Things Mewtwo Mains Need to Stop Complaining About, and Things They Need to Do Better

[Swoops]

STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT

1. WEIGHT
We get it, he's light. You get cheesed out. You didn't expect Bayonetta to do that random FSmash and died at 65% near the ledge. You got grabbed by DK at 60% and died.
Resolution: Be aware. You have plenty of tools that pressure without putting you in those situations. You have plenty of escape methods to get you out of situations you don't want to be in. You're percent is on the screen isn't it? You're aware of how light you are correct? If you're confidant you have the drop on your opponent in that situation then fantastic! Go for it, but don't come back crying if it didn't work out. You knew the risk.

2. MATCH UPS
This game has 58 characters, with a large percentage of them being viable. That's ridiculous, but that's the reality.
Resolution: If you lost to someone in a match up/playstyle you didn't understand, go back and grind it out. Play them until your fingers are raw. Try different things. Lose over and over again if you need to, just learn something new every match. Diddy with a banana is predictable, try to approach with NAir and cancel the banana out, use confusion at safe distances. Cloud has a below average grab game, over-shield if you need to. You can't contest his neutral, throw SH shadowballs and capitalize to make him second guess it. ETC ETC

DO BETTER

1. OPTIMIZE
Get all the damage you know you can. Did you get DTilt > FAir? Great, go for DTilt > DJ UAir > FAir next time if you can. It can actually lead to early kills near the ledge. Practice DTilt > NAir strings, you can extend your damage by 15+% in early combos. Are you landing NAir at later percents? Perfect, make sure you are converting into UTilt > USmash. Do all the damage and SEAL STOCKS

2. CAPITALIZE (BUT BE PATIENT)
If you notice a bad habit, PUNISH it. Life is too short with Mewtwo to let people get away with b*ll****. You notice roll aways, maybe throw a shadowball that you can chase down and apply additional pressure. Dash attack and convert if you're really confidant. Roll in a lot? Easy punish with NAir in place. Try to approach you at short hop height? Snag em with a quick FAir on reaction.

On the opposite side of that coin, DON'T OVER-EXTEND. Playing Mewtwo is a fine balance of aggression, and bait/punish. He can play very passively when he needs to be safe, but he also needs to capitalize on opponent mistakes as much as possible. Knowing when to continue pressure for more damage, and when to back off because you are in danger of eating a counter attack and dying is key to succeeding with the character.

3. BE VARIED
One of M2's main strengths is his sheer wealth of options. He has a projectile that can charge in the air, and has multiple versions that serve different purposes. He has a reflector that can also stall, recover, and serve as a quick command grab that can put the opponent in a mix up situation. He has a teleport that can cancel, and a solid range 16f projectile that can be used in the air and lead to kills VERY early. He has a great perfect pivot, along with a range of normals that can give you range, disjoint, quick speed, high active frames, and great reward depending on which you use. He is one of the fastest characters in the game, and has the best air dodge. He has a mediocre grab game, but he can get decent damage from it.

My point is that these strengths mean nothing if you don't use all of them in the correct situations. You have all the tools to start eliminating your habits. His air dodge is amazing, but YOU CANNOT SPAM IT against top players. Shadowball is fantastic, but will get you tagged if you use it in dumb situations up close. NAir is fantastic for leading into damage and kills, but will get snuffed out by any attack with actual range.


This was all helpful for me to see written on paper. I really wanted to get all of this out there, and I thought it might help M2 mains (including myself) nut up and start presenting better results. I genuinely believe this character is bottom of high tier when all is said and done, but there is no doubt that requires a ton of work to happen. This may get deleted, but I hope it speaks to those wanting to get better results with this character. I may have things to add if people find this interesting.

Carry on

 

[Constadin]

How not to not complain when his upb fails make him grab the ledge and curves him to death, from a situation where even l mac without his dj could have returned back to stage.

