should i feel bad...?

[ryankam10]

Here's the situation:
I started playing melee like two years ago, at the start of grade 12. I was basically brand new to the game at that point (I had played occasionally in like grade 6 lol ... played fox and just up-bed over and over). Been playing falcon since then.

However I have this friend who plays fox and the thing is... he doesn't play technical or use any sort of metagame/advanced tactics at all

meaning: he doesnt wavedash, doesnt shine out of aerials, doesnt waveshine, doesnt do any of that cool **** that other foxes do. in fact he doesnt do much except basically abuse the **** out of foxes moves against falcon

e.g. foxes super fast spot dodge, upthrow => like 10 uptilts, shining offstage

basically he just plays super safe, basically spotdodges everything, abuses fox's brokenness against falcon and because of this I usually go even against him, or I beat him by a narrow margin, and this is all against someone who has 0 tech skill, doesn't smash on a regular basis, doesn't keep up with the smash community at all. The only way I can beat him is if I basically dash dance all day, never approach and just grab him over and over. should i feel bad about doing this?

 

[ArcNatural]

Your problem is you think your better because you know things he doesn't.

But the problem is your not applying anything that you know.

He spotdodges alot? run up then sh knee. DD to grab. Bait the uptilt and land on him with a nair or a dair. You should be able to DI out of the uptilt pretty simply.

If you know he is going to spotdodge you can just run up then do whatever you want. Knowing he will most likely spotdodge.

 

[ryankam10]

Your problem is you think your better because you know things he doesn't.

But the problem is your not applying anything that you know.

He spotdodges alot? run up then sh knee. DD to grab. Bait the uptilt and land on him with a nair or a dair. You should be able to DI out of the uptilt pretty simply.

If you know he is going to spotdodge you can just run up then do whatever you want. Knowing he will most likely spotdodge.

well... what i meant to say is i can beat him most of the time but i have to play in a "gay" style to do so and I really really need to focus hard to beat him

for example, when i play against my friends who are much more technical (my friend who plays a good falco), I have a harder time beating them.

And it's not like my falco buddy just plays super aggressive and all technical, but he has a good mix of campiness/not approaching and really on point technical skill.

I just hate playing this one fox because I need to concentrate so hard on not ****ing up anything...

@ArcNatural: He's not so noob that I can just dd grab everything.... he plays *SUPER SUPER SUPER* safe... campy almost. that's what makes it frustrating for me, ugh

 

[ETWIST51294]

Ahh, have you ever seen S2J play? No, that's how you play falcon.

 

[ryankam10]

sigh. when i play this fox i am forced to also be super campy and just never approach...
when i play my more technical friends I can utilize a good mix of just waiting for him to **** up and approaching smartly. i dunno does that mean my fox friend is like really good or am i just getting whooped by someone alot worse than me? He doesnt even l cancel for godsakes

ugh. in sum I guess what I'm asking has anyone had the experience of playing someone who just plays super super safe, abuses broken **** and basically never approaches??

some trademarks:
1) uses tons of up, down and side smashes when its safe to do so (much more so than more technical people)
2) basically does one combo: upthrow => uptilt or upthrow => dash attack => up or side smash
3) rarely l cancels, doesnt wavedash at all

Am I just playing overly aggressive??!?!?!?! AUGH!!!!!!!!! I think I've played him to the point where we both know exactly what the other is going to do in any given circumstance... goddamn

 

[Brookman]

You are very honestly doing it wrong.

 

[ArcNatural]

well... what i meant to say is i can beat him most of the time but i have to play in a "gay" style to do so and I really really need to focus hard to beat him

for example, when i play against my friends who are much more technical (my friend who plays a good falco), I have a harder time beating them.

And it's not like my falco buddy just plays super aggressive and all technical, but he has a good mix of campiness/not approaching and really on point technical skill.

I just hate playing this one fox because I need to concentrate so hard on not ****ing up anything...

@ArcNatural: He's not so noob that I can just dd grab everything.... he plays *SUPER SUPER SUPER* safe... campy almost. that's what makes it frustrating for me, ugh

If he doesn't know or do any advanced techniques he can't play as safe as you claim. He needs to stay grounded because if he jumps he will have a lot of lag. He shouldn't be able to grab you if you space properly and he's mainly playing safe most of his grabs would be shield grabs.

