Important Carefully Ask PPMD about the Tiara Guy

[Duhssert]

pivot fsmash should only not work if they DI down and away. unless you're sure that's what they're doing then you need to practice.

you can set up (pivot) tippers at higher percents with dtilt and weak fair. higher than that is when first hit side b to utilt can be viable.

you'll also need to edgeguard if you can't get those things or just generally. look for when you whiff vs her and see if you can find corrections on your own or in pro matches.

you can jab turnip, fair it(and sometimes hit peach), nair it(first hit hits turnip, second hits peach coming in), or get on a platform to avoid throws and change position quickly and also fair if she starts to get close. you could also rush her down, especially on FD. she can't dash attack/dsmash when holding a turnip so you're more free to go in as long as you watch for aerials and rolls.

Thank you, im pretty good at pivots, its just i have very little peach mu experience but ill practice more, im pretty good at edgeguards but i was just seeing if you had different tactics, so thanks, cant wait to see you placing first again soon :D

 

[Kopaka]

I know it's slightly off topic, but could you perhaps link me to a post on this topic for Falco? I do main him now, but love reading this thread because it's so interesting.

http://smashboards.com/threads/falco-discussion-thread.256826/page-266#post-13598472

Guess ill write because lol buuuutt...I'm thinking some of the psychological advantages for Marth are...

-Being less technically demanding when playing vs space animals ; getting some opponents to think they need to press more buttons to win, and in other cases getting opponents to work a bit harder to get in hits that won't just be pivot grabbed : p

-Potential for touch of death combos on certain characters

-Vs Floaties, supreme ground speed (Watch PPMD Marth vs Hugs from Apex 2014, good example IMO) and tons of potential to get slower floaties to whiff. (I feel like Marth's potential to do this sort of thing has to be unlocked and you gotta drop habits you might have in neutral like being scared/landing on the ground and shielding really often...srs go watch that set it's great lol)

Disadvantages could be...

- Some players may not feel like they're accomplishing a whole lot in certain matchups. What I really mean by that is....Again, you aren't pressing AS many button's as Fox or Falco, and all of the "less is more" , "threatening by dashing to them" , Mantras and invisible fundamentals of the character that PP has talked about for dozens previous posts could end up taking a lot longer to really click with a Marth player than say...being able to drill waveshine upsmash with Fox 70% of the time. And that understanding of those parts of the game need to be mastered before you can start pulling off mew2king combos on space animals, at least consistently or as often as a Marth at that level could be doing.

 

[Sutekh]

As far as mindset goes, I think it's really demoralizing when you make the opponent feel like there's nothing they can do. If you're solid at chaingrabbing, less experienced players will get really frustrated as soon as you get a grab, and will be more likely to make a mistake once you're back in neutral. Even just being able to consistently stuff their approaches over and over, it'll feel like you're a brick wall. Marth requires precision, both to play with and against, and it puts a lot of pressure on the opponent to play perfectly when they're playing against a good Marth.

 

[Dr. Bread]

i think the important thing to realize with marth is that you can't really out-box almost any top-tier. most characters in the same tier as marth have better knockback, faster moves, more available punishes, and will likely have better trades; Marth loses in a pit fight.

against anyone reasonably familiar in the matchup, especially low%, you can't expect to win if you dont have dominant ground-movement and stage control, because thats what makes this character a top-tier.

I'd say at all levels of play, you'll get the most bang for your buck when studying and optimizing your ground movement. this is especially useful since a lot of parts of ground-neutral are sort of rock-paper-scissors, but most people will not have fully worked out the dynamics of the ground neutral the way you have, since the risk-reward aspects are expressed in such a subtle way.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Dr Peepee You've written on the psychological advantages and disadvantages of Falco before, what do you think are some of those for Marth from your experience?

