Brawl Back Room Video Analysis Project
This project is mostly geared towards players that have hit a plateau in their transition between mid to high level play and high to top level play. These transitions seem to be so difficult to get through because it’s not a technical aspect of the game that they need to improve on, but their ability to make decisions.
When most people get critiques on their matches, they end up getting something like this:
"Make sure you mix-up your landings with Breverse nades so you don’t get juggled.”
Sure, seems like a valid piece of advice, but it's almost useless. WHEN should I Breverse nade? Why in this situation but not that one? What’s the difference? Being able to answer questions like these, and understanding the answer so they can apply it to other situations is key for breaking these borderline plateaus.
This is the general idea of what we are trying to do with this project. We aim to take high and top level play and look at the decisions that the players make and offer explanations as to WHY they make those decisions. Players often times won't understand the why behind a decision or piece of advice, they will try to replicate the action they see or that they read about, and due to a lack of understanding will end up getting punished for that action and not understand why it didn't work. Fixing this problem, we believe, will help players break a plateau they're at and we hope will help them be able to get more of what they want out of the game.
For the time being, which matches we go over are being determined in the BBR. However, if there's a match that someone thinks deserves attention, feel free to message me with the match and why you think it should be gone over.
While there won't be a specified time period for new matches to be posted up, this is an ongoing project and will remain active. However, depending on the length of the matches, how many we do, and other projects going on, we can't say for certain how long each match will take to be released.
DEHF vs Tyrant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYORG278-Lw
*Note: All comments made in blue are comments made by DEHF himself.*
This is for and to help you guys! If you want further explanation on something or want us to focus more on a specific aspect of what the players did or the mindset that they had at a certain point please let us know. We can always talk about things more and contact the players to ask them directly if we need help!
This project is for you, and we really want to help you. In order for you all to get the most out of this, we need you to help us help you.
(That was a ******** sentence.)
This project is mostly geared towards players that have hit a plateau in their transition between mid to high level play and high to top level play. These transitions seem to be so difficult to get through because it’s not a technical aspect of the game that they need to improve on, but their ability to make decisions.
When most people get critiques on their matches, they end up getting something like this:
"Make sure you mix-up your landings with Breverse nades so you don’t get juggled.”
Sure, seems like a valid piece of advice, but it's almost useless. WHEN should I Breverse nade? Why in this situation but not that one? What’s the difference? Being able to answer questions like these, and understanding the answer so they can apply it to other situations is key for breaking these borderline plateaus.
This is the general idea of what we are trying to do with this project. We aim to take high and top level play and look at the decisions that the players make and offer explanations as to WHY they make those decisions. Players often times won't understand the why behind a decision or piece of advice, they will try to replicate the action they see or that they read about, and due to a lack of understanding will end up getting punished for that action and not understand why it didn't work. Fixing this problem, we believe, will help players break a plateau they're at and we hope will help them be able to get more of what they want out of the game.
For the time being, which matches we go over are being determined in the BBR. However, if there's a match that someone thinks deserves attention, feel free to message me with the match and why you think it should be gone over.
While there won't be a specified time period for new matches to be posted up, this is an ongoing project and will remain active. However, depending on the length of the matches, how many we do, and other projects going on, we can't say for certain how long each match will take to be released.
DEHF vs Tyrant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYORG278-Lw
*Note: All comments made in blue are comments made by DEHF himself.*
00:00 In the beginning of the match, Tyrant does an amazing job of avoiding lasers in two separate ways. First, and the most obvious aspect, is that for the first sixteen seconds Tyrant manages to avoid all the lasers that DEHF fires. More importantly than avoiding the damage, Tyrant changes how he dodges the lasers each time. When players wall you out with projectiles (Falco, Tink, Snake) or just general zoning tools (Marth’s fair, MK mixing up between fair/ftilt/etc) they’re doing something that is a staple of their game play. Because it’s so basic, they are free to focus on exactly how their opponents are avoiding their walls. By changing how he avoids the lasers, Tyrant makes it a lot more difficult for Larry to find a pattern where he could net an aerial or, for a bigger punish given the percentage, a grab.
While some characters are very bulky and aren’t able to avoid projectiles and walls as the smaller and faster ones (MK, Marth, ZSS), just walking to PS every time will get you punished from a simple read. No matter who you’re playing as, you want to be sure to mix-up how you avoid your opponents’ walling strategies. On the opposite side, as someone who is doing the walling, you shouldn’t have to think about how you are doing what you’re doing; it should be down to almost muscle memory since it is such a staple of your game play. Instead, focus on exactly how your opponents are avoiding your walls and use this information to start making the reads necessary to capitalize on your opponents’ actions.
00:12 This is something that you will see DEHF do very often vs MK players who are air camping vs him. MK has fairly low horizontal aerial mobility. By FHing towards Tyrant it forces an action. While the horizontal aerial mobility of these two characters is similar, Falco’s vertical mobility is significantly better than what MK can do. As a result of this, DEHF is almost always able to run away without Tyrant being able to chase him because of how quickly Falco can put space between himself and MK. In order to stay safe from Tyrant punishing his jump, once he gets near, or at, the apex of his jump, DEHF pulls back successfully applying slight pressure and forcing an action from Tyrant. Depending on the action that Tyrant took in this *repeated* situation, DEHF could potentially react and land uair, nair, etc. It is important to note that DEHF only jumps when Tyrant is at Falco’s FH height or higher. Any lower and Tyrant could react to Falco’s ascending jump to fall and start a juggling position.
Many characters are able to do something similar to this to any character camping in the air (which, really, is usually only MK but may also be DDD and a few others depending on the MU at hand) given that the camping character has low vertical and/or horizontal aerial mobility. Falco, as explained above, can use his higher vertical mobility to apply pressure and gain an advantage by forcing MK to act. Other characters with high vertical mobility (such as Fox, ZSS, and you even see Ally’s Snake go for superhero uairs vs MK’s dair camping at times) can apply the principle as well. Characters with higher horizontal mobility and notable range on their aerials (such as Marth, Wolf, etc) can do the same thing by spacing MK out from the sides while drifting away.
00:20 Given that DEHF has been doing this a bit now, and given that it is something that DEHF does frequently, Tyrant reads when DEHF is about to jump and preemptively FFs to the ground, with an AD covering his descent, allowing him to get under DEHF and punish Falco’s landing.
This relates back to the initial advice given for walling. While Tyrant was camping, he was able to focus entirely on what DEHF was doing as air camping is a fundamental part of his game. As he was able to focus entirely on DEHF, he was able to easily pick up on what DEHF was doing with how he was FHing allowing him to adapt and capitalize.
00:30 This is a really good mix-up that Falco has. By jumping, Falco presents the options of an aerial, laser, land into a tilt or jab, airdodge away to bait a grab/OoS option and punish it, or land into a grab. Given that Falco has a very quick FF speed it makes it impossible to react to any of the actions that he might take. As a result, Tyrant is forced to predict which option DEHF will take while DEHF is still in the air. If DEHF chooses to land-> grab, and Tyrant expects an aerial or laser, Tyrant will keep his shield up and won’t be able to react to the landing into grab in time to spot dodge. At this point Tyrant was out of chain grab percentages making the likelihood of the grab coming appear to be less. DEHF expected Tyrant to expect an aerial or laser, both of which lose to shield. This prompted DEHF to choose the option that beats shield; namely FF airdodge to grab. The FF is meant to make the time able to react as low as possible, the AD is to cover preemptive OoS options (such as SL), and then the grab is to beat the predicted shield.
While this mix-up works best with characters like Falco that have a quick FF speed, due to it lessening the amount of time to react, it is a strong mix-up available to all characters that have an aerial (or special) that can threaten well enough to force shield, especially if you take care to change up the timings for your aerials. This creates more uncertainty to what you’re about to do opposed to if you always throw out your aerial at the same point in your jump/approach. Characters that approach in the air can use their main approaching tool as a way to reliably bait out a shield reaction. This allows them to FF into a grab for a free punish and string set-up. These characters also gain the ability to AD through, or away from, their opponent when expecting a quick OoS option to be used preemptively allowing them to get a strong punish of almost anything they desire. If are expecting a landing into an option then they have to release their shield to be sure to be able to punish allowing your aerial to hit them. Finally, landing away from your opponent, assuming that you have a quick, ranged, and safe move, allows you to safely pressure them if they do nothing but sit in shield to set up frame traps (which DEHF could have done here with laser or ftilt) while also putting themselves out of range from OoS options allowing them to punish the opponent if they were to take one. A related, and important, note here- grabs are fairly laggy moves. If your opponent whiffs a grab against you it is very likely that you can get a relatively hard punish on them. For example, if Marth whiffs a grab, MK has more than enough time to hit Marth with an fsmash (not on reaction, but it’s still quite a big window to hit them in, even on reaction).
00:41 At this point DEHF realizes Tyrant is at a huge advantage in terms of risk/reward. DEHF was sitting at a percentage where he could easily be juggled or reverse the situation with him being offstage and Tyrant edgeguarding him for a stock or a large amount of damage at best (worst). To avoid this situation, DEHF felt it was smartest to just reset to neutral and fire lasers until Tyrant got off the ledge.
One of the most important things a player can learn to recognize well is when the risk/reward of a situation is heavily against them. Most tournaments have a moderate LGL so planking until a time out isn’t likely to be an issue. So, instead of getting anxious and impatient, reset the position to neutral if you feel the risk/reward is heavily against you. Take it as a moment to reflect on what happened recently, relax, get your nerves under control, etc. Rushing into a bad position because you’re frustrated or want your opponent to get out of a position where they are easily able to exploit the game’s mechanics is the easiest way to get punished for it and frustrate yourself even more. Recognize the risk/reward and just back away and go from neutral again. Keep in mind if they’re in a position where they’re actively trying to avoid confrontation, they’re potentially anxious and nervous as well. Don’t run into attacks to help them calm down and gain momentum.
00:50 DEHF does another empty SH, this time expecting an OoS option causing DEHF to spotdodge. Tyrant chooses to froll as it escapes the grab that he got hit with last time and ends quickly enough that if DEHF tried to run away that he could chase and apply pressure.
00:56 The phantasm that DEHF executed most recently before this one was an uncanceled one. This caused Tyrant to expect a second uncanceled phantasm to be coming. DEHF, realizing that this was a reasonable thing to expect, decides that instead of using phantasm to escape like he did last time, that he would expect Tyrant’s reaction and instead use it as an offensive tactic to be able to easily tack on some damage to Tyrant.
