Horrible at Melee

[ThatIsWho]

Hello all, I've been playing Melee for a little less than a year now and I'm quite terrible. My movement is clunky, my choices very poor, and my tech skill appalling. Sometimes I feel that I'm battling my hands rather than my opponents due to my lack of skill. I can perform some "advanced" techniques such as wavedashing somewhat consistently and I am working to implement them into my game. I also am working on consistently teching and l-canceling(teching not so much a problem for me, l-canceling moreso). One of my biggest problems is breaking bad habits, the worst being forward throwing then immediately forward smashing with Marth, hoping that my opponent will miss their tech. I cannot begin to describe my problems with movement, all I can say is that it is very slow and awkward. If anyone has any tips or advice for me it would be much appreciated. For the record I main Marth, but I have "experience" with Sheik and Falco as well. Thanks!

 

[PepaCorn]

I would just recommend going to your room for a few hours a day (until you get good) and just consciously practicing your tech. By consciously I mean really think about what you're doing. The best way I find for breaking bad habits is to think and strive to not do them. Auto piloting is the main reason that bad habits develop, so avoiding that is good to break them.

As for choosing options, I would just recommend watching some match analysis and see what they pick out, and then try to apply it to yourself. Watching top level players and analysing their gameplay is a great way to improve.

Movement takes a lot of time to get better at, but just practice your waveland timings on platforms and try to learn the distances and timings of your wavedashes. Dash dancing is also a large part of movement so try to figure out the limits of your characters dashes.

 

[-ACE-]

Get 20XX: TE and go to town

 

[ChrisWithAk]

the best way to get good at tech skill is just to grind it out and force yourself to focus on what youre doing. 20XX is a great tool to practice l-cancelling sh aerials then after you get those down fast fall the aerial as well.

As far as learning wavedashing/landing (with any character) goes the best why I found is to do a time battle (against a low lvl fox falco marth or falcon) set the timer to at least 15 min but probably better at 25 or 30 and just try to maneuver around the cpu as much as possible without getting hit. If you grind that 5 or 6 times a week your movement will get better pretty quickly. Practice wavelanding on every platform on every stage and and wavedashing off the stage to grab the ledge

 

[EPsilon933]

Try exercising your fingers. It might help improve technical consistency

Consciously think of every action you do and think of what they think you'll do. If you think they're expecting an fthrow, surprise them with a uthrow/dthrow. Go for combos they won't likely DI properly against sometimes. And play neutral game tactics they won't likely be spacing properly against

You might simply need to play more if you don't feel like you're controlling yourself. You might not have good enough muscle memory yet. If you exercise your fingers, your muscle memory won't match your strength for a while until you adjust to it. This is just something I've experienced when I tried it. I don't know if it's generalizable to everyone

Marth doesn't have good aerials and his dash attack sucks. Try walking and wavedashing more. His ground game is much better