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The Official Ice Climbers Video Critique Thread

DerfMidWest

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SOFA#941
The General Ice Climber Chat is starting to get really cluttered with videos and critiques and all that, so this is a place for all those videos to get posted.
In my experience, having sets critiqued is one of the absolute best ways to improve at melee, and I encourage anyone, regardless of how bad you played, or how great you are, to share your videos here.

Feel free to post whatever, and me, and/or any of the other ICs on this board will happily give you feedback/detailed analysis.

Link youtube videos or twitch archives (please time stamp these).

If you're uncomfortable sharing videos or being critiqued in a public forum, feel free to send me (or anyone else who's ok with that kinda thing) links via private message, however I encourage posting them here since you'll be able to get a couple different perspectives and opinions.
 
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Cervidae

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Feb 2, 2014
Messages
93
Location
Tucson, AZ
Yaaay Derf. Thanks for putting this thread together, man.

I do have a match that I'd like to have critiqued to start off this thread. It's from a few months ago against a local Puff. I feel pretty confident in the match-up, but the catch was that wobbling was banned for this one weekly (?) yeah it was kind of dumb. The match-up without wobbling was significantly harder, but it was a lot of fun to try and adapt throughout the set. I never really got the handoff timing during this set and even had an embarrassing rest punish whiff, but oh well, at least you guys will get a kick out of it. Anyways, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gEudLhKPzY

And just FYI I ripped this match from a twitch VOD, so the audio is out of sync and the quality is poop, so yeah, my bad.
 
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SHIP

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Dec 21, 2013
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95
Location
South West UK
Yaaay Derf. Thanks for putting this thread together, man. Sorry I didn't get around to doing it myself, but what's done is done.

I do have a match that I'd like to have critiqued to start off this thread. It's from a few months ago against a local Puff. I feel pretty confident in the match-up, but the catch was that wobbling was banned for this one weekly (?) yeah it was kind of dumb. The match-up without wobbling was significantly harder, but it was a lot of fun to try and adapt throughout the set. I never really got the handoff timing during this set and even had an embarrassing rest punish whiff, but oh well, at least you guys will get a kick out of it. Anyways, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gEudLhKPzY

And just FYI I ripped this match from a twitch VOD, so the audio is out of sync and the quality is poop, so yeah, my bad.
Who bans wobbling? That's just rude.

The first thing I would note is that your grab combos are pretty lacking. I know you are trying to handoff but tbh the guaranteed damage of a smash would be preferable to that of whiffing a handoff.

Good job catching the puff with usmash.
Roll blizzard on respawn is pretty awful. Because of the invincibility the puff could have at the very least rested you nana. You didn't get punished for it but i think wavedashing around and trying to confound the puff with your movement would have been preferable. Especially due to puff's atrocious mobility compare to our wavedash.

You start approaching with wd jab a whole lot more when you have only sopo remaining and get some pretty good damage from linking into down smash before puff finishe off the stock.

Like you said horrible rest punish. I think that turning around and usmashing would have killed there but more technical solutions such as grab pummel blizzard into dthrow usmash can kill a puff as early as 50 or so.

You only seem to back air when wavelanding off of a platform but it is quite good in neutral. I find that many puffs don't respect the autocancel on it and get hit by the followup dsmash while trying to punish it.

Decent rest punish at 4:35ish there wasn't anything more you could have gotten.

At that start of the second game that dthrow dair dash attack was pretty creative, never seen that before, I feel like you might have been able to follow up with fair afterwards although that would be quite risky.

At 7:45ish those back airs were spaced excellently.

Most of you kills came from wavedashing and smashing. I feel like a puff with better spacing and awareness would have given you more trouble.

I feel like shffld fairs are pretty good against puff because of their range and the possibility to meteor into jab reset so you may want to look into that.

I hope that this was at least somewhat helpful.
 

Kyu Puff

Smash Champion
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Feb 22, 2007
Messages
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Massachusetts
vs Squid

Overall, I was satisfied with how I played during this set, but I got randomly 3-stocked game 2. What could I have done differently? I think I also need to work on spacing my projectiles better, because I didn't get a lot of mileage out of them and put myself needlessly in danger a few times.

vs Lucky's Marth

Pretty disappointed with how I played here; I was missing inputs left and right (mostly timing out of shield and wavelanding onto the stage), and I landed tons grabs but never got anything out of them. I think I kept assuming he would mash out, regardless of percentage, so I'd throw him early without going for anything big. Feel free to tear me apart here, there's a lot I could've done better, and I want to avoid letting something like this happen in the future.

Lucky's spacing on shield is amazing, though, which threw me off. He would space moves outside of grab range, and throw out a bunch of consecutive hitboxes to wear down my shield quickly. I think I've been conditioned by other Marth players to rely on shield a lot, since they can be tricked into misspacing f-airs and d-tilts, but it definitely wasn't working here.

vs Sherigami

I won this match, but I felt like it was only because he lacked match-up knowledge. There were a lot of missed edgeguards (just panicked and hit the wrong buttons), and a lot of missed openings. I guess the two main areas I'm aiming to improve in this match-up are zoning (because there has to be more to it than just attacking the platforms) and optimizing my defensive reactions to different moves (especially out of shield/crouch cancel) so that I don't miss potential openings. If anyone has insight into what I could be doing better, I'm all ears, since I have comparitively little Sheik experience.

