Need help against Doc (beginner)

[Sangoku]

Hello,

As I haven't seen any "Q&A" thread, I'll ask my question a new whole thread. Mods feel free to move it if it's not the appropriate place to ask.

So I've never really played Melee, but I knew a bit of theory of it (I've watched the Wak's advanced how to play video guide) and I sometimes watch matches/read stuff, etc.

Since there is a room at my uni with the game, I thought I might get a bit more serious about it.

So my point is that I'm not a total noob, but I definitely lack experience.

So I went there and played against a bunch of guys. None of them knew ATs and most of them sucked. There was just this one guy's Doc who I couldn't beat. His main strategy was full hop pill, dash attack. I read in the falco matchup thread that I could dash below the pill, but he's throwing it when he's still quite far, so I don't have time to run below. The dash attack on its own is dumb, since I can wavedash backwards-> punish (which I sometimes succeeded), but not when he first throws a pill. This is when I let him approach.

If I try to approach with SHL, he would cape it so I get stopped. And when I land a nair on his shield, I get shieldgrabbed before I can shine.

Now in close-range game he would mainly grab, dsmash and usmash. I feel these attacks are kinda quick and hard to dodge.

I should also emphasized that even if he has played the game for years (since it came out), he doesn't know about SHFFL/DI and stuff and spam a bit too much fsmashes. So he's not a pro at all and I feel I could beat him and I SHOULD beat him, but it's like there's something missing or that I'm missing.

Thanks for the help =).

 

[Bones0]

- You can attack through pills, so if he throws out a pill and dash attacks, you should be able to just SHFFL a dair through the pill and hit him on top of his dash attack (it only has priority low, so you probably won't trade with it). You could also just full hop over the pill and dair him as he finishes his dash attack.

- If he capes your lasers, you're being too predictable. Instead of just hopping towards him and shooting a laser each hop, mix in dash dances and WDs. It's also really useful to just empty hop. All of these mixups can help to bait his cape, and as soon as you see it, you can usually react in time to get an approach before the lag ends. You can also shoot a high laser and run under it when he capes it or shoot a low laser and jump over it when he capes it.

- If your nair-shines are getting shield grabbed, just do the nair later without a fast fall. If you do a late nair on his shield, you are guaranteed to shine before his shield stun ends, and you can also do an early fade away aerial after the shine to keep him in shield stun and bait a grab after the shine.

- There isn't a consistent way to avoid getting d/usmashed by Doc because they are so fast, so it's best to just avoid being next to him like that in the first place. Try to stay out of his range until you are ready to approach with a dair/nair, and use lasers (along with the other mixups to fake/avoid caped lasers) to make sure you are approaching on your terms. This should help prevent situations where you are just standing next to each other, where Doc is much stronger because he has a better grab game, jab, and smashes.

 

[Sangoku]

Thanks for the quick answer!

- But if I SHFFL through the pill, I'm still too far from him to hit him with it and I'd get touched by the dash attack when I land. Or do I have time to wavedash/rejump before? And yes, full hop is what I was sometimes able to do. How about jabbing/ftilting the pill?

- That indeed sounds like a good thing to do. I'm ashamed that I haven't thought of it myself >_>. Maybe because in 64 I can SHDL and SHL without caring of being predictable...

- I really didn't know that (late nair thing). I thought SHFFL was the fastest thing. I'll try it!

- Oh so dsmash and usmash are good attacks? Again I thought most smashes weren't good because of 64.

So in general, I should keep the distance against Doc?

And also another unrelated question, how do I wavedash OoS? Everytime I tilt the joystick while shielding I first spot dodge. Should I jump, tilt joystick, press R? If yes, I gotta be very fast in order not to triangle jump.

We weren't able to play much today, but I will play him again tomorrow. I'll try all this ^^.

 

[Bones0]

Thanks for the quick answer!

- But if I SHFFL through the pill, I'm still too far from him to hit him with it and I'd get touched by the dash attack when I land. Or do I have time to wavedash/rejump before? And yes, full hop is what I was sometimes able to do. How about jabbing/ftilting the pill?

