I feel like it's hopeless.

[Sylarius]

Hello everyone,

I have been playing Brawl competitively for about 6 months now. Since I'm 13 live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada right now, I'm not really able to attend any tournaments.
I've been maining Marth for about 5 months of the last 6, with my secondaries GnW and Falco.

The problem is, I've put a lot of work into getting better at Brawl. I've watched tons of videos of MikeHaze, Anaky, Raziek, Zex and Kadaj. Although I improved for the first 2 months or so of maining Marth, I haven't improved any farther. It's becoming frustrating for me to play because I keep getting beaten by bad players, and also watching myself play afterwards is really disappointing because I can't tell what I'm doing wrong at all. I don't know what I'm doing wrong that prevents me from being better at Brawl.

Keep in mind I can only play on WiFi.

Well, I've tried hard, and I've messaged PatG (On AiB) many times because I'm friends with him. All he really says is to keep doing what I'm doing (Practicing, watching videos, and spending time on the forums. I do all of that.) and I'll eventually get better.

I'm not.

It's becoming really disappointing of me to play Brawl, and I really love the game a lot. I spend a lot of time on it and even writing this is bringing tears to my eyes (lol). But just today, I played a really bad player and lost, and it really, really made me feel bad.

This is my last resort. Today I pretty much decided to drop Marth if I can't figure out how to play better with him. I'm seriously deciding to give up, because playing him and losing to such terrible people is really a blow to the mind.

Thank you for reading this, and this page is one of my homepages for the time being. If someone could say something, then I would really appreciate it.

Sylarius

 

[Zankoku]

Do you have videos or anything? I really can't say what you're missing just by you telling us that you have no clue what's being done wrong.

That said, play the character you're best with, obviously.

 

[Sylarius]

Do you have videos or anything? I really can't say what you're missing just by you telling us that you have no clue what's being done wrong.

I'll post them once I get some.
And Aisight!! xD nice to meet you.

 

[C.J.]

Yeah, if you post videos in the subforum here, if nobody else does, I'll personally make sure to go over them for you and help in any way that I can =)

 

[PEACE7]

Yo post them videos up, don't quit bro

 

[Sylarius]

Thanks for the support. I'll do that soon.
I posted some GnW videos if that makes a difference in the GnW forums lol.

 

[Player-3]

play top players

ask for advice

other than that


play good players

ask for advice


or


ppost videos vs top/good players

ask for advice


or if you want to do it yourself


ask yourself for advice, and look for why you aren't winning


works for me

 

[1PokeMastr]

I'm not a bad player.
I'm a terrible one.
*Happy Face*.

 

[Lord Chair]

p3 stop posting like that it doesnt work with you

 

[Player-3]

p3 stop posting like that it doesnt work with you

yes me lord

 

[light-zion]

This is what i do.
Record every Match you play on wifi and watch them over and over intill you can find all you mistakes and practice fixing them. it takes time to fix your mistakes. Hope this helps.

 

[Lord Chair]

This is what i do.
Record every Match you play on wifi and watch them over and over intill you can find all you mistakes and practice fixing them. it takes time to fix your mistakes. Hope this helps.

your font please

 

[C.J.]

And by font, he means font color.

 

[Sylarius]

This is what i do.
Record every Match you play on wifi and watch them over and over intill you can find all you mistakes and practice fixing them. it takes time to fix your mistakes. Hope this helps.

See, I can only usually find almost no mistakes at all, and when I do it's usually something like DB on Shield or Spotdodging right after they roll behind me too much.

Honestly, when I play offline, I am able to predict and follow-through MUCH easier, but since I am unable to play offline much (http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=245407&page=100) it's frustrating for me whenever I play online.
I'll upload some matches to the critique thread soon, but I don't want my matches to take priority over everyone else's because of this thread.