How not to not complain when you play perfectly and end an opponent's first stock only to make a small mistake near the edge and die from a fsmash at 40% because m2 is so unjustifiably light for his hugh size.

How not to not complain when his grabs and tail hitboxes dont match their animations 100% and miss hits, you were sure you landed.

Yes mewtwo has great tools and he is viable but there are designing and programming holes that makes it impossible to not complain.

FIX his upb god damnit it!!!

 

[Swoops]

1. At this point every good Mewtwo should KNOW what UpB angles put him at risk. You still have the option to go straight up, straight diagonally, straight horizontally, or even from above and diagonally if you're good. Hell, you can even go under the stage, OR blow past them on stage.

2. You just said yourself. You made a mistake. You did not play perfectly. You should have known you would die at that percent. Sorry. Move on, don't do what you did again. This game is stupid unforgiving as is. M2 is NOT immune to the ridiculous that happens in this game, like Bayonetta, or Cloud limit (still) or random rage smashes killing you. It's the game.

3. They deliberately fixed his tail hitboxes in the 1.1.13 patch, and they have great range for what they do, especially DTilt, UAir, and UTilt. Even BAir is useful for covering ranges. Learn their ranges. If you miscalculate his range after 50 times, I lose sympathy for you.

 

[Sonicninja115]

Constadin
I made some videos showcasing just HOW much mewtwo can do to recover. On FD, Mewwtwo can go and teleport DIRECTLY into the stage, about half-3/4ths of the way down, and easily live, snapping the ledge. Same with BF and SV and T&C. BF has that annoying dead patch on the left side, but even shieks get hit by that, and you aren't even supposed to be that far down anyways. The patch destroyed them, but I will try to upload them today.

Learn his hitboxes. spend a couple of hours and you will be fine. Pros spend days, literally, doing this stuff. Learning exactly where you can hit the opponent. Axe, the melee pikachu, knows how to get the tail spike hitbox pretty consistently, even though this is insanely difficult.

I agree with everything you said Swoops I am going to start learning how to walk, because that is something I dumbly overlooked. I can walk, but I never utilize it in my game. Learn how to optimize Mewtwo.

Just the other day I was playing Metalex, and the difference in our playstyles was drastic. He had Uair combos, LC and Phasing down, while I had Nair, PP and Phasing. Playing the matches, we both used skills that the other was still optimizing, and I realized just how scary a Mewtwo could be once he knew everything.

 

[Constadin]

Actually I am not RLY complaining about anything else other than his upb... I have spend time on mewtwo and I am @ a rly great point with him, I love him and think that he is the most fun character to play as.

Stages that make the trajectory of his up b to curve due to their shapes, dreamland for example make this move suh a deal breaker. I am sure that even pros do lose stocks like this and if anyone tells me that he never ever dies like this anymore even in drunken friendlies I immediately know he is lying.

More than once I was at the worst possible position to upb where returning to stage is literally impossible when you either curve to death or w8 stearing and you die because you delayed your upb. You know exactly what position I am referring to...

Btw upbing with pika (only first part of the qa) or with sheik's vanish or even little macs laughable upb at the point, would result in a normal ledge snap.

 

[Opana]

Swoops with his australian wisdom

 

[Lord Dio]

As someone who mained mewtwo for a few weeks after he came out......
I love this post, and willingly admit I have made more than a few of the mistakes explained in the post using mewtwo. Most of them being Up B fails, but eh, I could have used it earlier most times.
Also, when I first played mewtwo, I literally used Confusion for nothing but juggling opponents in place, it was and still is one of the best ways to disrespect someone without koing them in my opinion. I found out it was a reflector by accident during a group match when I ended up reflecting a fully charged Thunder from the other team's Robin.
As for being varied....Confusion reflects and juggles your opponent in place for disrespect; disable, when timed right, can be very rewarding, as if you forget about it the whole match and you and the foe are at one stock, and they come at you, use disable and daze them right when they're in your face, and end them; shadow ball is very strong and can be charged in the air; teleport gets you out of sticky situations; shadow claw is useful for opponents like little mac who manage to get past your more ranged attacks and are great at being all up in your face; for that matter, most of mewtwo's attacks have good range and are good for keeping such players at bay.
In short, great post.

