Important Carefully Ask PPMD about the Tiara Guy

[peedy]

HI all, haven't been active as much this month but was hoping for some standard feedback into my play. Nothing in depth but more so general observations for improvement.
I've been working more on aerial spacing and mixups and hopefully its an improvement from what you've seen before.
this is from last night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4iZ0mJPIaY
I couldn't take a game off this guy but almost every game (even ones not recorded) was down to last stock.
I was really frustrated by end as I was trying to punish his tech in place but couldn't. I should have grabbed more for that rather than pure attacking.
I also grew frustrated that I couldn't crouch cancel his side bs despite knowing they were coming.
Here's my analysis of only game 1:
View attachment 180427
How do people analyze effectively? I'm trying to ask myself why I'm losing this situation and how I can improve but feel bored/unsure at times

You have major problems with tech skill, punish game, movement out of hitstun, reacting to his position in relation to yours and it doesn't seem like you have a great game plan which also slows your reaction time. If you had improved just one of these things you would have won.

http://alexspuffstuff.blogspot.com/2017/08/initiation-and-counterplay.html
https://curiosity.com/topics/learn-anything-in-four-steps-with-the-feynman-technique-curiosity/
Game theory (look this one up)

Ginger has some great stuff on Marth falco on his youtube channel from the falcos perspective. I would watch those videos over and over again

I would ignore studying until you work on your tech skill and punish game. Ibdw gave me that advice a long time ago and it was the best advice he could give. He told me that when you wavedash always move out on the first frame even if you aren't reacting to your opponent. This could be a dash a jump ect, ect. I thought this was stupid and mindless and I hate playing mindless but now I wish I had listened to him earlier because bad tech skill actually holds back reaction time a lot. It doesn't matter how good your gameplan is if your techskill/punish game isn't up to par.

1. Movement/Hitstun
2. Punish Game/Reaction tech chase
3. Gameplan/reactions in neutral


Use the Richard feynman method for learning neutral. Basically do what PPMD says and ask why. The feynman technique is a better version of asking why. Understand the basic game mechanics and why their important. Look at this paper everyday as its easy to lose focus.

Personally I wouldn't even worry about neutral until you have your movement/punish sorted out. Not much useful information here but honestly you didn't lose that game because he was destroying you in neutral. You lost because of the reasons I stated above in my opinion. But ya for neutral really take that feynman thing seriously, write everything down and make it as concise as possible. Look at every single word (not an exaggeration) and try to break it down in a simple way. If you can't explain neutral to a five year old then you don't understand neutral and should try to simplify it more. Again nothing groundbreaking here

 

[Reyjavik]

Yea I've seen and used flow but like writing down more. as it causes me to think harder rather than type away.
I feel conflicted about your observation Peedy however. I generally move right out of wavedash to either jump or dash. I def have to work on hitstun though.
I basically was using the Feynman technique in my analysis. I still find analysis very long and tedious but want to change that.
I'm trying to grind tech skill a ton and gameplay. If anything I need to do more situational analysis as well with save states (just a pain setting them up for 20xx though)

 

[peedy]

ya your probably right. That post was more for me so maybe ppmd would tell me what I'm wrong about or what he disagrees on

 

[Dr Peepee]

That Feynman technique is fine. Agree that most people should focus on punish and tech for best returns, but with the caveat that some people just enjoy neutral more or after some growth they may want to look into it more so it can be more complicated.

 

[Agrathor3]

Hey guys so I made this video basically as a first attempt at reviewing my own game play and I found a metric ton of things to work on but I would also like your opinions on it. So please tell me all the things I could do better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCygVuLSmbk&t=2s

 

[Kotastic]

^ clean up sloth in your gameplay. Have intention with everything you do, and hold position better.

 

[Reyjavik]

Hey guys so I made this video basically as a first attempt at reviewing my own game play and I found a metric ton of things to work on but I would also like your opinions on it. So please tell me all the things I could do better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCygVuLSmbk&t=2s

You're giving up space too much and not threatening the falcon at all. Also just going for straight grabs in neutral isn't the best way to go about it. Now he knows how you think and can easily see when you want to grab.
Def need to work on tech, especially your turnaround grabs.