This is something that you see players, especially mid-level players, fall prey to all of the time. When they’re backed into a corner they are afraid of being knocked off of the stage. They’re afraid to shield as they could still get grabbed and put offstage so they instead roll towards the middle. Be aware that your opponent is likely looking for a panicked, defensive reaction. Be aware that you can almost just as easily use an offensive to reverse the situation or knock your opponent far enough away to allow you to regain stage positioning.
00:59 With DEHF in front of him, Tyrant chooses one of the best poking tools in the game to force a reaction from DEHF. By using dtilt, a safe and ranged attack, Tyrant is able to apply pressure to DEHF with minimal threat of immediate retaliation. Since unshielding into an option takes too long, and Tyrant spaced his tilt so that he was safe from a shield grab, DEHF is realistically only left with rolling into Tyrant, away from Tyrant, spot dodging, to continue holding shield, or using an aerial OoS. Tyrant chooses to ftilt as it covers, by far, the most options available to DEHF at that point. Ftilt beats an aerial OoS as it will Falco’s jump animation. It covers DEHF spotdodging as there are multiple hits to ftilt which can have their timing varied as the player sees fit. Rolling into Tyrant would have also gotten DEHF hit by ftilt as the dtilt was spaced well. If DEHF just continued to hold shield then the mix-ups that ftilt 1 and ftilt 2 on shield provide MK would allow Tyrant to remain safe and apply more pressure. Only by rolling away could ftilt have been the incorrect option to choose in this situation; and even then, Tyrant can stop after ftilt 1 resulting in just a neutral situation. DEHF chooses to jump and ftilt covers this option resulting in the set-up for a string.
If you find yourself auto-piloting through pressuring situations and not being able to fully capitalize on them, it’s likely because you’re not waiting for a reaction and instead just following into a pattern that is easily punished or exploited. Recognize what your grounded poking tools are (dtilt, jab, and ftilt are likely the three most common moves to be general poking tools) and figure out what the options that characters have against them on shield are. Figure out how to actively cover the most options among them and focus on how your opponent then reacts in those situations. Focusing on your grounded poking tools over your aerial ones is important as using any aerial requires commitment that staying grounded doesn’t. Just by jumping you put yourself into a disadvantaged situation. However, that isn’t to say that they should be entirely avoided or ignored, just that focusing on your grounded ones first and more is likely to gain you more reward over time.
Immediately following Tyrant’s ftilt, he tries to frame trap DEHF by using a SH uair. However, Tyrant unfortunately lands with more lag than he wanted to, missing out on his second ftilt, allowing DEHF to take the advantage and jump at him baiting a response from Tyrant. DEHF expects an OoS option (in this case Tyrant grabs) so he buffers a spotdodge upon landing to avoid punishment. This allows DEHF to net himself a free punish.
01:06 DEHF does a dthrow and attempts to BDACUS, unfortunately messing up the input for it. Realizing his mistake, he continues to charge the usmash in hopes that Tyrant would attempt to challenge the usmash hoping for an advantageous trade. Tyrant sees the charging usmash and waits it out allowing him to try and punish DEHF’s technical error.
01:08 Tyrant gets a grab on DEHF and decides to use bthrow. Tyrant immediately follows this up with a SH uair. This does a number of things for Tyrant. First, it puts him underneath DEHF and the uair starts applying pressure so that DEHF is forced to react. Any way that DEHF reacts, Tyrant is likely able to respond and follow-up with one of the many options that MK affords Tyrant. For example, if DEHF had airdodged then a second uair or nair could have punished the airdodge. Dropping into shield covers an aerial counter attack and would let Tyrant punish any aerial with an OoS option such as grab, nair, or SL. However, at 00:52 in this match Tyrant did the same thing. Tyrant used uair and baited an airdodge so that he could hit with nado setting up and furthering a juggle on DEHF. Remembering this, DEHF anticipates the nado and DIs out from Tyrant with an airdodge in anticipation of the nado coming. Tyrant, seeing that this was a likely option from DEHF, decides to wait out the airdodge and land a phenomenal SL on DEHF.
Following, and keeping track of, your opponent’s actions out of a throw is one of the easiest ways to get easy follow-ups, damage, and kills. Out of a throw your opponent is put into an extremely disadvantaged position where they’re forced to act first. Most characters have options after a throw to cover the majority of choices the thrown character can take. Since it’s such an easy situation to set up (as shields in this game are incredible and grab beats shield), gaining momentum off of a grab is an important facet of your game that you want to develop as a player.
01:09 Tyrant chooses to stray from a traditional and grounded ledge trap. He uairs several times, an option that seems to be inefficient and not optimal due to MK’s poor aerial mobility. DEHF views this as a chance to get off the ledge easily instead of having to guess correctly. DEHF recovers to the stage where Tyrant immediately FF nairs into a SL to send DEHF offstage, correctly guessing that DEHF would choose then to get onto the stage. It is an incredible bait by Tyrant that he unfortunately fails to convert into a stock from DEHF.
Being on the ledge, not by choice, is one of the worst positions in Brawl to be in. Your options are limited, many characters suffer from RCO lag, and depending on the percentage, the standard options from the ledge can be exceedingly slow or be very vulnerable to punishment due to limited invincibility frames. When on the ledge, it is incredibly important to recognize that you’re in a bad situation but remain calm about it. Don’t try to force yourself out of it, as that is what makes the situation so bad in the first place. Watch your opponent’s ledgetrapping patters closely and find a hole that you can exploit by guessing correctly to get through safely. If it seems like your opponent is all of a sudden straying from a normal ledge trap of theirs, be wary of it being a trap as it was in this case.
From the side of the person doing the ledge trapping, be aware that your opponent feels rushed to get off of the ledge and is looking for any perceived opening to do so. By creating a situation, where you remain in complete control the entire time, that appears to be comprised of unsafe or “incorrect” options from you, your opponent will likely rush in and try to capitalize on your “mistake.” Becoming adept at setting up situations like this will help enhance your ledge game even more than your characters basic tools would allow otherwise.
01:41 Even the best players in the world have bad habits. DEHF became very impatient and NEEDED to get the kill so he tried to force it. As a result he lost his stock instead.
Don’t let yourself get psyched out. Everyone has habits that are waiting on you to capitalize on. They may be bad habits or they may be good habits. No matter what the habit is though, it’s still a habit which means it can be read, baited, and punished. It doesn’t matter if it’s M2K, Rain, DEHF, Leon, or your friend down the road. Everyone has habits for you to read so don’t let yourself get psyched out just because it’s a big name.
01:51 When being juggled people very often panic and use an airdodge or an aerial very early on. Most players look for this and will wait for the airdodge to come before using an attack of their own. By airdodging late or attacking late it will throw off the timing of a lot of players allowing you to land safely when you would have otherwise been unable to. Tyrant used a quick option to challenge DEHF (dsmash) in an attempt to frame trap him. If DEHF was going to attack or airdodge late then he would get hit by the dsmash. If DEHF attacked “on time,” the two moves would have traded and if he had airdodged “on time” then the dsmash would have missed. Had the dsmash missed, it has low enough cool down that Tyrant likely would have been able to choose another option to still punish the landing (grab, dsmash again, SL, nado, etc).
Trapping landings with low lag moves is often a better way to continue juggles rather than chasing your opponent up into the air. Using a low lag move forces some kind of reaction from your opponent (unless they get hit) such as an airdodge at which point you can follow-up your initial move (the purpose of which was to force a reaction) with another move (grab, vertical launching move, something to put them offstage or onto the ledge, etc) to reset the situation while adding more damage onto your opponent. Jumping at your opponent solely with the intention of trying to hit them instead of trying to force a reaction to then hit them afterwards results in many players having the situation reversed on them. Choosing options carefully in order to apply pressure will get you much further in advancing your skill level than just trying to hit your opponent non-stop.
02:08 Tyrant chooses to pressure Falco on the ledge by using nado. When on the ledge a character’s options are extremely limited allowing for a move as powerful as nado to apply an insane level of pressure. Since it is a habit of players who play the “Spacies” to abuse their long ranged sideBs to get off of the ledge, nado is especially powerful in this situation since it beats Falco’s phantasm and forces a hard landing due to RCO lag. This, in turn, will allow Tyrant to convert an otherwise average punish into an extremely potent punish and gain a lot of advantage.
Just like you need to know how characters trap you on the ledge, you need to be very aware of how characters prefer to get off of the ledge and if they have RCO lag or not. Falco/Fox like to sideB, Marth likes to nair, Ike likes to jump-> airdodge onto the stage, and so forth. Being aware of the common options allows you to choose options that cover not only that common choice effectively but do it in a way that allows you to react to a different option that they may take instead. If you have a quick dtilt, spaced dtilt vs Snake on the ledge is very good (for example) as it will trade if they get on with an aerial, hit their landing lag if they airdodge onto the stage, and will end quickly enough to allow you to react to other options Snake may take as a mix-up. Additionally, be aware of what characters suffer from RCO lag. To go back to Falco, if he chooses to phantasm onto the stage, almost all characters can react to Falco’s phantasm with a jab to beat it out and force a hard landing for an incredibly detrimental punishment option.
03:05 Instead of freaking out, where many players do in this situation when recovering without a jump, DEHF didn’t panic and immediately recover onto the stage in hopes to get back and regain his jump and other options again. Instead, he waited to see what Tyrant was trying to bait. DEHF saw that Tyrant wanted a big punish from phantasming into a nado causing RCO lag. Instead, DEHF kept calm and just recovered to the ledge instead. DEHF then sees that Tyrant is staying in the middle of the stage hoping for another phantasm to recover where Tyrant would have been waiting with a nair. DEHF instead short cancels phantasm onto the stage which allowed DEHF to safely get onto the stage and reset to neutral/an advantaged position.
Okay, you’re offstage with no jump. You’re scared, as you should be. Your options are extremely limited and getting onto that giant floating mass is your priority; makes sense, right? Well, your opponent is aware of this and they are always waiting for your panicked reaction. Stay calm and think things through. Watch your opponent closely. How close are they to the ledge? Can they make it there before your recovery option? Can they cover you recovering to the ledge and onto the stage simultaneously? Don’t panic, just relax and analyze what your opponent is doing. You know where your character is, how quickly they’re falling, and what your recovery move is- you don’t need to watch yourself. Stay focused on your opponent and react to whatever you see them do. As counterintuitive as this is, it might be better to let yourself take a big hit instead of a smaller one. It will let you get higher up (assuming you DI it properly) and give you more space to recover in. If you avoid the big hit and let yourself get hit by the smaller one, instead of being launched upwards, you may just fall farther away from the stage where you get ledgehogged for free. Alternatively, if there is a vertically hitting move coming at you it might be a good idea to let it hit you at times (DDD’s sideB being a prime example of this) as long as you’re at a percent where it won’t kill you. Again, it just creates more space for you to move around in and recover safely.
