Losing and don't know why

[Hawkins]

hey everybody! im a marth main who's fairly new to the smash scene, been doing this for a few months now and i really love the game. but i really really hate losing. i know nobody like losing, so thats not really news. i also know that i cant realistically expect to come in after a few months and compete with people who have been doing this for years. so its not really losing that bugs me so much as the fact that i just dont know why im losing.
its not like i dont try to do things, its just that they dont seem to work!

i dashdance, and i get hit out of it. i try to come in and hit them, and they just arent there anymore. i get a grab, and i just cant get anything off of it. i get hit, and i become a part of somebodys combo video. if i get somebody on the platform above me, i swing and hit their shield and they drop through and hit me. if im on the platform abve somebody, no matter what i try do to i get hit. my recovery just gets gimped over and over so easily. everything i try to do is just a fraction of a second too late, or just barely misspaced.

maybe most anoying of all, it seems like jump, roll, and spotdodge beat literally everything i try to do. i try to swing, they just arent there, and then im getting comboed.

this is frustrating the living hell out of me, but i just dont have any idea how to fix it. i mean i practice my tech skill (which i know is not good) but i really dont feel like thats the problem. I mean im obviously no expert, but i feel like even if my movement was perfectly smooth in practice and i hit every ledgehop, waveland, and L-cancel, i would still get bodied.

i really think its a mental problem. im just looking at the game all wrong, like im still trying to play the game against players the same way i would play against the computer. how do i fix that? i know how to practice tech skill, i have no idea how to practice changing the entire way i play and look at the game.

this might sound like a very vague post and im sorry about that, but im just really pissed off that im getting bodied by players who i dont even feel like are significantly better than i am and that i try to play the way i see pros play and nothing i try to do works.

any advice you guys could give me would be much appreciated!

 

[ThunderCat]

Hey dude I really dig your outlook on losing and wanting to improve! You definitely have the right attitude. Do you have matches recorded and have you tried the character specific forums? Try and see if other Marth players can critique your playstyle. It helped me.

 

[pagedMov]

It seems like you're having problems in neutral, which is a glaring issue that a lot of new players face. If you're getting hit out of your dashdances, just look at what you got hit by and find a way to counteract it the next time you're dashdancing. If you're getting comboed into oblivion, try mixing up your DI. If you held in the last time and died, try holding outward or upward, and vice versa. Basically, if you find that you're being punished for something, do it differently the next time. That's the best way to improve, honestly.
If you're having trouble in the mental game, the only good way to get better at it is with experience. Any time you play against another real player, attempt to read them in every way possible. This includes, but is not limited to, ledge option habits, oos option habits, neutral movement habits, and DI habits among other things. Any time you see them do anything, make a mental note of it and the next time you see that situation arise again, try to exploit it.
Always keep in mind that tech skill =/= Melee skill. Technical ability is only a part of what makes a good Melee player actually good.

 

[Xyzz]

but i really really hate losing.

try to see those as lessons. Sure, the end goal is to win every match, but on the way, we gotta accept that there's people better than us, and we still have to learn how to beat what they're doing

maybe most anoying of all, it seems like jump, roll, and spotdodge beat literally everything i try to do. i try to swing, they just arent there, and then im getting comboed. [...]I mean im obviously no expert, but i feel like even if my movement was perfectly smooth in practice and i hit every ledgehop, waveland, and L-cancel, i would still get bodied.

This is a very good observation. Tech skill is nice to have, but what's ultimately going to win you games is a lot more mental than pressing buttons. Not being where your opponent is going to hit is an easy ticket to a free combo for you. If you notice they spotdodge out of your approaches, you should delay whatever you're doing a bit and hit them during that vulnerability. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfBuAo_Bfvw probably still one of the best introductions to spacing and the neutral game.

but im just really pissed off that im getting bodied by players who i dont even feel like are significantly better than i am

this is not a good observation. If they're winning they're better than you are. They might not be more technical than you are, but that's not important. The game only knows win and loss, not how you got there.