 

[Sonicninja115]

Here is the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8z6eDN0-_g

He can recover from some rather dumb places.

Constadin

 

[Lord Dio]

Hmmmm
What's the range of Teleport? Perhaps my Teleport fails were because I was out of range of the stage,. Which would explain other Teleport fails.

 

[Browny]

All you people talking about upb, when will it end.

A) Stop trying to upb from positions where you KNOW it will bounce. If you die from bouncing because you tried to come in perfectly horizontal, its your own fault. Its almost IMPOSSIBLE to bounce if you come up from below.

B) Do this more
https://youtu.be/MUFrKjfZthA?t=33

Use confusion to stall and dodge any edgeguard attempt and then teleport through the enemy. What that video doesnt show though is the version with far less landing lag. If you do it right it has hardly any lag at all.

 

[godogod]

Oh come on.. The UP B SD issue is a legit complaint. How can people be ridiculed for bringing that up here and have a "Deal with it, work around it, you suck!" response? That's one of the most fundamental things that needs fixing and puts him at a disadvantage in FD stages.

 

[Browny]

To me it sounds like someone going

"Cloud needs his recovery buffed its so unfair that when I go really deep offstage to spike someone with dair and I miss, I cant make it back and I SD. How has this not been patched yet"

Yes we know it bounces, yes it would be nice if it was patched. But UNTIL it is patched, there is no excuse for SD'ing to it and then complaining because it is almost always 100% the players fault for recovering from a stupid angle. Just like Ness mains bouncing off FDs lip if they come in at the wrong angle.

 

[Sonicninja115]

Oh come on.. The UP B SD issue is a legit complaint. How can people be ridiculed for bringing that up here and have a "Deal with it, work around it, you suck!" response? That's one of the most fundamental things that needs fixing and puts him at a disadvantage in FD stages.

Because I used to suck, but then I dealt with it, found many new ways to recover safely, and now I don't suck. It may sound harsh, but in practice, it isn't.

 

[Constadin]

The thing is that even while dyoy might not suck now, you still sd because ultimately its not a thing to program your muscle memory or even remember not doing but rather a programming mistake. Try dreamland and with enough vs you will see for yourself that there really is a position that tou cannot come back even though you can theoretically cover both horizontal and vertical distance with the upb.

As previously mentioned, upb issues are legit and we should not compromise and live with it. It needs fixing period.

 

[Metros]

All you people talking about upb, when will it end.

A) Stop trying to upb from positions where you KNOW it will bounce. If you die from bouncing because you tried to come in perfectly horizontal, its your own fault. Its almost IMPOSSIBLE to bounce if you come up from below.

B) Do this more
https://youtu.be/MUFrKjfZthA?t=33

Use confusion to stall and dodge any edgeguard attempt and then teleport through the enemy. What that video doesnt show though is the version with far less landing lag. If you do it right it has hardly any lag at all.

You do realise that the upb bounce is something that needs to be fixed, regardless of teleporting below or not? I teleport FROM below and it STILL bounces sometimes. Don't tell people to just basically deal with something that's been an issue that needs fixing for a very long time. Mewtwo can come in perfectly horizontal and not bounce, yet bounce on random.

 

[godogod]

No its not anyone's fault this bug hasn't been fixed. Sure its good to work around it, but you'll be put into positions where you'll be near the \blast line of a stage under the stage at an angle, forcing you to teleport diagonally. I teleport from straight below 90% of the time and this happens occasionally still. This shouldn't happen regardless of from what angle you teleport in.

