@ garrR:
I went through game one and came up with a few things to take note of.
Game 1 -
0:01 Why would you willingly put yourself underneath Falco? Unless you have a plan for dair or know you can react to it, don’t put yourself in that situation, especially in the air.
0:03-0:07 I’m fine with your platform and spacing choices here. A lot of safe movement, which is good.
0:08 Okay I have a problem with this. Falco is on a platform, which means his options for getting back to the ground are pretty limited. You should be immediately capitalizing on his disadvantage, but instead you fail to react to his SH down from the platform and get nailed with it into a combo. Fortunately for you, he doesn’t get much damage from it.
0:10 You probably had time to shield grab. Most of the time if you have time to shield on a platform, you should mash shield grab if they land in front of you. Reason for this is that it’s harder to shield pressure on platforms, so the reward is high while the risk is low. But the Falco just opts to f-smash, putting you below him, which is good for you.
0:12 I’m okay with the SH bair through the platform. Your spacing is a little far away from your target. I don’t know if you were just playing really safe or if you thought he’d try to run off the left side of the platform. In any case, this play is conservative but acceptable.
0:13 You catch him in the air with a nicely placed fair into grab. It’s good that you’re looking for and reacting to his jumps.
0:16 You whiff a fast fallen fair and get punished by dash attack. The reason you whiff is because you’re looking for him to move into you. Try to be more aware of the possibility that Falco can be patient and doesn’t have to constantly attack.
0:22 Should have fallen through the platform with bair. I don’t know why you elected to go with fair.
0:31 Perfect opportunity to ledge hop fair. Instead you do the slow over 100% stand up animation from the ledge. And of course you get sent back offstage for your trouble.
0:38 Instead of wavedashing out of shield into shield again, you could have wavedashed into f-tilt and caught him on the edge of the platform.
0:45 Why would you waveland onto a platform?? Stay under it and punish Falco for jumping above you!
0:49 Okay you finally punished him for throwing out stupid dairs. That’s critical that you react to him and don’t let him get away with dairing from obvious angles.
0:56 You d-tilt, he misses tech, and you don’t d-smash??? Always react to missed techs with something. Dash attack … even up-smash can be used to punish missed techs…
1:01 Good nair out of shield. But then you jump onto the platform again and forfeit any advantage that you had in that situation. Stop wasting your stage control with stunts like that!
1:06 Okay, here I would actually recommend wavelanding onto the platform. The reason is because you already have the momentum from running forward and short hopping. If he doesn’t roll in, his only real options are getup attack and stand up. Both can be reacted to with drop through fair, spaced if necessary. Again, the reason why I recommend using a platform in this situation is because it puts you in a good position to cover pretty much all of his options. An alternative would be to SH and DI back so that you land outside of the getup attack range to set yourself up to punish his wakeup options.
1:08 You miss another waveland... At this point I’m almost convinced that you’re just wavelanding onto platforms when you get a chance to practice them or show off. This isn’t a mistake you can afford to make in tournament.
1:13 At that laser distance, it would be reasonable for you to try SH nair out of shield.
1:15 Another basically pointless waveland onto platform that gets you punished. Starting to look like a really bad habit.
1:18 God only knows why you would ever roll into Falco.
1:27 Falco air dodges onto the top platform, and you don’t even attempt to punish it …
1:30 I can’t really fault you for going for a grab there. But I just want to point out that you’re at a great range to continue poking shield with f-tilt.
1:38 Pretty good edgeguard.
1:47 Try run off fair to f-tilt instead.
1:49 Good anticipation of his approach. Netted you a grab and tech chase.
2:04 Don’t jab at that percent… It doesn’t really get you anything and it’s easily crouch cancelled. Try up-smash or dash attack.
2:07 Sh needles are definitely superior to full jump needles in that situation. You got the kill anyway, but the angle of SH needles would have been way better.
2:13 You fake yourself out, running one way then back into the zone where Falco can reach you from.
2:17 Again you don’t seem fully aware of Falco’s options from a platform. Run off dair is hardly ever adopted as a viable option, because it doesn’t cover as much real estate as running SH dair off the platform. Try to put yourself in the shoes of your opponent to help you predict things like this.
2:23 You landed on that laser because you fast fell. You don’t always have to fast fall. Floating aerials is a useful tool as well.
2:25 You could easily have punished that f-smash. Gotta jump cancel those grabs, bro!
2:27 Why didn’t you ledgehop fair? You had plenty of time to react to his missed f-smash. Know when your chances to land free hits are!
2:35 Nothing wrong with rolling to the left to escape that situation. Rolling is sometimes the best option.
2:44 Don’t waste frames of invincibility doing aerials when Falco is nowhere near getting hit. Get in Falco’s face and react to what he does. Instead of throwing that needle, fair and jab, you could have walked up to Falco and punished his airdodge without breaking a sweat. Instead, you got caught in some other routine that prevented you from getting anything out of your invincibility.
2:48 Don’t wavedash when running would be faster.
2:49 You didn’t space your fair properly and got shield grabbed.
2:54 Don’t full jump fair when you have him stuck in shield. Instead, it would be better to poke at him with SH bairs from below the platform.
3:16 Good job baiting the shield grab, but why did you try to waveland onto the platform to tech chase when he’s at 77%. A simple fair tech chase from below would get the job done.
3:21 He dash attacked your shield. Nair out of shield!
3:37 *Face palm*. With him up-bing so close to the stage you could have faired him, DI’ed left and landed back on the stage then fast fallen under him and double jump faired to end the game. Sorry, I know you are aware of your mistakes here and are probably kicking yourself. But I do feel the need to break down some of these things methodically to make them clearer.
