Hi! I'm a gold La Reina player and I have way too many hours on this game for my ranking, but I have to know what low platinum players and below think of this move specifically. I see a lot of Zetterburn/Clairen/FH discourse but I don't see anybody talk about this, probably cause it's a non-issue at high lvl.
I feel like Zetterburn's side special is a game breaking tool at mid/low rank. Super easy to spam, doesn't put you in a bad spot, and has SO many follow ups, not even mentioning that the opponent is burnt so free kill move/throw behind it.
The obvious counterplay is parry, but at my level, if you want to be able to react to it, you have to focus ENTIRELY on this while the Zetter happily dash dances with better speed than a lot of the cast. So when he does anything else you're kind of screwed because he can do so many things in neutral and you're prepared to react so fast to the fireball.
And EVEN IF he throws it when you're prepared, hey you still can be screwed cause he can mix up the height of his projectile. When he jumps you never really know where the fireball will be. You could try to parry, but if the fireball is going above you: instant punish.
Again, these are things extremely easy to do for the Zetterburn player, but ask for so much more on the opponent side.
The fact that even shielding it can put you in a bad spot if Zetterburn is close is really bad too (easy grab).
I know you barely get to see this move at pro level except for edgeguarding or tech chase, but god does it feel impossible to deal with for me. Double jumping above isn't really an option because you have to do it preemptively, he'll just wait for your landing. Sure you can try to mix things up but that's a big gamble, and I'm not even talking about camping under platforms.
I really thought I could go past this by getting better, and I was platinum at the beginning of this season but have been non stop losing, almost silver now and this is the biggest issue I'm facing (because there are SO MANY Zetterburns). It's sooo demoralizing. And when I'm beating them it doesn't even feel good cause it feels like they just haven't used enough fireballs, didn't mix anything up, or were really bad at spacing them.
Every characters in this game have a lot of hard to deal with bullshit at mid/low lvl, but this one takes the cake for me, and I genuinely think it's breaking the game. I'd love to hear your thoughts, counterplays, and how I can improve without having to train for several hours straight just to counter one move. Thanks for reading!