03:12 DEHF tried to intimidate Tyrant by just staying underneath him while Tyrant was in the air. By just staying underneath him it gave the threat of hitting Tyrant, even without DEHF using any attacks. This threat forced Tyrant to use more and more of his jumps. As MK has a very low aerial mobility, the loss of his jumps is extremely hard for him to deal with as he loses options very quickly as his jumps disappear. As the jumps deplete, leaving only a few left, DEHF chooses to jump towards Tyrant to force an action to get to the ground (which would refresh his jumps) by feigning an attack. The two best ways for Tyrant to avoid getting hit are with either a FF airdodge or by using nado- both of which excellent options for what he’s trying to do (stop/avoid getting hit by an attack). In order to cover both of these choices that he expects, DEHF immediately FFs once he jumps, allowing him to stay under and slightly away from Tyrant so he can punish either option Tyrant chooses. Tyrant chooses to nado and DEHF if ready to get the punish as a result.
03:34 This is the exact same situation as 00:59. This time DEHF chooses to roll away- the option that MK’s ftilt doesn’t cover.
03:44 DEHF is out of options on his way down and is stuck in front of Tyrant. DEHF’s options are to airdodge and to attack. Falco lacks large disjoints on his aerials so any disjointed move from MK would cover that option. Likewise any ranged move, that is fairly safe on shield, is safe to use against the airdodge option as well. If Tyrant times the move right it’ll hit during the landing lag and if he’s late, and hits shield, Tyrant would remain safe from the virtue of the range of the move.
04:06 By footstooling (yes, it was on purpose) Tyrant it gave DEHF the option to net damage on him from an edgeguard as Tyrant had no reason to expect the footstool to be coming. Tyrant, unexpectedly immediately recovered with dimensional cape forcing DEHF to react immediately in order to land his following dair. As soon as Tyrant chose a grounded option, in this case to roll, DEHF immediately ran towards him to bait out an attack- specifically he was waiting for a SL or dsmash. As DEHF gets impatient for kills, it is reasonable for DEHF to assume that Tyrant was expecting a usmash, which would lose to both dsmash and SL given the speed of the moves/invincibility frames. DEHF, guessing right, avoids the SL and expects Tyrant to immediately cancel the SL to land laglessly and get to a safe position. Seeing that Tyrant chooses to glide away a little in an attempt to create distance, DEHF turns around and dashes left to get the usmash for Tyrant’s second stock.
04:42 Once again, DEHF expects Tyrant to immediately cancel the shielded SL to return to a neutral position to get to a safe position. Expecting this, DEHF chooses to boost pivot grab which would have net him the grab had he read correctly. Instead, likely remembering that DEHF expected an immediate cancel last time (see above), Tyrant chooses to glide away a little first before canceling causing the boost pivot grab to miss. DEHF realizes that he should have instead done a regular pivot grab.
06:00 As Tyrant has spent some time now jumping around, DEHF has had plenty of time to figure out Tyrant’s jumping pattern. Having done this, DEHF is able to land a dair setting up a tech chase. DEHF shields expecting a get-up attack as a mix-up (since it’s far from safe at kill percents as it is laggy). Had he gotten the read, he would have been able to grab, pummel, dthrow-> BDACUS/aerial/etc based on DI and expectations.
06:01 Tyrant instead sticks to a safer option and rolls into DEHF leaving DEHF sitting there in shield as Tyrant is able to get to a safe position.
While some characters are very bulky and aren’t able to avoid projectiles and walls as the smaller and faster ones (MK, Marth, ZSS), just walking to PS every time will get you punished from a simple read. No matter who you’re playing as, you want to be sure to mix-up how you avoid your opponents’ walling strategies. On the opposite side, as someone who is doing the walling, you shouldn’t have to think about how you are doing what you’re doing; it should be down to almost muscle memory since it is such a staple of your game play. Instead, focus on exactly how your opponents are avoiding your walls and use this information to start making the reads necessary to capitalize on your opponents’ actions.
00:12 This is something that you will see DEHF do very often vs MK players who are air camping vs him. MK has fairly low horizontal aerial mobility. By FHing towards Tyrant it forces an action. While the horizontal aerial mobility of these two characters is similar, Falco’s vertical mobility is significantly better than what MK can do. As a result of this, DEHF is almost always able to run away without Tyrant being able to chase him because of how quickly Falco can put space between himself and MK. In order to stay safe from Tyrant punishing his jump, once he gets near, or at, the apex of his jump, DEHF pulls back successfully applying slight pressure and forcing an action from Tyrant. Depending on the action that Tyrant took in this *repeated* situation, DEHF could potentially react and land uair, nair, etc. It is important to note that DEHF only jumps when Tyrant is at Falco’s FH height or higher. Any lower and Tyrant could react to Falco’s ascending jump to fall and start a juggling position.
Many characters are able to do something similar to this to any character camping in the air (which, really, is usually only MK but may also be DDD and a few others depending on the MU at hand) given that the camping character has low vertical and/or horizontal aerial mobility. Falco, as explained above, can use his higher vertical mobility to apply pressure and gain an advantage by forcing MK to act. Other characters with high vertical mobility (such as Fox, ZSS, and you even see Ally’s Snake go for superhero uairs vs MK’s dair camping at times) can apply the principle as well. Characters with higher horizontal mobility and notable range on their aerials (such as Marth, Wolf, etc) can do the same thing by spacing MK out from the sides while drifting away.
00:20 Given that DEHF has been doing this a bit now, and given that it is something that DEHF does frequently, Tyrant reads when DEHF is about to jump and preemptively FFs to the ground, with an AD covering his descent, allowing him to get under DEHF and punish Falco’s landing.
This relates back to the initial advice given for walling. While Tyrant was camping, he was able to focus entirely on what DEHF was doing as air camping is a fundamental part of his game. As he was able to focus entirely on DEHF, he was able to easily pick up on what DEHF was doing with how he was FHing allowing him to adapt and capitalize.
00:30 This is a really good mix-up that Falco has. By jumping, Falco presents the options of an aerial, laser, land into a tilt or jab, airdodge away to bait a grab/OoS option and punish it, or land into a grab. Given that Falco has a very quick FF speed it makes it impossible to react to any of the actions that he might take. As a result, Tyrant is forced to predict which option DEHF will take while DEHF is still in the air. If DEHF chooses to land-> grab, and Tyrant expects an aerial or laser, Tyrant will keep his shield up and won’t be able to react to the landing into grab in time to spot dodge. At this point Tyrant was out of chain grab percentages making the likelihood of the grab coming appear to be less. DEHF expected Tyrant to expect an aerial or laser, both of which lose to shield. This prompted DEHF to choose the option that beats shield; namely FF airdodge to grab. The FF is meant to make the time able to react as low as possible, the AD is to cover preemptive OoS options (such as SL), and then the grab is to beat the predicted shield.
While this mix-up works best with characters like Falco that have a quick FF speed, due to it lessening the amount of time to react, it is a strong mix-up available to all characters that have an aerial (or special) that can threaten well enough to force shield, especially if you take care to change up the timings for your aerials. This creates more uncertainty to what you’re about to do opposed to if you always throw out your aerial at the same point in your jump/approach. Characters that approach in the air can use their main approaching tool as a way to reliably bait out a shield reaction. This allows them to FF into a grab for a free punish and string set-up. These characters also gain the ability to AD through, or away from, their opponent when expecting a quick OoS option to be used preemptively allowing them to get a strong punish of almost anything they desire. If are expecting a landing into an option then they have to release their shield to be sure to be able to punish allowing your aerial to hit them. Finally, landing away from your opponent, assuming that you have a quick, ranged, and safe move, allows you to safely pressure them if they do nothing but sit in shield to set up frame traps (which DEHF could have done here with laser or ftilt) while also putting themselves out of range from OoS options allowing them to punish the opponent if they were to take one. A related, and important, note here- grabs are fairly laggy moves. If your opponent whiffs a grab against you it is very likely that you can get a relatively hard punish on them. For example, if Marth whiffs a grab, MK has more than enough time to hit Marth with an fsmash (not on reaction, but it’s still quite a big window to hit them in, even on reaction).
00:41 At this point DEHF realizes Tyrant is at a huge advantage in terms of risk/reward. DEHF was sitting at a percentage where he could easily be juggled or reverse the situation with him being offstage and Tyrant edgeguarding him for a stock or a large amount of damage at best (worst). To avoid this situation, DEHF felt it was smartest to just reset to neutral and fire lasers until Tyrant got off the ledge.
One of the most important things a player can learn to recognize well is when the risk/reward of a situation is heavily against them. Most tournaments have a moderate LGL so planking until a time out isn’t likely to be an issue. So, instead of getting anxious and impatient, reset the position to neutral if you feel the risk/reward is heavily against you. Take it as a moment to reflect on what happened recently, relax, get your nerves under control, etc. Rushing into a bad position because you’re frustrated or want your opponent to get out of a position where they are easily able to exploit the game’s mechanics is the easiest way to get punished for it and frustrate yourself even more. Recognize the risk/reward and just back away and go from neutral again. Keep in mind if they’re in a position where they’re actively trying to avoid confrontation, they’re potentially anxious and nervous as well. Don’t run into attacks to help them calm down and gain momentum.
00:50 DEHF does another empty SH, this time expecting an OoS option causing DEHF to spotdodge. Tyrant chooses to froll as it escapes the grab that he got hit with last time and ends quickly enough that if DEHF tried to run away that he could chase and apply pressure.
00:56 The phantasm that DEHF executed most recently before this one was an uncanceled one. This caused Tyrant to expect a second uncanceled phantasm to be coming. DEHF, realizing that this was a reasonable thing to expect, decides that instead of using phantasm to escape like he did last time, that he would expect Tyrant’s reaction and instead use it as an offensive tactic to be able to easily tack on some damage to Tyrant.
This is something that you see players, especially mid-level players, fall prey to all of the time. When they’re backed into a corner they are afraid of being knocked off of the stage. They’re afraid to shield as they could still get grabbed and put offstage so they instead roll towards the middle. Be aware that your opponent is likely looking for a panicked, defensive reaction. Be aware that you can almost just as easily use an offensive to reverse the situation or knock your opponent far enough away to allow you to regain stage positioning.
