Crushed by amateur? Where did I go wrong?

[Testem]

Hey guys, I, pretty new to competitive smash and have been practicing for about a week now with Marth as my main.
I have a knack for getting some good Fair combos and a good few Utilts, and practiced all week on either a lvl 7 Falcon (due to mixed DI) or just practice mode. (lcancel, some wavedashing, shffl)

I thought about entering a tourney on the 26th, I honestly thought I was sort of alright at the game.

This evening I invited my buddy up to play a bit, hoping I could get some practice on a human player and show him all the new tech I have learned.

He picked Fox and 3 stocked me first match. Then the second, then the third. I beat him once, with Link.

I was pretty distraught. This guy hasnt played Melee since he was about 11 years old, so this made no sense to me. I felt like I was naturally just terrible at the game.

So what do you guys think? I was constantly juggled by Fox and couldnt even reach the ground before I got smashed. None of my fairs hit, and he would just jump out of all my utilts.

Where did I go wrong guys? Should I just give up Marth and try out someone else? Is it just the character Fox? It feels pretty crappy being beaten like this, so I just need some insight on if I should even continue putting my time into playing the game.

tl;dr - week practicing adv. tech, my buddy beats me with fox (he doesnt practice adv.tech) what did i do wrong?

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Beating bad players is less about tech skill, and more about out-smarting them
Especially with Marth

 

[Rarik]

You should continue to play, you should continue to play Marth if you like Marth as a character, no it wasn't just Fox.

Where you went wrong is this: You thought that just because you knew advanced tech skills you were better than your buddy. Practicing tech skill certainly isn't a bad thing, but tech skill is useless unless you have solid decision making to back it up.

 

[Testem]

You should continue to play, you should continue to play Marth if you like Marth as a character, no it wasn't just Fox.

Where you went wrong is this: You thought that just because you knew advanced tech skills you were better than your buddy. Practicing tech skill certainly isn't a bad thing, but tech skill is useless unless you have solid decision making to back it up.

What I found is that I can play better, but with less tech with Young Link and Falco, but I can play less better, but with more tech with Marth, which I assumed should be mained.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

At your level, characters and strategies will work for you for completely absurd reasons that won't apply as soon as you go to tournaments. For example, perhaps you had more success with young link because you're friend sucks at dealing with tether grabs.

Remember, when you're not playing for money, winning isn't the most important thing, improving is.

 

[Rarik]

The reason for that could be a ton of things. It could be your playstyle fits YL or Falco better, it could be that your buddy is worse versus YL and Falco, it could be that because you're spending too much time trying to incorporate the advanced tech skills into your Marth play and that's detracting from your overall play. That last part happens a lot when you learn something new and start incorporating it into your play, you get worse for a time and then you adjust and ultimately end up better.

So pretty much what Grim Tuesday said as I get ninja'd again

 

[Rojo]

^ What this guy said mostly ^
Playing marth is less about running all over people with tech skill and more about punishing their mistakes insanely hard with good spacing, baits, edgeguards, etc.
Advanced tech is important, you can't break the barrier into being a truly good player without them, but it's more important to understand everything that's going on to the fullest extent. Advanced tech just gives you more options to choose from in any situation, but if you consistently fail to choose the correct option, then the tech isn't really helping you that much.

example: if fox keeps double jumping out of your up tilts, then stay underneath him with wavedashes and keep juggling him in the air with Marth's insane up-air and up-tilt priority. Once he uses his double jump in the air, fox has a really difficult time getting back to the ground without eating a huge punish. If he goes on a platform, keep him there and keep punishing him with tipper up-tilts and forward smashes or waveland on grabs. One of Marth's strengths is his ability to pressure and threaten space without actually throwing out any moves. Just standing at tipper range from someone threatens a huge foward smash at any moment without too much fear of a rebuttal. Try to maintain that spacing throughout the match through dash dances and wavesdashing. Also if your friend can't do any AT's then he'll probably just roll into you half the time for an easy grab. Before people learn AT's they roll like there's no tomorrow for some reason. Just read the rolls and punish.

Also if it helps, when i first started learning AT's I got worse before I got better. A lot of the time I was concentrating too much on the actual wavedashes and L-cancels rather than the game. Once it becomes completely muscle memory things get a lot better.

 

[Testem]

The reason for that could be a ton of things. It could be your playstyle fits YL or Falco better, it could be that your buddy is worse versus YL and Falco, it could be that because you're spending too much time trying to incorporate the advanced tech skills into your Marth play and that's detracting from your overall play. That last part happens a lot when you learn something new and start incorporating it into your play, you get worse for a time and then you adjust and ultimately end up better.

So pretty much what Grim Tuesday said as I get ninja'd again

At your level, characters and strategies will work for you for completely absurd reasons that won't apply as soon as you go to tournaments. For example, perhaps you had more success with young link because you're friend sucks at dealing with tether grabs.

Remember, when you're not playing for money, winning isn't the most important thing, improving is.

