Improvement as puff

[Legendre]

So I know that a lot of Puff play is read based, and I think I have the basic tech down(l cancel, wavedash, rest setups, etc.). However, I feel like I have plateaued in my puff play, like reached a wall in my skill level. How do I continue to improve at Puff? I feel stuck at the "proficient" level and not at the "good" level yet.

 

[Jank++]

There's soooo much to improve on. Start studying your punishes, mixups, and matchups. Learn every way you can convert a situation into a rest or edge guard. Master jab reset rests and creating/recognizing situations to go for them.

Watch hbox videos on slowmo in matchups you're struggling with try to understand the choices he's making in neutral. Break down your playstyle and decisions by matchup and understand when to apply different techniques. For example, I love to shield vs marth. You have lots of options out of shield and you can make him scared to grab by threatening crouch rest a lot early on. But do that against a character like falcon and you're going to get stuck in shield and murdered.

Also, your movement can always be improved. Watch videos of yourself and figure out where your play gets slow/jerky. Mix up your aerial, dj, and fast fall timings. Learn to shield drop rest marths fsmash because its funny. etc, etc. If you can't find things to work on you're just being lazy!

 

[Ezmar]

Also, you'll need to play a lot to learn how to deal with pressure. You can grind all you want on CPUs to combo into rest, but if you question yourself just a little bit, you'll miss the confirm, but if you over-commit, you'll get punished. Making those calls and combos in context is a whole different beast.

 

[Massive]

The biggest reason you don't see a lot of puff mains out there at a high level is that practicing doesn't really make puff much better. Spending hours grinding tech skill alone on Fox or Falco can actually make you a lot better, but on Puff will only grant you some very small improvements in spacing and movement.

In order to improve you absolutely need to be able to understand how people think to beat them. Puff is a character that you can only get good with by playing a lot of varied opponents. There is no other substitute for this experience (if there was, there would be more than one top level puff). This means that the best puff players are the ones who travel to and participate in tourneys very frequently, and while that's at least partially true for every character, the only successful Puff mains were/are the ones who have done just that.

 

[Legendre]

Thanks for all your replies, I'll be sure to take them into consideration!

 

[Legendre]

Another thing, why can't people improve puff game through the advent of Netplay?

 

[Jank++]

I mean, there's nothing stopping you from doing so. It's just not the preferable option if you have alternatives because getting used to that added input latency will mess with you a bit when you DO play offline. It also won't help you get used to dealing with distractions and pressure. Also, depending on the latency it can get you in the bad habit of not hit confirming things. Those are the main reasons I don't do it all too much, but I have a reasonably active local community to play with and small locals like 1-2 hours away from me lol. The upstate ny life ain't easy but there's no substitute for tournament experience.

 

[Fortune]

Crouch cancel grab is very important for puff. This technique is not talked about as much as it should be, I think. You hold down, then hit L or R (and hold), followed by A. Shield dropping is important as well. drill -> grab and drill -> rest (know when the flip will occur and when it will not).

For example, I love to shield vs marth. You have lots of options out of shield and you can make him scared to grab by threatening crouch rest a lot early on. But do that against a character like falcon and you're going to get stuck in shield and murdered.

I would like to point out that against a marth that knows what he's doing, shielding is very bad. Marth can get tipper f-smashes on puff if the grab connects. Marth's running grab will capture a crouching puff. Basically, crouch rest is not a legitimate threat. If it works against the marths you play against, go for it. but you are building bad habits which will haunt you when you play against a real marth. Vs marth i like to space sh bairs in neutral with very little time spent on the ground.

There is reading apart from parsing what has happened in the game so far. I think puff rewards reading the opponent's emotional/physical state. if an opponent seems sluggish and slow to react, empty hop grabs will likely be effective. If you can tell they want to be aggressive but know they cannot do so without leaving holes, know where their holes are and prepare to punish them. Punishing over-aggressive players with a setup into rest can be devastating for the opponent.

oh yeah and autocancel nair is god tier. look up the frames in the frame data guide.

