BOOK II - Nayru's Love: Basics

While initially appearing to be a clunky and restrictive special move, Nayru's is surprisingly versatile and useful in counterintuitive situations. The move has long end lag but is offset somewhat by a nice blender and a decent ending hitbox, but the real shining star of Nayru's is the 7 invuln frames it gives you during startup between frames 4 and 11. This enables you to use Nayru's as something similar to a parry with good timing, and it's much easier to land a more solid blender when your opponent whiffed something at you and is now halfway inside of you. This use in particular is closer to the triangle jump in terms of read requirements, but this is generally an easier read than a triangle jump. Unfortunately, unless you are on ledge and force your opponent offstage a Nayru's parry like this usually won't net you any followups, especially if your opponent rolls or techs out.

Nayru's shines (heh) most of all when using this parry as an out-of-shield option. You must jump oos to perform this nayru's after jumpsquat ends. Frame perfect this move is invuln 10-17 and hits on 17 from shield. This is best used to read grabs on shield and hard punish them. If timed correctly, a good grab read will leave them with empty hands dead in the center of Nayru's where it is most difficult to SDI out of the resulting blender.

Another really magnificent use of Nayru's is an aerial stall. You can use Nayru's midair to stop your vertical momentum. This is most useful to mixup when you are descending for followup or escape. If you missed a kick and your opponent is conditioned towards you wavelanding or regular landing, he may attempt something when actionable OoS. Throwing a Nayru's at around head level on shield will dodge any grab and blend and disrupt any option thrown too late. Aiming this with a little momentum  at their shield is best as you will have the option to land behind them where you cannot get shieldgrabbed if they manage to shield the entire Nayru's blender.

Nayru's can also be used to gimp recoveries, and most effectively flat / low and close recoveries. A nayru's slightly below ledge will blend a spacie hugging the stage, making stage teching almost impossible to time correctly. It is also useful against marth as good timing can put you in invuln during dolphin slash and stage spike before his sweetspot hits. A fast fthrow and an aggressive-coverage ledge nayru's can also be used to frame trap and interrupt DJs and fast recoveries and gimp at very low %.

Nayru's on platform has an additional and much faster OoS option, shield drop platform warp Nayru's. If you shield drop through the platform and Nayru's in the next 3 frames you will perform a platform warp and be grounded part of the way through the move without needing to jump. Frame perfect this gives you invuln 5-12 and hits 12-18, making it an extremely solid defensive option to further buff your presence on platforms.

It's worth noting that nayru's does have "edge cancel" ledge tech, but it is not a true edge cancel, nor extremely useful, nor an easy thing to pull off. If you SH Nayru's in air and land on the edge and slide off, you will complete the nayru's and become actionable shortly before grabbing ledge. This has fringe uses at best, with the most obvious being stuffing a high spacie recovery and taking ledge. There are almost always better coverage options, however.

BOOK I - Boost Wavedash / Wavesurfing

Zelda's wavedash is tied for worst in the game alongside peach distance-wise, but that doesn't mean we can't improve it or otherwise bend it to our will. Zelda also has absurdly high initial dash speed that quickly falls off, and we can use this to extend our wavedash quite a bit farther than usual and cover more ground in a shorter time. Dashing for between 2 and 4 frames before wavedashing leads to an extended wavedash; it is a faster way to cover ground than just dashing or just wavedashing.


I have seen this referred to in a couple of places coloquially as 'surf wavedash' or 'wavesurfing', and it's fundamental in keeping your movement speed on-par with the rest of the cast such that you can respond to their movement options. This also has implications in landing your bairs and fairs; dashing 2 frames before starting a bair moves the bair significantly closer to your original position and makes punishing an approach rely less on a read and more on a reaction by replacing your original position with a kick rather than relying on them to move into a kick along a specific path to you.

BOOK I - Uair AC AI

Uair has a ridiculous little thing that it does during the autocancel window where it pulls your feet (the bottom of your ECB) up then drops them within the first few frames. This can be used to quickly put yourself into 4-frame landing while not quite all the way up through a platform, shaving a ton of frames off of getting Zelda’s slow, hulking mass up onto a platform. Anytime you could waveland onto a platform while coming up through it (with a few exceptions) you can also uair ac ai and be grounded and actionable within a few frames. This really improves our platform game, for example taking platform then quickly dashing back can solidify your position and dodge a punish while possibly creating an opening of your own. This is a critical piece of platform movement that I’ve been employing to great effect. It can be used to quickly setup a dsmash or a techchase from a grab below a platform.

BOOK I - Drop Dash

BOOK I - DROP DASH

The dropdash is a device of my own creation; its purpose is a faster, wigglier wavedash on platform. Dropdashing is performed by dropping through platform, jumping the first frame actionable through platform, and wavelanding the frame after. This negates Zelda's monstrous jumpsquat time during wavedash startup and saves you one frame, bringing her WD on platform down to 6 frames. If performed optimally the dropdash is slightly longer than WD as you can gain slight horizontal distance and momentum by jumping forward/backward.

I find the easiest input for this to be down -> roll into WD angle, then input the equivalent of a jump cancel grab except using R instead of Z. The most important part of the dropdash input is the DJ to digital trigger press being within a one frame window. If you shield early with analog during the time it takes you to pass through platform, you will shield and not pass. To combat this and to give me more versatility in trigger inputs, I remove the spring from my right trigger and take it off of the analog rail. This allows for a pure digital-only trigger button for more precise cases of trigger input. Dropdashing has a one frame tolerance; you can perform a dropdash on frame 1 or 2 after passing through platform.