Alright, this all makes sense. I like Marth as a character, so naturally Ill stick with him. Theres a million places I can improve, I cant really execute wavedashes in a match yet, some of my l-cancels dont go through and I sometimes find it hard to get past a 3-hit combo, but like you said Im sure it comes with time and practice.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

By the way, many new players don't realize that dash-dancing and directional influence are far more important than wavedashing and possibly even l-canceling

Don't fall into this trap

 

[Rarik]

^Why I suck at this game

 

[Testem]

By the way, many new players don't realize that dash-dancing and directional influence are far more important than wavedashing and possibly even l-canceling

Don't fall into this trap

I tried my hardest to space it out with dash dancing but there was never any mind games, it was all just him dashing and ftilting, then getting me more and more from there. How do I particularly combat that dashing ftilt Fox has? Especially from someone who doesnt use any tech.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Remember you can cancel your dash with a crouch as well.
By dashing back and forth, cancelling your dash and reacting to his dash ftilts, you should be able to set yourself up so you are right in front of him or dashing into him as the ftilt is ending. From there, you can punish him during his ending lag.

 

[Beat!]

Rather than asking for advice on how to beat certain strategies, you should be prioritizing
1. Getting a regular practice partner.
2. Going to as many tournaments as possible and playing friendlies with as many as possible. Don't be afraid to ask better players for advice while playing.
3. Watching a ton of high-level matches on youtube.

Practicing against computers can be detrimental if you don't understand exactly what you can and can not practice against them. You can't develop strategies against them that you then try to apply against real opponents, because they don't behave like human opponents.
However, it's completely fine if you're aware of what it is you're practicing (consistency, reactionary combos, etc.).

Fox's ftilt is easily beaten by good DDing -> grab. Or CC grab. Or dtilt. If you're getting hit by it more often than not then you're not dashdancing properly. Watch high level Marths, and rather than just observing that they're dashdancing, try to pay attention to how they're spacing it in relation to their opponent.

Basically, work on improving your general understanding of the game as well as your tech skill, and tons of tactics that you consider difficult to deal with now will be rendered obsolete naturally.

 

[MookieRah]

Since I've been practicing like crazy pretty much entirely solo (and improving A LOT) I might make a guide for it or something soon.

Some stuff you should know:

I really hate the assertion that you are somehow a better player than your friend just because you are practicing tech. I would argue that he is clearly the better player if he beats you despite your tech superiority. I don't say this to be mean, I say this because it needs to be said. Just because somebody doesn't know about all the crazy stuff in smash it doesn't mean that they can't be very smart players. With that said, we can move on to...

...you are likely losing because of your practice method. Beat! and others have mentioned it, but my guess is that you are training against CPUs and trying to do crazy combos and all that. Combo training is fine, albeit overrated. If you want to practice against CPUs and improve your combo game, you should instead be practicing movement. Learn to wavedash, learn to waveland, learn how to have a controlled dash dance (by this I mean that you can do it very tight, max length, or anywhere between on command). Increasing your movement options will allow you to place yourself where you want to be, and thusly you will be in a better position to combo your opponent. Also, practicing movement options is a lot less likely to cause you to develop bad habits.

Practice your spacing. When you play lvl 7 computers focus less on attack strings and more on tipping everything. Learn how a tippered fair is different from a non-tippered fair. Learn what is different between a hit with the one side of the tip of uair and the other side (later in the animation). Place bombs on the platforms on DL64 and learn to not have them explode on you.

Practice your ledge game. This is something that a lot of people neglect and it goes a long way to improving you as a player. Learn to sweetspot the ledge, learn how to perform aerials from the ledge onto the stage and how to do aerials and regrab ledge, learn to waveland onto the stage from the ledge, etc. Most new players don't have much of a ledge game at all and it's really easy to abuse this against them.

Do all of that and you will improve a lot. There is still a lot that you will have to learn from human opponents, but this will give you the tools to learn those concepts faster and will eliminate a lot of tech barrier.

 

[Beat!]

You don't have to add the exclamation mark to my name. I only added it because Beat was already taken.

 

[atangerine]

Maybe your friend is a hardcore smasher in disguise

 

[Fish&Herbs19]

Although I don't play Marth and am a noob myself, I can explain a couple of things. I remember playing a friend in Melee. He hasn't played Melee in years and he doesn't know any advanced tech. But he still managed to beat me because he had amazing fundamentals and just made good decisions. Tech is a good and useful thing, but you need to be able to apply that tech in the correct places. Applying the tech properly and having that tech down so that the inputs for wavedashing become second nature is extremely important.

 

[MookieRah]

Although I don't play Marth and am a noob myself, I can explain a couple of things. I remember playing a friend in Melee. He hasn't played Melee in years and he doesn't know any advanced tech. But he still managed to beat me because he had amazing fundamentals and just made good decisions. Tech is a good and useful thing, but you need to be able to apply that tech in the correct places. Applying the tech properly and having that tech down so that the inputs for wavedashing become second nature is extremely important.

I should have mentioned this in my post earlier too. You have to think of tech like this:

Learning to perform the tech != knowing how to implement it. After you learn how to do tech, you have to spend just as much time (often it's actually more) learning how to use it in effectively in a match.

 

[SAUS]

I've seen many people have this problem - maybe not so severely as yours, but I'll come back to smash after 6 months of not playing and play my friend who's been practising daily on his tech skill and I'll be messing up all my stuff, but still 2-stock him. It's because he focuses too much on what he is doing and not on what is actually happening in the game. After learning all the tech skill, it still took almost another year for my play to resemble high level play.