Best way to get timing and spacing to stick in your head?

[clumsyninjah]

I posted here 6 months ago and got a great suggestion to record myself playing here (I'm the marth)

Right now I'm working on fundamentals, my hands are still too slow to l-cancel or DI consistently. After showing some higher level players and playing a few games they told me that my accuracy is **** because I have no sense of timing or spacing. Their advice was that I should know where my character and the other character will be at all times and my move choice/reads based on those predictions. The problem is that after 2 years I still can't "see" the trajectory of myself or the other player or the range of the moves. This is also something I'm missing in real life. I don't really know how long my arms or legs are or where I am in space so I'm always knocking things over. Can't play sports, can't tell if i'm straight or crooked in a parking spot, lose stuff all the time because I have no memory of where I put it.

As mentioned in a previous post, I strongly suspect I have dyspraxia but people have said that simply being uncoordinated does not account for the bad judgement I display in this game. At this point I'm being told by a lot of people I have no talent and I should just give up; advice I just can't accept. There is nothing more that I want than to be competitive at melee, please give me your best advice how to get this skill down, I'll do whatever it takes.

 

[yttik]

After looking at the video you linked, I think you need to work on your neutral more. You put out unsafe moves like Fsmash, if you have problems with spacing and will inevitably whiff moves then the last thing you want to whiff is something as laggy as that. You also got a couple of throws on spacies but you instead of going for the chaingrab (which is understandable considering you have problems with timing) it looked like you went for an instinctive move based on what direction they were facing. When you get a hit/throw, really watch carefully on where they are going and how they tech/DI, then punish it afterwards. You can practise the outcomes if you have the 20XX pack since the CPUs have random DI and tech options. Learn the timing and muscle memory for as many different situations as you can. If you can instinctively do certain sequences of inputs because you have practised them on your own, then when it comes time to play a real match it shouldn't be as much of a worry to have to try and time and space everything based on what the opponent plays like - you already know everything they can do in any situation. Marth is a character that often doesn't need to go in aggressively at all, so if you can, put up a defensive wall of Dtilts, Fairs etc and wait until the opponent comes to you, maybe that way you won't have to concentrate so much on the positioning of both characters? This situation is all so awkward because Marth is a character that benefits greatly off of good spacing. If you go into training mode and learning the exact tipper range of all your moves, maybe that could help.

This is probably bad advice since I don't know what it's like to have dyspraxia but I think if you grind practise rigorously enough, anyone can improve.

 

[GenNyan]

Right now I'm working on fundamentals, my hands are still too slow to l-cancel or DI consistently.

DI doesn't really require speed, you DI based on what you think is about to hit you. Try to predict what your opponent's next move will be. If it's strong, DI in. If it's weak, DI away. (SUPER oversimplified DI tutorial)


Its really hard for me to see the video with that annoying logo blocking it, if you can upload to youtube or something in the future, that'd be much better. Anyway...

(0:06) You waste your invincibility by just dash dancing around Gannon crossing him up and not attacking.

(0:14) Your edge guard gets the job done, but if you Down-air by the ledge he would have no chance of making it back.

(0:27) You upthrow and then just stand there. I don't know the specifics of what marth can do off his throws, but it looks like you could have at least gone for an uptilt or an Fsmash. This seems like a recurring pattern, you'll use a move and then not input another action for several frames, and it slows you down a ton.

(0:30) another grab that you don't convert off of.

(0:54) that was a pretty good recovery (he didn't respect the side-b), you might need to work on being able to sweetspot the ledge with your up-b though.

Note: you got a ton of grabs, if you converted off of them you'd be in the money. I have no idea what your condition even is, but a lot of the stuff you're missing seems to be things that have to do with your reaction times and learning when you can move after an attack. You should definitely try to learn l-cancelling. If you can't, just learn SHFFLs because those are basically muscle memory. Oh and you don't have to press the trigger all the way down to l cancel. just barely pressing it down will work.