4: The Doctors Moves
In this area I will describe each attack as well as putting a little something about when, how and why to use the attack. I will also put up a little basic guide before going on to the actual moves, such as Dodging, Sidestepping and Shorthopping. But I will also write about the techniques called L-Canceling and Wavedashing.
Moves:
As I just said, I will first write a little something about the various moves all characters are able to perform, such as jumping and dodging.
Jumping:
Jumping is done by simply pushing the control-stick Up or by pressing the X or Y button.
Jumping is among the most important thing to do, since a good bunch of attacks only can be done from the air or are better when done so. For Doctor Mario, jumping is very important when combined with his array of aerial-bound attacks, since his best (I.M.O) knockout move is among them. Jumping is also done for closing in faster to your opponent or for confusing them by jumping over them and attacking them from behind. Just jumping isn't enough, mastering jumping is essential for all SSBM-players, without exceptions.
Dodge:
While holding the R or L-button, press left or right on the control stick to dodge. Dr.Mario rolls out of the way by doing this. His dodge is neither bad nor good, it's pretty standard. This can be both good and bad. Dodging is a pretty nifty technique maybe the first 500 hours or so you play, but after that the uses of it declines. There's a laggy start-up and finish in which your opponent can hit you. Dodging is never to be regarded as useless I believe but in the long run you should use prioritise better techniques.
Shielding:
As you KNOW, by holding the R or L button you will put up your shield which absorbs damage. Incredibly useful and combined with other techniques it's simply "awesome".
The little tricks are:
Jumping from the shield is a great way to get out of the way. You can instantly perform attacks, air-dodge or just get the **** out of there. You must learn this.
Dodging. Yes you can dodge from the shield. I don't know why I wrote this but here it is. You can dodge from the shield.
And, since you jump from the shield you can also wavedash. Now I promise that you'll break your poor wrists before getting this down. Harder trick there isn't in this game I believe.
But if you do learn it, you've just improved your game with all characters.
Short-Hopping:
A jump, only much shorter. You do this by pressing the X or Y-button very fast, you just tap it carefully. What is this good for you ask? Well, it's the same as for usual jumping; you do attacks out of it, only that the attacks are done closer to the ground. And therefore, you can do all your aerial-attacks as ground-attacks, adding five attacks to your ground fighting!
Once again, Doc's best knockout-move is an aerial one, and if done with a short-hop, you do it faster and with a bigger chance to hit.
Fast-Falling:
A very simple yet useful technique, fast falling is done by pressing down on the control stick while falling. If done so, your character will fall faster towards the ground. The uses for this are explained later but the basics for it are reaching the ground before your opponent can get to you and hit you while in the air.
Sidestepping:
Another move everyone can do. When holding the R or L-button, press down on the control stick to Sidestep, making the character flash for a second and avoiding all possible harms.
This is simply a move for avoiding attacks on the spot. With the right timing you will be able to avoid about anything including smashes, grabs and thrown objects. This for example has much better uses in the long run than rolling. You'll dodge and will be able to hit your opponent directly after it. Also, there’s barely any lag involved so simply it's a more viable tactic when you become a better player.
Air-Dodging:
The last type of dodging, air dodging is of course done in the air. Just press R or L while floating and you will suddenly stop and flash for a second, making you invulnerable to attacks. If you press the control stick at the same time, you will float a short bit in that direction. This can serve as a third safer jump than the usual Up B. Air-Dodging is a technique that should not be overabused, since it is pretty easy to attack someone out of it. After you've done it, you can't do anything more but fall to the ground. While doing this, you're extremely vulnerable to attacks. Air Dodging is therefore preferably done as close to the ground as possible, otherwise you're in for a nasty surprise. Use, but don't abuse.
Air-Teching: (?)
By tapping the control stick left-right, you’ll straighten yourself up while tumbling around in the air. This becomes more and more useful the more you use it. Right now I’m able to do it maybe a second or two after I’ve been hit, enabling me to counterattack much faster, especially if hit by a launcher which has sent me straight up. Other uses are for recovery. When being smashed over the edge and trying to come back, do this to straighten up and save your jump for later. Using your jump to straighten yourself up can be dangerous since your movement in-air will be seriously hampered by it. Save it for later and trick your edge-guard happy opponent.