At one point I had the lead, and decided to sit back/let him approach, but that forced me to give up center stage, so I almost feel like pressuring the platforms from near-center is a more comfortable position to be in.


EDIT: Updated with youtube links.
 
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DerfMidWest

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SOFA#941
Yaaay Derf. Thanks for putting this thread together, man.

I do have a match that I'd like to have critiqued to start off this thread. It's from a few months ago against a local Puff. I feel pretty confident in the match-up, but the catch was that wobbling was banned for this one weekly (?) yeah it was kind of dumb. The match-up without wobbling was significantly harder, but it was a lot of fun to try and adapt throughout the set. I never really got the handoff timing during this set and even had an embarrassing rest punish whiff, but oh well, at least you guys will get a kick out of it. Anyways, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gEudLhKPzY

And just FYI I ripped this match from a twitch VOD, so the audio is out of sync and the quality is poop, so yeah, my bad.
Ship already posted a bunch of stuff, so I'ma skip this for now, but I'll take a look later and see if I notice anything he didn't already point out.

vs Squid

Overall, I was satisfied with how I played during this set, but I got randomly 3-stocked game 2. What could I have done differently? I think I also need to work on spacing my projectiles better, because I didn't get a lot of mileage out of them and put myself needlessly in danger a few times.

vs Lucky's Marth

Pretty disappointed with how I played here; I was missing inputs left and right (mostly timing out of shield and wavelanding onto the stage), and I landed tons grabs but never got anything out of them. I think I kept assuming he would mash out, regardless of percentage, so I'd throw him early without going for anything big. Feel free to tear me apart here, there's a lot I could've done better, and I want to avoid letting something like this happen in the future.

Lucky's spacing on shield is amazing, though, which threw me off. He would space moves outside of grab range, and throw out a bunch of consecutive hitboxes to wear down my shield quickly. I think I've been conditioned by other Marth players to rely on shield a lot, since they can be tricked into misspacing f-airs and d-tilts, but it definitely wasn't working here.

vs Sherigami

I won this match, but I felt like it was only because he lacked match-up knowledge. There were a lot of missed edgeguards (just panicked and hit the wrong buttons), and a lot of missed openings. I guess the two main areas I'm aiming to improve in this match-up are zoning (because there has to be more to it than just attacking the platforms) and optimizing my defensive reactions to different moves (especially out of shield/crouch cancel) so that I don't miss potential openings. If anyone has insight into what I could be doing better, I'm all ears, since I have comparitively little Sheik experience.

At one point I had the lead, and decided to sit back/let him approach, but that forced me to give up center stage, so I almost feel like pressuring the platforms from near-center is a more comfortable position to be in.


EDIT: Updated with youtube links.
So I actually watched the entire set with squid a couple days ago and did a full critique and stuff, but then I didn't post it, soooo I'm just gonna write another one when I have more time.
But the big things I remember were that you were putting yourself in the corner a lot and kind of ignoring his position a little bit on a few occasions.
You also went for some pretty cool techy stuff, but missed it, and ended up being in a garbage situation a few times I remember (story of my life tho...)
I also remember being mad about dreamland being the first stage you ended up going to, but you won that game, so w/e.

I also felt like your yoshi's play could use some improvement, can't remember all the things I was noticing in particular, but that was probably mostly just because squid was more comfortable on that stage than you, which can be irritating.

Anyway, I'll watch it again and post an actual critique eventually.
 

Kyu Puff

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So I actually watched the entire set with squid a couple days ago and did a full critique and stuff, but then I didn't post it, soooo I'm just gonna write another one when I have more time.
But the big things I remember were that you were putting yourself in the corner a lot and kind of ignoring his position a little bit on a few occasions.
You also went for some pretty cool techy stuff, but missed it, and ended up being in a garbage situation a few times I remember (story of my life tho...)
I also remember being mad about dreamland being the first stage you ended up going to, but you won that game, so w/e.

I also felt like your yoshi's play could use some improvement, can't remember all the things I was noticing in particular, but that was probably mostly just because squid was more comfortable on that stage than you, which can be irritating.

Anyway, I'll watch it again and post an actual critique eventually.
Thanks, I look forward to it.

For stage striking, I believe it came down to Yoshi's vs. Dreamland. I don't like Battlefield against Falco because the platforms are just as bad as Dreamland's, you don't live for as long, and there's less horizontal space. I believe that ICs use horizontal space better than Falco does, because his lasers are fairly ineffective and he has a much harder time approaching from the side. Yoshi's can be fun, but I don't think it's a great stage choice against aggressive Falcos. I knew Squid wouldn't try to camp me so I went Dreamland.

I actually don't mind Dreamland as a first stage, even against campy players. The game takes significantly longer, which gives you more time to look for habits and see how they react in different situations. You get to move around and warm up your hands, don't get punished as hard for mistakes, etc.
 

DerfMidWest

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Thanks, I look forward to it.

