Advancing the Mewtwo Meta Game

[Deleted member 212841]

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[ihasabuket]

Can we talk about Marth sheild for a second? As silly as it is, sheild grab is actually really obnoxious because Marth's reaching arms lets him snatch Mewtwo whenever he does a wd in dtilt thanks to the latent momentum from the wd. You could wait til you stop slidong forward but that just slows down the whole motion and guves more time for Marth to react. I've been trying to think of workarounds but coming up drier than I'd like. (wd grab, cross up aerials and???) Hopefully you guys are better at creative problem solving than I am. Best I can come up with is being less wavedashy and instead use tight tight dd with run canceled dtilt I guess? (might be answer since dashing lets me block instantly at any point marth decides to swing + lean forward dash animation helps with dtilt)

Well pivot dtilt would be best as it makes the mixup between shielding, grabing, and dtilt more ambiguous.

 

[ChivalRuse]

? Both achieve essentially the same thing except the it takes longer to stop yourself from moving forward by wd down instead of just waiting for you to stop moving forward. I'd understand the idea for Luigi since he keeps sliding for years but that's not the case with Mewtwo.

Since I don't have access to recording equipment atm, I'll draw a diagram in paint to illustrate the situation. I attached it to this post.

Upon further reflection, baby shadow ball is a good way to trump most if not all of Marth's defensive options. The issue I see with it, though, is that Marth would have to be giving you excessive amounts of space. What does Mewtwo have to stop Marth from giving the peach treatment? (ie camp close enough that you can't get your projectile out)

Well, Mewtwo doesn't have Peach's dash attack or instant float cancelled nair. The best hitboxes you can really throw out to threaten Marth's space is a running SH nair right? Tight dash dances followed by grab, nair, or running d-tilt seem like the safest options if you use them on reaction to Marth's actions as well as you can.

 

[Deleted member 212841]

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[ChivalRuse]

In theory, if you empty jump and see Marth wavedash in to punish your landing, you can just up-b and land behind him. You can also do a DJC disable or near-to-the-ground confusion to throw a wrench in his plans. If he doesn't wavedash in or charge in with a dash fair / d-tilt, you can simply throw a baby shadow ball and assess the position from there.

 

[Deleted member 212841]

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[ChivalRuse]

Good Marth players will intentionally whiff moves to bait you in. They'll throw out safe SHFFL fairs and nairs in place, etc. Occasionally, though, they will do something risky and that is potentially something you can react to. Now, if they wavedash in and f-smash, you have to be semi reading it to do anything about it, unless you're already in shield of course.

 

[SuperShus]

charge shadow ball if he's sitting in shield
mix up wd late dtilt and wd up wd back, and wd up dash grab

 

[MookieRah]

So apparently there is a lot of Marth discussion going on here in the span of time between when I last got on and now. Some of the problems being discussed I haven't really encountered. Marth is a wierd matchup and I think I'm fairly good at it, but a lot of what I do is more instinctual response and quick decisions based on the circumstance, so it's kinda hard to talk about a lot of solutions I've found because it's largely just understanding Marth's ranges and a whole bunch of spacing, but I'll try to help with what I can.

Wavedashing Problem & Mewtwo D-tilt:
A lot, I mean a lot of the wavedash problems you guys are mentioning is more of a spacing issue than anything else. I haven't run into the problem with getting grabbed out of a wavedash either, although I know it has happened a few times it hasn't been something that I thought of as a problem because I actually dash dance a lot more than I wavedash around. I think that Mewtwo's dash dance is heavily underrated, largely because of the tail hit box issue, but aside from that it's one of the better dash dances in the game, offering a fairly ideal dash length to play with.

D-tilt is also a really bad approach/move against Marth because he can pretty much CC the tip of it indefinitely and return with a d-tilt of his own. I do not recommend using dtilt in this way, unless you sneak it in-between aerials as he is landing.

Now, if a Marth is taking advantage of wavedash -> d-tilt, I'm pretty sure his grab won't reach you if you don't d-tilt. I would imagine the move would extend Mewtwo's hurt-box a little. Even if that is not the case, you could always wavedash right outside of d-tilt range, wait a brief moment for the Marth to grab, and whiff punish. As an example, I've been able to whiff punish Marth grabs with my own (unintentionally) due to his arm extending out. To do this intentionally is just a matter of being aware of your opponent's pattern, and having the presence of mind to punish it when it happens. The timing would likely not be hard.

