How to deal with overly offensive players?

[Gravitirax]

I have some friends who are ridiculously offensive when they play. No mindgames or neutral stance or anything. They just sorta run up to you and do whatever. Is this something I should expect in real tournaments and how should I deal with it?

 

[SAUS]

You should probably expect this if you can't deal with it. Good players find your weaknesses and exploit them - badly. If it's obvious that you can't deal with their pressure/aggression, you will be in for a rough time.

The good thing is that marth can thrive on this. He is often seen as a bit of a campy character because he is not as good at attacking but can perform powerful punishes on enemies who are too reckless. I don't know how much of the advanced techniques you know (says you joined here only 1 month ago), but dash dancing by itself can probably crush 0 mindgame, blind approaches. Just run back and forth and when they miss, you can get easy grabs. You can practice it on level 9 CPUs.

Another thing about marth is that he can stuff approaches. His giant sword, if timed and spaced correctly, will beat out a lot of attacks. If your opponent is predictable, knowing the timing and spacing for your moves will most likely allow you to beat everything they throw at you.

 

[goateeguy]

There are a couple of buttons on your controller that may help. They're labelled L and R. They look the same, except one's on the left side and one's on the right side. When attacks hit you while you're holding them they don't do damage, and if you press left right or down on the joystick while holding them, you won't be grabbed. If you press A while holding them you can grab them, which is effective at punishing attacks people try when you're holding them.

Alternatively you could just bait whiffs (dash in, dash-dance back out of attack range, or dash-wavedash or wavedash-wavedash) and punish them during the lag of the probably laggy move they just threw out.

In all seriousness, one-sided play like this doesn't survive long at a competitive level. It might work once or twice because a player is thinking "nah, he wouldn't do something that stupid" and then he does. But once a good player catches on to someone not respecting their defensive options they can abuse it easily.

 

[Nicholas1024]

I have some friends who are ridiculously offensive when they play. No mindgames or neutral stance or anything. They just sorta run up to you and do whatever. Is this something I should expect in real tournaments and how should I deal with it?

The first thing you should know is that counter is actually really good against this kind of player. If they always just run in and attack with no variation, it'll shut them down and force them to slow down and insert some mind games or grabs.

The second thing is that wavedash back into D-tilt or F-smash will beat anyone who just runs in against you. Same thing with dash dance backwards into grab, it'll beat someone who attacks the space where you just were. If they're being predictable in their approach, that'll blow them up in neutral.

Thirdly, don't be afraid to shield and roll or wavedash away. Yes, it's bad if you become predictable with it, but you shouldn't just ignore your defensive options.

However, just because someone is being all-out aggressive does not necessarily mean they're playing badly. Mango is the perfect example of this, as he goes in nearly every chance he gets, but he's still one of the best players around. If you're good enough at it, you actually can just run up to people and nair-doubleshine-grab or such.

Just remember, as long as you can move well enough to retreat and hit them with your sword (or grab them) when they come in, you'll win the matchup. If they can outmaneuver you and come in when your'e not prepared to deal with pressure, they'll win.

 

[Lawn Chair]

Dtilt and retreating nairs are really good against overly offensive. Spacing grabs can also punish bad approaches