Ito's Meta Knight

[Chainsaw114]

Hello everyone! Just wanted to post these videos I found where it looks like Meta Knight CAN actually be viable in tournament play. It's somewhat dubious though since this player's reflexes are like lightning. Regardless, its pretty amazing, and will hopefully restore some people's love for this character.

Srry if someone has already posted about this earlier

Since this is my first ever post, I can't post links. Instead, look it up.

Google: Metaknight - 58% Airstring to an Up-B KO

youtube:
Tight or Fight 10 - Super Smash Bros. Wii U Singles Tournament
1:21:07 for part 1
and
1:23:09 for part 2

 

[ItoI6]

lol i dropped him for diddy

i played in a 32 man bracket today offline and early on i played the guy who got 2nd in the tourney and i got 2-0ed when i decided to use mk.

then i went diddy the rest of the tourny and ran through the brackets and 6-0ed the same guy in grand finals

ill be honest i dont think hes viable but hes still better than like half the cast. use him to impress.

 

[W.A.C.]

lol i dropped him for diddy

Are you dropping him altogether or is he likely to be your secondary character? You're insanely good with that character, so it would be a shame if you completely dropped him. Why do you feel he isn't viable? Meta Knight will probably be my second or third main character, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Though I'm definitely not good with that character... >_>

 

[daedgaem]

Fear not, just wait for Katakiri to post his videos stomping diddys and the likes, the prince will soon take the throne.
Kappa keepo cappuccino

 

[ItoI6]

i really think mk would be a lot better if his fair autocancelled after a shorthop. its incredibly bad that if you shorthop nothing you do is safe on shield and all your jumps are too small individually to take you out of the range of fullhop up air. all the top tiers do more damage off of their combos then mk too so i dont really see the point. i think mks one good matchup vs top tier is sonic who he does really well against. i wouldnt use him vs anyone else up there except maybe sheik if i was in the mood that day. oh he bodies DK too but thats not really relevant lol

 

[Chainsaw114]

Oh lol sorry for not reading all the posts and actually seeing the regular discussions going on. I guess I got a little excited since it was the first time I actually found something on the character besides people on reddit complaining how bad he is (and then I discovered smashboards)

 

[Ulevo]

Yeah, I'm not expecting Meta Knight to be top tier, but he's pretty decent versus a relative portion of the cast. That said, I'm starting to think there's a lot of terrible characters mostly because the movement options in this game are far too linear, and with no L-Cancel characters will be arbitrarily tiered soley based on the fact that some of them have 10~ frames of landing lag while others have 20+ for seemingly no reason. The fact that air dodges have 20+ landing lag too is pretty terrible in a game with no L-Cancelling also since it means very few aerials options are safe, ever.

In terms of match ups I think Meta Knight does pretty good against Sheik despite how good she is. I haven't played a Sonic so I can't comment on that.

 

[daedgaem]

its incredibly bad that if you shorthop nothing you do is safe on shield and all your jumps are too small individually to take you out of the range of fullhop up air.

Been saying this forever, but when you say it, the parroting immediately begins. Funny

That said, I'm starting to think there's a lot of terrible characters mostly because the movement options in this game are far too linear, and with no L-Cancel characters will be arbitrarily tiered soley based on the fact that some of them have 10~ frames of landing lag while others have 20+ for seemingly no reason. The fact that air dodges have 20+ landing lag too is pretty terrible in a game with no L-Cancelling also since it means very few aerials options are safe, ever.

That's because every character needs at least 1 lagless areal to give them a higher number of approaching options. This is the main reasn why meta knight is bad, since literally every move carries a high landing lag.

 

[Ulevo]

Been saying this forever, but when you say it, the parroting immediately begins. Funny



That's because every character needs at least 1 lagless areal to give them a higher number of approaching options. This is the main reasn why meta knight is bad, since literally every move carries a high landing lag.

