Discovering the Chozo Artifacts: A 3.5 Samus Video Discussion

[pooch182]

Here's a good set between me and Zwarm. Squirtle is pretty weird to fight against, but I think I love that match up. Also, you can really see how much I don't like Norfair (that was my first time playing on that stage, ever) for Samus.

 

[SoulOfSmash]

Here's a good set between me and Zwarm. Squirtle is pretty weird to fight against, but I think I love that match up. Also, you can really see how much I don't like Norfair (that was my first time playing on that stage, ever) for Samus.

Not bad man but I have one note for the Squirtle matchup: use fire mode! I know your not really a missile heavy Samus but fire missiles are so strong against Squirtle especially if you can learn how to do really low missile cancels. They can break the armor on any of his moves (side B is really the most important one) as low as 20% and give you that punch to get him off stage. Also CC Fire DTilt is incredibly strong vs him since you can get some good air follow ups off of it like NAir and UAir. Also really respect that Up B the hitbox is huge and if you miss an edgeguard against it your immediately in a bad position, I don't really know what else to say then that. All in all looking good man your movement is sexy and its what I look to help me learn. Just work on missile stuff and practice on Norfair more its actually a pretty good stage for her imo.

 

[Naggy]

I don't see this mu too often, so the footage is helpful. It's really important to get your missile cancels as low as possible otherwise squirtle can just side b underneath them.

 

[Orion Prime]

Yo, finally got a set on stream at our monthly tourney to put up. Please give all the input you can, I have a ton of work to do and a lot of bad habits that need correcting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcVVDZIRHXA&index=16&list=PLPWJv4PpJ82788VkrhxaGubZf0b-OBKOD

Games 1 and 2 are vs Luigi. Should have taken the 2nd game but I played like an idiot, so I sort of deserved the ensuing demolition I received game 3 vs Kirby. I feel OK w the Luigi matchup if I can just play back, not press him in the air, and not do the same dumb stuff continually (like randomly jump + nair or lay bombs for no reason?...). Kirby, however, is a nightmare. I played sloppy, and the added ice fair end-lag bit me a couple times, but I got thoroughly walked on - not sure where to start on that MU. All insights will be greatly appreciated! Thx

 

[pooch182]

Game 1: Good choice to play keep away with the missile game. That Luigi player isn't very good at all, and his movement was piss poor. Take advantage of that as much as possible. If you ever come across a better Luigi player, one of the biggest things in your mind should be making sure that ************ doesn't get on top of you. Because you will have a bad time.

As far as deciding to go with ice mode, I'm unsure of which beam works best in this MU. Whenever I play with Sago, I feel like he struggles with all the multi-hits of plasma beam, and it racks up damage super easy, and missiles play a bigger role in hindering his movement. Fire missiles are better against movement heavy/down b heavy Luigi players, from what I've observed. Of course, you've got your standard ice stuff that kills early, but I feel like both beams are effective dependent upon the play style of the Luigi.

Game 2: Go to around 6:50 on the time stamp. That bomb you do there, is really poorly thought out. Bombing out of hitstun is super amazing, but you have to know where to go after you drop the bomb. You had a juicy platform sitting right there on your left, and you drifted instead to the right, and directly on top of Luigi. Furthermore, you put yourself in a less than stellar position by sacrificing all stage control and moving to the ledge after taking the stock. Not all characters can just do that. Sheik can do it because Sheik thrives at the ledge. Samus isn't godlike at the ledge, she likes the center of the stage a lot more. If you're trying to stall out the invincibility, you can try using crawl and boost ball to keep yourself mobile and hard to lock down. Just stay on the stage.

You seemed to be looking for a set up to charge shot on that last charge last stock. In a deficit like that, especially at lower/intermediate levels of play, it's not really a bad idea to just dump the shot out and see what your opponent does. Sometimes people freeze up and eat a dumb charge. Most of the time, they pick a bad option and you can cover it. Also, he started grabbing more towards the end of the game, but he wasn't grabbing nearly enough. In that case, you should just hang out in shield and let him poorly attack your shield. UpB isn't a good option OoS against the Weej, though. Nair is far better, and it can lead to stuff at high-mid percents.