People always talk about matchups as a static ratio like 60:40 etc but I really like looking at things from a human level. It's a great feeling when you're playing someone and a combo you get on them during a tourney set ends up really hurting their morale or focus with the next stock. Or maybe it doesn't. Either way it really brings out the physical/human feeling of Melee that this game has

I'll need some time to think about this since I'm a little out of touch with the character at the moment. Good question!

 

[Uma]

smashboards is so dead

 

[FE_Hector]

smashboards is so dead

While I will admit that there could be far more people active on SB, it's definitely far from dead and definitely makes a good resource.

 

[Kopaka]

smashboards is so dead

Just patiently waiting for PP to grace us with his presence...

 

[xXadevs2000Xx]

Just patiently waiting for PP to grace us with his presence...

At least we get more than the Falco boards!

 

[AirFair]

lool this is easily one of the best threads in the character boards, and we have Dr Peepee to thank.

Thanks for all of your knowledge!

 

[FE_Hector]

Just patiently waiting for PP to grace us with his presence...

Most people do think that, if Gods truly do exist, their sense of time would be vastly different from ours, which very well could account for it.

At least we get more than the Falco boards!

I main Falco. FeelsBadMan

 

[Dr Peepee]

No problem guys! =)

I may do a knowledge drop/post some ideas I'll work on later on when I'm doing better in here for you dedicated smashboards homies.

For now, make sure to stand where M2K does when stageguarding Peach, watch how m2k zoned with fairs and sometimes nairs, and also what he did after throws(please don't expect good peaches to do that awful Dthrow DI armada did game one though lol).

 

[xXadevs2000Xx]

please don't expect good peaches to do that awful Dthrow DI armada did game one though lol

Can't you pivot fsmash every DI off of fthrow besides down and away?

And near ledge, the down and away that they would be doing on fthrow can create a DI trap where you can dthrow fsmash?

If so, couldn't you mixup between fthrow pivot fsmash and dthrow fsmash?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Can't you pivot fsmash every DI off of fthrow besides down and away?

And near ledge, the down and away that they would be doing on fthrow can create a DI trap where you can dthrow fsmash?

If so, couldn't you mixup between fthrow pivot fsmash and dthrow fsmash?

Yeah but I don't know the percents or nuances to it.

Peach can hold to DI fthrow and then switch to Dthrow DI since it's a slower throw but if you wanna try it you can.

 

[Klemes]

At least we get more than the Falco boards!

That you do my friend. That you do.

Dr Peepee So what did you think of m2k's marth 3-0 vs armada ? I know armada may not have played his best in the MU by getting hit by shaky combos and not punishing a few unsafe moves/approaches by marth. But still, his marth looked pretty sick to me, super threatening and doing all the stuff that make the MU a living hell for peach.

 

[Brave Little DeCoste'R]

When do you want to WD back instead of Dash back to make an opponent whiff an approach? Spacing definitely has something to do with it but I feel like there should be a reason to dash back instead of WD back and vice versa to force an opponent to whiff an approach.

 

[ChivalRuse]

Brave Little DeCoste'R Whoa, that's a complex question. Causing someone to whiff with a wavedash is usually preemptive; you would do this if you had frames to spare before the opponent could hit you, but you want to put your opponent into a range where you can react to their approaches. Dodging the opponent with a dash dance is usually reserved for when you are at a reactable range.

Example: If a Fox is close enough to hit you with a SHFFL nair, you could wavedash away from him, then observe him. If he does elect to do a SHFFL nair, you could then dash dance grab him, because he would be at the appropriately reactable range.

 

[RedmanSSBM]

Dr Peepee To kind of play off of Klemes ' question, I wanted to know what you think are the major differences between your approach to the Marth v Peach matchup, and M2K's approach to the same matchup, especially considering he played so well at Summit. I could definitely notice some differences between his play and yours, but I wanted to hear what you thought first.

What do you think he did really well? What do you think he could have done better? What were some decisions he made that you would have done differently? What did you learn from Mew2King's play that you could use in your own play?

This matchup just got really really interesting for me.

