See, Little Mac has no air game to work with. So there's no purposes to jump except to avoid a projectile, but you'll drop yourself down as soon as you can to get back to the ground anyways. There's no air combo that Little Mac has outside of an up+b from the ground combo (which is garbage tier), so you have to play a footsies game with him.
You force yourself in, and mix up grabs, attacks, and roll baits when you dash in. Basically, your simplest pressure situation starts with a dash. It can then go to 2 possible aggressive choices, and 2 possible defensive choices. There are others, but these are the simplest that every Little Mac should know.
First aggressive choice, you dash in to dash attack range, stop the directional input and do an up smash to hit the opponent. Why up smash and not a dash attack? Because up smash forces the opponent back if they shield, which will make it harder for them to retaliate, while dash attack puts you right next to them with no knockback. This is your most common way to get in because if you do it anywhere other than the edge of the platform, it's very hard for the average person to punish it.
Second aggressive choice, you continue to dash and do a grab. This is for the people who are standing at the edge trying to bait you into doing something stupid. So you grab them and show them that you're sick and tired of the idiot Little Macs making everyone look down at you and show them what it's like to get bodied by somebody that knows what they're doing. And you never let them get back on to the platform ever again.
First defensive choice, you dash, let go of the direction at dash attack range and quickly do a back roll. If they were planning to try to react to you dashing in, you might bait out an attack or grab, which leaves them wide open to a free 20% neutral A combo. And if you don't, well you have optimal spacing now.
Second defensive choice, you dash, let go of the direction at a little before dash attack range and shield or counter. This is mainly against sword users, who can catch you during the dash, if they know it's coming, because of their range. This could bait them out for an easy retaliation, or you get a counter on them. And if they don't take the bait if you shielded, oh well, you have optimal spacing again.
I could go on to explain the ins and out of playing Little Mac, but I would probably write a small book about matchups, options, the lack of true combos, etc. etc. So I'll leave it at what I've written so far.
Last edited by Oracle; Dec 16, 2014 at 04:33 AM.