Game 3: RIght off the bat. . . hold on to your damn double jump. You're up against one of the most ferocious edge guarding characters in the world, and if you don't have your jump, you're gonna struggle. Stop relying so much on missiles as a whole, but especially in this MU. You have to play the game as well, you can't just let them do all the work. Kirby has good aerial mobility, and his aerials are able to break your missiles, so he can approach through them safely. Instead, you need to focus on strong ground movement and getting him above you where you can hit him with the tips of upair or even upsmash. Kirby on a platform is just asking to eat some ice. Once you hit him once, establish positional control and work on a charge shot. Charge shots take up a lot of space and he can't beat them with aerials. Once you've got a charge on line, you can throw some missiles down range to try and burn his jumps, thus guaranteeing a charge shot to hit. Even if you don't land the charge, all you have to do is win another single exchange and charge up again.

If you ever find yourself fighting Kirby on a triangle platform layout, just let him circle camp you. You'll be able to land enough upairs and upsmashes to establish a lead.

Don't over extend for an edge guard, especially against multi-jump characters. If you're gonna go for Kirby, be above him and go for dair, otherwise just set up for an edge guard.

So much jumping in the neutral. So little space between you and Kirby when you jump. So much wrong with this idea. Stay on the ground, unless your going to a platform for movement. Back to the idea of bombing out of hitstun, you can't do it against multijumps, because they dgaf about your bombs. They just hit you while you're in helpless. Just DI out and get away, take whatever damage you must, but hold your DJ and try to move to a safe position.

Separate yourself more. Max ftilt range should be where you're fighting. Kirby struggles more when you outspace him. If you come right in on him and jab2 his shield, you let him win the exchange 10 times out of 10. If you're in a position where you're in the neutral and find yourself above Kirby, FF dair can be incredibly effective, especially if you land behind them. Those missile dash attacks you're doing that KB stack can be missile upsmashes, and those kill. Try it out every now and again, works wonders against floaties.

Overall: Calm down with the missile play and focus on the rest of your neutral. Your ground game is lacking, and you seem to favor an aerial style when not shooting missiles, but your spacing is sloppy and you're impatient with your option selections. Aggression works sometimes, but you can't do it to Luigi because he gets comboed even less than Samus does, and Kirby will eventually just jump away and win the aerial game. Work smart, not hard. Your movement also needs work in general. Again, the missile game is fine, but your wavelands and wavedashes aren't always crisp and could just use some polishing. It'll come with practice. Your ledge play is also a bit slow (as is mine, I need to work on it a lot), so work on making every frame of invincibility count.

 

[Narpas_sword]

Managed to get recording devices setup at my last meet. I'm pretty casual these days, so will be happy to get some critique pushing me back into competitiveness.

Haven't had the opportunity to play anyone good for ages, then this french guy comes out of the woods and ****s on all the players, was fantastic.

Im old and have bad habits i need someone to yell at me and call me a noob for =p
will post up once i split the vids and upload _b

 

[Orion Prime]

Thanks a lot for the advice pooch.

You're dead on ab the missiles - whenever I get overwhelmed or have a MU I'm unfamiliar w I tend to lose focus and spam them. But that's just crappy on my end, gotta keep the work up.

 

[pooch182]

I sort of have this mindset of missile canceling as little as possible. I don't exactly know why I'm so against using it in my own play, but I do know that it's made my spacing game way ****ing better.

 

[Litt]

Managed to get recording devices setup at my last meet. I'm pretty casual these days, so will be happy to get some critique pushing me back into competitiveness.

Haven't had the opportunity to play anyone good for ages, then this french guy comes out of the woods and ****s on all the players, was fantastic.

Im old and have bad habits i need someone to yell at me and call me a noob for =p
will post up once i split the vids and upload _b

lol and you and pizzacato said you would beat me? lmao if some scrub who can come out of the woods and take all the players in your area, i have no doubt in my mind neither of you have a chance

 

[Narpas_sword]

You mustn't have read correctly.
I said id beat you at metroid Prime. =p

 

[Litt]

You mustn't have read correctly.
I said id beat you at metroid Prime. =p

Nah you said that after the fact...

 

[pooch182]

Broke my keyboard, so few words. More vids soon.

