How to add in attacks to your neutral game

[trueFBGM]

Hey guys. So playing netplay, i realized i dont throw out any attacks in neutral. now the title makes it seem like i want to throw out attacks to hurt my opponent. i know that thats not what the purpose of attacking during neutral is (at least with Marth). Im pretty sure attacking in neural is to let your opponent know that theyre not aloud to come into your space, like "NO!, this is my space, get away." (only using the moves once in a while though) I know that the safe options are usually dtilt, jc grab, and retreating fair (which is apparently the worst out of all of them ive heard), but how do i incorporate them in to my play? All i do is just dash dancing around the stage in front of my opponents zone, but they dont feel threatened. (so i have gotten past the stage of just dash dancing in one place

Side note: a gold III player on netplay said that against aggressive opponents, marth should use counter as a way to set the pace of a match. Is this true?
The top foxes(or really any top players) arent really aggressive, so i dont really know what to look for in the vods.
Also, how do you play on smaller stages like BF, YS, and FoD ?

Side note #2: the gold III player on netplay also said for someone playing for 3 weeks, my movement was pretty good which is cool

 

[ridemyboat]

It depends on who (the character, the player) is being aggressive, but IMO counter should never be used to set the pace in neutral. It sounds like you're on the right track, though. I'll talk a little bit about stage control though.

Let's say that you have most of the stage, and you're on FD and Fox is cornered near the ledge. You don't have to approach at all in this situation, unless Fox starts lasering because you outrange him, which you have a lot of tools to punish with. Instead, you can just dash dance.

By dash dancing, you're putting yourself in a position where you can give up a little bit of the stage in exchange for reacting to any of fox's decisions. For example, if he nairs, you can dash away from his nair and grab him. You don't have to grab him though. To keep control over the stage, you need to be comfortable mixing it up by reacting with decisions of varying levels of commitments and rewards. For example, you can keep dash dancing. You'll lose a bit of control, but if your punish isn't guaranteed then it will help prevent you from being punished for being predictable.

 

[trueFBGM]

It depends on who (the character, the player) is being aggressive, but IMO counter should never be used to set the pace in neutral. It sounds like you're on the right track, though. I'll talk a little bit about stage control though.

Let's say that you have most of the stage, and you're on FD and Fox is cornered near the ledge. You don't have to approach at all in this situation, unless Fox starts lasering because you outrange him, which you have a lot of tools to punish with. Instead, you can just dash dance.

By dash dancing, you're putting yourself in a position where you can give up a little bit of the stage in exchange for reacting to any of fox's decisions. For example, if he nairs, you can dash away from his nair and grab him. You don't have to grab him though. To keep control over the stage, you need to be comfortable mixing it up by reacting with decisions of varying levels of commitments and rewards. For example, you can keep dash dancing. You'll lose a bit of control, but if your punish isn't guaranteed then it will help prevent you from being punished for being predictable.

So i dont know if i fully understood what you said, so i have a question

1. (2nd paragraph) wait, so your saying that instead of approaching i just dash dance and take the damage, or are you saying i should approach with dash dance instead of attacking? (the second option makes more sense)

2. Ah, the old example of dash back then grab. So whenyou say you dont need to grab if it's not guaranteed, you mean like this? (At 4:17 or so) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPzZgt5Jm0s&list=PLPN-oTWI2RA88hDxQ7zftfXe_jAiin91r&index=4

And also,sorry if i sound stupid, but how does does this answer my original questions? now of course, this is helpful, so thank you, but yeah, how does this help with my original question?

 

[ridemyboat]

So i dont know if i fully understood what you said, so i have a question

1. (2nd paragraph) wait, so your saying that instead of approaching i just dash dance and take the damage, or are you saying i should approach with dash dance instead of attacking? (the second option makes more sense)

2. Ah, the old example of dash back then grab. So whenyou say you dont need to grab if it's not guaranteed, you mean like this? (At 4:17 or so) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPzZgt5Jm0s&list=PLPN-oTWI2RA88hDxQ7zftfXe_jAiin91r&index=4

And also,sorry if i sound stupid, but how does does this answer my original questions? now of course, this is helpful, so thank you, but yeah, how does this help with my original question?