 

[Dr Peepee]

I already answered what m2k did above.....

 

[Dr. Bread]

Yeah but I don't know the percents or nuances to it.

Peach can hold to DI fthrow and then switch to Dthrow DI since it's a slower throw but if you wanna try it you can.

the animations are pretty indistinguishable until close to the end of the throw, though the reaction window is bigger and bigger depending on weight.

i'll look at it later in frame advance, but i wouldn't be surprised if the mixup had a pretty short reaction window. With that said dthrow has fewer DI angles that allow for followups than fthrow, it just so happens that dthrow covers most if not all of the angles used to escape fthrow.

as a side note i couldn't help but notice that sometimes people instinctively react to super subtle cues incredibly fast(and then if they try to consciously spot and react to those same cues they can't react to it anymore lol)

with all that said, the more subtle the visual cues, the slower they are processed.

edit: misunderstood, thought you meant that you can hold DI for f-throw and then react to dthrow, rather than to DI for f-throw and then DI for dthrow after a quick delay.

 

[SwiftBass]

Can't you pivot fsmash every DI off of fthrow besides down and away?

And near ledge, the down and away that they would be doing on fthrow can create a DI trap where you can dthrow fsmash?

If so, couldn't you mixup between fthrow pivot fsmash and dthrow fsmash?

The pivot fsmash on a character like peach or Jiggs requires a really tight string of executions. You need frame perfect dash/dash turn then hit two more 1 frames with the pivot turnaround frame then the c stick.

If you are frame perfect and measure your dash range as such you can get Jiggs up to around like 80-85% iirc. There was a GIF in kadanos thread I believe a while back. Not sure about peach but I've always seen their trajectory/properties as similar in regards to Marth grab.

I think with that curve of execution I think realistically ID expect pivot fsmash at the mid-mid/high range for like Peach and Jiggs to be a risky option perhaps used sparingly during a set as opposed to a bread n butter setup.

There are also other options from the earlier percents on if you are quick enough and the opponent's DI is subpar( i.e not down and away after a forward throw)

 

[xXadevs2000Xx]

The pivot fsmash on a character like peach or Jiggs requires a really tight string of executions. You need frame perfect dash/dash turn then hit two more 1 frames with the pivot turnaround frame then the c stick.

If you are frame perfect and measure your dash range as such you can get Jiggs up to around like 80-85% iirc. There was a GIF in kadanos thread I believe a while back. Not sure about peach but I've always seen their trajectory/properties as similar in regards to Marth grab.

I think with that curve of execution I think realistically ID expect pivot fsmash at the mid-mid/high range for like Peach and Jiggs to be a risky option perhaps used sparingly during a set as opposed to a bread n butter setup.

There are also other options from the earlier percents on if you are quick enough and the opponent's DI is subpar( i.e not down and away after a forward throw)

Getting frame perfect dash out of throw isn't that difficult.
Just turn 'Wait' to a colour overlay in 20xx and try to dash from throw without seeing that colour.
And I use Cstick for pivot fsmash so it has to be frame perfect.
The hardest part is evaluating where to pivot, but that's about it.

Also, I think fthrow/dthrow pivot fsmash IS a bread and butter against Puff.

 

[xXadevs2000Xx]

.............................(what I asked was wrong :/)

 

[bomono3]

why do you opt for tippered forward tilt during some of your punishes over fsmash, when non tippered fsmash is stronger than tippered ftilt?

 

[xXadevs2000Xx]

each can hold to DI fthrow and then switch to Dthrow DI since it's a slower throw but if you wanna try it you can.

I think dthrow and fthrow are just as long on Peach.
So I think it's a legitimate DI mixup, but I'll have to test more.

 

[PedXing]

Hey PP ( or anyone), I'm a relatively new player, been playing for around 5 months now, and I find that when I play some people, I get so overwhelmed I have no idea what to do and start flubbing everything, and feel like I can't move. Thinking about the match becomes hard and it feels like I should just put the controller down.

