All I can say is if you feel like you are not gaining any progress with Shazam then he may not be the character for you. There seems to be alot of people in this forum who complain about his faults instead of accepting them and moving forward. Everything you mention from his dash to his jump ins are true to some extent. However, it's not the moves that are unsafe but how you are using them against your opponent that make them seem unsafe. I'll tackle your first issue and go down from there.
Dashing - This is his fastest tool of movement. However, like most characters in this game Shazam is at a
disadvantage when performing it. If you find that your opponent is snuffing out your attempts to close space it may be wise to just walk them to the corner. I know this seems tedious but you have to respect your opponents reaction time even if it maybe better then yours. I had this same issue happen to me at my weekly gathering. It only came to me after I lost that I should of walked them to the corner instead of trying to force my way in. Shazam has the tools to lock his opponent down. The main part is getting in there. That is all about analyzing and conditioning your opponent so you can execute your strategy.
Atlas Torpedo (AT) - There is a thread in here that list all characters that can punish
AT. Not sure where, but you should check it out for future matchups. I'll say this much if your opponent is consistently blocking and punishing
AT then it would be wise not to use it outside of combos. Basically, you need to anaylize the match and execute moves accordingly. Throwing out random
AT will produce random results. However, if you condition your opponent you are more likely to land a
AT on them when normally it wouldn't connect. Also, if you perform it at close range it is much harder if at all for your opponent to punish you.
Teleport - You need to give this move some credit. It's his best meter building tool and it get's you out of alot of situations. On top of that it's his main zoning tool. Now if you are getting punished for teleporting then that means you are using it at the wrong times and the wrong situations. You shouldn't use teleport to close space while your opponent is able to attack you. You know as well as I and everyone else that plays with Shazam how vunurable teleport is on startup and recovery. Instead use teleport when your opponent is not able to attack you on startup or recovery (ie. knockdown, blockstrings, wakeup, projectiles). Simple enough, right?
Jump Ins - These are always debatable outside of a knockdown. It really has to do with timing the ground attacks. If you do a jumpin attack and follow up with a decent normal like
d1 or
2 then your opponent will not be able to retaliate. You gave the example of
j2,2,2 and Catwoman's Evade. I'm going to assume that she was able to evade the last attack because that is not a true block string. Every character can back dash the last hit of
22 on block. Still this doesn't mean that it's useless. This is where
analyzing and conditioning your opponent comes in handy. In this situation with Catwoman being able to evade your blockstring it would be wise instead of doing
22 to do
2, bf2 (AT). It's safe and will produce better results if she executes evade. It's best to go into training and test the advantage for your moves. Try not to soley rely on the data put forth by Nether Realm. It can be misleading.
Command Grabs - Alright so imagine if you will that you were playing with Zangief. Only he does 50% less damage on his command grabs but he has Makato's dash, a watered down teleport like Dhalsim, and a high tiger shot like Sagat. Now alot of people who play Street Fighter would say that Zangief would be beyond broken. Now I'm assuming that this is what you were implying when you were complaining about Shazam's command grabs. Giving him a command grab that would connect on standing and crouching opponents and lead into 40% or so damage would make him broken. So if you are having trouble landing his grabs you should try conditioning your opponent to guard in a certain state so that your grabs have a much more higher percentage of connecting then if you were to just guess. What I like to do is do
b2, teleport to condition my opponent to block high. If he decides to back dash or jump before the
b2 connects then the option select on
3 will connect and I get a free combo. If he blocks the
b2 then the option select
3 will teleport me to safety. After awhile when I notice that my opponent is blocking high in anticipation I will execute his Herculean Might and get at least 40% damage.
Throughout this long drawn post to yours there was one point I was really trying to "drive home". That was analyzing and conditioning your opponent to make smart moves. Now alot of people get the term smart confused with clever. Clever would be if you substitute a low attack for an overhead in an attack string. Smart would be conditioning your opponent to guard low so the overhead hits. Like I said before if you do random moves they will produce random results. Now this is in no way a post that solves all of Shazam's issues or a direct message to you SuppaSapien3. This is a message to everyone who is having issues with Shazam and see no way of progressing. He will still have bad match-ups, but that's not going to stop me from playing him. I hope it doesn't stop the rest of you either.
