Important Carefully Ask PPMD about the Tiara Guy

[Dr Peepee]

You just "@" them. Or you hit reply by their message you want to respond to.

I think the DJ can be good and playing with drift and SH one way DJ another way etc is all good. The main concern to me is getting hit out of it and also what happens after you land next to them. It's not necessarily an advantageous position there at all positions in all matchups. I do think it's still a decent option though because you can even do mixups like FF through the platform and hitting or drifting away etc so there's too much useful variability, but the cons are still real to me.

 

[maxono1]

thanks Dr Peepee

what do you think about the pivot stuff from my earlier post? would you consider it?

 

[Dr Peepee]

No problem

And yes I know it can be more consistent now. I forget about that pode thing but either way I think through practice and some of these things it can become pretty consistent, as of course Zain has shown. I never meant to imply it was inconsistent in general, only inconsistent for me since I didn't practice it enough.

 

[iCrash]

What do you think of using fullhop Nair to cover the top platform on Yoshis Island? Particularly during tech chase scenarios, I have felt like I sometimes struggle to follow up if I knock someone onto the top platform when going for Uair.

 

[Sacredtwin11]

FH nair can be decent at higher percents, but you also have the issue if you're slightly late and they just hold down and cc first hit and get their shield up. Try watching zain cover top plat on fountain or yoshi's since they're either the same height or really close.

 

[RedmanSSBM]

It has come to my attention over the past few days that when playing against others I have a "setplay" style where I have specific reactions points on each stage that I tend to dash dance in and react to something my opponent does. While this can be okay at a mid level, this will be more easily caught onto at a higher level and I will lose neutral a lot because of it. That is, until I learn more and more about what I can and can't do from these reaction points. There's also a lot of preemptive moves that I tend to use in neutral (jumping being one of them) and I don't really react to my opponent probably because I'm used to playing neutral like this as Ganon.

When I'm playing against another person, should I be trying to purely focus on reacting to what they're doing in neutral, even if my reactions are late? I'm not saying I should react 100% of the time in neutral (unless you think that would be good practice) but I feel like I need to get into the habit of reacting to my opponent instead of just putting out moves on where I think they might end up. The only thing that discourages me from doing this is that I don't like feeling that I react too late to something, but I guess that is why I need to practice it.

I also feel like studying top player matches and focusing on when they jump and what they do with their jump is helpful for me to figure out what I could do in neutral that is either setplay or reactionary.

 

[maxono1]

Dr Peepee i think you didnt understand my point but my explanation was also very barebones so let me try again

the method of pivoting you are probably thinking about is the pewpewu style pivot which is inputting your attack in the 1frame standing animation, which is very difficult and requires lots of practice as you said.

im talking about empty pivot or flicker pivot which is not skill dependent but controller dependent (Kadano confirmed for me i asked him earlier)

high degradation or corrosion of the potentiometer (the black things on the stickbox that read your stick inputs) or pode makes dashbacking on non ucf more consistent but makes empty pivots or flicker pivots and ledgedashing harder.

what im saying is that when u want to play seriously again u should get a new controller or let kadano clean up your favourite one because you dont need good vanilla dashback anymore because ucf and arduinos are everywhere now and pivots are super useful and i would like to see you suceed.

tl;dr empty pivots are pay to win and you dont need intense practice to master them like zain

 

[iCrash]

FH nair can be decent at higher percents, but you also have the issue if you're slightly late and they just hold down and cc first hit and get their shield up. Try watching zain cover top plat on fountain or yoshi's since they're either the same height or really close.

What if you timed it so the first hit of nair would be in the vulnerable frames of tech in place? Then they wouldnt be able to CC

 

[ElectricBlade]

Hey PPMD, I'm a Smash 4 player coming to Ultimate and I actually have a few questions on movement, considering that theirs some similarities. These will mostly be about Dash dancing.

1. So it seems like there's two main uses of dash dancing, which is to either set up for an approach of some kind, or to bait the opponent to attack to set up a whiff punish (Obviously simplified). I've been thinking of counter strategies to both of these at least in a vacuum, and I was wondering what you think of them/think I should consider adding to vary my options on dealing with them.
-Options against "aggressive" dash dance (Use undershot attack to catch forward dash, move back to whiff punish, jump over attack, beat the attack outright)
-Options against "passive" dash dance (Corner them as they dash back, use overshot attack to catch backdash, use a feint to bait whiff punish, threaten them)

2. This is almost directly related to the last question, but when I'm still figuring out how the opponent how can I decipher how they are using their dash dancing? What tells are you looking for to figure out what they're currently trying to accomplish?

3. This is more related to dealing with aggressive approaches. In Smash 4, movement was very rigid and it wasn't very difficult to zone because the opponent lacked options to whiff punish at times and they couldn't mix up their timing very well. I was wondering how you go about zoning/beating out aggressive approaches when the opponent is able to mix up their timing so well? I can never really figure out when they're actually going to try and come in, how do you go about figuring out when they'll come in after a dash dance? I'll sometimes try to stuff a dash in with Dtilt, but narrowly mistime it an get hit.


Thank you in advance if you chose to answer these, I really appreciate the work you put into these threads. :D

 

[Dr Peepee]

What do you think of using fullhop Nair to cover the top platform on Yoshis Island? Particularly during tech chase scenarios, I have felt like I sometimes struggle to follow up if I knock someone onto the top platform when going for Uair.

I think it's fine but if they hold down and slide off they can't be so easily punished at lower percents, but sometimes that can still be worth it. It can help to still work on setting up Uair though because that's a pretty good tool.

It has come to my attention over the past few days that when playing against others I have a "setplay" style where I have specific reactions points on each stage that I tend to dash dance in and react to something my opponent does. While this can be okay at a mid level, this will be more easily caught onto at a higher level and I will lose neutral a lot because of it. That is, until I learn more and more about what I can and can't do from these reaction points. There's also a lot of preemptive moves that I tend to use in neutral (jumping being one of them) and I don't really react to my opponent probably because I'm used to playing neutral like this as Ganon.