 

[Dr Peepee]

WD back dtilt isnt that good vs falcon

JC grab

Move more quickly when you have a tech chase/juggle/edgeguard scenario

Tech practice

 

[Kopaka]

Writing this to bring some clarity to my thoughts. Related to what we've been talking about. This is also a pain to write about since I have a really good feeling in my mind about why what I'm doing is working for me but putting it into words is really hard lol.

Ok so I'm still doing the only specific moves in neutral depending on the matchup thing. For example ill do fair only against fox. I'll go for short hop fair over and over in neutral. It sometimes looks like im just spamming the move. and I kind of am. But that's the point I think. (Though sometimes ill still play a longer neutral, but most of the time I'm not) But it's really great because you're just letting yourself see all the ways the move would and would not work. Then you go and play a really good player and you do it, and then you see even more ways it wouldn't work. Say they start crouch cancelling, but you STILL do the move. Then you learn how to play around crouch cancel. You start practicing fading away fair. Or empty short hop then fair. You gotta really just force yourself to think only Fair, and then all the other characteristics about the move like fast fall or double jump or not doing it, or doing it in a dash dance or a wavedash back. Then you can start playing against their other counters like if they shield. How to use fair if they shield. Then you start waiting out. All this stuff branches from it. Once you see their counters to the move, then you start thinking "ok I might be able to grab there" and all that.

I've only done this with Marth, and it really does lead me to believe that Marth relies a ton on simple play/fundamental play. Like when I lose to better players when I do this, I don't think it means I should force a bunch of complex stuff into my game, that would just take me back to where I started not knowing why I'm doing what I'm doing. I think I should keep doing what I'm doing and pay attention to the adjustments i'm making. It's like fine tuning. Really fine tuning all the little details about the tool. I think that the tool comes first, and then the movement. Which seems backwards, but I don't think that it really is.

At first it looks zone heavy. Then you can start learning how to dash and use ground movement with Fair too because you're just forcing yourself to only Fair. OF course you cant ONLY just Fair. You're still playing Melee lol.

Then of course punish. You're forcing yourself to see how to follow up after the move in so many situations instead of like dash dancing for 5 seconds and then doing the move. It's kind of like cutting to the chase. Of course maybe in a real match you wouldn't fair a whole bunch, but at least after a long time you'd have a waaayyy deeper understanding of what you can do when the move hits, at what percentages, from what distances, etc...

Then you play a marth ditto and you'll go Ok, down tilt only in neutral. Then you see all the ways that works and doesn't work.

There's still reason to solo practice too I think. Once you have all this in your head, then you really get this feeling that what you're doing in neutral matters so much since in the background you have all this data behind the potential attacks you can do. You gotta like be able to control your impulses so solo practice still really matters and I should probably go back to doing it soon lol

This then gives you this real basis for what you should do in tournament in the matchup. You can do whatever in Melee but that also makes it so that you shouldn't really do whatever. You can get away with doing a lot of creative and on-the-spot stuff with the attacks if you really really really know all the little details about them. But it's like, you don't see that when you watch people play that way. You just see Fair. What you dont see is all the reasons why that Fair worked. If you want to go learn how to do that, you go and practice using the move over and over in neutral.

This is also great because while it's building into your gameplan, I'm starting to think it also cuts down hard on having like new player habits like fsmashing in neutral because once you know why your Fairs would work, you'd have less reasons to go for fsmash, and you're building newer probably better habits.

 

[Farco]

So good news, I played pretty well at this last tournament and made 1 upset! I used a lot of self-assuring thoughts which I think helped significantly in clutch situations. The two sets I lost were to Marth and Falcon, which have been pretty consistently my worst matchups the past few months. My punish game on both of these characters is pretty good I think, but my neutral suffers because of fear of a punish from the other character, so I tend to play more nervously because of that. I could of course improve my combo di somewhat, but the punishes in both the ditto and against Falcon can be brutal even with good di. It's especially bad if, say, a Falcon, gets a sick combo on me and his friends start cheering for him or against me. I find it pretty difficult to shrug that off. Is there any sort of mental technique or something I could read to help with this?

 

[Dr Peepee]

It helps to address those thoughts you have when you get punished hard and people cheer. So what if it happens? Do you have that little confidence in your own abilities? You already said your punish game is good so return to that comfortable, confident place that you can hit them back just as hard when something tough happens. That helps me a lot as Falco.