Teching:
This is also a quite simple technique to use. It's also easy to learn but to master takes some time though not very long compared to other techniques. It is simply a fast recovery when you've been hit to the ground. Right when you touch the ground, press R or L (you can use Z too but I advise against it) to perform a kip-up and rise to your feet immediately. To get the correct timing in can need some practicing but it's quite easy really. You should practice this until it's a reflexive action, you just press the R/L when you hit the ground without thinking about it. But there's more to it. You can also hold a direction on the control stick when doing this to roll that way getting you out of harms way. The downside of this can be that you continually roll into people’s smashes by accident by pointing the stick the wrong direction... Still, it's important to learn this too. Finally you can tech to a wall by pressing R or L when you hit it. This is especially important on levels such as Hyrule where you can hide in the "cage" in the middle and with help of this survive well over 300%.
L-Canceling:
This little thing is probably the most usable thing you'll ever learn if you actually manage to master it. It sounds pretty simple but is less. After you've done an aerial attack close to the ground, you'll fall to it and then a short to long recovery time follows when you can do nothing. Frustrating isn't it? Well, by using L-Canceling, you will negate that recovery time and will therefore be able to move out of harms way faster or follow up with another attack much faster than without. So how do you do it? Just before you hit the ground, press R or L.
It's that easy. But remember that this must be done in the middle of a fight right after you've done another attack. No matter what people say, I simply find this to be the best technique in SSBM at all. It speeds up your game and leaves you less vulnerable after an attack. What more do you need? You can play fast with DK dammit!
Wavedashing:
Now for the fascinating bug people has realised exists. Wavedashing is simply air dodging into the ground, extremely close to the ground. But I'll go into it deeper. Wavedashing is a way to move over the screen fast while being able to perform any attack anytime. Sounds good doesn't it? It really is, but it's pretty **** hard to learn too. So how do you do it? For starters, you should practice it by jumping once, and when you've almost reached the ground, air-dodge diagonally down-left or down-right. If done correctly, Dr.Mario should slide a little bit to the direction you pushed the stick. This is in most cases no good, but it’s just the beginning. After you've learned this, you should try doing it out of a short-jump. After this, you should try doing the one-hundredth of a second after you've jumped, continually.
Hold the stick, down-right or down-left and press jump, then press R or L as fast as possible, preferably as I just said, one-hundredth of a second. If done correctly, you'll slide a bit in the chosen direction. Now press X, R, X, R, X, R, X, R, X, R over and over again and you should begin to slide over the screen. Now start to alter the control back and forth and you should be able to move around the screen by just wavedashing. Nice, you know how to perform a wavedash, now you should learn to perform it out of nothing and follow it up with attacks.
More on this in the "How To Play Doc"-part.
DI’ing:
DI stands for Directional Influence and is something that should be kept in mind all times when playing. DI is used to get out of combos, survive into higher percents of damage and space your attacks to hit better.
You do this by using the control stick as usual. If you’re hit out from the platform, push the stick towards the platform and up to make your character float upwards a little and slow your flight towards doom. Your recovery will then be easier and shorter.
When you’re being comboed, also remember to DI. How to do this I can’t really say, it depends on which attack you’re hit by and what player you’re juggled by. For instance when chain grabbed by Peach at low percents, you can’t really know how she will move next to catch you. A good chain grabber uses their own version of DI’ing to grab you again. The only thing I can tell you is to practice.
You may think this part was pretty useless but since it’s the basics of playing Super Smash you should learn it all before moving on to the next part. Now, if you’re some kind of pro cruising for other viewpoints on Doc this part was pretty useless.
The moves:
Now I'll go into each of Dr.Marios moves and write something about the uses for them and maybe a little about the range, damage and speed.
A Button Moves: (The basic stuff)
The A-button is the bread and butter in SSBM. The characters strong attacks, Smashes, and Aerials are done with that button and I'll dare to say it's at least twice as important as the B-button.
First out is the basic combo: A, A, A.
A, A, A: One, Two Kick-combo
Damage Done: 4, 4, 4%
Mario’s basic combo is slow, I have to admit it. It’s slow, deals low damage and most characters can deal out an attack before you manage to kick them. So simply avoid the kick. But don’t avoid the whole move, all attacks are good to know and only gives you more options. The death of all players is predictability. So use it sparingly, preferably if you can manage to time it against grabbers or people about to smash you. It’s Docs fastest attack and has uses just for that.
