Please Critique Me!

[Caliburn89]

I'm looking to improve my Link game, and it was suggested that I upload a match of mine here to get some advice on what I could do to play better. For context, I've been playing since Brawl, but have only really seriously been trying to get better since Ultimate came out. GSP seems to run around a million (recent brutal losing streaks not-withstanding.) Aside from the really stupid SD at the end, this was one of my better matches tonight. Thoughts, opinions, and criticisms appreciated!
Link vs Richter

 

[Aquamentii]

What cost you the most during your match was your airdodging when you were landing / coming back on stage. Examples would be at 0:46, and 1:12. In fact, you have a habit of only jumping up from the ledge. You need to mix up what options you do off the ledge: roll, normal get up, the rare get-up attack. The Richter wasn't really going for holy water setups at the ledge, so you have all of those options available to you. If an opponent picks up on that habit in a match, they'll nail you every time.

One of your other habits in neutral is to jump high and space out an aerial / prepare a projectile. This isn't bad if you're doing the latter, especially if you want to avoid Richter's cross or other long-distance burst options from your opponent. But you should try to short hop into your approaches more, as they become faster and tighter. Along with full hopping in neutral, you also like to use your double jump haphazardly, and you can see this is actually what cost you the match when you used your double jump in neutral and didn't land on stage. If you want space, try simply running backwards and throwing out a B-reversed arrow or boomerang.

From your spacing it seems you get a bit tunnel visioned, meaning you tend to keep your eyes on yourself instead of your opponent. This means you throw out some moves don't really seem to be aimed at where your opponent is going, but rather where they are. An example is 0:24. You run forward and throw out a Nair, but the Richter is already jumping forward and has basically crossed you up by the time you stick out your foot. You can see you land with your Nair where the Richter was before he jumped, while if you trusted your reactions a bit more, you could pull out a Dair instead and hit him while he's running/jumping beneath you. You can also see your opponent does a much more exaggerated version of the same thing, in that same instance. Notice how badly his Fair misses you. He was aiming at where you were a complete second ago.
Also study 1:42, where you don't watch your opponent so you don't see he's starting Holy Water and you jump into it. Watching your opponent will let you notice the startup animations of all of their attacks, allowing you to effectively react faster to what they are doing and counter appropriately.

You also give Richter way too much respect at the ledge. Notice how you just back off at 0:30. Later when you knock him off you pull bombs, which I agree with because they're a great tool for edge guarding, but you just stay far away from the ledge while you do it when you don't need to. If you were right at the ledge, Richter would have to worry about the bomb and then you if he gets past that. In this match, he only really had to worry about the bomb.

All in all, you're doing some good things. I just think you should take the time to work out tighter approaches in neutral, and seriously work on coming back on stage from the ledge / landing from juggles. I don't like a lot of your directional air dodges (especially the ones tilted up: why give yourself more time before you can land on stage again?) but your ground play seems decent. Final example: if you want to approach with Nair, try running forward and short-hopping into it so your opponent has less time to react to your approach, as opposed to full hopping into it or (even worse) double jumping into it, as that is slower and gives your opponent more time to see it coming.

 

[Caliburn89]

What cost you the most during your match was your airdodging when you were landing / coming back on stage. Examples would be at 0:46, and 1:12. In fact, you have a habit of only jumping up from the ledge. You need to mix up what options you do off the ledge: roll, normal get up, the rare get-up attack. The Richter wasn't really going for holy water setups at the ledge, so you have all of those options available to you. If an opponent picks up on that habit in a match, they'll nail you every time.

One of your other habits in neutral is to jump high and space out an aerial / prepare a projectile. This isn't bad if you're doing the latter, especially if you want to avoid Richter's cross or other long-distance burst options from your opponent. But you should try to short hop into your approaches more, as they become faster and tighter. Along with full hopping in neutral, you also like to use your double jump haphazardly, and you can see this is actually what cost you the match when you used your double jump in neutral and didn't land on stage. If you want space, try simply running backwards and throwing out a B-reversed arrow or boomerang.

From your spacing it seems you get a bit tunnel visioned, meaning you tend to keep your eyes on yourself instead of your opponent. This means you throw out some moves don't really seem to be aimed at where your opponent is going, but rather where they are. An example is 0:24. You run forward and throw out a Nair, but the Richter is already jumping forward and has basically crossed you up by the time you stick out your foot. You can see you land with your Nair where the Richter was before he jumped, while if you trusted your reactions a bit more, you could pull out a Dair instead and hit him while he's running/jumping beneath you. You can also see your opponent does a much more exaggerated version of the same thing, in that same instance. Notice how badly his Fair misses you. He was aiming at where you were a complete second ago.
Also study 1:42, where you don't watch your opponent so you don't see he's starting Holy Water and you jump into it. Watching your opponent will let you notice the startup animations of all of their attacks, allowing you to effectively react faster to what they are doing and counter appropriately.

You also give Richter way too much respect at the ledge. Notice how you just back off at 0:30. Later when you knock him off you pull bombs, which I agree with because they're a great tool for edge guarding, but you just stay far away from the ledge while you do it when you don't need to. If you were right at the ledge, Richter would have to worry about the bomb and then you if he gets past that. In this match, he only really had to worry about the bomb.

All in all, you're doing some good things. I just think you should take the time to work out tighter approaches in neutral, and seriously work on coming back on stage from the ledge / landing from juggles. I don't like a lot of your directional air dodges (especially the ones tilted up: why give yourself more time before you can land on stage again?) but your ground play seems decent. Final example: if you want to approach with Nair, try running forward and short-hopping into it so your opponent has less time to react to your approach, as opposed to full hopping into it or (even worse) double jumping into it, as that is slower and gives your opponent more time to see it coming.