Have you got any tips for making sure you don't get knocked all over the place and can at least stand your ground?

 

[A_Reverie]

Hey PP ( or anyone), I'm a relatively new player, been playing for around 5 months now, and I find that when I play some people, I get so overwhelmed I have no idea what to do and start flubbing everything, and feel like I can't move. Thinking about the match becomes hard and it feels like I should just put the controller down.

Have you got any tips for making sure you don't get knocked all over the place and can at least stand your ground?

This is what happens when you face a player that's generally better than you when it comes to raw speed and execution. The only real option you have to improve here is with experience. If it helps you can go practice movement/tech skill on your own but that doesn't do much to help you learn to respond to someone else's pressure-via-movement. Exposure to it will help, maybe not right away, but over time.

If you find yourself really overwhelmed and unable to breathe fighting them, then follow these priorities. Learning this early will help a lot:

• Learn what habits you have that let them combo you so hard. For example, if you're fighting another Marth and they're stringing you across the stage with aerials, you probably need to DI out and save your jump. Fixing this will give you more breathing room and make you take less damage.

• Stay on the ground, and when you sense that your spacing is compromised, be ready to use a defensive option. This is more nuanced than it sounds and a lot of this will come with experience, but it helped me to pinpoint where I could prevent taking damage or being sent into tumble. Let's say you're dash dancing, and a Sheik slides into your space with her own wavedash just after you've dashed back. Your back is to them, dashing back the other way puts you in F-tilt range. Knowing when your space is threatened allows you to respond with defense. In this case you could immediately do a retreating F-air after inputting the dash toward them. Or you could spotdodge and hold down to CC other hits and jump cancel a grab. Fact of the matter is you need to know what classifies as defense, and when to use it.

• Technical errors and the like can be ironed out through solo play, but every player needs exposure to pressure so that they can practice maintaining their ability to move freely while being aggressed. One of the simplest ways to check your opponent and assess their intent is by wavedashing backwards. You see players like Plup do this a lot, especially Sheiks since their dash is so short. This strategy works really well if you know you're playing underneath a more technical player. Simply wavedashing back when you feel you need some space gives you plenty of opportunity to respond, as it keeps you facing forward and is only a small amount of frames to commit. Marth in particular has amazing options out of wavedash, D-tilt being the gold standard. This strategy isn't perfect, though. A good Fox player, for example, will try to run you down and either shine or try to aim their N-air behind you so that it connects after your movement. Try to adapt in turn.

• Crouch cancel is super important in Melee, but learning when it can be done can be a bit vague. A good start is to hold down after you land with an aerial. This puts you in crouch and also makes D-tilt available on-landing so you can check their ground movement after advancing. Holding down after a roll or spotdodge is also a really nice way to tank certain punishes that rely on catching you out of these animations. It's useful for if the opponent doesn't feel safe committing to a grab because they feel they don't have time. A Fox, Falco, or Sheik may try to dash attack, for example, which can be CC'd rather well until high percents. CC after a wavedash is pretty standard, as you're doing a downward input to airdodge into the ground already.

• You may have heard this before, but learn to resist the urge to shield grab. Shield pressure for every character revolves around avoiding this, and against a good player it'll most likely get you punished. Other OOS options that are good for Marth are wavedash, F-air (if spaced correctly) and then simply rolling/spotdodging. Marth's OOS is weaker than other top tiers, which is just a part of his design. More advanced shield game involves Shield DI, lightshielding, etc. Common shield pressure includes Fox shine/aerial pressure, but even more common than that is your standard "boxing" that most characters not named Marth can do. Rolling, spotdodging can break this up, but if you feel like they'll read this, you can try to Shield DI/Lightshield away from them and then wavedash back to neutral, or F-air. I suggest practicing figuring out when to roll first, as it's most simple, and work from there.