When I'm playing against another person, should I be trying to purely focus on reacting to what they're doing in neutral, even if my reactions are late? I'm not saying I should react 100% of the time in neutral (unless you think that would be good practice) but I feel like I need to get into the habit of reacting to my opponent instead of just putting out moves on where I think they might end up. The only thing that discourages me from doing this is that I don't like feeling that I react too late to something, but I guess that is why I need to practice it.

I also feel like studying top player matches and focusing on when they jump and what they do with their jump is helpful for me to figure out what I could do in neutral that is either setplay or reactionary.

Yeah part of this might be resolved if you practice intentionally reacting. I think your main issue outside of this is just understanding positions better, which you mentioned.

Dr Peepee i think you didnt understand my point but my explanation was also very barebones so let me try again

the method of pivoting you are probably thinking about is the pewpewu style pivot which is inputting your attack in the 1frame standing animation, which is very difficult and requires lots of practice as you said.

im talking about empty pivot or flicker pivot which is not skill dependent but controller dependent (Kadano confirmed for me i asked him earlier)

high degradation or corrosion of the potentiometer (the black things on the stickbox that read your stick inputs) or pode makes dashbacking on non ucf more consistent but makes empty pivots or flicker pivots and ledgedashing harder.

what im saying is that when u want to play seriously again u should get a new controller or let kadano clean up your favourite one because you dont need good vanilla dashback anymore because ucf and arduinos are everywhere now and pivots are super useful and i would like to see you suceed.

tl;dr empty pivots are pay to win and you dont need intense practice to master them like zain

Hm I knew some of this but not all. I need to look into this more for sure, this controller stuff is such a pain. Thanks for the info I will save it.

Hey PPMD, I'm a Smash 4 player coming to Ultimate and I actually have a few questions on movement, considering that theirs some similarities. These will mostly be about Dash dancing.

1. So it seems like there's two main uses of dash dancing, which is to either set up for an approach of some kind, or to bait the opponent to attack to set up a whiff punish (Obviously simplified). I've been thinking of counter strategies to both of these at least in a vacuum, and I was wondering what you think of them/think I should consider adding to vary my options on dealing with them.
-Options against "aggressive" dash dance (Use undershot attack to catch forward dash, move back to whiff punish, jump over attack, beat the attack outright)
-Options against "passive" dash dance (Corner them as they dash back, use overshot attack to catch backdash, use a feint to bait whiff punish, threaten them)

2. This is almost directly related to the last question, but when I'm still figuring out how the opponent how can I decipher how they are using their dash dancing? What tells are you looking for to figure out what they're currently trying to accomplish?

3. This is more related to dealing with aggressive approaches. In Smash 4, movement was very rigid and it wasn't very difficult to zone because the opponent lacked options to whiff punish at times and they couldn't mix up their timing very well. I was wondering how you go about zoning/beating out aggressive approaches when the opponent is able to mix up their timing so well? I can never really figure out when they're actually going to try and come in, how do you go about figuring out when they'll come in after a dash dance? I'll sometimes try to stuff a dash in with Dtilt, but narrowly mistime it an get hit.


Thank you in advance if you chose to answer these, I really appreciate the work you put into these threads. :D

Well I can't truly help you here because the games are so different, but I will just answer however I can. This is a Melee thread after all.

1. You can also move forward and full approach before they do against their aggression.

2. Looking for when their dash becomes run helps you know when they are interested in committing more, and in a given spacing they may be more likely to choose one option or another. Also at a certain timing in a spacing, or a timing in general people may approach or go into a defensive play. These are useful lenses to use.

3. You can control how they approach based on your plays in part. If they can only beat you out before your move comes out, then you know when you move in that you just need to let them have that advantage before you move back to punish for example. But in general it really helps to learn positions so you really know what options you beat and lose to at every timing in as many situations as you can. Starting close up and moving to farther away approaches. This understanding really informs your decisions instead of having you hope they run into you.

 

[Kotastic]

Dr Peepee , I can confirm what maxono says is correct which is basically supported with what n3z has told me. Zain supposedly uses a pearly white controller because that kind pode doesn't degrade, and supposedly Black Smash 4 controller pode doesn't degrade either. I have switched to my black S4 controller for more than a month now and my pivots have been pretty consistent with minimal practice.

I would also like to share a story about playing Battleship with a friend of mine, the same game Leffen and Mango played on stream http://en.battleship-game.org/

I thought it was a fun random game to play with a friend of mine that barely plays games or competes much. It was fun games just us messing around with basically random shots because the game is all random right? Don't have any idea where the ships could be, so it could be anywhere right? We played at like midnight.

We applied basic option coverage where obviously this large ship would be likely to be there. Stuff like that. It was pretty random which of us would win, and it would be pretty infuriating to be on a losing streak due to randomness and luck. Then...I thought about looking about his ship placement after my losses, made an internal theory on how typically his ships are close together, and rode it through. Instead of just guessing, I made reads that his ship would be close by instead of just taking purely random shots. After I made that adjustment, I won 10 straight games in a row despite how many wild lucky guesses he made. At one point, I sunk all his ships before he even sunk one of mine before he demanded my secret.

As soon as I told him my strategy, he took note of that and it basically became a huge mindgame of outplays. After demonstrating how I do my reads, I began shifting the metagame to slightly alter the ships to be slightly further away than normal. We would discover some positioning principles where the corners/sides are really good hiding spots for ships and that it should be looked there first. I would sometimes use one ship as bait with no other ships surrounding it, at the cost of all my other ships being dangerously close which sometimes paid off. He would take note of my shooting habits and won a game because I never checked the corner. What turned into a fun, guessing game turned into series of trying to outwit each other, and it kept us so stimulated that we played until nearly 4 am.