 

[Quantumpen]

Yep, whether you can work around it or not -- it's still an extremely annoying bug. As long as you angle yourself correctly, you shouldn't get killed because the games collision detection script has trouble with teleport and the stages hit boxes.

 

[Chiroz]

B) Do this more
https://youtu.be/MUFrKjfZthA?t=33

Use confusion to stall and dodge any edgeguard attempt and then teleport through the enemy. What that video doesnt show though is the version with far less landing lag. If you do it right it has hardly any lag at all.

Please stop exaggerating things. Even with the "low landing lag" version of Up-B, there is still enough time for the opponent to land from an aerial, run towards Mewtwo and smash him if the opponent is using any Top Tier that isn't Rosalina (Because Rosa's really floaty and also her dash is slow).

I seriously can't take people seriously when all they want is to exaggerate things all the time to make Mewtwo look good. Try being objective about stuff.

Up-Bing through people works because opponents are surprised and can't react fast enough. This means that you can only do it once of twice per matches. If they are expecting it, even if they bait it out by throwing an aerial your way, they will still have plenty of time to punish with an U-Smash.



It's the same like getting a combo out of Aerial Confusion. It works because the opponent can't react fast enough, but theoretically speaking Mewtwo should be air dodging after every Aerial Confusion since the opponent can act faster and most likely has a faster aerial (top tiers).



Also the bounce doesn't happen as much horizontally. If it happens to you horizontally it's because you have not learned to aim it correctly. Most of the times it happens when coming in from below because Mewtwo bounces with the lip of the stage since a lot of Omegas have weird lips. In order to avoid this you SHOULD teleport more horizontally most of the time, or just learn every single lip of every Omega out there, but no one picks Omega's in tournaments so w/e.

Edit: Battlefield's and FD's left side has an invisible wall that you can wall jump on. Learn this wall, as Mewtwo bounces from it too. You can also bounce off of Dreamland too, but those aren't invisible walls and are very clearly visible. These are the only 3 legal stages that you can bounce off of without a special scenario such as the ones I described below. Just learn the walls and slowly drift out of their collision path before Up-Bing.



I will say this: The main reason the bounce happens on most matches is people trying to Teleport immediately after being hit. I've said it many times: There's a global mechanic that you cannot regrab the ledge with Up-B after being hit for a small amount of time (1-2 seconds). There's also a mechanic that you cannot regrab the ledge with Up-B right after letting go (also like 1-2 seconds).

If you try to Teleport on any of those 2 scenarios, Mewtwo will reach the edge, be unable to grab it because of it and then BOUNCE from the edge itself and die. Make a habit of just just dropping down (or Side-Bing) after being hit or letting go of the edge.

 

[Mr. B]

Great OP from Swoops. My Mewtwo game has had to evolve over time, since I was always really cautious about overreaching for confirms and gave the opponent too many opportunities to make unpunished mistakes. Learning the differences between what situations are good to chase down and what situations you should just chill and charge SB is tough, and getting that coded into muscle memory/intuition is tougher, but I am seeing steady improvements.

As for teleport bouncing, it is a legit concern, but much less so for me nowadays. I tend to get it most when I am hitting buttons frantically, and I am 99% sure that most of them were my input failures. I seem to get teleport bouncing less when I am calm and in control... could be that I have intuitively grasped which stages need specific approaches, but I am convinced that actually its my inputs which were at fault most of the time.

 

[Top Boss]

You must have never tried recovering on omega boxing ring LOL
I like the way you think though.

 

[Mr. B]

Omega boxing ring edges are hyperjank. I have special procedures for dealing with being off edge on that stage = recover high and if you cant recover high, don't try any strict-timing shenanigans.

 

[Sonicninja115]

I will make a video showcasing all the dead zones on LEGAL stages. It's your fault for playing omega's with janky deadzones, unless it's for glory.

