Charizard Description of Options

Charizard
v1.3 updated 4-30

Decent neutral, good advantage, bad disadvantage. Range, speed, power, ending lag, hard to get out of disadvantage.
Jank hurtbox, some hitboxes are wonky, bair is jank.

It's also good to watch people play. Here's a playlist of good vods: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUu-jc-Gbmfn8rrUp7FPRO3ONTyIXVMUp

Neutral:
Zard is pretty good at zoning opponents with his range and ground speed, since he can dash back and force things to whiff and AC nair is lagless. He has a well-rounded set of pokes: dash attack to zonebreak quickly, bair to zonebreak with disjoint and more safety, flamethrower to poke noncommittally, fh ac nair to beat more options and be mostly safe on shield. His boxing is good too in jab and dtilt.
However, he doesn't have many tools that are safe on shield or whiff. Dtilt seems safe on shield and whiff, but not entirely. Bair is safe on shield, but movement weakens it as an option because of its startup as a grounded option. Landing fair is somewhat safe, while sh fair needs to be retreating. Flamethrower is pretty safe on shield. FF AC nair is pretty safe on shield when spaced well, but it's telegraphed
He's somewhat weak to zoning, but he can pressure through it. Projectiles aren't a big issue unless they're good against shield like banana and Robin's magic, while swords limit his neutral more but aren't terrible. He's also somewhat weak to strong burst options.


Defensive options (mostly catching approaches and zoning):
Jab: One of his best tools. Large range, frame 4. His head is vulnerable during it, so it loses to aerial approaches.
Fh ac nair: Fullhop, delay a few frames, ff nair. It has some startup, but the startup is hard to beat. The hitboxes end in front of and under him and it autocancels 5 frames after they end, so it protects falling him very well. It forces things to whiff before he lands, is pretty much safe on shield if spaced well, and starts combos. Beats all sorts of approach options that he would otherwise need to dash back to beat, so it's sometimes very useful defensively.
Sh fair/landing fair: somewhat unsafe, but beats approaches. Fair is strong and may suddenly kill you. FH fair autocancels on a BF platform.
Dtilt: large range, low ending lag, hits 30° to force a tech. Usually forces shorthop aerials to whiff. It extends a hurtbox so it's punishable on whiff. Very useful at midrange.
Flamethrower: stops approaches, deals some damage but not much. Can allow Zard to camp.
Pivot grab: doesn't go too far, but is pretty disjoint.
Dash back sh bair: Beats dash attacks and dash grabs. Kills!
Shield/spotdodge/roll back (rolls are short though).
-- Less useful --
Sh nair: stops approaches somewhat, but it's easy to beat early in the animation. Kind of beats dash attacks.
Fly: Shoryuken through an attack, but with lots of ending lag. Frame 4 armor, frame 9 first hitbox.

OoS options:
These are weakened by low traction, but they're ranged enough to be strong. He can potentially play out of shield the whole game.
Jab: frame 11 OoS, pretty good range. Turnaround jab beats crossups.
Grab: goes pretty far out of shield because he tucks his head into his shield. Not disjoint, though. Weakened by low traction.
Fly: frame 9 hitbox, kills, beats crossups if reversed. The hitbox starts in front of his feet or at the base of his neck, and is disjoint on his feet. Can be done prematurely to kill aerial opponents.
Usmash: frame 6 anti-airs above shield, decent forward range, kill move.
Fair: frame 17 OoS, kill move

Movement options:
Dash goes fast
Dash turnaround is actionable on frame 15, making a cool dashdance-like thing.
Skid lasts 13 frames, so Zard basically has a 25-frame foxtrot for defensive movement. Potentially Zard can approach with runup jab/dtilt as a mixup from shield out of dash.
FH fair/nair autocancel on BF platforms, while only nair autocancels on other low platforms.
Sh ff ac nair is decent from a low platform.

