Is Mac really just an easy to play character and nothing else?

[Kirby Phelps (PK)]

I'm starting to wonder if I really am good with Mac or if I'm just beating people who haven't figured out how to deal with him yet. I mean, when I play Mac, I don't really do anything fancy. I just space myself, jab, tilt, and smash attack at the right moments and that usually seems to work. No combos or set ups or anything. And when I do try and do that stuff, I start losing, so I go back to my usual. My friends think Mac's cheap and OP and to try and prove it, one of them decided to play him. And for his first time, he actually did well. He didn't win, but he did well and I had some trouble. He used that as an example of Little Mac being an OP character that anyone could pick up and play. But if that's true, then maybe I'm not good with Mac, he's just super easy to use. I used to be able to mop the floor with Mac against my friends, which is why they hate Mac so much, but recently it seemed like one of my friends started picking up on what Mac's all about and I could barely touch him after that. And although he was beating my Mac, it didn't make him believe that Mac was no longer OP. He still thinks that. It's like, Mac is only as good as the person using him. It's not like he's a character that's tricky to master, but very deadly when mastered. It's like a super skilled player who barely uses Mac ever could beat a not so skilled player who uses Mac all the time. It feels like it takes very little practice to become competent with Mac.
I really don't wanna believe that, but with the way I've been performing with Mac, I'm starting to feel a little down about him...

 

[Grump]

Little Mac requires a decent understanding of the fundamentals to be used with some effectiveness, and quite an understanding of game psychology to use extremely well. Several of Mac's options can be denied simply through a playstyle change, but that opens up other weakness. Some of the things I've noticed, and how I deal with them:

1. When players start to expect counters, they go in for grabs instead.
-> Use a jab instead of a counter- I believe it comes out faster than any grab-boxes and can break a lot of grab attempts.
2. Players start to use spacing moves to keep us too far away to tilt.
-> Bait a move like that and Side-B your way in (not safe on a fresh-stock)
3. They spam ranged projectiles.
-> Jab cancels out most projectiles, and a good portion of them can be jumped over with Side-B with enough time to hit the opponent before they can do anything.
4. C-Flicked smashes get spot-dodged.
-> When you predict this could happen, throw out a d-tilt first and follow with
a.) a jab combo if they spot-dodge (these moves string together so nicely)
b.) an f-smash if the d-tilt connects.

Additionally, some tips that not a lot of people have caught onto yet.
1. If you knock them off stage and you can reach them with a single jump while they're still in hit-stun, jump and n-air them for good measure. I've interrupted many double-jump attempts and left characters with usually-decent recovery helpless.
2. A surprising number of combos can be broken with n-air.
3. For a mix-up, jump over the opponent and pop with them a b-air.
4. Mac does have the potential to harass people as they are recovering back, if you feel absolutely safe doing so. If they are recovering horizontally, jumping past them and side-B'ing back to the stage does nice extra damage (and has a VERY nice knockback angle if you hit them with the very bottom of the hit-box). If they are recovering vertically, either a jumped up-B or a fastfall+second-jump+up-B can catch people off guard and either stage-spike them or knock them higher (which is better than having them below you).
5. Dashattack-to-jab seems to be a surprisingly safe 'combo', in case they shield the first hit. Once you condition the opponent to shield both hits, switch to dashattack-to-grab. It's not as safe, but if the opponent is expecting another jab they'll keep the shield up.

What character are you having particular issues with?

 

[Kirby Phelps (PK)]

He beat me with Duck Hunt, Captain Falcon, and some other character I don't remember. Probably had a projectile.

 

[qwfwfq]

Bleh. I feel similarly. I really like playing with him though. I don't use him against my roommates anymore (they say he's cheap) because they think he's cheap and I'm in it for the glory (haw). I agree with what I've read on here: seems like LM is really effective against people who don't know how to fight against him. I'd love to see a pro use him in a tournament.

 

[GuardianZen]

Mac is the King of Casuals because not a lot of newbies (like moi and my peers, family, associates, etc.) have a lot of arial game. Thus, games typically stay grounded and are less about fancy combos and more about who lands one hit at a time. Thus, a character that practically "only has ground game" (debatable since I've heard people say n-air can do some nice things side-b and counter still do their job up in the sky) and will mainly be getting in one hit at a time basically rules this sort of casual meta.

