Borrowed from Havok (Error Margin)

[#HBC | Scary]

Not often I do much to contribute or be productive around here. I'd really like to change that one of these days.

However, just browsing around, I found this post from Havok and it applies to Sheik probably even more than it does to Marth so here it is.

Marth is nowhere naturally as good as we thought since the inception of Brawl.

However…

Perhaps we all came to this conclusion at one point or another, at the beginning many players thought that Marth was probably Top Tier and as time went on he slowly made the transition somewhere lost in the middle tier. Not terrible by any means but not as awesome as we all thought. Turns out recoveries are extremely valuable and Marth doesn’t have an excellent one, mediocre at best. Some characters have easy, reliable kill moves where Marth has laggy, semi-predictable, and unreliable ones.

So how does Marth win in the first place?

By playing flawless.

Have you ever noticed either you’re completely overwhelming a perso,n literally beaten to a pulp or you’re the one being decimated? That’s because Marth has no error margin. Marth doesn’t have the luxury to get hit off the stage often because of his mediocre recovery. Marth can’t afford to get hit very much because his momentum cancel leaves him without a jump, opening him to more gimpy action. However, when played to a point of near perfection as far as Brawl is concerned, Marth is a Beast. By spacing well, not getting grabbed, reading people, being patient, knowing when to attack and when to hold back, DI correctly, use your kill moves correctly, pressuring when appropriate, applying a mixup game, and knowing your matchups, the game suddenly leans heavily in your favor. Not many characters can do much to a Marth that actually practices what he preaches using the range, invincibility frames, etc. Not even Meta Knight. Why is Marth so Hot/Cold?

Because Marth is an emotional character.

Let me explain.

I’ve spent countless hours playing with Marth and I’ve come to the conclusion that in order for you to transfer everything your skill has to offer you need to be completely in sync with the game. You need to be “in the zone”, “owning”, “pumped up”, whatever, in order to get passed those last few rounds to reach finals of a tournament, whether it’s a local or in a regional. You absolutely need it. Notice how your Marth does on those days you just don’t feel like playing. It does terrible. Notice how your Marth does after a dissapointing loss that sends you to losers bracket. Terrible. Notice how your Marth does after when he 3 stocks you or you SD. Terrible.

My point is:

Control your emotions. Think. Put aside anything that’s happening at the moment. I believe he’s the only character that suffers Severely from Hot/Cold.

Of course there are exceptions, those people who can just “Do it”, either that or they’re impervious to feelings. I know this sounds weird since it doesn’t have anything to do that’s integrated in Brawl, but it applies to the psychological aspect of the game, like mind/mixup games.

It winds down to the reason why Marth has been shifting away from the higher tier, it all depends on how the actual player uses the character at the moment, Marth can wind up from being as good if not better than MK (well at least pretty **** close), Falco, and Snake or as iffy as Zelda or Lucas.

** Believe me, I know this may or may not apply to the entire game as well but I think so, more so to Marth in Brawl.

Thanks for reading.

Disscuss.

After reading this, and thinking about the ******** wall of text I made a while back, it occurred to me that Sheik suffers more from emotion more than anyone. Just recently I was at a tourney when I had to play RedHalberd's brother Mampam. He normally just uses Diddy, and I forced him to rage quit game one. But, he went to Snake game two and even though the match was all me at the beginning, I lost. I had a two stock lead and lost to severe camping. I would lose to the same camping in game three. During those matches, I allowed myself to get frustrated. I allowed myself to just play and not keep my cool.

Moral of my small story, Sheik's potential can't be tapped into if you lose your cool EVER.

We may not have all the tools and range that Marth has but we have everything we need to breakthrough our tough MUs and such. As I've previously stated in the past, we are our own worst enemy and nothing else.

Just my two cents and a kinda spur of the moment thing lol.

Discuss?

 

[SuSa]

This is how read and bait characters play.

MK is MK, so is effected less until the top levels of play.
Marth
Sheik
Sonic

Just to name off 4 that are extremely bait and read dependent.

You need to be able to control your emotions so you aren't blindly rushing in, forgetting your opponents habits. You need to keep your cool, watch your opponent, study them, learn what they do, bait them, read them, and then finally punish them.

So tl;dr
I agree.

:leek:

 

[#HBC | Scary]

That's good

Really, the only reason I posted it was because of the past tourney set where I just raged for an entire set. It was kinda a spectacle to see, and tbh, I really play a rushdown oriented game and eventually get to reading but I really let my emotions take me over. It's kinda like venting with an attempt to be helpful you can say lol.

 

[-Mars-]

I do this all the time. One of the main reasons I haven't reached the next level yet. I get extremely frustrated against certain characters and start making silly mistakes.

I also think luigi is like this, a bait and read character.

 

[saviorslegacy]

I'll get depressed and start playing like a n00b.

tl;dr... I'll read it later.

 

[Juushichi]

Both the Mario bros play like that, Mars. It's just that Luigi's is more noticable because he's never safe until he gets in.

 

[riocosta123]

Since I think Sheik is a mediocre character it's actually easier to take than if my Wario gets *****.

In fact, that situation happened two months ago, where I raged/got ***** by a campy Olimar, and then I ***** him with my patient Sheik.

 

[Judo777]

Um yea sheik definitely has this worse than any character. Marth has a decent margin for error on spacing with alot of the cast. Marth is a great character that has his amazingess to fall back on if he loses his cool. I'm not saying that marth isn't "emotional" im just saying that sheiks got it much worse IMO.

Yea i stress this a whole lot. Alot of INKY will tell you about how much getting mentally worn out or frustrated changes my gameplay.

Also LOL at him saying marth can be as bad as jigg and zelda...............

 

[thexsunrosered]

this is SOOO important. In this past tourney I was playing in losers semis on game three and it was really tense. The guy I played was a roller but he wasn't a dumb roller, and I couldn't do anything about it. I realized I had to start rolling against him and read him and as the match was winding down I... well, I'll upload the video and you guys can see for yourself, but emotions play a BIG part in the outcome of a match, so be mindful.

/jedi

 

[Greave]

When it gets to the point that you forget how to approach a GaW who's spamming dSmash, then you need to take a huge breath and focus. Or maybe I'm just bad. Either way, Sheik is definitely susceptible to the hot/cold theory.

Sheik has no "breather" attacks. Guys like GaW and Mario can mentally break from the action and "rest" with the relatively safe bAir and Fireball (respectively). Because of her range and general priority, Sheik doesn't have that privilege. So when your emotions or anything else pulls you from the game, you don't have any flaming turtle to fall back on.

I JUST realized how old this thread is, but I'm not gonna let my already-written post go to waste. >_> *sneaks out*