Except unlike a lot of other characters, Meta Knight has ways to get around or mitigate this specific problem.

 

[Float SSB]

lol i dropped him for diddy

On maining MK as a tournament player:
Yea I am dropping him as well. I got butt stomped by players I felt were much worse than me in some ladder games yesterday. I was significantly outplaying them but they just had to do so little work to get a KO on me by comparison. They weren't even playing AMAZING characters (Ike and Wario). I don't think I was playing GREAT but I wasn't playing bad and I was certainly playing better than them. I rematched both of them in practice later with my Sheik and crushed both easily. I am by no means bad at MK but Sheik is about the same ground speed, racks damage faster, is safer, has better combos, better recovery and just more options overall. The ONLY thing MK really has over Sheik is the absurdness that is shuttle loop.

And as much as I didn't want to say it in the video thread, the people ito was wrecking so hard are just far inferior players to him. He probably could have beaten those players with just about anyone in the cast. As cool as it was to get MK some exposure, it didn't prove much. Ito is seriously good.

On Metaknights supposed strengths:
I have talked about how great metaknights edgeguarding is but honestly MK doesn't have a kit geared towards horizontal knockback anyway so he struggles to even get people out over the edge. I have gone through entire tournament SETS where I never hit my opponent a significant distance over the edge and get all my kills vertically. Maybe if I totally mastered perfect pivot downsmash I could create move situations but at the kind of percents where I start getting good edgeguarding potential with dsmash I might as well just go for a grab to rack more damage and set up for shuttle loop kills :/

On metaknights aerials:
I do see one thing significantly missing from a lot of MK play and that is dair camping. If you played Brawl you might be familiar with it. Basically you get above your grounded opponents and use your multiple jumps to hover while dairing their shield. Usually you can vary your jumps and timing enough to bait out something and punish them. You can also use this technique to safely dair at someone once and back off

That's because every character needs at least 1 lagless areal to give them a higher number of approaching options. This is the main reasn why meta knight is bad, since literally every move carries a high landing lag.

Yea I basically do 4 approaches with MK. Dash grab, Dash attack, run up instant fullhop dair into dair camping, approaching from the air, dair camping their head until I have 2 jumps left and then backing off or landing behind them and pivot grabbing if they are stuck in shield. The 5th option only really works against players who consistently spot dodge approaches which is just run up tornado. These players usually learn to stop spot dodging EVERYTHING and you have a window where they are conditioned to either roll or just block in which case your dash grab becomes very good but everything else becomes ass. Having an opponent conditioned to where dash grab is your best approach at high percents is NOT useful.


My major thoughts on the character:

I do think the character is much better than people give him credit for but you need to be EXTREMELY good to make the character shine. Usually this isn't a problem in a competitive game. HOWEVER, high skill ceilings is only really worth it if the matchup is unusual in some way. For instance, Amsa's Yoshi. A very VERY hard character to play well but when you get good at abusing his armor and shield parry and shield drops, suddenly a TON of top tiers characters normally very safe options become totally non-viable. You have to play against Yoshi in a specific way and with specific options that you don't really dedicate practice time or thought to. Yoshi is essentially lowering your skill as a player because he is making you do things you don't normally and aren't as good at. Metaknight, however, does not have a way of twisting a matchup in the same way aside from making you have to play just a little safer defensively to deal with his great dash grab and the threat of his shuttle loop in the air. Neither of these are particularly hard for higher tiers to avoid with their safe moves.

All metaknight really needs is move damage. I know people say reach this and reach that but he doesn't REALLY need more reach. He is plenty fast enough to deal with his reach and there are slower characters with less reach that do fine. The problem became most apparent to me against a very skilled DDD player. I was connecting a full move more than 20 times a stock on him and he was killing me in an average of 9 moves. NINE. It was frustrating that I had to make more than twice as many openings or combos than him. I really just wasn't doing enough damage, even when I landed 5 upair strings (which is situational at best) he just had to land d-throw + fair to get the same percent if not more.

