Some serious help here :/

[Umme]

There is a tournament in 2 weeks (Storm Underground 3), and they will be having a session for Brawl and Melee singles and doubles. I entering, but I have been going back and forth between mains (Marth/Falco) that Its really starting to get to me.

Ive always played Marth. Always. I know Marth like I know my right hand. The thing is my Marth is very good, only playing comps. I have absolutely NO ONE to play agaist where I live, and Gainesville is too far of a drive. I play agaist my brother whenever he has time but now that he works and im in college i have no time to play him @ 2:30 in the morning when he gets back. I do know my Marth freezes somewhat whenever i play real people, and that Marth is the type of character that requires somewhat perfect execution to effectively be played.

My falco is not my main, but I do pick Falco sometimes. My falco does not freeze up, and I have a more comfortable feeling when i pick falco instead of marth (maybe because i am more confident on my falco than marth).

The thing is, I love playing Marth, always have. And im stuck between letting marth go and not picking him at all for the tournament because i freeze and will not most likely be able to execute him as i do with comps and picking up falco, or train for the last two weeks all i can with marth and build up confidence any way possible. Or spend my last two weeks training my falco in tech skill etc.

Any opinions please? Im not worried about the Brawl tournament (im not even going to practice), that is just for lolz.

 

[Samochan]

I believe what you do not need really serious training, if what you're saying that your marth is already fluid enough to enter tournament. Most certainly not training with just your falco, all that would be at the cost of your main, both of which being very important in counterpicking. I also suggest playing many, many friendlies on tournaments against people of your own skill level or lower. Check out how people seem to play and ask whether they'd like to play. Do not attempt to play someone of high caliber when it's bracket time, it will only serve to lower your moral when you get roughened up time and time again. Sure picking on weaker players is not fair play, but it most certainly is a good moral booster if you end up winning and at the same time maul them with combos and whatnot and get used to playing Marth and Falco against real people. And when it's time for tournament, you're confident enough on your skills to enter.

What you also need is phychological boost. If you have a rolemodel in smash that uses your main Marth, watch some of the videos. Start analyzing videos and think why do they do such things on certain points. Analyzing videos helps to build up your mindgames when you cannot play against human opponents. If you can understand why Pro's do certain things, you can understand their mind. Then when you're going to bed, think about some of the maneuvers you seem to have trouble with, executed flawlessly or something really fancy you'd love to see yourself master. Think about how you're being awesome when you're doing this and this. I call this Mind Practicing. Then practice for a little bit on the next day. Not too long periods alone, it can be detrimental.

Switch characters and not just marth and falco, experimenting with another unknown character can have quite positive effect on your whole gameplay and even net you another secondary to use if you feel comfortable with using said character. Practice with both your mains till you seem to have the hang on basic maneuvers and think about what kinds of things you want to master in the future. If you can learn to master techniques and maneuvers, your goals, one by one, it's a good way to gain confidence. And not confidence in your character or your ability to play character, but in yourself. I know for a fact that moral goes a big way on being succesful on tournaments. Keep your moral high, know your abilities and your characters, know what you can execute and know what you still need to practice. That way you can be confident when it's time to face the music.

Also, do not be afraid to mess up then and there with Marth, hell even with all the perfect execution Armada does, he's still quite human and messes up from time to time. But what you can do is to compensate for your mess ups, fix your position and whatever and in the end it might not even count as a messed up strategy or something. If your opponent can't take advantage of it, it's not a mess up. Perfection is an impossibility on a game that's super smash bros melee, so do not be harsh to yourself and expect yourself to always perform up to perfection or even up to your limits. And when you can't seem to focus enough, be fluid enough or whatever to compete with the opposition, do not get discouraged but start to try harder, get more serious about winning the next one. Thing about what you did wrong and rectify that. If you can't seem to perform a certain maneuver at some point, don't try to do it at all. I know I've tried to do many, many waveshines with one of my secondaries Fox, sometimes managing to do a very good one and sometimes just failing. But most of the time I won't even try and stick to jumping out of the shine, the finger motions just don't seem to agree with me. Failing to do a waveshine would cost me a lot more than not doing it at all.

