Know My Power - A Meta Knight Match Up Thread

[Narelex]

MK beats Kirby imo. I'll do the Ness write-up soon.

Yeah Kirby has stubby little arms so its hard to deal with our sword.

Good to hear I look forward to reading it soon.

 

[Phubs]

Kirby's tilts, airs, and smashes lose to mk for sure, but I feel like his specials can still give mk trouble in a lot of situations, such as punishing a rollercoaster attempt with a brick
By no means is this mu in Kirby's favor, I'm just saying that it isn't a free win

Especially with that freaking mock tornado..

 

[Dandizzle]

Ya know I'll ride or die with @ Phubs here because too many match ups are simplified by saying stuff like "He's like Kirby... WITH A SWORD!!!!!!!" If you gonna write anything decent you best have real good experience playing Kirby players in tourney and the like and go into more detail than a sentence or two. My thoughts on the match up mostly carries over from 3.5 but I think playing Kirby aggro against MK is asking for trouble, while a more patient style could probably find more success. I aint gonna act like I know better as of now but I'm not gonna stay silent unless I don't know anything. Also stages swing the match up A LOT in each others favor so you gotta pick and ban right to really get them wins easily.

 

[Narelex]

Kirby's tilts, airs, and smashes lose to mk for sure, but I feel like his specials can still give mk trouble in a lot of situations, such as punishing a rollercoaster attempt with a brick
By no means is this mu in Kirby's favor, I'm just saying that it isn't a free win

Especially with that freaking mock tornado..

Kirby's rock does make comboing him a harder task in the air, If he does it though he is committing hard or punishing you for going too far. His specials aren't too bad to deal with in general. Kirby has to commit to trying to swallow you so DDing is a good way to avoid it.

(If you land on a platform and tech he can chase you with it)

MK doesn't really have any "Free" Mu's just ones where he is more likely going to win. a 60/40 MU means that in a best of 5 it would end as 3-2 so its not as large of a difference as people think.

Player-skill and Matchup knowledge are usually the deciding factors.

 

[sneakytako]

Against kirby one of the keypoints is to remain level with him when he's off stage or far away, kirby's side cutter is one of his better tools for approach and recovery. One of the reason's it's so potent is how hard it is to beat it on shield; if he his you at the end of his cutter he will always get a bair or nair out before you have a chance to act out of shield. So you don't want to space far away on the ground against him, rather you want to stay in the middlish spacing or be in the air in front of him at all times.

When in the the afromentioned middle spacing you have to wary of dash attack. This attack is easy for him to combo out of, but it has a few weaknesses MK can exploit. MK can outspace this move cleanly with dair most of the time, but it comes out too quickly most of the time to react to, ur gonna have to read it to punish this way. Nair will trade, which is pretty favorable, and upair is fast enough to react and punish if he's coming from a platform (just make sure not to do it too quickly, and remember he can change the trajectory from falling off a platform with dash attack).

When being grabbed by kirby the most common thing he will try is the dair tech chase/jab reset. Always tech this throw, if he jab resets you he's either going to get a ton of percent or straight kill you super early with a hammer, dash attack, regrab, or other shenanigans. You want to mix up your tech patterns; he can punish both techrolls and tech in place with a guess, but he can't cover all the options. The thing is, he's going to try and read with a very strong punish like fsmash or hammer. My advice would be is to always insist that he needs to cover tech in place, then after he starts punishing tech in place start mixing up other tech patterns. Also remember he can see which direction you're holding while getting dthrown by watching your di, make sure to not always di and tech the same way every time.

For stages kirby likes the 3 platform stages, he likes having the option of dashing attacking from platforms. Smashfield is one of the best starters, I would ban dreamland because you can't kill him and he can still kill you albiet a little later.

 

[Narelex]

Against kirby one of the keypoints is to remain level with him when he's off stage or far away, kirby's side cutter is one of his better tools for approach and recovery. One of the reason's it's so potent is how hard it is to beat it on shield; if he his you at the end of his cutter he will always get a bair or nair out before you have a chance to act out of shield. So you don't want to space far away on the ground against him, rather you want to stay in the middlish spacing or be in the air in front of him at all times.

When in the the afromentioned middle spacing you have to wary of dash attack. This attack is easy for him to combo out of, but it has a few weaknesses MK can exploit. MK can outspace this move cleanly with dair most of the time, but it comes out too quickly most of the time to react to, ur gonna have to read it to punish this way. Nair will trade, which is pretty favorable, and upair is fast enough to react and punish if he's coming from a platform (just make sure not to do it too quickly, and remember he can change the trajectory from falling off a platform with dash attack).