For stage striking, I believe it came down to Yoshi's vs. Dreamland. I don't like Battlefield against Falco because the platforms are just as bad as Dreamland's, you don't live for as long, and there's less horizontal space. I believe that ICs use horizontal space better than Falco does, because his lasers are fairly ineffective and he has a much harder time approaching from the side. Yoshi's can be fun, but I don't think it's a great stage choice against aggressive Falcos. I knew Squid wouldn't try to camp me so I went Dreamland.

I actually don't mind Dreamland as a first stage, even against campy players. The game takes significantly longer, which gives you more time to look for habits and see how they react in different situations. You get to move around and warm up your hands, don't get punished as hard for mistakes, etc.
Thats fair. I personally really dislike bf against him for the top platform, but im much more comfortable there then on dreamland. I don't like giving falco as much room to move, but im also a little more aggressive against spacies and yoshis and FoD let me do that better.

ButI feel that a lot of falco's do not abuse the matchup to the best of their ability, and that lets you get away with certain stages.

Fly, you've got a new recruit here, any tips to a new Icy? Things to focus on to start?
Welcome dude, pop on by the general chat and ask questions.
Also reading fly's guide is a fantastic way to get started.
 

Jagoffian

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Jan 29, 2012
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Orange County, CA
Hey guys, I played a sheik yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B19xwukXlY

I think my biggest problems in this set were that I played way too aggressive (too many wavedash-ins) and dropping grab punishes (I reaaaaally need to work on my wobbling). I'm also terrible at intercepting sheik when she's going after Nana. Any advice is appreciated!
 

Fly_Amanita

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Claremont, CA
Faceroll does way too many tilts. You can CC -> dash grab -> kill him for a lot of those. Practice punishing Sheik's dsmash OoS, also, since that's a guaranteed WD OoS -> grab. There are a lot of times when you have a free grab and you choose something else. Sometimes this makes sense when you're just Popo, but grabbing is pretty much always better than anything else when you're synced. I wouldn't dash attack so much as Popo against Sheik since it doesn't really lead to much.
 

SHIP

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Dec 21, 2013
Messages
95
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South West UK
Hey guys, I played a sheik yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B19xwukXlY

I think my biggest problems in this set were that I played way too aggressive (too many wavedash-ins) and dropping grab punishes (I reaaaaally need to work on my wobbling). I'm also terrible at intercepting sheik when she's going after Nana. Any advice is appreciated!
You die a lot in some very silly ways. Probably worth putting some time into thinking a bit more about your recovery choices.

Your edgeguards against sheik were also a bit dodgy. Any time she is off stage and forced to recover you should be aiming to either get a grab or force her back off in the same direction so that she is trapped with the same limited set of options. Stand up from the ledge to grab is actually very good against sheik's recovery if you can force her onto the ground because you can either kill her or reverse fsmash her off again.
 

Vanitas

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Jan 30, 2010
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Final Destination
Hey! Looking for critique! I played a super aggro Fox the other day by the name of Chester01 (Ranked 5th in the same region as (some common big names) Kage the Warrior, Bam and Vwins who are respectively higher). Although I beat him in Winners, these matches are him resetting the bracket and winning eventually lol. I think where I suffer is how I edgeguard spacies and I dropped many wobbles as it was getting late and my concentration was starting to wane. Although dropping some wobbling might have caused me to lose some matches, I would really like to be critiqued more on my neutral game (as that's probably more important in how I get my grabs and punishes). All advice and critique would be super appreciated!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ittPEHBeQe0
 
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VegiLohrd

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Jan 23, 2014
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Ok so I know this is pretty bad because 1. I've never played against jigglypuff really and 2. I've only mained Ice Climbers for like 3-4 months now. But I took some notes on it and I'd like to hear better Ice Climbers opinions of it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2Jv6zvAO1U Winner's Finals (audio/video is a little ****ed but whatever)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z139gba0slQ Grand Finals

And while I'm here might as well get your reactions to this absolutely trash set I had with dizzkidboogie on commentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUQ30Qetjro
 

DerfMidWest

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SOFA#941
Ok so I know this is pretty bad because 1. I've never played against jigglypuff really and 2. I've only mained Ice Climbers for like 3-4 months now. But I took some notes on it and I'd like to hear better Ice Climbers opinions of it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2Jv6zvAO1U Winner's Finals (audio/video is a little ****ed but whatever)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z139gba0slQ Grand Finals

And while I'm here might as well get your reactions to this absolutely trash set I had with dizzkidboogie on commentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUQ30Qetjro
I'm not really super familiar with the puff mu myself, but this is what I see:

I only watched the first game of the first set so far, but I'll watch the rest later.
So far the big things I'll say are there:
1.Pay more attention to your position and be aware of where you are on the stage and where puff is vulnerable.
2. Stop committing to things so hard (especially charging smashes), just react more.
3. Poke more. Little pokes tend to set up the big hits, as opposed to just throwing out big moves and whiffing and getting nothing. pressuring puff that's way up high with uairs puts her in a really bad spot.
4. Really think about grabs and how you can get the most off of them (and at what percent certain things start to work at). If you're not going to wobble, you want to at least be getting something off of your grabs.

here's a full critique of the first game if you want to read it:
(winners finals):
0:10 that was a free grab. You went for a dsmash to punish (it was late so it missed anyway), but you would get way more off grabbing there than you would off of a raw solo-dsmash. While you shouldn't be fishing for grab, you want to be aware that it is still your hardest punish and generally whenever you have the option to either grab or smash attack, grab is the harder punish.
Dsmash would just reset to neutral.

