How to be good with Diddy

How to be good with Diddy by Ge0 (what I learned from Zinoto really)

Neutral:

Ideally you want a banana in your hand (unless you’re playing a Rosa). Most of the people who play the game aren’t good enough to avoid making mistakes in neutral. Weave in and out with the banana in your hand. Simply walk up and move back, do some crawls, low hop a bit. Position yourself so that they want to hit you, but never actually let them hit you. Most probably they’ll fall for it and commit to something. This is when you throw the banana. If they slip, grab.

Glide tossing is extremely useful. Glide tossing banana on someone’s shield when you’re close almost always links to grab. Zinoto likes to dtilt out of it as well because most people mash an attack to avoid the grab and dtilt is faster and will punish the shield drop. People stay in shield a lot when diddy has a banana. Monkey flipping usually takes care of that, but good players will react and punish accordingly. A lot of times it’s good to run up to the player and glide toss the banana downwards then grab. The player will be waiting for the banana to hit their shield and a lot of times when they don’t get that cue, the grab is free. Plus grabs are great.

In some matches a banana on the ground is more useful than a banana in hand. This makes it more difficult for certain characters to approach. For example, Luigi doesn’t have many approach options. A banana on the ground makes it that much harder for him to get in. Watch Zinoto vs. Loe1 for examples.

Without a banana, falling aerials are better than rising aerials. Falling fair spaced correctly is unpunishable on shield by most of the cast so that’s a great option for keeping people out. You don’t get the auto cancel, but people usually can’t drop shield and punish you in time anyway. This is especially good at keeping luigi out since he slides. Play the same neutral as before, but you’re going to empty hop while pulling away a bit more, this allows for falling aerials to punish bad approaches. People will start to realize that they keep getting hit, so they will run in and shield. This is when you drop and grab. This is the way to wall people out.

If they have the banana just run away and shield. Unless they have a command grab they can’t do anything to combat shielding.

Mix things up. If you’re playing someone who won’t make a mistake in neutral you have to force one out of them. This means doing things like running in and spot dodging or literally just running in and then short hopping back wards. These are examples of mixups in neutral that can force your opponents hand and try to get a mistake out of them.

Advantage:

Regrab. If you can’t get the kill focus on regrabs. Diddy gets so damn much off of grabs that it’s just the name of the game for diddy.

When you have stage control and you don’t think it’s punishable, get a banana. You could be giving up your current advantage, but diddy with a banana is so good in neutral it could just be easier to win neutral again than keep advantage.

When people are on platforms just throw out aerials at them. Fair and bair are super good for this. It’s intense pressure and it’s where diddy excels.

When people are in the air try to just smack them with an aerial. Jump at them and wait for the air dodge. It’ll probably happen, then hit them. If you have a banana, I find it useful to throw the banana up to either force the air dodge or hit them, then hit them with an aerial. Also frame trapping is definitely a thing, falling bair frame traps into a regrab and grabs are good.

If you get a grab at 0 there are 3 good options:
uthrow -> double uair. This gives you stage control and sets you up to punish the landing. The second uair isn’t true but it hits if they try anything but air dodge.
Ge0 combo. It’s a free 20% and then a guaranteed Nair -> Bair -> Bair afterwards. It’s a bit hard to hit so practice it a lot. It’s mostly useful for luigi, lucas, ness and kirby.
fthrow -> fair. Gets you stage control and could be useful against characters that hate being at the ledge (cloud, luigi)

After that uthrow -> double Bair is usually what I go for, then uthrow -> fair, then uthrow -> uair. If you get a grab at like 30-55 at the edge and uthrow and the person DIs offstage that’s a free stock (dair).

If you have the advantage and they have banana in hand just keep throwing out aerials (especially if they’re a slow character). Diddy does a great job at catching the banana with aerials and if it isn’t caught it disappears to his hitboxes.

Disadvantage:

Stop monkey flipping on stage or in neutral. Just don’t it’s a terrible option except in very specific matches (i.e. Megaman). Limit yourself to 3 or 4 a game.

When recovering you’re almost always better off using barrels from a distance than monkey flipping from a distance. MF is just too easy to react to and too exploitable. Work on aiming barrels correctly.

When in a combo like mario’s up tilt and up air strings monkey flipping is a very good tool. Use it to run away, feel free to go to the ledge using MF and popgun cancelling, or use it to get to platforms. Most of the time you’re better off using monkey flip than burning your double jump. So monkey flip, if they are covering your landing b-reverse, and if you still might get hit, double jump and then b-reversing again can help.