Offensive options (a well-rounded collection of pokes):
Dash attack: Zonebreaks, pretty powerful, and not too much ending lag. Its hurtbox placement can force some things to whiff.
Dash grab: laggy and doesn't have much range
Landing bair: slow, extremely ranged/disjoint, safe on shield, does a ton of shield damage. Does a ridiculous amount of knockback, so block it or dodge it! Used to outdisjoint walling attacks.
Fh ac nair: Safe on shield when spaced and timed well. Autocancels like 5 frames after the hitbox ends, and a landing hit starts a combo into jab, dash attack, dash grab, or fair. Can be used after a bait, or just to land on someone. It's mostly disjoint, but the base of the tail and any other part of Zard's huge hurtbox can be easily hit, especially by swords.
Flamethrower: Very uncommittal poke, deals some damage. Very useful for playing lame. Slow the game down and can reduce the opponent's momentum.
Sh fair/landing fair: goes pretty far, not quite safe on shield but hard to punish out of shield. Low angle and kills at like 90 on the ledge.
Usmash: frame 6, scoops you up out of dash and kills, and antiairs. This is why you don't want to make mistakes at kill percent.
Skid jab/dtilt: skidding takes 13 frames, while still moving at like half run speed. These are relatively safe on shield, and they go far. Nobody uses them for some reason though, maybe because it's actually a weak option?
Flare Blitz: really weak to shield and has a lot of ending lag, is slow to start up, loses to attacks over 14%, and sometimes loses to projectiles, but it kills around 80 and beats things in a unique way. Works best against laggy attacks like sh aerials and landings, beats most hitboxes and projectiles. Shield or jump.

Kill options:
These can come from anywhere. Landing on you, juggling you, out of dash, grabbing you, edgeguarding, punishing out of shield, jabbing you. Don't expect to live past 120, especially if you're not experienced against him, and don't be surprised if you die at 60 to bair or fly.
Usmash: fast, anti-air, scoops opponents up, kills around 110/120. Doesn't connect well in the back, so you're safe from it when crossing him up.
Bair: zonebreaks, kills at the ledge around 70 without rage and 50 with max rage, safe on shield when spaced. Mostly disjoint. This is often used after conditioning an opponent to beat approaches out with offensive options.
Fly: Frame 4 armor, frame 9 first hitbox, kills around 100/110 without rage and around 60 with max rage, has an initial hitbox just below and in front of him. Kills you out of untrue strings! DI in might help escape it? DI the last hit out and down.
Fair: somewhat fast and safe, kills at the ledge around 100. Strong hit is frame 10, while the weak one is a bit faster. Used to break crappy strings, out of shield, to stop approaches, or sometimes to approach.
Uair: Kills super duper early for no reason. Slow and doesn't hit well in the front, but it has a significant hit behind him. Committal enough to risk the entire advantage state.
Dair: Massive hitbox, but slow. Can be used three times before he has to recover.
Uthrow: kills without a platform around 155 with DI down and out, and from the top DL platform around 120. Beware of DI mixup with fthrow; DI for fthrow, then react to uthrow's startup. Max rage reduces the kill percent by around 40, and platforms generally reduce it by 15%.
Dthrow > fair 50/50 kill at the ledge on fastfallers around 70; stops working with higher rage
Jab 2 > fly: Works with tipper jabs, works better against larger hurtboxes. May be inescapable depending on the character; if it's escapable, airdodge will do it, unless you're a super fastfaller and can just hold shield (be careful not to buffer airdodge in that case). Initial hitbox: https://puu.sh/vwXOU/df4ae85536.png
Jab 2 > usmash: may work on floaty characters, but it's rather hard. Works well against superheavies and Mewtwo.
Ftilt: kills around 110 w/o rage near the ledge, kind of laggy but goes far enough that it can be safe when spaced.
Utilt: kills around 120, has more vertical range than usmash and much less lag.
Ledge jump Fly: Catches people standing by the ledge, probably unreactable
Flare Blitz: beats your things so you need to shield
Late hit of ac nair > fair is a kill combo for a bit when fair kills.

Throws:
Bthrow > fair/dash attack from 0-30
Dthrow > usmash at 0. DI in at 0, especially if you're floaty. Jump out so you don't get hit by a following utilt or nair.
Dthrow > fair/uair until like 80. DI 30° out ideally, but no higher. Probably just DI out is the best idea so you don't make mistakes.
Dthrow > nair, then read opponent's option, at low percents. Jumping out is the best option generally.
Dthrow > fair 50/50 kill around 80 from a slight spacing from the ledge, like the spacing to grab neutral ledge getup. Works best on high fall speeds, probably doesn't work above mid fall speeds. (Possibly a confirm sometimes)
Dthrow > bair may be a 50/50 kill around 60/70, but we haven't tested this.
Uthrow: DI ideally around 300° depending on your gravity, but just the lower out notch works. Kills around 160 w/o rage or platforms. 40% less on top BF platform. 70% less on tree? Low platforms reduce kill percent by like 13%.
On moving SV platform: dthrow > fly, true and kills around 85-115, 30-55? w/ max rage. Ends 10% earlier if you DI up and in, but may be vulnerable to uair. This grab can result from conditioning, with a mixup between fh aerial onto the platform (fh ac nair), landing aerial on the platform, and empty land grab on the platform.