0:18 edgeguarding puff isn't super easy for ICs but generally what I like to do is have nana blizzard by the ledge then jump up and uair like in front and bellow her, so she has to jump. Then I just count her jumps, which limits where she can land and punish that.

0:24 not sure what was going on with that fsmash, but that was super over-commital and he just jumped over you and baired (and gained total control of the stage with you in knockdown and trapped on the ledge, away from nana).

0:55 another unsafe dash attack from puff. This time you opted to punish with jab when puff was at 90+%. Grab->dthrow usmash would have killed here (or fthrow->dash cancel usmash, which I think is a better option if you're synced properly).
good reaction to nana tho, but if she hadn't done computer things that happened to work, you wouldn't have gotten the kill.

1:03 bad on both your parts. If he hadn't misspaced his fsmash so horribly, you would have been pushed on the ledge.
I don't like being forced up to the ledge at all, but especially not in your shield, that's really a position you want to avoid.
You ended up getting a grab, and that was really important, but you didn't get anything off of it. I know you don't wobble, but you at least could have wracked up some percent and tried to regain stage control.
If you can't kill off your grabs, you want to get the most out of them that you can, and a lot of the time that's just position.
Either throwing her offstage (I probably would have done reverse fsmash for more percent) or getting her up above you would let you run back to center stage and keep puff in a bad spot.
But instead you died.

1:17 not sure I liked the spot dodge desync, but blizzard walling was the right idea here. Wouldn't have ice blocked as popo while puff is in the air, since that doesn't do much, but you can threaten her with your shield or with a different attack.
He pounded above your head to avoid the blizzard, which was bad, but it stopped him from being grabbed because he was so high. It would have been better to do a synced usmash here to put on percent and get him up above you which would let you poke with uairs and stuff.
If he'd spaced the pound correctly, or made it descend, it would have been better to shield and try and shield grab it than to try and dash grab, since you would have gotten smacked in the head.

1:24 you got another grab that you got nothing off of.
It seems like you're not really sure what to do when you grab puff, and because he's at such low percent, he just mashes out before you can do anything.
In general, don't try to just pummel someone when they are at super low percent, because that gives them a window to mash out. At like 0-ish to 30%, I usually just throw right away.
Anyway, with puff, if you're not wobbling, dthrow->smash attack (or fthrow, it does more damage, but you have to dash cancel if you want to usmash) to put puff in a bad position then poke at her or wall her out.
Unless you're in position to handoff, because that's a better option by the edge.

1:36 I would have gone to punish the grounded pound here. You put out a blizzard, and recognized that he got hit by it, but didn't react to what he did about it.
You definitely could have connected a grab since he didn't SDI the blizzard properly, but you needed to be further forward.

After that you did the thing where you're sitting in shield while trapped against the ledge.
Not a position you want.

1:55 the handoff timing on puff (from dthrow) is really fast because she's hella light, so keep that in mind when going for those.
that fsmash after the dthrow never should have connected though... puff could have just jumped out. But take what you can get I guess.

1:59 good ice block lmao. When puff is at 96%, I would just dsmash her out of it instead, at lower percent I grab because rollout is fraudulent, but since you don't have a lot of experience in the mu, I don't blame you for choosing iceblock, you didn't get anything off it, but it kept you safe. I would have thought blizzard might be better, and that rollout could have gone through iceblock, but I guess it's even more fraudulent than I thought.
jumping to a platform and avoiding it altogether would have been fine too.

2:02, another bad fsmash. Waaay too much commitment.

2:09, you had the right idea with dthrow usmash, but puff is super light and dthrow is affected by weight, so you had to do it a little faster than that. Fthrow->dash cancel usmash timing is not affected by weight though and is overall better, just a little harder to learn.
At that percent, even like dthrow->uair would have killed, so it wouldn't have mattered.

2:43 pound to the ledge sucks and this isn't brawl so it doesn't just cancel. That should have been a super dead puff, but you did another silly fsmash and couldn't react because you super over committed again.

2:46 uair would have been better than usmash here. You're fishing for this kill super hard and it's letting him get away with a lot more.

3:06 please don't jump at the invincible puff.

3:14, he ended up behind you from that pound on shield, grab wouldn't have worked, but usmash OoS might have. AC Bair OoS definitely would have connected and been your safest option. You would have kept stage too.