Plus, you know, we all suck and are predictable and repetitive, and Mac is pretty good at punishing when he sees an opening. In general, he's very natural once you get used to his unique playstyle and (like everyone says) it's sometimes hard to figure out how to deal with him.

 

[Uffe]

I wouldn't call him cheap, nor would I call him OP. If his ground game was reduced, then he would need a decent aerial game as well to balance him out. He's balanced with really strong attacks and super armor because he lacks in a lot of other areas that would otherwise make him very bad. Good Mac's tend to be patient, and as it has already been established, look for openings. He's the type of character who also benefits greatly from rolls and tilts. He only feels easy to use because of his strength that has good knockback and can kill early. Aside from that, and I'm not going to sugarcoat this, your friends sound whiners if you're beating them with Mac. Let them trash talk on the character. If you're the one winning, that's all that really matters.

 

[Quillion]

Remember when everyone called him the most overpowered character in the game?

Good times, man. Good times.

 

[dahuterschuter]

I think he's an easy character to play at a casual level, and in some match-ups with Brawlers, but to play him against a good opponent pretty much awesomely means playing it like Punch Out!!! Instead of dashing around you trot the stage ready to through out your jabs and tilts and mix your spot dodges with counters and all that good stuff. Also his recovery isn't nearly as bad as it was supposedly going to be. He can still, like everyone else in the roster, pretty much always return to the stage form off-screen if ungimped.

 

[Tino]

Not unless you really use him as your main or least as a secondary.
Plus, he isn't cheap or OP in anyway. Remember his ****ty air game and recovery?

 

[Izanagi97]

Little Mac is the most easily gimped character to the point that I think Mario might be a hard counter for Little Mac due to FLUDD being able to stop his recovery dead

 

[cot(θ)]

I can't believe people are still having this discussion. Little Mac is only "OP" and "easy to use" at the very lowest levels of competitive play. At higher levels of competitive play, Diddy Kong is the character who's easiest to pick up and do well with.

That doesn't make either of them 'OP', it just means that Little Mac has a very high reward for very little commitment at a low skill level, and Diddy Kong has an even higher reward for very little commitment at a slightly higher skill level.

In theory, I think that Little Mac has a great deal of untapped potential that will require a huge amount of technical skill to unlock, via fox-trotting, dash dancing, and perfect-pivot based techniques. However, no player has yet acquired enough skill to use all these techniques consistently, much less effectively, so his real potential at a high level of play is unknown, but the skill required to reach that potential is huge.

 

[Izanagi97]

I can't believe people are still having this discussion. Little Mac is only "OP" and "easy to use" at the very lowest levels of competitive play. At higher levels of competitive play, Diddy Kong is the character who's easiest to pick up and do well with.

That doesn't make either of them 'OP', it just means that Little Mac has a very high reward for very little commitment at a low skill level, and Diddy Kong has an even higher reward for very little commitment at a slightly higher skill level.

In theory, I think that Little Mac has a great deal of untapped potential that will require a huge amount of technical skill to unlock, via fox-trotting, dash dancing, and perfect-pivot based techniques. However, no player has yet acquired enough skill to use all these techniques consistently, much less effectively, so his real potential at a high level of play is unknown, but the skill required to reach that potential is huge.

And besides, like I said in the last post, he is comically easy to gimp.

 

[Kirisamee]

The poor guy has to have his feet glued to the floor so he can be effective, and if you remove said feet from the floor, he becomes the Magikarp of Smash Bros. He's really well balanced in my opinion - trading off all forms of aerial potential for a stunning ground game.

 

[pershona]

Extremly easy against very low skill players.
Extremly hard against players that have any idea what they're doing.

 

[Perpetual Christopher]

As a Little Mac main, I can honestly say my deaths are more often then not, in my error. An unfortunate Jolt Haymaker off the side im sure is something we all have cursed ourselves with, but Ill tell you a secret. What I think his most hidden weakness, at least it certainly is with me is... impatience. Learning to be patient with a Glass Canon like Little Mac after many years maining someone with similar speed (Much love for Shiek!) training myself to not try to rush into battle was (and still is) the hardest thing about using Little Mac. But it is fun. I do not personally think he is easy to win with, but I beleive he does fit the "Easy to use, difficult to master" category.