 

[Jank++]

I would like to point out that against a marth that knows what he's doing, shielding is very bad. Marth can get tipper f-smashes on puff if the grab connects. Marth's running grab will capture a crouching puff. Basically, crouch rest is not a legitimate threat..

First off, the spacing of dash grab on crouch is tricky, you're still going to whiff unless you place the grab just right. Tipper fsmashes are indeed unfortunate but they're not guaranteed at any percent if you DI correctly. Yes shielding can be dangerous but its also an amazingly powerful tool in the matchup as so little of marths moves are safe on shield and we have such great punishes OOS. Even stuff like run up shield is a great bait. (but not something you wanna be throwing out all the time obviously.)

I definitely don't agree with staying in the air the whole game. Hungrybox himself has commented on his pewpewu apex set stating that he thought he should have played more grounded.

 

[-LzR-]

I have heard from multiple sources that Marth has a guaranteed tipper Fsmash out of a grab if he can do pivots. Gladly I still have to face such a player, but I have recently stopped crouching much at all in this MU except to avoid rising aerials, people learned to dashgrab.

 

[Jank++]

Huh, had no idea on the guaranteed pivot tippers... that does indeed sound terrifying. I'd like to see the frame data for that but until proven otherwise I'll believe it. As to crouching, you guys may be right I'm probably not getting punished by dash grab enough locally. I'll have to take another look at the hitboxes and see if I'm as vulnerable to grab as you say I am. My original point was that shield is a great tool in the matchup though and I don't think crouch losing viability really invalidates that.

 

[-LzR-]

Huh, had no idea on the guaranteed pivot tippers... that does indeed sound terrifying. I'd like to see the frame data for that but until proven otherwise I'll believe it. As to crouching, you guys may be right I'm probably not getting punished by dash grab enough locally. I'll have to take another look at the hitboxes and see if I'm as vulnerable to grab as you say I am. My original point was that shield is a great tool in the matchup though and I don't think crouch losing viability really invalidates that.

As long as people keep attempting JCgrabs against you it will be smart to keep crouching them, you are only doing what benefits you the most, abusing their lack of matchup knowledge.

I believe you can crouch Marths dashgrab by timing the crouch well. In the beginning of the crouch animation the weird thing on Puffs head goes much lower until it soon rises a bit for the idle crouch animation where the grabbing hitbox will connect (please tell me if I'm wrong).

 

[Massive]

I have heard from multiple sources that Marth has a guaranteed tipper Fsmash out of a grab if he can do pivots. Gladly I still have to face such a player, but I have recently stopped crouching much at all in this MU except to avoid rising aerials, people learned to dashgrab.

I have played several of these players. Tipper fsmash is only guaranteed if you react predictably.

In those matches you have to accept that you WILL get hit, the trick is to DI-in or unpredictably so they can't get the tipper on you.

 

[squible2]

Another benefit of crouch is you can rest a marth out of nearly all his moves if you are close enough. You can rest jab, dtilt, dash attack, and up tilt at certain spacings. If you know the marth is going to down tilt, you can short hop bair to punish. Getting caught in shield when marth is down tilting sucks because if he times it right, he keeps poking until he shield pokes or he reacts to your oos option.

 

[Fortune]

I definitely don't agree with staying in the air the whole game. Hungrybox himself has commented on his pewpewu apex set stating that he thought he should have played more grounded.

I just meant spend little time on the ground when you are doing the sh bairs. I didn't mean stay off the ground all the time.

Yeah and the marth i play against just has like a billion hours vs mahone, who you might know from mahone's stuff about puff. So he knows the matchup really well.

If what you're doing vs marth is working, that's cool. It's just a warning. The same stuff I abused to own a lot of marth players are what got me punished the hardest when I started to play puff vs that marth.