Even in a game as simple as Battleship which you would suspect as a simple guessing game, it is still an interaction between two human opponent. Even with the element of luck/randomness, there is something to be exploited with basic strategies, positional understanding, and seizing their habits. After our session, the day later I played against random online opponent, and found that I won a decent amount of my games when days prior I would lose a lot of them. I could tell with the games I lost, they outplayed me instead of pure guesses. I think many people view Melee (and probably other Smash titles) too mechanically if that makes sense. That this situation is a pure mixup, I can solve this scenario, too much endless possibilities in this one scenario, the famous meme of 20XX where Fox will solve the game.

With many things I've been learning about Melee, I would suggest to take a step back, and observe. Try to outplay the opponent. Fancy tech skill, dash dance, pivots, 1-frame window inputs, whatever helps but is insufficient in this interactive game. What matters more is paying attention, and doing all you can to outwit your opponent to win. Paying attention to positioning, habits, baits, understanding your character strengths and weaknesses, being adaptive, so many variables. And who knows, maybe guessing might be the endgame for Battleship, and everything might be a mixup endgame for Melee as well, but at the very least for the journey of becoming a better player in Melee, I think this is a very important principle to internalize.

 

[Echo97]

PP, I was wondering how you developed your movement (particularly with Marth) over time. My game plan isn't as heavily focused on movement as I'd like it to be; when I try to be cool and use slicker movement I'll often just get hit because I don't have a method to the madness I'm creating. I'm not quite sure if either solo practice or having learning goals in game would be most effective.. or perhaps both. I just wanted to know what your recommendations were. Thank you sensei.

 

[maxono1]

Kotastic im playing on a black smash 4 controller for like a year now and i can say it definitely degrades i never knew how much i relied on the empty pivot to get my fsmashes.
idk where i saw you say it but you said fh fair is good against samus. is it good because you can combo better or you can escape to top platform if they block it? now that i think about it, is it safe from cc?
also do you practice writing? that battleship story was kinda entertaining ngl.

 

[iCrash]

Dr Peepee , I can confirm what maxono says is correct which is basically supported with what n3z has told me. Zain supposedly uses a pearly white controller because that kind pode doesn't degrade, and supposedly Black Smash 4 controller pode doesn't degrade either. I have switched to my black S4 controller for more than a month now and my pivots have been pretty consistent with minimal practice.

I would also like to share a story about playing Battleship with a friend of mine, the same game Leffen and Mango played on stream http://en.battleship-game.org/

I thought it was a fun random game to play with a friend of mine that barely plays games or competes much. It was fun games just us messing around with basically random shots because the game is all random right? Don't have any idea where the ships could be, so it could be anywhere right? We played at like midnight.

We applied basic option coverage where obviously this large ship would be likely to be there. Stuff like that. It was pretty random which of us would win, and it would be pretty infuriating to be on a losing streak due to randomness and luck. Then...I thought about looking about his ship placement after my losses, made an internal theory on how typically his ships are close together, and rode it through. Instead of just guessing, I made reads that his ship would be close by instead of just taking purely random shots. After I made that adjustment, I won 10 straight games in a row despite how many wild lucky guesses he made. At one point, I sunk all his ships before he even sunk one of mine before he demanded my secret.

As soon as I told him my strategy, he took note of that and it basically became a huge mindgame of outplays. After demonstrating how I do my reads, I began shifting the metagame to slightly alter the ships to be slightly further away than normal. We would discover some positioning principles where the corners/sides are really good hiding spots for ships and that it should be looked there first. I would sometimes use one ship as bait with no other ships surrounding it, at the cost of all my other ships being dangerously close which sometimes paid off. He would take note of my shooting habits and won a game because I never checked the corner. What turned into a fun, guessing game turned into series of trying to outwit each other, and it kept us so stimulated that we played until nearly 4 am.

Even in a game as simple as Battleship which you would suspect as a simple guessing game, it is still an interaction between two human opponent. Even with the element of luck/randomness, there is something to be exploited with basic strategies, positional understanding, and seizing their habits. After our session, the day later I played against random online opponent, and found that I won a decent amount of my games when days prior I would lose a lot of them. I could tell with the games I lost, they outplayed me instead of pure guesses. I think many people view Melee (and probably other Smash titles) too mechanically if that makes sense. That this situation is a pure mixup, I can solve this scenario, too much endless possibilities in this one scenario, the famous meme of 20XX where Fox will solve the game.

With many things I've been learning about Melee, I would suggest to take a step back, and observe. Try to outplay the opponent. Fancy tech skill, dash dance, pivots, 1-frame window inputs, whatever helps but is insufficient in this interactive game. What matters more is paying attention, and doing all you can to outwit your opponent to win. Paying attention to positioning, habits, baits, understanding your character strengths and weaknesses, being adaptive, so many variables. And who knows, maybe guessing might be the endgame for Battleship, and everything might be a mixup endgame for Melee as well, but at the very least for the journey of becoming a better player in Melee, I think this is a very important principle to internalize.

Not entirely related, but this reminds me of something I learned when I was first getting into statistics and data analytics. In sports there is a 'golden equation' of Performance = Ability + Random Chance. The idea in stats is that every athlete has a 'true' ability that if they played an infinite # of games, their performance (how well they did at any particular thing) would average out to be. Random chance is how much their performance can vary from their ability (such as if the player is playing better/worse than usual, whether thats from being sick or whatever).

The reason I bring this up is that random chance can be big or small, and in stats thats calculated by finding the 'standard deviation' (which is how far performance will on average vary from ability). But no matter what you are doing, regardless of how random it is, there is some pattern to it. Even computers are very rarely truly random, because computers use an internal clock when spitting out random numbers (look up RNG seeds if you want to learn more). In a game like Battleship, the standard deviation is very high, and so its random- but players still have tendencies, it will never truly be random.