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Baby Shadowballs:
Baby shadowballs are great in this matchup, assuming you have the space to use them. They disrupt Marth, either by hitting him out of short hops, or by forcing him to swat them (either in the air or on the ground). A lot of people think that swatting them is the solution, but what people don't understand is that whenever a Marth commits to swatting the projectiles you are effectively in control of when he swings his sword. This gives you the ability to confidently weave into range and punish him during the recovery time after he swats the shadowball.

Baby shadowballs, or just charging a shadowball, is a great way to force Marth to come to you as well.

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Well, Mewtwo doesn't have Peach's dash attack or instant float cancelled nair. The best hitboxes you can really throw out to threaten Marth's space is a running SH nair right? Tight dash dances followed by grab, nair, or running d-tilt seem like the safest options if you use them on reaction to Marth's actions as well as you can.

Running nair can work well, but only if you catch Marth off guard. The problem is it's fairly easy to react to as Marth in most cases. The thing is, if you are forcing Marth's approach with baby shadowballs then Marth players will often extend close enough to you that you have options to fight back with. It's rare that a Marth positions himself so perfect that he is outside of Mewtwo's effective range but within his max range while dealing with projectiles.

Well, I've got more to say but not time to say it now. I'll leave you with that.

 

[Deleted member 212841]

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[MookieRah]

EDIT: I totally misunderstood Shu's post. I read charge shadowball and thought he meant SBC. He clearly meant just charging a shadowball in place to provoke Marth to come to you. Still, the post below is valid regarding SBC and Marth.

A thing though, SBC is not suggested against Marth, unless he is very much on the defensive. If he is waiting, in order to react, SBC is one of the worst options to go for because it takes so long before the hitbox will land. Only SBC Marth if you are applying pressure and you are sure he is locked down. More often than not this is in situations after a tech chase when he's close to the ledge or under the lower platforms.

In general that is the best time to SBC any character, but with Marth it's doubly important because it's generally Marth's strategy to smack anyone who is silly enough to jump at him. This is why I try to discourage running nair, because essentially Marth wants you to jump at him.

I'll post a better Marth game plan soon, when I have time.

 

[Deleted member 212841]

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[ChivalRuse]

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that you just throw out nair haphazardly. It's entirely possible to use SH nair in a calculated manner. For example, you can dash dance nair to dodge and punish Marth's rising fair. Also if you get Marth into his shield, you can potentially space a nair to pressure him (possibly even cross up his shield).

I also like the idea of using d-tilt to whiff punish Marth. I would definitely avoid using it if Marth is grounded, though, for the most part, unless you happen to have perfect spacing at that moment.

 

[MookieRah]

@Melee Mewtwo
I actually misunderstood Shus and didn't have time to write about baby shadowballs.

So Mewtwo's general strategy against Marth is to be extremely patient. It's a good thing to go into the match assuming that most neutral exchanges will be won by Marth, and to basically be ready to DI like crazy to minimize percent and early KOs. Your overall goal is to deal as much percent damage as you can and then get Marth off stage. Once Marth is off stage, the ball is entirely in Mewtwo's court. Once Marth is at high percent it becomes easier to take the fight off stage and gets easier to get the KO. Once Mewtwo is at high percent, he becomes harder for Marth to deal with, and if you do a good job of maintaining your cool and are able to reset to neutral then you can begin to build a strong lead against Marth.

For example: It often ends up that I will be behind at around 100% on my first stock against my opponent's Marth when he's at around 50%, but when I get a back throw, I often am able to force him into bad positioning enough to gimp him or at least get a percentage lead before he regains neutral.

In neutral, if I have space I charge shadowballs or toss a baby shadowball. Depending on how the opponent acts determines what I do. If the Marth is more patient and doesn't charge in, I charge in place. If they are often moving forward, I throw baby shadowballs to disrupt or possibly manipulate his actions. I try to make it so that whenever they do approach, I meet them in such a way that they end up closer to Marth than he wants me to be. From there everything is determined by what my opponent does in that situation, and it's really hard to get specific.

