Judge me and tell me how much I suck!

[S2rulL]

Aight, so at my recent regional monthly, I placed joint 7th in Melee (out of 16 players) and I was pretty proud of myself cus I came down to last game, last stock against a Peach player who I've struggled against since I started playing the Icies. Only one of my matches in Melee made it on stream however and it was against the best Melee player in our region, which can be found here.

So here's the things I know I did wrong:
-Mistimed both wobbles I got (though I can time it fairly consistently so I'm johning and putting it down to stream+tourney nerves).
-Not enough spacing with aerials/dsmash, too much fsmash.
-Too much time spent in shield and roll desyncing, not enough wavedashing.
(There'll be more but I'll it down to you guys to point out to me.)

What I did right? Tbh I dunno. I think my edgeguards and reads at certain moments were on point but I'd hope I did even slightly ok. Please judge and evaluate away and lemme know! Cheers!
-skrull.

 

[Cervidae]

Woah, our IC's are scarily similar. It's kinda cool.
A couple of things I noticed though:
1) DAir at low percents is not really a safe option against fast falling characters. It has it's uses like at 1:15 where you ledge cancel to get him to jump and snuff his approach with another DAir which was cool, but more often than not it looks like you're just throwing it out whenever you fall from platforms. It seemed like he picked up on that pretty quickly too.

2) Foxes' love their platforms. Watch how they approach you/juke you from them. Being able to limit their escape routes and points of entry on you really puts the momentum in your favor. For example, I noticed that this particular player likes to position you directly under the edge of a platform closest to the center and either does a walk-off back air or walk-off double jump to bait out a reaction then punish. This is a really popular offensive technique that I run into against Foxes. A well timed u-tilt or up air, or even a hard read into wavedash bair could help alleviate pressure from a Fox on a platform.

3) I know you already pointed it out, but desync blizzards aren't as effective against characters like Fox, Falco, or Captain Falcon as they are in many other match ups, especially if you walk away from Nana during her blizzard. This creates the perfect amount of space for Fox to aerial -> shine the climbers apart. Be ready for this kind of approach if you do go for a blizzard desync.

4) Fox should have died at 1:45. Taking ledge was crucial, since it would have covered illusion and would have forced him to go high with fire fox and be intercepted with a up-air into back-air combo if he had reacted fast enough. Every time you drop a kill you should mentally point it out to yourself and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Not a lot of characters like to outright approach the IC's, Fox being one of those characters. Be a little bit more aggressive and really focus on learning your opponent's favorite escape routes to deny them stage positioning. Try not to go for so many raw grabs and grabs out of shield and be really careful about whiffing them especially against a player who can react quick enough to punish you for it more often than not. Hopefully this is somewhat useful, I'm not all that good myself, but I've had some of my matches critiqued and a lot of points that people made about my play is mirrored in yours.

 

[DerfMidWest]

@ S2rulL
I only watched the first game so far, but here's what I noticed:

movement. Like, you can do it... but you could do it a lot faster.
You didn't have control of the stage.
ICs are stupid fast on the ground and with low platforms like yoshi's and stuff.
I'd recommend training with the singleplayer glitch in fixed camera mode. (or just 20xx it up if you roll that way I guess)

I do various drills on different stages.
pretty much just be able to move all over every stage real fast.

You fished for shield grabs a lot. Be careful with that. I do this sometimes as well. If you know you can get it, go for it, but decent spacies (and peaches lol) are pretty hard to shield grab most of the time. generally, it's best to force a knockdown and react to/read the tech options.

ledges. Really really work on ledge stuff.
I think it was the last kill where you just stood up and he fsmashed you. I'm not sure if that was an input error or just an incorrect option choice, but in that position, ledgedash dsmash or ftilt probably would have beat that out.

I'll watch the rest of the set later.

 

[SHIP]

To be honest throughout the game it looked like you took a very passive role throughout the game. Sitting in shield is not a good way to go about fighting the enemy unless they are super inconsistent at l cancel shining. In stead you should go for some more proactive options such as dash dance grab, wd jab/ ftilt, wd dsmash (which was the move that was responsible for the majority of your openings), spaced backairs and the occasional dash attack. If you can anticipate your opponents jumps you can also try to intercept them with an upair.
Whilst you defensive tactics did land you a few grabs for the most part roll blizzard alone is not particularly effective. In order to make use of it it would be a good idea to perform moves which cover nana whilst she blizzards such as ice block, ftilt or aerials. In order to blizzard an opponent who is aware enough to avoid the roll blizzard try dash dance blizzard or the nanapult instead.

As you said you edgeguarding needs improvement, while smashes can be effective at edgeguarding just throwing them out or charging them isn't really the correct way to be using them. You usually have time for a space animal to commit to an option before you have to act. So when they begin to side b on stage or to the ledge dsmash will cover it. When they upB typically both fsmash and dsmash can cover both onstage and ledge recoveries although if they go high it will miss. If you have some time while waiting for them to commit to an option you could spotdodge and have nana blizzard to make things a little easier for yourself.

Another point that should be made is that you need to protect your nana. Be ready to upB at a moments notice in order to save her from foxes shine spiking. And if you realise that you cannot save her try to make sure you can prevent fox from returning to the stage.

On what you did right:
You did a fairly good job of getting back down to the ground
You escaped some up throw up airs
You did a good job of converting damage and kills off of stray hits
Often managed to escape unharmed when forced to recover with side b

While I'm not fantastic myself I can put a moderate amount of hurt on spacies with my ICs. If you make it to one of the more southern UK tournaments I will try to show you some stuff (or get a better climber main to do so).

 

[Nana Saves Popo]

Video unavailable?