As a whole, this kid is throwing out waaay too many pounds in neutral. It's irritating as ICs, since nana can't CC them, but you can just shield and punish them. you have to watch your shield size though.
CCing is still a good option, just remember nana might pop up.

at like 3:20-some, completely disregard what the commentators are saying about rest. Puff can throw out as many rests as she wants bellow 60%(depending on stage) as long as she hits one climber. Sopo's rest punish game is literally only charged usmash, and nana usually does something dumb like jab, she also dies if she gets hit. Puff should be dead if she misses a rest, but against a non-wobbling IC, there is no real threat aside from double usmash (which should kill around 60% depending on stage) or walk to ledge->handoff.
When I play against 4% or Abu (the only puffs I ever really get to play against), they will just throw out rests whenever they see an opportunity. It's always super important to be covering nana's weakpoints when she's vulnerable in this mu, because otherwise she dies.
 

DerfMidWest

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SOFA#941
Yo here's a couple things from a few weeks ago (I don't know if I posted these anywhere already)
If anyone cares to critique, it would be much appreciated.
The only one of these I've watched super close so far is the set against beegs, but as a whole the big things that kept messing me up were that my grab punishes were super weak because I just couldn't hold a wobble at all this tourney. That's been pretty frustrating for me in general lately because I don't really drop it when practicing by myself or when playing friendlies, but I get kind of adrenaline rushy in tourney and either go way too fast or try to calm down and go too slow. That's just something I'm trying to iron out by using it more in tourney, but w/e.
A couple other bad habits I picked up on were running in with smash attacks way too often when I could have grabbed or done something that would have lead to a harder punish or at least better position.
I also had a tendency to just give up stage at a couple points or trap myself in the corner.
I occasionally would get carried away with moving too much and just leave nana vulnerable.

I think at this tournament, my movement and techskill was pretty on point (I was trying to calm down with tech stuff a lot too and focus on being more consistent), but the biggest issue I had was just not capitalizing off grabs super hard when I got them, which I feel is especially huge in these three matchups.

anyway, please advice at me

vs Rob Taylor (Fox)

vs Beegs (Marth)

vs ShroudedOne (Peach)
 

VegiLohrd

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jan 23, 2014
Messages
135
Location
Pittsburgh/Erie, PA, USA
I'm not really super familiar with the puff mu myself, but this is what I see:

I only watched the first game of the first set so far, but I'll watch the rest later.
So far the big things I'll say are there:
1.Pay more attention to your position and be aware of where you are on the stage and where puff is vulnerable.
2. Stop committing to things so hard (especially charging smashes), just react more.
3. Poke more. Little pokes tend to set up the big hits, as opposed to just throwing out big moves and whiffing and getting nothing. pressuring puff that's way up high with uairs puts her in a really bad spot.
4. Really think about grabs and how you can get the most off of them (and at what percent certain things start to work at). If you're not going to wobble, you want to at least be getting something off of your grabs.

here's a full critique of the first game if you want to read it:
(winners finals):
0:10 that was a free grab. You went for a dsmash to punish (it was late so it missed anyway), but you would get way more off grabbing there than you would off of a raw solo-dsmash. While you shouldn't be fishing for grab, you want to be aware that it is still your hardest punish and generally whenever you have the option to either grab or smash attack, grab is the harder punish.
Dsmash would just reset to neutral.

0:18 edgeguarding puff isn't super easy for ICs but generally what I like to do is have nana blizzard by the ledge then jump up and uair like in front and bellow her, so she has to jump. Then I just count her jumps, which limits where she can land and punish that.

0:24 not sure what was going on with that fsmash, but that was super over-commital and he just jumped over you and baired (and gained total control of the stage with you in knockdown and trapped on the ledge, away from nana).

0:55 another unsafe dash attack from puff. This time you opted to punish with jab when puff was at 90+%. Grab->dthrow usmash would have killed here (or fthrow->dash cancel usmash, which I think is a better option if you're synced properly).
good reaction to nana tho, but if she hadn't done computer things that happened to work, you wouldn't have gotten the kill.

1:03 bad on both your parts. If he hadn't misspaced his fsmash so horribly, you would have been pushed on the ledge.
I don't like being forced up to the ledge at all, but especially not in your shield, that's really a position you want to avoid.
You ended up getting a grab, and that was really important, but you didn't get anything off of it. I know you don't wobble, but you at least could have wracked up some percent and tried to regain stage control.
If you can't kill off your grabs, you want to get the most out of them that you can, and a lot of the time that's just position.
Either throwing her offstage (I probably would have done reverse fsmash for more percent) or getting her up above you would let you run back to center stage and keep puff in a bad spot.
But instead you died.

1:17 not sure I liked the spot dodge desync, but blizzard walling was the right idea here. Wouldn't have ice blocked as popo while puff is in the air, since that doesn't do much, but you can threaten her with your shield or with a different attack.
He pounded above your head to avoid the blizzard, which was bad, but it stopped him from being grabbed because he was so high. It would have been better to do a synced usmash here to put on percent and get him up above you which would let you poke with uairs and stuff.
If he'd spaced the pound correctly, or made it descend, it would have been better to shield and try and shield grab it than to try and dash grab, since you would have gotten smacked in the head.

1:24 you got another grab that you got nothing off of.
It seems like you're not really sure what to do when you grab puff, and because he's at such low percent, he just mashes out before you can do anything.
In general, don't try to just pummel someone when they are at super low percent, because that gives them a window to mash out. At like 0-ish to 30%, I usually just throw right away.
Anyway, with puff, if you're not wobbling, dthrow->smash attack (or fthrow, it does more damage, but you have to dash cancel if you want to usmash) to put puff in a bad position then poke at her or wall her out.
Unless you're in position to handoff, because that's a better option by the edge.