00:59 With DEHF in front of him, Tyrant chooses one of the best poking tools in the game to force a reaction from DEHF. By using dtilt, a safe and ranged attack, Tyrant is able to apply pressure to DEHF with minimal threat of immediate retaliation. Since unshielding into an option takes too long, and Tyrant spaced his tilt so that he was safe from a shield grab, DEHF is realistically only left with rolling into Tyrant, away from Tyrant, spot dodging, to continue holding shield, or using an aerial OoS. Tyrant chooses to ftilt as it covers, by far, the most options available to DEHF at that point. Ftilt beats an aerial OoS as it will Falco’s jump animation. It covers DEHF spotdodging as there are multiple hits to ftilt which can have their timing varied as the player sees fit. Rolling into Tyrant would have also gotten DEHF hit by ftilt as the dtilt was spaced well. If DEHF just continued to hold shield then the mix-ups that ftilt 1 and ftilt 2 on shield provide MK would allow Tyrant to remain safe and apply more pressure. Only by rolling away could ftilt have been the incorrect option to choose in this situation; and even then, Tyrant can stop after ftilt 1 resulting in just a neutral situation. DEHF chooses to jump and ftilt covers this option resulting in the set-up for a string.
If you find yourself auto-piloting through pressuring situations and not being able to fully capitalize on them, it’s likely because you’re not waiting for a reaction and instead just following into a pattern that is easily punished or exploited. Recognize what your grounded poking tools are (dtilt, jab, and ftilt are likely the three most common moves to be general poking tools) and figure out what the options that characters have against them on shield are. Figure out how to actively cover the most options among them and focus on how your opponent then reacts in those situations. Focusing on your grounded poking tools over your aerial ones is important as using any aerial requires commitment that staying grounded doesn’t. Just by jumping you put yourself into a disadvantaged situation. However, that isn’t to say that they should be entirely avoided or ignored, just that focusing on your grounded ones first and more is likely to gain you more reward over time.
Immediately following Tyrant’s ftilt, he tries to frame trap DEHF by using a SH uair. However, Tyrant unfortunately lands with more lag than he wanted to, missing out on his second ftilt, allowing DEHF to take the advantage and jump at him baiting a response from Tyrant. DEHF expects an OoS option (in this case Tyrant grabs) so he buffers a spotdodge upon landing to avoid punishment. This allows DEHF to net himself a free punish.
01:06 DEHF does a dthrow and attempts to BDACUS, unfortunately messing up the input for it. Realizing his mistake, he continues to charge the usmash in hopes that Tyrant would attempt to challenge the usmash hoping for an advantageous trade. Tyrant sees the charging usmash and waits it out allowing him to try and punish DEHF’s technical error.
01:08 Tyrant gets a grab on DEHF and decides to use bthrow. Tyrant immediately follows this up with a SH uair. This does a number of things for Tyrant. First, it puts him underneath DEHF and the uair starts applying pressure so that DEHF is forced to react. Any way that DEHF reacts, Tyrant is likely able to respond and follow-up with one of the many options that MK affords Tyrant. For example, if DEHF had airdodged then a second uair or nair could have punished the airdodge. Dropping into shield covers an aerial counter attack and would let Tyrant punish any aerial with an OoS option such as grab, nair, or SL. However, at 00:52 in this match Tyrant did the same thing. Tyrant used uair and baited an airdodge so that he could hit with nado setting up and furthering a juggle on DEHF. Remembering this, DEHF anticipates the nado and DIs out from Tyrant with an airdodge in anticipation of the nado coming. Tyrant, seeing that this was a likely option from DEHF, decides to wait out the airdodge and land a phenomenal SL on DEHF.
Following, and keeping track of, your opponent’s actions out of a throw is one of the easiest ways to get easy follow-ups, damage, and kills. Out of a throw your opponent is put into an extremely disadvantaged position where they’re forced to act first. Most characters have options after a throw to cover the majority of choices the thrown character can take. Since it’s such an easy situation to set up (as shields in this game are incredible and grab beats shield), gaining momentum off of a grab is an important facet of your game that you want to develop as a player.
01:09 Tyrant chooses to stray from a traditional and grounded ledge trap. He uairs several times, an option that seems to be inefficient and not optimal due to MK’s poor aerial mobility. DEHF views this as a chance to get off the ledge easily instead of having to guess correctly. DEHF recovers to the stage where Tyrant immediately FF nairs into a SL to send DEHF offstage, correctly guessing that DEHF would choose then to get onto the stage. It is an incredible bait by Tyrant that he unfortunately fails to convert into a stock from DEHF.
Being on the ledge, not by choice, is one of the worst positions in Brawl to be in. Your options are limited, many characters suffer from RCO lag, and depending on the percentage, the standard options from the ledge can be exceedingly slow or be very vulnerable to punishment due to limited invincibility frames. When on the ledge, it is incredibly important to recognize that you’re in a bad situation but remain calm about it. Don’t try to force yourself out of it, as that is what makes the situation so bad in the first place. Watch your opponent’s ledgetrapping patters closely and find a hole that you can exploit by guessing correctly to get through safely. If it seems like your opponent is all of a sudden straying from a normal ledge trap of theirs, be wary of it being a trap as it was in this case.
From the side of the person doing the ledge trapping, be aware that your opponent feels rushed to get off of the ledge and is looking for any perceived opening to do so. By creating a situation, where you remain in complete control the entire time, that appears to be comprised of unsafe or “incorrect” options from you, your opponent will likely rush in and try to capitalize on your “mistake.” Becoming adept at setting up situations like this will help enhance your ledge game even more than your characters basic tools would allow otherwise.
01:41 Even the best players in the world have bad habits. DEHF became very impatient and NEEDED to get the kill so he tried to force it. As a result he lost his stock instead.
Don’t let yourself get psyched out. Everyone has habits that are waiting on you to capitalize on. They may be bad habits or they may be good habits. No matter what the habit is though, it’s still a habit which means it can be read, baited, and punished. It doesn’t matter if it’s M2K, Rain, DEHF, Leon, or your friend down the road. Everyone has habits for you to read so don’t let yourself get psyched out just because it’s a big name.
01:51 When being juggled people very often panic and use an airdodge or an aerial very early on. Most players look for this and will wait for the airdodge to come before using an attack of their own. By airdodging late or attacking late it will throw off the timing of a lot of players allowing you to land safely when you would have otherwise been unable to. Tyrant used a quick option to challenge DEHF (dsmash) in an attempt to frame trap him. If DEHF was going to attack or airdodge late then he would get hit by the dsmash. If DEHF attacked “on time,” the two moves would have traded and if he had airdodged “on time” then the dsmash would have missed. Had the dsmash missed, it has low enough cool down that Tyrant likely would have been able to choose another option to still punish the landing (grab, dsmash again, SL, nado, etc).
Trapping landings with low lag moves is often a better way to continue juggles rather than chasing your opponent up into the air. Using a low lag move forces some kind of reaction from your opponent (unless they get hit) such as an airdodge at which point you can follow-up your initial move (the purpose of which was to force a reaction) with another move (grab, vertical launching move, something to put them offstage or onto the ledge, etc) to reset the situation while adding more damage onto your opponent. Jumping at your opponent solely with the intention of trying to hit them instead of trying to force a reaction to then hit them afterwards results in many players having the situation reversed on them. Choosing options carefully in order to apply pressure will get you much further in advancing your skill level than just trying to hit your opponent non-stop.
02:08 Tyrant chooses to pressure Falco on the ledge by using nado. When on the ledge a character’s options are extremely limited allowing for a move as powerful as nado to apply an insane level of pressure. Since it is a habit of players who play the “Spacies” to abuse their long ranged sideBs to get off of the ledge, nado is especially powerful in this situation since it beats Falco’s phantasm and forces a hard landing due to RCO lag. This, in turn, will allow Tyrant to convert an otherwise average punish into an extremely potent punish and gain a lot of advantage.
Just like you need to know how characters trap you on the ledge, you need to be very aware of how characters prefer to get off of the ledge and if they have RCO lag or not. Falco/Fox like to sideB, Marth likes to nair, Ike likes to jump-> airdodge onto the stage, and so forth. Being aware of the common options allows you to choose options that cover not only that common choice effectively but do it in a way that allows you to react to a different option that they may take instead. If you have a quick dtilt, spaced dtilt vs Snake on the ledge is very good (for example) as it will trade if they get on with an aerial, hit their landing lag if they airdodge onto the stage, and will end quickly enough to allow you to react to other options Snake may take as a mix-up. Additionally, be aware of what characters suffer from RCO lag. To go back to Falco, if he chooses to phantasm onto the stage, almost all characters can react to Falco’s phantasm with a jab to beat it out and force a hard landing for an incredibly detrimental punishment option.
03:05 Instead of freaking out, where many players do in this situation when recovering without a jump, DEHF didn’t panic and immediately recover onto the stage in hopes to get back and regain his jump and other options again. Instead, he waited to see what Tyrant was trying to bait. DEHF saw that Tyrant wanted a big punish from phantasming into a nado causing RCO lag. Instead, DEHF kept calm and just recovered to the ledge instead. DEHF then sees that Tyrant is staying in the middle of the stage hoping for another phantasm to recover where Tyrant would have been waiting with a nair. DEHF instead short cancels phantasm onto the stage which allowed DEHF to safely get onto the stage and reset to neutral/an advantaged position.
Okay, you’re offstage with no jump. You’re scared, as you should be. Your options are extremely limited and getting onto that giant floating mass is your priority; makes sense, right? Well, your opponent is aware of this and they are always waiting for your panicked reaction. Stay calm and think things through. Watch your opponent closely. How close are they to the ledge? Can they make it there before your recovery option? Can they cover you recovering to the ledge and onto the stage simultaneously? Don’t panic, just relax and analyze what your opponent is doing. You know where your character is, how quickly they’re falling, and what your recovery move is- you don’t need to watch yourself. Stay focused on your opponent and react to whatever you see them do. As counterintuitive as this is, it might be better to let yourself take a big hit instead of a smaller one. It will let you get higher up (assuming you DI it properly) and give you more space to recover in. If you avoid the big hit and let yourself get hit by the smaller one, instead of being launched upwards, you may just fall farther away from the stage where you get ledgehogged for free. Alternatively, if there is a vertically hitting move coming at you it might be a good idea to let it hit you at times (DDD’s sideB being a prime example of this) as long as you’re at a percent where it won’t kill you. Again, it just creates more space for you to move around in and recover safely.