 

This technique really shines out of shield drop. Giving you the equivalent of a frame 4 wavedash on platform, this is extremely difficult to execute but very possible to master with enough practice. Practice shield drop doublejump and wait for your opportunity to waveland, then over time slowly tighten the window between your shield drop and doublejump to get up to speed and have a muscle feel for the stick movement needed to go from shield drop position to wavedash angle quickly. This technique really enables some insane speed and is becoming a major movement option for me. This cannot be understated in its importance to Zelda's ability to move and control area.

BOOK I - Farore's Wind - Interactions and Bending The Rules

BOOK I - FARORE'S WIND

Interactions and Bending The Rules

Farore's has a couple of interaction rules that are important to know and important to know how to bend. 

1. An aerial teleport passing downwards through a platform will always put Zelda into a grounded teleport on that platform and interrupt the teleport.



How to bend it: land your Farore's startup. Aerial teleports can be converted to grounded teleports if Zelda lands on a platform during the Farore's startup, this allows for teleport movement through the platform.


 
You can also ground a teleport by drifting Farore's upward through a platform. This can be useful to drift yourself into a cancel spot and give your opponent less time to read your options.



This is especially useful on Yoshi's as grounding a drift Farore's near the edge of side platform during startup and sweetspotting downwards to edge is extremely difficult to expect or even follow when expected.

2. Farore's from below the ledge does not sweet spot. If you complete your startup animation and are below the ledge, there is no way for you to not have vulnerable frames before grabbing ledge.



How to bend it: Farore's startup will always cancel and magnet grab ledge if it is moving downwards within range of and facing an available ledge. This is very useful to recover flat towards edge as you will magnet from a wide angle. This also makes Farore's grab ledge during IASA frames, out of tumbles, and from less intuitive angles. You can also use this to Farore's stall on ledge.

3. Horizontal Farore's into ledge also does not sweetspot. You will teleport stall on the stage until the point which you reappear, and you will be vulnerable for a couple frames until you begin falling downwards.




How to bend it: A teleport directly into stage at a particular height (right around where you would be hitting Zelda's knees into stage) will actually push you up onto stage thanks to weird ECB shape during the transition to special fall. This shaves some frames off of special fall and allows you to recover flat around a hogged edge from a longer distance.

BOOK I - Farore's Wind - Farore's Stall and Other Farore's Ledge Movement

BOOK I - FARORE'S WIND

Farore's Stall and Other Farore's Ledge Movement

Farore's stalling is something beyond useful that begins the march towards Zelda's insanely sticky ledge presence. If done perfectly you can be completely invuln on ledge indefinitely while throwing hitboxes.

Maintaining invulnerability is dependent on releasing ledge on the first possible frame, and not fastfalling more than a couple of frames. Releasing ledge late is what I find most often putting me into a vulnerable state during a stall, and is the only point this move requires frame-tight precision. This will be a difficult movement to master, experiment with different inputs and see what works for you. I strongly recommend using Uncle Punch's Training Pack to train your ledge release and invulnerability.

Another useful use of ledge position is ledgehop Farore's. This is valuable as you can adjust the starting height of Farore's stall without losing invuln, and ledgehop Farore's visually appears to be a stall until you crest ledge, land, and teleport across stage. It's a great way to regain stage control when being pressured on ledge from a medium distance.

Many of these options can be combined for maximum flashitude. For example, Battlefield has a ledgehop Farore's edge cancel on top platform. You can drift teleport away from ledge while stalling to throw a farther out hitbox and still magnet ledge. Be creative; the best way to use these techniques is all of the ways.

BOOK I - Farore's Wind - Edge Cancels

BOOK I - FARORE'S WIND

Edge Cancels

Edge cancelling Farore's makes the move into an extremely fast and powerful gap closing and chase tool but the tolerance to land edge cancels is extremely small due to Zelda's higher traction. Despite the high precision required, the payoff is immense as landing it can lead to more followups, safer recoveries, and better positioning. Horizontal teleport cancelling is by far the easiest, as it's possible on platform to another platform and you only need concern yourself with your X position on the platform. You can get a feel for this distance by standing directly between the red arrows in the center of Pokemon Stadium's platforms and teleporting across to the other platform. This is the easiest visual platform cancel queue Zelda has. I recommend learning to cancel by feel rather than spot memory as you will have overall more reliable teleports in more places when you use distance judgment to hit your cancels.

Aerial cancels are harder but are possible along a line of points while aerial rather than a single point like on platforms. Zelda needs to fall onto edge at the end of her teleport for a cancel. These have multiple angles and points and can be achieved most easily with  horizontal teleport. There are a multitude of teleport spots on every map but some are far from intuitive.

Generally teleport edge cancels are not possible from above due to Farore's propensity to become grounded upon passing downwards onto a platform, but longer than maximum teleport distance downward edge cancels are possible given you finish your teleport invisibility before coming to the platform. This enables some serious trickery as recovering from a great distance offstage suddenly becomes an actionable state immediately off of the edge of a platform but this is by far the most difficult edge cancel in my experience, it requires almost pixel perfect judgment over a very wide distance.

Stage / ground teleport cancels are also possible and enable a wide-range option on stages like FD + Pokemon. This is simplest performed by starting farore's on the first frame of jump as if wavedashing (hover teleport). This has a very narrow window to execute successfully and like other aerial teleport cancels is possible along a line above stage achievable by increasing the time between jump + teleport start & distance between you and the edge.