So if you feel like your Marth is freezing up, stick to more easier maneuvers and don't try anything fancy. Keep your moral high after each match and don't let losses carry you down. Don't get discouraged if opponent seems better than you, you just need to try harder to win. If nothing else, you just might exceed your own expectations of yourself, which is probably the best reward you can gain, even if it's loss. Then you can raise the bar even higher and continue to suprise yourself as you go.

Tl;dr Version:

Keep your moral high. Confidence in yourself is the key. If freezing up, don't try anything fancy, stick to basic maneuvers. If losing, don't get discouraged, instead try harder to win. Exceed yourself and have fun playing.

 

[Umme]

First of all, thanks for the input

I have tried to simplyfy ( i dont know how you spell it) my marth to avoid freezing, because i do get caught up in the wavedash craze, and it does work, i just need to do it MORE. I always need to rememeber to keep it simple.

I do have to keep my confidence hight, and I totally agree with you that its a good idea to go against people on par with me or lower. I realize i have to keep keeping my head high even if im losing or lost. I know my marth can push wonders, its my fault of losing confidence or freezing up that limits me.

 

[Samochan]

First of all, thanks for the input

I have tried to simplyfy ( i dont know how you spell it) my marth to avoid freezing, because i do get caught up in the wavedash craze, and it does work, i just need to do it MORE. I always need to rememeber to keep it simple.

I do have to keep my confidence hight, and I totally agree with you that its a good idea to go against people on par with me or lower. I realize i have to keep keeping my head high even if im losing or lost. I know my marth can push wonders, its my fault of losing confidence or freezing up that limits me.

It is most likely just your inexperience against real people that do different maneuvers than computers do, that makes you freeze up since you're being uncertain in what you should do. It hasn't ingrained into your brain yet what kind of response you should make. It will fix itself in time if you can play more real opponents than computers, hopefully you can enter more tourneys since you can't really play against your brother regularly. What you can always do is to keep moving. If you dunno how to respond, avoid the other player till you can figure out an approach/response. At the very least, moving will make you lesser of an target.

Good luck for your tournament, keep your head high and have fun and play lotsa, lotsa friendlies and also against the occasional Pro player to get the feel on how they play the game, perhaps get them to teach you stuff about mindgaming (horribly generalized term for thinking lol) and tips on maneuvering and whatnot. =) Personally I've found tournaments are the best teachers for smash, usually skills skyrocket within and after a tournament.

 

[Umme]

Thanks for the info Samochen, you helped me out tons. My inexperience is definitely my biggest setback. I will keep my head high, win or lose, and have fun .

Thanks on the advice to keep moving and keeping my head steady. Even if i freeze, my brain will keep its steady pace.

 

[Samochan]

Thanks for the info Samochen, you helped me out tons. My inexperience is definitely my biggest setback. I will keep my head high, win or lose, and have fun .

Thanks on the advice to keep moving and keeping my head steady. Even if i freeze, my brain will keep its steady pace.

Not a problem, I hope you'll enjoy your time on tournament. =)

 

[Massive]

All I can say is be ready to lose.

Cross-training in smash cannot hurt you, it is good to have a secondary character (especially space animal, since they're so versatile). Falco is a far more technical character than Marth, improving your Falco's tech skill will improve your Marth's tech skill and vice versa.

Again, be prepared to lose and don't get discouraged.
CPUs are not even in the same league as people.

 

[Kal]

I disagree with the premise that cross-training cannot hurt you. This depends a lot on your skill level and which characters you're using. I recommend focusing on one character until you're confident in how to play every matchup. Then, pick a secondary and try to follow these guidelines. Falco is a good choice for Marth, but Fox is arguably better.

 

[Veetaak]

Play friendlies at the venue first to see what works out the best that day.

 

[Umme]

All I can say is be ready to lose.

Cross-training in smash cannot hurt you, it is good to have a secondary character (especially space animal, since they're so versatile). Falco is a far more technical character than Marth, improving your Falco's tech skill will improve your Marth's tech skill and vice versa.

Again, be prepared to lose and don't get discouraged.
CPUs are not even in the same league as people.

Absolutely right, i am ready to lose, but i also will try my 110% to win. but in the event i lose, ill learn from it, and move on.

