I'm fairly new to this. Need help with choosing a main.

[Drexel]

Hey Smashers!

I am a player who is more specialized towards Melee and PM, but Brawl mechanics are something completely different to me. Now that I am hoping to begin my competitive career in the three I mentioned, I need some help with choosing which character(s) to main in Brawl, as my mains in the other two are all set. I have already begun trying out characters but I haven't found one I really feel comfortable playing as. Anybody who is experienced at this kind of thing, please help me out! Thanks in advance!

 

[TheGrunyan]

You should probably look at the top ten characters if you want to succeed in competitive brawl. Pikachu, Ice Climbers, Diddy Kong, and Zero Suit Samus are probably the hardest to play well of those 10, and Meta Knight, Marth, and Snake being on the easier side. Meta Knight is clearly the best character in the game, but ultimately you should play whoever you feel comfortable with.

 

[Taytertot]

It is entirely up to your playstyle preference. If you've tried them all out and can't find one your want to main then maybe checking out some tournament matches of different characters will give you some inspiration.

 

[RunawayPanda]

Well in brawl, when I was a complete noob, I just always picked pikachu lol and I just stuck with him the whole time and just learned how to play well
So if you don't really know how you want to play yet, first pick characters from a series you're a fan of preferably a high tier character. Then if that doesn't work out, just keep playing around with different characters until you find one. I know we're talking brawl, but when I went into pm, I was sure I'd either end up playing ike and Pikachu, but it turned out almost completely diffierent...
I ended up maining Lucas with Sonic and Pikachu on the side.

 

[infiniteV115]

It depends on what your goals are. If you want to become one of the best and actually break into top 8 at national tournaments and stuff like that, you should be sticking to the top 10 in the game.

If you want to be good but not necessarily the best, while still having fun, then just pick whomever you're comfortable with.

Btw I want to clarify something mentioned up there lol. I heavily disagree with Marth being one of the easier top tiers to play well. Marth is probably the hardest top tier to play at a top level, just because you have to be extremely precise. However Marth is a very straight forward character, so just picking him up and learning the basics with him is pretty easy.

Top tiers that are easy to pick up
Meta Knight, Marth, Diddy, Olimar, Snake, and to a lesser extent, Falco and Wario

Top tiers that are hard to pick up
Ice Climbers, Pikachu, ZSS

Top tiers that are easy to reach a high/top level with
Meta Knight, Diddy, Olimar, Wario, Falco

Top tiers that are hard to reach a high/top level with
Marth, ICs, Pikachu, ZSS, Snake

ICs are a weird topic. The easiest part about ICs (for a top level player) is learning the chaingrabs; it takes time and practice, which is what makes them hard to pick up, but once you've picked them up you should be able to destroy people who are not very good. At high/top level though, you have to be ridiculously good at the neutral game with ICs to succeed

 

[RunawayPanda]

Lol I was never aware that Pikachu was hard to pick up, but I guess I'm a bit different since learning snake and olimar are just impossible for me

 

[Drexel]

It is entirely up to your playstyle preference. If you've tried them all out and can't find one your want to main then maybe checking out some tournament matches of different characters will give you some inspiration.

Well, in Melee and Project M, I use Link and I tend to play a tactical but explosive game, (not as in using a lot of Bombs but rather being able to stay back for a bit and then turn highly aggressive and launch deadly combos), and I have beaten top/high tier foes pretty often against friends who use to play competitive Smash. But Link is really screwed up in Brawl because of his inability to do some things I like to do in Melee and PM like Bomb Punting. I have Pikachu right now on my profile, but I am getting the hang of Diddy Kong and am liking his agility/camping abilities, so I might use him as my main, and then Marth as a secondary since I can hit his sweet spot pretty efficiently and land the Ken. Thank you all for the help!

 

[infiniteV115]

I suppose it depends on what your definition of 'pick up' is. At a super low level, yeah Pikachu's easy to pick up cause you just spam dsmash and nobody knows how to SDI out of it

At that level Marth is hard because shieldgrabs are easy, spacing is hard, and you can never finish dancing blade. XD