 

[Bleezyy]

I main little mac I don't think he's cheap he's actually not all that great in most peoples eyes.
I become very frustrated with him at times because of his recovery and air game, but he is extremely fun to use and has a lot of potential, at least I think so.

 

[EvilShadow777]

Play against a player who knows little Macs frames and weaknesses and you won't be calling him op anymore lol. Like hell, one time I was wrecking a sonic during a match that was pretty close and the difference was me at 40% and him at 120%. After going for a kill and getting thrown instead I try to side b back and eat a spring. The rage on it put me below the ledge on 2nd side b and I died in a match that I otherwise would've won.

Compare that to Diddy who's just as lagless, fast, never dies, and his juggly aerials also kill. Any concept of Little Mac being op crumbles when you consider how much power too tier is allowed to have without Macs glaring flaws.

 

[Hoth]

^Diddy is an example of a broken character, unlike Little Mac, who has some very defined weaknesses and strengths. If you how how to exploit said weaknesses, he won't seem so op anymore.
Diddy, on the other hand...

 

[Wintropy]

I've run into my share of Macs before, and I honestly think that a lot of the hysteria surrounding him is based on For Glory. For better or for worse, most people's soujourns into the competitive scene is based on For Glory: a mode where Mac is, by default, in his element. That naturally contributes to an aggregate opinion that he's "overpowered", because he's naturally in his best possible stage by the very definition of the mode. Put him in a stage with platforms or other dynamic elements and it's a very, very different ball game than what it usually is.

I don't think Mac is overpowered, but I think he is essentially unbalanced. That's not a bad thing, of course, just a conscious design choice that defines his playstyle. He is vastly superior on the ground than in the air, and that's naturally going to define how he performs on certain stages and against certain opponents. I would argue that he has a relatively low skill ceiling, but still requires a competent degree of technical skill and conceptual understanding to play well. I think we can all agree that there's a huge difference between a poor Mac and a skilled Mac. They're hardly the same character, even, and that's a pretty marked contrast for a single character.

 

[Vincent21]

If Mac was easy-to-play For Glory would've have painted a bad picture for him (i.e. this character is bunk look at how bad these people are) and we PROBABLY would've even seen him hold a better location on multiple preemptive tier lists for longer.

He is, at first, counter-intuitive to play. Despite being one of the fastest characters in the game, you're supposed to spend the majority of your time walking, not running, at people. Throwing your tilts from their furthest ranges, and only breaking into a dash when you can punish someone with their stock with running usmash, or perform a perfect pivot mix-up on someone you're forward pressuring. Despite appearing to be very much about forward momentum, you spend most your time patiently throwing hitboxes until they make a mistake, and trying to keep the game in neutral.

Ultimately, you're just playing Punch Out! Score incremental damage during openings, patiently respond to your opponent's attacks when they offer you an opening, and get your star punches in when they whiff their higher commit moves.

This is not easy to do, especially with a bad grab. This character is not easy. You have no margin for error, a limited off-stage game, have to work really hard to stay safe on shield, and even harder to make sure that you keep the fight located where you want it.

He's difficult to play, and that might be discouraging. He's masquerades as newcomer friendly, but that's a blatant lie. If anything he teaches new players (who are most likely fighting other new players) terrible habits that will make them markedly worse players moving forward, since they'll feel like throwing dash attacks and smashes around is okay because they haven't been receiving their fair share of punishment for it.

Mac has the strongest ground game, is excellent at controlling the neutral, and can pressure characters and bait false punishing very effectively. However, to use any of that you have to understand that, put simply, he's not easy at all. That's why the majority of players fail with him.

 

[Deadzombie]

Once you get gimped after your jump back to the stage by a neutral. Your opinion will most certainly change.

 

[Kirby Phelps (PK)]

One thing I hear people complain about most is Little Mac's super armor on his smash attacks. Many times I've KO'd because I powered through an attack that would've knock me away otherwise. But doesn't Ike have the same thing? I rarely hear people complain about that.