 

[Massive]

I disagree with the premise that cross-training cannot hurt you. This depends a lot on your skill level and which characters you're using. I recommend focusing on one character until you're confident in how to play every matchup. Then, pick a secondary and try to follow these guidelines. Falco is a good choice for Marth, but Fox is arguably better.

Focusing on one character will grant you control over that characters most minute functions over time, but it will yield little insight into what other players are thinking, what their options truly are and how to counter their best tactics.

I'm not saying that one should play random secondaries in tournament brackets, you should play the character you have the most experience with/are most comfortable with. I just fail to see how understanding the mindset behind another character could be detrimental to your main; playing and understanding your weakest matchup's opposing character always yield some insight into that particular characters weaknesses and strengths, as well as the mental state the other player has to be in to perform with that character.

This is especially true when you have nobody to play with. You can't learn how other characters perform playing against CPUs. If you have the luxury of another person who plays a different character you can learn the matchup from that, otherwise the only way to learn the match is from the inside out.

 

[Mr Wizzrobe]

Warm up with all of your characters in friendlies, and play the one you've been working on most/feel most comfortable with that day in tourney.

 

[Kal]

Focusing on one character will grant you control over that characters most minute functions over time, but it will yield little insight into what other players are thinking, what their options truly are and how to counter their best tactics.

I'm not saying that one should play random secondaries in tournament brackets, you should play the character you have the most experience with/are most comfortable with. I just fail to see how understanding the mindset behind another character could be detrimental to your main; playing and understanding your weakest matchup's opposing character always yield some insight into that particular characters weaknesses and strengths, as well as the mental state the other player has to be in to perform with that character.

Playing other characters helps, but it's not a practical method of learning how to play your matchups. Nor is playing characters to learn about them equivalent to picking them up as secondaries.

Also, it's a little insulting to suggest that I am arguing that understanding the mindset behind another character is detrimental. Clearly, I'm not a ****ing idiot, so I'm not going to say "more knowledge = bad." However, the question is how detrimental trying to main additional characters is to your overall skill. In a sense, you end up "spreading yourself too thin" if you try to play too many characters. In my opinion, if you are just starting, "too many characters" is 2; for starters, players should learn one character, and all of his matchups. There is no point in learning that Falco can dair > shine > retreating nair, if you're not good enough to get past Falco's laser approach.

As I said before, I'm all for picking up secondaries. I just feel that it should be done at the appropriate time; there's no point in maining two characters if you consistently lose with both of them. Picking up a secondary should not be done to "learn characters" (and if you want to learn characters by playing them, that's fine; it does not mean you need to use them in tournament). It's a strategic move done to increase your odds of winning. If your odds of winning are absurdly low because you're terrible, picking up a secondary won't change that. You'll just perform worse at tournaments.

 

[Umme]

I am most comfortable with Falco/Doc. However with those two I tend to not play easy and tend to focus more on getting a combo and going all attack. Which sometimes casuses me to suicide, or if I am losing the match, start getting predictable and forget about overall game tactics.

With Marth, I am more careful seeing as Marth isnt the tyype of char. in which going all out is a good thing. With Marth I am more calm and relaxed and do not get frustruated when I am losing. Also, I know out playing my opponent is key to winning with Marth, and knowing my Marth can edgeguard effectively, I keep a level head. Downside, I am used to fast fallers, and Marth's floaty mechanic makes my fingers lock up and freeze.

I am a terrible mess >.<

 

[Kal]

I would suggest that you pick one of the two to focus on. Pick whichever you enjoy playing more, since they're both viable characters.

 

[Umme]

I would suggest that you pick one of the two to focus on. Pick whichever you enjoy playing more, since they're both viable characters.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will go with Marth.

 

[Kal]

Ok. I'm a pretty good Marth main and my advice is generally pretty helpful, so if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them. I'm also willing to critique videos.

 

[Umme]

Ok. I'm a pretty good Marth main and my advice is generally pretty helpful, so if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them. I'm also willing to critique videos.

Cool thanks man. I do have a question though. Last time I played with Harriet I noticed something about Marth that got me thinking: Marth is the type of character that has to bait or snake in for an attack.

