Ridley (SSBU): Difference between revisions

Ridley is a [[weight|heavyweight]] character and the tallest fighter in the game, tied for the 13th heaviest character, and possesses the third lowest [[traction]]. Ridley has overall good mobility, especially compared to most heavyweights: with two midair jumps, slightly above average [[walk]] speed, tied with {{SSBU|Charizard}} for the 10th fastest [[dash]]ing speed, average [[air speed]], [[air acceleration]] and [[gravity]], and the 18th fastest [[falling speed]]. Ridley also boasts faster frame data than most heavyweights, further setting him apart from them.

Ridley's most defining trait is his potent and varied [[punishment|punish]] game and aerial pressure. With remarkably long range, high power and decent speed throughout his moveset, as well as a [[projectile]], Ridley is a serious threat once he gets the advantage; with opponents often overwhelmed and/or find it difficult to get in. His key strength is his strong air game. Boasting overall quick, powerful, long-ranged aerials, and decent air mobility give Ridley overall excellent air pressure potential. Thanks to his additional jump and relatively high fast fall speed, he has superb vertical flexibility, and can use additional jumps or surprise fastfalls to fake out and punish his opponents with his far-reaching aerials. His [[neutral aerial]] is arguably his most effective aerial, having low all-around lag, good range, and average knockback. It is a good combo, spacing, and [[edge-guarding]] tool, while also being fast enough to break out opposing pressure if positioned correctly; these traits make it among the best of its kind and one of Ridley's most commonly used moves. [[Forward aerial]], while having average power, has the highest damage output of Ridley's aerials when all hits are sweetspotted, and is able to perform a [[wall of pain]] at low percentages, especially due to Ridley's aforementioned two midair jumps. [[Back aerial]] is decently quick, long-ranged and has consistently high damage and knockback, making it a deadly KO move, especially if used off-stage for edge-guarding. [[Up aerial]] is a good, disjointed juggling move with decent startup and good KO potential when sweetspotted, but requires opponents to be very close to or above Ridley to land. Lastly, [[down aerial]] is a stall-and-fall that powerfully [[meteor smash]]es opponents when sweetspotted, and can potentially be recovered from if initiated slightly above the ground. Even when sourspotted, it has high KO potential, similar to Bowser's own down aerial.

Like most Heavyweights, Ridley has an abundance of powerful moves, with his tail-based moves having higher power if sweetspotted with the bladed end of his tail. His power also leads into one of his other primary strengths: his edge-guarding ability. His powerful air game gives him the innate ability to edge-guard offstage effectively, as many of his attacks have great KO or gimping potential, while his long-distanced recovery makes coming back to the stage a non-issue. His neutral aerial has decent range and is powerful when sweetspotted at the tip. Forward aerial boasts great wall of pain potential with enough reach and a long enough duration to effectively gimp most recovering opponents. Finally, as mentioned before, his back aerial has the strongest and most consistent knockback of his aerials. Ridley also has easy ways to set up edge-guards; his down tilt and down throw are both reliable combo starters that launch at favorable angles, and he has plenty of attacks dealing high horizontal knockback, such as forward tilt and dash attack.