When you got to the point where you were both trying to outplay each other, you were getting closer to the others players 'ability' in that situation, and breaking down the random chance. This is a point in mindgames where you are getting to 'ranges' and 'Yomi layers' in some situations, though I dont think I have time to explain either or those this moment.


Bit ranty, but I think Performance = Ability + Random Chance relates a lot to what you were noticing with how even in 'random' games players still have tendencies. The standard deviation in the end result is higher, but a pattern is still definitely there.

 

[Kotastic]

Kotastic im playing on a black smash 4 controller for like a year now and i can say it definitely degrades i never knew how much i relied on the empty pivot to get my fsmashes.
idk where i saw you say it but you said fh fair is good against samus. is it good because you can combo better or you can escape to top platform if they block it? now that i think about it, is it safe from cc?
also do you practice writing? that battleship story was kinda entertaining ngl.

Hmm, really? I can say for me personally compared to testing other controllers, the black smash 4 controller is lasting longer than my other controllers which never lasted more than a month. Maybe having 2 Black Smash 4 controllers a year is optimal or perhaps procuring a Pearl White controller is worth it. Mb I should ask Zain directly in his stream or something.

I said it somewhere in reddit where someone thought Marth loses/even to Samus which I heavily disagree with. I think one of the main tools in the mu is run up shield to observe and then immediately FH fair out of it to cover myself well, alongside with the mixup of wavelanding to top platform or various drifts on the way down. Samus can beat it by being directly under me, but then she's making a read of not respecting my space so to beat that, I can just dtilt/nair in place to force her to respect my space. And it's honestly not that bad to get hit by Samus at low percents, as the best she can get is nair or upair...lol. Bit more problematic at higher percents but I think the risk/reward is in my favor since Samus players don't like leaving the ground for a good reason. I would like to see how this strategy would work out against the top samus players, but I think it's pretty good since I'm essentially abusing Samus's main weaknesses (bad grab and abysmal air control). A quick demonstration of using shield and FH fair in an interaction: https://clips.twitch.tv/CautiousAverageMartenKappa
A recent set of mine here where I don't think I played great but w/e https://youtu.be/crKM6IPYrN0?t=88

Also idk I guess the rhetoric I learned in my college writing classes lol, the rhetorical triangle. People also like multiple paragraphs for longer stories. I write a decent amount in my blog where I ramble about some things. I proofread a bit. Idk tbh lol I just write and observe what people like or don't like, since that's the endgoal right?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Dr Peepee , I can confirm what maxono says is correct which is basically supported with what n3z has told me. Zain supposedly uses a pearly white controller because that kind pode doesn't degrade, and supposedly Black Smash 4 controller pode doesn't degrade either. I have switched to my black S4 controller for more than a month now and my pivots have been pretty consistent with minimal practice.

I would also like to share a story about playing Battleship with a friend of mine, the same game Leffen and Mango played on stream http://en.battleship-game.org/

I thought it was a fun random game to play with a friend of mine that barely plays games or competes much. It was fun games just us messing around with basically random shots because the game is all random right? Don't have any idea where the ships could be, so it could be anywhere right? We played at like midnight.

We applied basic option coverage where obviously this large ship would be likely to be there. Stuff like that. It was pretty random which of us would win, and it would be pretty infuriating to be on a losing streak due to randomness and luck. Then...I thought about looking about his ship placement after my losses, made an internal theory on how typically his ships are close together, and rode it through. Instead of just guessing, I made reads that his ship would be close by instead of just taking purely random shots. After I made that adjustment, I won 10 straight games in a row despite how many wild lucky guesses he made. At one point, I sunk all his ships before he even sunk one of mine before he demanded my secret.

As soon as I told him my strategy, he took note of that and it basically became a huge mindgame of outplays. After demonstrating how I do my reads, I began shifting the metagame to slightly alter the ships to be slightly further away than normal. We would discover some positioning principles where the corners/sides are really good hiding spots for ships and that it should be looked there first. I would sometimes use one ship as bait with no other ships surrounding it, at the cost of all my other ships being dangerously close which sometimes paid off. He would take note of my shooting habits and won a game because I never checked the corner. What turned into a fun, guessing game turned into series of trying to outwit each other, and it kept us so stimulated that we played until nearly 4 am.

Even in a game as simple as Battleship which you would suspect as a simple guessing game, it is still an interaction between two human opponent. Even with the element of luck/randomness, there is something to be exploited with basic strategies, positional understanding, and seizing their habits. After our session, the day later I played against random online opponent, and found that I won a decent amount of my games when days prior I would lose a lot of them. I could tell with the games I lost, they outplayed me instead of pure guesses. I think many people view Melee (and probably other Smash titles) too mechanically if that makes sense. That this situation is a pure mixup, I can solve this scenario, too much endless possibilities in this one scenario, the famous meme of 20XX where Fox will solve the game.

With many things I've been learning about Melee, I would suggest to take a step back, and observe. Try to outplay the opponent. Fancy tech skill, dash dance, pivots, 1-frame window inputs, whatever helps but is insufficient in this interactive game. What matters more is paying attention, and doing all you can to outwit your opponent to win. Paying attention to positioning, habits, baits, understanding your character strengths and weaknesses, being adaptive, so many variables. And who knows, maybe guessing might be the endgame for Battleship, and everything might be a mixup endgame for Melee as well, but at the very least for the journey of becoming a better player in Melee, I think this is a very important principle to internalize.

But it messes with dashback or something right? I think to have the best of everything I'll either need to do the practice method, or have a pivot/Marth controller, which is pretty funny if not a bit silly lol.