When being grabbed by kirby the most common thing he will try is the dair tech chase/jab reset. Always tech this throw, if he jab resets you he's either going to get a ton of percent or straight kill you super early with a hammer, dash attack, regrab, or other shenanigans. You want to mix up your tech patterns; he can punish both techrolls and tech in place with a guess, but he can't cover all the options. The thing is, he's going to try and read with a very strong punish like fsmash or hammer. My advice would be is to always insist that he needs to cover tech in place, then after he starts punishing tech in place start mixing up other tech patterns. Also remember he can see which direction you're holding while getting dthrown by watching your di, make sure to not always di and tech the same way every time.

For stages kirby likes the 3 platform stages, he likes having the option of dashing attacking from platforms. Smashfield is one of the best starters, I would ban dreamland because you can't kill him and he can still kill you albiet a little later.

If there's any MU's you feel you've played enough to do some writeups on, feel free man. I've been a little busy so I haven't had time to work on any myself.

Jelly seems to have vanished for a bit and he was the main one doing the Marth writeup (I was just there for fact checkup mainly) so if anyone else wants to take a crack at it be my guest

 

[sneakytako]

Favorability
2~2.5

General Strategy
Marth is an annoying MU. It's very hard to pin down Marth with nairs; if he has space he can wavedash back and grab, if he feels pressured he can call you out for committing and uptilt or fair you, or he can try to cc grab at low percents. Grab is not something you want to eat in this mu; getting upthrown into uptilt/upair/fair juggles will put you in a lot of dangerous spots.

His main dash dance game will consist primarily of dtilts, grabs, fairs, and some occasional nairs/fsmashes. You must win the ground game in this mu. Your goal is to space close enough that he feels pressured enough to throw out dtilts and fairs, and then making them whiff and punish accordingly. If he whiffs on the ground, dtilt and grab are the go to options. If he whiffs a fair, I would run underneath him and either upsmash or nair, depending on the whether it was a rising or falling aerial.

Once you have him in the air, use the platforms to apply safe pressure with upairs into nair. Upair on their shield from underneath their platforms will allow you to safely hit their shield and wait for an opportunity to poke their shield with nair. Even if the nair doesn't shield poke for whatever reason, it's pretty safe unless they have some godlike shield drop upair.

When you space far away from marth, I feel we don't have a strong advantage. It's difficult to play conservative and try and force a whiff punish when both players have the option to retreat, a lot of the time I will decide to fully commit and go for a yolo boost grab, dash attack, or quick down-b out of dash. These aren't very good options, but sometimes you need to do this to make him respect your space. If you do decide to dash attack, be prepared to mash because he can cc grab you easily.

I only nair approach when I feel I have marth on the run. These situations include tech chases, chasing him from another hit like nair or ftilt, pressuring marth when he has cornered himself near the ledge, or dropping/pushing off platforms unexpectedly. I try to avoid nair approach when marth has center stage; it's tempting to try an earn space back with nair approach but as aforementioned marth has a lot of tools to deal with incoming nair pressure. Dash attack is actually better when he has center stage, being able to keep moving after the hitbox comes out makes it harder to punish.

In order to gimp marth, cover low using intangibility from the ledge. If he decides to go low keep refreshing your ledge grabs (make sure not to do it too early and give up your 5 grabs). You can cover both ledge and stage if he goes low with the same nair, don't get lazy and do roll from the ledge too much. When he's recovering high, use upair to decentivize him from drifting forward, and nair in his face if he decided to space too close. If he respected you and didn't drift forward at all, proceed to either grab ledge or get on stage and pressure with dtilt or fsmash. If he somehow gets by with up-b while you're still on the ledge, down-b is probably the simplest strong punish you can do (you can try to be fancy and do a long down-b or a turn around down-b, these help hit marth harder and hit him off the stage in the right direction.)

Good Stages
In terms of stages dreamland is the stage of choice, marth's hate that stage. The higher the platforms the better it is in this mu, small stages with big blast zones are also pretty favorable. BF is my prefered starter, I avoid PS2 and smashfield. GHZ is a bit iffy, MK can easily tech chase to get marth off the stage often, and the platform is pretty hard for marth to use to recover from the ledge safely while we can just tornado to it pretty safely. However the short side blastzones makes fsmash super dangerous, and if you DI incorrectly he can dair you for free. I personally like it because I'm confident in my tech chase but I could see other people not liking this stage. If they ban both GHZ and DL my next choice is probably FoD.

