Hello guys ^^
First of all, i warn you, I'm french ( Yes, there are french people on theses boards ! ) so my apologies if my english sounds ugly for some of you if I do some mistakes while writting this post.
As I said in the title, I "found" something tonight that I think is huge for me Mario main. But maybe some of you already thought about it, or think it's not that cool, or whatever, so I'm sorry if that post leads to nothing.
I said I am a Mario main, and my gameplay is mainly based on combos. I know combos are a very tough thing to achieve in Brawl, but I hope that you Mario mains think of them as a tough but possible thing to do, and won't say " Combos are impossible in Brawl", thing I disagree and heard too much already. But I agree that comboing is difficult, and I spend many hours in training mode trying to achieve some ( Also, you who do the same thing I did, give up training mode and go to Melee mode, the decay on too-frequently-used moves isn't effective in training mode, so your combo's may not work in a real battle as the way they did in training. Plus your real foe will DI, etc... ).
I ended being a pretty good Mario player, able to land some 0~40-50-60% combos pretty often.
Most of you probably already know the most damage racker combo Mario has : Chain Uairs.
Basically : Short hop => Uair 2 times, => land, and dash if you need => repeat the first steps. I personnaly fast fall after the second Uair of each SH, it makes the combo a little faster.
I know that the chain Bairs are also a good way to rack damages but the knockback being more important, you will surely have a hard time to chain more than 3 of them. With a good setup, you can probably land 4, 5 or even 6 uairs. And even be able to finish with a stutter-stepped Fsmash ( Yes, that works, 70% combo ! )
The hardest part of the Uair combo is the setup. You have to hit your opponent with Uair and chain him. But Uair has a low horizontal range, and it's a bit difficult to make use of the vertical range to hit a falling opponent, because he will surely airdodge / attack, and with Uair middle - low priority, you'll end trading blows at best, so destroying your combo anyway.
You will probably answer me " Go downthrow ! ". It works sometimes, and even works pretty well on light but "fast-falling" opponent ( Fox, Falco, MK ... ) because the throw finishes earlier than on heavy weight characters, and the "fast-falling" aspect of your opponent will prevent them to be knocked to far away to continue your combo ( Don't even think of chaining Puff though... )
But against middle or heavyweight characters, anyone who saw that combo once will probably ( even surely ) try to airdodge and DI far from you.
Here again, no problem. If your opponent is a little too airdodge-happy, you will probably chase them and grab or pivot-grab. But even if they get caught, they will probably think " it's alright to take 6 more % if I can avoid that hellish 50% combo ". Even if they were mindgamed, they still avoid your combo.
So I tried to find another setup for that combo, but I ended finding nothing and going chase and grabbing my opponent if I couldn't land that first Uair after that downthrow.
Basically, after a downthrow, us Mario main are used to either try a Uair combo, or mindgame your opponent by waiting for their airdodge to end and grab them.
When you try to grab your opponent after they airdodged your ghost Uair, you make use of the few frames of vulnerability he has when he lands and the airdodge ends. The timing is a bit tough but with the expended duration and range of the pivot grab, you make it most of the time if you trained enough.
Now, for the main point of this topic : What if, instead of chasing your opponent and grabing them, you just chase them and try to land that **** first upair after their airdodge end ?
I found that in a 1V1 match VS a lev9 Mario CPU. I got bored of that habit they have to airdodge as soon as they are knocked in the air, even a little. So I wanted to have fun and abuse of it. That's when I discovered ( Or maybe someone else did before me ) that you can easily land a Uair on a landing airdodging opponent, if they're tall enough ( Pretty hard with kirby or other small sized characters, but we saw earlier that downthrow finishes faster against that type of character, so it doesn't matter that much what setup you use if the combo can land ). I tried to combo out of it and manage to combo that Mario CPU with a success rate of 4 / 5 or so. I didn't try on other characters yet, but as you should now, if a CPU Mario finds a weakness in your combo, he will absolutely hit you with that 4 ( or 5, I don't remember ) frames it takes for his Nair to hit. So it should work on most of the cast as well.
So, given that your opponent DI and dodge the way you guessed, you can pretty easily land the first hit of your combo.
It sounds like I made a havoc and a huge topic over a tiny thing, but as I said before, I finally saw a good answer to that most important problem I have, being a Mario main and having a combo playstyle : the setup.
I once again apology if you thought that what I explained is obvious, and also for the ridiculous size of this thread ( I just overdid it a bit I think ), but I hope this will help those of you who play a comboing Mario and are also trying to improve Mario's comboing patterns.
So if you have a suggestion or something to add, feel free to post. Seeya !!
