Fenrir VII
Smash Master
- Joined
- Sep 9, 2005
- Messages
- 3,506
Ok so first off, I am not intending for this thread to be a Mega Man guide with pictures, frame data, etc. Those threads are useful and informative, and I’m sure that we’ll have one at some point, but I won’t be the guy to put that together. Instead, I think we have a need on our board for a general “Mega Man used in a competitive environment” thread, where we can discuss anything and everything around competitive play and how we are winning/why we are losing. We’re kind of in a unique situation where (A) there are LOTS of new players with Smash 4, and (B) Mega Man really doesn’t play like any character that has ever been in Smash. As such, I think he’s been criminally slept on by the community, and I’d like to have a place to share what I’ve been seeing/doing, and hear the same from the other players who have had success with him.
Obviously as the OP a lot of this is going to be based on my opinions, but I’d like to have this as a discussion thread, and I’d like to keep the OP updated with the things that we find/agree on. For anybody who doesn’t know me, I’ve been in the competitive Smash scene through Melee (Fox main), Brawl (Fox main), PM (Link main), and now SSB4 (Mega main) since 2004. I was briefly power ranked in Melee in FL around 2006-7 (top 5 or so in Central FL) and am currently in the top 3 players in Melee/PM/SSB4 in SC. Only mentioning that to say that a lot of the opinions I’m going to list are completely coming from a tournament setting and based on anecdotal evidence. I’m not the most scientific player, so I’m going to MOSTLY stay away from frame discussion here. Instead, this is going to be more of a universal truths/tips thread.
With that said, LET’S GO! (deep breaths)
0. WHAT IS A ‘MEGA MAN’?
I almost didn’t include this section because a lot of this info is around the board, but I think it’s useful to orient this discussion correctly.
In essence, Mega Man is a mid-range zoning MONSTER. A common misconception is that he is a long-range projectile spamming character. He actually doesn’t do too well when playing like that in most matchups (mostly because our long-range projectiles aren’t hard to avoid). Your key strategy with him should be to use your projectiles to safely pester your opponent and force them into bad situations. Learn to love your pellets/buster shots/lemons and downward angled Metal Blades.
Additionally, Mega Man has very good disjointed aerials (all 4 of the directional aerials have uses). All of his smash attacks are strong, but have long cooldown, so you will get punished if you miss.
Mega has what I would call a “good enough” recovery. It’s punishable if you are not careful, but you can mix it up enough to get back most of the time. He’s also a heavy character, so you’ll be living for a while. He is a good edgeguarder.
He actually has a bit of trouble killing. This is not because of a lack of power, but rather because his kill moves are generally laggy/unsafe on miss. A big part of becoming a better Mega player is learning how to set up kills. I’ll have deep-dive sections about everything I have generalized in this paragraph later on. Now on with the tips.
1. LEARN TO EMBRACE THE IMPASSE
Ok there’s a reason this is #1 here. In my opinion, this is the most important thing to learn when transitioning into a competitive player, but especially as a Mega player. Mega Man is a very strong mid-range zoning character. Essentially this means that you are going to spend a large amount of time just outside of your opponent’s range, pestering them with projectiles and aerials. And a lot of the time, this can feel like you’re really not making progress. They will shield/dodge stuff, and you’ll be trying to increase their damage by 2% at a time. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU SHOULD CHANGE STRATEGIES.
If you are applying pressure and not getting punished for it, even if you are not currently doing much/any damage, you are making good progress in the matchup. Let me explain… every time you are in a situation where you can make your opponent feel unsafe, they will need to react to it in some way. Typically, people have a “go-to” defensive strategy that they will try until you catch on. For a lot of online players, this is rolling… other players will try to shield-grab… other players will just go aggro on you and throw out tons of attacks, etc. Each of these things is punishable in different ways… so by playing safe and allowing things to unfold, you are essentially learning what your opponent likes to do so you can punish it NEXT TIME.