Strong Attacks:
Dr Mario’s strong attacks aren’t among the best in the game, but the uses do exist as with all attacks. They are mainly for keeping distance and racking up a little extra damage.
Up A: Uppercut
Damage Done: 10%
A good move simply. Doc smashes his fist up making anyone in its vicinity fly. If you hit someone on the ground or very close to it, they’ll fly up and to the right. If hitting someone in-air, they’ll fly almost straight up. This is one of Doc’s best jugglers and can often be used continually against bigger/heavier characters with Ganon and Link as favourites. (Surprise huh…?) Still, Doc is best played as a short-hop maniac and doesn’t really like standing on the ground except when edge-guarding, but if you’ve shield-grabbed someone and smashed them down, use this for a quick combo followed by a N-Air.
Forward A: Kick
Damage Done: 7%
This move is not that good. It’s simply a kick, and a quite ugly one to boot. Doc just protrudes his foot forward hitting anyone who happens to be standing there. The only nice thing to say about it is that it has quite nice range. You could go in for some extra damage against lightweighters with bad range like Ness or Jigglypuff. Again, this has its uses but they are few. Use it sparingly like when Edge-Guarding or when you just want your enemy to get away from you.
Down A: Sweep Kick
Damage Done: 9%
Doc bends down and sweeps his foot in front of him. This move is strange, since it sends the enemy flying towards you and behind you. This move also is mainly for poking the enemy and gives you a little breathing space. Even more useless than Forward-A, I barely ever use this attack but I'll tell you about the strange use I have for it. When facing an enemy such as C.Falcon or Ganondorf, who has highly abusable recoveries you can edge-guard with this. Just bend down and wait for them. When they reach the edge, kick them in the head and they'll be trying to fly past you. Now, since the edge is in the way, they'll get smashed into that and will then fall to their doom. In most cases the cape is better but since this goes a tiny bit under the edge you could psyche your opponent with it. Just remember to roll away or sidestep if he techs, you’ll get hit by his recovery otherwise.
Dash A: Glidekick
Damage Done: 9%
You’ll love this move for very long. It is fast, has nice range, goes under your enemies shield and sends your opponent straight up. But, almost all Dash-attacks suck in the long run. This one has among the worst recovery time of all moves and has a hit box that makes your little sister cry. If you miss this one against an experienced player, you’re screwed big time. But as usual it has its uses. Actually I still use this against Marth. Right when he’s done his smash and missed it (yeah REALLY often right…) you can do this to pop him up in the air and juggle him. If he sets up his shield it’s all right because it’ll probably go under it. So the uses are clear, it can be good if done after a missed smash, but you have to make sure it connects because otherwise you’ll get more hurt than you’d ever manage to hurt him.
Smashes:
Smashes are a little like Dash-attacks. They’re great the first 500 hours of play but the use decline, not as much as the Dash though. Doc’s smashes are good, maybe even great but he has some serious problems connecting them due to the short range of them. But of course, as with all moves you should learn them, master them and use them whenever you see an opening. It’s his most powerful attacks after all.
Forward-Smash: Lightning Smash
Damage Done: 19-25%
This move is Doc’s best KO’er in terms of damage and knock back-effect, but is less so when you take its horrible range in account. It can easily kill someone at 100% if not less, and if they reach as much as 150% (shame on you) they will "die" from the massive impact. The trick with this one is to use it when your opponent is recovering from his own smash or to Wavedash back or forth and do one with the C-Stick. Forward makes it gain a little more range and backwards makes it serve as an evasive attack. This is a great attack, it’s just hard to hit with.
Up-Smash: Overhead Smash
Damage Done: 16-21%
You’ll use this one less and less the more you play just as with the rest of his smashes. The wind-up time is just to long for it to be truly great when playing on high level. But this one’s still pretty nifty if used as a juggler. It may not deal incredible amounts of damage and the launcher effect is pretty bad too but almost 20% and the chance to juggle your opponent is always welcome. But as I’ve stated before, the wind-up time is a little to long and it requires a good sense of timing to actually get in a clean hit.
Down-Smash: Dragons Tail
Damage Done: 18-24%
This name may be misdirecting, but it was the best name I could come up with. Dr Mario bends down and smashes both his feet and legs around him knocking away all enemies nearby.