All of these things are very difficult to keep in mind while you're being pressured. What I've been doing it practice in my free time is just fighting the 20XX 4.05 AI Fox while examining my play and trying to determine where I can apply these concepts. As long as you recognize all of this will take a good amount of time to learn, and you commit yourself to learning it, you'll be just fine. Keep up the good work. Hope this helps!

 

[PedXing]

Wow, thanks for taking the time to construct and drop that knowledge. That really helps, as I've never really considered a lot of that properly. Learning my habits is probably the biggest one for me as a new player thinking about it. I don't really know what my habits are, and today when I got bopped I just got flustered and I imagine I was rolling after knockdown every time and just spamming aerials to get a hit, which I think is where I was getting hit the most. I did realise and tried to get into grounded movements, but the pressure at the time was just too much for me to handle.

I also think you're totally right in that I need exposure to pressure. I mainly just practice techskill at the moment with the odd friendly on netplay everyday and a monthly meetup, which isn't really much. In practice I can do all the techskill I want to be able to at the moment, I just havent really been able to implement it in game and I guess the only way to solve that is through playing.

Thanks for your words of encouragement too, it's easy to come away from a bad loss and feel like giving up, but it helps to hear that it's all part of the learning process.

 

[FE_Hector]

Learning my habits is probably the biggest one for me as a new player thinking about it. I don't really know what my habits are

If you have any matches recorded, there's a Marth Video Critique Thread you can post it in. As far as habits in terms of moves, think about what moves you use a lot and see if there are better options. I'd had the habit of fsmashing every time somebody got in my space back when I first started, so for a few weeks I made a point out of NEVER fsmashing and it helped me consider my options way better. Same with rolling in neutral, approaching with certain moves too much, etc.

 

[A_Reverie]

Thanks for your words of encouragement too, it's easy to come away from a bad loss and feel like giving up, but it helps to hear that it's all part of the learning process.

No problem. This is what we do, so welcome aboard.

 

[The Flood]

Hey pp, I’ve been playing actively for a long while now but only recently really started to look inward and figure out why I’m still bad at the game. As I try and break down situations and figure out what “good” movement and spacing is I find it increasingly difficult to apply or practice anything and it only becomes more apparent that what is currently my neutral is all flash and no crash (this is also a big part of my theory on why losing is so bad but winning doesn’t carry any heft). Do you have any tips on building up neutral game or movement based on concepts and not just “I’ve seen PPMD move like this and it’ll give me enough punish opportunities to beat some people”?


It’s shocking where the question “Why am I not where I want to be in melee” will take you lol

 

[Kopaka]

• Technical errors and the like can be ironed out through solo play, but every player needs exposure to pressure so that they can practice maintaining their ability to move freely while being aggressed. One of the simplest ways to check your opponent and assess their intent is by wavedashing backwards. You see players like Plup do this a lot, especially Sheiks since their dash is so short. This strategy works really well if you know you're playing underneath a more technical player. Simply wavedashing back when you feel you need some space gives you plenty of opportunity to respond, as it keeps you facing forward and is only a small amount of frames to commit. Marth in particular has amazing options out of wavedash, D-tilt being the gold standard. This strategy isn't perfect, though. A good Fox player, for example, will try to run you down and either shine or try to aim their N-air behind you so that it connects after your movement. Try to adapt in turn.

The bold/italicized/underlined parts are really important.

Seek people in your scene that can crush you. The more drive and motivation you have, the easier it will be in the long term to find ways to improve. Go out and lose every single friendly you play. Come home and have an intense drive to figure out why you may lose. Rinse and repeat. (advice i need to srsly listen to myself >_>)

 

[PedXing]

If you have any matches recorded, there's a Marth Video Critique Thread you can post it in. As far as habits in terms of moves, think about what moves you use a lot and see if there are better options. I'd had the habit of fsmashing every time somebody got in my space back when I first started, so for a few weeks I made a point out of NEVER fsmashing and it helped me consider my options way better. Same with rolling in neutral, approaching with certain moves too much, etc.