Besides that, you may benefit from imagining the situation happening during practice or when meditating and directly encounter what you think and make peace with it and then substitute new thoughts.

 

[peedy]

So good news, I played pretty well at this last tournament and made 1 upset! I used a lot of self-assuring thoughts which I think helped significantly in clutch situations. The two sets I lost were to Marth and Falcon, which have been pretty consistently my worst matchups the past few months. My punish game on both of these characters is pretty good I think, but my neutral suffers because of fear of a punish from the other character, so I tend to play more nervously because of that. I could of course improve my combo di somewhat, but the punishes in both the ditto and against Falcon can be brutal even with good di. It's especially bad if, say, a Falcon, gets a sick combo on me and his friends start cheering for him or against me. I find it pretty difficult to shrug that off. Is there any sort of mental technique or something I could read to help with this?

The tetris effect dude. When people play tetris they start seeing shapes everywhere. When they close their eyes the light turns into shapes. When they go shopping the groceries turn into shapes. It's legit everywhere. When you focus on something even for a short period of time you start seeing it everywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae-ypgdd5-8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJsdqxnZb0

What do you want to fix? You get caught up in your emotions. Sometimes I do but I use to a lot more. Scientists have a thing for getting caught up in an experience and it's called the attentional blink. "When you shift your focus from one thing to another, a tiny gap in attention called attentional blink is created. It only lasts for about half a second Your brain has limited attentional resources. If you have ever tried to focus on multiple things at once, you have likely discovered you could not fully pay attention to all of them. In some cases, you might even notice that some things seem to simply slide past you unnoticed. " Basically when you switch attention from one thing or another you have a gap in your experience.

The youtube video below has a decent description and a test you can take on the attentional blink. Basically when your focusing on multiple things your brain picks the most important thing to focus on and gets caught up in it for 1/2 or a second or less. Everyone has this and everyone get's caught up this no matter what, even the most hard core buddhist has this. We can reduce it drastically though and it will have a huge benefit for you in all aspects of life

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-attentional-blink-2795017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBsFM36lNd0&t=3s

So basically when we experience an emotion we get caught up in it. Your brain subconsciously realizes this and tries to compensate afterwards by rushing and filling in the gaps of the missed experiences. This causes car accidents, and tech flubs in smash and a whole lot of other things. Your ability to let go of a thought or a sensory experience is directly related to your reaction time. If you can't let go then your brain can't move on to the next experience and you cant react. Then your brain tries to overcompensate your internal rhythm's is thrown off because your rhythm is thrown off you cant do tech nearly as well and your neutral will suffer. Also as a side note it doesn't matter if the experience is positive or negative we can get caught up in anything

Their are three main types of meditation but one type in particular that teaches you to let go which would help you with your tech flubs and it would also increase your reaction time dramatically because your ability to let go means you get less caught up in thoughts in feelings and your brain has more resources to process the present. In fact multiple science studies have proven that this type of meditation is best for learning to let go and focus on the present by measuring the attentional blink( I'm not saying it's the best form of meditation but it's the best to solve this issue) This meditation is called open monitoring meditation.

Basically open monitoring meditation is being aware of the present while letting go and trying to be non judgmental. You might notice the gaps in your attention. What is this gap? Look left and then look right. When your eyes move your brain shuts off similarly as to how it does when we switch awareness between sensations. This is called saccade masking. Theirs another gap in your awareness called mindlessness that you might have heard of but I don't want to get into that too much.

Their is a problem with open monitoring meditation. You can't work on it once or twice a week, It's a daily thing you have to work on and it takes a lot of dedication. Look into the video below to kinda see what I mean. If you do the "letting go" meditation then the tetris effect kicks in and you start finding reasons to let go of negative emotions. This can backfire though and cause fatigue, lack of motivation, depression as you might let go of your ability to be happy, motivate yourself and other things. So what would be the easiest way to implement this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHu5ZAA0HYw&t=329s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention (Look under multi-tasking and simultaneous)

When I've suggest to my friends to start meditating all of them found it universally overwhelming. So here's my suggestion on a great quick start guide
The easiest way to fix this without spending too much time meditation is a book I suggest called. the happiness advantage (I linked it on youtube above). This book takes you though a list of exercises which take about 20 minutes a day (every day no exceptions) and is by far the best way to achieve the results your looking for at least with a minimal amount of time.