Ridley's grounded game is also noteworthy in terms of utility. His [[neutral attack]] is his fastest attack, and has both great damage potential thanks to its infinite, and surprising power due to the regular third hit. His [[forward tilt]] has good range and low lag overall, while dealing high knockback if sweetspotted, with the low aim version being a reliable two-framing option. Meanwhile, his [[up tilt|up]] and [[down tilt]]s offer varied potential, with up tilt being a great anti-air that can chain into itself, most aerials and even up smash, whereas down tilt allows Ridley to combo off from a safe distance and set up punishes or juggles. His [[dash attack]] is one of the few to lack a sourspot, and has respectable power. [[Forward smash]] has below-average startup (around the same as {{SSBU|Mr. Game & Watch}} and {{SSBU|Palutena}}) and is short ranged, but is one of the strongest of its kind in both damage and knockback, and is just fast enough to two frame and punish whiffs, landings, or be a more situational follow up, like off a late hit of a landing neutral aerial, or a frame tight execution after a gentleman jab. [[Down smash]] has slow start up and less raw power, but has very large, mostly disjointed range as it makes use of the invulnerable parts of Ridley's wings, along with totally lacking a sourspot. It's start up has Ridley hurtbox shift upwards, potentially evading attacks, allowing it to hard punish grabs or certain attacks. It is also a notoriously effective punishment option after a successful Skewer sweetspot, as it can cover most get-up options. This more commonly is used to cover ledge get-up options from the opponent, as with proper timing, Down Smash can cover almost the entire cast's options to return to stage, only being checked by moves that can hit from below stage (like Ridley's own uair). Finally, [[up smash]] is Ridley's fastest and most reliable smash attack; while not having the sheer power of the other two, it is still powerful in its own right, and is also a very effective anti-air as Ridley's foot is granted invulnerability. Overall, each of Ridley's grounded moves have different attributes that make them useful, while still giving him the typical great power of a heavyweight.

Additionally, his special moveset offers interesting options. [[Plasma Breath]] is Ridley's projectile; it fires a small, bouncing ball of fire, and can be charged to fire from two to five; when fully charged, it can deal substantial damage if every projectile lands. These traits make it a useful damage-racking, combo-starting, and on-stage edgeguarding and gimping tool. However, landing a hit on Ridley's mouth during the move will deal extra damage and stun him for a significant amount of time, though doing so will not deal any knockback to him. [[Skewer]] is a "high risk, high reward" punishment move that, when sweetspotted, deals extremely high damage and crumples enemies; while situational due to the high difficulty on sweetspotting the move, it puts the opponent in a dangerous position where Ridley can read their reaction. [[Space Pirate Rush]] is a command grab with some unique perks; it can be cancelled into a throw at any time that puts both Ridley and the opponent into the air. On land, Ridley drags the opponent on the ground, dealing high damage when performed from one ledge to another, and launching opponents offstage when Ridley reaches the edge of a platform, with the launch being capable of KOing at high percentages. In the air, it makes Ridley drop down to the floor until he lands, which can allow for easy gimps offstage as Ridley can drag opponents closer to a blast zone, potentially leaving them too far to recover. Lastly, [[Wing Blitz]] is Ridley's primary recovery move. It can be aimed in four directions, with the forward input traveling at a slight downwards angle, the backward variant traveling at a slight upward one, and the down variant traveling at a slight diagonal angle in front of Ridley. All Wing Blitz variants have a large ledge sweetspot and have high knockback, with the down input meteor smashing opponents; the down input is also unique in that it can be used at the edge of the stage and grab the ledge as long as the down direction is not inputted for longer, which can let Ridley potentially ledge trump an unsuspecting opponent or send them straight down, depending on their position.

While it's an understated attribute, Ridley's jack-of-all-trades archetype allows Ridley to have a valuable tool or playstyle in almost all match ups, which plays very well to Ridley's strengths. Ridley's disjointed range is effective against characters with poor range or grab-centric playstyles, his command grab is effective against highly defensive characters and characters with lackluster recoveries, and his projectile is effective against characters lacking projectiles themselves or an effective method of dealing with them. Ridley's surprising defensive capabilities are most notable in matches that would seemingly favor the aggressor, such as his rather impressively low ledge hang (which can even evade moves like Marth and Lucina's forward smash), the surprisingly low profile of his crouch, and the previously mentioned intangible tips of his Wing Blitz recovery. In the end, while many characters can give Ridley trouble, few characters are equipped to successfully negate his tools, and even fewer are able to negate all of them.