1:36 I would have gone to punish the grounded pound here. You put out a blizzard, and recognized that he got hit by it, but didn't react to what he did about it.
You definitely could have connected a grab since he didn't SDI the blizzard properly, but you needed to be further forward.

After that you did the thing where you're sitting in shield while trapped against the ledge.
Not a position you want.

1:55 the handoff timing on puff (from dthrow) is really fast because she's hella light, so keep that in mind when going for those.
that fsmash after the dthrow never should have connected though... puff could have just jumped out. But take what you can get I guess.

1:59 good ice block lmao. When puff is at 96%, I would just dsmash her out of it instead, at lower percent I grab because rollout is fraudulent, but since you don't have a lot of experience in the mu, I don't blame you for choosing iceblock, you didn't get anything off it, but it kept you safe. I would have thought blizzard might be better, and that rollout could have gone through iceblock, but I guess it's even more fraudulent than I thought.
jumping to a platform and avoiding it altogether would have been fine too.

2:02, another bad fsmash. Waaay too much commitment.

2:09, you had the right idea with dthrow usmash, but puff is super light and dthrow is affected by weight, so you had to do it a little faster than that. Fthrow->dash cancel usmash timing is not affected by weight though and is overall better, just a little harder to learn.
At that percent, even like dthrow->uair would have killed, so it wouldn't have mattered.

2:43 pound to the ledge sucks and this isn't brawl so it doesn't just cancel. That should have been a super dead puff, but you did another silly fsmash and couldn't react because you super over committed again.

2:46 uair would have been better than usmash here. You're fishing for this kill super hard and it's letting him get away with a lot more.

3:06 please don't jump at the invincible puff.

3:14, he ended up behind you from that pound on shield, grab wouldn't have worked, but usmash OoS might have. AC Bair OoS definitely would have connected and been your safest option. You would have kept stage too.

As a whole, this kid is throwing out waaay too many pounds in neutral. It's irritating as ICs, since nana can't CC them, but you can just shield and punish them. you have to watch your shield size though.
CCing is still a good option, just remember nana might pop up.

at like 3:20-some, completely disregard what the commentators are saying about rest. Puff can throw out as many rests as she wants bellow 60%(depending on stage) as long as she hits one climber. Sopo's rest punish game is literally only charged usmash, and nana usually does something dumb like jab, she also dies if she gets hit. Puff should be dead if she misses a rest, but against a non-wobbling IC, there is no real threat aside from double usmash (which should kill around 60% depending on stage) or walk to ledge->handoff.
When I play against 4% or Abu (the only puffs I ever really get to play against), they will just throw out rests whenever they see an opportunity. It's always super important to be covering nana's weakpoints when she's vulnerable in this mu, because otherwise she dies.
You're a gentleman and a scholar.
 

941

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Nov 28, 2014
Messages
448
I'm relatively new to competitive smash, so if someone could give me some advice, I would really appreciate it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuWl-5tYnbs

I don't really care too much about the first set (4 games), because I spent most of it trying to learn the Ganondorf MU (although I won't ignore any comments about it). I'm mostly interested in how I could have played the games against Marth better, as well as any bad habits or recurring mistakes that stand out. Thanks in advance!
 

DerfMidWest

Fresh ******
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Mar 31, 2011
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SOFA#941
^ I see all you guys videos and I will try to watch them later if I have time

Here is me vs drephen from a tournament this weekend (in pools). The first game is the one I care about most, I'm not sure what happened to first stock in the video, but I'm pretty sure I just walled him out.
game 2 and 3 he c/ped luigi and I kinda just stopped caring because it was pools, which is a horrible excuse and I'm pretty disappointed with myself for that, and didn't adapt to his style being very different from the luigi experience that I have (vudu / a little abate). I could have done a lot of things differently those games (especially in regards to my mentality), but w/e.

I haven't had time to just watch through the whole things and critique myself yet, but if anyone else would like to watch and give me some pointers that would be great. Right now the biggest thing I'm trying to work on is optimizing my punish game, because I still do a lot of risky and/or suboptimal stuff, but I've been doing pretty good at calming down in tournament lately.

The other thing I've been trying to do is calming down with just doing stupid IC tech for no reason and focusing on the stuff I don't mess up right now when in tournament. I'm going to try and reintroduce a lot of the more techy stuff into my play slowly as I get it down to as near 100% consistent as I can. Not about losing stocks from tech flubs these days.
 
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SHIP

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Dec 21, 2013
Messages
95
Location
South West UK
^ I see all you guys videos and I will try to watch them later if I have time

Here is me vs drephen from a tournament this weekend (in pools). The first game is the one I care about most, I'm not sure what happened to first stock in the video, but I'm pretty sure I just walled him out.
game 2 and 3 he c/ped luigi and I kinda just stopped caring because it was pools, which is a horrible excuse and I'm pretty disappointed with myself for that, and didn't adapt to his style being very different from the luigi experience that I have (vudu / a little abate). I could have done a lot of things differently those games (especially in regards to my mentality), but w/e.

