Coaching a friend... ran into a few problems.

[WT!]

I went to Apex 2014 with a friend who was much less skilled at the time and still loses regularly. He doesn't know nearly as much about the game as I do despite being good, and... I'll get to the point.

He is convinced that predicting the opponent, not getting predicted and mindgames in general are the most import aspect of competitive Brawl. He denounces knowledge of options, technical skill, and spacing as less important, and claims that metagames are useless and stupid. The problem is he has no clear plan with his mix-ups, and they end up doing nothing but tack on a little damage that he would otherwise not have landed. They don't lead to other moves, put in in a better position, on lead to a kill (with the exception of the occasional RPG hard read, he's a Snake player) and whenever he fools me with one of these mix-ups, or does something contrary to the metagame like forward smashing for no reason, spamming various moves like the mortar, nikitas, forward tilts, up tilts etc, DACUSing back and forth, you get it, and I tell him that it is a dumb decision and it would never work in a tournament situation despite the fact that it fooled me, he says "then prove it" or "but it works". He's very stubborn. How do I get through to him? Any expert advice? He might listen to you.

 

[Shadow the Past]

I think the biggest aspect of this is he thinks making unconvential options are going to let him beat opponents who are used to playing people who use more standard options. Yes, you can use bad options unconventially to try and throw off your opponent, but if you continue to use them repeatedly, you're going to get punished. While it's important to use an option that they might not expect, if you're going to mix up your options, you have to use an option that is safe and does not give up your advantageous position. Let me try and make an example, hopefully you can relay it to your friend in one form or another.

Let's say I'm Meta Knight, and he's Marth. Let's say we're on FD in the middle of the stage, and he's in the air directly above me while I'm on the ground. Marth does not have good options for attacking beneath him (his dair is slow and has a lot of cooldown, airdodging can be read and punished), whereas Meta Knight has a lot of safe options to combat people above him (uair, nair, nado, etc). This means Meta Knight is in an advantageous position, which can lead to more damage and potentially a kill in favor of MK, so I want to keep him in this position. The good MK's practice this vigorously, so once you're in the air against them, you're not going to land again (assuming they don't mess up).

Now let's try role-switching this. Say your friend is MK and I'm Marth, same position as before. I still lack viable landing options, and he still has more than enough juggling options, but he chooses not to use them. Could he do something like Side-b/Down-B into me to damage me? Sure, but now he has lost his advantageous position since he has to land, meanwhile I get to land of the stage (since neither move has considerable knockback) and potentially punish him. Did I see it coming? Probably not, but now that I know he likes to pick this bad option, I can predict it when he tries to do it again (airdodge, then punish).

If he pulls the "but it works" argument, try bringing up this argument: If you're playing Snake and d-throw a level 9 CPU while standing close to the ledge, they will always roll towards it, so you can just grab them again. They will never roll backwards, stand straight up, or do a getup attack, all the way up to 999%. Obviously this is a "but it works" scenario, but it's not going to work against a human opponent, and certainly not against one who is a seasoned player.

 

[WindMajor]

He says that predicting his opponents and not being predicted back is one of the most important things about Brawl, but how does one do that? He has to have a good understanding of the technical and the psychological aspects of the game. Having that solid understanding is what creates a good prediction and mix-up game. Not having this understanding is the difference between making a well informed decision and merely guessing. All those things that he said were not as important are actually equally as important as having a good prediction/mix-up game because you can't have a good prediction/mix-up game without them.