Also, I agree with Chiroz

Constadin DL is one of my best stages, as Mewtwo rocks on it. I have only been pine-appled. Never had any trouble with dead-zones on that stage. There is probably a slight zone near the bottom, but that must be a puny zone. I have never been deadzoned in my 50+ hours on that stage.

 

[Darklink401]

If Greninja has his headbonk fixed to not kill him, I see nothing wrong with Mewtwo getting some love in that area too.

I think at this point, aside from that quirky thing, the only issue he actually has is his grab. And even that's work-aroundable.

 

[Sonicninja115]

I tested out DL's sides, and I couldn't find the deadzone besides the usual pineapple area. I was double jump and Teleporting right below the curve, and never had anything bad happen. (I tested both sides, video incoming in the next week, I am uploading a lot...)

There are certain omega stages that have dumb dead zones, Coliseum and such, but with practice, they are easy to work around.

 

[Mewtwo the king of bad]

If Greninja has his headbonk fixed to not kill him, I see nothing wrong with Mewtwo getting some love in that area too.

I think at this point, aside from that quirky thing, the only issue he actually has is his grab. And even that's work-aroundable.

Dis truer words where never spoken preach preach

 

[Sonicninja115]

Dis truer words where never spoken preach preach

They changed the stun of Headbonk. They would literally have to change all the dead zones of every stage to fix this. They did it to some extent with Lylat, but it probably took them a hundred or more man hours to complete. The problem isn't with teleport, but with the stage, and it isn't feasible to spend that much money and hours to fix a relatively small thing that rarely affects casual play, and almost never affects high level competitive play.

 

[Quantumpen]

Not the only solution. I haven't delved into the internals of how the devs implemented the move, but I know that Sheik's up B doesn't have this problem. Absolutely no reason they can't copy that implementation.

 

[Mewtwo the king of bad]

They changed the stun of Headbonk. They would literally have to change all the dead zones of every stage to fix this. They did it to some extent with Lylat, but it probably took them a hundred or more man hours to complete. The problem isn't with teleport, but with the stage, and it isn't feasible to spend that much money and hours to fix a relatively small thing that rarely affects casual play, and almost never affects high level competitive play.

Oh I was talking about the grab whiff in I'm okay with the stage bonking although I do get why they would make his grab range short if he's going to have such a powerful throw sorry if I was unclear

 

[Sonicninja115]

Not the only solution. I haven't delved into the internals of how the devs implemented the move, but I know that Sheik's up B doesn't have this problem. Absolutely no reason they can't copy that implementation.

Shieks Vanish does have the problem, but to a smaller extent. deadzones affect every character, and they are usually walls in which you will clunk your head, like the bottom of SV or the lip on coliseum for teleporters. Mewtwo's and Palutena's work differently then Shieks, so the coliseum one might not hurt Shiek, but every character suffers from dead zones. Also, The coliseum one is solved by wall jumping or using confusion. If you are worried about not making it back, Confusion, then walljump, and then your confusion hop will be restored. I had to learn were the deadzones were with Shulk, so that I wouldn't SD, and I learned which stages I need to aim my teleport on with Mewtwo, so that I wouldn't SD. I don't understand why I don't have this problem and apparently everyone else is chronically suffering from it. I play for at least two hours every day, and I still only SD in horrid lag.

 

[Quantumpen]

I think chronically suffering from it as on overstatement, but it's annoying -- and it hurts your game since it limits the way you can recover, which makes your recovery more predictable. Plus as a software engineer myself, it's not the intended behavior so it's annoying on principle. I don't buy that they can't fix it, there's a reason it happens to Mewtwo/Palutena but not to Sheik nearly as often, and they should look at the better implementation and standardize the functionaly/just swap out the animations.

 

[Sonicninja115]

Quantumpen Being totally honest and trying to help, my suggestion is to be creative.

Also, I started discussion on Phasing in the metagame thread.

 

[Quantumpen]

Good videos, good stuff to know.