Some things to look out for in neutral:
Does the Marth use nair? If so, a whiffed nair in neutral is a free punish. It's very easy to take advantage of it, and so many Marth's seem to think this move is safe when it definitely is not.

Does the Marth approach with aerials? If so, how does he do it?

If the Marth is careless he will short hop towards you and spam fairs without much worry regarding his spacing. This is shield grab bait, and simply requires patience.

Generally most Marth's eventually make the mistake of short hopping toward you to approach or possibly over-extend while applying pressure on you. This is almost always bad for Marth, because there is no way to control your spacing properly after you short hop towards your opponent. Whenever I see a short hop forward, I try to place myself so that I disrupt his plans. If it's a cross up attempt I run back and shield, if they are planning to space so that it tips my shield, I run forward to meet him. Any attack he tosses at me can be easily shielded, and if you are close enough and facing him it is a free shield grab, if not you are positive on frames and your next attack is largely safe.

If a Marth is very spacing orieinted he/she may employ pivot aerials or shield stop aerials. These are much harder to punish because Marth has more control over his spacing, but at the same time Marth has to get into range by running before he makes the jump. This leaves him vulnerable slightly before he jumps, as he will be coming at you in his dash animation which has a strong lean.

It's entirely possible to punish a whiffed short hopped fair, even a stationary one, with several of Mewtwo's moves before the second fair comes out. The timing is strict, but it's very much doable.

More to come as I try to convert my experience into words. A lot of stuff is so specific that it's hard to cover in a good way.

 

[ChivalRuse]

How good is using disable after Marth does a short hop aerial? I feel like DJC disable can be amazing, since Marth never wants to have his back to you.

 

[MookieRah]

Hmm, it's hard to say. It can work really well when Marth is focused on a pure ground game because it has a fairly long range, but the problem is that Marth often will d-tilt which allows him to duck under it.

 

[SuperShus]

BSBs are good because they kind of disrupt marth's movement, but if youre playing a marth that gets really aggressive he's going to get all over you if you do that because he wont want to be BSBd and that will kinda suck for you. you can get fairs off of a marth playing like that but its going to be very annoying

i like to charge shadow ball because it has a similar effect to shooting lasers as fox
the opponent realizes that if they let you get a charge shadow ball then life is going to get harder

although unlike lasers the effect of having a fully or nearly fully charged shadow ball is pretty big
suddenly an fsmash whiff or techroll can cost a whole stock
obviously they dont like that and will often approach with pretty horrible options like sh nair if they're not great
if they are great theyll dash dance up and try to dtilt or grab you

you can edge cancel and up b to escape
dash forward to ruin their spacing
djc fair
wd forward shield
do a mookieball
fh nair forward drift back

this one i like a lot as a mixup, dash back - shield to cover up the tail in case he was trying to dtilt your toes, jump oos and djc slingshot towards marth with bair, of all moves, and hit with the strong bit if you can. this works a lot better if he's high% and can't just cc it and hit you lmao

 

[ChivalRuse]

Actually, I'm glad you mentioned DJC bair. I just had an idea. Pivot bair. If you look at the hitbox for bair (while it's not super disjointed because of the tail hurtbox), it has insane range. As long as you don't bair directly into an active hitbox, you should be able to poke or space against people from very far away, Marth included.

I think we should do some experimentation/research on pivot bair, because it allows us to bair while keeping our face to the opponent for as long as possible. This could be a very valid approach/counter spacing option.

 

[Deleted member 212841]

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[Sieghart]

Actually, I'm glad you mentioned DJC bair. I just had an idea. Pivot bair. If you look at the hitbox for bair (while it's not super disjointed because of the tail hurtbox), it has insane range. As long as you don't bair directly into an active hitbox, you should be able to poke or space against people from very far away, Marth included.

I think we should do some experimentation/research on pivot bair, because it allows us to bair while keeping our face to the opponent for as long as possible. This could be a very valid approach/counter spacing option.

I approach with pivot bair all the time. Main problem I have is that the tip does basically nothing until higher percents and spacing it for the stronger hitboxes properly makes M2's slow speed more apparent and brings with it the dangers of your opponent hitting the tail since those hitboxes aren't disjointed. It's great for threatening space, though, and in my experience it gets people to approach you if that's what you wanted.