I would also start researching meditation 10-15 minutes everyday and after you start seeing positive effects from the happiness advantage you should transition into a personalized meditation routine. Going to an online community might motivate you to meditate, might help you see the wonderful effects of meditation and might speed up the process drastically.

So ya basically dude
step 1. Happiness advantage
step 2. Research meditation 10-15 minutes a day and find a community online to help you out
step 3. Transition to specifically open monitoring meditation after a few months of doing happiness advantage everyday

All in all your looking at 30-45 minutes a day of dedication. Maybe this is too much for you but it changed my life a lot of my friends lives and I'm certain it would change yours. Before I started doing stuff like this I was depressed and had possibly the worst adhd and reaction times in all of melee. I had an "aha" moment started doing this and other things and now I can reaction tech chase almost perfectly. I saved at least 6 hours a day from meditating because I'm not as mindless, more motivated, more pain resistant and other things.

As a side effect I've been so motivated my melee has suffered /rip but if you can do this "everyday" I'm certain it would help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Muce2TxDlMw&t=18s

 

[Plumpet]

A lot of the time I get the sense that my opponent isn’t really reacting to my individual dashes or wavedashes, and moreso to my general distance from. So when I try to do a dash forward to see a Sheiks response, they don’t really do any specific action, but tend to do a dash attack for example when I’m at a certain range. Against the more robotic people who literally do the same thing everytime I get to a certain distance from them, I find it easy to just move into that distance with a dash and then punish. But against people that have more complex neutral mixups, I feel like my info gathering from dashes tends to throw me off when they might not be reacting to those individual dashes. How should I think about these situations?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Look at what they do when you move in and make predictions based on what happens. If they do nothing or wait, then they didn't think you'd attack or maybe were just off balance for example. If they move back, maybe they did think you'd attack. Just make some predictions and remember to keep your conditioning strong.

 

[AirFair]

I was playing against a pretty good puff recently, and I had a couple questions:

-How much success have you (or anyone else here) had with dtilting puff's landing when she drifts back after doing an aerial? I know from arc's video that it can make her want to drift farther out to where you can pivot grab her bair, but I haven't been able to really do it the same way. I usually wd in when I see them fade back but I will often get hit by them coming up with another aerial or an fsmash. My usual strategy has been to use ac nair to hit her coming up when I dash in after she fades away. I use nair pretty often in general when I see she wants to jump at me, but I don't get that many grabs as a result. I think that if I faked the nair more, I could get her to drift farther in toward me, or catch her doing fsmashes, but I'm also thinking I could be punishing her drift back back better, I just can't seem to confirm it properly.

-Juggling this puff also gave me a question. Usually this puff would drift away when I would threaten dj aerials, and then when I got her to drift to an edge of the stage (what I want) and she would start to come down towards ledge, she would sometimes drift right into me last second and pound/fair, or go to the ledge. In these types of juggling scenarios, I feel like I should watch how they land first, and then that will help me when the scenario happens again. So if I dash away from them coming down, which lets me fair them attacking, I can see them go to ledge and know next time I want to wait and punish that. Is there a better way I can play that situation? It's ambiguous to me because she's closer to me where I don't need to threaten dj aerials anymore.

man I've been inactive on this thread, but I'm still practicing. Hope to get back into posting soon.

 

[Dr Peepee]

You have to go pretty early to get the Dtilt OR you have to assume she will WD back upon landing. It could be possible you're a bit close as well. I would maybe look into grab or the Nair you do or maybe Fair or sometimes Fsmash depending on how she wants to weave and act after landing.

You can be more proactive with dashes and SH. So if you dash away early, you make them want to go to the edge. If you dash away last second you could punish them attacking you but give up edge coverage. If you SH you can threaten attacking them if they come into you which may force more jumps and weaves depending on how and when you SH. So it can be both proactive and reactive. Once she gets lower/off stage you don't need to threaten DJ aerials anymore of course, but that just means you have new setups to run and new things to threaten.

