Introduction
Gardevoir is classified as a Technical character, which means she has a lot of tricks up her sleeve. She’s one of the harder characters to pick up and do well with, but once you understand her toolkit, she can definitely shine. Gardevoir is well-known for her zoning capability and excels at long-range combat with her multitude of projectiles. She is also able to control and restrict the opponents’ movement by setting delayed traps (Future Sight) on the ground or in the air. Being able to utilise each of her tools to stay ahead of the opponent is crucial to playing Gardevoir at a high level, since she falls a little short when stuck in the corner.
Another aspect to Gardevoir is her wall and corner pressure. Using Future Sight or Psychic properly, she is able to trap the opponent in the corner and prevent them from jumping out with projectiles or her other close-range tools.
Unfortunately, Gardevoir does lack a lot of mobility tools that are present in the rest of the cast. Her jump is quite floaty, which is helpful for aerial mixups, but it also gives the opponent a larger window of time to knock her out of the air. She struggles defensively in the corner, especially against rushdown/mixup characters like Pikachu Libre and Weavile. Her midrange game is extremely lacking as well, causing her to fall short in certain matchups like vs Sceptile, who excels at controlling the midrange with his set of traps.
As a result, most Gardes choose to play a defensive/run-away style that is typical of a zoner character. Typically, Garde wants to maintain space with Future Sight and stand at a safe distance to throw projectiles. Alternatively, some do make an aggressive “grappler” playstyle work as well, utilising her above-average grab damage and amazing oki pressure to bully the opponent in the corner.
Gardevoir has air control when jumping.
- Gardevoir can move forwards and backwards during a neutral jump.
- Gardevoir can increase the distance of a forward or backwards jump by holding the direction.
- Gardevoir can halt the distance of a forward or backwards jump by pressing the opposite direction.