People have always found Jigglypuff to be one of the “lame” characters in Smash, but I think this “lame” label comes from not being able to play against her as effectively as other characters. What I aim to do here is evaluate some common neutral game scenarios that players might have problems with, as well as how to avoid some common K.O. setups/situations that Puff has. It should go without saying that all players are different, these are just some common situations I’ve noticed in my time that catch some players who aren’t aware of what Puff is doing. Most of these tips are best utilized with Fox, but there are other characters who can take advantage of the same situations with their own tools. Just try to apply anything new against Puff with a tool that your character has (ex, Falco lasers instead of Fox lasers, or Falcon/Marth dash-dance camping to bait approaches), and there should be an answer to your problem.

Dealing with the Elephant on Stage: Puff’s Back-air

Universally hated is one of Puff’s strongest tools, her Back-air. Most players have experiences what it is like to be hit by this move, the range on it is deceptively long especially for newer players. Combining back-air with Puff’s incredible aerial mobility, she can easily put out safe moves with high poke and decent damage. A lot of players tend to approach Puff in an unsafe way, and her back-air is an incredible anti-approach tool that Puff uses. Here are a couple different, but common patterns that Puff players use their back-air in the neutral, along with some potential solutions to each problem.

1. Short-hop Back-air

Puff players tend to use her full-jump as they can move in the air comfortably and put out a couple moves in one jump, but it’s important to take note of any short-hop back-airs the Puff player might do. What tends to happen is if a player starts to chase a Puff across stage, Puff can just run away into a short-hop back-air, and this is a pretty fast option to catch anyone chasing her. If you notice your opponent is either using this strategy or using short-hops in general, you’ll want to make a note of that. A decent solution to her short-hop aerials is being able to catch yourself chasing her, you need to slow down and realize that you’re running after Puff and that’s what she wants. You can react to this with either dash-dancing back or wavedashing down.

I think wavedashing down tends to work a bit better as you don’t have to be in your dash to use it. After avoiding getting hit, the hard part is punishing the back-air. This can be really tricky, as you have to move pretty quickly and take note of how the Puff likes to aerial drift. Usually a Puff will do her short-hop back-air and fade back away from you, so if you can avoid her back-air, you can immediately run in and punish, probably best with a grab or any pretty fast move. This can be really difficult if they’re aware of their own timings, that is if they’re fast-falling and hitting their L-cancel, it might be too difficult to punish her back-air, but it’s definitely an option you can experiment with

2. Full-hop Back-air

Puff is one of the more unique characters in terms of being able to put out two aerials in one full-hop and using them successfully. Puffs will generally tend to have an automatic aerial drift pattern while using full-hops and back-airs, and you need to realize this pattern and counter it. In general while Puff’s full-hop double back-air strategy is pretty good for beating overly aggressive and unsafe approaches, it can be a lazier form of defense that you can punish while playing fast characters.

These types of back-airs are what the Puff is using in order to stuff your approaches, higher back-airs (towards the top half of her full-hop) are used to stuff most aerial approaches (both high and short approaching aerials) while the lower back-airs are for stuffing grounded approaches (grabs, dash attacks, low short-hop aerials). What you need to do if you notice your opposing Puff using these full-hop double aerials is to realize their pattern of aerial drift and run in with a shield. If the Puff is getting lazy with her full-hop double aerials, you can run underneath the space she's covering with the high back-air with a running shield and punish her drift back with an option out of shield.

This should work once you've noticed their timing, which tends to be a common pattern of drift towards your character -> back-air -> already drifting back to their original position to set-up for the next back-air. Of course, the Puff should be,mixing up their timings to try and throw your positioning off, but running shield does wonders against full-hop aerials. Once you've shielded the back-air, pretty much any forward reaching aerial should connect with Puff (Fox neutral-air, Falcon neutral-air, Marth forward-air) and hopefully lead to another move.

Another option which is a bit riskier is to punish Puff's second, lower aerial. Again, learning how they like to drift is the key to punishing her moves, and it can be difficult without being used to how Puff works. Instead of blocking the higher aerial and counter-attacking, you can take note of when she does her high aerials, and on her way back down/setting up for the second aerial, you can use an approaching full-hop aerial to take advantage of Puff's back-air not having the highest vertical hitbox (which makes up for the horizontal length). Some moves I think are good to do this with (of course it's all situational) are generally down-airs and neutral-airs for most characters. Some characters have moves that can lead to better follow-ups on Puff than others, (Fox using his down-air -> grab, Falcon stomping -> covering a missed tech with up-air), so you should ideally aim to punish with a move that will lead to a longer punish, but against Puff most punishes don't tend to last more than a couple moves. Depending on how confident you are with your follow-ups against Puff, sometimes just using a strong aerial is a better choice if you're unsure of how to connect your next move.

3. Avoiding Getting Carried Off-stage/Recovering Against Back-Air

Most players have been knocked off-stage by Puff only to hold-in and get seemingly carried farther off-stage. While it sounds simple, DIing out and away from Puff on the first back-air should give you a better chance to make a recovery. As with most things, you shouldn't attempt this if you're at a higher percent with most characters as you'll be sent too far away to successfully recover. With characters that have good upward recoveries in terms of their Up-B (Fox, Falco, Marth, Falcon (more or less), Samus, even Peach sometimes), you can DI Puff's first back-air near the edge of the stage out, drop low, and use your Up-B to attempt to either get back on stage or grab the ledge. When you drop low, you want to make sure you're comfortable with fast-falling out of range for Puff's next back-air and drop low enough that you can recover to either stage or the ledge. This is easiest with Fox, as his recovery is amazing, but most characters can use this strategy as well.