Bad Stages
For bans I consider wario ware an auto ban if legal. Marth is just too good on this stage, I don't like it at all. From then it's really a toss up between FD and yoshi's for me; if I feel I can out maneuver the marth I'll ban yoshi's, but if I feel like I need to murder marth before he murders me I'll ban FD. Both stages are kinda kill or be killed; you need to be able to tech chase effectively on fd and have good platform options for yoshi's. In general randall helps you more than he helps marth, it's super easy to nair or dair marth on randall and push him off on shield.

Additional Notes
Oh one final thing, I'm always ready to press down-b on a missed tech. If marth misses a tech from dthrow, dtilt, dair, etc, I always have my hands ready to react to a missed tech to punish. It can also be used to react to tech rolls both towards and away, eventually they are forced to spam tech in place and then you can meaty boost grab to cover that single option or dsmash to cover multiple options.

 

[ZGE]

Happened to stumble upon this thread.

I'm a Zelda player and one of the best PM players in my town plays MK. From the Zelda standpoint, I think we AT BEST go even with MK. Our punish game is super nasty on MK but it's hard to throw a Din's out that's any bigger than minimum size (otherwise MK runs in and combos). Uair to up b seems to be a thing that works very well on us, and MK's DD game gives us fits. Zelda does have Uair which will stuff nair approaches, but it is very committal (attack frames start on frame 8 but it lasts close to 30 frames I think, whereas MK has fair and bair disjoints).

To elaborate on the DI of her throws as well, DI'ing her fthrow in will land you a kick to the face, same with DI'ing dthrow in at high percents. I personally don't use dthrow much because you can react to it and Zelda doesn't tech chase terribly well IMO, or maybe I'm just doing it wrong. Anyway, upon getting grabbed DI for the fthrow and react to everything else. If you get up thrown at mid-higher percents, DI behind Zelda or else you'll eat a sweet spotted up air and die.

Got a couple videos, I don't really think my opponent knew how to play specifically against Zelda at this time. Also pardon the really bad commentary on both of these.

http://youtu.be/1EiUzRQ61UI
http://youtu.be/U7D-0ETpWj8 (Grand finals, skip to 12:15 to see the Zelda matches)

 

[Narelex]

Happened to stumble upon this thread.

I'm a Zelda player and one of the best PM players in my town plays MK. From the Zelda standpoint, I think we AT BEST go even with MK. Our punish game is super nasty on MK but it's hard to throw a Din's out that's any bigger than minimum size (otherwise MK runs in and combos). Uair to up b seems to be a thing that works very well on us, and MK's DD game gives us fits. Zelda does have Uair which will stuff nair approaches, but it is very committal (attack frames start on frame 8 but it lasts close to 30 frames I think, whereas MK has fair and bair disjoints).

To elaborate on the DI of her throws as well, DI'ing her fthrow in will land you a kick to the face, same with DI'ing dthrow in at high percents. I personally don't use dthrow much because you can react to it and Zelda doesn't tech chase terribly well IMO, or maybe I'm just doing it wrong. Anyway, upon getting grabbed DI for the fthrow and react to everything else. If you get up thrown at mid-higher percents, DI behind Zelda or else you'll eat a sweet spotted up air and die.

Got a couple videos, I don't really think my opponent knew how to play specifically against Zelda at this time. Also pardon the really bad commentary on both of these.

http://youtu.be/1EiUzRQ61UI
http://youtu.be/U7D-0ETpWj8 (Grand finals, skip to 12:15 to see the Zelda matches)

Unfortunately I can safely say after watching the vids that the MK in those vids is playing incorrectly. MK's Nair is not safe on shield in the manner that he was using it. He was also jumping far too much and MK is supposed to be played similarly to Marth where you stay rooted to the ground in neutral until you can get your opponent airbone.

The punish game on each other is real but a good MK will not let Zelda back to earth after he gets her into the sky. Also they should always be DIing for the Fthrow/Bthrow and switch to the Dthrow DI if they see it coming.

He didn't seem to know the MU like you said, but that doesn't change the fact he was also playing MK at a base level incorrectly. Approaching with aerials especially Nair in neutral is the sign of an inexperienced MK.