- That indeed sounds like a good thing to do. I'm ashamed that I haven't thought of it myself >_>. Maybe because in 64 I can SHDL and SHL without caring of being predictable...

- I really didn't know that (late nair thing). I thought SHFFL was the fastest thing. I'll try it!

- Oh so dsmash and usmash are good attacks? Again I thought most smashes weren't good because of 64.

So in general, I should keep the distance against Doc?

And also another unrelated question, how do I wavedash OoS? Everytime I tilt the joystick while shielding I first spot dodge. Should I jump, tilt joystick, press R? If yes, I gotta be very fast in order not to triangle jump.

We weren't able to play much today, but I will play him again tomorrow. I'll try all this ^^.

- If he's not close enough for you to SHFFL as soon as he jumps to throw the pill, then he shouldn't be close enough for his dash attack to be threatening. If he's coming in right as the pill would hit you, you can aerial through it and hit him. If he's not approaching until after the pill has forced you to do something, then you can just shield it and dair OoS if he approaches. Full hopping is probably what I would do the most though. You can easily jump over his pills, and the only way it will mess you up is if he can avoid the dair you come down with.

- No, a lot of smashes are useful in Melee, especially up smashes because you can jump cancel them right out of your shield. Doc's dsmash is also really quick meaning he can just do a quick jab and either grab you if you shielded or dsmash if it hit. You usually can't avoid the dsmash unless you CCed the jab.

- You shouldn't necessarily keep your distance, you just don't wang to get caught stationary near him. I suggest watching Mango vs. Shroomed at Genesis 2 to see how he worked with different spacings.

- WD OoS can be hard if you use the same trigger to shield and WD, but not impossible, I do it just fine, even with Fox who has a 3 frame jump. Falco's is 5 frames, which means after you jump (while still holding shield) you have 4 frames to let go of the trigger and press it back in for the airdodge (which will be a wavedash if you do it fast enough).

It just takes some getting used to in order to get the pattern down. You'll end up just doing this really quickly: Holding R -> Y -> R + angle stick. If you think of it in separate pieces it becomes much easier. You almost want to ignore the fact that you are shielding in the beginning, and then it just seems like a simple wavedash.

 

[FoxLisk]

Dude. you just need to do a tiny bit of thinking here. Take a look at your complaints and figure out the easy answers. If he's too far away from you for you to hit him and his whole plan is to FH and throw a pill, you have all the freedom in the world to just GET CLOSER.

Things like that. I'm not saying these are dumb questions, just like... it's good to learn now to think through situations so when answers arent so easy, you can figure things out yourself.

 

[Warhawk]

If he keeps shield grabbing your shffl'd aerials you could always come in and feint to get him to shield and then come in with a dash-cancelled grab or do a late aerial and then perform a shine-cancelled grab. Also you can try shffling nairs and dairs through his shield so that you land behind him and then shine/up tilt/fadeaway back-air to try and pressure him in his shield or hit him should he try to roll in that situation.

 

[Sangoku]

FoxLisk:

I think you're missing something. Thinking, spacing, mindgames, etc. all need knowledge. Knowledge in attacks durations/lags, ranges, or even basic things like horizontal momentum. Coming from 64, when I first tried the game, I was amazed at how far Captain Falcon would get if you jumped while dashing. On the contrary, I found Falco a bit too much "stationary". This is just to say that before I can figure out things by myself, I need to reach a certain level of understanding of my char, the ennemy's char and the game in general. I need to be able to think of all my options and the possible outcome of each (which one will get punished, which one won't) and it's not something that I can do at my current level. This is why a lot of people would play the game for a long time and think they're unbeatable whereas they actually don't know anything about ATs, spacing and stuff. Most people don't "discover" stuff neither they see what works best. Of course, when you get more into the game you'll need to think, but I believe the techskill and knowledge barrier need to be passed first.
But again I'm mostly basing what I say on 64, since I'm still too much of a noob at melee. But this is how I understood it as I saw the transition between not beeing able to think back on what I should have done or what I should do to being able to "see" things.