One of the best examples I can give here is in the Rosalina matchup. I’m going to come right out and say we have literally 0 reason to NOT spam crash bomb in this matchup. If it hits Luma, it will instantly explode and usually hurt Rosa in the process, while applying ridiculous amounts of pressure to her. Now, she has a ‘counter’ to this with Down-B, where she negates the crash bomb. Thing is, this never hurts you, and doesn’t put her in any kind of a positive position. She just used a move to negate yours. Why at this point would you just not shoot another crash bomb and make her do it again? What you’re doing with this is training her to Down-B when you are in crash bomb distance. If at some point you decide to NOT shoot a crash bomb, I think you can see how some really good punishes can come if she Down-B’s when you don’t shoot (and her only response to this is to not Down-B, which opens up the pressure again). In this matchup, I turn into an artillery unit and wait for her to answer it with SH nair, etc, which are also punishable
So the takeaway here is to just LIVE FOR the moments where you are applying safe pressure and not getting punished for it. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE DOING DAMAGE TO HAVE A POSITIVE POSITION IN A MATCH. Don’t fall into rushing an opponent’s shield when they dodge a few shots.
2. PUNISH YOUR OPPONENT’S LANDINGS
A big thing in this game is that landing is fairly unsafe. Everything you do in the air is associated with SOME landing lag before you can shield/roll/etc. with the least lag given to just doing nothing (or landing after an attack autocancels). Most characters in the game have a 2nd jump and upB that leaves them helpless after, so I’m going to focus my discussion on those chars for now. You know going into these matchups that if you hit the opponent and they use their 2nd jump, they essentially have to land, go for the ledge, or UpB and then come down (mostly used as a YOLO attack to catch you off guard). Whatever they do, you should be there waiting for it, and throw out an attack to punish if they actually do land.
When talking about how to punish this, you have to consider what the opponent is going to do before landing. They can choose to throw an attack, air-dodge, or just land (this is another thing you can learn their tendencies with). There are a number of options for punishing this (and I’ll let you figure out your own), but my personal favorites are usmash and shield > grab or usmash/utilt. Usmash is a lasting, multi-hit attack that overprioritizes nearly any aerial in the game, but might whiff against an air-dodge, so I try to delay it so it would hit either option. This is fairly matchup-specific for me (I love it vs. chars like Mario). A shield > grab is a reliable punish to nearly all times that an opponent is in the air trying to land. The shield covers any aerials, and with good timing, the grab will connect while the opponent is in landing lag. The only exceptions I can currently think of are characters with an aerial that either (A) has no landing lag, (B) pushes you back too far and is too fast for us to spot dodge on reaction, or (C) comes out hitting you before your grab comes out (but after you have to start it… so a large aerial that has a very fast startup. The list of aerials that fall into one of those categories is pretty small. Shield drop > utilt is my new favorite way to punish things, so any time the opponent does a laggy short-ranged aerial on my shield…SHORYUKEN. This is a brainless on-reaction kill move to punish bad spacing on your opponent's part. I see no reason not to use it everytime you have time to. Shield > usmash is also very good (and has a benefit of hitting them if they land slightly behind you)
In order to guarantee a punish, be very aware of your opponent’s aerial movement speed, and follow with running shield. Some aerials are safe when spaced on shield, but YOU should be the one controlling spacing in this scenario. Another thing that a lot of people like more than I do is charging an fsmash in this scenario, then shooting when the shot will connect during the opponent’s lag. This actually does work, but I find it’s fairly risky if we slightly misjudge spacing, so I just don’t personally like it. It’s something to keep in mind though.
Now for multi-jump characters, or those with a non-helpless UpB, this process changes a bit, but the basics still apply, so just keep an open mind for various matchups. One pertinent thing I want to mention is how to play when WE are the ones landing (because seriously a blind falling fair is not the way to go onto a shield). Our UpB essentially means we don’t have to land (Up B + 2nd bounce on rush gives us our 2nd jump back…and another rush, so really we don’t ever have to land). Remember topic #1 here and realize that retreating with UpB is always better than just eating an attack or attacking a shield.