If MK racked damage at a comparable rate to sheik, diddy, c falcon and other top tiers, hell even mid tiers, he would be a very strong contender for A or B tier.

What am I gonna do about it:

This is hard to say. I REALLY like metaknight and his playstyle fits me well but I cant really justify him over who I feel is his closest simulacrum: Pit. Pit plays in a very similar manner but does probably twice MKs damage. It also helps that Pit is fun as hell. I might also just play Sheik and be a boring **** like half the other competitive players in this game.

 

[MagiusNecros]

Well like I said in another topic. Meta Knight needs one of two things. More range or more damage. If he gets more range he can do more damage reliably. If he gets more damage on his attacks we can forgive the range in favor of being able to once again rack up damage reliably.

 

[Float SSB]

Well like I said in another topic. Meta Knight needs one of two things. More range or more damage. If he gets more range he can do more damage reliably. If he gets more damage on his attacks we can forgive the range in favor of being able to once again rack up damage reliably.

Honestly I don't think anything short of a ridiculous amount of range would help him as much as damage buffs. I can dominate a fight all day long with his current range and speed but you just have to spend WAY too much time interacting with opponents per stock because of his low damage. Being so light compounds this problem. If MK had faster ways to rack damage he would spend less time exposing himself per stock and be much safer in the long run than a range buff would make him.

Most good punishes do more damage than metaknights guaranteed combos and punishes so the character just ends up with an INCREDIBLY small margin of error. Why botter playing him at his current stage when you could play Pit who has a similar style, does twice as much damage per hit (if not 3x), has more range overall, has easier to land kill moves and something to combat campy playstyles (an area metaknight struggles in). Yes, Pit is not as blindingly fast as metaknight or have as varied a recovery (I actually think metaknight has the most varied recovery in the game) but that isn't a huge issue, really.

Don't get me wrong, metaknight is AWESOMELY fun but when there is another multijump character that massively outclasses him, it just doesn't seem worth it to pursue him. I will keep my MK sharp in hopes of buffs down the line and I will post some of my better matches and clips but with my punish heavy playstyle I need a character that hits a little harder.

 

[daedgaem]

Except unlike a lot of other characters, Meta Knight has ways to get around or mitigate this specific problem.

You are right. Like projectiles, counter, range and all that other cool stuff. :^)

On metaknights aerials:
I do see one thing significantly missing from a lot of MK play and that is dair camping. If you played Brawl you might be familiar with it. Basically you get above your grounded opponents and use your multiple jumps to hover while dairing their shield. Usually you can vary your jumps and timing enough to bait out something and punish them. You can also use this technique to safely dair at someone once and back off.

Pretty sure it is literally impossible to punish a roll when doing this though. Also, a majority of the cast can simply u smash you in the face if you keep doing it, can they not? (During the initiation jump obviously, considering the horribad range on dair.)

 

[W.A.C.]

Personally, the only thing I hate about his play style is that using his down special as an attack doesn't allow you to grab onto ledges if you use the move as an attack. It just makes that move way more risky than it should be with its current attack strength. And prior to the patch, dear ****ing god that move was rarely worth the risks when near a ledge.

 

[Float SSB]

You are right. Like projectiles, counter, range and all that other cool stuff. :^)



Pretty sure it is literally impossible to punish a roll when doing this though. Also, a majority of the cast can simply u smash you in the face if you keep doing it, can they not? (During the initiation jump obviously, considering the horribad range on dair.)

On characters that have an answer for it you should footstool them for a guaranteed hit. If they react to the initial shorthop then they should get the hit. Any character not doing a rising move would get hit just the same; not an MK issue. You actually CAN do rising dair at point blank. I do it as a punish to start a tech chase on characters weak to tech chasing.

As for punishing a roll, it depends. Roll behind you can punish with bair and a roll back just granted you more stage control which is a win in its own right. Metaknight does well when he controls more space.