It has the best range of Doc’s smashes and is pretty fast to throw out. The only problem is that he spins around his feet instead of doing a split. The recovery is a little to long but if you hit, that’s not a problem. As with all smashes, you have to hit because otherwise you’ll get hurt which you in most cases can’t afford when playing Doc, at least not against characters like Fox, Marth and Sheik. Tough luck eh? You can’t use your strongest attacks against your biggest enemies. I guess that’s what makes them your biggest enemies.
Aerial Moves:
As stated before, Doc’s aerials are his best moves. He has a good charge-attack that outranks his dash, a great K.O-move, a very useful edge-guarder, a good juggling attack and also a nice combo-starter. Mastering his aerials is essential, if not a must when playing Doc. Plus; they’re darn cool when used correctly.
But before I go into the moves, I’ll have to present the single most useful technique in the entire game, namely shffl’ing.
Shffl’ing:
Shffl is short for "ShortHopped FastFalled L-cancel".
Sounds pretentious don’t it? Now imagine being able to perform all your aerials on grounded enemies with less performing time than a strong and less recovery than a smash. The thought almost gave me goose bumps before I learned it. It’s the best simply and as soon as you’ve really learned this, you’ll start asking yourself how you could have been playing without this. ^_^
But for now, you’ll just have to learn the basics which everyone is forced to start with. Practice doing it in training first and then go over to doing it in matches. Your playing will get worse the first 5-10 hours when learning this but then it will suddenly improve at a pace only experienced when you first started playing the game. I’m not kidding here. Before learning this I could kick my best friends C.Falcon with maybe one or two characters namely Doc and Marth. Now I can kick him with DK, Ness, Young Link, Doc, Marth, Fox, Luigi, Ganondorf and occasionally Roy. The usefulness of shfll’ing transcends everything and if you don’t learn this, you’ll never get truly pro. But well, you won’t get pro just by learning this but it’s the biggest step you’ll ever take.
Here’s a course on how to learn shffl’ing. Remember to do each part until you’re really proficient at it. Just L-canceling once or fast-falling once won’t do. Practice it for at least five minutes, preferably fifteen. Shffl’ing is hard and recquires both precision and speed so practice practice practice, otherwise you’ll learn this the wrong way and will only end up frustrated and will start calling L-Canceling unnecessary which is as far from the truth you can come.
1 - First off, learn to fastfall. Jump, perform an F-Air and then smash the stick down. You should reach the ground faster.
2 - Learn to L-Cancel. Jump, press Forward + A and when you reach the ground again, press L or R. If done correctly, most of the lag will be cut off and Doc will rise to his feet faster.
3 - Now combine these two. Jump, do a F-Air, smash the stick down and when you reach the ground press L or R. Faster performance, less lag. This really demands immense practicing and until you’re really good at this, you shouldn't go further into this. At least half an hour should suffice. Yes, I know this may sound extreme but the truth is that you sacrifice maybe two-three hours of your life to get much better at this game. If you’re going for casual play (what’cha doin at SWF anyway then?) maybe this isn’t that necessary but if you want to get pro in the long run, you MUST learn this.
After you’ve learned fast-falling in conjunction with L-canceling, you should learn how to short-hop.
4 - Basically, just tap the jump-button slightly or tap it very fast. You should jump a little less vertical. Do this for 10 minutes or so until you’re getting it down in practice. Now start adding attacks to this. Actually, short-hopping is the most important step in shffl'ing. You could first practice a little in matches with just short-hopping. Your game will probably improve by just learning thus. But that’s besides the point, learn to fully shffl instead.
5 - Now, do all of this at a time. Short-hop, press F-Air, fast-fall and press L/R when reaching the ground. Did you get it in? Probably not because if you did you should have skipped this part.
For you who didn't, you'll need weeks of practice and you need to practice it IN matches. Try doing short-hops and L-Cancels all the time, on all aerials. It'll probably take months until you'll fully get it down and can do it as a reflex. I think I’m getting this down pretty good by now. I get it in little more than 9/10 times, and maybe 8/10 times when getting a clean hit since the timing is a little different then. Also, I don’t think about the fact that I shffl any longer, it’s as natural as jumping and wavedashing, it’s just another technique in my arsenal and the same should apply to you in the long run.