This was just what I saw, because I would try to bait Josh, he wouldnt buy it, but I tried to snake in and got a couple of grabs, but I had to wait for the slightest opening while defending my Marth against Fox's grab combos and shine combos.

So my question is, other than f-air, what is the best option for either faking out or intimidating your opponent in an approach to snake in? F-airing can get punished and predictable, so I was wondering what other tactics Marth could use to successfully create a "barrier" so Fox/Falco/Falcon dont rush in like they tend to do.

I would say switching between F-airs and shield breaker, and then alteranting between them short hopped and normal hopped, all the while moving forward and then moving back, more emphasis on moving forward until I get the right spacing.

 

[Kal]

Obviously, you need to dash dance. A few good options are:

1) Empty fairs. These are shffl'd fairs dropped far enough away from your opponent to avoid getting punished, but close enough to maintain tension.

2) Dtilt. This is one of Marth's safest moves and many good Marths use it to poke the opponent's shield.

3) Grab. This is sort of the obvious one, so you need to be careful. But if you're dash dancing and you get close to your opponent and he shields, you can grab him. Of course, he can spot dodge, so it becomes something of a guessing game, but you can compensate by mixing it up.

Mostly, you want to keep some form of pressure on your opponent by staying close enough to punish them, but at the same time maintaining distance so that they cannot hurt you (this is especially important against characters like Fox, who absolutely destroy Marth at close range).

However, a quick aside: don't bother "normal hopping" anything. Marth is at a huge positional disadvantage whenever he is above someone, and full jumping into anything will get you killed. Fox in particular can just uair or usmash you out of anything. Only full jump an aerial if it continues a combo. Also, approaching with shield breaker is, in general, a bad idea. The only exception is if you think it will actually break a shield and your opponent is shielding.

Whenever approaching with an aerial, you generally want to keep two things in mind: speed and position. When approaching with fair (don't ever double-fair as an approach, by the way), you want to short hop, and then execute the fair as you fast fall. This allows for the safest execution of the move. Secondly, you want to always keep your distance in such a way that your opponent cannot punish you. Against Fox, this means being a little over an fsmash away; against Falcon, it usually means being even farther away. This is more the kind of thing you'll memorize by practicing against opponents.

 

[Umme]

Alright, thanks for the good sound advice Kal.

 

[Kal]

No problem. If you have any more questions (matchup specifics, for example) feel free to ask.

 

[Samochan]

An approach that I feel should be mentioned here, an approach even amsah uses from time to time (which he also told myself to use), would be approaching and then shielding and after that using whatever maneuver from shield yo wish, be it either grab, wavedash, jump to aerial (say a very quick fair or dair behind your back) or even counter from shield. If you are quick about it, such approach should beat most other approaches sans immediate grabbing, since you're safe from all kinds of attacks and then can formulate a response depending what your opponent may do. It certainly works with powershielding as well, I believe m2k does it quite often against Falco. But in order to punish from shield, you will need to be fairly close. Close enough to get into range quickly and punish, but not close enough to be in any real danger from say, their smashes or aerial attacks. And since marth has such a good wavedash dash dance game, it is very effective to weave in an out, shield an attack, wavedash out of the way of their dash dance grabs or aerials and then dd back/pivot whatever you wish to punish them with, usually your own grab will suffice. Note this type of style requires one to react very quickly to whatever their opponent does, so it might not suit your playstyle as you will need to get more comfortable with responding to a real life opponent as opposed to computer. But it's very useful maneuver and at the very least should be put behind your ear for future reference if you ever have trouble say, with Falco or Fox laser camping and forcing an approach.

 

[Bones0]

I'm sure most people will suggest new players to stick with just one character, but I've never been too fond of that approach. Obviously if you just play one character all the time you'll understand their matchups better and faster, but Melee is such a deep game that when you're first starting out, playing multiple characters isn't going to hurt your game nearly as bad as it will later. If you can't understand the nuances and subtle differences between approaching as Falco and approaching as Marth, it really isn't a big deal to play both of them. There's also the issue of picking a main. I feel like a lot of people just kinda fall into a character without really exploring their options with other characters. Some people learn to love their character and that's fine, but you're much more likely to feel some chemistry with your character's play style if you choose them after playing all of the characters for at least a little bit. You can never tell who you will like before you give them a real chance.