I like your story a lot. We are PEOPLE playing the game, which is so often overlooked by mechanical players. To bring balance, I would like to add that you used human and game-related principles to inform your decisions so it really requires a strong interplay to succeed.

PP, I was wondering how you developed your movement (particularly with Marth) over time. My game plan isn't as heavily focused on movement as I'd like it to be; when I try to be cool and use slicker movement I'll often just get hit because I don't have a method to the madness I'm creating. I'm not quite sure if either solo practice or having learning goals in game would be most effective.. or perhaps both. I just wanted to know what your recommendations were. Thank you sensei.

There are two main ways I recommend learning movement. One is to learn positions. So if you're right next to one another, and you attack at the same time, what move wins? What if you're late/early? What if you move before attacking? This is the simplest stuff. Then you move farther away and add complexity in doing so. Eventually you develop a plan for the important positions.

However, to use these positions well you must use your options well. To do this you must practice. Practicing the base option such as WD over and over helps you become as perfect as possible at the tool, including being able to control distance of the WD and how quickly you want to act or manipulate momentum out of it. You build a connection with the tool. When you have this, you can begin combining various tools. WD Dtilt for example. These combinations are things you can use in given positions, and being great at them + knowing their purposes will help you make informed decisions.

Working at this from both ends is good. You can then test ideas against people to see how you're doing, and also do analysis and pause in certain positions to guess how you'd do and then unpause to see if it would work and why. Then you take the new information back to practice and build new ideas. Etc

 

[Kotastic]

Yes because of no/little pode degradation, the dash back is pretty bad. Idk about shield drops if it's related. Thing is with ucf and external arduinos, this should be less of a problem so in theory the no pode degradation is just better. Interesting to note is that despite Evo 2018 not running ucf, Zain still opted for his pivot controller and still seemed to do fine despite the amount of dash backs he does.

 

[quixotic]

PP can you explain why you go for rc dtilt here?

https://youtu.be/CwHR2k8eop8?t=4

 

[Dr Peepee]

After doing an initial bait and changing my rhythm, I reacted/guessed out of my longer dash in that he'd be open/reacted to his Ftilt and punished. I watched the first game and I'm playing weird partly because it's PM so I can't totally be sure. I do think that reaction based on how I set it up was very possible though.

Edit: And I picked Dtilt because Fthrow could have been DI'd to get him to the edge plus it'd be hard to get the grab there iirc, and Dtilt is fine damage plus a psuedo combo position.

 

[maxono1]

Hmm, really? I can say for me personally compared to testing other controllers, the black smash 4 controller is lasting longer than my other controllers which never lasted more than a month. Maybe having 2 Black Smash 4 controllers a year is optimal or perhaps procuring a Pearl White controller is worth it. Mb I should ask Zain directly in his stream or something.

I said it somewhere in reddit where someone thought Marth loses/even to Samus which I heavily disagree with. I think one of the main tools in the mu is run up shield to observe and then immediately FH fair out of it to cover myself well, alongside with the mixup of wavelanding to top platform or various drifts on the way down. Samus can beat it by being directly under me, but then she's making a read of not respecting my space so to beat that, I can just dtilt/nair in place to force her to respect my space. And it's honestly not that bad to get hit by Samus at low percents, as the best she can get is nair or upair...lol. Bit more problematic at higher percents but I think the risk/reward is in my favor since Samus players don't like leaving the ground for a good reason. I would like to see how this strategy would work out against the top samus players, but I think it's pretty good since I'm essentially abusing Samus's main weaknesses (bad grab and abysmal air control). A quick demonstration of using shield and FH fair in an interaction: https://clips.twitch.tv/CautiousAverageMartenKappa
A recent set of mine here where I don't think I played great but w/e https://youtu.be/crKM6IPYrN0?t=88

Also idk I guess the rhetoric I learned in my college writing classes lol, the rhetorical triangle. People also like multiple paragraphs for longer stories. I write a decent amount in my blog where I ramble about some things. I proofread a bit. Idk tbh lol I just write and observe what people like or don't like, since that's the endgoal right?

thanks for the thorough reply. about the controller yeah it held for the better part of a year i thought you meant they last forever because i never had anything to compare it to since this is my first new controller and the other ones were heavily used so they had pode already.

about the strategy using shield a lot worked out great i got many oos punishes and using dtilt/nair in place if they wanted to push in recklessly was also good.
Fh fair worked kinda well but oos when they didnt hit my shield didnt really work out, probably mostly because i drift forward with the quick fairs because i still use a. i also got better at dealing with missiles after labbing it a bit in 20xx, turns out you can wavedash under standing missiles lol and nair/crouch ps but thats not as fun. well now i think i have a pretty good grasp of the matchup thx a lot

 

[AirFair]

How does marth handle really long invincible ledgedashes from characters like luigi and ice climbers? Until now I've been standing back and trying to space fairs on them ledgedashing to make them shield, but sometimes they just ledgedash roll around me, or I misspace it and get grabbed by them.

Another question has to do with fox, and how I can escape followups when he hits me with a shine. What I usually do is sdi the shine away and dash away if I can, which avoids him grabbing me, and can dodge him trying to followup with a dash sh aerial. Sometimes though, I don't have the stage for that, so I feel like I'm forced to shield there, or try rolling, which they can catch on to. An idea I had was to do a rising fair in place/retreating that would cover those aerials and possibly discourage fox from going in super hard when he sees me sdi a shine away. Are there any other things I could try?

 

[Dr Peepee]

You should be able to turn around and grab if they roll, or you need to do later Fairs. You can do Dtilt to cover the WD if you find it easier to turn around out of it. You could also Nair and drift back a bit to hit them forward in case they roll in as well I suppose.

Dtilt, some type of Fair or even Nair, (run in) grab, WD are all options. Sometimes you do just have to shield, but it helps to see what you actually have time for and what you can beat with different options. Shine often doesn't lead into anything direct for him, so no need to always dash away unless he'd hit you otherwise.

