Neutral

The style that Terry is most known for. You want to close the distance and use your superior frame data to eventually convert into a combo. However rushing in recklessly will more often than not get you hit instead, putting you straight into disadvantage.

As Terry lacks good air speed you should generally approach from the ground. Use shield stop, walking and dash walk to get you closer without leaving yourself too open to attacks. Pivot cancel forward tilt is a great tool to approach with a hitbox. It is disjointed, safe on shield and can convert into a combo for additional damage.

To approach from the air, you can use iRARs to give you mixups between back air, up air, reverse PW and tomahawks. For forward facing jumps you can space forward air and neutral air which will hit smaller characters better, in return for missing jumps. CS from jump is a good mixup covering quite a bit of space in a short time and can catch opponents off guard. Another option is to tomahawk into a grab or even jab/tilt as those can be converted into shield pressure.

To cover your approach you can use lPW and follow behind it. lPW into chCS is a good mixup that will catch jumping or shield dropping as well as single parry attempts and will also poke or even break shields if there is some previous damage.

Another follow up to lPW is tkPD, if it lands on shield you can beat most out of shield options with jjPD.

Once in range, your main tools here are jab, down tilt, forward tilt as well as neutral air. Either of these will give you an opportunity to combo or setup shield pressure while also being relatively incommital should you whiff.

This style takes advantage of the threat of Terry's burst range. The plan is to weave in and out of the opponent's burst range to bait an option, then whiff punishing accordingly. Avoid dash dancing continuously as it leaves you very open to attacks, instead prefer walking and single dash backs or even short hop fast falls in place. Mix in a PW occasionally to make your opponent uncomfortable with their current position.

Punish jumps without an aerial with CS as soon as they start jumping. Against rising aerials you can either time a CS to their end lag or use a parry/out of shield option. If you are really confident in their timing you can also use the disjointed cBK to challenge their jumps.

If you don't want to commit to an aggressive option, you can also dash/walk back to create a whiff and use forward tilt to catch their end lag. Down smash is also a great whiff punish tool due to its speed, range and low profiling hurtbox shift.

Keeping stage control is key, the less space they have to back off, the more likely they are to come towards you.

CS Example

Terry also has the tools to play a defensive zoning game. The general idea being as noncommittal as possible to be able to react to the opponents approaches. However being defensive does not mean that you should run away, rather you should aim to be a wall that does not let the opponent get past you. By doing that you can slowly force them into the corner where their options are limited.

Use a mix of weak and strong PW at long range to poke and force jump ins. Use SDA and coil cRT against unspaced approaches. Utilize Terry's out of shield options, notably neutral air and cRT. Disengage as needed to gain a better positioning, but try to keep center stage.

While GO is active you gain access to a very powerful anti air option in PG, as long as you make sure not to spam it and save it for the right moment. At maximum spacing it is hard to punish even when shielded, in addition to dealing half a shield's worth of damage.

Many Terry's struggle against zoners. Often because they focus too much on rushing in. The key in those MUs (or actually any MU) is to understand their threat range.

Projectiles usually have at least either a decent amount of startup or end lag, thus limiting their effectiveness at close ranges. > To circumvent that, zoners usually like to space back in between attacks. Now if you try to rush into their position, they will already be outside your range again and will be able to punish you if you chose a laggy option while approaching. Instead what you should focus on, is taking the stage control that they give up when backing off while staying safe against counter attacks.

Eventually they will have their backs to the ledge and be unable to space their options any longer. That's when your approaches will be much more effective.

Something to keep in mind: You are vulnerable for at least 10 frames when starting a dash before you can shield. If not transitioning to a run this window increases further to at least 16 frames. This makes walking such an important option, as you retain the ability to perform any action.

Parrying is broken on Terry and the other traditional fighting game characters. A successful parry will give you at least 3 frames of advantage. This is enough to guarantee a jab combo if you are positioned correctly which either leads into ~30% damage or even a kill. It is highly recommended to learn the parry timing against falling aerials.

A good way to setup parry's, is to tap shield when you think a hitbox is coming your way.

A tapped shield will shield for 3 frames, followed by a 5 frame parry window and lastly 6 frames of end lag.

Think of parries as a universal grounded frame 4 counter that you can also use out of shield (which would remove the 3 "startup" frames in the process) .

Just like normal counter moves, you don't use it on reaction, you use it on anticipation of your opponent's move. Usually this will be their landing aerial, but other cases exist.

However, this means that unlike often claimed, this is an option that is still very strong online.

(I am assuming a stable connection with constant delay)

Compared to traditional counters, it lacks in active frames (8 vs ~20), but makes up in having significantly less end lag (6 vs~40), as well as being whiff cancellable into jump, up smash and up special. This makes it an option that you can use with more freedom, not having to worry about being punished by a smash attack. As a matter of fact, it is actually impossible to whiff punish on pure reaction. The total frames (14) are less than it takes your average Human to even react to the initial 3 frames of shielding.

Another big implication is that you can use it to create Options Selects in combination with fast moves like for example all of Terry's normals and to some extend his aerials. If timed correctly and your opponent does commit to a hitbox, you will get the parry. And if they don't, your fast option can catch them going for something like a tomahawk option.

The Box, or Threat Bubble is a concept to help with spacing in neutral.

In its most simplistic description, the box is just the space that your opponent can cover with a hitbox, before you are able to avoid it on reaction. Additional reaction time (e.g. online delay) increases the size of your opponent's box accordingly.

Usually you'll want to stay just outside of their box, while keeping them inside yours.

When you get a bit deeper, you will also need to consider how dangerous each hitbox is. E.g tippers, combo starters, kill moves.

Then you also consider by how many different options a single position is covered. This allows you for example to bait a specific option by moving inside a position that's only covered by it.

Looking at it the other way, you'll want to maximize your own threat by moving the part of your box towards the opponent, that is covered multiple and/or your best options.

The more you know about your opponent's habits, the more you can define their box. The more predictable you choose your own options, the simpler your box gets and the easier it becomes to play around it.