While Ridley has amazing strengths, he also has some critical and exploitable weaknesses. The most notable of them is his size; Ridley has among the largest, most awkward hurtboxes out of the cast, which combined with his heavy weight and fast falling speed makes him very easy to combo, juggle, and hit in general. This combined with his lower weight compared to similarly sized characters negatively affects his survivability, as he is often at a considerably higher risk of dying much earlier from being in disadvantage than other heavyweights. While Ridley's frame data, although good for a heavyweight, is poor. He has below average startup and above average ending lag overall on his toolkit and lacks a tool fast enough to break combos effectively; this makes him one of the most affected characters by average combo strings, and he is rather easy to KO. Ridley’s options against projectile users and zoning are virtually nonexistent despite having a projectile himself; Plasma Breath is laggy, its projectiles travel slowly, and are useless against more powerful projectiles, and the move's recoil property on Ridley's mouth can easily open up opportunities for critical attacks against him that would end a stock, despite the recoil itself preventing knockback. Ridley's disjointed moves are seldom capable of beating out projectiles, and he has few moves that boast enough range to challenge zoners, and these options usually require a great deal of effort to execute right compared to what they're challenging, which can quickly lead to Ridley being cornered into a worse situation. All of this is further worsened with how tricky it can be to land with Ridley, despite him being a fast-faller.

Adding to the above is Ridley's recovery, which is still exploitable despite its long distance. Both of his recovery specials, Space Pirate Rush and Wing Blitz, have high startup and the latter, despite its appearance and its impressive distance, has only four angled travel routes, which means that Ridley has to properly get into a good position to recover, giving the opponent more than enough time to react. While Wing Blitz has some minor defenses while active, it does not have a charging hitbox while his body remains vulnerable throughout the move, so it can be quite easy to aim for with prediction. This is worse when a character has a counterattack or heavily disjointed attacks, as they can safely challenge the move at any stage of its animation, though certain stages can allow Ridley to evade being countered by aiming Wing Blitz toward the stage and bouncing up to the ledge from impact. Without his midair jumps, Ridley can also have a lot of trouble recovering from below, and any low-sending attack like a [[semi-spike]] can put Ridley into an unrecoverable position. Because of this, offstage Ridley usually is forced to use his extra jumps as emergency jumps when he's in a disadvantage, which while valuable, is noticeably less useful than most other multi-jumpers. As a result, Ridley's overall endurance is poor for a large heavyweight, and while his survivability isn't as poor as other lighter characters, it is unimpressive for a heavyweight his size.

Another critical flaw to Ridley is how drastically his moves vary in quality, which can lead to Ridley becoming quite predictable. While he has plenty of moves offering varying amounts of utility, some of them still have significant flaws; these can range from slow startup (Plasma Breath and down smash), absurd blindspots (up tilt and up smash on occasions), overly situational and/or strict (Skewer), to being downright unreliable (down aerial). On the other side of the spectrum, some of Ridley's moves like neutral aerial, up smash, down tilt, and depending on the match-up, the aforementioned Plasma Breath is so favorable that it becomes easy to over-centralize on their use. Ridley is a character that finds the most success in being unpredictable, which can be difficult when a player subconsciously checks off using so many moves. This, combined with his aforementioned trouble at dealing with fast and/or zoning characters, and with recovering under pressure, makes Ridley one of the most susceptible characters to pressure, as Ridley's disadvantage state makes him easy to overwhelm, and failure to overwhelm or control aggression could force him to take heavy damage or even be KOed outright.

Overall, Ridley is a character of extremes, with a relatively high learning curve and an even higher cerebral curve. Similarly to what {{SSBU|Mewtwo}} is among lightweight characters, Ridley fills in the position of being a glass cannon heavyweight. He has excellent damage, pressure, and edge-guarding potential with a broad arsenal of powerful moves and tools to gain and sustain advantage, gradually poke and pressure from a fair distance away, and punish whiffs or what would normally be an inconsequential slip-up. This allows Ridley to easily make comebacks or greatly widen his lead with minimal set up should an opponent make a single error in considering Ridley's approach. However, despite possessing a powerful and highly versatile moveset, Ridley lacks strong options out of disadvantage and generally struggles to oppose pressure from opponents due to his size and the frame data on his aerials and grounded attacks. This makes top tier matchups like Snake and Palutena difficult for Ridley, as they are well-equipped to combat Ridley through oppressive walls of projectiles or strong aerial combos respectively. As such, mix-up heavy playstyles are heavily encouraged when playing Ridley to prevent opponents from capitalising on his own susceptibility as much as possible.