Misc combos:
Landing nair > jab/grab/dash attack
Landing nair > fair kill around 80-100
Landing uair > utilt/usmash/uair (occupies same use as landing nair though)
Utilt > utilt/usmash
Jab 2 mixups into grab, dtilt, usmash, fly


Advantage:
Zard has a bunch of good tools for keeping advantage, especially grounded options.

Juggling options:
Usmash: fast, anti-air, powerful, disjoint. Doesn't work behind him, just spikes the opponent a bit there. Very effective against characters that can't mix up their drift, but characters with high air acceleration can avoid it.
Nair: has disjoint on most of the tail but not the base. Out of fh, covers a lot of space and can be used well against airdodge. Out of sh, covers some horizontal space. Both have low ending lag, so they don't give up advantage state.
Utilt: *massive* vertical disjoint, low endlag, kills a little later than usmash (~120).
Uair: Risks the entire advantage state for a kill at 70
Bair: Outspaces aerials, kills
Dash attack: beats you if you land with lag or can't land on time. Beats many landing aerials because of its hurtbox placement and slight disjoint.
Dash grab: loses to landing aerials and attacks but beats landing shield.

Ledgeguarding options:
Nair: covers many options if he reads the opponent's getup timing
Flames: covers every option except roll. May condition you to roll, which is heavily punishable and a common conditioning goal. Doesn't do much damage usually.
Standing back and reacting: covers every option if they're good.

Edgeguarding options:
Fair: hits you hard. Bair is stronger but fair has huge coverage. The late hit has a lower angle than normal.
Nair: can gimp, but has a lot of ending lag so it's limited.
Dair: huge hitboxes, huge knockback, huge startup. Lasts for 9 frames, with the spike lasting 3 frames.
Flames: Generally don't gimp you own their own. Remember that ledge denial prevents from grabbing the ledge for 54 frames after getting hit, though, and delay your recovery as much as possible (unless you're a fastfaller or have a poor recovery, in which case you may have to mash).
Ftilt/dsmash: can 2-frame. Dsmash has huge hitboxes so it can hit before the 2-frame, and ftilt goes very far.


Disadvantage:
His slow air speed, huge hurtbox, and slow fall speed make him very vulnerable to juggles. Landing options include AC nair and flamethrower, while rock smash has effective counterplay.
Fly has significant gimp resistance with 12 frames of super armor starting frame 4, allowing Zard to beat a gimp attempt on reaction. He can also use Flare Blitz to snap the ledge with armor, though it loses to attacks over 14%.

Landing options:
These aren't too great if you know them all or read him, but they're useful. Charizard is slow to fall, has low air speed, and has a huge hurtbox, so juggling tends to just be a matter of beating options instead of aiming. Especially against swords, he's sometimes forced to go to the ledge.
AC nair: good for beating options, but can be beaten out by swords. Has very low ending lag with a good autocancel, enough that it can be safe on shield with good spacing. Zards may use this as their main landing tool. Beat it by forcing it to misspace.
Flamethrower: beats opponents waiting in front of him Can be b-reversed to mix up momentum.
Rock smash: beats challenges, but is very unsafe and laggy. If you think he'll use this, try to juggle so you don't get hit by this in your ending lag.
Landing fly: if he lands on an opponent, he can scoop them up with this and kill them around 100. Effectively beats Mario's usmash. Initial hitbox: https://puu.sh/vwXOU/df4ae85536.png
Landing bair/fair: various degrees of safety on a shield
Tomohawk jab: nice
Tomohawk fly: the future

Ledge options:
These are rather weak. Standing back and waiting for an option is generally effective.
Roll sucks, since it has high ending lag and doesn't go very far.
Jump sucks because of Zard's trouble landing.
Neutral ledge getup and attack are fine.
Ledge hop fair/nair autocancel and are unreactable. Nair lasts for a long time, but may be stuffed. Fair is super fast, ant it goes rather far. Stand just outside of range though, since they don't go any further than ledge attack.
Ledge jump fly scoops opponents up near the ledge and is probably unreactable. Kills early depending on rage.
Ledge hop flames/rock smash are options that can disrupt a ledgeguard attempt. Flames could beat standing back patiently, but after it's done we return to neutral.
Ledge hop airdodge onto the stage has no landing lag.


Stages:
These depend on the matchup a lot. Zard's best stage is probably Lylat because he can pressure every platform without committing. TC improves his landing and uthrow half the time, but sucks the other half. BF/DL are good because the platforms can give him a better advantage state, but BF is bad against characters that can juggle, shark, or camp very well (DL is basically a milder BF). FD is very plain and in most matchups is his worst stage.