Getting the hang of neutral

[ZipZopZoop]

Hey everyone. Ive been playing about 8 months now and still am told by better players that my neutral is what is lacking. I lose neutral 8/10 times and when i win it is usually by converting my few openings into kills pretty quickly. They say i am predictable and campy. I have trouble seeing this however.

I have heard people talk about this and it apparently is a big wall to many players. I play a lot and try super hard to improve but it seems like this is always the worst aspect of my play regardless of character and it drives me crazy. How do i work on improving this faster?

An example would be say i am marth against a fox. If he runs in with an aerial i usually react with something like wd back fsmash/grab. If this fox starts to overshoot his aerials(mostly nair) then wd back no longer works, so i am forced to either shield and let him go nuts on my shield and maybe get a shieldgrab if im lucky or try and utilt/fair him out of the air before he gets to me(which usually doesnt work). CC might work but shines after the aerials will knock me back so i cant retaliate correct? What options am i missing here in this situation?

 

[Dark Byte]

You are missing the dash dance, for one thing. Try using a combination of fast dashdances and wavedashes in and out of the edge of your opponent's range. This will make you less predictable as you are obscuring the exact location of your character. You are the only person who can feel your thumb moving back and forth with your character on screen, so you can make it look like you are in range of fox's aerial approaches but you are actually safe.

The other thing you are missing is if you are expecting an aerial approach from fox, you can place your own aerial in front of his to beat it. As marth, short hop nair in place is good for this, or just do a rising fair wherever you think he will approach from.

 

[1000g2g3g4g800999]

When it comes to examples, you're mostly talking about dealing with the opponent's offense. Sometimes, the best way to defend against this is to attack first.

If Fox was overshooting the nair such that WD back wouldn't work and you shielded instead, he'd go right through you, can you could wavedash away for free. If you WD back and he hits you anyway, you can CC grab at a pretty decent percent range (especially if he runs into it, or shines you back into the ground), and if he drills, unless it's only the later hits, shifting to SDI to get out should also be easy. But you can also generally just shield grab the drills, especially if you shield DI/angle so that some of the hits miss (which can also mess up their L-cancel timing). You can still get ASDI down grab even if you get wavedash back down-tilt to cover running shine or something grounded, and they jumped over it to hit you.

Also, dash dancing is amazing and probably the most important movement option in the game, but don't let me saying this blind you to other things. Running in and grabbing as soon as the opponent tries to move (as long as they aren't doing so to get out of range) at the right distances can be excellent. Opponents may try to space approaches or do certain things at certain distances that aren't necessarily safe, so moving in to intercept them before they get into position is great, and poking at the back end of someone's dash dance with Marth's downtilt also works wonders. Run up shield or dashing back or wavedashing back tends to be the most reliable way to deal with this yourself. AC nair in place can be alright, but a number of characters can run under it, so it tends to be a little safer retreating (and it's great against short hop approaches of all kinds). Fair can cover lower positions, but you need good timing and you need to control any drift you're doing either to make it so you hit, or the opponent has a harder time getting to you before you land.

Nair is a bad approach a lot of the time as Marth, but if you cross up or still manage to auto-cancel as soon after the second hit as possible (or possibly land right after it comes out and l-cancel as a timing mixup) it's works a lot better.

Aside from running in and grabbing or moving forward with a downtilt as someone starts to move towards you, you can grab people right out of a jump, or do a well timed fair. Advancing with any of these is supposed to win by catching startup, retreating with them gives you more time to react and get your hitboxes out, so retreating fair may be the easiest thing for you to use if your fairs normally don't work and you aren't retreating already. You don't have to retreat all the way either, a small jump back can mess with their spacing and timing just enough, and you can drift back in with the fair if necessary. The longer they stay on the ground or more forward they go, the less you want to drift back in.

You can also just roll through approaches if you have the space and time. You'll have less of an ability to punish them whiffing, but you're less likely to get hit in the beginning than if you tried to wavedash, run, or jump past them.

Also, while your profile indicates you main Puff, this was written with Marth in mind. Most of the grab related stuff is still quite applicable to Jiggs, however, even if her ground movement's worse. But shining you into the ground won't end stun prematurely, for instance.

 

[ZipZopZoop]

Wow thanks for these responses guys. This is really good info. After thinking about what you guys have said along with looking up some other similar things and what ive noticed playing the last couple days it seems like if a situation or opponent is slow enough then i usually can make a decent choice of what to do.

I fall into doing these bad options a lot because im too slow in recognizing and responding to situations when they appear, so mostly against good players it seems like i rely on reads with very little reaction. This makes me be pretty stationary so i dont DD much and just wd to maneuver a lot so i can always be ready to respond to an approach. Because of this i go into autopilot very easily and once i do that its hard to turn it around.

So any advice for an issue like this? How do i make myself react to more instead of just always trying to read when someone will approach and randomly making yolo approaches of my own when i feel like i need to be aggressive? My dash dancing to avoid things is also kind of shoddy i think so i need to work on that but it seems like a lot is needing faster reactions.

Also yes i main puff but recently started playing a lot of other characters to avoid falling into the same rythm playing puff always. Also i think playing more characters exposes me to more situations which will help me improve. Usually its just marth fox falcon and puff i play.

 

[XLAX_OVERDOSAGE]

IMO one of the most fundamental aspects of the neutral game itself is recognizing what your opponent is going for. Try to notice patterns in the approaches your opponent is going for. Think about what you keep getting hit by mostly against a specific player and theorize on ways to get around that. Can you CC it? Can you dash dance or move around it? Are you pre-preemptively throwing out aerials in neutral and getting hit for it?

As you've mentioned, playing other characters is a good way to improve on fundamentals and learn new options/aspects of the game you wouldn't have learnt as well with your main.

 

[Mr Snak3_]

If they're an 'all in attack' kind of player try use counter
It's dumb so people don't expect it
Gets some funny reactions from pulling a 2005