I don't at the minute, is there an easy way to record netplay matches?

The bold/italicized/underlined parts are really important.

Seek people in your scene that can crush you. The more drive and motivation you have, the easier it will be in the long term to find ways to improve. Go out and lose every single friendly you play. Come home and have an intense drive to figure out why you may lose. Rinse and repeat. (advice i need to srsly listen to myself >_>)

I feel like at the minute, I have the drive, so I'm hoping it stays for a long while!

Played a few games today on netplay against players much better, and although I lost a lot, I felt that I was able to keep composed and almost understand what was going on! So thanks for the advice and comments everyone, it really helped already in less than a day.

I think I'm gonna like it round here!

 

[AustinRC]

Since there seems to be some confusion I'll chip in for a second on pivots regarding Puff/ Peach.

Pivoting against Puff:

Marth has kill options on puff at around 60%-70% (stage dependent) from Fthrow on every DI however some of these require a read at lower percents.

Pivoting against Peach:

Peach can react to fthrow/ dthrow setups on reaction. She can just hold down/ down and away and get away from all pivot setups/ wavedash fsmash. Which is why it's super important to add in tech chasing or uthrow into some threat of a juggle. If she has more to worry about she may flub her DI on a super quick fthrow but it should be used pretty sparingly.

 

[xXadevs2000Xx]

Peach can react to fthrow/ dthrow setups on reaction

I used to think so but I'm not so sure anymore.

Both throws takes 13 frames in which Peach can react.
Theoretically, this is just about within human reaction time and therefore possible.

However, take into account how similar fthrow and dthrow animations are.
That's why it's so much easier to techchase Falcon, because of how easy to distinguish his tech roll animations are.

You aren't simply reacting to "green and red" in those 13 frames, you're reacting to 2 very similar animations, which makes it 1000x harder and I don't believe it's humanly feasible to do on reaction.

 

[AustinRC]

I've asked multiple peach mains about this since they were all DI'ing the throws correctly. All of them including Armada said that they were reacting to the throw. My whole game play for awhile revolved around this mix up and it completely stopped working. Simply holding down is enough as well for both throws from what I remember. Tested it awhile back but I believe that DI got out of follow ups on both throws.

 

[xXadevs2000Xx]

I've asked multiple peach mains about this since they were all DI'ing the throws correctly. All of them including Armada said that they were reacting to the throw. My whole game play for awhile revolved around this mix up and it completely stopped working. Simply holding down is enough as well for both throws from what I remember. Tested it awhile back but I believe that DI got out of follow ups on both throws.

I'm going to assume that they aren't reacting for what I'm about to say, for the reasons I listed above. If you want to believe otherwise, that's completely fine.

Because of the down DI, the default should pretty much always be fthrow. If they DI down, you dash attack them, get them above you and **** them up. If they DI down and away, you techchase (nair to cover tech in place, then react to other options)
I'm 100% not saying to rely on the mixup, but if you notice that they are doing their DI down and away to avoid the dash attack and take the techchase instead, you can dthrow fsmash if they DI as such.
If you don't get the read and they DI down, then you're in an edgeguard situation.

Again, this is assuming that they aren't capable of reacting, which is what I believe for the reasons I gave above.


Thanks for the info about the down DI by the way.

 

[Dr Peepee]

holding down is always so busted =(

 

[AustinRC]

Gosh dangit Mr. Nanney, I swear.... Also yeah you're right you should be able to land dash attack unless they hold down and away then tech chase if they do, I agree completely. I've only based my opinions on the subject with results from game play, I haven't delved into the actual frame work of it though. But I believe what Xelic told me awhile back was he would always DI down and away (for fthrow) then switch after visually confirming dthrow. Again I'm just basing it off what he had said and my experiences with other good peach players. I may play around with this some more though or see what Kadano says if he decides to look into it.

Yeah no problem. Peach is butt muffins.

 

[FE_Hector]

holding down is always so busted =(

Peach's dsmash tho