VS ORLY:

VS Knubs:

 

[Ivko]

Yo, finally got a set on stream at our monthly tourney to put up. Please give all the input you can, I have a ton of work to do and a lot of bad habits that need correcting

Games 1 and 2 are vs Luigi. Should have taken the 2nd game but I played like an idiot, so I sort of deserved the ensuing demolition I received game 3 vs Kirby. I feel OK w the Luigi matchup if I can just play back, not press him in the air, and not do the same dumb stuff continually (like randomly jump + nair or lay bombs for no reason?...). Kirby, however, is a nightmare. I played sloppy, and the added ice fair end-lag bit me a couple times, but I got thoroughly walked on - not sure where to start on that MU. All insights will be greatly appreciated! Thx

Only watched the first game, but here's some tips that should help a lot. First, learn to wavedash out of shield and use it a ton. Any time you're taking hits on shield or are shielding because you suspect an incoming attack, I think you should generally either:
- wavedash and tilt/smash/jab
- up-b if appropriate
- jump and dodge back + z-air
Once I started using more wavedash out of shield, my game changed significantly.

Also, watch your opponent when you're missile spamming instead of yourself. This is a flaw I had until recently too. What ends up happening if you watch yourself is you'll spam until it's no longer safe to and you'll throw out a missile in a terrible position and get punished. Instead, learn when to stop missiling and move in with a grab or such instead. In general also, sometimes it's worth stopping the missile spam and coming in with something like a grab when the opponent is shielding an incoming power missile.

 

[Ivko]

Broke my keyboard, so few words. More vids soon.

VS ORLY:

VS Knubs:

Can't see a lot of advice to give since I think we play pretty similarly and at similar enough level except I tend to mess up my execution in tournaments a lot more.

I agree you shouldn't necessarily try to missile spam too much, but I think you could do it more than you do, especially on levels like PS2. Against slower enemies, it's safe and useful to retreat sometimes and throw out spam. The important part is to identify when you need to stop and transition to something else.

I think you also use a lot of raw up-smashes (in both forms) which rarely work in my experience and gets you punished a lot. I would do it less. Maybe use more melee-style wavedash->forward tilts too and zairs to harass safely rather than running in. Also, there's some times you could have ran off with a nair to edgeguard. I like how you use down-angled ftilt to guard sometimes though, I need to learn to make use of that.

 

[pooch182]

 

[pooch182]

vs Double (really need feedback/advice):

vs Knubs:

 

[Naggy]

I'm not the greatest samus player, but here are my thoughts vs double:
I really think you ought to be missile pressuring more to limit his options. lucario has a strong ground game so you'll want to be zoning him out as much as possible until you can follow up with something guaranteed. I saw you going for dair over nair a lot when you were coming back down from being in the air. Against lucario, i think nair would have been a better option because it comes out so much sooner and leads to better stage control by boxing him in on one side or the other rather than a guessing game for the tech chase. You were overcommitting way too much in your first game with whiffed ice up smash so idk what that was about but it's super laggy hard read that doesn't lead into a kill until higher percents so maybe don't do that. also i'm not guaranteed about this, but i'm pretty sure samus's bombs clank with a lot of lucario's approaches so you could use them defensively wait for the explosion and then either wavedash into dsmash/fsmash or come down with a nair. it would probably also work against his habit of crossing up behind you after shield pressure if you bomb oos and fade away and go for a spaced ftilt or something like that. Basically, just don't let lucario get in.

 

[Orion Prime]

vs Lucario:
I know nothing about this matchup (does anybody?), so the only Lucario specific comment I have is that I would prefer fire mode. In ice mode you lacked reliable options to knock Lucario away when on the ground, and fire fsmash and dtilit probably wouldve helped.

I'll ignore game 1 bc that just seemed like an uncomfortable experience. Game 2 was much closer bc you did a good job edgeguarding and landing charge shots early, and mostly stopped with the raw ice usmashes. General comments on gameplay here:
- Unwise OoS options, particularly the last 2 lives. You started going for a lot of shield grabs, most of which were unsuccessful and punished. Maybe more upB an nair OoS instead?
- Reiterate some of Naggy's comments. You used ice usmash, dair, and raw dash attacks to shield pressure and as approaches frequently. He picked up on that pretty quick and just started holding his shield and grabbing you on the lag. Instead of just rushing in on a character w stronger ground game (especially w you in ice mode) maybe stay off a bit more and allow him to approach. Dont think I saw a single zair all set?
- Random moment - at 9:41, instead of jab do an up angled ftit or maybe SH nair. I know it was likely just reflexive, but that cost you a good edgeguard opportunity late in the match.

