Inkling vs Mario

The Mario Inkling matchup involves a lot of moving around in neutral on both ends. Inkling is not a character that hard focuses on punishing Mario oos because they aren’t that great at doing that, so they will be focusing on dashing around and whiff punishing Mario’s aerials with dash grabs, dash attacks, or back air. They can still punish Mario’s rising back air with nair oos and punish his up smash on block with a grab or dash attack, sometimes even up smash. Overall, Mario will be able to do more on Inkling’s shield than they can to him. Inkling’s dash isn’t as troublesome for Mario as it is for most characters, as landing back air and down tilt will catch Inkling dashing at him, and angled down fludd can catch them too. Both characters will tend to have their backs facing each other in this mu, as both tend to try and focus on landing bair into a follow up to rack up the most % on each other. Inkling is one of the characters Mario has an extremely easy time landing combos on, so most of the match, Mario will be the one out-damaging Inkling.

You want to stall with capes when recovering and keep your jump to save yourself from dying to run off fairs sometimes. Also so you can avoid bomb gimps. Bomb will hit Mario’s up b and send him in an awful direction, and he most likely wont be able to recover.

When in disadvantage vs Inkling you want to stall with cape then landing with an aerial for mix ups, so your landings dont always get dash grabbed or rollered for free. Roller is a very strong way to catch landings, so be aware of that and try to avoid it when you see it coming. Also, don’t always jump immediately out of hit stun vs Inkling when getting hit, as a good Inkling will look for that option.

They aren’t the easiest to edgeguard, but when you are doing so, you want to place an aerial on top of their up b where they will grab ledge, since they have no hitbox there. They edgeguard Mario much harder. You want to stall with capes when recovering and keep your jump to save yourself from dying to run off fairs sometimes. Also so you can avoid bomb gimps. Bomb will hit Mario’s up b and send him in an awful direction, and he most likely wont be able to recover. Recovering high as a mix up can also be useful, but be very wary of the fact that they have more than one way to edgeguard Mario.

Around 35% is when down throw to short hop up airs start connecting very well on Inkling, and then you can extend from there. Though, raw dash grabs is not something you should be doing much against Inkling as they can actually be very difficult to just run in and grab vs because of how fast they are and their dash.

The 2 main stages you will want to ban vs Inkling as Mario is Final Destination and Kalos. They love having a flat ground to move around on, and a lot of space to work with. On FD it is harder to avoid roller, and you can’t platform camp them because there are no platforms to work with, you also don't get the usual platform combo extensions. Mario is also just worse on FD. (a stage Mario should ban in almost every matchup) On Kalos they have a ton of flat surface to move around on, and they live longer. Everywhere else is about neutral/good for Mario, with Battlefield being the best stage vs them. The next best ban after FD and Kalos, is Town and City (thought it isn’t bad on that stage)