Playing less characters will help you develop better character specific strategies early on, but I would argue that learning general strategies related to out-spacing your opponent and learning manipulation and fakeouts as general strategies are much more valuable, and playing multiple characters helps to see all the different ways you can move around, react to certain strategies, etc. Then, once you've gotten a grasp on most of the core concepts you can move on to choosing a main and developing character specific strategies that can be built on top of the core skill set built up while playing several characters. I think this approach to the game will definitely yield results more slowly in the short term (you won't be beating anyone in tournament for a while), but once you get to the point where you are really comfortable with your main, then the core skills you've built up will start to speed up compared to other people who only stuck to those 1 or 2 characters in the beginning and only learned a "shell" or list of gimmicks that can be used to beat people.

With all that in mind, if you're pretty happy with Marth and Falco, that's great. For the tournament, just play friendlies with both of them. For your matches, you will get dominated pretty hard (especially with such a low seeding), so I would just suggest using Marth for Game 1 and Falco for Game 2 (or vice versa if you want).

 

[Mokumo]

If you're not in it to win and you really want to improve your Marth so much just make sure to play as many people as you can and play with an open mind. Try to learn some new strategies (not combos) and play to learn.

 

[Samochan]

With using Falco early on, it might certainly be easier to win with pure tech skill alone against players of your own skill level. However, in the end it would not progress the mind aspect of your game much if at all, since falco is generally a rush character where it's better to think with fingers than with head most of the time. Marth is the complete opposite of falco, which is why I'd encourage to work on Marth more than Falco. Falco is the easy way out, Marth is the harder but in the end better way.

Falco is cool to get your finger motions down, boost your technical skill, finger maneuvering and button smashing and whatnot, but playing marth hones the most important aspect of smash bros melee and that is the thinking factor aka mindgames. How to respond to maneuvers, how to coach others to respond the way you want them to, how to respond to a response of a response (inception anyone, lol), how to anticipate a certain response... and so on. Marth is all about baiting, anticipating and punishing, while Falco is more about rush down, overwhelming character who think on their feet (lol). While it may no longer apply on higher skill level (such as Calle W's falco), on your skill level, simply playing technical can overwhelm an opponent even if their thinking aspect is superior to yours (I've had this happen to myself), just because they are too slow to respond as they're not quite technical enough as of yet to get away from falco's overwhelming rush down tactics. But do not go that route if you can help it, since learning how to play smart as soon as possible can only affect positively on your gameplay. That way, you can apply both smart play and technical play to your gameplay and will overall be superior to simply technical playstyle. One can see tons and tons of technical players, but you don't see many as smart players as say, Armada & Amsah.

 

[Kal]

I'd be careful with running up and shielding. Marth's out of shield game is very poor. Against Falco, it's obviously necessary to an extent, but running up and shielding is, in general, not a very good strategy.

 

[Massive]

I'd be careful with running up and shielding. Marth's out of shield game is very poor. Against Falco, it's obviously necessary to an extent, but running up and shielding is, in general, not a very good strategy.

If the only other OoS game was fox/falco I would agree with you, however compared to many other characters I'd say that his OoS game is actually pretty good.

You can fair out of shield in 9 frames and all of his tilts come out in less than 7 frames (after shield lag, anyway). I've had AustinRC do heinous things to me with run-up shield shenanigans, and this was against Jigglypuff who is notorious for not being in range of OoS anything.

YMMV, obviously.

 

[Kal]

Just because something has worked or works against you does not mean that it's optimal or even good. Marth's out of shield game is good in two ways:

1) His grab has range
2) His fair comes out quickly

However, against any character worth playing, this won't matter. Running up and shielding may work, but keep in mind that its ability to work depends solely on your opponent's failures, and not upon any of your own success. Why risk getting grabbed or shield pressured by running up and throwing out a defensive maneuver when you could just do something which works consistently?

Also, AustinRC has a very eccentric playstyle. A lot of the things he does are based more on reads than on any foundation of consistent gameplay. Sure he's very good, but that's exactly why I wouldn't recommend just assuming what he does works; a lot of the time there is some logic (of which you are unaware) going through his mind which justifies something sub-optimal (and this is frequently the case with high level players like AustinRC).