I haven't had time to just watch through the whole things and critique myself yet, but if anyone else would like to watch and give me some pointers that would be great. Right now the biggest thing I'm trying to work on is optimizing my punish game, because I still do a lot of risky and/or suboptimal stuff, but I've been doing pretty good at calming down in tournament lately.

The other thing I've been trying to do is calming down with just doing stupid IC tech for no reason and focusing on the stuff I don't mess up right now when in tournament. I'm going to try and reintroduce a lot of the more techy stuff into my play slowly as I get it down to as near 100% consistent as I can. Not about losing stocks from tech flubs these days.
I'm told by people that Luigi is a bad matchup for ice climbers but I've never felt that way. I use fair bair and blizzard a lot against him because of the big hitboxes. I don't really feel like Yoshi's is a particularly good stage against Luigi. I like places that are wide open because Ice climbers can then stop Luigi's wavedash approaches with things like blizzard and his options for going over it to get you are not great because of his slow air movement.

You were really passive in edgeguarding him. A lot of times back air and downtilt or smashes can keep Luigi from recovering.
 

DerfMidWest

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SOFA#941
I'm told by people that Luigi is a bad matchup for ice climbers but I've never felt that way. I use fair bair and blizzard a lot against him because of the big hitboxes. I don't really feel like Yoshi's is a particularly good stage against Luigi. I like places that are wide open because Ice climbers can then stop Luigi's wavedash approaches with things like blizzard and his options for going over it to get you are not great because of his slow air movement.

You were really passive in edgeguarding him. A lot of times back air and downtilt or smashes can keep Luigi from recovering.
I actually just ran back to yoshi's because I didn't feel as though the stage were the problem.
He banned FD, and I didn't have FoD, so I didn't feel there were other stages for me to go.
I don't like the space above climbers under the platform on dreamland, and I'm used to abate on BF, but honestly I think BF would have been my best stage here.
Maybe stadium but I didn't want to deal with the transformations if I lost the lead.
I don't think yoshi's was the worst choice though because it gave me consistent control of that platform and really limited luigi's movement.

Overall I really just don't care about the games with his luigi, I think I would beat it if we did it again. But I could have autopiloted less.
 

Fly_Amanita

Master of Caribou
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PS is the best stage against Luigi after FD. With no top platform and terrible aerial movement, it's really hard for him to deal with blizzard there.
 

DerfMidWest

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SOFA#941
HEY who wants to see me lose to the third best player in my region?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWhvaolAgSI

S/O to Logan calling every IC player in Pittsburgh uncreative
I just watched it real quick but the big things that stood out to me right away were your movement and your grab combos/followups. Both of those need work.Most of the time when you're getting a grab, you'll do like throw->smash attack then it just resets to neutral and you've done about 30% or something.
For as many grabs as Johnny let you get, you could have gotten way more out of them.

A lot of it is also that you hesitate when you have openings to punish. You kind of second guess yourself and don't take openings, which is something that happens to all of us here in the awkward bubble of midlevel play.

On that same note, being able to move quickly and control where you are moving to is a big deal. A lot of the time your movement can be really choppy and with your wavedashes in particular it looks like you're either going further than you want to or not going far enough. You really want to work on getting the different wavedash lengths down and consistent.

You want to be able to transition from wd to dash or short hop or [insert move] more quickly, and vice versa. I noticed you'll do like wd, wait for wd to end, then dash forward when you realize the wd didn't go far enough, and a lot of that goes hand in hand with knowing the wd lengths, but also knowing when you can transition into other things or waste fewer frames in your actions will really help you out.

I'd also like to point out that your movement is very linear. You really like this one direction which we like to call forwards. Try to remember that neutral is a combination of both advancing and retreating, sometimes you need to change directions. This is another point where having good movement can help you out a lot, I think you should work on integrating dash dancing and wavedashing together and being able to make that transition whenever you need to, also work on interrupting your movement and switching directions.
 
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Kyu Puff

Smash Champion
Joined
Feb 22, 2007
Messages
2,258
Location
Massachusetts
Here is a video of me playing a peach at my home town local. Any feed back and critique is welcome!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4arX7iJyeSY&feature=youtu.be
I'm going to highlight a few exchanges to underline some things I think are important in this match-up.

First exchange (beginning of the match):

- You start off by shooting Ice Blocks; Peach simultaneously pulls a turnip (which she's almost always going to do from that position), and then floats over both Ice Blocks. Remember that Peach has very little motivation to stay on the ground--that's the only way she can get grabbed, and ICs have trouble challenging her float. One interesting outcome is that she's forced to use her float early; you could've taken the opportunity to close some space so that you're potentially in a position to grab when she lands.

- When Peach throws the turnip, you WD backwards to avoid getting hit. This is dangerous because it puts your back right against the ledge. If Peach knows you can't retreat, she can easily cover both your jump and any movement forward with f-air. Furthermore, if you do get hit by f-air, you're sent off the stage and Nana is as good as dead. This situation could have been avoided either by catching the turnip or by moving forward sooner.