 

[Stride]

You're not understanding what's going on because you're not looking at things closely nor specifically enough, and you're not distinguishing between different causes of the same results. You don't "just" get hit, or fail to hit your opponent, or anything else; there's a specific cause and effect to every action, even if the contributing factors and number of intermediate steps can be numerous and complex. You're only noticing the basic intent behind your action and the very end result of the action; not everything else (which you need to notice in order to make meaningful adaptions).

Take this example:

i try to come in and hit them, and they just arent there anymore.

Yes, that describes what is happening on some level, but there's so much more to it than that. First of all: you didn't just move in and hit them; you moved in a certain way at a certain timing, used a certain attack, with a certain positioning, and so on. Second of all: your opponent didn't just magically get out of the way, nor automatically know to do so; they made the decision to move away, for certain reasons. What details are you missing?

You can't really solve the problem on the level you're thinking of it on, because you don't have a line of reasoning to follow to reach a meaningful conclusion. There are a million different reasons why your opponent's response to your action of "move in and attack" could be to "not be there anymore" (not to mention the number of meaningfully different ways it could play out), and if you don't consider the problem in more detail then you'll have no idea which one it is. Therefore you won't have any way of knowing what causes you to succeed or fail, and hence won't have any way of knowing when you're doing something right and when you're doing something wrong. You need to be specific; identify the situation, break it down, understand what goes into that situation, and determine specific adaptions to make from that. Don't just think "attack"; think "attack with this option, at this spacing, for this reason, with these factors affecting the possible actions in these ways (and so on)".

 

[Dolla Pills]

If you could get us a video of your play that would actually be very helpful. What you're talking about is extremely complex, but if you show us your play we can give you some concrete examples of how to think in neutral by looking at decisions you/your opponents made.

 

[Modesty]

Melee, like anything competitive is as much mental as anything else. It's more about what your opponent does than what you do. Lets face it, any idiot off of the street could do even the most difficult techs with enough practice. The game is far more about figuring out your opponents game plan, and countering it. As you admitted your post is fairly vague so it's hard to give you any real advice other than to watch your previous matchups and figure out what you are doing wrong. That's by no means an easy task, but melee is not an easy game to be good at.

 

[zero sum]

i mean, this is hard. my initiation to the scene was with someone who's taken sets off of several top 100 players and who would probably be top 5 on my region's if he bothered going to more tournaments, along with another player vastly better than me. learning how to play melee is really difficult and losing sucks especially when you don't know what you're doing wrong.

to me it sounds like you're having difficulty baiting things out from your opponents. if you're dash dancing and frequently getting hit out of it, i'd guess that you either aren't anticipating an attack aren't positioning yourself well enough to react to an attack. if you haven't already, i'd recommend that you watch these two videos: spacing tutorial, reading comprehension. i think that it'd be helpful to watch these since i think they give you a good idea of the purpose your movement should serve. they're both fairly short and i think they should help you a lot. re: the dropped punishes, i think you'll learn how to hit things like that with more practice. it's all a matter of muscle memory. for example, at first i couldn't hit uthrow uair on away DI against marth players, but after grinding it out i hit it almost every time. getting punishes off grabs is something that you just need to grind out

also recommended viewing: smash practice's video ‘movement and intention’. at an hour and a half it's very long but it's an excellent resource if you're completely lost as to what you should be thinking about when you're moving. imo it's also much clearer than the hmw tutorials and i'd encourage you to set aside some time to watch the video. if you can't watch it all in one sitting then i'd definitely recommend setting aside blocks of time to finish it. this video was probably the biggest impetus for my improvement in the past ~3 months, along with considerable practice and note-taking on matches.

that being said, it's difficult to give you advice when you don't have (or at least haven't given) any footage of you playing against your friends. maybe ask people when you play them what they're catching you out of?