 

[iCrash]

Do you play or keep up with other competitive games?
Just wondering.

 

[Dr Peepee]

I don't play and haven't really played any competitive games since I got super into Melee. I played Brawl for a few years competitively after it was released, but I had retired from that by the time Smash 4 came out and didn't want to play it.

I tried to watch competitive CSGO among other games, but it didn't stick with me. I mainly watch speedrunning for competition now, although I don't watch races much. I prefer competition for fastest times. I watch sm64, banjo kazooie, pokemon gens 1-3, celeste, mario golf in a couple forms, and more.

 

[Kotastic]

PP, in past vods of your marth mirror sets, you sometimes went for WD back to WD in Fsmash especially when the Marth is cornered. Often when it landed, the other Marth just dies.

What is your reasoning for doing so, and would you still do it now or would opt for other tactics. If they respect it with shield, would you go for grab or apply fair pressure?

 

[Dr Peepee]

I really like WD out WD in for the ditto. I used to dislike it because it took too long, but after watching old videos and Mango it looks like Marth just covered so much ground that the opponent could be slow to react to it in the first place, which helps set up your approach. This is how the Fsmash works to me, but there is more to it such as conditioning. Fsmash is also good vs cornered Marth because the main Fsmash counter, moving away, is gone. So he has to move in or SH and both lose to Fsmash with good timing.

As to your second question, I think with so much analyzing people do these days I would do the Fsmash less. But I wouldn't opt for doing Fsmash as a staple when they're cornered anyway. Taking that much risk when you have advantage isn't usually a wise idea, it's more of a mixup anyway. So yes I would opt for Fair/Dtilt/grab/wait more, and observe how they respond, and then work in Fsmash either if I need a momentum swing or have a read for example.

 

[jedimeister007]

so recently i've been more interested in picking up Marth to play as a secondary/potential main and just had a few q's

what are some good resources for newer Marth mains?

I've been watching lots of PPU, Tai and PPMD to try and understand the character, but I wanna know what other players do that is important to learn. I should study more M2K for edge pressure and whatnot, and Zain/Rishi for punish game, but not sure if there are any other Marths i should look at.

when stuffing Fox approaches, is it a good option to SH backwards and fair/nair to stuff his approach? I don't really like this since it seems he can run up CC > punish unless it's super well spaced. Is wd back dtilt a good option/substitute for SH backwards?

Is wd in utilt good vs sheik using aerials? it seems very hard for her to deal with and sets up for a juicy combo. Also, does wd in utilt beat lateish needles? i'm not sure if the sheik's i play are just bad at timing needles, or if utilt actually wins that interaction.

How good is fthrow > dtilt vs Falco at very low%? I'm not practiced at the cg and don't really like fthrow > regrab much, so i figure this is a semi safe replacement, but i really just don't know the pros/cons of it.

is bair good for safely covering platforms? it goes pretty high, reaches far and puts people in a pretty bad position. Is it very safe vs shield drop?

 

[Dr Peepee]

If you want to beat approaches with CC, then Dtilt in place or WD back Dtilt or later aerials are good. You can also intercept with run up grab.

I don't think Utilt is reliable there since Sheik could just hit you on reaction unless you move in first, but if it's working then alright. I think run up Fair is better, but you need to be close enough for it to work. I like being just around her Ftilt range so I can do this.

Fthrow Dtilt only works on them holding in iirc, so it's better to either go with that or regrab depending on the end position you get out of it.

Bair is good vs platforms but often won't give you a big punish, especially since you'll need to drift away in some situations to be safe. Also it starts from low to high so it can sometimes take a bit to get where you need it to be.

 

[Reyjavik]

Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New years and happy whatever I missed lol.
I've been taking a break from the boards to do more self reflection and even managed to read more from the Inner Game of Tennis lol. (still need to finish)
Lately I've felt amazing playing the game, working on my mentality has done wonders. I'd recommend people laugh and smile more after ridiculous things or after a stock is taken, it really does help both minimize negative psychological effects I feel and make you feel way more energetic.
While I haven't done ranked matches, I feel I've moved up to gold level to the point where I can not overall win against plat level people but go even in games.
My greatest focus these days is grinding out tech skill in meaningful ways and psychologically accepting what's happened to me not only in the game but in life as well. From accepting what happens we can grow to accept that sometimes what happens in game will happen regardless of skill. How we get up and approach is the greatest strength in improving.
On to discussion:
What do people say is the greatest way to approach the sheik mu grab wise? I was experimenting against a player using forward throw but I could not get real followups. I can see how up throw is effective but want to keep the options open ground game wise

 

[Dr Peepee]

When you can't get a true confirm on Uthrow, then Fthrow/Dthrow/Uthrow are all viable at different times. If you can Fthrow regrab or hit that's good, or if you can Fthrow/Dthrow tech chase OR side throw so Sheik is cornered that's good too. Uthrow is generally good for making her burn her DJ so you can punish that way, but sometimes platforms get in your way.

Good work on your progress, and I hope you keep it up.

 

[Zorcey]

This is probably a question that comes down to “do what works for you” but I’d still like hear about your personal experience: coming up in a region where you were the best for much of your rise (at least this is the impression I have), what techniques did you use/do you use to stay engaged when grinding with players who may be a few skill tiers below you? Some things that have helped me a lot are just looking at the game in a more objective “what option are they using in this position and what options do I have that beat it,” and teaching my opponents about their habits in situations so they can better mix it up and keep me honest. But there are still some things I’m struggling with a bit:

A particular issue when it comes to player habits is that I’m not sure how to effectively practice beating more advanced or I guess just unusual options in some positions because of not having practice partners who use them. Do you think shadowboxing was sufficient for you to be practiced against uncommon options when they eventually came up in tournament? Similarly, how do reccomend getting out of the habit of instinctively covering options that a practice partner might commonly abuse, but few other opponents would?