I'm all for everyone learning how to deal with the problem as best as possible -- my only (admittedly some what purist/dogmatic) objection is some people characterizing it as not a problem. It's like if every time you posted a message on smashboards, the page auto refreshed every 5 minutes. Sure there's 100 ways to work around it but just the fact that it happens is annoying, I think people are justified at being upset when software engineers do a botched job implementing something and they're forced to "work" around it.

So I'm just defending people's right to be annoyed by this, for reasons that have nothing to do with smash itself. Since it probably won't get fixed, we should all study and learn to work around it as best as possible.

I moved my phasing post to that thread.

 

[ArcPh1r3]

The Teleport thing is a problem, but it's much more worthwhile to learn how to deal with it than to complain about it and hope it gets patched.

 

[Constadin]

Unfortunately we are forced to do both.

 

[Sonicninja115]

Unfortunately we are forced to do both.

I call foul, you are not forced to complain. If Nintendo thought this was a serious problem, they would have patched it by now. Otherwise, they are either ignoring it, or working on it for a future patch. There is no way that their testers don't know about the deadzones, they were probably put there on purpose anyways.

 

[Mewtwo the king of bad]

I call foul, you are not forced to complain. If Nintendo thought this was a serious problem, they would have patched it by now. Otherwise, they are either ignoring it, or working on it for a future patch. There is no way that their testers don't know about the deadzones, they were probably put there on purpose anyways.

I highly doubt it was put there on purpose but I do agree we need to stop complaining about it if they haven't noticed it by now then they don't want to notice it

 

[Swoops]

Balance patching from Nintendo seems to be on an "as it comes up" basis.

Rather, I think complaining in a competitive inner circle on boards or streams has little impact. Something like a YouTube video with mass exposure would have more effect, but even that's iffy (for example, not all of the Samus issues in the video they released got fixed, and D3 hasn't been touched at all.) Generally speaking though, Nintendo does what they want, and anything that coincides with the competitive community's take on balance is a nice bonus. Glitch fixing is a slightly different story though, but as Sonicninja said it seems to be a more complex problem that has to do with stage dead zones.

On the grab issue, I feel like people need to be implementing roll cancel grabs more for M2. His is particularly good.

 

[Mewtwo the king of bad]

Balance patching from Nintendo seems to be on an "as it comes up" basis.

Rather, I think complaining in a competitive inner circle on boards or streams has little impact. Something like a YouTube video with mass exposure would have more effect, but even that's iffy (for example, not all of the Samus issues in the video they released got fixed, and D3 hasn't been touched at all.) Generally speaking though, Nintendo does what they want, and anything that coincides with the competitive community's take on balance is a nice bonus. Glitch fixing is a slightly different story though, but as Sonicninja said it seems to be a more complex problem that has to do with stage dead zones.

On the grab issue, I feel like people need to be implementing roll cancel grabs more for M2. His is particularly good.

Man I never thought of that I'll have to convert that into my gameplay

 

[Sonicninja115]

Balance patching from Nintendo seems to be on an "as it comes up" basis.

Rather, I think complaining in a competitive inner circle on boards or streams has little impact. Something like a YouTube video with mass exposure would have more effect, but even that's iffy (for example, not all of the Samus issues in the video they released got fixed, and D3 hasn't been touched at all.) Generally speaking though, Nintendo does what they want, and anything that coincides with the competitive community's take on balance is a nice bonus. Glitch fixing is a slightly different story though, but as Sonicninja said it seems to be a more complex problem that has to do with stage dead zones.

On the grab issue, I feel like people need to be implementing roll cancel grabs more for M2. His is particularly good.

can you point me to a video or guide on it? I can only find reflexs showcase.

 

[Swoops]

can you point me to a video or guide on it? I can only find reflexs showcase.

I could only point you to Reflex's video on it.

But a tip for execution, you should be slamming your stick in a direction slightly BEFORE you hit shield (i.e. Left > shield > A). It seems like you can roll cancel pivot grab too to get extra distance