Samus viability at lower levels; Should I play samus?

[figer360]

Hello to all!

I have been playing melee for about a year now and went to my first tournament two months ago. I have experimented with all of the top tiers and played marth, ics and falco for awhile, then dropped falco right after my first tournament (it was trash) and have since been playing marth and ics (mostly marth though), I decided to give a look into the pikachu to ganon range of the tier list to see whether I might enjoy one of those characters, as marth has been a little boring in recent times. From looking at samus, she seems quite interesting and have decided to look into her a little more. However, of the 70+ people who go to my weekly, I have found exactly one person who plays samus, and they play sheik when actually in bracket. I have also noticed that people seem to think that samus's tech skill is quite difficult to accomplish. So my questions are:

1. Why is samus play basically nonexistent at lower levels?

2. How steep is her learning curve?

3. Is she viable as a main?

4. Would I need a secondary to cover some matchups?


Thanks!

 

[Linkkicksu]

>Why is Samus play basically nonexistent at lower levels?
She has a very short window in which to release jump for shorthopping, gimping your ability to do so reliably when coming from more mainstream picks. On top of that, she's a floaty.

>How steep is her learning curve?
Depends of what you came from.
As a fresh player, she can be hard or easy to learn depending on your innate reaction time/will to learn.
As a secondary from a floaty she can be fairly easy to learn, as long as you can wrap your head around her projectiles.
As a secondary from a spacie/fastfaller, she can be very hard to learn and adjust to.

>Is she viable as a main?
If you manage to get good, yeah.
Floaties are established as good counters to spacies due to the unusual matchup/spacies reliance on weighty characters for combos due to their shorter reach. This is why Armada is able to dominate as Peach and Hbox as Jiggs.
(Not to mention Leffen's apparent complex against Samus players, particularly Duck.)

>Would I need a secondary to cover some matchups?
Definitely. Samus is great, but not the end-all perfect counter to any character.
I'd recommend picking up something with a little more weight and speed for coverage.
I love C. Falcon for this purpose.

Final piece of advice would be to play who you enjoy the most, not just whoever you consider the most viable (though if you plan to win big, at least pick up ONE top tier.)

 

[Blisket]

Also to add onto the point of why she is an uncommon pick; she's easy to read.
Her grab, missile, roll and charge shot are all very slow to come out and telegraph way in advance.
She does have one tool that works against enemies with instant moves however; bombs.
Bombs change her trajectory when moving, making it easy to bait out whiffs when recovering while at the same time doing a little damage.
Her Screw Attack is instant too, and is a great way to punish anyone getting too close to put shield pressure on you.

 

[Nudl]

1. Why is samus play basically nonexistent at lower levels?
Her entry level is somewhat higher than most characters due to tech skill and getting bodied a lot when starting off with Samus. You'll lose a lot with Samus before you start winning.

2. How steep is her learning curve?
This really depends on how far you want to take Samus, if you know l-cancel and all the wavedashes: WD, WD OoS, Ledgedash, Platform Wavedash.. then you are well on your way. With that said Samus has an absurd amount of techs that you can choose to learn.

3. Is she viable as a main?
If Plup could play with Samus as a top 10 player then yes. All top tier matchups are sorta 40%/60%, so it's not that terrible.

4. Would I need a secondary to cover some matchups?
No, but some Samus players like to pick up Shiek because she can cover Samus's bad matchups and plays similiar to Samus.