Again, like Naggy's disclaimer, I'm no Barbie or Chevy (or even a pooch), so feel free to disregard if not helpful/wrong.

 

[pooch182]

The raw upsmashes and aggressive down airs were because I just finished playing that set with Knubs. It was really working against him, but it took me a bit to train it out of me against Double.

 

[SoulOfSmash]

2 videos from the last tourney I went to another one should be added later. My opponents weren't the best in this (except the 3rd game when I add it) but still advice would be good on stuff I should work on.

 

[Orion Prime]

@ SoulOfSmash

Its much easier to learn and for others to critique your play when analyzing matches where you lose, or especially when you get demolished. This happens to me frequently so I spend a lot of time listening and learning! I know its a product of your local scene, but when you get videos of you playing against more competent smashers, it really helps you self-evaluate and assists other people here in providing useful advice.

That being said, I'd go back and re-read Barbie's advice to your original video posting on this thread. Yes, you can utilize grounded MC's and charge shot spam to overwhelm lesser players and never actually have to "fight" them - I unfortunately rely on this strategy too often myself and it degrades the rest of my game when counted on too much. Practice your basic tech - wavedashing, wavelanding, L-canceling - until it is smooth and natural to the point where you execute it without thinking. Go study esam's missles guide in this forum. If you like spamming missiles now, you'll piss your pants in joy at how many you can fire off when you can master platform missile cancelling (this allows Samus to put smothering pressure on some of her otherwise tricky matchups, e.g Luigi). You need a VERY solid foundation of the basic tech for this character before you can operate a presentable tournament caliber Samus. Other characters (cough cough Mario) are much more user friendly and do not demand high technical depth to produce semi-competent smash play.

If you want to improve your Samus, swallow the earlier advice you were given and start grinding on the fundamentals for hours - movement, spacing, basic tech. You wont realize how much better you can get until you force yourself to focus on the boring little stuff for a good long while. If you have a hard time getting a feel for things as you begin practicing, try changing button configurations to facilitate techs (this got me over the hump when I was practicing WD'ing and power shielding) and utilize the slower play speeds in training mode (I had to practice platform MC'ing at slower speeds for a while before I got the hang of it). Also, stop trying the super wavedashes mid match - they're useless and they're fails anyway ha! You need to get really really good at dribbling the basketball (basics) before you start practicing tricksy behind-the-legs slam dunks (SWD's).

 

[pooch182]

You exhibit a lot of habits that remind me of when I started playing this game competitively! The biggest thing is the constant dash attacking, which isn't a habit you want to keep around. These opponents are pretty bad, and neither of them seemed to know when to shield or be defensive, so you got away with a lot of dash attacks. Don't let it become a habit, because you'll find yourself getting shielded and punished like every single time you dash attack against a higher caliber player.

You're also a relatively jumpy Samus, which isn't inherently bad. I know she's considered to be a ground based zoning character, but she's got a lot of merit in her aerials. My issue with your aerial game is that you're very quick to jump and commit to a missile, which lets your opponent just move in towards you, and you end up right above them, just asking to be comboed. Utilize platforms and wavelands more. You'll often times see me wavelanding on platforms and dropping with nair or a spaced bair, and using platforms to increase the speed at which I threaten my opponents with aerials. This helps pressure them with good spacing and strong attacks while still moving quickly and maintaining safer positioning.

Your missile game is very cut and dry, in a bad sense. Double missiles are all well and good, but when you come up against players with a good power shield game, or even just a good WD OoS game, you're gonna find yourself in trouble. You could go the route of most Samus players and practice missile canceling, which is probably the better route. Or, if you're like me, and too lazy to practice a very basic mechanic to maintain consistency, you can focus heavily on improving your spacing game and using more and more tilts and smashes to space, as opposed to pushing people back with missiles. Actually, one of your biggest weaknesses in this game seems to be that whenever you put your opponent off stage (especially Ness), you just shot missiles across stage and didn't really assume any stage control or positional advantage.