But now, I will describe each aerial attack, both when performed in-air and when performed as a juggle.
For starters, Doc’s aerial game actually isn’t that incredible. He doesn’t have very good manoeuvrability when flying and his attacks are pretty short-ranged. Shffl’d on the other hand, the aerials quickly becomes what defines Doctor Mario. He can deal nice damage in short time while still being able to avoid counter-attacks due to the almost non-existent recovery time his shffl’d aerials has. In other words, Doc should stay as close as possible to the ground while still being in the air.
Neutral-Air: Sex-Kick
Damage Done: 5-9%
Doc’s Sex-Kick is among the best in the game. It has a long performing time, a good hit-box and increases in power the longer it’s out. This means of course that the most powerful hits are performed from the air. Full-jumped, fastfalled ones can sometimes actually be worth using, though not very often. But using this as some kind of counter in-air is stupid, the range is bad and you really need some kind of momentum for it to be usable. And so, shffl’ing comes into the spotlight once again.
Shffl’d this attack becomes one of Doc’s best. It is quite fast, has short recovery, a good hitbox and deals nice damage. The trick is to use it while running. Do a short dash and then a shffl’d N-Air. Congratulations! Doc’s best charge-attack is yours to use and abuse. A good way to push your enemy backwards is to use this over and over on him pushing him further and further back.
A great attack and possibly the one you’ll use the most because of it’s versatility.
Back-Air: Double Kick
Damage Done: 8%
Docs B-Air is almost as good as his Sex-Kick. It’s fast, has the best range of his aerials and has pretty good knockback. If you don’t shffl it, full-jump it and use it for its range to poke away incoming enemies.
If used with shffl’s this attack has uses similar to Jiggly’s B-Air. It is far better than N-Air when edgeguarding and racking up damage. The recovery is as usual non-existant and so you can do it maybe once per second or even more often with enough training. It can’t be used as a charge however so leave that for the N-Air.
Up-Air: Somersault
Damage Done: 7-10%
First off, this one is incredibly hard to shffl, even if you use the C-Stick. You’ll have to train for months (after you’ve learned basic shffl’ing!) until you can pull this off correctly but when you do it’s… Actually this attack isn’t as great as you hoped. It’s good alright but doesn’t have very many uses. The main use is if you can pull it off repeatedly without fail. Then you’ll be able to hit low-percentage enemies with this for up to 30%. Yeah I know that’s a lot, but the training this requires is immense. Also openings won’t appear very often. It’s kinda like smashes. They’re great when you get them in, but you won’t get them in very often. Of course you should learn this, but save it for last.
Up in the sky this attack is far better I think. It’s very good for juggling as you can hit from beneath and it sends your enemy just a little up and to the side, time for another one? You’ll find yourself using this one more than it should be healthy when airborne. Along with B-Air, this is Doc’s best attack while being forced to fight flying. There’s also another strange use for it if you feel like surprising your opponent.
When someone's about to come back to the edge, you could just run out, hold the control stick a little up and press A. You’ll hopefully hit the opponent and send him away again. You should then have your second jump left to get back to the edge. Or if you haven’t got it because you screwed up the attack, your Up-B should be enough.
This attack is better than you realise first. Use it often but keep in mind not to be predictable. Use this when jumping up under your opponent but mix in other attacks every now and then to surprise your opponent. Be unpredictable!
Forward-Air: Air-Smash
Damage Done: 17%
You have a better name for Doc’s strongest aerial? I sure don’t and so I’m gonna call it "Air-Smash". This deals as stated above a whopping 17% to whoever may be in its nearness. That’s enough to kill enemies at 100-150%. To boot you’ll often get this in while your enemy’s airborne and so you’ll need even less damage for them to be smashed to kingdom come. Anyway, there are some major downfalls for this attack and it doesn’t really matter if it is performed shffl’d or not. It has major wind-up time for starters where Doc first pulls his fist back ready to smash it. Second, it has very short range and the hitbox is just his fist, not his body like the Sex-Kick. Thirdly, even if you l-cancel it still has among the worst recovery-times of all Doc’s attacks. And if you miss the l-cancel and even missed the attack, you’re gonna get hurt. And so, this attack requires the most practice of all Doc’s aerials. You’ll have to master this one to make it useful, so the first five to ten hours of shffl’ing, you should use this consistently. Your gameplay will suffer but in the long run you’re gonna get far better anyway. People will start anticipating when you will throw this out and will start avoiding it. Good, when they’ve started doing that and you feel comfortable with it, start using it maybe one-tenth as much, but with bigger precision. Throw it out when he least expects it and make sure you’re really gonna get it in. In the long run, this will become your number one K.O-move perhaps along with your grabs.
