lightening smash and meteor cover it very well, the same goes for spindash. dont timestop vs tails unless you are really quick, as he has many moves that come out quickly and can punish you hard.

Well, it makes sense, I tried to use Stop waaay too much agaisn't you. Thanks for the advice.~

and whatever moce that staff swing is is incredibly effective, the side-b grab is also really good at stopping my advances.

Black Mage's Side-special probably beats Tails' at mid-range.

But in neutral, I would just say try to stay airborne when starts the Side-special. He's vulnerable from the top and can't attack directly above him without jumps to Up-air. Black Mage has a pretty fast, good range Down-air that arcs beneath him.

u can DI upwards...& Use Nair.
also use Uptilt if you happen to hit the ground again between SideB's

Black mage spotlight on metagame monday! http://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/2kh6pq/metagame_monday_55_smash_qa_continued_subreddit/cllbqf3

go post some tips and videos and gifs and stuff

I have found that Black Mage is probably my toughest MU based on my play style. I hate this character with a passion, mostly because he's so difficult to combo and pretty much all of my mains are combo heavy. His moves come out so quickly that they easily interrupt what you're doing. It also doesn't help that he's probably the smallest target in the game. Hate playing this dude.

I'm having a little bit of trouble dealing with BMage's Side-Spec. Comes out super-quick, and some players mash it when I KB them at horizontal trajectories.

Just wait for it, Haste it's very easy to predict and if you're out of the range, you can easily punish him for doing that, so take advantage of that. Haste it's only a move used for punish, if they try to spam it, then be patient and wait.

It's more dangerous/annoying when they try to spam Meteo.~

I don't think Meteo is that bad. Then again, I use a character with lots of control.

Would you use Meteo against all characters, or are there some bad situations to use this move?

Against fast characters, it has too much startup, so using it against Fox or such would be a death sentence. It can wall out slow characters and is a fabulous edgeguard tool. Be careful because it's pretty easy to powershield.

Hows that stop nerf affecting him?

Should mean people can't just jump in with it and force people to evacuate, which was probably a top 5 lame option in the game.

The lame thing was that when spaced correctly, you had no viable defensive options except rolling away, jumping away, or running away, none of which allowed you to punish BM. You couldnt spot dodge, roll behind, shield, or jump straight or towards BM without getting hit, which at high percents was certain death and at low percents meant either a juggle for tons of percent or a free edgeguard setup.

So I've noticed that Death will knock someone out of your grab, and the grab will cease to do any damage while whatever throw you were doing still carries out the animation.

So my original thought was to have death not knock people out of your throws.
But then I tested something out with multiple characters at once, and I realized.
All those fancy throw animations? They dont have hitboxes.

So here's an idea, stuff like fthrow and bthrow, why not make them connect with characters not caught in a throw, with actual hitboxes? It wont be game breaking, but will give him some real good potential in teams and free-for-alls and combo potential with Death, along with not leaving you a sitting duck when someone gets knocked out of a throw. This gives BM a unique twist on his throw game, a situational yet fun buff. (BM caught someone in a throw? The rest of you better back the hell away or youll end up flying the same way that unlucky soul will)

This screams "Crowd Control" which was one of the main things Black Mage was used for in FF. Collateral damage and black magic go hand and hand so why not?