Having Trouble Approaching in Neutral

[pulsar moon]

Hey I’ve been playing Zetterburn lately, but I’ve also been experimenting with Maypul and Orcane. Right now, I’m really trying to improve my neutral game, especially my approaches—and honestly, I’m struggling.

I know there are other parts of my gameplay I need to work on, but neutral is what I want to focus on right now. I’ve attached a gameplay clip where I’m fighting a Ranno, and I was having a really tough time finding safe ways to approach without getting hit.

It feels like the only times I could get in and deal damage were when I landed a projectile and happened to be close enough to follow up during hitstun. Outside of that, I just couldn’t figure out how to safely break through.

What am I missing?
Is there something fundamentally lacking in how I’m playing neutral or thinking about approach? I’d really appreciate any feedback, especially if you could point out specific timestamps and suggest better approach options—and why they would have worked.

Thanks in advance! I’m super motivated to improve and would love to hear any advice you’ve got.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxz4WVd-k3U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xo-4MHA1vU

[worldly breach]

Not the best player or coach minded but be aggressive on zetterburn. You get a random hit a lot then just reset or throw fireball

[south dove]

your entire movement is wavedashing

focus on dash dancing more since it gives you access to all your defensive options

whereas you cant shield in the middle of a wavedash

Which is probably why you feel like you keep gettin ghit

[strong merlin]

Hey a little late to the party but from what I saw I think you have a good understanding of what your options and goals are, but not your opponents. I would suggest trying to learn what your opponents want and how to play into that.

I also made a video about neutral that might be helpful, if you have more questions let me know
https://youtu.be/llV8aK9fYA0

[real tiger]

Remarks:

Zetter vs Ranno game --> Your neutral is fine in this game. You won like 50 interactions. Notice how many times you got a grab.

But you did forward throw on each grab. What happened? Ranno went away and you reset the nuetral. No reward for winning the grab.

I don't play zetter, but you want uthrow and down throw to combo into stuff.

What I'm seeing is a punish game lacking.

Really, even if your nuetral sucks, if your punish game can close out stocks in two openings, then ur way better than someone whose really good at nuetral and can only close out stocks after 50 openings.

So my suggestion: focus on combos, learn the zetter bread and butter by watching top players on youtube. Stuff like dash attack into ustrong, bair ustrong, shine into the world combos, fair fair fair, etc. Any staple zetter combos.

Learning the bread and butter character combos should always be the first thing you learn, and shortly after, learning the characters recovery options. You will get 2x better in a week if you do this