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DEALING WITH FATIGUE: A PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
DISCLAIMER: I typed this up for myself more than anything, but hopefully other people can benefit from this as well. A lot of this is common knowledge, common sense or just plain useless, but I think it'd help me to have my thoughts written out; and again, new players might find this helpful.
Why I wrote this crap:
After having enough of losing soundly to campy Snakes and Falcos, I forced myself to analyse how I play and to rethink my strategy for dealing with characters that will wreck an overaggressive player. The fatigue mechanic and the impact it has on a player's psyche and playstyle is one aspect that came to mind, and there are a few things I've thought about that I'm sure a lot of people know, but never actively thought about themselves.
For those of you unfamiliar with the fatigue mechanic, here's a basic rundown of how it works. Each pokemon has its own variable - we'll call it the fatigue value - that starts at 0 at the beginning of the match. Every second that a pokemon is out, and every move that it does adds 1 to that value. Once this value is at 120, your pokemon is considered fatigued and enters the tired animation. At this point, your moves start doing less damage, less hitstun, and most importantly, less knockback. At 120, you are effectively at 80% of your unfatigued power. You remain at 80% until a fatigue value of 130, at which point your power begins to decline further. Fatigue value maxes out at 200, and at this point moves are doing only 70% of their original knockback. Now, for every second that a pokemon stays out of battle, it recovers 5/3 points of fatigue. Also, when a pokemon is KO'd, its fatigue value drops to 30% of its original value. See http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=161741 for more details on the mechanics side.
Stay cool:
So how does this affect PT? Brawl is a defensive game, and this mechanic punishes us for having one pokemon out for too long. This wouldn't be such a big deal if all three pokemon performed equally well in a matchup, but as we all know, that's never the case. There's always going to be a "best pokemon", whether it's because of the matchup or because of personal preference. So, if you want that best pokemon to be effective and to get those KOs, you need to be the one attacking your opponent. You're going to have to be aggressive in a defensive game. It's an inherent disadvantage to playing PT, but hey, it comes with the territory, right?
That's the mindset I had for a long time, and while there certainly is something to be said for being more aggressive to maximize your effectiveness with your best Pokemon, taking it to the extent that I did was pretty stupid. It's probably a major reason why my Squirtle doesn't do as well against Snake as perhaps he should - rushing in to apply constant pressure and eating a tilt or getting grabbed. So I'm writing this because I hope it will make how I play more concrete in my mind and help me understand the weaknesses in my playstyle. The fatigue mechanic can affect some players psychologically, and disrupt the cool and rational mindset that is so important in high pressure matches. Understanding fatigue can help to remedy these adverse psychological effects. You should understand exactly what fatigue does to your pokemon, and you should know how you're going to deal with it as you head into a match.
Thinking is a good thing:
There's no doubt that fatigue seriously hurts PT's potential in the Brawl metagame. Less hitstun makes it more likely for your opponent to be able to deter any follow-up to a move you might be trying, less damage is never good, and KO'ing 30-40% later only gives the opponent more time to deal damage to you. The fact that each move decreases your timer by one second means that spamming moves with PT can actually work against you. Falco can shoot lasers, Marth can wall with f-air, Toon Link can spam projectiles, all without having to worry about something like stamina. But is it worth it to limit your moves just to conserve stamina? Probably not. Even if they don't connect, those b-airs by Ivysaur are still serving a purpose. It's not at the level of individual moves where you need to be concerned about fatigue, but at a bigger picture. It's something to think about if you're still trying to develop your own style, but changing your playstyle just to conserve stamina is probably going to hurt you overall. What's more important is the time aspect of fatigue: that just having your pokemon active is making it weaker.
But just how bad is it to have to approach? With every development in the Brawl metagame today, it seems more and more that approaching is a bad idea against most characters. Often in discussions you can see people using phrases like "can force them to approach" or "has no need to approach". When we choose to play PT, we are choosing to play a game where we are punished for employing the best strategy. Brawl is a game that rewards patience, but patience works against a character like PT. This puts a lot of pressure on the player: is it worth it approach just because you're worried about fatigue?