Spotdodging and rolling are usually used heavily at that level. And you said he spotdodges a lot. Quite simply to be the better player you should just play simple and out play him. you don' t need to do fancy flashy techniques to stomp players like this.

 

[Brookman]

Look, he might not know how to combo out of his shine but he's obviously not brain dead. you said that he up throws, up tilts, AND SHINE SPIKES? You probably shouldn't feel bad but you probably could learn something from him. If you can't adapt to his roll/side step abuse that just makes you inferior. In that regard, even if you know how to l cancel, dash dance, wave dash, you can't just practice smart patience and that is your current weakness.

I remember watching a local tourney-goer who had one of the most fluid looking marths around and he would lose to a roll/down smash spamming yoshi who basically just picked up the game.

It's like tic-tac-toe. You're just doing it wrong.

 

[ryankam10]

I guess I just need to play super safe and campy to beat him then... I mean against lesser players it easy to throw out shffled nairs and just win...

its like against players worse or on your level you can just basically play aggressive and win, i think to play against people who play super safe you just have to camp a ton in return, whoever approaches first gets *****

 

[Deleted member]

a win is a win, don't let anyone tell you otherwise

lemme tell you though that there's a solution to almost everything, fox especially

 

[Windrose]

johnny, do you still believe in the 50,000 nair strategy against fox? I used to believe in it, but against more aggressive foxes :S I try my hardest to space nairs but they just get inside me .

 

[Walt]

Once they get inside my nair spam/spacing I just get out there with shielding+wavedashing+rolling and do a lot of pivot grabs. Pivot grabbing a nair is really demoralizing and slows down their play often.

 

[Deleted member]

johnny, do you still believe in the 50,000 nair strategy against fox? I used to believe in it, but against more aggressive foxes :S I try my hardest to space nairs but they just get inside me .

ideally n-airs should counter aggression if you space it

i space really really hard though in between nairs

don't nair blindly too, just use it as a spacing tool

 

[Hax]

Fox is significantly easier to play than falcon, but a noob fox should still get ***** by a 2 year old falcon. it sounds to me like you've spent the past two years researching techniques without learning how to actually apply them; you should take this opportunity to practice your techchasing and your ability to read spotdodges. these are two critical aspects of falcon's gameplay (and SSBM in general) and i'm sure if you work on them you'll be ****** your friend's fox. try to really make him pay for his spotdodges; when you feel as though he is going to spotdodge, trust your read and dair, knee, or grab him. I used to have this problem vs Jman (he would spotdodge constantly to dodge my grabs) until i began to catch onto his patterns and punish him so hard for the spotdodges that he doesn't even spotdodge vs me anymore. infact i used to complain about how spotdodging is ridiculously broken but now i think it sucks hahah

 

[ryankam10]

Fox is significantly easier to play than falcon, but a noob fox should still get ***** by a 2 year old falcon. it sounds to me like you've spent the past two years researching techniques without learning how to actually apply them; you should take this opportunity to practice your techchasing and your ability to read spotdodges. these are two critical aspects of falcon's gameplay (and SSBM in general) and i'm sure if you work on them you'll be ****** your friend's fox. try to really make him pay for his spotdodges; when you feel as though he is going to spotdodge, trust your read and dair, knee, or grab him. I used to have this problem vs Jman (he would spotdodge constantly to dodge my grabs) until i began to catch onto his patterns and punish him so hard for the spotdodges that he doesn't even spotdodge vs me anymore. infact i used to complain about how spotdodging is ridiculously broken but now i think it sucks hahah

yeah your probably right. hes been playing for more or less 2 years also though! I think s2j was also right that it doesn't matter what I have to stoop to to beat him... lol

My playstyle against that fox right now, is basically to dash dance alot, try to get closer and closer to his zone of safety until hes sort of forced to do something, I also grab alot vs him everytime he throws out a random nair. I Feel like I'm grabbing him too much lol -_-

 

[Frozener]

I feel like I have a situation that mirrors yours. I play falco and I am not great, but I have loads more tech skill than my roommate, who sorta plays random characters. I've only been playing for about 6 months but we started on about the same level of noob. I was committed to learning ATs and he didn't really care. After my techskill started to get better, I was getting beaten by him consistently, no matter what character I was up against. I was get ***** because of my over aggression, predictability, and inability to read. I just assumed that techskill made me better. But I finally figured out that when I started thinking about how predictable HE was (i.e. roll/spot dodge abuse, always rolling up from the edge, crouching -> downsmash/downtilt) I could win easily. For example, every time he would take a stock he would run to the edge and wait for me to race in and then roll inward to punish my idiotic approach. Now I run at him, stop, wait for the roll and forward smash behind me. He doesn't spot dodge as much, but if I think he's going to I just wait and punish. If you find patterns like this (which there inevitably are because lack of techskill means lack of options), playing this kind of player will hopefully be much easier.