Point is, he's good, but not infallible. I've seen AustinRC very, very frequently use the side-B combo against Fox and Falco, despite it being easily DI'd at any percent resulting in severe punishment to Marth. Appeals to authority that are just "I've seen this good player use it" are not really evidence of anything.

 

[Bones0]

WD OoS is the most common option I see people using. Just watch any game with Mango's Fox. He runs up, shields, and WDs back out at least half the time. Marth's OoS game is plenty good. Run up shield, grab/WD back punish/WD forward punish. Godlike. I'd almost rather have Marth's OoS game than Falco's, at least for anything except like spacie shield pressure where Shine OoS is useful.

 

[Massive]

Lol, I've beat his Marth with Kirby before, of course he's fallible.

There's no tactic you can use that is 100% effective every time. It's about adding things to your toolbox so you can use the right move at the right time and ultimately win. ****'s situational.

 

[Kal]

There are tactics which are obviously worse than others. You don't just add tactics to your toolbox because they're new; they need some degree of viability. Overwhelmingly, run up and shield is not a viable strategy against anyone, because the opponent should not be falling for it at all. Again, why bother with a strategy that requires your opponent to make an egregious error when you can just force your opponent's hand?

And Bones0, I think that, while it's true in theory, Marth's out of shield game just doesn't apply most of the time. If your shield is being pressured by anyone who knows what he's doing, you're not going to be able to get off a punish.

However, I should mention that, if you see your opponent spacing something, then running up and shielding so that his spacing gets ruined, and thus allowing you to perform an out of shield punish, is a perfectly viable strategy. However, you need to be certain you're fast enough to run to the appropriate position and shield before getting hit. For this reason I prefer to just try and maintain positional advantage on my opponent by keeping him above me, and to simply outspace my opponent until I am able to place them in such a position.

And of course, it's entirely possible that I'm just grossly undervaluing a facet of Marth's gameplay.

 

[Eternal*Ho-Oh]

I would get technically flawless before thinking about strategies. Reading these previous posts is like listening to fatties talk about the physiological principles behind each diet.

Never miss a wavedash out of shield, waveland onto stage, chain grab, and most importantly...EDGEGUARD.

Trust me, it will only be more frustrating thinking you are smart and not having reliable tech skill to go with it...meanwhile the fox is "pressing buttons" and winning.

Please take the phrase "technically flawless" with a grain of salt, the matchups will come into your head as you play and watch videos. Don't be afraid to watch the same match a couple times.

Since you said you don't have anyone to play with, tech skill (doing common things pros do...not 8x shining) should definitely be your #1 priority.

 

[Van.]

There is a tournament in 2 weeks (Storm Underground 3), and they will be having a session for Brawl and Melee singles and doubles. I entering, but I have been going back and forth between mains (Marth/Falco) that Its really starting to get to me.

Ive always played Marth. Always. I know Marth like I know my right hand. The thing is my Marth is very good, only playing comps. I have absolutely NO ONE to play agaist where I live, and Gainesville is too far of a drive. I play agaist my brother whenever he has time but now that he works and im in college i have no time to play him @ 2:30 in the morning when he gets back. I do know my Marth freezes somewhat whenever i play real people, and that Marth is the type of character that requires somewhat perfect execution to effectively be played.

My falco is not my main, but I do pick Falco sometimes. My falco does not freeze up, and I have a more comfortable feeling when i pick falco instead of marth (maybe because i am more confident on my falco than marth).

The thing is, I love playing Marth, always have. And im stuck between letting marth go and not picking him at all for the tournament because i freeze and will not most likely be able to execute him as i do with comps and picking up falco, or train for the last two weeks all i can with marth and build up confidence any way possible. Or spend my last two weeks training my falco in tech skill etc.

Any opinions please? Im not worried about the Brawl tournament (im not even going to practice), that is just for lolz.

.. this post makes me trip, because you and I are like... SO similar. I lived in FL and had no one to play but my brother for my first year of smash, only recently did i find locals to play with. I even had trouble deciding wether to use marth or falco before my first tournament. Crazy.