I believe that as people gain more experience in fighting PT, camping out our "best" pokemon will be more common. Take the PT vs. ZSS matchup for example. Squirtle does much better than Ivysaur or Charizard against her, and she's a lightweight that should probably be dying before 120% against Squirtle. From the ZSS point of view, if you could play defensively for two minutes and basically start the match against a Squirtle that has less power, does less damage and gives less hitstun, why wouldn't you? Whether they're camping out your best pokemon or just playing campy in general, the PT must make a judgement call. Will we be able to effectively break through their defense by playing aggressively? And is getting moves in while unfatigued worth the additional damage you may take while playing with aggression? Your opponent's character, your opponent's percents, your percents, the role of your pokemon (get the KO, tank the stock, sacrifice, etc.) are all factors that should go into making this call. If your opponent is particularly hard to KO, that may be reason to try to get the KO while unfatigued. On the other hand, if your opponent is particularly good at punishing poor approaches, you may have to hold back a bit and make every approach planned, safe and smart. These judgement calls can only come from experience, as there are a large number of variables to consider. However, always remember that the technical skill requirement of Brawl is relatively low - to play well you need to think. Fatigue should be only another factor to consider when making decisions - it should not be something that clouds your reason.
Other observations:
One thing worth noting is that once your pokemon is fully fatigued at 70%, its power will no longer decline. In other words, there is no longer any penalty to staying out longer. Once it gets to this point, the major decision you have to make comes down to, quite simply, "switch or stay in?". If you do decide to stay in (either to let that pokemon receive the fatigue reduction upon KO, or to have the next pokemon come in fresh), you should realize that you're continuing to play at minimum power. In a sense, this allows you to play a more liberated playstyle, since the pressure of the fatigue timer is gone. I often find myself applying this to Charizard: he tends to be out until maximum fatigue since he's often tanking stocks, and because most of the time I want Squirtle in fresh. Charizard is also a character that plays very well defensively - sitting back and punishing approaches. This idea can also be applied to 80% power fatigue, when the pokemon first shows signs of being tired. At this point, the rate of power decay is relatively slow compared to the sudden drop from 100% to 80% power. If your opponent is not near KO percents when you first show signs of fatigue, you might as well consider yourself fully fatigued, since by the time they get to KO percents you'll probably be closer to 70% power anyways. On the other hand, if they're only 10% away from being KO'd by your 80% power pokemon, it might be a good time to be slightly more aggressive to get that extra damage off and get the KO before you become more tired. Something to keep in mind is that if you use one move every two seconds, it'll take you just over 50 seconds to go from 80% power to 70%.
Now, it's important to remember that we do have three pokemon to work with, so one pokemon does not have to perform all the roles of a character. Being fatigued lowers your KO power, but that doesn't even matter if your goal with that pokemon isn't to KO. If an individual pokemon's matchup is best played very defensively, then why should we follow some other strategy just because of fatigue? This pokemon does not have to get the kill to be effective - let the next pokemon to come in finish the job. All in all, fatigue is not something we should just "have to deal with". It's something we should adapt our playstyle to fit. The most obvious way to do this is to switch more often. Understand what roles each pokemon can play in each matchup so you can make a decision on when it is possible and when it is wise to switch. Keep this in mind, and you'll see that in quite a few matchups, particularly the ones where more than one pokemon are viable, there are plenty of times when you can switch, and it can be very beneficial.
Conclusion:
Fatigue has been something we've been dealing with for almost two years now. My impression is that a lot of PTs just accept it as a character weakness and play through it anyways, but it sets our character apart from any other, so we shouldn't be playing just like any other character. PT requires a lot of strategic depth, and hopefully this article will get some of you to think about how and why you treat fatigue the way you do.
~T