 

[ArcNatural]

yeah your probably right. hes been playing for more or less 2 years also though! I think s2j was also right that it doesn't matter what I have to stoop to to beat him... lol

My playstyle against that fox right now, is basically to dash dance alot, try to get closer and closer to his zone of safety until hes sort of forced to do something, I also grab alot vs him everytime he throws out a random nair. I Feel like I'm grabbing him too much lol -_-

If your grabbing him too much it's simply because you haven't worked on your combo's out of throws.

Falcon needs those grabs. It's just the better you get (usually) you will grab less because you combo out of grab tech chases more often. At the top level certain grab to tech chase situations can cover 2-3 options that they can possibly tech, or you can simply react tech chase them. You need experience to be able to do these properly.

One does not simply grab, tech chase dair to knee...

There's spacing...
defenses that are more than just shielding or spotdodging.
the great top tier chars are always against you.
even the very option to tech chase dair is a mindgame.

Not with Bowser could you do this. It can't be done....

ryankam10 "I'll grab, tech chase dair to knee, but I don't know the way..."

Hax "I'll help you... You have my knee"
s2j "My nairs"
Windrose "I'll follow you"
Frozener "I'll help with my experience"
Walt "My pivots"
ETWIST51294 "my video review skills"
Brookman "I'm coming too! You need people to show you how to not do it wrong!"
ArcNatural "Me too!, You need someone to come with some intelligence on this sort of thing!"

Together Isai deems us the fellowship of the "Don't get hit".

 

[ryankam10]

ahahaha i like that. anyways i think im just not being careful enough.

e.g. against lesser opponents you can sort of just throw out mediocrely-spaced nairs and have some measure of success. With my matchup against fox I just need to be REALLY on point with spacing nairs, never hitting his shield (lest I get shield grabbed) and other simple stuff. also i gotta stop recovering from below so i dont get shined
ugh

 

[Walt]

If your grabbing him too much it's simply because you haven't worked on your combo's out of throws.

Falcon needs those grabs. It's just the better you get (usually) you will grab less because you combo out of grab tech chases more often. At the top level certain grab to tech chase situations can cover 2-3 options that they can possibly tech, or you can simply react tech chase them. You need experience to be able to do these properly.

One does not simply grab, tech chase dair to knee...

There's spacing...
defenses that are more than just shielding or spotdodging.
the great top tier chars are always against you.
even the very option to tech chase dair is a mindgame.

Not with Bowser could you do this. It can't be done....

ryankam10 "I'll grab, tech chase dair to knee, but I don't know the way..."

Hax "I'll help you... You have my knee"
s2j "My nairs"
Windrose "I'll follow you"
Frozener "I'll help with my experience"
Walt "My pivots"
ETWIST51294 "my video review skills"
Brookman "I'm coming too! You need people to show you how to not do it wrong!"
ArcNatural "Me too!, You need someone to come with some intelligence on this sort of thing!"

Together Isai deems us the fellowship of the "Don't get hit".

This was a weird post! Lol.

Also ryankam you can space nairs on his shield and dash out of them and not get shield grabbed. Gotta hit with those toes man.

 

[ArcNatural]

Yeah really bored at work, found it odd that Hax posted in it. Realized only 9 people have posted in the thread. Still really nerdy XD.

You can nair Fox's shield just fine. Properly spaced he can't grab you, properly l-canceled you can jab or gentleman or some variation of gentleman to prevent him from grabbing usually. You can also do stuff like nair slightly misspaced, proper l-cancel, raptor boost and the raptor boost will move you out of shieldgrab range. I would only do the raptor boost thing if you have a read on him though. Other wise just spacing aerials like dair behind his shield to raptor boost is fine.

I'm actually pretty sure you can nair to dash and avoid getting shield grabbed but I'm not certain. Just need to make sure the 2nd hit of the nair hits low on their shield. Basically you can't fast fall the nair asap, just need to learn the timing. Ideally for most aerials you would want the hitbox to hit as low as possible unless your specifically attacking a certain spot, like shieldstabbing Marth's head, doing a retreating aerial, etc.