@Melee Mewtwo
In all honesty I'd most likely back up and charge shadowball. Unless I'm mistaken, SHDL takes 23 frames so that's some info that might be worth having in such a situation.

 

[SuperShus]

I've got another poll for you guys.

You are playing a Fox on Battlefield. He's at 60% with a stock lead underneath the side platform. You have center stage with 80%. What do you do?

shield

Kappa

 

[MookieRah]

People keep bringing up bair as a thing we should use on stage, but it's never seemed like a good idea for me and I've never gotten it to work. It's just so damn slow, and as Sieghart points out it also is vulnerable. I feel like, due to it's slow startup, it would only work as a gimmick as better players would quickly adjust to it and begin to start taking advantage of it after a few uses.

You are playing a Fox on Battlefield. He's at 60% with a stock lead underneath the side platform. You have center stage with 80%. What do you do?

You gotta give us way more information than that. Who currently has momentum, and how did your positioning end up like that? If Fox is under the platform because you forced him there, my answer will be very different than if Fox was beating me up and I was able to retreat to center stage.

EDIT:
Quick observation: If you djc fair directly over the center line of your opponent the game will place you behind them. This makes for some very ambiguous cross-ups.

Quick question. When your opponent tumbles to the ground, can they CC stuff there? Like, if I hit with a fair at 0% and they fall flat on their ass, if I immediately dtilt will it bull**** me or would they pop up in the air? If it CCs then I'm thinking that I'll just immediately upsmash at low percent fairs to catch them.

 

[Deleted member 212841]

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[MookieRah]

@Melee Mewtwo
I would jump in with reverse SBC, and would do so immediately upon landing from the nair. Since you've applied some pressure and his back is facing you, it's very unlikely that he will immediately start inputting an attack to counter it.

ChivalRuse

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that you just throw out nair haphazardly. It's entirely possible to use SH nair in a calculated manner. For example, you can dash dance nair to dodge and punish Marth's rising fair. Also if you get Marth into his shield, you can potentially space a nair to pressure him (possibly even cross up his shield).

Forgot to address this earlier, but yeah, that was my point more or less. Nair should be very calculated when thrown out in neutral, and should not be used unless you have some kind of game plan.

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More Marth Stuff:
So there were a lot of things I wanted to say about the Marth matchup, but I was afraid that I might be wrong due to going from memory, but here are a few more tips.

If you are close to Marth (pretty much any spacing in which he doesn't tipper you with it), any dtilt against your shield is a free fair. I think the fastest option he has to retaliate would be either another dtilt or his jab, but I know that the next dtilt will not come out in time to save him, and even if it did frame wise you would be able to place yourself sufficiently above him so that his dtilt wouldn't connect. I also don't think it would be very intuitive for Marth's to then go for dtilt -> jab, so I wouldn't think there is much to worry about there if that is even something that would work.

This kinda goes for anything that Marth does when he's not a tip range with his tilts. Anything he does that doesn't hit will be a free punish.


When you are slightly closer than tip range on Marth's d-tilt it's an ideal range to counter his dtilt. A short hop from here will place you in range to hit him quickly, but you'll be high enough to not be hit by dtilt. This is really good when applying pressure and Marth is trying to dtilt to get you off of him.


Lastly, max range wavedash to dtilt (like Taj does) is super ridiculously effective during the dash dancing phase. It is just so quick and goes so far that it's easy to clip Marth's toes. A lot of times you can't make a followup, as they will DI away due to inputting a dash back, but it gives you stage and makes Marth question dash dancing, which is it's own reward because Marth lives and dies by his dash dance.

 

[Deleted member 212841]

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[MookieRah]

Yeah, he could, but they usually don't after you put them on the defensive. If he doesn't respond with countering SBC (which could be a ton of options really) he's pretty screwed. I mean, on paper SBC is super total garbs and would never work, but in practice it has a ton of practical and reliable uses. If they start countering your SBC then it forces them to prematurely try to counter it, which leaves them open for other stuff.

 

[ChivalRuse]

I did some testing on the knockback and range of bair. It's definitely a weak move at low percents. Weak enough that you will probably get hit anytime you land it. I might just stick to fair and nair in neutral.