Thanks for all the advice! I’m definitely going to take this all into practice mode.
One thing-I practice short hopping a ton in training mode, but I can’t seem to translate it into actual matches. It’s like my brain shuts off what I’ve been working on learning and just goes on instinct. Any thoughts on how to counteract this?

 

[Aquamentii]

New techniques tend to take a while to develop in matches verse other people. But there's a nice pathway for developing new tech:
1) Training room. What buttons do I press?
2) Matches verse computers. When do I press these buttons against a moving target? This is your missing link.
3) Matches online / with friends. When do I press these buttons against a thinking target?
4) Tournament matches. When the heck do I press these buttons against my opponent who's literally reading my every move and crap I paid $5 to enter this tournament and this jerk is knocking me out round 1 and his buddy is cheering against me heck heck heck palms sweaty knees weak arms heavy mom's spaghetti

Fragmenting the transition between no stress, no adversity practice and max stress, max adversity matches like this is the key to progress.

 

[Caliburn89]

New techniques tend to take a while to develop in matches verse other people. But there's a nice pathway for developing new tech:
1) Training room. What buttons do I press?
2) Matches verse computers. When do I press these buttons against a moving target? This is your missing link.
3) Matches online / with friends. When do I press these buttons against a thinking target?
4) Tournament matches. When the heck do I press these buttons against my opponent who's literally reading my every move and crap I paid $5 to enter this tournament and this jerk is knocking me out round 1 and his buddy is cheering against me heck heck heck palms sweaty knees weak arms heavy mom's spaghetti

Fragmenting the transition between no stress, no adversity practice and max stress, max adversity matches like this is the key to progress.

I’ve been avoiding playing against the computer to avoid learning bad habits, but I think I’m gonna take your advice. Thanks a ton.

 

[Veggieburger_802]

Not bad, Caliburn. You seem to understand Link's strengths pretty well. Aquamentii covered most of the important stuff, but I'll mention a few things I noticed.

• You should definitely be fast-falling more, especially during the neutral game when you're trying to get around your opponent's projectiles and start a combo. There were a few instances where I feel like you could've gotten in with a simple fast-fall nair, but your slow falling speed gave your opponent the few extra frames he needed to toss out an axe or react with a defensive option. Since Link can fall much more quickly than most characters, fast-falling is one of his most important tools for moving around nimbly. The rule of thumb for fast-falling is that you can do it as soon as you reach the highest point of your jump (when you start falling). I'd recommend trying to commit it to muscle memory in practice mode, but I sympathize with your difficulty translating skills that you've practiced into actual matches. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it eventually.
  
  
• That bomb edge-guard at 2:22 was brilliant, but you might've taken the stock at 2:02 if you had jumped and thrown your bomb about a second earlier. Bear with me here: you can visualize recovery possibilities as a cone, with the pointy end being the furthest point away from the stage. If the character wants to get back to the stage, they need to stay roughly inside that cone. Richter's recovery creates a pretty narrow and low-angled cone, but you can imagine how a character with better aerial mobility in the form of multiple jumps or recovery options (like Meta Knight or Bayonetta) might have their recovery represented by a much bigger cone that forces you to consider more possibilities. Anyway, what I've illustrated here is how you can bomb him much closer to the pointy end of his cone, where he has fewer options.
  
  
  You played the situation pretty conservatively: you stood in one spot, and waited for about two seconds to throw your bomb, by which time he had already used his tether recovery and made it back to the stage safely. It also looks like you hit to throw your bomb, but it could've gone a bit farther with . On top of that, if you had jumped and executed your bomb pull after a midair jump (), then your opponent would've had less time to drift toward safety, and you could've intercepted his recovery while he was still close to the pointy end of his cone. There's not much he could have done if you had forced him to deal with a bomb that far away from the stage. He might've been able to air dodge it with good timing, but then he would've been vulnerable, and you could've nailed him with a fair or something. In my opinion, edge-guarding with bombs is the most satisfying way to kill with Link, and it's always more effective when you detonate closer to the pointy end of your opponent's recovery cone (which is a thing I just made up, but you get the idea).
  • Another type of edge-guard you can do with bombs, if you notice your opponent going for low recoveries often, is to jump offstage just a tiny bit, drop your bomb straight down with or (depending on how low they are), and detonate it right away as you drift back onto the stage. This is more situational and character-dependent, but it's a good tool to have in your belt.
    
• Whenever you're launched high offstage and your opponent's trying to edge-guard you, pull out a bomb and just chuck it at him. Even if it doesn't hit, or you don't detonate it (which is understandable, since it's not always easy to squeeze in a when you're trying to recover), it's a good way to make your opponent uncomfortable. When you were launched at 2:55, you ended up eating 26% damage before you made it back to the stage, but if Richter had had a bomb in his face at the time, he probably wouldn't have had the confidence to toss those projectiles at you. You'd be surprised how many people just freak out and back off from the ledge when they see a bomb headed towards them. The key is to pull it out and throw it towards the ledge early enough that it will hit the ground rather than bounce off the side.
  
  
• Angle your boomerangs! Hold or immediately after you input to make them fly slightly upward or downward. Your opponents will have a much harder time approaching you when they don't know which way a boomerang might be coming at them.

You've got solid fundamentals, and considering how open you are to receiving help from others, I can definitely see you improving a lot. Keep it up.