- Fortunately, you respond quickly with a slightly overshot dash attack. This is a great option, because it has the potential to launch her if she tries to call your movement forward, and because even if that doesn't happen, it places you back towards center stage, where you have more of a positional advantage. I like dash attack for similar reasons against Falcon, because if he overshoots his aerial you move straight past him, safely out of his range.

- Now, Peach has her back to the ledge. Personally, I might have gone for something like dash away -> dash towards -> Nana Blizzard (quick way to set up a Blizzard desynch without moving forward at all) to limit her ground options. A lot of Peach players will panic when you're near her on the ground and start spamming d-smash, so synched f-air and Blizzard are both safe ways to approach.

- You instead opt for sh b-air--and I can't really fault you for that, since it looked like it could have hit--but it misses, and you proceed to shield. If Peach had hit the panic button, you would be stuck shielding d-smash backwards. Now you can punish her d-smash with WD out of shield... sometimes... but personally I would go for the option that has lower risk and easier execution. Another option would be to d-smash immediately after landing, so if the b-air misses or hits her shield you can stuff her next decision.


Second exchange (2:05):

- In neutral, you run forward and shield after you see Peach floating. This situation is fairly common and very disadvantageous for the IC player. You have all of FD behind you, so the risk isn't quite as high, but Peach can still do massive amounts of damage from a single float-cancelled aerial. My theory about this situation is that you're conditioned by other characters to shield when it looks like you're about to be hit by an aerial approach. But Peach hasn't actually committed to anything--she's just floating above you. Let's consider your options here...

  1. You can wait in shield for her to hit you. This is pretty much the worst option, because Peach has a 4 frame advantage when she f-airs your shield, and she'll always win as long as she doesn't mess up.
  2. You can wait in shield and try to react once she commits to an approach. This is what you end up doing, but it's also a losing scenario because the longer you wait, the more your shield drains and the less viable shielding becomes. So you're left with either attacking or retreating. If you roll, Nana becomes invulnerable on frame 10. Your only viable hitboxes in this situation come out on frame 10 (u-air) and frame 15 (u-smash). Peach's f-air comes out on frame 16. When you factor human reaction time, which is 12 frames on average, your chances aren't looking good...
  3. That leaves you with one option. Learn to recognize the situation, and end it as soon as possible. If you train yourself to stop shielding any time you see her floating above you, and immediately roll, wavedash away, or attack, your chances of getting out okay are much better. If you had rolled immediately in this instance, HomeStar's f-air wouldn't have clipped Nana, and you could have avoided the 50+ damage you took in the following sequence of attacks.

Overall key things to remember fighting Peach:

- Challenge her on the ground, not in the air.
- Try to maintain control of center stage, because the closer you are to the ledge, the fewer movement options you have and the easier it is for Peach to corner you.


Other notes:

- When Peach dash attacks your shield, you have a huge window to punish. Just grab or b-air depending on where she hits you.
- You got d-smashed almost every time you tried to land with d-air. D-air has fixed knockback and is easily crouch cancellable, but if it seems like the best option, try using right before you land to minimize your frame disadvantage. It's also much safer if you use it when your opponent is in the air.
- Final Destination is not necessarily your best stage in this match-up. The length (gives you some buffer room for being knocked off the stage) and ceiling height (u-smash kills at 80 or 90%) are nice, but the lack of platforms doesn't really help you. Platforms can give you an alternate means to regain stage control after being pushed to the ledge. Yoshi's and Pokemon Stadium make it easier to kill her, and Battlefield and Dreamland make it easier to run away. If you want to play the match-up on FD, you'll need to figure out a way to stop playing her game (dodging float-cancelled f-airs and going for low-reward trades) and start playing your own (putting her in uncomfortable situations on the ground where she's at risk to get grabbed if she chooses the wrong option).
 

DerfMidWest

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SOFA#941
  1. You can wait in shield for her to hit you. This is pretty much the worst option, because Peach has a 4 frame advantage when she f-airs your shield, and she'll always win as long as she doesn't mess up.
Just wanted to add to this point: Peach's fc fair is almost never actually +4 against ICs because of the way she has to fair their shield. For it to be +4 she has to fair as late as possible, which isn't super safe for her to go for most of the time, so, iirc, in general when peach fairs ICs shield it's only like +1 or +2, which is still really bad, but not as bad as +4.
I just find thinking of it as +4 all the time becomes a little toxic to my own mentality and I start going "oh no, my shield got faired, I can't do anything now," when that's generally not quite the case.

She's always at the advantage though, so you're definitely right in wanting to avoid the situation altogether.
 

NTRN

Smash Cadet
Joined
Feb 8, 2016
Messages
38
Not so much a critique request, but here a are a couple of fun sets I played a year ago at a little engineering tourney at my university. Couple of handoffs and aggressive ice climbers, if you are in to that sort of thing.

Winners Finals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0RHeknqS68
Grand Finals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHckv1mOWQ0

EDIT:

To avoid the double post, I made a video with a collection of desyncs/advanced techniques/combos that I have used in real matches. I always find that sort of thing cool so I'll post it up.

https://youtu.be/T0Wykq16gh4

It also has a dope backing track.
 
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