 

[AirFair]

Oh I see, that sounds really good actually.

Then I can change this up again at higher percents where I want to get a kill with fsmash/utilt and look to threaten those more on the ground right?

 

[Dr Peepee]

That's totally right. Sometimes you can Fsmash Puff's drift away at lower percents in this position and get her to DI away to die early(especially on YS), so be sure to experiment.

 

[Kotastic]

When you think that in the mirror that Marth will DA/Fsmash from the corner, how far of a distance do you go in to dash/WD back? I swear it's so much farther than something like Sheik's DA. It doesn't feel that much of an advantage because I always feel with the distance I'm required to space around, I feel like the opposing Marth can easily take space or overshoot. I could shield, but somehow Marth's fsmash just hits me anyways and it's triggering.

 

[AirFair]

When you think that in the mirror that Marth will DA/Fsmash from the corner, how far of a distance do you go in to dash/WD back? I swear it's so much farther than something like Sheik's DA. It doesn't feel that much of an advantage because I always feel with the distance I'm required to space around, I feel like the opposing Marth can easily take space or overshoot. I could shield, but somehow Marth's fsmash just hits me anyways and it's triggering.

I had some ideas about how I could better play this position, and I think that as you space around those options you believe the other marth will do, I think you can dtilt marth before his dash attack comes out (as he's coming forward). I haven't really tested this a lot yet, but I think that it can really help you discourage them from pushing forward, and then you can dtilt them instead and force them to try and jump at you or fsmash or something.

 

[Dr Peepee]

When you think that in the mirror that Marth will DA/Fsmash from the corner, how far of a distance do you go in to dash/WD back? I swear it's so much farther than something like Sheik's DA. It doesn't feel that much of an advantage because I always feel with the distance I'm required to space around, I feel like the opposing Marth can easily take space or overshoot. I could shield, but somehow Marth's fsmash just hits me anyways and it's triggering.

Yes, in the ditto you must be aware of a larger space because you both take up so much. I like pushing in to some extent when I have the other Marth cornered because it allows me to not have to worry about them coming in and if they do I'll intercept them. Intercepting in general is pretty good against those approach tactics as they can often have a lot of windup needed to WD/RC for Fsmash. Also I really like ensuring they can't dash back much/at all when cornered because then they lose a way to dodge my attacks and have to either push out to intercept me, shield, or attack in place to counter me. All of this said, if you do want to avoid them then for DA you'll want to be around immediate DA range so a dash back allows you to dodge it, and being closer a WD will let you dodge it. If you think they will go farther, then you may need to dash into WD away for the quickest and longest escape possible. It may be worth practicing this position with a partner, or at least testing out in 20XX what positions and options within those positions seem reactable and which don't.

 

[AirFair]

Yes, in the ditto you must be aware of a larger space because you both take up so much. I like pushing in to some extent when I have the other Marth cornered because it allows me to not have to worry about them coming in and if they do I'll intercept them. Intercepting in general is pretty good against those approach tactics as they can often have a lot of windup needed to WD/RC for Fsmash. Also I really like ensuring they can't dash back much/at all when cornered because then they lose a way to dodge my attacks and have to either push out to intercept me, shield, or attack in place to counter me. All of this said, if you do want to avoid them then for DA you'll want to be around immediate DA range so a dash back allows you to dodge it, and being closer a WD will let you dodge it. If you think they will go farther, then you may need to dash into WD away for the quickest and longest escape possible. It may be worth practicing this position with a partner, or at least testing out in 20XX what positions and options within those positions seem reactable and which don't.

Can you intercept their dash attack with a jc grab? I think you can with the windup before it comes out, and that sounds like a really good idea to discourage it, as well as build more threat on you pushing in so they might try to fsmash/jump in place

 

[RedmanSSBM]

I've been getting a lot of Sheik practice lately and I'm finding that while my punishes on her are getting better, I'm not taking more stocks. I'm finding myself upairing probably more than I should be, but that leads me to my question: Is it more favorable for Marth to keep Sheik in the air and keep doing damage with upairs and then try to kill with uptilt? Or would doing only 1-2 upairs and then try to fair or bair her on the way down to get her off stage to edgeguard her be more favorable? Maybe even less upairs than that? I'm unsure as well if this is something that is stage position dependent or not.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Can you intercept their dash attack with a jc grab? I think you can with the windup before it comes out, and that sounds like a really good idea to discourage it, as well as build more threat on you pushing in so they might try to fsmash/jump in place

So you can, but it's difficult. Dash attack starts as looking like dash/run forward and out of this you could of course move back or Fair or whatever. So if you grab when they come in you are risking losing to most other options. Add to this that you need to be kinda close to pull it off and/or move forward a bit before they swing and it becomes harder to pull this off with any consistency.