 

[Hawkins]

Hey everybody, thanks a ton for the advice. the videos you've recommended actually seem super helpful. i'll start to try looking at things the way it talks about them, being aware of potential actions my opponent can take at a given moment and spacing. i definitely need to just try in my mind to slow down and think a lot more critically about what im doing and why and what my opponent is doing and why. thats a tough thing to do because Melee is really fast, but the ability to do that will come with time and practice i assume.

people brought up what i said about dash-dancing and i think its correct that im moving but im not sure exactly what im trying to accomplish. as i understand it, the general goal is to try to bait the opponent into making an unsafe attack or approach that whiffs and i punish.

here's a video of my play. I know the quality isn't great or anything but at the moment its the only video i have. i'll try to get another here in the next day or two if you guys would like.

the video may not be the greatest example of what i've been talking about but like i said, its all i have at the moment. this was several months ago and i've noticed a few things about my play since then and im trying to fix them. one of my bad habits is rolling from the ledge. i did it all the time and right now im really trying to work on my ledgehop aerials and mixing up the different options.
another bad habit is dash attacking as an approach. my two problems with that are 1) a lot of the time its a controller flub and what im trying to do is run up dtilt. 2) im not totally sure what else to do. grab maybe? SHFFL fair seems unsafe but maybe im wrong? but this is more of a character specific thing so maybe ill take that to the marth specific forum.

anyways have a watch and tell me what you think. i know it isnt pretty but then if it was, i suppose i wouldnt be asking for help.

enormous thanks again to everyone who is taking the time to help me out.

 

[MurphyPrime]

You actually start off the match with a nice sequence where you get like 30% or so. But there are a bunch of things you could work on (we've all been there). I'm not super great at the Marth vs. Peach match up so I'm going to just point out a few of important things I noticed:

1. (0:09) You really didn't need to do that f-smash, but it could have worked with better timing. All you need to do is dtilt to cover her parasol. At that percent the fsmash would send her up such that she could recover potentially. The uber pro strategy would be to dash dance>waveland onto the edge once you got her into parasol. But constant dtilt-ing would have worked too if you time it right..

2. (0:33) She was in such a bad situation. All you needed to do was wait for her to try and move in, then punish via f-tilt if she went higher, or d-tilt if she went low. Up-tilting put you in too much lag to properly punish.

3. (1:26) The peach was using Dash dancing more so how you should. But the dash dance made her commit to covering roll in our tech in place/get up attack. Using roll away would have got you out of this.

4. (1:33) Bad dash dancing, since you dash danced too close and couldn't react to get out off the way. You have to respect the opponent's range.

5. (2:15) Why neutral special? Just wait and grab where she goes. You can dash dance out side her attack range and just grab where she goes if she rolls/gets up. Shield Breaker was not a good option.

6. (2:29) That was a good dash dance to avoid the dash attack and punish.

7.(3:02) Charging your shield breaker limited your options. Not great coverage option. When she got onto the stage she did a risky down smash, which you could have punished by doing the dash dance closer to her (obviously not in range of the attack though).

That's my two cents anyway. I'm not the most experienced Marth player, so hopefully others can further help/correct if I said something wrong. Just keep watching vids/practicing your tech/fighting players. You'll get there.

 

[Xyzz]

people brought up what i said about dash-dancing and i think its correct that im moving but im not sure exactly what im trying to accomplish. as i understand it, the general goal is to try to bait the opponent into making an unsafe attack or approach that whiffs and i punish.

another bad habit is dash attacking as an approach. my two problems with that are 1) a lot of the time its a controller flub and what im trying to do is run up dtilt. 2) im not totally sure what else to do. grab maybe? SHFFL fair seems unsafe but maybe im wrong? but this is more of a character specific thing so maybe ill take that to the marth specific forum.