Down-Air: Drill-Kick
Damage Done: 2-11%
This move should not be used shffl’d, you have lots better moves to use instead of this one. Instead it should be used with a full jump but with the fast-fall and l-cancel. This way it can be used for intercepting enemies from the air while stopping them from counterattacking. It is therefore most useful against floaters such as Peach, Samus and Jigglypuff. And, if you hit with this while airborne you can always get in a free Up-Air directly after. I use this attack very sparingly because of the many downfalls of it. It has its uses but they are few and they are very circumstantial.
Special Attacks:
Docs special have been quite overlooked by me. They are actually pretty good but are as the name implies used for special circumstances. You have a great projectile, a good edge-guarder, a rather crappy third jump and a somewhat fun recovery trick helps you against edge-guarders. You should learn the uses of his specials just as you should learn all his A’s and grabs, they’re simply part of his arsenal and the more you use of it the better.
Neutral-B: Megavitamins a.k.a The Pill
Damage Done: 4-6%
The pills are along with his Air-Smash what define Doctor Mario and also what makes him more than a Mario-clone. The pills have it all. Damage, a great stun effect that sometimes sets in even if the opponent blocks, a great bounce effect that is affected after how far from the ground you throw the pill and fast spamming rate. The only thing missing would be speed, it’s not that fast but on the other hand it’s better for setting up combos that way.
But anyway, what is the best way to use the pill? It’s something called a pillrush and if you don’t know what that is I’ll tell you right now.
A pill-rush is a short-hopped, fastfalled pill. Those again huh? Starting to get annoyed? I did when I realised I had to fast-fall every **** attack I used. But if you think a little you realise its kinda logic. Fastfalling makes you reach the ground faster which shortens your recovery time. And shortening the recovery time makes you faster, which is what this game is all about in the long run. Every **** second you possibly can earn by using weird strategies is good, because you’re gonna need it. But back to the pills.
Anyway, a main tactic is to short-hop forward, throw a pill and fastfall. Repeat. You’ll be throwing pills against your opponent until you’re close enough to start doing shffl’d N-Air’s or a F-Air instead. They’re simply for rushing your opponent while keeping some sort of defense up. Another nice trick you can do is to first do a pillrush and then do a fulljumped pill. Both pills should reach your opponent at approximately the same time. But really, you should check out the other Doc-guide here on Smashboards, his Pill-part is far better than mine.
Up-B: Super Jump Punch
Damage Done: 2-13%
This is bad, really really bad. The range is short, the damage is incredibly low and the third jump-effect is a joke. If you use this as an attack I’ll laugh at you. But since it’s so bad, you have to learn sweetspotting. You have to learn the exact path and length of this so that you can grab the edge by the millimetre. There’s is a little fun thing to this that makes its usefulness a little more than abysmal. Doctor Mario’s arms are longer than it seems. He can actually grab the edge from a little distance after you’ve finished this. It’s nothing I would recommend you learn to do but it will save you a number of times and your opponent is gonna go: "You should have died there!". But well, since it’s so bad it’s even more important you learn how to surpass this weakness of Docs. It’s about the only recovery he has after all so you’ll just have stick with it.
Forward-B: Super Sheet
Damage Done: 8-11%
The sheet is another thing that is less useful than Marios, I guess it’s to balance that his F-Air, D-Air, F-Smash and Sex-Kick is better. But from what I’ve learned, it’s actually a little longer than Mario so the reflector-effect should be better. But how often are you gonna use that? The main use of this attack is edge-guarding. You know that hitting someone with this turns them around, which has a few times saved me from smashes and the like. Try doing it on an enemy using his third jump. If you time it correctly, they’ll turn around in mid-air without a chance to recover. It is really easy to do against C.Falcon and Ganondorf and a little bit harder on Falco and Fox. But you can do it against everyone with a third jump; some enemies are just much harder. It’s for example possible to do it against Marth but the timing is much harder to get in and you’ll probably get hurt by it anyway. But more on that later. This move just gains more and more uses the more you play.