The MU is in MK's favour but it does have some required knowledge otherwise it will feel closer to even.

 

[ZGE]

Unfortunately I can safely say after watching the vids that the MK in those vids is playing incorrectly. MK's Nair is not safe on shield in the manner that he was using it. He was also jumping far too much and MK is supposed to be played similarly to Marth where you stay rooted to the ground in neutral until you can get your opponent airbone.

The punish game on each other is real but a good MK will not let Zelda back to earth after he gets her into the sky. Also they should always be DIing for the Fthrow/Bthrow and switch to the Dthrow DI if they see it coming.

He didn't seem to know the MU like you said, but that doesn't change the fact he was also playing MK at a base level incorrectly. Approaching with aerials especially Nair in neutral is the sign of an inexperienced MK.

The MU is in MK's favour but it does have some required knowledge otherwise it will feel closer to even.

Yeah, perhaps those videos can serve as examples of what not to do. Critique as you please. And you make a really good point about Zelda getting juggled: one of her big weaknesses is getting juggled because of her floatiness, which MK can exploit quite well. Zelda either has to air dodge down (not safe for obvious reasons), try to dair through an attack (which is super slow and gets beat easily by MK's disjointed uair), or teleport down (her safest option but still very punishable especially for a speedy character like MK).

I know someone was asking for Zelda vs. MK videos so I just thought I would put those there.

 

[Narelex]

Yeah, perhaps those videos can serve as examples of what not to do. Critique as you please. And you make a really good point about Zelda getting juggled: one of her big weaknesses is getting juggled because of her floatiness, which MK can exploit quite well. Zelda either has to air dodge down (not safe for obvious reasons), try to dair through an attack (which is super slow and gets beat easily by MK's disjointed uair), or teleport down (her safest option but still very punishable especially for a speedy character like MK).

I know someone was asking for Zelda vs. MK videos so I just thought I would put those there.

Don't worry about it too much I just wanted to maintain that while Zelda can win the MU. It's not in her favour. Some people will see one or two games where a character loses and instantly think the MU is bad.

I appreciate you taking the time to add videos.

Doesn't mean I won't critique incorrect MK play however

 

[Taytertot]

Edit: i had a question here but found the answer already.

on a side note, i really like the concept described in the OP of this thread and i feel like it should be stickied so that its more accessible.

 

[ChrisRoxal]

So is this thread alive ?

 

[Sadface]

Apparently not. We have a lot of mu discussion in the discord.

 

[Mechaglacier]

What is the Mew2-MK Mu exactly?

 

[DawnClutch]

What is the Mew2-MK Mu exactly?

I actually have quite a good understanding of this matchup. One of the best players in our region uses Mewtwo, Fuzz. It seems to be a pretty weird matchup, and at top level I honestly have no idea who would actually win. Meta Knight can kill M2 pretty early off the top with Up-B, and that's probably going to be MK's best kill option against Mewtwo. It can kill ridiculously early sometimes and makes you think that alone might make MK win the matchup. I'd also probably say MK might win neutral just because he's way faster than M2 on the ground, and dash dancing seems to help a lot in the matchup. Sometimes however a simple shadow ball can disrupt that.
Where things get really weird and interesting is the nature of the punish/combo game each character has on each other. I'm 80% confident Mewtwo's punishes on MK are far more severe than MK's punishes on Mewtwo. It's quite ridiculous how much M2 can get off of just one up throw on MK. Since Mewtwo is also very floaty, while Meta Knight can juggle Mewtwo at extremely early percents for a little while, it''s still very difficult to combo him effectively at any percents after 50%. This alone makes the matchup feel a lot more difficult than it probably should be. It seems like Meta Knight's strengths as a character shine mostly in neutral, where MK probably has an easier time getting that first hit. However, Mewtwo seems to kind of just negate Meta Knight's amazing edge-guarding potential and his amazing combo potential.

In short, Meta Knight wins neutral but he needs to win neutral A LOT more than Mewtwo does. Mewtwo can get a lot more off of one opening, and doesn't seem to be bothered by MK's edge-guarding if the M2 is recovering right and mixing up their recoveries.

With all that being said, I still honestly have no idea who wins. I think MK can do it. That down-tilt to up-b guaranteed kill option on M2 is pretty ridiculous.

Also, tech chasing M2 is a pain in the ass. I don't know how to do it. Like, how do you tech chase him? HOW?