Its isn't a "DO THIS ALL THE TIME" type of thing but under certain conditionings dair camping is legit.

Personally, the only thing I hate about his play style is that using his down special as an attack doesn't allow you to grab onto ledges if you use the move as an attack. It just makes that move way more risky than it should be with its current attack strength. And prior to the patch, dear ****ing god that move was rarely worth the risks when near a ledge.

It only decides to attack if you are holding B as the move ends so you should get into the habit of deciding and reacting close to the end. Funny trick I do is if I start to down B and see they are shielding I WONT do the slash and will reappear and immediately cape again in place, attacking. It is amazing how many people do some huge laggy thing to try and punish the attack they thought you were gonna do and get hit by the 2nd cape. It is kind of a gimmick though, I wouldn't do it more than once a game or match. It is enough to condition them to be way more scared of cape.

 

[Float SSB]

sorry for double post please ignore

 

[MagiusNecros]

Don't get me wrong, metaknight is AWESOMELY fun but when there is another multijump character that massively outclasses him, it just doesn't seem worth it to pursue him. I will keep my MK sharp in hopes of buffs down the line and I will post some of my better matches and clips but with my punish heavy playstyle I need a character that hits a little harder.

Would like to see your matches. As far as my concerns for range go I just want all of his attacks to hit if they get hit by his sword. They shouldn't completely miss.

 

[daedgaem]

It's weird having a character with such low killing power, struggling this much with putting on % as well. Agree with all the posts regarding damage. Screw range, give most of his moves around 50% increased damage, not even joking.

As for punishing a roll, it depends. Roll behind you can punish with bair and a roll back just granted you more stage control which is a win in its own right. Metaknight does well when he controls more space.

Doubt you'll be able to hit that bair before they'll shield, because of the slow air speed, unless you of course predict it. If your landing move gets shielded, it's always a guaranteed punish as well, which in general doesn't make it worth it, since trading any attack with meta knight is ********. :^)

 

[Chainsaw114]

I agree that Meta Knight doesn't really need more range, aside from the somewhat wonky hitboxing in his Dsmash (enemies don't get hit near the edges, where there is a clear slash mark where they would be). What he needs is at least one or two lagless air moves, and an increase in power. He does have his Fsmash which is amazingly strong and has less recovery time than Dspecial and Uspecial, but almost impossible to hit. There needs to be something safer that he could use. Or they could at least give him more air control after up and down specials similar to Ness after a PK thunder launch. His fall states right now are stupid.

Though I do have range problems when fighting Marth and Lucina, who have so much air maneuverability and sword range that I could never figure out how to get to them.

 

[Float SSB]

It's weird having a character with such low killing power, struggling this much with putting on % as well. Agree with all the posts regarding damage. Screw range, give most of his moves around 50% increased damage, not even joking.



Doubt you'll be able to hit that bair before they'll shield, because of the slow air speed, unless you of course predict it. If your landing move gets shielded, it's always a guaranteed punish as well, which in general doesn't make it worth it, since trading any attack with meta knight is ********. :^)

It depends situationally. There are some characters with very easy to react to rolls and you can punish with FFbair or FFdair and other characters you just get to land and reset the situation with nothing but time lost really.

As for his kill moves, it really is true that he needs something more reliable. Shuttle loop has some strong setups for fast kills but they are all situational within a small window of percents. F smash is unusable without a read or them using a massively unsafe approach/move and he doesn't have good tools for knocking people horizontally offstage to use his amazing off stage play. Up-B OOS is a great way to turn your opponents percent into a big defensive advantage for you but this is nothing unique to metaknight.

I thought about it more and it really would be great if he did more damage. When other characters miss out on their situational kills they just say "Oh well I will take him to %160+ and land something mediocre and they will die." MK obviously doesn't have as easy of a time racking damage, especially past 80% or so when most of his combos stop working.