 

[ihasabuket]

About the whole marth topic, ive said it before but i want to reiterate. Marths rising fair isnt very safe against characters with good air mobility. Best case scenario rising fair will be -20 on shield. Best case scenario is he hits with the last frame of fair's hitbox(frame 7) and uses the first IASA frame(frame 30) to start a second fair(frames 4-7). There's a 27 frame gap between the two fairs, assuming he hits your shield with a tipper you incur 7 frames of shield stun. That means after shieldstun marth is -20 best case scenario with perfect timing, tipper, and unstaled moves.
Since fair has 6 frames of hitlag you have 13 frames(shieldstun + hitlag) to react to this; thats not to mention the SH telegraphing the fair and the startup of fair.

 

[ChivalRuse]

I'm pretty sure that you can dash dance SH fair to punish a whiffed Marth rising fair (especially since Marth's fair hitbox starts from the top and arcs down, it's less likely to hit Mewtwo's tail as he dashes back).

 

[Deleted member 212841]

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[Deleted member 212841]

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[ihasabuket]

Worth noting that Mewtwo's low traction + the extra pushback means that tipper fairs are difficult (impossible maybe? been a while since I tested) to punish oos since Marth ends up too far away especially if he was already fading away. Sheild asdi can help counter this, though.

Because mewtwo is so tall, marth's rising fair hits on the first frame. So realistically we can say that after shielding a tipper fair, mewtwo has a guaranteed 23 frames to punish marth.
Even with low traction you can probably reach by just jumping(5 frames) forward and drifting for up to 13 frames before you fair; I assume you could use DJC to slingshot forward and cover more distance.
Alternatively, you can punish marth with WD(15 frames) -> tilts(5-6 frames) or grab(7 frames) in the event that he fades away after hitting your shield.

EDIT: Does anyone know how long it takes to crouch? I was thinking you can WD OoS into marth so you can CC the weaker hit of the fair. If youre too high % you can always WD in and shield as the weaker hits of the fair are -1 on shield.

 

[Deleted member 212841]

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[ihasabuket]

Yeah my numbers were off, I started shieldstun on the wrong frame and I forgot that the IASA frame is the frame your acionable on not the frame after it. I usually do these calculations in my head so I usually write it in the post so someone can correct me if im wrong. Anyway, youre actionable on frame 12 of his fair animation and his second fair would come out frame 33 so you have frames 12 - 32 which means you have 21 frames to punish.

Also do you get crouch armor during the squat animation?

 

[Deleted member 212841]

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[Deleted member 212841]

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[ChivalRuse]

You know that you can edit your previous post instead of double posting.

Regarding the shield pushback on tippered fair, I'm pretty sure that you can confusion out of shield, or disable out of shield, depending on how they drift the fair.

 

[MookieRah]

Confusion out of shield against an airborn Marth underneath a lower platform might cause Marth to flop onto the platform. That would be really good, especially considering how Zoma uses confusion on FoD to great effect.

 

[CnB | Chandy]

For djcland (psuedo-wavedash?) there's zero frame leniancy with the double jump timing. However, uair and dair give you a one frame leniancy after the double jump to get the ac land. Bair is only one frame. Also, inputting the djc uair too early can result in a jc usmash which is really bad. Using dair will always have a sfx, though. Not sure how positive or negative that is but I imagine it mostly dosen't matter and it's best to use dair unless you are very confident in being frame perfect enough with uair.

Djc landing is wicked mad dope mang. I looked into it for Ness specifically but it could have utility for M2 as well. Specifically because it can allow you to do quick pseudo-pivots consistently. Landing with an auto canceled aerial leaves you in a neutral state, meaning you can immediately turn around and do a grounded option right after (hence the term "pseudo-pivot"). This is admittedly riskier and slightly slower than a regular pivot, and getting hit out of it will leave you with no double jump, but it helps with doing moves out of pivot that are usually quite hard, like utilt, dtilt, usmash and dsmash.

Further, you can use djcland pseudo-pivot grab to do an especially tricky tomahawk. The opponent will expect a low djc aerial and stay in shield because the start up looks identical, then you fastfall the aerial to get the autocancel as a timing mix up and grab them. This should be used sparingly, however.

Here's a gfy of how it works with Ness, his autocancel window on dair is super generous though so it might not be directly translateable to M2.

http://gfycat.com/ElatedDistantBuffalo

 

[Deleted member 212841]

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