Binx
Smash Master
I've had people asking me recently how to be good, and rather than spend 3 hours talking to each one of them individually I decided to try and phrase it in a guide and have them read it. And then I can answer questions on an individual basis. As an IC main I decided to go ahead and post it here, there are a number of issues when playing melee to become good and I hope to cover them all.
I will keep everything as concrete as possible so that everyone can understand it.
Positioning
Positioning is the most important aspect of melee, if you are positioned off the edge, your dead, or at the very least closer to losing your stock. Another example is if you are cornered on the edge of a stage you have less options to move or attack safely.
Positioning is always important but the proper spacing changes based on the character you are fighting, in general you want to be close enough to punish as many of their options as possible while remaining safe. The distance changes slightly based on your character, your opponents character, and your reflexes.
Walling is the act of maintaining a neutral position with your opponent by using attacks to keep them at bay, and can be an important aspect of proper positioning. Jigglypuff provides a great example of this, her full jump bair retreating bair is very difficult to punish, but is not really good for actually attacking you.
Walling does several things, it keeps you safe while giving you time to think, and if your position is between your opponent and an edge it can create a lot of pressure and your opponent could very likely jump into you and take hits worrying you might approach, when in reality there is very little danger for them. You can see this to great effect by watching M2K's Marth play just about anybody.
Attacking
Here are some basics
Defending
Not be to be confused with positioning, defending is when you are on the defensive, when you are being attacked, and are either being shield pressured, or being HIT. Defending sucks, but unfortunately it happens, there is not a lot we can do about it. Defending is all about patience, you need to be able to calm down and predict them the same as you would do in a positioning phase, some people really fall apart while being attacked, don't be one of them.
Ice Climbers create a lot of pressure because if we are good enough our opponents know they if they get grabbed, no matter who they are will take anywhere between 50% to an entire stock out of a single grab, on any stage, at any time.
Because of this and our unique shield properties we can actually attack people with our shields! By varying your movement and shielding near opponents you do two things, you either 1) gain information on how they want to react when you approach them, or 2) provoke them to attack a moving target's shield, which is much more difficult to space properly against opening up more opportunities to grab.
By approaching facing away we have the option to bair directly out of a wavedash or turn and grab if they are being defensive (shielding) uair under them if they use jumping defensively, or pausing before grabbing if you expect a standing dodge. You also have the option of turning and shielding, which can net you a shield grab, since they might think they have time to hit you. Your success with this will vary based on how you trick your opponent and how well you space and predict.
I will keep everything as concrete as possible so that everyone can understand it.
Positioning
Positioning is the most important aspect of melee, if you are positioned off the edge, your dead, or at the very least closer to losing your stock. Another example is if you are cornered on the edge of a stage you have less options to move or attack safely.
Positioning is always important but the proper spacing changes based on the character you are fighting, in general you want to be close enough to punish as many of their options as possible while remaining safe. The distance changes slightly based on your character, your opponents character, and your reflexes.
Walling is the act of maintaining a neutral position with your opponent by using attacks to keep them at bay, and can be an important aspect of proper positioning. Jigglypuff provides a great example of this, her full jump bair retreating bair is very difficult to punish, but is not really good for actually attacking you.
Walling does several things, it keeps you safe while giving you time to think, and if your position is between your opponent and an edge it can create a lot of pressure and your opponent could very likely jump into you and take hits worrying you might approach, when in reality there is very little danger for them. You can see this to great effect by watching M2K's Marth play just about anybody.
Here are some basics
- the longer you wait before commiting to an attack the less expected it becomes
- The payoff for attacking does not always outweigh the risk
- To properly utilize attacks you need to correctly use your positioning as well as some level of prediction.
Lets talk about these bullets for a moment. All of them basically tell you the same thing, that attacking takes a back seat to positioning, you should not attack unless you are in a good position to be attacking. And you should definitely not attack without having a reason to believe it will hit them (this was one of the largest hurdles for me, and other people's lack of this realization is how I win a lot of my matches).
Defending
Not be to be confused with positioning, defending is when you are on the defensive, when you are being attacked, and are either being shield pressured, or being HIT. Defending sucks, but unfortunately it happens, there is not a lot we can do about it. Defending is all about patience, you need to be able to calm down and predict them the same as you would do in a positioning phase, some people really fall apart while being attacked, don't be one of them.
- Rolling is awful
- Shielding can be good
- Shielding can be bad
- Crouch canceling can completely remove the defensive phase at the cost of a little damage.