I've been getting a lot of Sheik practice lately and I'm finding that while my punishes on her are getting better, I'm not taking more stocks. I'm finding myself upairing probably more than I should be, but that leads me to my question: Is it more favorable for Marth to keep Sheik in the air and keep doing damage with upairs and then try to kill with uptilt? Or would doing only 1-2 upairs and then try to fair or bair her on the way down to get her off stage to edgeguard her be more favorable? Maybe even less upairs than that? I'm unsure as well if this is something that is stage position dependent or not.

You want to get her up and then out. Dash toward center then dash FH Fair toward the edge to push her out if at all possible. You'll learn the percents and positions etc this is a good idea by going for it more. Utilt kills are good especially if you can Utilt from a platform but they come later percent wise. Sometimes on like YS or occasionally BF you can DJ Uair Sheik off the top from the top platform so it's worth doing that sometimes.

 

[peedy]

I'm starting to question what top players say (not you peepee). I hear all the time how 15 frames is the limit for reaction time including the 3 frame input lag. One day I was playing as fox against a marth and was powershielding all of his forward smashes and dash attacks. He wasn't spamming them either and I wasn't predicting them just reacting. I thought it was a fluke but for the past week or so I have been doing that fairly consistently and only miss when their is a gap in my perception (mindlessness).

I'm starting to think that in 5 years from now we are going to realize how much top players kinda stunk in 2018 and how much room their is for improvement in neutral. I feel like fox is far more broken then I realized :/

I think smashers can react in a 10 frame window including 3 frames of input lag and I'm not sure if anyone is ever going to believe me on this one unitil someone proves it but I know it's possible. It might even be possible to react to Marth's dash grab on reaction although I think that would be pushing the human limit from my understanding of it. Damn my health problems :/

 

[Kotastic]

The average human reaction time is .25 seconds for visual cues, so that's 15 frames in Melee terms.

You might be reacting to their startup like their dash/WD alongside the windup or some audible cue. I find it hard to believe you're not unconsciously predicting some habit of the Marth player if their startup reaction isn't the case.

I personally think reacting to stuff is overrated in the manner you're talking about, and you would fall for several false positives if you rely on this too much or simply getting execution tested on your reactions.

I think your claim about reacting in 10-frame window (or 7 frames if you subtract the 3 frames) for visual cues is frankly ridiculous, and you're more than welcome to prove me wrong if you can perfectly rtc without fail in a tournament set. Not even faceroll is always perfect with his rtc.

 

[peedy]

The average untrained reaction time is 15 frames. Name one melee player who understands the underlying mechanics of reaction time and actually uses this knowledge to increase their reaction time? There isn't one I'm aware of?

Personally I've doubt you understand the mechanics of reaction time which I don't mean as an insult as I myself lack basic knowledge.

7 frames is very much possible as 100 Ms or about 6 frames is the known limit of visual reaction click the link (although some people can do it in 80ms). Although melee is slightly more complex it just means theirs a longer learning curve for your unconscious to take in visual stimuli.

If you mean proof as in show you a player who can do this then no I can't which doesn't mean it isn't possible.

Just want to emphasize that 15 frame visual reaction is plain wrong and extremely misleading although you may be right that 5 frame reaction is too much

What do you mean by false positives? If you mean forcing a reflex then I see what you mean. If you mean subconsciously reacting to a dash or wavedash then I call hogwosh as I'm not making a prediction 90 percent of the time

I mean all of this with much respect as I have greatest respect for what you post

 

[Kotastic]

At the same time, I'm not hearing valid research on your end for your claims for 7 frame reaction times or 15 frames not being the average. This isn't necessarily good research that I just looked around for 5 minutes, but it's something: https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffe...ayer_reaction_times_relative_to_major_sports/
https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1689&context=source
I know reaction time can improve if you're in good health (such as exercise, sleep, etc) but afaik, training your reactions is largely diminished returns due to it being genetic (in which .25 seconds is enough anyways, that's my average score). There's also some cases where under adrenaline rushes your reactions improve, which I have felt but it's not something I think is always reliable to fall on.