Overall, you really need to focus on your movement. Perfect wavelands will take you very far, and once you master those, you'll find it much easier to develop your own style of play. Learning missile cancels is probably a very good idea as well, just because it has a lot of utility and makes certain match ups just outright unbearable for the opponent.

 

[pooch182]

Classic me losing to Double so I choke away my top 8 placement again. Just the standard stuff. I am learning how to deal with his play style, though. He really likes to DT after pressuring me with 3 or 4 hits, so I just need to get my punish game down for dealing with it and he should be less of an issue for me. Also, I'll be uploading my set with Sago once WCS gets it up on YouTube.

 

[Orion Prime]

Classic me losing to Double so I choke away my top 8 placement again. Just the standard stuff. I am learning how to deal with his play style, though. He really likes to DT after pressuring me with 3 or 4 hits, so I just need to get my punish game down for dealing with it and he should be less of an issue for me. Also, I'll be uploading my set with Sago once WCS gets it up on YouTube.

Just curious, what do you think you improved on from the last set you posted that let you perform better, and be in a favorable position to win, this set?

The 3rd game it seemed like nerves kinda got to ya and it manifested itself offstage. You reverted back to some of things that got you punished in the last vid against Double you posted, and stopped doing some things that made you successful in the 1st and 2nd games. The 2 semi-SD's certainly didn't help...At 10:05, were you trying for the tetherjump instead of a regular recovery or was that just a whiff? Heres some smash analytics for you: in game 3 you were 1 for 6 on Usmashes, 0 for 3 on charge shots. Going for all those hard reads w the Usmash got you punished, and being hasty w the charge shot potentially cost you a good bit of damage. Just food for thought.

I never really noticed this in anyone's game until you correctly pointed out this problem in mine, but your actions off ledge could be more decisive. There are plenty of times where your hanging around gives Double time to gather himself into optimal edgequard position, whereas a quick, crisp waveland (or other action) could likely get you back onto stage before he is adequately prepared.

On the bright side, at least he finished you off that last game in epic aura sphere fashion ha! That was one of the cooler , if not unfortunate, kills I've seen in a while...

 

[pooch182]

10:05 was a whiff, I thought I had my jump. The powerball kill at the end was because I was greedy and wanted the power shield (can you power shield that, I've never actually tested lol).

As far as sitting on the ledge, I tend to do that to take a deep breath. I get incredibly shaky in sets like this where it's super close, so I need to calm myself down through meditative breathing (you'll also see my body language is very stoic/focused). I've never cared about hitting charge shots, I've said that in my character tutorial for 3.02. Most of the time, I just want to distract my opponent in their shield or push them into a corner. That being said, my charge shot game has been weak as of late, and I haven't been capitalizing on it at all, or placing shots well in general.

Up smash is god, even when I whiff. I typically play a very long game when I play sets with people. If you'll notice, every game went to battlefield, because I'm still feeling out how Double plays against me and such (I've only played him like 3 or 4 times seriously). The overuse of upsmash is more of a conditioning thing for a long play, so he's aware of it and plays more defensively. I spent like 2 weeks just going for a ton of grabs on people to condition them to think I play grab-heavy. One of those weeks was that set against Soap. I grabbed a lot in that set, and it worked. Now, he never shields against me and over extends even harder than normal, and I get free punishes because of it.

The biggest thing I realized with this MU is that Double loves to Double Team, and I've been learning how to space it out and just punish him for predictably doing it. I really didn't think that down tilt had such range on it, and it seems to have decent disjoint, so I'll watch out for that as well. I'm also starting to learn his combo strings that he likes to go for, so DIing his stuff is becoming easier and easier. Force palm is bull**** though.

 

[pooch182]

Luigi . . . ugh

 

[Ivko]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=jslF-lA1CUk#t=17204
Starts a bit rough, took me a stock or two to stop constantly doing stupid things.

 

[Ivko]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=jslF-lA1CUk#t=16202

Watch the previous post if you're gonna watch only one; the lack of matchup knowledge was a big problem in this one.