- Teching is important
- DI is very important
Rolling is a very, very dangerous thing, there are few times that it should be used, and I would go as far as to say that you could go entire tournaments without using it even once and it would probably be a really good idea. Take the time and learn to wavedash out of shield, learn when to short hop attack or even full hop attack out of shield, some characters have good rolls, and its okay to use them infrequently.
Before I discuss shielding I'm going to go ahead and touch on crouch canceling. If you crouch cancel an attack you should have done it to give yourself frame advantage, which means you have eliminated the defensive phase, you are now attacking, and they are defending. If you didn't just have an "AH HA!" moment then you already know how to crouch cancel well, if you don't know how to crouch cancel well it's something you should learn ASAP.
The advantages of disadvantages of shielding, being trapped in your shield is bad, its a very limited position, against the better aggressive characters, Marth, Fox, Falco, Sheik, and even Peach, being in your shield can be very dangerous. All of those characters have something in common, they have moves that are what I'm going to refer to as "shield safe" that doesn't mean that you can't punish them when they hit your shield, but it will stop typical OoS options. Especially vs ICs the first concern of most characters is not to be grabbed, so they will space so that you can't shield grab, our grab range is abysmal and we slide a lot, so it isn't too difficult. They will also try and hit us in a manner that we can't easily leave our shield safely.
As we have learned above rolling away is usually a poor option, because it gives up a lot of space and if they expect it, is easily punished. Spot dodging can be a better option especially if you timed it to where you can grab afterwards, this requires you to know their spacing and if and when your opponent's character can attack again quickly enough after the miss before you can guarantee a grab, you must also predict their next action, be it defensive or offensive.
Shielding with Ice Climbers is a little bit different than with most characters, first of all Ice Climbers have a very large shield in comparison to their body, especially when light shielding, they are difficult to poke, they slide far when light shielding as well, so it's difficult to maintain pressure, as an ice climber player varying when you light shield and normal shield can throw off spacing and land you opportunities to land rare shield grabs. Another unique thing about our shield is that there are two of them. This means double shield stun for some spacings of attacks, which again translate to more opportunities to shield grab.
Using your Shield AggressivelyBefore I discuss shielding I'm going to go ahead and touch on crouch canceling. If you crouch cancel an attack you should have done it to give yourself frame advantage, which means you have eliminated the defensive phase, you are now attacking, and they are defending. If you didn't just have an "AH HA!" moment then you already know how to crouch cancel well, if you don't know how to crouch cancel well it's something you should learn ASAP.
The advantages of disadvantages of shielding, being trapped in your shield is bad, its a very limited position, against the better aggressive characters, Marth, Fox, Falco, Sheik, and even Peach, being in your shield can be very dangerous. All of those characters have something in common, they have moves that are what I'm going to refer to as "shield safe" that doesn't mean that you can't punish them when they hit your shield, but it will stop typical OoS options. Especially vs ICs the first concern of most characters is not to be grabbed, so they will space so that you can't shield grab, our grab range is abysmal and we slide a lot, so it isn't too difficult. They will also try and hit us in a manner that we can't easily leave our shield safely.
As we have learned above rolling away is usually a poor option, because it gives up a lot of space and if they expect it, is easily punished. Spot dodging can be a better option especially if you timed it to where you can grab afterwards, this requires you to know their spacing and if and when your opponent's character can attack again quickly enough after the miss before you can guarantee a grab, you must also predict their next action, be it defensive or offensive.
Shielding with Ice Climbers is a little bit different than with most characters, first of all Ice Climbers have a very large shield in comparison to their body, especially when light shielding, they are difficult to poke, they slide far when light shielding as well, so it's difficult to maintain pressure, as an ice climber player varying when you light shield and normal shield can throw off spacing and land you opportunities to land rare shield grabs. Another unique thing about our shield is that there are two of them. This means double shield stun for some spacings of attacks, which again translate to more opportunities to shield grab.
Ice Climbers create a lot of pressure because if we are good enough our opponents know they if they get grabbed, no matter who they are will take anywhere between 50% to an entire stock out of a single grab, on any stage, at any time.
Because of this and our unique shield properties we can actually attack people with our shields! By varying your movement and shielding near opponents you do two things, you either 1) gain information on how they want to react when you approach them, or 2) provoke them to attack a moving target's shield, which is much more difficult to space properly against opening up more opportunities to grab.
By approaching facing away we have the option to bair directly out of a wavedash or turn and grab if they are being defensive (shielding) uair under them if they use jumping defensively, or pausing before grabbing if you expect a standing dodge. You also have the option of turning and shielding, which can net you a shield grab, since they might think they have time to hit you. Your success with this will vary based on how you trick your opponent and how well you space and predict.