I'm skeptical about this because your argument is no different for the typical "just PS every falco laser" which is within the realm of possibility, but no one has ever done it for some reason. Or Fox hitting every single perfect ledgedash but that's not the case. Or Sheik RTC. It's probably possible for sure on very extreme ends, but I personally do not believe that such high intensity requirements can consistently be pulled off, so not reliable.

If somehow it can be pulled consistently, what I mean by false positive is I can do a dtilt, Fox tries to punish with drill, and I don't actually do a dtilt and dash back grab. Since you're claiming that you can basically react to Marth dtilt, I can trick you with false positives like these.

A less extreme example where you're claiming you can react to DA/Fsmash, I do a long dash forward at you to observe how you react to it, and if you do shield that's a false positive that you expected me to DA at you from my long dash forward and I mixed up with grab. You might argue that you would see me not to the DA and thus you would do something else, but I'm forcing you to do something with my long dash forward alone making DA a viable mixup if you were to jump preemptively instead or something. I'd also need to see some specifics with your example too, but that's an example of what I mean. Might not be a false positive, but I'm saying DA isn't worthless.

Basically, I think reaction times are overrated anyways if what you say is true.

 

[peedy]

Thank you for replying. I want you to know that the reason I'm having this discussion isn't to fight or troll or even "win an argument" but as a means to both broaden my understanding of the game, how the human body works, and figure out if fox would be broken if a faster reaction time are possible. The fact that your taking this discussion some what seriously is much appreciated. I'll post links later and take all of your points one by one so as to organize this discussion. I also hope other people will chime in.

Just as a side note now that I understand what you mean by false positives. Isn't false positives forced in every neutral interaction? That's basically what reads are is it not?

 

[AirFair]

Thank you for replying. I want you to know that the reason I'm having this discussion isn't to fight or troll or even "win an argument" but as a means to both broaden my understanding of the game, how the human body works, and figure out if fox would be broken if a faster reaction time are possible. The fact that your taking this discussion some what seriously is much appreciated. I'll post links later and take all of your points one by one so as to organize this discussion. I also hope other people will chime in.

Just as a side note now that I understand what you mean by false positives. Isn't false positives forced in every neutral interaction? That's basically what reads are is it not?

I think the idea of false positives lends more to conditioning and setting up threats that you can use to trick opponents with. Reads are more like using information to make predictions that can have huge payoffs.

I agree that while reactions can be very useful, I don't think looking to react to raw options in neutral would be super effective, mainly because I think there wouldn't be that much engagement, and like Kotastic said, you would get tricked/tested fairly often once an opponent adjusts to your style.

 

[Kotastic]

I'm glad that this discussion didn't turn into a soapbox of some sort, and I do appreciate productive discussions as well.

Oh as for my dtilt example which I forgot to point out an important detail, I meant crouch for a couple frames to fake a dtilt as a false positive, since it looks like the startup for Marth doing a dtilt.

Reactions are important, but I'm still skeptical to how far it can be pushed to what you're suggesting. I think things like audible reactions are great, because it's faster and more obvious what cues to react to, but for visual reactions other factors like at what point are you exactly visually reacting to is also ambiguous.

 

[nats]

You can react to something happening surprisingly quickly, as quickly as 10 frames in melee. You won't know what it is, but you can for sure do a 10 frame reaction. You can test this out by having a CPU doing a random fsmash on 20XX and then freeze framing as soon as you react. My typical is like 12-13 but I've gotten as low as 9-10. That's just pure reaction though, and doesn't have toooooo much use. Panic shielding can happen quickly like this. Reaction time lowers significantly when you're trying to react to multiple things or different situations, and that's what'll typically be happening in melee. I usually ballpark anywhere from 15-20 frames for those types of situations. It also goes down significantly again when something unexpected happens

 

[quixotic]

https://youtu.be/Ns85L2lCWBI?t=157

How would you followup after this uptilt?