03:12 DEHF tried to intimidate Tyrant by just staying underneath him while Tyrant was in the air. By just staying underneath him it gave the threat of hitting Tyrant, even without DEHF using any attacks. This threat forced Tyrant to use more and more of his jumps. As MK has a very low aerial mobility, the loss of his jumps is extremely hard for him to deal with as he loses options very quickly as his jumps disappear. As the jumps deplete, leaving only a few left, DEHF chooses to jump towards Tyrant to force an action to get to the ground (which would refresh his jumps) by feigning an attack. The two best ways for Tyrant to avoid getting hit are with either a FF airdodge or by using nado- both of which excellent options for what he’s trying to do (stop/avoid getting hit by an attack). In order to cover both of these choices that he expects, DEHF immediately FFs once he jumps, allowing him to stay under and slightly away from Tyrant so he can punish either option Tyrant chooses. Tyrant chooses to nado and DEHF if ready to get the punish as a result.
03:34 This is the exact same situation as 00:59. This time DEHF chooses to roll away- the option that MK’s ftilt doesn’t cover.
03:44 DEHF is out of options on his way down and is stuck in front of Tyrant. DEHF’s options are to airdodge and to attack. Falco lacks large disjoints on his aerials so any disjointed move from MK would cover that option. Likewise any ranged move, that is fairly safe on shield, is safe to use against the airdodge option as well. If Tyrant times the move right it’ll hit during the landing lag and if he’s late, and hits shield, Tyrant would remain safe from the virtue of the range of the move.
04:06 By footstooling (yes, it was on purpose) Tyrant it gave DEHF the option to net damage on him from an edgeguard as Tyrant had no reason to expect the footstool to be coming. Tyrant, unexpectedly immediately recovered with dimensional cape forcing DEHF to react immediately in order to land his following dair. As soon as Tyrant chose a grounded option, in this case to roll, DEHF immediately ran towards him to bait out an attack- specifically he was waiting for a SL or dsmash. As DEHF gets impatient for kills, it is reasonable for DEHF to assume that Tyrant was expecting a usmash, which would lose to both dsmash and SL given the speed of the moves/invincibility frames. DEHF, guessing right, avoids the SL and expects Tyrant to immediately cancel the SL to land laglessly and get to a safe position. Seeing that Tyrant chooses to glide away a little in an attempt to create distance, DEHF turns around and dashes left to get the usmash for Tyrant’s second stock.
04:42 Once again, DEHF expects Tyrant to immediately cancel the shielded SL to return to a neutral position to get to a safe position. Expecting this, DEHF chooses to boost pivot grab which would have net him the grab had he read correctly. Instead, likely remembering that DEHF expected an immediate cancel last time (see above), Tyrant chooses to glide away a little first before canceling causing the boost pivot grab to miss. DEHF realizes that he should have instead done a regular pivot grab.
06:00 As Tyrant has spent some time now jumping around, DEHF has had plenty of time to figure out Tyrant’s jumping pattern. Having done this, DEHF is able to land a dair setting up a tech chase. DEHF shields expecting a get-up attack as a mix-up (since it’s far from safe at kill percents as it is laggy). Had he gotten the read, he would have been able to grab, pummel, dthrow-> BDACUS/aerial/etc based on DI and expectations.
06:01 Tyrant instead sticks to a safer option and rolls into DEHF leaving DEHF sitting there in shield as Tyrant is able to get to a safe position.
00:12 This is something that you will see DEHF do very often vs MK players who are air camping vs him. MK has fairly low horizontal aerial mobility. By FHing towards Tyrant it forces an action. While the horizontal aerial mobility of these two characters is similar, Falco’s vertical mobility is significantly better than what MK can do. As a result of this, DEHF is almost always able to run away without Tyrant being able to chase him because of how quickly Falco can put space between himself and MK. In order to stay safe from Tyrant punishing his jump, once he gets near, or at, the apex of his jump, DEHF pulls back successfully applying slight pressure and forcing an action from Tyrant. Depending on the action that Tyrant took in this *repeated* situation, DEHF could potentially react and land uair, nair, etc. It is important to note that DEHF only jumps when Tyrant is at Falco’s FH height or higher. Any lower and Tyrant could react to Falco’s ascending jump to fall and start a juggling position.
Many characters are able to do something similar to this to any character camping in the air (which, really, is usually only MK but may also be DDD and a few others depending on the MU at hand) given that the camping character has low vertical and/or horizontal aerial mobility. Falco, as explained above, can use his higher vertical mobility to apply pressure and gain an advantage by forcing MK to act. Other characters with high vertical mobility (such as Fox, ZSS, and you even see Ally’s Snake go for superhero uairs vs MK’s dair camping at times) can apply the principle as well. Characters with higher horizontal mobility and notable range on their aerials (such as Marth, Wolf, etc) can do the same thing by spacing MK out from the sides while drifting away.
00:30 This is a really good mix-up that Falco has. By jumping, Falco presents the options of an aerial, laser, land into a tilt or jab, airdodge away to bait a grab/OoS option and punish it, or land into a grab. Given that Falco has a very quick FF speed it makes it impossible to react to any of the actions that he might take. As a result, Tyrant is forced to predict which option DEHF will take while DEHF is still in the air. If DEHF chooses to land-> grab, and Tyrant expects an aerial or laser, Tyrant will keep his shield up and won’t be able to react to the landing into grab in time to spot dodge. At this point Tyrant was out of chain grab percentages making the likelihood of the grab coming appear to be less. DEHF expected Tyrant to expect an aerial or laser, both of which lose to shield. This prompted DEHF to choose the option that beats shield; namely FF airdodge to grab. The FF is meant to make the time able to react as low as possible, the AD is to cover preemptive OoS options (such as SL), and then the grab is to beat the predicted shield.
While this mix-up works best with characters like Falco that have a quick FF speed, due to it lessening the amount of time to react, it is a strong mix-up available to all characters that have an aerial (or special) that can threaten well enough to force shield, especially if you take care to change up the timings for your aerials. This creates more uncertainty to what you’re about to do opposed to if you always throw out your aerial at the same point in your jump/approach. Characters that approach in the air can use their main approaching tool as a way to reliably bait out a shield reaction. This allows them to FF into a grab for a free punish and string set-up. These characters also gain the ability to AD through, or away from, their opponent when expecting a quick OoS option to be used preemptively allowing them to get a strong punish of almost anything they desire. If are expecting a landing into an option then they have to release their shield to be sure to be able to punish allowing your aerial to hit them. Finally, landing away from your opponent, assuming that you have a quick, ranged, and safe move, allows you to safely pressure them if they do nothing but sit in shield to set up frame traps (which DEHF could have done here with laser or ftilt) while also putting themselves out of range from OoS options allowing them to punish the opponent if they were to take one. A related, and important, note here- grabs are fairly laggy moves. If your opponent whiffs a grab against you it is very likely that you can get a relatively hard punish on them. For example, if Marth whiffs a grab, MK has more than enough time to hit Marth with an fsmash (not on reaction, but it’s still quite a big window to hit them in, even on reaction).
00:41 At this point DEHF realizes Tyrant is at a huge advantage in terms of risk/reward. DEHF was sitting at a percentage where he could easily be juggled or reverse the situation with him being offstage and Tyrant edgeguarding him for a stock or a large amount of damage at best (worst). To avoid this situation, DEHF felt it was smartest to just reset to neutral and fire lasers until Tyrant got off the ledge.
One of the most important things a player can learn to recognize well is when the risk/reward of a situation is heavily against them. Most tournaments have a moderate LGL so planking until a time out isn’t likely to be an issue. So, instead of getting anxious and impatient, reset the position to neutral if you feel the risk/reward is heavily against you. Take it as a moment to reflect on what happened recently, relax, get your nerves under control, etc. Rushing into a bad position because you’re frustrated or want your opponent to get out of a position where they are easily able to exploit the game’s mechanics is the easiest way to get punished for it and frustrate yourself even more. Recognize the risk/reward and just back away and go from neutral again. Keep in mind if they’re in a position where they’re actively trying to avoid confrontation, they’re potentially anxious and nervous as well. Don’t run into attacks to help them calm down and gain momentum.
00:56 The phantasm that DEHF executed most recently before this one was an uncanceled one. This caused Tyrant to expect a second uncanceled phantasm to be coming. DEHF, realizing that this was a reasonable thing to expect, decides that instead of using phantasm to escape like he did last time, that he would expect Tyrant’s reaction and instead use it as an offensive tactic to be able to easily tack on some damage to Tyrant.
This is something that you see players, especially mid-level players, fall prey to all of the time. When they’re backed into a corner they are afraid of being knocked off of the stage. They’re afraid to shield as they could still get grabbed and put offstage so they instead roll towards the middle. Be aware that your opponent is likely looking for a panicked, defensive reaction. Be aware that you can almost just as easily use an offensive to reverse the situation or knock your opponent far enough away to allow you to regain stage positioning.
01:06 DEHF does a dthrow and attempts to BDACUS, unfortunately messing up the input for it. Realizing his mistake, he continues to charge the usmash in hopes that Tyrant would attempt to challenge the usmash hoping for an advantageous trade. Tyrant sees the charging usmash and waits it out allowing him to punish DEHF’s technical error.
01:41 Even the best players in the world have bad habits. DEHF became very impatient and NEEDED to get the kill so he tried to force it. As a result he lost his stock instead.
Don’t let yourself get psyched out. Everyone has habits that are waiting on you to capitalize on. They may be bad habits or they may be good habits. No matter what the habit is though, it’s still a habit which means it can be read, baited, and punished. It doesn’t matter if it’s M2K, Rain, DEHF, Leon, or your friend down the road. Everyone has habits for you to read so don’t let yourself get psyched out just because it’s a big name.
03:05 Instead of freaking out, where many players do in this situation when recovering without a jump, DEHF didn’t panic and immediately recover onto the stage in hopes to get back and regain his jump and other options again. Instead, he waited to see what Tyrant was trying to bait. DEHF saw that Tyrant wanted a big punish from phantasming into a nado causing RCO lag. Instead, DEHF kept calm and just recovered to the ledge instead. DEHF then sees that Tyrant is staying in the middle of the stage hoping for another phantasm to recover where Tyrant would have been waiting with a nair. DEHF instead short cancels phantasm onto the stage which allowed DEHF to safely get onto the stage and reset to neutral/an advantaged position.