Another habit I’m trying to expunge from my play is a tendency to get lazy when I think I’ve “already won” and start fishing for a cheap read to “quickly” end the game (that might cost me a stock or two before I get it sometimes). What I think I should do is feed this back into the game by thinking something like “okay, I have a lead and he’s at kill percent, how will this make him play? What options will this make him respect, and how can I abuse that conditioning?”

The problem I’ve had with this solution no longer sounds valid now that I’m putting my thoughts into writing lol, but I’ll see what you think anyway: I don’t have very much mental stamina, (compared to other people I know, anyway): I can play about an hour of friendlies before it’s difficult to focus and I start having a hard time working through positions while playing/I can’t process very well/etc. So typically when I “get lazy” I’ve seen it as a way of conserving stamina (because after all I “already won the game”), but this is silly when it builds a habit that will transfer over to tournament sets, and also prevents me from meaningfully working through situations that will definitely come up in those games.

More about mental stamina: I’ve been better about it lately, but I’m still not as good as I’d like to be about listening to my body/mind telling me it’s spent and I should take a break. It’s not easy for me to arrange practice with another person, and I feel bad about ending it prematurely - especially if they’re prone to hours and hours of grinding like I find many players to be. But for my own growth at the moment after about an hour I need time to write some things down and work through them away from the game, otherwise my thoughts get cloudy and the quality of my play drops quite a bit. At the same time, I want to improve my stamina, but I haven’t found a way to effectively manage that. (This has hurt me a LOT when I’ve attended tournaments as well.) Do you have any reccomendations for this?

Thanks as always PP I’ve improved so much in and out of game the past few months <3

 

[Dr Peepee]

For your first set of questions, I didn't shadowbox until I was a top player. I did however play people and when I was beating them imagine every interaction I won what they could do differently. How when I move in I could lose etc so it kept me mentally engaged and open. I would also just use analysis and imagination to come up with situations that were different than normal so I was always expanding what I could fight against. Shadowboxing is just an extension of that though, so you could do whatever approach you like here. Staying in the habit keeps you flexible, but you could write down some ideas if you worry you'll overwhelm and forget. You can also choose to not directly counter all openings and instead do partial counters or just wait, and you could practice those.

The match isn't over until it says game. Any laziness will carry over to tournament. You play like you practice. Respecting your opponent means playing seriously until the end of the match. Etc etc these types of thoughts are what helped me. It does help to feed into the game as much as possible as well, such as also thinking about how you need to play now that you're close to the end. You want to consciously think of avoiding laziness or rushing as those are big problems.

Sounds like building up stamina would benefit you as well. And you should be upfront with training partners when scheduling the session. It's way harder to get annoyed then lol. As for the way to build it up, I don't know what you have and haven't tried so I'd like to hear about that first.

You're welcome! =)

 

[Zorcey]

My current approach is to reason out why I won or lost a situation in friendlies, but I don’t always tell myself what I should do instead when the situation comes up again - I need to be diligent about being concrete with what I’ll change. Also thinking about what my opponent could do instead when I win a situation hadn’t actually occurred to me until now, but suddenly sounds obvious lol. Is there any way you balance these different ways of looking at an interaction, or do you just do whatever seems appropriate to you at the time? I think dissecting an interaction from as many angles and directions as possible would teach me the most, so I’ll get into the habit of writing down particular ones to think about later as they come up.

Assuming our definition of a “partial counter” is the same (mine would be a spot or option from which you can confirm some number of your opponent’s options instead of having to hard commit to beat them - the benefit would be you can cover more options perhaps at the expense of needing to set up + potentially less reward than a hard commitment), this is something I’ve been working on lately. They seem to require a deep understanding of a position to execute properly, since you should know everything you can cover from whatever spot you pick + what you can’t cover and may need to call out. They also seem like a muuuch more powerful default than hard commiting all the time like many players do, but they don’t always seem possible because you have to set up more and there are some things that you just can’t confirm like that. ...I think all this is just to check that I’m understanding you correctly when you tell me to practice partial counters lol. What would you correct here?

What I’ve tried thus far for stamina is more frequent exercise, pushing my limits, meditation, and better hydration habits and mild diet adjustments. All of these have helped my growth in their own ways, but none have seemed to crack my stamina. I’ve shifted to more or less daily shorter workouts than longer ones a few times a week, which has actually helped my processing when I first sit down a LOT, but hasn’t done much for stamina. Just trying to play longer sessions hasn’t done much either, but honestly I haven’t been diligent about trying to slowly bring it up, so maybe that’d help. Breifly meditating before playing, hydration, and diet have gone basically the same as exercise - they help, but so far they’re not “the thing,” you know?

 

[Dr Peepee]

Just do something one way until you've exhausted it, then move on. The most important thing is to stay engaged and learn, not the method itself since that will evolve to suit you if those first conditions are there.

I'd say that's pretty correct, but I'd probably add that you're basically committing to covering other things and usually at a farther away range, or hitting where they are if normally you'd expect them to move away, etc. It can be easier than normal punishes in that you're attacking earlier and usually farther away so it's safer. However thinking about it a bit more, you may also want to count acting late as a partial counter in that it beats them attacking deep or whiffing then attacking again or coming oos...etc etc so in that way it could be more risky. Anyway it's all nitpicking you're largely right.

Perhaps you are too tense when playing, and you should investigate your posture/mental attitude. I think various tension approaches would be good, as tension saps energy very quickly. If you feel energetic other times but don't in Melee, this is likely the reason. Sleep and more intensive diet adjustments on the physical end may be worth exploring as well. The slow improvement approach is good too.

 

[iCrash]

It might just be that I am new to melee specifically, but when I play vs. players better than me, I find I often feel really overwhelmed by the number of options they have and what I can do against certain things.