What you're doing is recognizing the first back-air is hitting you, DIing to get away from the next one, and setting up a recovery in a position that is difficult for Puff to reach. Puff does have a really good air game, her mobility and options in the air are exceptionally good, but one of her elements that can be abused is her difficulty moving vertically compared to most other characters. Pretty much anyone can go higher or lower than Puff faster than her, exceptions for top tier characters Samus and Peach. If Puff isn't expecting you to drop low, this can be a powerful mix-up as long as they aren't expecting it. Once the Puff has caught on to your fast-falling low strategy, you can mix-up your recovery by jumping away from the stage (with Fox, maybe Falco) and Up-B high or as appropriately for the situation. Other characters will have a harder time mixing up going high, as Marth and Falcon can be easier to edgeguard than the space animals. Instead of using your double-jump to go backwards or high, you can just not fast-fall as the reverse mix-up.

Neutral Game Tips: Exploiting Puff’s Weak Point

Puff ultimately has one key weakness against the vast majority of the cast, her overall slow (comparative to high tiers) speed. While Puff, like any character, can utilize movement techniques to increase her speed and movement options, she still has one of the slowest speeds in the game, and with pretty much any good character you want to abuse this. This key weakness is why Fox holds such a large advantage over Puff, as his overall speed is one of the best in the game, second only to Falcon.

Fox has a really easy time running away from Puff, and with how easy it is to do running turn-around lasers, it can be a simple strategy to just run away and laser Puff before attempting to K.O. her off a grab or combo starting move. What most Fox players don't understand is that on one hand, yesb your lasers are doing damage and you are avoiding damage by running away, your main goal with using lasers is to force Puff to give up stage control and approach you, giving you more opportunities to punish her slow speed. A good, simple run-and-gun strategy is to mix-up your counter-attack timings. If your opponent gets into the habit of thinking you are going to attempt to run away and shoot more lasers, you can use their assumption against them to counter-attack them head-on instead.

A simple image I tend to think of is the musical term for increasing your volume, a crescendo. You want to think of your volume as approaches or interactions. You can obviously change to what you feel like is comfortable, as well as immediately going back to the starting point of not-approaching and using lasers. You could also think about using this strategy in reverse, the main point is about changing the tempo of the match to match what you want/are comfortable with. If you want to slow down the match to force the Puff into approaching/taking damage, you can run away and slow the match down. This will make them more prone to your approaches when you're ready to go in, and you can apply more or less pressure more and more until you need to change it back to either being safe and lasering or being aggressive with your approaches. While the strategy might not make too much sense, you're just trying to establish a pace that you like as well as tire out your opponent.

This strategy works best with Fox as his lasers are quick to tack on damage with their speed, but most characters can use this strategy with just their movement. Obviously you're not going to be able to get as much damage this way with a character like Falcon or Marth, but using the same strategy with dash-dancing (“camping”) can still change the tempo of the match. You can mix-up your approaches in the same way by holding your approaches back and waiting a bit longer.

Avoiding What Puff Wants

Since Puff is a slower character, her game plans revolve around getting something off of your mistake. Most Fox and Falco players know how it feels to mindlessly aerial a Puff’s shield only to get shield-grabbed into an up-throw rest (with bad DI). What makes Puff so good is her ability to punish simple and common mistakes that most players make, such as imperfect spacings and timings with moves. If you know what the Puff wants to do, you need to just take steps to avoid falling into her traps. Puff has to make decisions based on what they think you will do, so you need to take it one step further.

Besides waiting in shield for unsafe pressure, another common strategy that Puffs might use are cross-up aerials into a punish. When a Puff sees that you’re holding shield, one of the things some Puffs will utilize is a cross-up aerial to bait a shield grab or other option out of shield. What this means is that the Puff is recognizing you’re acting out of your shield in an incorrect manner, in terms of spacing, timing, or your decision. Once you’ve committed to an option out of your shield, the Puff will then punish your decision, most commonly with a move like Forward-Smash or a grab if they can get it.

Another thing to avoid is having “bad” DI when Puff gets a grab, especially as a space-animal player. Inputting no DI or not being fast enough to DI her up-throw is incredibly dangerous as it will lead to an easy rest, taking both your stock and any momentum away quickly. While Puff (like most characters) does have follow-ups off of throws on most characters, you can make it harder for her to combo you out of throws by already holding a direction by the time she hits or grabs you. She still has options out of any kind of DI you put in, but you can make her punish harder to hit or do less damage this way. The main thing that you want to remember is that Puff doesn’t have too many options to continue combos if you are already holding away from her at lower percents, so if you just hold away in anticipation of her punish, moves like her up-throw won’t lead to as valuable of a punish.

Bad DI happens sometimes, anyone can be caught off-guard and input no DI or not enough. The main thing to remember is to just take note of how the Puff got their grab or hit and how to avoid that for next time.

Like our content? Support us by getting our merchandise in our shop