Regarding dash dancing: Yeah, that's the general idea. But, it's one of the easiest techniques to learn, yet one of the hardest to actually implement. Dash dancing for the sake of it, isn't accomplishing much (makes life a little harder for your opponent, because even a predictably moving target is harder to hit than a stationary one). Dash dancing will only get your opponent to throw out moves if you do it correctly. That is, your dash dance needs to be threatening. Your opponent needs to wonder whether you're going to attack/grab him, or are just going to run away again. And you need to consider what he can do to you at your current spacing, that you can't react to in time. In the case of playing Marth, you usually outrange your opponent quite a bit, make sure that you don't run into his threatened space, but still keep at a distance where he isn't comfortable. (Say, you're never within a dash attack range of Peach, but don't go away so far that she has the time to pull turnips.)

Regarding approaches with Marth: Marth isn't a character that generally does a whole lot of that. You usually want to punish him for whiffing moves you baited / forced out with your movement. That being said, you still have some things you can do, if you feel like it's beneficial to turn up the heat a bit. Dash > crouch > dtilt is indeed a very good option. It's super fast, both in startup and endlag, and the range is really good. So you're rather safe doing it. Most opponents can't deal with it staying grounded, and that is what you generally want to accomplish with it. Make them jump. Marth's air to air or ground to air game is really strong. Fairs, uptilt, sometimes fsmash are really strong once you've gotten your opponent to jump a lot. Grab isn't really an approach, it's more a punish for them whiffing something, or the reward for you conditioning them to shield at certain spots. Correctly spaced fairs are rather safe on shield, so you can sometimes get away with them, so if you consider that an approach there's that. To me an approach is more along the lines of a spacie who really just tries to get in on his opponent and then goes to town... which isn't really happening all that much for Marth

 

[Diosama]

Hey everybody, thanks a ton for the advice. the videos you've recommended actually seem super helpful. i'll start to try looking at things the way it talks about them, being aware of potential actions my opponent can take at a given moment and spacing. i definitely need to just try in my mind to slow down and think a lot more critically about what im doing and why and what my opponent is doing and why. thats a tough thing to do because Melee is really fast, but the ability to do that will come with time and practice i assume.

people brought up what i said about dash-dancing and i think its correct that im moving but im not sure exactly what im trying to accomplish. as i understand it, the general goal is to try to bait the opponent into making an unsafe attack or approach that whiffs and i punish.

here's a video of my play. I know the quality isn't great or anything but at the moment its the only video i have. i'll try to get another here in the next day or two if you guys would like.

the video may not be the greatest example of what i've been talking about but like i said, its all i have at the moment. this was several months ago and i've noticed a few things about my play since then and im trying to fix them. one of my bad habits is rolling from the ledge. i did it all the time and right now im really trying to work on my ledgehop aerials and mixing up the different options.
another bad habit is dash attacking as an approach. my two problems with that are 1) a lot of the time its a controller flub and what im trying to do is run up dtilt. 2) im not totally sure what else to do. grab maybe? SHFFL fair seems unsafe but maybe im wrong? but this is more of a character specific thing so maybe ill take that to the marth specific forum.

anyways have a watch and tell me what you think. i know it isnt pretty but then if it was, i suppose i wouldnt be asking for help.

enormous thanks again to everyone who is taking the time to help me out.

You don't give yourself enough credit. You're not that bad. Just try to get your shield up faster.

 

[Bones0]

It's awesome that so many people are offering advice, and listening to others who know what they're talking about and have already experienced and solved the problems you are going through is by far the quickest way to improve. However, I'd just like to point out that good problem solving and crticial thinking mindsets are critical to improvement. The first thing you have to do is identify a problem. Most people, sadly enough, get stuck at this point. They may not identify a problem at all and just try random stuff. Sometimes that random stuff works, but without understanding why, you're only setting yourself up for more confusion and failure in the future. People also like to generalize their problems into statements like "I just can't beat X character" or "Player Y is just better/lucky". These are poor ways of articulating problems unless you like losing and feeling sorry for yourself. If you meet a player who seems like they are consantly in a character crisis, chances are they suck at problem solving. They don't understand the dynamics of their in-game interactions, so they'd rather just change characters and hope it avoids the problem. I'm as guilty of doing this as just about anyone.

