A better meaning for arrows offstage

Something I used to believe was that arrows' goal isto hit the opponent, either catching their double jumps or simply tackling a few percents. But because of airdodge, that is unreliable and I was just shooting arrows hoping I hit some lucky ones.

What if I tell you not hitting the opponent is the real goal.

Because of Pit's poor air mobility, small jumps and extremly long vulnerability on his specials if he doesn't snap directly to the ledge, it is natural for Pit to aim for the ledge when he is recovering. But there is a second option to recover : jumping straight onto the stage.

This second option is very valuable as this second options forces the opponent to guess which way the opponent will recover. If your opponent (who is currently recovering) chooses to go to the ledge, you must fall low to catch him or wait for him to grab the ledge to threaten a ledge trump. If he chooses to jump to the stage (usually with an aerial that is safe on shield), you must either preemptively catch the double jump, or get away from the ledge to whiff punish.


But to have acess to this mix up, the opponent have to be high enough. This is why height is a "ressource" just like double jump.
If the opponent has his double jump, he has the choice to either jump, or directly use a special to recover. If he doesn't have a jump, you know he must use one of his specials.
Likewise, if the opponent is high in the air, he can either keep slowly falling high or fast fall low, if he opponent if too low, he must use his special or double jump to go back up.

Here is an example (we assume Luigi lost his double jump) : on the first picture, Luigi can either drift offstage, then recover low or drift directly to the stage.
On the second picture, he is now too low, and have no option but go to the ledge.

This is where arrows come into play : all the time the opponent spends airdodging to avoid our arrows is time he keeps falling low. Height is lost and ressource are wasted.

Tl;dr : Thanks to arrows, we can cut the opponent's option to recover high.