 

[Dr Peepee]

I'm thinking SH Uair or SH and let him DJ and then DJ Uair him after that. It's hard for me to tell when Zain is actionable/how much Plup SDI'd because Zain just sat there lol.

 

[Reyjavik]

So I came across a grandmaster whose really good with yoshi. While I wasn't getting outright 4 stocked, I did not take any games in our friendlies.
I got mad at the dinosaur and the game and while no controller was spiked, I was mad at myself and the game for not acting the way I want.
Its hard to diagnose why exactly you're mad in the moment and I think its a skill that will help me move forward.

How do you all approach the yoshi matchup? I think I need to give more space than you would realize for him since his nair is so powerful.
I as trying to use nair, dtilt, and grabs when I could but couldn't find any exact followthroughs

 

[AirFair]

So I came across a grandmaster whose really good with yoshi. While I wasn't getting outright 4 stocked, I did not take any games in our friendlies.
I got mad at the dinosaur and the game and while no controller was spiked, I was mad at myself and the game for not acting the way I want.
Its hard to diagnose why exactly you're mad in the moment and I think its a skill that will help me move forward.

How do you all approach the yoshi matchup? I think I need to give more space than you would realize for him since his nair is so powerful.
I as trying to use nair, dtilt, and grabs when I could but couldn't find any exact followthroughs

I recently played a yoshi too, and that got me thinking about the matchup actually, so this is some good timing lol

My main strategy was to just try and pivot grab/fair his djc aerials, and when he stuck to the ground using wd dtilt I would dtilt him back. It's important to not swing at him impulsively, or a good yoshi can parry that and nair you. Knowing that, I only wanted to aerial when spaced properly and to attack him for jumping. I don't think I want to jump offensively much for risk of parrying, so as of right now I stick to the plan above.

Off grabs I would usually just side throw, and try and techchase or work the edgeguard juggle situation, but I do think that I could explore uthrow more to get rid of his dj armor, which was something I've seen suggested but wasn't confident in. I'm definitely not that familiar with the punish game on this character lol but I have a few ideas off the bit of vod watching/reading that I did.

Because yoshi can cancel his dj at any point during it with an aerial, my idea of juggling/edgeguarding him effectively means waiting for him to cancel the dj with an aerial (there's both an audio and visual cue for this I believe) and hitting that with sword, or hitting him after the dj (probably shouldn't happen as often as the former, since you want to threaten him into cancelling). I think hitting dj aerials is pretty unlikely with dj armor + the likelihood of djc aerials happening, so I try and threaten fair/uair with my sh, and then if he djc's he'll fall really fast into the aerial I put out.

Beyond that, I'm not entirely sure about how to deal with some things, like yoshi shield pressure or how to deal with eggstalling, since only really good yoshis do both of those things well I think.

 

[Plumpet]

is there any safe way to edgeguard that grapple to ledge Samus does a lot when she doesnt airdodge? I feel like grabbing ledge gets me hit really often, and when I grab it early she waits til i dont have invincibility

 

[Dr Peepee]

Grabbing edge early then letting go and DJ Bair can be good. Sometimes you can runoff Fair her or runoff/SH off DJ Fair her. WD off Bair can work too. If you know when Samus might try to use the grapple you can get to where she will be early, and if you move well you can hit her whether she does the grapple or not. I'd just play around with those tools and see how it goes. You won't always be able to stop her but this can help.

 

[Agrathor3]

So I've noticed my out of shield game is very lacking especially against spacies all I really do is wd oos, buffer rolls and occasionally rising fair but what are some other good options particularly against spacies that spam shines and sffl aerials on shield? The other thing is I'm not sure what to do when fox shines me like if I get hit by the shine I try to spot dodge after to avoid the grab but I'm not great at the timing so what other options do I have when fox hits me with a shine? (Like a running shine or dair or nair into shine)

 

[Dr Peepee]

Zain uses lightshield vs Falco and it seems to be effective vs most. You may also find shield DI away to be useful.

If Fox hits you with running shine he can usually just get the grab unless you held down vs the shine. You may want to try dashing away if you think you have time though I guess.