Okay, you’re offstage with no jump. You’re scared, as you should be. Your options are extremely limited and getting onto that giant floating mass is your priority; makes sense, right? Well, your opponent is aware of this and they are always waiting for your panicked reaction. Stay calm and think things through. Watch your opponent closely. How close are they to the ledge? Can they make it there before your recovery option? Can they cover you recovering to the ledge and onto the stage simultaneously? Don’t panic, just relax and analyze what your opponent is doing. You know where your character is, how quickly they’re falling, and what your recovery move is- you don’t need to watch yourself. Stay focused on your opponent and react to whatever you see them do. As counterintuitive as this is, it might be better to let yourself take a big hit instead of a smaller one. It will let you get higher up (assuming you DI it properly) and give you more space to recover in. If you avoid the big hit and let yourself get hit by the smaller one, instead of being launched upwards, you may just fall farther away from the stage where you get ledgehogged for free. Alternatively, if there is a vertically hitting move coming at you it might be a good idea to let it hit you at times (DDD’s sideB being a prime example of this) as long as you’re at a percent where it won’t kill you. Again, it just creates more space for you to move around in and recover safely.
03:12 DEHF tried to intimidate Tyrant by just staying underneath him while Tyrant was in the air. By just staying underneath him it gave the threat of hitting Tyrant, even without DEHF using any attacks. This threat forced Tyrant to use more and more of his jumps. As MK has a very low aerial mobility, the loss of his jumps is extremely hard for him to deal with as he loses options very quickly as his jumps disappear. As the jumps deplete, leaving only a few left, DEHF chooses to jump towards Tyrant to force an action to get to the ground (which would refresh his jumps) by feigning an attack. The two best ways for Tyrant to avoid getting hit are with either a FF airdodge or by using nado- both of which excellent options for what he’s trying to do (stop/avoid getting hit by an attack). In order to cover both of these choices that he expects, DEHF immediately FFs once he jumps, allowing him to stay under and slightly away from Tyrant so he can punish either option Tyrant chooses. Tyrant chooses to nado and DEHF if ready to get the punish as a result.
04:06 By footstooling (yes, it was on purpose) Tyrant it gave DEHF the option to net damage on him from an edgeguard as Tyrant had no reason to expect the footstool to be coming. Tyrant, unexpectedly immediately recovered with dimensional cape forcing DEHF to react immediately in order to land his following dair. As soon as Tyrant chose a grounded option, in this case to roll, DEHF immediately ran towards him to bait out an attack- specifically he was waiting for a SL or dsmash. As DEHF gets impatient for kills, it is reasonable for DEHF to assume that Tyrant was expecting a usmash, which would lose to both dsmash and SL given the speed of the moves/invincibility frames. DEHF, guessing right, avoids the SL and expects Tyrant to immediately cancel the SL to land laglessly and get to a safe position. Seeing that Tyrant chooses to glide away a little in an attempt to create distance, DEHF turns around and dashes left to get the usmash for Tyrant’s second stock.
04:42 Once again, DEHF expects Tyrant to immediately cancel the shielded SL to return to a neutral position to get to a safe position. Expecting this, DEHF chooses to boost pivot grab which would have net him the grab had he read correctly. Instead, likely remembering that DEHF expected an immediate cancel last time (see above), Tyrant chooses to glide away a little first before canceling causing the boost pivot grab to miss. DEHF realizes that he should have instead done a regular pivot grab.
06:00 As Tyrant has spent some time now jumping around, DEHF has had plenty of time to figure out Tyrant’s jumping pattern. Having done this, DEHF is able to land a dair setting up a tech chase. DEHF shields expecting a get-up attack as a mix-up (since it’s far from safe at kill percents as it is laggy). Had he gotten the read, he would have been able to grab, pummel, dthrow-> BDACUS/aerial/etc based on DI and expectations.
Many characters are able to do something similar to this to any character camping in the air (which, really, is usually only MK but may also be DDD and a few others depending on the MU at hand) given that the camping character has low vertical and/or horizontal aerial mobility. Falco, as explained above, can use his higher vertical mobility to apply pressure and gain an advantage by forcing MK to act. Other characters with high vertical mobility (such as Fox, ZSS, and you even see Ally’s Snake go for superhero uairs vs MK’s dair camping at times) can apply the principle as well. Characters with higher horizontal mobility and notable range on their aerials (such as Marth, Wolf, etc) can do the same thing by spacing MK out from the sides while drifting away.
00:30 This is a really good mix-up that Falco has. By jumping, Falco presents the options of an aerial, laser, land into a tilt or jab, airdodge away to bait a grab/OoS option and punish it, or land into a grab. Given that Falco has a very quick FF speed it makes it impossible to react to any of the actions that he might take. As a result, Tyrant is forced to predict which option DEHF will take while DEHF is still in the air. If DEHF chooses to land-> grab, and Tyrant expects an aerial or laser, Tyrant will keep his shield up and won’t be able to react to the landing into grab in time to spot dodge. At this point Tyrant was out of chain grab percentages making the likelihood of the grab coming appear to be less. DEHF expected Tyrant to expect an aerial or laser, both of which lose to shield. This prompted DEHF to choose the option that beats shield; namely FF airdodge to grab. The FF is meant to make the time able to react as low as possible, the AD is to cover preemptive OoS options (such as SL), and then the grab is to beat the predicted shield.
While this mix-up works best with characters like Falco that have a quick FF speed, due to it lessening the amount of time to react, it is a strong mix-up available to all characters that have an aerial (or special) that can threaten well enough to force shield, especially if you take care to change up the timings for your aerials. This creates more uncertainty to what you’re about to do opposed to if you always throw out your aerial at the same point in your jump/approach. Characters that approach in the air can use their main approaching tool as a way to reliably bait out a shield reaction. This allows them to FF into a grab for a free punish and string set-up. These characters also gain the ability to AD through, or away from, their opponent when expecting a quick OoS option to be used preemptively allowing them to get a strong punish of almost anything they desire. If are expecting a landing into an option then they have to release their shield to be sure to be able to punish allowing your aerial to hit them. Finally, landing away from your opponent, assuming that you have a quick, ranged, and safe move, allows you to safely pressure them if they do nothing but sit in shield to set up frame traps (which DEHF could have done here with laser or ftilt) while also putting themselves out of range from OoS options allowing them to punish the opponent if they were to take one. A related, and important, note here- grabs are fairly laggy moves. If your opponent whiffs a grab against you it is very likely that you can get a relatively hard punish on them. For example, if Marth whiffs a grab, MK has more than enough time to hit Marth with an fsmash (not on reaction, but it’s still quite a big window to hit them in, even on reaction).
00:41 At this point DEHF realizes Tyrant is at a huge advantage in terms of risk/reward. DEHF was sitting at a percentage where he could easily be juggled or reverse the situation with him being offstage and Tyrant edgeguarding him for a stock or a large amount of damage at best (worst). To avoid this situation, DEHF felt it was smartest to just reset to neutral and fire lasers until Tyrant got off the ledge.
One of the most important things a player can learn to recognize well is when the risk/reward of a situation is heavily against them. Most tournaments have a moderate LGL so planking until a time out isn’t likely to be an issue. So, instead of getting anxious and impatient, reset the position to neutral if you feel the risk/reward is heavily against you. Take it as a moment to reflect on what happened recently, relax, get your nerves under control, etc. Rushing into a bad position because you’re frustrated or want your opponent to get out of a position where they are easily able to exploit the game’s mechanics is the easiest way to get punished for it and frustrate yourself even more. Recognize the risk/reward and just back away and go from neutral again. Keep in mind if they’re in a position where they’re actively trying to avoid confrontation, they’re potentially anxious and nervous as well. Don’t run into attacks to help them calm down and gain momentum.
00:56 The phantasm that DEHF executed most recently before this one was an uncanceled one. This caused Tyrant to expect a second uncanceled phantasm to be coming. DEHF, realizing that this was a reasonable thing to expect, decides that instead of using phantasm to escape like he did last time, that he would expect Tyrant’s reaction and instead use it as an offensive tactic to be able to easily tack on some damage to Tyrant.
This is something that you see players, especially mid-level players, fall prey to all of the time. When they’re backed into a corner they are afraid of being knocked off of the stage. They’re afraid to shield as they could still get grabbed and put offstage so they instead roll towards the middle. Be aware that your opponent is likely looking for a panicked, defensive reaction. Be aware that you can almost just as easily use an offensive to reverse the situation or knock your opponent far enough away to allow you to regain stage positioning.
01:06 DEHF does a dthrow and attempts to BDACUS, unfortunately messing up the input for it. Realizing his mistake, he continues to charge the usmash in hopes that Tyrant would attempt to challenge the usmash hoping for an advantageous trade. Tyrant sees the charging usmash and waits it out allowing him to punish DEHF’s technical error.
01:41 Even the best players in the world have bad habits. DEHF became very impatient and NEEDED to get the kill so he tried to force it. As a result he lost his stock instead.
Don’t let yourself get psyched out. Everyone has habits that are waiting on you to capitalize on. They may be bad habits or they may be good habits. No matter what the habit is though, it’s still a habit which means it can be read, baited, and punished. It doesn’t matter if it’s M2K, Rain, DEHF, Leon, or your friend down the road. Everyone has habits for you to read so don’t let yourself get psyched out just because it’s a big name.
03:05 Instead of freaking out, where many players do in this situation when recovering without a jump, DEHF didn’t panic and immediately recover onto the stage in hopes to get back and regain his jump and other options again. Instead, he waited to see what Tyrant was trying to bait. DEHF saw that Tyrant wanted a big punish from phantasming into a nado causing RCO lag. Instead, DEHF kept calm and just recovered to the ledge instead. DEHF then sees that Tyrant is staying in the middle of the stage hoping for another phantasm to recover where Tyrant would have been waiting with a nair. DEHF instead short cancels phantasm onto the stage which allowed DEHF to safely get onto the stage and reset to neutral/an advantaged position.
Okay, you’re offstage with no jump. You’re scared, as you should be. Your options are extremely limited and getting onto that giant floating mass is your priority; makes sense, right? Well, your opponent is aware of this and they are always waiting for your panicked reaction. Stay calm and think things through. Watch your opponent closely. How close are they to the ledge? Can they make it there before your recovery option? Can they cover you recovering to the ledge and onto the stage simultaneously? Don’t panic, just relax and analyze what your opponent is doing. You know where your character is, how quickly they’re falling, and what your recovery move is- you don’t need to watch yourself. Stay focused on your opponent and react to whatever you see them do. As counterintuitive as this is, it might be better to let yourself take a big hit instead of a smaller one. It will let you get higher up (assuming you DI it properly) and give you more space to recover in. If you avoid the big hit and let yourself get hit by the smaller one, instead of being launched upwards, you may just fall farther away from the stage where you get ledgehogged for free. Alternatively, if there is a vertically hitting move coming at you it might be a good idea to let it hit you at times (DDD’s sideB being a prime example of this) as long as you’re at a percent where it won’t kill you. Again, it just creates more space for you to move around in and recover safely.