 

[ryankam10]

UGH
playing against this fox makes me wanna quit the game :S

I need to be more consistent with what I make out of a grab... He likes to spam nairs alot and I can usually get a grab on him, I just need to convert a higher percent of my grabs into a stock , or at least like 80% worth of damage...

 

[Brookman]

tech chase with grabs. If you're quick enough you can throw a knee to cover his tech in place/no tech and still chase with grab. Down air is pretty much the **** vs. fox.

 

[Windrose]

it SHOULD be frustrating. Falcon is one of the most frustrating characters to pick up. You have to outsmart your opponent because you can't beat them straight up most of the time so it drains alot of mental energy. Where as some characters can get by at a low-mid level play by spamming tech skills and still do decently okay.

 

[CaptainFalcon9000]

oh a friend of mine is just alike yours, he plays as snake and camp a lot and when he attacks all he uses is his froward tilt, yet your problem is that you´re afraid of being hit, if he´s capming go run to grab the **** out of him and keep on until he dies, if you can just falcon punch his face to nothingness.

 

[ryankam10]

I just need to stop treating him like a worse player, I need to play him as if he's a really good fox, I think once I change my attitude from "He has no tech skill, why am I not able to randomly spam aerials and beat him" to "I need to give him the respect of a really slippery and safe fox", I will start beating him more, or at least learning how to beat him and seeing the mistakes that are causing me to lose

 

[CaptainFalcon9000]

i just need to stop treating him like a worse player, i need to play him as if he's a really good fox, i think once i change my attitude from "he has no tech skill, why am i not able to randomly spam aerials and beat him" to "i need to give him the respect of a really slippery and safe fox", i will start beating him more, or at least learning how to beat him and seeing the mistakes that are causing me to lose

that´s the actitud duwwdee!!!

 

[Windrose]

oh a friend of mine is just alike yours, he plays as snake and camp a lot and when he attacks all he uses is his froward tilt, yet your problem is that you´re afraid of being hit, if he´s capming go run to grab the **** out of him and keep on until he dies, if you can just falcon punch his face to nothingness.

what is this i don't even...

 

[MikeHaggarTHAKJB]

yhea you should definetly feel bad, obviously you are horrible at this game

 

[GhllieShdeKnife]

wow flaming lol
and absolutly needed too
motivation

 

[ryankam10]

yhea you should definetly feel bad, obviously you are horrible at this game

FUUUUUUUUUUUuuu

 

[ETWIST51294]

oh a friend of mine is just alike yours, he plays as snake and camp a lot and when he attacks all he uses is his froward tilt, yet your problem is that you´re afraid of being hit, if he´s capming go run to grab the **** out of him and keep on until he dies, if you can just falcon punch his face to nothingness.

Melee nigga, MELEE. That other Falcon ain't really falcon.

 

[CaptainFalcon9000]

Melee nigga, MELEE. That other Falcon ain't really falcon.

i was just giving an example, melee is my favorite d**** bag

 

[linkoninja]

I had the same problem. But yeah as others said Tech-skill only gets you so far. you need to apply it or your just Silent Wolf loool. I used to go even with a friend also, but then yeah I just started playing smarter. Space properly, grab him and don't let him breathe till you take his stock, get those tech-chases in. Use the platforms if u need to lol~

 

[ETWIST51294]

i was just giving an example, melee is my favorite d**** bag

 

[Deleted member]

edit: awefawefaweah345wj46yt

 

[Superspright]

If your opponent does X a lot and you always do Y to respond to it, then did Y work? You just aren't trying the right options like others have stated. If he lacks tech skill he's very beatable.

 

[Mr.Jackpot]

A game only gets as interesting as the worst player. If a Marth is spamming FSmash pulling out all your techskill on him won't help, you just have to find an opening and hit him with an aerial. It's stupid, boring, but that's how you win.

 

[Walt]

Whaaaaat? If Marth is just spamming fsmash then he is bad and I get to have fun making him feel like a ****** when I 0%-death combo him off a missed fsmash 4 times in a row.

 

[Kanelol]

try and teach him, if he refuses to learn, **** him until he decides that maybe he should listen to you

 

[Mr.Jackpot]

You mean her?