As a note, I didn't mention just jumping up there and hitting them, which is also applicable (be sure to bait the air-dodge). I'm not trying to say that's a lesser option, I just think there's more to talk about with landings.
By now, we have figured out that SH uair is a very nice tool for the "opponent above you" situation. Spaced correctly, it will either hit them, they will jump to avoid it, or they will airdodge through it. All three lead to negatives for them, so it's very nice. In the case of airdodge, you can then punish their landing with an usmash, etc. This is a great trap.
3. GRABBING IS AMAZING
Ok ok let me defend myself by saying using the same move over and over and over is usually not the best advice for any competitive setting (unless of course your opponent has the defensive capability of a lvl 9 CPU). But seriously Mega Man’s grab range is probably among the best in the game, and his throws are quite good as well. The range is enough to surprise opponents, and throws can lead to good situations all around. At low %, typically dthrow can combo or lead to more damage-giving moves. Then at high %, a throw off-stage generally leads to a very good edgeguarding position. Bthrow in particular can also kill at very high %’s, and throws at a low angle, which forces the opponent into a very difficult situation for recovering… especially when we have a plethora of space-covering projectiles to control where they can jump.
So setups for landing grabs…I already mentioned the landing punishes. Other setups include any time a downward-angled metal blade hits them, any time they are forced into shield by a crash bomb, roll punishes, or just a mixup from all the projectile spam.
Dthrow combos into turnaround full-hop bair against many characters at low %. This is a really good bread-n-butter low% combo that can lead to a 2nd bair + followups, so I recommend everybody to learn and practice this one. After a higher % or against lighter chars, dthrow still puts the opponent above you, which is a good situation for Mega Man (see point #2), so it’s still useful. Bthrow/fthrow offstage to setup an edgeguarding situation is pretty self-explanatory and something I’ll dive into later.
At mid %s, I really like dthrow > SH uair > usmash [if air dodge] - - 2nd uair [if jump or hit by first uair]
4. KILLING
Killing is an area that most people consider to be a weakness of Mega Man's.. more to come.
5. EDGE GUARDING
6. USEFUL SITUATIONS/COMBOS/ETC
7. OTHER USEFUL THREADS/VIDEOS/LINKS/ETC
More to come! Please let me know comments/complaints
Obviously as the OP a lot of this is going to be based on my opinions, but I’d like to have this as a discussion thread, and I’d like to keep the OP updated with the things that we find/agree on. For anybody who doesn’t know me, I’ve been in the competitive Smash scene through Melee (Fox main), Brawl (Fox main), PM (Link main), and now SSB4 (Mega main) since 2004. I was briefly power ranked in Melee in FL around 2006-7 (top 5 or so in Central FL) and am currently in the top 3 players in Melee/PM/SSB4 in SC. Only mentioning that to say that a lot of the opinions I’m going to list are completely coming from a tournament setting and based on anecdotal evidence. I’m not the most scientific player, so I’m going to MOSTLY stay away from frame discussion here. Instead, this is going to be more of a universal truths/tips thread.
With that said, LET’S GO! (deep breaths)
0. WHAT IS A ‘MEGA MAN’?
I almost didn’t include this section because a lot of this info is around the board, but I think it’s useful to orient this discussion correctly.
In essence, Mega Man is a mid-range zoning MONSTER. A common misconception is that he is a long-range projectile spamming character. He actually doesn’t do too well when playing like that in most matchups (mostly because our long-range projectiles aren’t hard to avoid). Your key strategy with him should be to use your projectiles to safely pester your opponent and force them into bad situations. Learn to love your pellets/buster shots/lemons and downward angled Metal Blades.
Additionally, Mega Man has very good disjointed aerials (all 4 of the directional aerials have uses). All of his smash attacks are strong, but have long cooldown, so you will get punished if you miss.
