Julian Carrington · @Zinoto
2nd Apr 2017 from TwitLonger
Neutral
To start I'm going to say that I feel the MU is 50/50. I say this because half the tweets replying to this are gonna be ppl asking this anyways and me saying Diddy sets the pace of the neutral got confused into Diddy stomps rosa in the neutral. I mean everything that Rosa does has to be dictated by what Diddy does or else she will just hard lose altogether.
• Rosa's aim in neutral is to grab Diddy while still in possession of Luma or if he's at mid percents hit him with jab3.
• Diddy's aim in neutral is to get rid of luma or make Rosa jump. Rosa can't grab you and your aerials will safely hit both Rosa and Luma if she's aleady airborne a lot of the time.
Since Rosa won't willing throw herself into the air and shield is one of the strongest neutral options in the game, Rosa will end up fishing for grabs and Diddy opportunities to to get Monkey Flip since it one shots luma from practically anywhere on not FD/T&C. I use these stages because DIddy will likely ban T&C as it's arguably Rosas strongest stage in the MU and Rosa should ban FD as it's arguably ours.
Monkey Flip, both grab and kick, will send Luma flying off the stage from pretty much the middle of the stage onwards. If you hit rosa as well, you can guarantee Luma dies from a followup hit anyways. Because of this, Rosa will play around this tool more than anything. With Luma's priority, monkey flip kick will beat everything except star bits. Rosalina can use usmash (since it has invincibility) and fsmash (because the hitbox is disjointed) but Luma will still get hit. As a result the option of choice is typically to run to the end of the move and pivot grab the landing lag.
Now this is where I feel like I didn't articulate my point well enough. Rosa will generally walk up and jab Diddy's shield with the tip of luma. This makes it so they are still able to dash away from side b if they use it but can still pressure diddy. We also can't hit Rosalina with aerials since she is so far away. At this range, Rosa has an advantage and side b has effectively been neutralized so Rosa has the advantage. Diddy can't effectively pressure Rosalina directly, but we can still work towards our goal of getting rid of luma by damaging her. For Diddy, the only not super laggy moves that will send Luma flying from full HP are side b and uair. Since Rosa is covering side b, our best option is to just damage Luma instead. After luma gets to ~25% HP pretty much everything will send it flying. The safest things we can do are dtilt (5%) and falling bair (9%). It will take 3 bairs and luma will be sent flying by almost anything.
Just like with side b, luma can't compete with another hitbox because of it's priority so even if rosa uses jab our moves will flat out beat it. REMEMBER WE ONLY NEED 3. We may get 1 for free, but (like anything) if you spam it they will punish it. So Rosa will likely run up and shield the second time so that if you use a falling aerial she can shield grab. At this point they are no longer spaced for side b, but may still be prepared to deal with it by using usmash. Another way of disabling luma's ability to hit you is by grabbing rosa. If she runs up and shields you can grab her. If you send her far enough or have enough damage already on luma you can probably kill luma in this time as well. Maybe you have no idea what she's gonna do after she runs up. You can roll behind her and now all the stage she took is yours. She no longer has the stage to deal with side b so now she's in a real bad spot. Stay there and risk letting the side b cancel potentially killing luma or jump to a nearby platform/ledge. I stated earlier Diddy has two goals, force her to jump or hit her with side b. We now have goal 2 available.
Let's say Rosa walks forward so that she is close enough to where your bair will now touch her shield as well and she continues jabbing. The alternative reason Rosas stay at that range is so if you try to roll through her, they can pivot grab you. At this spacing if she does an immediate pivot grab, she will not be able to dash far enough to pivot grab you leaving this option available as well. You can tell when this spacing occurs with Rosas as well because they will often do Jab1 --> Jab2 --> dash back to anticipate a roll back option. Unless they preemptively move, they won't be able to punish it. If Rosa just walks forward and does nothing you can just wait as well, but most Rosas will attempt to dash grab (like Ray did) and if you spotdodge it you can grab her for free. You can also just dash grab her (since it will disarm luma) and throw her for a free luma kill. You can move away as well if you have the stage to sacrifice. If she moves forward while you're airborne you can just land or side b while mid air.
Aside from just using falling aerials you can also just pull a banana and use that. If you jump toss the banana it will hit rosa and unless Rosa can get the rapid jab off with luma you can side b kick her for free. The option of gravitational pull is available ofc, but if she uses it and you don't throw the banana you get a free side b so the risk/reward is not in her favor at all.
On top of all this Rosa has to be constantly weary of just random side bs, that could just cost them luma flat out.
This all requires really good and constant spacing/timing on rosas end. ZeRo used primarily one option against Ray and even though it got punished often, it only takes one opportunity to get it right and potentially kill luma. Ray wasn't even pressuring ZeRo with jabs or anything. He was half way in his dash back before ZeRo even did the Monkey Flip and still barely got most of the Monkey Flip punishes. It's just such an easy way to kill luma that many Diddy's assume that it's the only way to do it.
Moreover, ZeRo doesn't abuse monkey flip in any other MU like this. If I know all he is going to do is Monkey Flip over and over until he hits luma, then there's no need to even guess at what he's going to do. Every thing i stated earlier stops at "stay spaced for Monkey Flip" and pivot grab.
Diddy has way more options than just Monkey Flip until luma disappears. I know because this is the primary way I beat Rosa players. I can't hold an advantage state half as well as ZeRo, so they get way more opportunities to use Luma. Even if ZeRo played a stronger neutral for even one stock's worth and then just spammed Monkey Flip he'd probably see a ton of success since it'd be much harder to read.