The next step is generally to theorycraft. Come up with an idea that may fix the problem. A lot of people get stuck here as well. They are so focused on getting the perfect answer to a problem that they freeze up and don't try anything at all. You can try just about anything and learn something, so don't be afraid to abuse trial and error. But also keep in mind Melee is a very open and dynamic game. You can't try EVERYTHING like you can in games that have less competitive depth, such as tic-tac-toe, which is so shallow you can actually devise a flowchart to never lose. Especially when you are first starting out, your intuition about how to solve problems is not going to be very good. You have no patterns to base your theories off of, so you're basically shooting in the dark. Once you get better, you will have experience with using certain tools to solve many different problems.

An example of problem solving tools is adjusting your move choice. A very pure example of adaption is Armada's use of Fox's dtilt vs. Hbox's ledge camping. Armada didn't look at the scenario and instantly realize dtilt was the solution, he thought about the problem ("Hbox is on the ledge where I can't easily hit him") and considered how one of his many tools (move choice) could give him a solution. In narrowing down his focus, it became much easier to look through all of Fox's moves to see which ones might be best suited for dealing with a Puff on the ledge. I am willing to bet Armada did not have to spend a very long time thinking about the problem at home before coming up with dtilt as a solution because he has experienced so many situations throughout his career where adjusting his move choice allowed him to effectively deal with certain strategies. Indeed, in most cases, pros are able to problem solve on the fly. They can encounter a strategy they've never seen before and intuitively understand what they can change to achieve a desired effect. This skill, I fear, is very undervalued by Melee players compared to things like tech skill because of how far players can get at low levels with autopilot gameplay.

Lastly, I'll leave you with an AMAZING video by Day[9] who is a Starcraft player, but also generally knowledgeable about how to gain knowledge and improve. There are 4 parts. The problem solving bit doesn't come until later, but they're so helpful you should just watch all of them:

 

[KムエN]

Disregard this.

 

[MattLib]

What year did you start playing competitively?
If the answer is 2015, then you can't really complain about not winning

 

[Hawkins]

What year did you start playing competitively?
If the answer is 2015, then you can't really complain about not winning

Yeah i did start this year. And like i said in my opening post, i don't really expect to beat people who have been doing this for forever, that isn't really why i'm here asking for help. What it is is that i think i have a real mental problem with looking at the game in the wrong way and so i dont really know what to try to do to improve. being able to compete with those people will come with time i'm sure. (how much time is an interesting question, but just like medicine commercials, im sure results may vary). i just want to know the right way of looking at the game so i know why im losing and what to work on and look at beyond the simple "get better tech skill"

You don't give yourself enough credit. You're not that bad. Just try to get your shield up faster.

Thanks man! a little encouragement helps! and i will try to work on that shield for sure.

You actually start off the match with a nice sequence where you get like 30% or so. But there are a bunch of things you could work on (we've all been there). I'm not super great at the Marth vs. Peach match up so I'm going to just point out a few of important things I noticed:

1. (0:09) You really didn't need to do that f-smash, but it could have worked with better timing. All you need to do is dtilt to cover her parasol. At that percent the fsmash would send her up such that she could recover potentially. The uber pro strategy would be to dash dance>waveland onto the edge once you got her into parasol. But constant dtilt-ing would have worked too if you time it right..

2. (0:33) She was in such a bad situation. All you needed to do was wait for her to try and move in, then punish via f-tilt if she went higher, or d-tilt if she went low. Up-tilting put you in too much lag to properly punish.

3. (1:26) The peach was using Dash dancing more so how you should. But the dash dance made her commit to covering roll in our tech in place/get up attack. Using roll away would have got you out of this.

4. (1:33) Bad dash dancing, since you dash danced too close and couldn't react to get out off the way. You have to respect the opponent's range.

5. (2:15) Why neutral special? Just wait and grab where she goes. You can dash dance out side her attack range and just grab where she goes if she rolls/gets up. Shield Breaker was not a good option.

6. (2:29) That was a good dash dance to avoid the dash attack and punish.

