The Dilemma with Mario's Combos

[HeroMystic]

Lets get one thing out of the way, the notion that Mario's combos are percent-specific is true.

After labbing with Mario nearly all of yesterday, I've found some very interesting combos I wanted to try out, but found this more difficult to do thanks to the fact that these combos can only happen certain ranges. For instance:

D-throw > U-air > N-air is a combo that gives 20% damage and gives you a strong position to follow-up with U-air > U-air > Up-B for 26% to 31% damage (if you land all hits with Up-B it's 31%), giving 51% total.
At 90%, D-throw (or D-tilt) > U-air > F-air is a true combo and deals 26% and is a guaranteed spike if positioned correctly.

Using these on Diddy, these combos worked at roughly 50-65%, and 90-100% respectively. If they go any higher then Diddy popped up too high to deal these combos, and that's an issue for Mario in general.

But then lets factor in rage. Ideally, rage allows Mario to deal these combos sooner, which on paper is a good idea. However, when the ability to deal these combos are so percent-specific, suddenly Mario runs into the issue of possibly losing the ability to use these combos if Mario takes too much damage. For instance, if I have Diddy at 60%, Ideally I'd want to do the N-air finisher, but if Mario jumps from 30% to 90% in damage, this combo would no longer be valid.

Then we have to factor in DI, staleness, and character specifics... and suddenly I've come to the realization that Mario's combos are extremely wonky due to so many factors that messes them up, unlike Sheik, Luigi, or ZSS whom have the air speed, hitstun, and IASA frames minimizing or even negating these issues.

I also believe multiple characters have these issues as well, namely Ike and Bowser Jr which I know for a fact.

 

[Nd_KakaKhakis]

And its not only how finnicky Mario's combos are but also how absolutely crucial it is for Mario to maximize his damage out of throws. If you're getting 60% off of a first hit you're probably chilling and winning in a 2 stock match. If you get that opportunity and only get 20% or so then you have to get in again and against an opponent with good neutral that can prove difficult.

I feel though that the joy of this character comes from getting a grab with mario and then trying to get the read on my opponent to maximize my damage output. Which direction will they DI, do I have to bait out a counter or a nair? I rarely think about Rage and Staleness but those surely can factor in to your advantage (or probably disadvantage)

If people would be interested I'd love to go through the whole cast and try out specific combos to see how far you can go and at what percentage ranges these combos work.

I think a useful starting point would be downthrow into uptilt. At what percentage does this string true combo and how many uptilts can you get on each member of the cast? Then from there I'd love to lab it up and search for the character-specific nature of other combos. For example I know upthrow into dair into fair works on Diddy but I've never done it successfully on any member of the cast.

 

[A2ZOMG]

This is half the reason why EJP is so good in several matchups...easy hit confirm from D-throw that works at a very large percent range and does like 27% and can be even viably be used as a KO confirm. You basically get to throw out all the complications of Mario's combo game and get all the reward and then some in a single move that doesn't even hurt your recovery by a very huge amount once you factor that Custom Capes pick up the slack.

Some things I try to do to make Mario's combo game easier on myself is remembering that certain characters I can U-throw U-smash at 0 (generally fastfallers) which then puts them at a percent range where the rest of Mario's combo game links properly. I'm also generally speaking fine with the reward on B-throw and F-throw in this game. One thing we rarely talk about that's especially good about F-throw is the fact that it has virtually no ending lag, which technically allows us to combo into DA at low percents for 16% (could be character dependent, F-throw against walls however gets you really good combos), but more importantly puts Mario in a more favorable than normal positional advantage in mid% edgeguard situations. There's a reason why back in Brawl I went nuts about F-throw-> Fireball.

I don't really like thinking very hard about Mario's combo game personally. I've already done more than enough of that in the past being a nut about knowing when it's optimal to U-tilt people and other things. Nowadays I just go for simple stuff where I know it's applicable, and when I see big punish opportunities, I remember that whiff punishing with F-air is often better than trying Mario's conventional combo game (14-15% and the trap setups you can create when your opponent misses the tech don't require a lot of thought or execution).

 

[HeroMystic]

I will say the goal of my labbing is finding out how to make Mario's neutral game better. It's very obvious by this point that this game is going to be all about how often a character can beat another character in neutral and also factor in how much reward you can get out of hit confirm.

However, I also feel that maximizing our advantageous state is very important for when we do get hit confirm. So when I found the stated combos above, I spent the day perfecting that in training mode, only to find out the problems I've stated before in real matches.

So personally, I feel both are important. @ Nd_KakaKhakis , if you feel up for it, feel free to make a list. Your work would be greatly appreciated.