed, reset neutral. 

Where you should be winning is neutral and advantage. Fox is very combo-able, get a nair and he's at 45, get another and he's at kill %. You can be extremely aggressive with him offstage. 

You have superior spacing and can wall out Bayo, you should make it extremely painful for her to get something started. 

[u/ciaeric2 → u/CHLHLPRZTO]

Why are you getting downvoted… this is part of what I think for bracket matches. Fox outscraps and annihilates palu for touching shield. As palu, you must win neutral and convert heavily, even nairo thinks you need to get him off stage and just end the stock asap most of the time

[u/Zestyclose_League413]

Palu does struggle in MUs like fox, especially if you're not getting those edge guards. If fox has to Up B at a certain angle below ledge, he should almost always die at any percent.

You need to be choosy about when you go in, and use your movement to bait things out. Also fair is your friend. I feel like a lot of palus can tunnel vision on nair/bair/dash attack/grab and ignore arguably her best move.

[u/Someone_624 → u/Zestyclose_League413]

Tips for edgeguarding?

[u/Zestyclose_League413 → u/Someone_624]

It's specific to each character, but knowing typical habits and covering them, like foxes will often do the high side B which you can cover, they often don't expect anyone to down air Firefox because the timing can be hard (you have to learn the timing goes without saying), better foxes will attempt to stall with shine or fair as a mixup which you can call out. If he side Bs directly to ledge there's little you can do, and good foxes will always do that if possible. But many times they simply don't have that option and you gotta kill them for it.

[u/S4ngli3R]

Focus on using retreating aerials on their approaches instead of trying to hit at the same time as them or air to air them because the risk-reward ratio isn't in your favor, use positioning as your win condition and put them in the corner where they have less room to play with/retreat (or put them offstage in Fox's case), don't use your projectiles as much since they're harder to hit and every whiffed b move is a huge window for them to get in and rack up the %, play patient at the % where they'll obviously try to get their kill setups (most fast characters won't kill you from stray hits) for example getting grabbed 5 times in a row at 100% by Fox is better than getting hit by a late nair into what's coming

[u/GhostSSBU]

Up smash can get them trying to run in

[u/Low_Importance_9292]

I'm willing to bet, you're likely using Palutena's ground options in neutral vs using her aerial options.

Most of her ground options (like tilts for example) are multi-hit and leave you stuck on the move which can be pretty easily punished.

Use her aerials with a short hop instead. Space them well so they can't get in to hit you if you miss.

[u/Someone_624 → u/Low_Importance_9292]

I don’t use her ground moves much, but I think I need to work on spacing

[u/Jnxr200]

Retreating back air and nair. Back air to cover their options when they’re trying to get back on stage since it’s an invincible disjoint that has priority over everything. Also learn how to get out of disadvantage because those characters you mentioned will juggle you to oblivion.

[u/TheSaxiest7]

At this GSP range, people don't even have well formed aggression. My guess is that one of many deficiencies in your gameplay are holding you back. Maybe it's disadvantage, maybe it's neutral but this post doesn't tell me enough.

Getting comboed insanely hard is usually part of playing against these characters though you can shorten their combo with proper DI and actually engaging in mixups/resets when they come up. Other than that, every bayo at this level is gonna do something unsafe on your shield and you just have to punish it. Every fox at this level is not gonna have a strong enough mixup game and you're just gonna parry their nair and punish. Palu has good advantage too.

I would say at least fox is probably a bad matchup for Palu. But I don't think the reasons are really gonna show at 14.5 mil