I watched this video
https://youtu.be/uXvKpe5MP0s and I play both melee and sm4sh, my question is: How do I get better st observing my opponent''s reactions in order to read them decently?
How do I even get better st observing the things I do myself in order to keep things mixed up?
I know this is a very fundamental thing about the mental game, but it seems like I completely missed it while learning to play the game. Now if I try to observe my opponent it becomes difficult to play the game because I'm just so focused on what my opponent is doing that I'm missing basic tech or (in the case of sm4sh) I'm messing up basic combo strings and even approaching wrong.
In melee it's even harder because it's much faster where I find that this concept is way easier in sm4sh.
Is this something that will happen as I learn to git gud? Am I going to get bodied a lot more as I learn to adapt to my opponent instead of rushing in blindly to attack? I feel like I'm going to have to regress before i progress.
Should I switch characters to someone that is more read based in order to get better?
You guys give great advice, sorry for such a huge mental topic.
Melee is a fast game. As a result, the mixups are going to be coming at you much faster than in Smash 4. The key to reacting properly to any given situation is to know and understand the possibilities. Once you know them intellectually, you must develop habits that allow you to punish, avoid, or otherwise deal with the situation instinctively. You don't have
time to think about reads at high level.
One of the simplest examples is tech chasing. The opponent has 7 options: tech in place, tech roll left, tech roll right, get up attack, missed tech roll left, missed tech roll right, and stand. No one action will cover all of these options, so in order to punish the opponent properly, you must either react or read. The first thing you need to do is break down each option and figure out your limitations. Can you punish option X on reaction? How much harder is your potential punish if you hard read vs. react? How much riskier is it to read vs. react? Which options has the opponent been utilizing most? What can you do cover these options?
If you don't know the answers to these questions, your ability to tech chase will rely heavily on luck. You should learn to trust your intuition while playing, but you should also constantly challenge your intuition outside of the game to develop an accurate sense of what your opponent will do. Maybe you habitually hard read missed techs because the person you practice against misses them often. If you play someone who demonstrates they can land their techs, you will have to reevaluate how you're dealing with their options.
Even with just 7 options, tech chasing gets very complicated very quickly. As you can imagine, mixups in neutral are compounded with much more subtlety in each decision. Since you have to start somewhere, do your best to build a solid foundation of theory. If you find yourself getting beat by micro-adjustments within each mixup scenario, don't stress over it. These are the things that come with experience and time, and if you ever play someone who is very experienced in a matchup, you will often feel like you are losing mixup scenarios you aren't even aware of because they are already familiar with what you're doing.
One of the most common scenarios for Falco players is what to do after lasering. Should you approach with an aerial? Should you run up grab? Should you laser again or just back off entirely? The number of ways you can aerial an opponent is staggering, but breaking it down into larger chunks will help you build a foundation of understanding. So you laser their shield, and then they do something. Let's say they just continue holding shield. This is something you can, to an extent, react to. As you run up towards them after the laser, you can notice that they are still shielding and grab. They could spotdodge and that's something you can't react to, so it's usually best to be more patient at the beginning of matches/sets until you know what they are likely to do. It's usually better to miss out on a punish opportunity and maintain stage control than to go for a grab and get spotdodge dsmashed by a Peach. If the opponent simply holds shield after you shoot another laser or dashdance, that is information to use in the future. Keep in mind that the only way you can use this information is if you understand that a mixup occurred. Instead of shielding or spotdodging, the opponent can also roll in two directions, do certain attacks OoS, jump, wavedash, etc.
It is crucial that you figure out which options are most common in a matchup, for a specific player, and for specific situations. I'm sure you've all heard people complain about Falco's tech in place, spotdodge, shine. It is no doubt a pesky noob slayer, but the reason some players get hit by it seemingly every time is that they don't understand that it is a mixup. They don't realize that the timing of their attack is obvious and so they get confused and continue to get hit by spotdodge shines. If a third player came up and asked them what the Falco player does after tech in place, they probably wouldn't even be able to give an answer despite knowing they keep getting hit by spotdodge shine. This is because they don't identify the TIP as the beginning of a mixup scenario. Players get especially frustrated because if they finally bait out the spotdodge shine, they probably have no experience punishing it and don't get a lot off of it, and then the player who is very familiar with the mixup options after TIP will realize they caught on after only being punished ONCE. The next time they TIP and the opponent tries to bait the spotdodge shine, they will just attack (fsmash to be simple). So the player punishes a single spotdodge shine and the next time they get fsmashed. Again, their lack of understanding of the ENTIRE mixup will lead to frustration. They thought they figured out the mixup, but since Melee is a crazy deep game, Falco has about 45 billion options after TIP. Even just using spotdodge, the Falco could simply delay the timing of it.
If you've ever felt like someone was just reading your mind, this is probably what was going on. You had a narrow perspective on the mixup scenario which allowed the other player to easily adapt while you struggle to adapt until after you've been punished multiple times for something. This is why experience is so crucial in Melee, and the only way you can counteract this is to pay attention to when you get hit or miss a punish and dissect the scenario.
1. Identify mixup scenarios
2. Identify the opponent's available options
3. Identify what options you have to beat their option
Remember to chunk similar options together. Laser to SHFFL nair and laser to SHFFL dair have drastically different uses, outcomes, risks, rewards, etc., but you can't expect to understand these immediately. Put all of the laser to aerial options in a single category and learn how to beat them most of the time. Maybe you discover both CC shine and DD grab can beat laser to aerials some of the time. Once you figure out this general solution, repeat the process to refine your mixup:
1. Falco lasered your shield
2. Nair or dair
3. CC shine vs. nair; DD grab vs. dair
This is far from the end of the process. You can break down each option into more and more sub-options. Are they doing nair or dair? Dair. Are they doing an early dair or late dair? Late. Are they at a percent where a trade is beneficial? Yes. Are you facing towards or away from them? Away. Solution? Bair OoS to stuff their approach.
Don't take my word for it that this is how players deal with mixup scenarios. I encourage everyone to go watch a match and look for this specific situation or any others. Identify a mixup scenario and post it in this thread to see what others think of your analysis. You can start with a mixup you are very comfortable to get the hang of the steps, but you should ultimately look for mixup scenarios you never even noticed or thought about and analyze those. Maybe you overlooked an option that another player uses all the time, and they can give you an extra tool for your arsenal.