 

[zmx]

Hello Sylarius

A couple of things. I'm not a Marth main but I do secondary him (though I secondary almost everyone tbh). Keep in mind that Marth is EXTREMELY difficult to play at high level. This is precisely why just about no Marth can place consistently well. You can't just spam broken stuff and win with him. You need reads for every kill. You need to put in a lot more work with him to win than with most other characters I feel. But that doesn't mean you should give up. If anything that should only encourage you to stick to him because not many people do.

And imo Marth is the most frustrating character to play through in lag but you have to keep at it. And don't worry, if your connection is good enough you are BOUND to find some players you can play with with virtually no lag. I've found several. It depends on location as well, where do you live?

That being said I would be happy to play you on Wifi and then give advice. I think one of your main problems is you are not asking for advice after being beaten by better players, this is something you should always do. There's no way you could be being beaten by "bad" players according to you and not be doing some obvious things wrong. I am almost certain you are doing a ton of things wrong that you don't realize are bad. But again I can advise you much better if I play you.

Edit:

As a side note how do you know the players you're losing to are terrible? Which players are these btw? I may have faced them at some point.

 

[Sylarius]

Since I'm 13 live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada right now, I'm not really able to attend any tournaments.

I live in the middle of nowhere.

I'm not a Marth main but I do secondary him (though I secondary almost everyone tbh). Keep in mind that Marth is EXTREMELY difficult to play at high level. This is precisely why just about no Marth can place consistently well. You can't just spam broken stuff and win with him. You need reads for every kill. You need to put in a lot more work with him to win than with most other characters I feel. But that doesn't mean you should give up. If anything that should only encourage you to stick to him because not many people do.

=(

And imo Marth is the most frustrating character to play through in lag but you have to keep at it. And don't worry, if your connection is good enough you are BOUND to find some players you can play with with virtually no lag. I've found several. It depends on location as well, where do you live?

There's about 2 or 3 people that have a decent connection with me, but there is still a noticeable amount of lag. x:

As a side note how do you know the players you're losing to are terrible? Which players are these btw? I may have faced them at some point.

Multy among others. I also played someone who spammed rolls and I did crappy the first game but was reading better the second. As I said, I can predict and follow up far better offline then online, so playing online is just really frustrating.

Afterwards when I talked to 1PokeMastr, the conversation went something like this:

Me: "I lost to Multy."
1PokeMastr: "What? You lost to Multy?
Me: "Yes."
1PokeMastr: "Ouch. That must be a blow to the senses.
Me: "I can't beat him consistently either."

 

[Lord Chair]

da **** is 1PokeMastr

 

[zmx]

I live in the same region as 1pokemastr. So if there's usually a decent connection when you play him it should be the same for me.

Anyways allibrawl is not the only place where you can setup matches:

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=275524

I like this place better and tend to hang out there.

Also rolling indeed can be frustrating to punish if there is lag. The key is to remain patient and don't over read the situation. More importantly, if you mess up a read don't let it get to your head. Marth has an awesome pivot grab and side B, both great for punishing roll spammers.

 

[Sylarius]

Also rolling indeed can be frustrating to punish if there is lag. The key is to remain patient and don't over read the situation. More importantly, if you mess up a read don't let it get to your head. Marth has an awesome pivot grab and side B, both great for punishing roll spammers.

Alright. I'm not bad at predicting it's just I keep losing matches and don't really know what I'm doing wrong. .-.
Also, I'm going to someone's house tomorrow for Smash, so I'll record some offliners and put them up on the critique thread =)

 

[Albert.]

Just give up.




yo

 

[Metakill]

And this is why I change to MK at some time.
Please don't do that, Marth is hard to play at top level like someone said but if Mikehaze can you too, try play to a lot of people, the exp is the best to getting better.

Come on, you can do it!

PS: some videos will be usefull to give tips, like everybody said so... :3

 

[Cygnet]

I'm not sure if I can add anything else to what everyone has already said, especially because I'm in a similar situation, but I think if you try to play against a CPU with a 300% handicap, your mistakes will become extremely evident and you'll start to play safer, I think.