It typically takes me several friendlies before I really start picking up on other players habits, range, etc. and being able to feel like I can pick specific situations or things I am getting hit by and then be able to adapt or try doing certain things to avoid punishes, extend my own punishes, maneuver around the other character, etc.

I just feel overwhelmed. Are there ways I can work on this?

 

[Zorcey]

Why is it that partial counters are typically set up at farther ranges? I guess the extra space is important to make confirming an option you're primed to cover possible. But what would be an example of a partial counter Marth could execute at a close range? What comes to mind for me when close is confirming something out of dash/WD back or retreating SH, so basically I'm always putting that extra space between myself and my opponent when attempting to confirm something. Is this a limitation in my understanding, or a limitation of human reaction? Do I have to retreat if I want to confirm, or are there situations where I could move in? I can often stay in place, but I notice I require stage control there as well. (Thinking about this has also given me another perspective on the importance of having space versus playing from the corner, now that I think about it.)

Tense playing was a really good suggestion. After thinking about your response a bit I did some practicing, checking for tension in my body every so often, and I noticed there's quite a lot of it - I also found that I got more tense the more intently I was thinking about the game, and when I was in positions like recovering or when I was trying to execute a precise combo or tech. I would say I'm generally pretty tense, which is probably why a difference didn't really occur to me. But clearly I have more than one reason to work on expunging this tension, so I should make it a priority. My initial ideas would be to get into the habit of checking my body for tension throughout the day and releasing it, as well as stopping to take occasional deep breaths and maybe more frequent, short meditations. I may also need to search myself for particular reasons I'm tense and confront them. Are there recommendations you'd add to this?

 

[maxono1]

It might just be that I am new to melee specifically, but when I play vs. players better than me, I find I often feel really overwhelmed by the number of options they have and what I can do against certain things.

It typically takes me several friendlies before I really start picking up on other players habits, range, etc. and being able to feel like I can pick specific situations or things I am getting hit by and then be able to adapt or try doing certain things to avoid punishes, extend my own punishes, maneuver around the other character, etc.

I just feel overwhelmed. Are there ways I can work on this?

i think thats perfectly normal.
you can definitely remedy this somewhat by watching/analysing top players but in my opinion you just need experience/consistent practice with better players
for extending your own punishes specifically beating up 20xx bots is very good
solo movement practice is good to make yourself more confident
the less you have to worry about your own character the easier it is to watch your opponent and pick up on their patterns

 

[iCrash]

i think thats perfectly normal.
you can definitely remedy this somewhat by watching/analysing top players but in my opinion you just need experience/consistent practice with better players
for extending your own punishes specifically beating up 20xx bots is very good
solo movement practice is good to make yourself more confident
the less you have to worry about your own character the easier it is to watch your opponent and pick up on their patterns

Makes sense, there is definitely still a lot of grinding for me to do on movement and such. My movement is definitely getting better, but still far from being perfect by any means lol.

 

[maxono1]

im not talking about being perfect im talking about the mental energy you need to do it, like how much you have to focus on it to do it consistently.
for example i started practicing haxdashing like 3 or 4 months ago but only recently could i implement it in higher pressure situations where i have to think about what happens next instead of worrying if i can do the haxdash.
this is more of an extreme example because when you mess it up you die immediatly but you can apply it to general movement too. if you need to focus on your character to for example drift you aerial on shield correctly you cant observe your opponents oos options and timings fully and therefore picking up their patterns gets alot harder

 

[Dr Peepee]

It might just be that I am new to melee specifically, but when I play vs. players better than me, I find I often feel really overwhelmed by the number of options they have and what I can do against certain things.

It typically takes me several friendlies before I really start picking up on other players habits, range, etc. and being able to feel like I can pick specific situations or things I am getting hit by and then be able to adapt or try doing certain things to avoid punishes, extend my own punishes, maneuver around the other character, etc.

I just feel overwhelmed. Are there ways I can work on this?

Basically what was recommended to you, practice and study. That will help a lot and then you can develop ideas against those players to an extent.

Why is it that partial counters are typically set up at farther ranges? I guess the extra space is important to make confirming an option you're primed to cover possible. But what would be an example of a partial counter Marth could execute at a close range? What comes to mind for me when close is confirming something out of dash/WD back or retreating SH, so basically I'm always putting that extra space between myself and my opponent when attempting to confirm something. Is this a limitation in my understanding, or a limitation of human reaction? Do I have to retreat if I want to confirm, or are there situations where I could move in? I can often stay in place, but I notice I require stage control there as well. (Thinking about this has also given me another perspective on the importance of having space versus playing from the corner, now that I think about it.)

Tense playing was a really good suggestion. After thinking about your response a bit I did some practicing, checking for tension in my body every so often, and I noticed there's quite a lot of it - I also found that I got more tense the more intently I was thinking about the game, and when I was in positions like recovering or when I was trying to execute a precise combo or tech. I would say I'm generally pretty tense, which is probably why a difference didn't really occur to me. But clearly I have more than one reason to work on expunging this tension, so I should make it a priority. My initial ideas would be to get into the habit of checking my body for tension throughout the day and releasing it, as well as stopping to take occasional deep breaths and maybe more frequent, short meditations. I may also need to search myself for particular reasons I'm tense and confront them. Are there recommendations you'd add to this?

You could move in with a partial counter, but you may not attack because you may just want to take the stage. In this case, partial would refer to doing part of the total action. But a partial counter could mean you hedge your bet and don't swing because there is a (good) chance they move away or swing themselves to beat out what you're doing. So it could mean positioning to win if they do one thing but hedging a bit more if they do another. WD in and SH in could work similarly.

That's all good, but I'd recommend working on sitting posture in general. It's not enough to notice the bad, but to replace it with good. Practice is a good environment to develop this skill.