1. Do you mean if fox is lasering? I mean here that you are at a close enough range to punish lasers, and so it's a really unsafe option to begin with. You can do whatever you want if he's lasering at close range, including taking the damage.

2. Man pewpewu is amazing. Yes, thats a great example of what I mean.

Don't worry, you seem smart to me. I'm responding to one of the ideas behind this line in particular, and not the original question, because I think maybe a different mindset will help more when it comes to dealing with fox players.

Im pretty sure attacking in neutral is to let your opponent know that theyre not aloud to come into your space, like "NO!, this is my space, get away."

I interpreted this to mean that you feel that in neutral you should focus on walling your opponent out. The problem I see with this is that when you're playing an aggressive fox or something, they're more than happy to trade with you, and if you try too hard to wall them out then you just get baited. The big idea is that aside from throwing out attacks to try to keep your opponent away, you can also wavedash OOS, fair OOS, run around and generally try to be unpredictable.

I didn't talk about the original question on the tradeoffs of safer options fair, dtilt because I think that the mindset is more important here. The opponent should be worried about the repercussions of running into your space, but they don't have to do that if they already know that your strategy is to wall them out.

 

[trueFBGM]

1. Do you mean if fox is lasering? I mean here that you are at a close enough range to punish lasers, and so it's a really unsafe option to begin with. You can do whatever you want if he's lasering at close range, including taking the damage.

2. Man pewpewu is amazing. Yes, thats a great example of what I mean.

Don't worry, you seem smart to me. I'm responding to one of the ideas behind this line in particular, and not the original question, because I think maybe a different mindset will help more when it comes to dealing with fox players.



I interpreted this to mean that you feel that in neutral you should focus on walling your opponent out. The problem I see with this is that when you're playing an aggressive fox or something, they're more than happy to trade with you, and if you try too hard to wall them out then you just get baited. The big idea is that aside from throwing out attacks to try to keep your opponent away, you can also wavedash OOS, fair OOS, run around and generally try to be unpredictable.

I didn't talk about the original question on the tradeoffs of safer options fair, dtilt because I think that the mindset is more important here. The opponent should be worried about the repercussions of running into your space, but they don't have to do that if they already know that your strategy is to wall them out.

Ah. i guess i worded that line weirdly. I do know that your not suppose to just keep on throwing out moves, from my research i found that you should only throw out dtilt, or fair, like only once in a while. Also when you say " you can also wavedash OOS, fair OOS, run around and generally try to be unpredictable." you mean that like, in the middle of dash dancing, just randomly shield then do something?

 

[ridemyboat]

Ah. i guess i worded that line weirdly. I do know that your not suppose to just keep on throwing out moves, from my research i found that you should only throw out dtilt, or fair, like only once in a while. Also when you say " you can also wavedash OOS, fair OOS, run around and generally try to be unpredictable." you mean that like, in the middle of dash dancing, just randomly shield then do something?

Possibly in the middle of a dash dance, but as a reaction to a commitment that the opponent makes.

 

[ridemyboat]

Err, to be more specific, don't shield randomly for the same reason you don't want to counter randomly.

 

[trueFBGM]

Possibly in the middle of a dash dance, but as a reaction to a commitment that the opponent makes.

Oh you just mean like in general. Like if the fox does a SH nair, i shield, then i fair oos, or if falco is pressuring my shield, i can wavedash back

 

[ridemyboat]

Here are two articles that should help.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SSBM/comments/3w1say/daily_discussion_thread_120915/cxsogto
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Daf_Dqod1HoMj7L26ITeUM-xKUKhfxh2vJLWOl2N0C8/edit?pli=1