7.(3:02) Charging your shield breaker limited your options. Not great coverage option. When she got onto the stage she did a risky down smash, which you could have punished by doing the dash dance closer to her (obviously not in range of the attack though).

That's my two cents anyway. I'm not the most experienced Marth player, so hopefully others can further help/correct if I said something wrong. Just keep watching vids/practicing your tech/fighting players. You'll get there.

Thanks for the break down! I appreciate the time you put into it. you noted several poor neutral-b usages in there and i agree, it's not a great option. I agree that grab is better, at least in theory, but i have a hard time getting strong followups on grabs against anybody, much less peach. so i guess the impulse there is to take what damage i can get and swat her away. but again, i see your point. it's been some time since this match and hopefully i've improved and some of the other things would be less of a problem now. f-smashes though, those i know are still a problem. theyre just so tempting because you can finally get something satisfying instead of little tilts where you get no breathing room and they often fell like they have such a small reward. *sigh* still, thats no excuse for choosing a dumb option

Regarding dash dancing: Yeah, that's the general idea. But, it's one of the easiest techniques to learn, yet one of the hardest to actually implement. Dash dancing for the sake of it, isn't accomplishing much (makes life a little harder for your opponent, because even a predictably moving target is harder to hit than a stationary one). Dash dancing will only get your opponent to throw out moves if you do it correctly. That is, your dash dance needs to be threatening. Your opponent needs to wonder whether you're going to attack/grab him, or are just going to run away again. And you need to consider what he can do to you at your current spacing, that you can't react to in time. In the case of playing Marth, you usually outrange your opponent quite a bit, make sure that you don't run into his threatened space, but still keep at a distance where he isn't comfortable. (Say, you're never within a dash attack range of Peach, but don't go away so far that she has the time to pull turnips.)

Regarding approaches with Marth: Marth isn't a character that generally does a whole lot of that. You usually want to punish him for whiffing moves you baited / forced out with your movement. That being said, you still have some things you can do, if you feel like it's beneficial to turn up the heat a bit. Dash > crouch > dtilt is indeed a very good option. It's super fast, both in startup and endlag, and the range is really good. So you're rather safe doing it. Most opponents can't deal with it staying grounded, and that is what you generally want to accomplish with it. Make them jump. Marth's air to air or ground to air game is really strong. Fairs, uptilt, sometimes fsmash are really strong once you've gotten your opponent to jump a lot. Grab isn't really an approach, it's more a punish for them whiffing something, or the reward for you conditioning them to shield at certain spots. Correctly spaced fairs are rather safe on shield, so you can sometimes get away with them, so if you consider that an approach there's that. To me an approach is more along the lines of a spacie who really just tries to get in on his opponent and then goes to town... which isn't really happening all that much for Marth

Hey thanks for the advice man! your advice about dash-dancing and spacing is super helpful. i'm realizing that that is one of my major weak points, not being mindful of what my opponents immediate range and options are and not using my movement to force them to respect my own. that's something i haven't been thinking about in my matches that i will absolutely try to do better moving forwards. i'll also remember to resist the urge to approach in favor of forcing whiffs with what will hopefully one day be uber slick PPMD-ish dash-dance movement skills
as for forcing my opponent to jump, i totally see how Marth is very good at both forcing and punishing jumps. his moveset excells at that. unfortunately, i do not. much as having an opponent above me sounds like a good thing, i lose in such situations more often than not. when, for instance, i have a spacie, Sheik or C. Falcon above me, i will eat a down-air. i of course try to swing with up-tilts to stuff them coming down, but i am either too slow, or they simply double jump and then come get me. if they're on a platform, they'll just shield and then drop through and hit me with a back-air or some such. when i try to wait out the double jump, it doesnt come and i'm getting stomped while i stand there like a fool. any advice on how to deal with this? i know that this is really Marth's bread and butter staple, keeping people above him. how do other people pull it off without getting beat the way i do?