At first, you'll probably be getting 3 stocked all over the place though, but after a while, the CPUs won't be able to touch you and eventually, neither will humans! (In theory.) After all, Marth definitely has the tools to do so, much more than most characters.

(Actually not sure if this is a good way to practice, but it makes sense conceptually, so maybe try it out...?)

Good luck with everything!

 

[Sylarius]

Doing far far far far FAR better now, thanks for the advice everyone. A mod can delete this if they want. (I'd almost actually prefer if they did.. o.o)

 

[theONEjanitor]

sylarius, what helped you improve?

 

[Sylarius]

Maining a different character for awhile. (G&W) When I went back to Marth after losing with G&W too much, I found I played a lot better than I had before >_> I was able to make reads far better too, although I'm still doing bad with coping with gameplay changes midway through.
Uh.
Practiced with Poke pretty much every day too.
That's all I can really remember. xD I don't know how it happened but even my rating in the AiB ladder went up by 400 since.

 

[infiniteV115]

Yo Sylarius, are you coming to IMPULSE?
You should come to IMPULSE, you'll get to face a bunch of good people there.

Edit: SIG, Y U NO WORK
Double edit: SIGNATURE, SERIOUSLY, Y U NO WORK?
Is there some sort of minimum character requirement to get your sig to show up?
Triple edit: There you go :D

 

[Sylarius]

Since I'm 13 live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada right now, I'm not really able to attend any tournaments.

Wish I could. 14 now, but it makes no difference.

 

[PrinceMarth]

Do you have videos or anything? I really can't say what you're missing just by you telling us that you have no clue what's being done wrong.

That said, play the character you're best with, obviously.

This was one of the first comments, not sure how far behind i am.. but i just felt like saying that i disagree with this comment.

>obviously

thats why. IT's not obvious, because some people prefer to play other characters. I'm best with ice climbers, but i don't always enjoy sitting there chain grabbing my opponents to death so marth remains my favorite. Then I played a lot with marth and he's become my best. So play with who you like and hope to get good. (As long as they are a decently tiered character)

 

[Zankoku]

What, should I instead say "most comfortable with"? If you're at a relatively low level of play, attempting to play multiple characters at a tournament level is going to hinder your development rather than help it.

 

[Wumbo105]

The first thing I noticed was that you said you've been playing for 6 months.
This is not a problem, although the fact that you thinking you've hit a wall is the problem. I'm pretty sure everybody kinda plateaus for at least a little while in their career, it's inevitable.
But in your specific situation, you're just way too early in your career to say something like that. I've been playing Brawl for about 3 years now (would have been 4 if i didn't take an unexpected 1 year hiatus), and I hit my wall about 1-1 1/2 years in. Brawl is just that kinda game that you just have to keep on truckin', and you'll break through.
Just keep in mind that 6 months is MINISCULE, and if you feel like you've done all that you can possible do in that short amount of time, you are sorely mistaken.

Another thing is that you almost exclusively play online. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times before. Brawl lag is HORRENDOUS, and lag does nothing but encourage bad habits and behavior that no doubt carry over to offline play. I can't count how many times where I played someone online and somehow lost, when I was damn well sure I would have 3-stocked them offline. I know your feeling.
Unfortunately you really don't have a choice in the matter, which sucks.

Only thing I can say is to try your hardest to search for at least ONE guy that plays Brawl around you, and practice as much as you can. If you can't, just try to limit your online matches to only people that live relatively near you and have shown to have a good connection.

There is ZERO reason to give up. Gogogogogo.

 

[Sylarius]

Most of the guys around me I can 2 or 3 stock.
But thanks for the answer.

 

[Orion*]

You need reads for every kill.

LOLOLOLOL

10lies

 

[SkOaRaAn]

The videos that you watch will not teach you how to mindgame people. You have to not only increase Marth's technical skill, but read your opponents. Practice reading, and guessing your opponents next move to easily destroy them.