 

[Rikter]

Only on Aether (Might be wrong here about this still existing in smash 4) and Eruption and neither of those are as easy to just casually throw out and grab a kill with in lower level play compared to Little Mac's smash attacks.

 

[Wintropy]

Ike's Aether still has super armour on the startup frames.

None of his smashes do.

 

[WwwWario]

At first, I thought Little Mac was an OP character that didn't requier any skill at all. Now, I think the exact opposite. I believe Mac can be deadly if the oponent doesn't know Mac as a character, but a Mac player definitely needs practice for him to get really good. How to recover effectively, how to play with a good variety of moves so you don't get read and punished easily - heck, I've even found his areals to be very useful lately, and at first I thought they were absolutely worthless. So yes, I personally believe you need skill to be good with Mac.




And dang, Mac is SO fun to play with!

 

[Izanagi97]

Mario is a hard counter to Mac (Cape stops side special, FLUDD kills his Up special)

 

[Deleted member]

When I first got into Smash 4 I thought he honestly was broken with all of the super armor, I think what leads people (like myself) into thinking he's broken is how different he really is as a character compared to other characters in Smash Bros. history. He's essentially a big character but smaller, yet, has even more safety than big characters while also having insane speed and power along with a KO punch that can get a free kill almost.

When you first run into him the first few times you really start wondering "how can I deal with this" because you try to use Smash, and he'll Smash right through yours, his jabs can lock you when you aren't expecting it, and his roll speed and overall speed makes it very confusing to figure out how you exactly beat him.

It wasn't until I played against him a few times and also played with him a few times to realize he had a weakness that could easily be exploited. Ever since that, I find the character honestly pretty easy to fight. I notice a lot of new players use him cause well, he's pretty easy to use with his safe Smashes for lower level players. As far as For Glory and online go, Little Mac can sometimes have an advantage with lag because he generally stays on the arena and has all this super armor and range so some of the faster techniques to deal with him sometimes don't work with lag going on.

He's an easily gimped character once you start realizing you can throw him off, or swat him in the air, or keep him at bay with zoning or off-stage him with a single hit.

 

[Funkermonster]

Mario is a hard counter to Mac (Cape stops side special, FLUDD kills his Up special)

Mario is not a hard counter to little mac: if you're smart, you'll recover low underneath the ledge so that neither FLUDD nor Cape will get you. If you're on a stage where you can easily wall jump, its even less of an issue. Even if you couldn't do that, just because Mario can edgeguard him that easily doesn't make him a hard counter, you still need more advantages than just that to win.

completely destroys Mac the moment he's offstage with her Dtilt, Dair, and Phantoms; and yet he still bodies her. He's too fast for her, kills her too easily, and punishes her too consistently with little effort. She still murders hm offstage, but the trouble comes from even getting him offstage in the first place. Mac beats her fairly easily, even Zelda mains themselves call it 3-7 and one of her worst matchups.

and also make short work of him offstage thanks to their impressive range, and they have a far better air game than he does. Not as easy as Zelda, but Lucina/Marth is still not that hard of a fight because their moves take waaaaay too long to end and they don't really have very many moves that are safe on shield besides dtilt, jab, or a fullhopped aerial. And they are not the best at recovering themselves, a well-timed Dsmash hits underneath the ledge and stops their UpB, they can't make it back without their double jump.

And against Mario, at least Mac has a better ground game and Neutral Game, two areas Mario is kind of lacking on both counts (his only good ground normals are basically his jab and his grab, the rest are pretty situational or just flat out bad). mean, yeah its still in Mario's favor, but he's still doable. and are better examples of hard counters to Mac, he's not nearly as threatening as they are.

 

[meleebrawler]

Mario is not a hard counter to little mac: if you're smart, you'll recover low underneath the ledge so that neither FLUDD nor Cape will get you. If you're on a stage where you can easily wall jump, its even less of an issue. Even if you couldn't do that, just because Mario can edgeguard him that easily doesn't make him a hard counter, you still need more advantages than just that to win.

You need to space the uppercut perfectly, though, since it doesn't snap, he can often FLUDD you
anyway if you don't get it exactly right.