It's awesome that so many people are offering advice, and listening to others who know what they're talking about and have already experienced and solved the problems you are going through is by far the quickest way to improve. However, I'd just like to point out that good problem solving and crticial thinking mindsets are critical to improvement. The first thing you have to do is identify a problem. Most people, sadly enough, get stuck at this point. They may not identify a problem at all and just try random stuff. Sometimes that random stuff works, but without understanding why, you're only setting yourself up for more confusion and failure in the future. People also like to generalize their problems into statements like "I just can't beat X character" or "Player Y is just better/lucky". These are poor ways of articulating problems unless you like losing and feeling sorry for yourself. If you meet a player who seems like they are consantly in a character crisis, chances are they suck at problem solving. They don't understand the dynamics of their in-game interactions, so they'd rather just change characters and hope it avoids the problem. I'm as guilty of doing this as just about anyone.

The next step is generally to theorycraft. Come up with an idea that may fix the problem. A lot of people get stuck here as well. They are so focused on getting the perfect answer to a problem that they freeze up and don't try anything at all. You can try just about anything and learn something, so don't be afraid to abuse trial and error. But also keep in mind Melee is a very open and dynamic game. You can't try EVERYTHING like you can in games that have less competitive depth, such as tic-tac-toe, which is so shallow you can actually devise a flowchart to never lose. Especially when you are first starting out, your intuition about how to solve problems is not going to be very good. You have no patterns to base your theories off of, so you're basically shooting in the dark. Once you get better, you will have experience with using certain tools to solve many different problems.

An example of problem solving tools is adjusting your move choice. A very pure example of adaption is Armada's use of Fox's dtilt vs. Hbox's ledge camping. Armada didn't look at the scenario and instantly realize dtilt was the solution, he thought about the problem ("Hbox is on the ledge where I can't easily hit him") and considered how one of his many tools (move choice) could give him a solution. In narrowing down his focus, it became much easier to look through all of Fox's moves to see which ones might be best suited for dealing with a Puff on the ledge. I am willing to bet Armada did not have to spend a very long time thinking about the problem at home before coming up with dtilt as a solution because he has experienced so many situations throughout his career where adjusting his move choice allowed him to effectively deal with certain strategies. Indeed, in most cases, pros are able to problem solve on the fly. They can encounter a strategy they've never seen before and intuitively understand what they can change to achieve a desired effect. This skill, I fear, is very undervalued by Melee players compared to things like tech skill because of how far players can get at low levels with autopilot gameplay.

Lastly, I'll leave you with an AMAZING video by Day[9] who is a Starcraft player, but also generally knowledgeable about how to gain knowledge and improve. There are 4 parts. The problem solving bit doesn't come until later, but they're so helpful you should just watch all of them:

Thank you for the reply! I really appreciate it. I'll definitely give that video a good watch. Not to worry in terms of getting the urge to switch characters as a solution to problems. I love Marth and i've always felt that the problem isn't marth, it's me. Besides that, i'm definitely more of a "stick to your guns in the face of all logic" kind of personality. come to think of it, thats probably a significant part of the reason i'm here asking for help haha! too stubborn to change in the moment i suppose. ehh. i'll deal with it. haha!
on a more serious note, identifying the problem is really where im stuck and why i'm here. i know that i'm losing (obviously) and that the options i am trying to do either are not doing what i want them to do, or whiffing/getting stuffed before they happen. but the deeper reason why what i'm doing isnt working escapes me. i think a lot of what everyone in this thread has been so kind to share with me will significantly with that if i give it time and intelligent effort. hopefully, once i'm better at identifying specific problems, i can really implement the theorycrafting bit you suggested, using Armada as a wonderful example. how would you recommend trying to make adaptations on the fly at my level? i see how what you are suggesting applies to the top levels of play, but how should I try to make use of it?

Disregard this.

Well, i mean, if you insist.

Once again, my sincere thanks to everyone who has taken time to help me out with this. All of your advice has been kindly offered, hugely helpful, and much appreciated.