Down-B: Dr. Tornado
Damage Done: 2-10%
I don’t really know how to put this. But alright, this might be Doc’s worst attack overall in competition with his Down-A. It has bad range, low damage and bad recovery. Yeah, it’s that bad. But of course there are uses, they’re just few and kinda unnecessary, you could do much else instead of this. But I’ll tell you since I’m so nice. One is to use a U-Throw against fastfallers and immediately do this. You’ll do maybe 15-18% of damage, which can be quite helpful. But remember you can only do this when they’re on low to mid damage. The same goes for normal-weighters on low damage. Against floaters it isn’t possible.
The other is to use it in mid-air against some U-Air happy opponents. With a little luck they’ll be trapped in it and sent away to get you some breathing space. The third are for recovery-purposes. If you mash the B-button when doing this, you’ll stay in mid-air and can turn a little to the left or right while doing it. The recovery part will explain this better later on.
Throws:
Doc’s throws are good. He has a little something for everything when it comes to grabbing your opponent. Just learn when to grab and which throw to use and you’re set. Throwing is among the most basic things in SSBM and has some major uses. Anyway, first I’m gonna tell you about some little tricks involving grabbing.
Shield-Grabbing:
The normal way to grab is to press Z, but after a while this won't do since your opponents are to fast to get grabbed normally.
Then, you should use Shield-Grabbing. If you've seen the "How To Play", you should know that you can grab by pressing R and A together.
And that's about it. First you shield and wait for someone to hit you. When they've finished their attack, press A to grab. This enables you to first shield to avoid damage and getting flung away, then grabbing and either setting up a combo or just throw them away. Very simple, yet very useful. Just remember to use Z when running.
Dash-Canceling:
Yay, another cancel-tech!
When doing a running grab, you should smash the control stick up before pressing Z.
If done right the lag-time involved by missing will be cut to maybe half. Just learn it, it’s simple and useful.
On to the throws:
While Holding - A: Headbutt
Damage Done: 3%
Dr.Mario headbutts his opponent while holding him, dealing a small amount of damage. This may seem useless, but if you grab often and remembers to use this once or twice, you'll soon rack up some respectable extra-damage with this.
While Holding - Up: Trampoline Launcher
Damage Done: 8%
This attack somehow reminds me of a trampoline since it sends your opponent up the same way Mr Game & Watches recovery do.
Anyway, this is a launcher, only made for sending your opponent up. This throws main use is for players who really like air-fighting or against characters who hates it. It can also be used when standing under a roof to smash them up in the roof and then directly down again to give you a free smash. Not really his best throw but not a bad one either. And don't forget that this is the choice when fighting fast-fallers on low damage, the D-Throw won't get you anywhere then.
While Holding - Forward: Fling
Damage Dome: 9%
Well, he flings his opponent a little bit so that's the best name for it. They won't go very far, nor will it deal very much damage. But this is really fun for edge-guarding. Just when they think they've made it back, just grab them, headbutt them once or twice and send them out again, and again, and again, and soon they'll be dead for sure. If they manage to get past you, turn around and use the next grab instead. Another fun use can be to fling your opponent into another if playing free for all. Since this throw comes out really fast, it can be used for interrupting a charging Captain Falcon itching to use his knee. Or you could even throw some poor fella right into the same Falcon and his dreaded knee.
While Holding - Back: Wrestle Whirlwind
Damage Done: 12%
Like some big wrestler he grabs his opponent by the legs, spins them around a few times and then throws them away. Now we're talking!
This is by far Dr.Marios best knockout-throw and has killed many a smash-avoiding opponent. Other from just killing them off, I don't know what this move is for. If they don't die right-out, run to the edge and get ready to edge-guard. And by the way, this move deals a nice 12%. ^_^
While Holding - Down: Rebound Pound
Damage Done: 6%
Doc smashes his opponent into the ground, which makes him bounce up again and ready to smash away. My personal favorite when it comes to setting up combos, since they won't be able to guard you when you grab. (Duh) Prolly his best set-up move and far better than the Dash-A in the long run. The effect is similar but it's safer.
And well, that should be it really. Now I'll move on to getting a little deeper into playing Dr.Mario.