So I basically asked just to be sure I wasn't missing something important (whatever it could have been) and I also think that at my current level, good tips will contribute a lot, more than personal thinking that could lead to wrong conclusions.

Thanks to everyone who answered btw . I played this guy again (among others) and I beat them all now. Now I need to find better opponents so I can learn the game more.

 

[FoxLisk]

Im unclear on how anything you said contradicts anything i said.... Like it's all well and good to rephrase the elements of this game using fancy language but the problem was "he shoots a pill when im too far away too punish" and the answer is the obvious "get close enough to punish."

i deliberately left tons of breathing room in my explanation of "find obvious answers until the answers arent obvious" so I'm not sure what you're objecting to in my explanation. If it's just 'you didnt mention that ATs change everything,' i know that and i was hoping that was one of many things you'd realize you need to learn from my response.

 

[Sangoku]

The way I understood your answer was "asking is dumb, you should think to find answers yourself". And I don't think finding answers is obvious at all at my current level.

You say "get closer"? The only way I know for getting closer is dashing. And if I dash and there's a pill coming to me, am I not going to get hit? You'll probably answer "then avoid it" or whatever, but I don't know what would be the best way to avoid it, etc. In other words you're saying answers are obvious and I'm saying they aren't. Where does this difference come from? This is what I answered to in the previous post (knowledge of the game etc). And my initial problem wasn't about the pill only anyway, I needed information on that matchup. Each of my paragraph would describe a problem, without emphasizing one in particular.

Anyway I don't know why you even came arguing while Bones0 provided me a perfectly satisfying answer.

 

[Dark Lady]

FoxLisk... I think his problem was more along the lines of "I need to approach, but my own methods failed. What's the better way to do it?" sort of thing. I personally think that other people who replied gave him the answers that he needed to get over that small stumbling block. This is a place to ask when you're confused as to what to do, so I find no fault in Sangoku asking at all...

If he understood ALL of his options and was a Melee supermaster, it'd be a different tale, lol.

 

[FoxLisk]

The way I understood your answer was "asking is dumb, you should think to find answers yourself". And I don't think finding answers is obvious at all at my current level.

You say "get closer"? The only way I know for getting closer is dashing. And if I dash and there's a pill coming to me, am I not going to get hit? You'll probably answer "then avoid it" or whatever, but I don't know what would be the best way to avoid it, etc. In other words you're saying answers are obvious and I'm saying they aren't. Where does this difference come from? This is what I answered to in the previous post (knowledge of the game etc). And my initial problem wasn't about the pill only anyway, I needed information on that matchup. Each of my paragraph would describe a problem, without emphasizing one in particular.

Anyway I don't know why you even came arguing while Bones0 provided me a perfectly satisfying answer.

im not arguing. i specifically said they're not dumb questions and i just think it's valuable to start looking at the game analytically now.
i would say the simplest answer as to how to get closer is to dash when he's jumping, before the pill has come out. if there's a reason you can't do that, explain what it is and we can talk more about it.
but if youve noticed a pattern (which is very important) and you know what position you want to be in (also very important), putting together the final step of "what about this pattern gives me an opportunity to get closer to my desired situation?" is, comparatively, easy. And at the very beginning levels i know it's not easy, but it's a good thing to learn.

a lot of players end up learning the easy answers, learning tech skill, and then coming back to the boards with questions like WAT DO VS MARTH [video link] when its obvious the marth is doing the same thing over and over and the player has the tech skill to punish it. not ever ending up in that situation would be super awesome and i want to encourage you to learn how to think such that you don't end up being that guy.

edit:
@empressofice

im aware this is a small stumbling block that has an easy answer, im just trying to emphasize that eventually the stumbling blocks will be bigger and the answers will be harder, and he's so close to figuring it out on his own I want him to work on getting together the last piece on its own, because that is a hard and super valuable skill.