 

[Litt]

@ pooch182 dude do you know how to play against falcon? You literally never use the best aspects of neutral for samus in PM... mainly that in morphball rolling around, she is a pichu sized CC dsmash tank... yet you are running around spamming missles and trying to maintain neutral against a character 2x faster than you.... In that MU you pretty much have to say well **** i lose neutral and just constantly be retreating trying to bait out attacks and punish for them doing so. Falcon doesnt have many great ways to approach you safely that you cant shield and punish.... or CC downsmash or dtilt

 

[pooch182]

@ pooch182 dude do you know how to play against falcon? You literally never use the best aspects of neutral for samus in PM... mainly that in morphball rolling around, she is a pichu sized CC dsmash tank... yet you are running around spamming missles and trying to maintain neutral against a character 2x faster than you.... In that MU you pretty much have to say well **** i lose neutral and just constantly be retreating trying to bait out attacks and punish for them doing so. Falcon doesnt have many great ways to approach you safely that you cant shield and punish.... or CC downsmash or dtilt

It's hard to transition between Melee and PM Samus in a common MU in like an hour. I don't really use a lot of PM tech a lot of times if Melee is the first tourney that week.

 

[Litt]

It's hard to transition between Melee and PM Samus in a common MU in like an hour. I don't really use a lot of PM tech a lot of times if Melee is the first tourney that week.

I say again... do you even understand the falcon samus mu? because even in melee you should be cc dsmashing those nair approaches

 

[pooch182]

tbh, no . . .

 

[Litt]

tbh, no . . .

Im not saying this to be mean, but I think you as a player (that has a published guide on this forum) need to take a step back analyze and better understand/apply what options samus has that can be transitioned across match ups. What can samus punish big for on the defensive (her whole CC game) and how to expand your game to encompass it, knowing how certain characters have to approach, you can start building your neutral around it instead of just playing your standard ol' game plan. Understanding these facets are how MUs are really established, for what moves can and should be used where for specific character interactions. If you havent in a while, I suggest rereading the Little Things Guide and pick out options you dont normally do in game that you see as good/positive that arent as frequent in your current repertoire. But honestly, just maintaining a forward jumping (dair from falcon) stomp distance away in morphball into retreating airdodge back zair is a great wait to bait falcon to approach into a cc situation for you

 

[❤ Nikodemus05]

lol and you and pizzacato said you would beat me? lmao if some scrub who can come out of the woods and take all the players in your area, i have no doubt in my mind neither of you have a chance

nice b8

 

[Narpas_sword]

nice b8

did you really need to reply to that?

 

[❤ Nikodemus05]

did you really need to reply to that?

i really needed to reply to a dead post that's 4 months old

 

[pooch182]

Is Barbie even alive, still?

 

[bubbaking]

Hey guys, been playing a bit of Samus here and there. Here are some matches I got recorded.

$5 MM vs Phresh (ICs) (Games 2, 3, and 5 are Samus)
vs Advil (Falcon) (Only game 2 is Samus)

I would greatly appreciate any constructive criticism/feedback.

 

[Tha_Shogun_12]

https://youtu.be/naUpTJEc7wo?t=12m41s

My Samus at the Ft. Smith 5 here in Arkansas vs. Arby (5/30/15)

He is currently the ranked no. 1 player in Arkansas. He uses Marth then Switches to Falcon so it can give you guys some good ideas on what to use on these characters. If the link somehow doesn't work, I switch to Samus at 12:41 and use her for the rest of the set.

https://youtu.be/naUpTJEc7wo?t=12m41s

One of my Matches in Semi-Finals Vs. Dru2 (currently ranked 5 in Arkansas power rankings)

https://youtu.be/1T4hB95hp7Q?t=5m6s

Also I used Samus at Ft Smith Smash 4 vs Haruhiism's Luigi in Grand Finals, Currently ranked 4th in Arkansas power rankings (4/29/15):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkJKsMq3D9w

And a match vs. Supovpovich's Ganon at Ft. Smith Smash 4. GIves some ideas on what to use on Ganon and also a pretty nice combo at the end of the first match.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBK6qUDsxd4

 

[bubbaking]

I'm starting to play a lot more Samus in tournament now. Here is a match against one of the up-and-coming best Ganons in the area. I would greatly appreciate any critique on my gameplay.

Bubbaking (Samus) vs AIDs (Ganon)