03:12 DEHF tried to intimidate Tyrant by just staying underneath him while Tyrant was in the air. By just staying underneath him it gave the threat of hitting Tyrant, even without DEHF using any attacks. This threat forced Tyrant to use more and more of his jumps. As MK has a very low aerial mobility, the loss of his jumps is extremely hard for him to deal with as he loses options very quickly as his jumps disappear. As the jumps deplete, leaving only a few left, DEHF chooses to jump towards Tyrant to force an action to get to the ground (which would refresh his jumps) by feigning an attack. The two best ways for Tyrant to avoid getting hit are with either a FF airdodge or by using nado- both of which excellent options for what he’s trying to do (stop/avoid getting hit by an attack). In order to cover both of these choices that he expects, DEHF immediately FFs once he jumps, allowing him to stay under and slightly away from Tyrant so he can punish either option Tyrant chooses. Tyrant chooses to nado and DEHF if ready to get the punish as a result.
04:06 By footstooling (yes, it was on purpose) Tyrant it gave DEHF the option to net damage on him from an edgeguard as Tyrant had no reason to expect the footstool to be coming. Tyrant, unexpectedly immediately recovered with dimensional cape forcing DEHF to react immediately in order to land his following dair. As soon as Tyrant chose a grounded option, in this case to roll, DEHF immediately ran towards him to bait out an attack- specifically he was waiting for a SL or dsmash. As DEHF gets impatient for kills, it is reasonable for DEHF to assume that Tyrant was expecting a usmash, which would lose to both dsmash and SL given the speed of the moves/invincibility frames. DEHF, guessing right, avoids the SL and expects Tyrant to immediately cancel the SL to land laglessly and get to a safe position. Seeing that Tyrant chooses to glide away a little in an attempt to create distance, DEHF turns around and dashes left to get the usmash for Tyrant’s second stock.
04:42 Once again, DEHF expects Tyrant to immediately cancel the shielded SL to return to a neutral position to get to a safe position. Expecting this, DEHF chooses to boost pivot grab which would have net him the grab had he read correctly. Instead, likely remembering that DEHF expected an immediate cancel last time (see above), Tyrant chooses to glide away a little first before canceling causing the boost pivot grab to miss. DEHF realizes that he should have instead done a regular pivot grab.
06:00 As Tyrant has spent some time now jumping around, DEHF has had plenty of time to figure out Tyrant’s jumping pattern. Having done this, DEHF is able to land a dair setting up a tech chase. DEHF shields expecting a get-up attack as a mix-up (since it’s far from safe at kill percents as it is laggy). Had he gotten the read, he would have been able to grab, pummel, dthrow-> BDACUS/aerial/etc based on DI and expectations.
00:00 In the beginning of the match, Tyrant does an amazing job of avoiding lasers in two separate ways. First, and the most obvious aspect, is that for the first sixteen seconds Tyrant manages to avoid all the lasers that DEHF fires. More importantly than avoiding the damage, Tyrant changes how he dodges the lasers each time. When players wall you out with projectiles (Falco, Tink, Snake) or just general zoning tools (Marth’s fair, MK mixing up between fair/ftilt/etc) they’re doing something that is a staple of their game play. Because it’s so basic, they are free to focus on exactly how their opponents are avoiding their walls. By changing how he avoids the lasers, Tyrant makes it a lot more difficult for Larry to find a pattern where he could net an aerial or, for a bigger punish given the percentage, a grab.
While some characters are very bulky and aren’t able to avoid projectiles and walls as the smaller and faster ones (MK, Marth, ZSS), just walking to PS every time will get you punished from a simple read. No matter who you’re playing as, you want to be sure to mix-up how you avoid your opponents’ walling strategies. On the opposite side, as someone who is doing the walling, you shouldn’t have to think about how you are doing what you’re doing; it should be down to almost muscle memory since it is such a staple of your game play. Instead, focus on exactly how your opponents are avoiding your walls and use this information to start making the reads necessary to capitalize on your opponents’ actions.
00:20 Given that DEHF has been doing this a bit now, and given that it is something that DEHF does frequently, Tyrant reads when DEHF is about to jump and preemptively FFs to the ground, with an AD covering his descent, allowing him to get under DEHF and punish Falco’s landing.
This relates back to the initial advice given for walling. While Tyrant was camping, he was able to focus entirely on what DEHF was doing as air camping is a fundamental part of his game. As he was able to focus entirely on DEHF, he was able to easily pick up on what DEHF was doing with how he was FHing allowing him to adapt and capitalize.
00:50 DEHF does another empty SH, this time expecting an OoS option causing DEHF to spotdodge. Tyrant chooses to froll as it escapes the grab that he got hit with last time and ends quickly enough that if DEHF tried to run away that he could chase and apply pressure.
00:59 With DEHF in front of him, Tyrant chooses one of the best poking tools in the game to force a reaction from DEHF. By using dtilt, a safe and ranged attack, Tyrant is able to apply pressure to DEHF with minimal threat of immediate retaliation. Since unshielding into an option takes too long, and Tyrant spaced his tilt so that he was safe from a shield grab, DEHF is realistically only left with rolling into Tyrant, away from Tyrant, spot dodging, to continue holding shield, or using an aerial OoS. Tyrant chooses to ftilt as it covers, by far, the most options available to DEHF at that point. Ftilt beats an aerial OoS as it will Falco’s jump animation. It covers DEHF spotdodging as there are multiple hits to ftilt which can have their timing varied as the player sees fit. Rolling into Tyrant would have also gotten DEHF hit by ftilt as the dtilt was spaced well. If DEHF just continued to hold shield then the mix-ups that ftilt 1 and ftilt 2 on shield provide MK would allow Tyrant to remain safe and apply more pressure. Only by rolling away could ftilt have been the incorrect option to choose in this situation; and even then, Tyrant can stop after ftilt 1 resulting in just a neutral situation. DEHF chooses to jump and ftilt covers this option resulting in the set-up for a string.
If you find yourself auto-piloting through pressuring situations and not being able to fully capitalize on them, it’s likely because you’re not waiting for a reaction and instead just following into a pattern that is easily punished or exploited. Recognize what your grounded poking tools are (dtilt, jab, and ftilt are likely the three most common moves to be general poking tools) and figure out what the options that characters have against them on shield are. Figure out how to actively cover the most options among them and focus on how your opponent then reacts in those situations. Focusing on your grounded poking tools over your aerial ones is important as using any aerial requires commitment that staying grounded doesn’t. Just by jumping you put yourself into a disadvantaged situation. However, that isn’t to say that they should be entirely avoided or ignored, just that focusing on your grounded ones first and more is likely to gain you more reward over time.
01:08 Tyrant gets a grab on DEHF and decides to use bthrow. Tyrant immediately follows this up with a SH uair. This does a number of things for Tyrant. First, it puts him underneath DEHF and the uair starts applying pressure so that DEHF is forced to react. Any way that DEHF reacts, Tyrant is likely able to respond and follow-up with one of the many options that MK affords Tyrant. For example, if DEHF had airdodged then a second uair or nair could have punished the airdodge. Dropping into shield covers an aerial counter attack and would let Tyrant punish any aerial with an OoS option such as grab, nair, or SL. However, at 00:52 in this match Tyrant did the same thing. Tyrant used uair and baited an airdodge so that he could hit with nado setting up and furthering a juggle on DEHF. Remembering this, DEHF anticipates the nado and DIs out from Tyrant with an airdodge in anticipation of the nado coming. Tyrant, seeing that this was a likely option from DEHF, decides to wait out the airdodge and land a phenomenal SL on DEHF.
01:09 Tyrant chooses to stray from a traditional and grounded ledge trap. He uairs several times, an option that seems to be inefficient and not optimal due to MK’s poor aerial mobility. DEHF views this as a chance to get off the ledge easily instead of having to guess correctly. DEHF recovers to the stage where Tyrant immediately FF nairs into a SL to send DEHF offstage, correctly guessing that DEHF would choose then to get onto the stage. It is an incredible bait by Tyrant that he unfortunately fails to convert into a stock from DEHF.
Being on the ledge, not by choice, is one of the worst positions in Brawl to be in. Your options are limited, many characters suffer from RCO lag, and depending on the percentage, the standard options from the ledge can be exceedingly slow or be very vulnerable to punishment due to limited invincibility frames. When on the ledge, it is incredibly important to recognize that you’re in a bad situation but remain calm about it. Don’t try to force yourself out of it, as that is what makes the situation so bad in the first place. Watch your opponent’s ledgetrapping patters closely and find a hole that you can exploit by guessing correctly to get through safely. If it seems like your opponent is all of a sudden straying from a normal ledge trap of theirs, be wary of it being a trap as it was in this case.
From the side of the person doing the ledge trapping, be aware that your opponent feels rushed to get off of the ledge and is looking for any perceived opening to do so. By creating a situation, where you remain in complete control the entire time, that appears to be comprised of unsafe or “incorrect” options from you, your opponent will likely rush in and try to capitalize on your “mistake.” Becoming adept at setting up situations like this will help enhance your ledge game even more than your characters basic tools would allow otherwise.
01:51 When being juggled people very often panic and use an airdodge or an aerial very early on. Most players look for this and will wait for the airdodge to come before using an attack of their own. By airdodging late or attacking late it will throw off the timing of a lot of players allowing you to land safely when you would have otherwise been unable to. Tyrant used a quick option to challenge DEHF (dsmash) in an attempt to frame trap him. If DEHF was going to attack or airdodge late then he would get hit by the dsmash. If DEHF attacked “on time,” the two moves would have traded and if he had airdodged “on time” then the dsmash would have missed. Had the dsmash missed, it has low enough cool down that Tyrant likely would have been able to choose another option to still punish the landing (grab, dsmash again, SL, nado, etc).
Trapping landings with low lag moves is often a better way to continue juggles rather than chasing your opponent up into the air. Using a low lag move forces some kind of reaction from your opponent (unless they get hit) such as an airdodge at which point you can follow-up your initial move (the purpose of which was to force a reaction) with another move (grab, vertical launching move, something to put them offstage or onto the ledge, etc) to reset the situation while adding more damage onto your opponent. Jumping at your opponent solely with the intention of trying to hit them instead of trying to force a reaction to then hit them afterwards results in many players having the situation reversed on them. Choosing options carefully in order to apply pressure will get you much further in advancing your skill level than just trying to hit your opponent non-stop.
02:08 Tyrant chooses to pressure Falco on the ledge by using nado. When on the ledge a character’s options are extremely limited allowing for a move as powerful as nado to apply an insane level of pressure. Since it is a habit of players who play the “Spacies” to abuse their long ranged sideBs to get off of the ledge, nado is especially powerful in this situation since it beats Falco’s phantasm and forces a hard landing due to RCO lag. This, in turn, will allow Tyrant to convert an otherwise average punish into an extremely potent punish and gain a lot of advantage.