First of all, i warn you, I'm french ( Yes, there are french people on theses boards ! ) so my apologies if my english sounds ugly for some of you if I do some mistakes while writting this post.
As I said in the title, I "found" something tonight that I think is huge for me Mario main. But maybe some of you already thought about it, or think it's not that cool, or whatever, so I'm sorry if that post leads to nothing.
I said I am a Mario main, and my gameplay is mainly based on combos. I know combos are a very tough thing to achieve in Brawl, but I hope that you Mario mains think of them as a tough but possible thing to do, and won't say " Combos are impossible in Brawl", thing I disagree and heard too much already. But I agree that comboing is difficult, and I spend many hours in training mode trying to achieve some ( Also, you who do the same thing I did, give up training mode and go to Melee mode, the decay on too-frequently-used moves isn't effective in training mode, so your combo's may not work in a real battle as the way they did in training. Plus your real foe will DI, etc... ).
I ended being a pretty good Mario player, able to land some 0~40-50-60% combos pretty often.
Most of you probably already know the most damage racker combo Mario has : Chain Uairs.
Basically : Short hop => Uair 2 times, => land, and dash if you need => repeat the first steps. I personnaly fast fall after the second Uair of each SH, it makes the combo a little faster.
I know that the chain Bairs are also a good way to rack damages but the knockback being more important, you will surely have a hard time to chain more than 3 of them. With a good setup, you can probably land 4, 5 or even 6 uairs. And even be able to finish with a stutter-stepped Fsmash ( Yes, that works, 70% combo ! )
The hardest part of the Uair combo is the setup. You have to hit your opponent with Uair and chain him. But Uair has a low horizontal range, and it's a bit difficult to make use of the vertical range to hit a falling opponent, because he will surely airdodge / attack, and with Uair middle - low priority, you'll end trading blows at best, so destroying your combo anyway.
You will probably answer me " Go downthrow ! ". It works sometimes, and even works pretty well on light but "fast-falling" opponent ( Fox, Falco, MK ... ) because the throw finishes earlier than on heavy weight characters, and the "fast-falling" aspect of your opponent will prevent them to be knocked to far away to continue your combo ( Don't even think of chaining Puff though... )
But against middle or heavyweight characters, anyone who saw that combo once will probably ( even surely ) try to airdodge and DI far from you.
Here again, no problem. If your opponent is a little too airdodge-happy, you will probably chase them and grab or pivot-grab. But even if they get caught, they will probably think " it's alright to take 6 more % if I can avoid that hellish 50% combo ". Even if they were mindgamed, they still avoid your combo.
So I tried to find another setup for that combo, but I ended finding nothing and going chase and grabbing my opponent if I couldn't land that first Uair after that downthrow.
Basically, after a downthrow, us Mario main are used to either try a Uair combo, or mindgame your opponent by waiting for their airdodge to end and grab them.
When you try to grab your opponent after they airdodged your ghost Uair, you make use of the few frames of vulnerability he has when he lands and the airdodge ends. The timing is a bit tough but with the expended duration and range of the pivot grab, you make it most of the time if you trained enough.
Now, for the main point of this topic : What if, instead of chasing your opponent and grabing them, you just chase them and try to land that **** first upair after their airdodge end ?
I found that in a 1V1 match VS a lev9 Mario CPU. I got bored of that habit they have to airdodge as soon as they are knocked in the air, even a little. So I wanted to have fun and abuse of it. That's when I discovered ( Or maybe someone else did before me ) that you can easily land a Uair on a landing airdodging opponent, if they're tall enough ( Pretty hard with kirby or other small sized characters, but we saw earlier that downthrow finishes faster against that type of character, so it doesn't matter that much what setup you use if the combo can land ). I tried to combo out of it and manage to combo that Mario CPU with a success rate of 4 / 5 or so. I didn't try on other characters yet, but as you should now, if a CPU Mario finds a weakness in your combo, he will absolutely hit you with that 4 ( or 5, I don't remember ) frames it takes for his Nair to hit. So it should work on most of the cast as well.
So, given that your opponent DI and dodge the way you guessed, you can pretty easily land the first hit of your combo.
It sounds like I made a havoc and a huge topic over a tiny thing, but as I said before, I finally saw a good answer to that most important problem I have, being a Mario main and having a combo playstyle : the setup.
I once again apology if you thought that what I explained is obvious, and also for the ridiculous size of this thread ( I just overdid it a bit I think ), but I hope this will help those of you who play a comboing Mario and are also trying to improve Mario's comboing patterns.
So if you have a suggestion or something to add, feel free to post. Seeya !!
