http://www.twitch.tv/slayertokey/b/399460316 http://www.twitch.tv/slayertokey/b/399505567 Twitch archives from the smashfest I went to yesterday if anyone wants to critique.
Look for the Fox with the "APSH" tag.
Please keep from giving advice that lies between the lines of "MORE TECHSKILL = YOU GOOD" because I'm trying to improve my game/character knowledge.
from the first link
1:17- so this is a pretty bad move to do in general. I'm assuming you came down with the back air because you were hoping that the Marth would run into it, but he didn't so you just got grabbed for no reason. On top of that, even if the back air had hit, it could have easily been CC grabbed which would have put you in the same scenario.
Also I notice that your first instinct after your first approach failed seemed to be to jump on the platforms to platform camp Marth which, in general, is a pretty bad idea. I get that the top platform feels like a safe place to be (especially on BF due to how high it is) but being above marth is rarely a good idea becausehe has a sword and an amazing DD which means he has the option of either hitting you back above him as you try to come down or, he can DD grab you as you land if you decide to come down with a move.
1:28- you started lasering for no reason and Marth got in on you. This is pretty bad because Marth shouldn't be able to get in on you that easily and you ended up losing whatever advantage you had gotten from the up-throw -> up-air. After that you went back to the platform game which, as mentioned above, isn't really all that useful against Marth, especially if you're going to keep whiffing aerials on your way down. Had you just come off of the platform and dashed away you wouldn't have gotten hit with the dash attack and you could have possibly baited out the dash attack by DDing and getting a punishment off of it.
1:40- Panic moment; thus far, it seems that you do a lot of moves that don't actually serve any purpose such as the shine that got you forward smashed. Try to have a reason for why you do the moves that you do and if you can't come up with a good reason to do them, then don't do them. This should also keep you from whiffing aerials as you fall because "maybe it'll hit them" isn't a very good reason to do a move.
1:45- I feel like you wasted your invincibility by lasering. especially since you had Marth backed into a corner which is a pretty bad place to be for Marth. A better use of you invincibility would have been trying to capitalize on Marth being in such a bad position by DDing just outside of his range to get him to try to react to your presence and punish him with a nair or grab depending on whether he decides to jump or punish while grounded. You ended up nairing his jump at you which is a really good thing to do, but then you got overzealous and went for a shine-spike that wouldn't work and ended up giving up your positional advantage. Marth's pretty terrible when he's at the ledge so if you ever manage to make Marth grab it, DD in front of the ledge and punish whatever option he decides to use because they're all pretty bad.
1:53- You missed a pretty big punishment opportunity here when he whiffed the dash attack as you were dashing away. A grab here would have been pretty big for closing the gap between you two. When you run full screen and start DDing you could have gotten closer to Marth and engaged him in a footsie battle but you stayed far away from him and decided to just run at him and shine. While this isn't that terrible of an option, I think that it's better to try to force Marth to respond to you being in his space and punishing him for it. You can go about doing this with things like while DDing, dash up to just outside of his max range and WD in place or shield and punish his reaction if he swings.
1:58- This was pretty good: you managed to grab him while he was dashing away near the edge so he didn't have much room to run away from you, but then you don't get much of a punish afterwards.
2:03- again similar scenario to earlier where he whiffs a dash attack but you weren't really looking to punish it so you just kinda jump away from him and give up ground.
2:08- similar to at 1:58, this is pretty good because you he didn't have much room to run away from you so over shooting a bit let's you catch him he runs away. You go for the Marth killer* but he's not really in a good position for you to go for it. If they end up close to the stage and above the edge like in this scenario just grab the ledge and refresh invincibility. I'm not exactly sure what you tried to do out of shield, but it looks like you reacted too late to him grabbing the ledge and ended up losing your stock for it. As far as your recovery goes, you probably could have angled it a bit steeper to avoid the forward smash, but you were in a pretty bad spot to recover from anyway.
*light shield instead of normal shield for the Marth killer.
2:19- you start DDing by the ledge, but then as soon as Marth does something you run away; it seems like you're not very comfortable with DDing and reacting to what you're opponent does because I think that had you been actually looking for Marth to do something you could have grabbed the forward smash and gotten a punish.
2:24- nothing really stood out of this sequence, but I just wanted to bring up that if Marth spot dodges your grab you can shine him out of his spot dodge before he recovers from it.
2:38- ledge hop dair is a pretty bad option for getting off of the ledge, especially if you go so high when you do it. Try looking into practicing ledge dashing because it's way too easy to lose stocks as Fox because you chose a bad option at the ledge.
2:51- you shined a lot for no reason. Marth wasn't anywhere near you and you were pretty lucky that you didn't get killed for one of those shines.
2:53- you get a drill but you end up WDing away from him so you should have recognized that you weren't going to be able to get the grab. This in combination with the fact that you woke up after the nair mashing ends up getting you put off stage where you should have died.
3:02- that was probably the worst possible place to do a full length illusion because if Marth had just shielded you would have been dead. As I said earlier, being able to ledge dash consistently would give you a safe option to get off of the ledge so you wouldn't resort to things like this.
3:08- there was no reason to laser there or to jump on the platform.
3:18- you keep jumping on platforms against Marth and getting punished for it.
3:29- This situation right here is what you want against Marth; you were DDing and he decided to swing so you punished him for it. You used your DD really well in this situation to force a reaction from Marth. You just need to be able to apply a similar mindset to your midstage game against Marth because all the other times you DDed it seemed like you're just aimlessly running around without a concrete idea of what to do or what to look for. Here, however, you seemed pretty aware that you had the advantage and you looked like you were specifically looking for him to do something.
afterwards, however, you just give up all of you positional advantage to laser for no real reason, the you run at him and nair. I'm curious as to why you thought running away to laser seemed like a good idea when you had such a large positional advantage over Marth.
3:38- Marth just whiffed a bunch of moves that go unpunished. This is a recurring thing throughout the match and it's a pretty big deal for this matchup in particular because if you're not punishing Marth for constantly whiffing moves then you probably aren't going to get very many hits on him at all because he beats you in almost every other aspect of the ground game. From the looks of things I'd say that you aren't focusing on looking at the opponent's character and you're looking at your own character instead because, at least from personal experience, whiff punishing is almost impossible in this matchup if you aren't looking at the opponent. If you are looking at the opponent rather than yourself, then I'd suggest working on recognizing when Marth does a move and grabbing him for it because letting him get away with whiffing moves makes this matchup pretty awful imo.
3:45- you start jumping around a lot for no real reason and end up getting grabbed because the Marth followed you and grabbed you as you were landing; this also makes it look like you aren't looking at the opponent, or at least not focusing on them, because you should have been able to recognize that he was chasing you and DJ'd away to avoid getting grabbed.
3:56- you got really carried away and tried to go for a shine spike when he wasn't anywhere near you which put you in a terrible position that left you with no options and you died for it.
So overall, what I noticed was that you seem do lots of things that don't really accomplish anything; that is to say, you have lots of extraneous movement/attacking, that you could get rid of by having concrete reasons for why you do things rather than doing things and hoping that they work, which is the vibe that I got from watching that first match. You also don't seem to be able to recognize when the other player commits to something which is a huge part of Fox's neutral game. You also laser way to much. I guess it can be good in certain situations, but every time you lasered you either gave up a strong position or ended up committing to the lasers and got blown up for it. Your DD also needs work which ties into recognizing when the opponent commits to something because far too often you would have a situation where you could have engaged Marth in footsies and you'd just start jumping around or going on platforms and getting blown up for that.