Just like you need to know how characters trap you on the ledge, you need to be very aware of how characters prefer to get off of the ledge and if they have RCO lag or not. Falco/Fox like to sideB, Marth likes to nair, Ike likes to jump-> airdodge onto the stage, and so forth. Being aware of the common options allows you to choose options that cover not only that common choice effectively but do it in a way that allows you to react to a different option that they may take instead. If you have a quick dtilt, spaced dtilt vs Snake on the ledge is very good (for example) as it will trade if they get on with an aerial, hit their landing lag if they airdodge onto the stage, and will end quickly enough to allow you to react to other options Snake may take as a mix-up. Additionally, be aware of what characters suffer from RCO lag. To go back to Falco, if he chooses to phantasm onto the stage, almost all characters can react to Falco’s phantasm with a jab to beat it out and force a hard landing for an incredibly detrimental punishment option.
03:44 DEHF is out of options on his way down and is stuck in front of Tyrant. DEHF’s options are to airdodge and to attack. Falco lacks large disjoints on his aerials so any disjointed move from MK would cover that option. Likewise any ranged move, that is fairly safe on shield, is safe to use against the airdodge option as well. If Tyrant times the move right it’ll hit during the landing lag and if he’s late, and hits shield, Tyrant would remain safe from the virtue of the range of the move.
06:01 Tyrant instead sticks to a safer option and rolls into DEHF leaving DEHF sitting there in shield as Tyrant is able to get to a safe position.
While some characters are very bulky and aren’t able to avoid projectiles and walls as the smaller and faster ones (MK, Marth, ZSS), just walking to PS every time will get you punished from a simple read. No matter who you’re playing as, you want to be sure to mix-up how you avoid your opponents’ walling strategies. On the opposite side, as someone who is doing the walling, you shouldn’t have to think about how you are doing what you’re doing; it should be down to almost muscle memory since it is such a staple of your game play. Instead, focus on exactly how your opponents are avoiding your walls and use this information to start making the reads necessary to capitalize on your opponents’ actions.
00:20 Given that DEHF has been doing this a bit now, and given that it is something that DEHF does frequently, Tyrant reads when DEHF is about to jump and preemptively FFs to the ground, with an AD covering his descent, allowing him to get under DEHF and punish Falco’s landing.
This relates back to the initial advice given for walling. While Tyrant was camping, he was able to focus entirely on what DEHF was doing as air camping is a fundamental part of his game. As he was able to focus entirely on DEHF, he was able to easily pick up on what DEHF was doing with how he was FHing allowing him to adapt and capitalize.
00:50 DEHF does another empty SH, this time expecting an OoS option causing DEHF to spotdodge. Tyrant chooses to froll as it escapes the grab that he got hit with last time and ends quickly enough that if DEHF tried to run away that he could chase and apply pressure.
00:59 With DEHF in front of him, Tyrant chooses one of the best poking tools in the game to force a reaction from DEHF. By using dtilt, a safe and ranged attack, Tyrant is able to apply pressure to DEHF with minimal threat of immediate retaliation. Since unshielding into an option takes too long, and Tyrant spaced his tilt so that he was safe from a shield grab, DEHF is realistically only left with rolling into Tyrant, away from Tyrant, spot dodging, to continue holding shield, or using an aerial OoS. Tyrant chooses to ftilt as it covers, by far, the most options available to DEHF at that point. Ftilt beats an aerial OoS as it will Falco’s jump animation. It covers DEHF spotdodging as there are multiple hits to ftilt which can have their timing varied as the player sees fit. Rolling into Tyrant would have also gotten DEHF hit by ftilt as the dtilt was spaced well. If DEHF just continued to hold shield then the mix-ups that ftilt 1 and ftilt 2 on shield provide MK would allow Tyrant to remain safe and apply more pressure. Only by rolling away could ftilt have been the incorrect option to choose in this situation; and even then, Tyrant can stop after ftilt 1 resulting in just a neutral situation. DEHF chooses to jump and ftilt covers this option resulting in the set-up for a string.
If you find yourself auto-piloting through pressuring situations and not being able to fully capitalize on them, it’s likely because you’re not waiting for a reaction and instead just following into a pattern that is easily punished or exploited. Recognize what your grounded poking tools are (dtilt, jab, and ftilt are likely the three most common moves to be general poking tools) and figure out what the options that characters have against them on shield are. Figure out how to actively cover the most options among them and focus on how your opponent then reacts in those situations. Focusing on your grounded poking tools over your aerial ones is important as using any aerial requires commitment that staying grounded doesn’t. Just by jumping you put yourself into a disadvantaged situation. However, that isn’t to say that they should be entirely avoided or ignored, just that focusing on your grounded ones first and more is likely to gain you more reward over time.
01:08 Tyrant gets a grab on DEHF and decides to use bthrow. Tyrant immediately follows this up with a SH uair. This does a number of things for Tyrant. First, it puts him underneath DEHF and the uair starts applying pressure so that DEHF is forced to react. Any way that DEHF reacts, Tyrant is likely able to respond and follow-up with one of the many options that MK affords Tyrant. For example, if DEHF had airdodged then a second uair or nair could have punished the airdodge. Dropping into shield covers an aerial counter attack and would let Tyrant punish any aerial with an OoS option such as grab, nair, or SL. However, at 00:52 in this match Tyrant did the same thing. Tyrant used uair and baited an airdodge so that he could hit with nado setting up and furthering a juggle on DEHF. Remembering this, DEHF anticipates the nado and DIs out from Tyrant with an airdodge in anticipation of the nado coming. Tyrant, seeing that this was a likely option from DEHF, decides to wait out the airdodge and land a phenomenal SL on DEHF.
01:09 Tyrant chooses to stray from a traditional and grounded ledge trap. He uairs several times, an option that seems to be inefficient and not optimal due to MK’s poor aerial mobility. DEHF views this as a chance to get off the ledge easily instead of having to guess correctly. DEHF recovers to the stage where Tyrant immediately FF nairs into a SL to send DEHF offstage, correctly guessing that DEHF would choose then to get onto the stage. It is an incredible bait by Tyrant that he unfortunately fails to convert into a stock from DEHF.
Being on the ledge, not by choice, is one of the worst positions in Brawl to be in. Your options are limited, many characters suffer from RCO lag, and depending on the percentage, the standard options from the ledge can be exceedingly slow or be very vulnerable to punishment due to limited invincibility frames. When on the ledge, it is incredibly important to recognize that you’re in a bad situation but remain calm about it. Don’t try to force yourself out of it, as that is what makes the situation so bad in the first place. Watch your opponent’s ledgetrapping patters closely and find a hole that you can exploit by guessing correctly to get through safely. If it seems like your opponent is all of a sudden straying from a normal ledge trap of theirs, be wary of it being a trap as it was in this case.
From the side of the person doing the ledge trapping, be aware that your opponent feels rushed to get off of the ledge and is looking for any perceived opening to do so. By creating a situation, where you remain in complete control the entire time, that appears to be comprised of unsafe or “incorrect” options from you, your opponent will likely rush in and try to capitalize on your “mistake.” Becoming adept at setting up situations like this will help enhance your ledge game even more than your characters basic tools would allow otherwise.
01:51 When being juggled people very often panic and use an airdodge or an aerial very early on. Most players look for this and will wait for the airdodge to come before using an attack of their own. By airdodging late or attacking late it will throw off the timing of a lot of players allowing you to land safely when you would have otherwise been unable to. Tyrant used a quick option to challenge DEHF (dsmash) in an attempt to frame trap him. If DEHF was going to attack or airdodge late then he would get hit by the dsmash. If DEHF attacked “on time,” the two moves would have traded and if he had airdodged “on time” then the dsmash would have missed. Had the dsmash missed, it has low enough cool down that Tyrant likely would have been able to choose another option to still punish the landing (grab, dsmash again, SL, nado, etc).
Trapping landings with low lag moves is often a better way to continue juggles rather than chasing your opponent up into the air. Using a low lag move forces some kind of reaction from your opponent (unless they get hit) such as an airdodge at which point you can follow-up your initial move (the purpose of which was to force a reaction) with another move (grab, vertical launching move, something to put them offstage or onto the ledge, etc) to reset the situation while adding more damage onto your opponent. Jumping at your opponent solely with the intention of trying to hit them instead of trying to force a reaction to then hit them afterwards results in many players having the situation reversed on them. Choosing options carefully in order to apply pressure will get you much further in advancing your skill level than just trying to hit your opponent non-stop.
02:08 Tyrant chooses to pressure Falco on the ledge by using nado. When on the ledge a character’s options are extremely limited allowing for a move as powerful as nado to apply an insane level of pressure. Since it is a habit of players who play the “Spacies” to abuse their long ranged sideBs to get off of the ledge, nado is especially powerful in this situation since it beats Falco’s phantasm and forces a hard landing due to RCO lag. This, in turn, will allow Tyrant to convert an otherwise average punish into an extremely potent punish and gain a lot of advantage.
Just like you need to know how characters trap you on the ledge, you need to be very aware of how characters prefer to get off of the ledge and if they have RCO lag or not. Falco/Fox like to sideB, Marth likes to nair, Ike likes to jump-> airdodge onto the stage, and so forth. Being aware of the common options allows you to choose options that cover not only that common choice effectively but do it in a way that allows you to react to a different option that they may take instead. If you have a quick dtilt, spaced dtilt vs Snake on the ledge is very good (for example) as it will trade if they get on with an aerial, hit their landing lag if they airdodge onto the stage, and will end quickly enough to allow you to react to other options Snake may take as a mix-up. Additionally, be aware of what characters suffer from RCO lag. To go back to Falco, if he chooses to phantasm onto the stage, almost all characters can react to Falco’s phantasm with a jab to beat it out and force a hard landing for an incredibly detrimental punishment option.
03:44 DEHF is out of options on his way down and is stuck in front of Tyrant. DEHF’s options are to airdodge and to attack. Falco lacks large disjoints on his aerials so any disjointed move from MK would cover that option. Likewise any ranged move, that is fairly safe on shield, is safe to use against the airdodge option as well. If Tyrant times the move right it’ll hit during the landing lag and if he’s late, and hits shield, Tyrant would remain safe from the virtue of the range of the move.
06:01 Tyrant instead sticks to a safer option and rolls into DEHF leaving DEHF sitting there in shield as Tyrant is able to get to a safe position.
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