Uses for Hydrant

First things first, hydrant has 13% base health (15.6% with the 1v1 multiplier). If it takes more damage than that, it will get launched using the direction and power of the move that launched it, and won't interact with the character who launched it. You can't walk through it, but you can roll through it or jump over it. Certain characters like joker can dtilt through it. It blocks all projectiles except ones that are specifically piercing like ROB laser. Hydrant fires two squirts of water at set times - these go to the side by default unless a character or trampoline is on top of it. Hydrant has X main functions:
1. As a wall
2. As a projectile
3. As bait
4. As a way to change the movement of projectiles or characters
5. As a way to recatch fruit

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1. As a wall

Because hydrant blocks most projectiles and you can't walk through it, it provides some significant defensive benefit. When you lay down hydrant between yourself and the opponent, you can safely charge fruit because they have to get past the hydrant before pressuring you. It can completely change the gameplan for a bunch of characters that rely on projectiles for neutral, like duck hunt or megaman. The four options that they have are to jump over it, to attack it, to roll past it, or to wait for it to go away. All of these take time to execute, and you can use that time to charge up to galaxian, bell, or key (the most valuable fruits). Usually your opponent will have a preference for one of these options, which you can take note of and anticipate in the future.

It can also be used as an offensive wall, where you block your opponent off from an area of the stage. Putting hydrant at roll distance from ledge denies them a ledge option and keeps them in the corner. You can put hydrant on platform to prevent jumping approaches. Placing hydrant at ledge will block characters with high doublejumps (mewtwo, ness, yoshi, etc.) from skipping past ledge.

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2. As a projectile

Hydrant can be a powerful projectile, dealing 13% (15.6% in 1v1) with decent knockback. The damage/kb dealth by hydrant is NOT dependent on what it was launched with. At high percents, it can be a viable kill option. The goal of course it to hit your opponent directly, or to provide an active and lingering hitbox that prevents the opponent from moving to a certain area. High launch angles are excellent for the denial of area access goal.

Using hydrant as a projectile effectively requires understanding the knockback angles and the hydrant health. In terms of hydrant health, you'll need to keep track of the damage that hydrant has taken at all times. Typically hydrant is either broken in one hit (by a smash attack, an opponent's strong aerial, or by key), or by "priming" it then launching it with a weaker attack. The best ways to prime hydrant are bair, nair, uair, and apple/melon/galaxian. All of those will do enough damage to hydrant that you can launch it with whatever you want afterwards. In terms of launch angles, you want to have a few options that give you a varied set of angles so you can mix up where the hydrant goes. Take a moment to look through the launch angles available to you in the #resources hitbox spreadsheet. The moves that I use most often are fsmash, ftilt, trampoline, bair, upsmash 1 (the "scoop"), apple, and key. The tip of jab 1, uair, bell, and dair can also get you unexpected launch angles. There are a number of excellent ledgetraps that use hydrant to cover several ledge options.

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3. As bait

As mentioned before, one of the options that your opponent has to deal with hydrant is to attack it. Some opponents get really focused on using hydrant against you. The issue is that attacking hydrant induces hitlag in the attacker but doesn't affect you; this means that they are more vulnerable to being punished than they would if they attacked your shield! By standing a little ways behind hydrant, their strong aerials and smash attacks typically send hydrant flying over your head with no risk to you. By baiting your opponent to attack hydrant (maybe even by priming it for them), you can punish their greed by dashing under the launched hydrant and using dash attack, a fruit combo, grab, or smash attack. The stronger the attack, the more hitlag there is so you can gauge how much time you have by the strength of their attack. Additionally, if you know that their attack isn't going to break it, they've just primed the hydrant for you. Use a quick attack like a tilt or bair to break it and hit them instead. You do have to watch out for certain moves like yoshi fair or gnw dsmash, which send hydrant at dangerous angles for you.

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4. As a way to change the movement of projectiles or characters

With the water that it shoots out, hydrant gives a great way to change the trajectory of your fruit (and opponents projectiles, if you've grabbed them). The water squirts are persistent windboxes, and cause your fruits to move in different ways - often making them move significantly faster. You should look through some montages and clips to get inspiration, then play around with how it affects your fruit in the training room. It can make apple, melon, and bell become even more lethal because it is difficult for your opponent to predict the new trajectory. If the opponent doesn't have a lot of matchup knowledge, these mixups can induce some confusion and a feeling of being outplayed, which will make them play worse.

The water of course pushes players too. Since you don't flinch when being pushed by water, you can do things like a super roll, very far drifting SH aerial, upthrow -> upair as a kill option on top of hydrant, moving charged smash attack, and moving grab. All of these affect your opponent too, so there are lots of ways to be creative with this.

Lastly, hydrant itself has a windbox that pushes you out if you're clipped inside of it. This is pretty unexplored tech but it's worth knowing about. You can do some neat things by putting hydrant at ledge and rolling inside it, then using different animations to pop out in weird places.

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5. As a way to recatch fruit

Cherry, strawberry, orange, apple, and melon all pop up when they hit something. Hydrant is included in that something, so you can throw fruit at it to have an easy way to recatch these fruit. M.man has a bunch of great YT videos on things you can do with recaught versions of these fruit. It's worth learning how to do this, even if you plan on using galaxian/bell primarily.