Mega has what I would call a “good enough” recovery. It’s punishable if you are not careful, but you can mix it up enough to get back most of the time. He’s also a heavy character, so you’ll be living for a while. He is a good edgeguarder.
He actually has a bit of trouble killing. This is not because of a lack of power, but rather because his kill moves are generally laggy/unsafe on miss. A big part of becoming a better Mega player is learning how to set up kills. I’ll have deep-dive sections about everything I have generalized in this paragraph later on. Now on with the tips.
1. LEARN TO EMBRACE THE IMPASSE
Ok there’s a reason this is #1 here. In my opinion, this is the most important thing to learn when transitioning into a competitive player, but especially as a Mega player. Mega Man is a very strong mid-range zoning character. Essentially this means that you are going to spend a large amount of time just outside of your opponent’s range, pestering them with projectiles and aerials. And a lot of the time, this can feel like you’re really not making progress. They will shield/dodge stuff, and you’ll be trying to increase their damage by 2% at a time. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU SHOULD CHANGE STRATEGIES.
If you are applying pressure and not getting punished for it, even if you are not currently doing much/any damage, you are making good progress in the matchup. Let me explain… every time you are in a situation where you can make your opponent feel unsafe, they will need to react to it in some way. Typically, people have a “go-to” defensive strategy that they will try until you catch on. For a lot of online players, this is rolling… other players will try to shield-grab… other players will just go aggro on you and throw out tons of attacks, etc. Each of these things is punishable in different ways… so by playing safe and allowing things to unfold, you are essentially learning what your opponent likes to do so you can punish it NEXT TIME.
One of the best examples I can give here is in the Rosalina matchup. I’m going to come right out and say we have literally 0 reason to NOT spam crash bomb in this matchup. If it hits Luma, it will instantly explode and usually hurt Rosa in the process, while applying ridiculous amounts of pressure to her. Now, she has a ‘counter’ to this with Down-B, where she negates the crash bomb. Thing is, this never hurts you, and doesn’t put her in any kind of a positive position. She just used a move to negate yours. Why at this point would you just not shoot another crash bomb and make her do it again? What you’re doing with this is training her to Down-B when you are in crash bomb distance. If at some point you decide to NOT shoot a crash bomb, I think you can see how some really good punishes can come if she Down-B’s when you don’t shoot (and her only response to this is to not Down-B, which opens up the pressure again). In this matchup, I turn into an artillery unit and wait for her to answer it with SH nair, etc, which are also punishable
So the takeaway here is to just LIVE FOR the moments where you are applying safe pressure and not getting punished for it. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE DOING DAMAGE TO HAVE A POSITIVE POSITION IN A MATCH. Don’t fall into rushing an opponent’s shield when they dodge a few shots.
2. PUNISH YOUR OPPONENT’S LANDINGS
A big thing in this game is that landing is fairly unsafe. Everything you do in the air is associated with SOME landing lag before you can shield/roll/etc. with the least lag given to just doing nothing (or landing after an attack autocancels). Most characters in the game have a 2nd jump and upB that leaves them helpless after, so I’m going to focus my discussion on those chars for now. You know going into these matchups that if you hit the opponent and they use their 2nd jump, they essentially have to land, go for the ledge, or UpB and then come down (mostly used as a YOLO attack to catch you off guard). Whatever they do, you should be there waiting for it, and throw out an attack to punish if they actually do land.
When talking about how to punish this, you have to consider what the opponent is going to do before landing. They can choose to throw an attack, air-dodge, or just land (this is another thing you can learn their tendencies with). There are a number of options for punishing this (and I’ll let you figure out your own), but my personal favorites are usmash and shield > grab or usmash/utilt. Usmash is a lasting, multi-hit attack that overprioritizes nearly any aerial in the game, but might whiff against an air-dodge, so I try to delay it so it would hit either option. This is fairly matchup-specific for me (I love it vs. chars like Mario). A shield > grab is a reliable punish to nearly all times that an opponent is in the air trying to land. The shield covers any aerials, and with good timing, the grab will connect while the opponent is in landing lag. The only exceptions I can currently think of are characters with an aerial that either (A) has no landing lag, (B) pushes you back too far and is too fast for us to spot dodge on reaction, or (C) comes out hitting you before your grab comes out (but after you have to start it… so a large aerial that has a very fast startup. The list of aerials that fall into one of those categories is pretty small. Shield drop > utilt is my new favorite way to punish things, so any time the opponent does a laggy short-ranged aerial on my shield…SHORYUKEN. This is a brainless on-reaction kill move to punish bad spacing on your opponent's part. I see no reason not to use it everytime you have time to. Shield > usmash is also very good (and has a benefit of hitting them if they land slightly behind you)
In order to guarantee a punish, be very aware of your opponent’s aerial movement speed, and follow with running shield. Some aerials are safe when spaced on shield, but YOU should be the one controlling spacing in this scenario. Another thing that a lot of people like more than I do is charging an fsmash in this scenario, then shooting when the shot will connect during the opponent’s lag. This actually does work, but I find it’s fairly risky if we slightly misjudge spacing, so I just don’t personally like it. It’s something to keep in mind though.
Now for multi-jump characters, or those with a non-helpless UpB, this process changes a bit, but the basics still apply, so just keep an open mind for various matchups. One pertinent thing I want to mention is how to play when WE are the ones landing (because seriously a blind falling fair is not the way to go onto a shield). Our UpB essentially means we don’t have to land (Up B + 2nd bounce on rush gives us our 2nd jump back…and another rush, so really we don’t ever have to land). Remember topic #1 here and realize that retreating with UpB is always better than just eating an attack or attacking a shield.
As a note, I didn't mention just jumping up there and hitting them, which is also applicable (be sure to bait the air-dodge). I'm not trying to say that's a lesser option, I just think there's more to talk about with landings.
By now, we have figured out that SH uair is a very nice tool for the "opponent above you" situation. Spaced correctly, it will either hit them, they will jump to avoid it, or they will airdodge through it. All three lead to negatives for them, so it's very nice. In the case of airdodge, you can then punish their landing with an usmash, etc. This is a great trap.
3. GRABBING IS AMAZING
Ok ok let me defend myself by saying using the same move over and over and over is usually not the best advice for any competitive setting (unless of course your opponent has the defensive capability of a lvl 9 CPU). But seriously Mega Man’s grab range is probably among the best in the game, and his throws are quite good as well. The range is enough to surprise opponents, and throws can lead to good situations all around. At low %, typically dthrow can combo or lead to more damage-giving moves. Then at high %, a throw off-stage generally leads to a very good edgeguarding position. Bthrow in particular can also kill at very high %’s, and throws at a low angle, which forces the opponent into a very difficult situation for recovering… especially when we have a plethora of space-covering projectiles to control where they can jump.
So setups for landing grabs…I already mentioned the landing punishes. Other setups include any time a downward-angled metal blade hits them, any time they are forced into shield by a crash bomb, roll punishes, or just a mixup from all the projectile spam.
Dthrow combos into turnaround full-hop bair against many characters at low %. This is a really good bread-n-butter low% combo that can lead to a 2nd bair + followups, so I recommend everybody to learn and practice this one. After a higher % or against lighter chars, dthrow still puts the opponent above you, which is a good situation for Mega Man (see point #2), so it’s still useful. Bthrow/fthrow offstage to setup an edgeguarding situation is pretty self-explanatory and something I’ll dive into later.
At mid %s, I really like dthrow > SH uair > usmash [if air dodge] - - 2nd uair [if jump or hit by first uair]
4. KILLING
Killing is an area that most people consider to be a weakness of Mega Man's.. more to come.
5. EDGE GUARDING
6. USEFUL SITUATIONS/COMBOS/ETC
7. OTHER USEFUL THREADS/VIDEOS/LINKS/ETC
More to come! Please let me know comments/complaints
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