Watching videos of skilled players, or players your level?

[Zodiac]

So this thought has come to me every now and again but I never gave it the time of day, so tonight I thought I would post it here and open it up for discussion while sharing my own thought's on it.

Should we be watching video's of the best of our character or should we be watching videos of player's more our own level?

I think a lot of people would say "Obviously watch the best players, they are better therefore you will get better from watching them." But I think while that is certainly a valid argument that watching only the best will ultimately prove detrimental to your game. Because much of the time the videos of the best are vs the best. I.E. Mango vs Dr.pp, Armada vs M2k. We are usually seeing two top class players going at it, and while its good to watch Armada if your a peach main that has trouble with fox's and marth's is it good for you to be seeing how they play their character against an opponent just as skilled as them? I don't think it is.

And the reason for that is most of the people we play are not in class of the aforementioned players, they may good and or competent, but not that good. So they wouldn't take nearly as much work to beat as Armada vs M2k.

I found by watching lower level matches I could easily pick out mistakes that these player's were making and could easily think of corrections for them or punishes their opponent could have used but didn't, this also helped when I went and played matches of my own, I was able see the similar mistakes in my opponent and punish them far better because I had seen player's my level make them, mistakes that M2k would not have made, mistakes that may have slipped by me had I not watched a video of player's closer to my level.

Now that I have explained my thought process on that I want to circle back to watching top class players fight each other. At some point if you keep getting better and better you will need to know how to fight against someone as good as m2k. But it probably won't happen for a while, so I think the best way to go about learning from videos is by watching Top level play of your character solely to see how to control your character and flow better with them, and watching video's of lower level player's to identify common mistakes an average player makes.

So that was a bit wordy, but what do you guy's think?

 

[Xyzz]

Watch videos of as many different players as you can, provided they aren't much worse than you.
Obviously what Armada does works for Peach, but there's lots of different ideas floating around, which might be more suitable to ones own playstyle.

 

[DerfMidWest]

I think you should be watching as many players as possible.

 

[prog]

A lot of players emulate their favorite players and screw up. However, out of those falters, a lot of good ideas and concepts/mixups arise.

 

[jerflip]

A lot of players emulate their favorite players and screw up. However, out of those falters, a lot of good ideas and concepts/mixups arise.

This. Everyone has a different style of comboing depending on their tech skill and past experience vs. other players. Just try lots of new things.

 

[MountainGoat]

You shouldn't try to emulate a top player exactly but if in watching their videos you can pickup on certain things that definitely work and incorporate them into your game. When you watch lower tier players play you might pick up on their bad habits or try copying things that only work on a lower level of play. However, it's still worthwhile to check out both levels of play as long as you keep it all in mind.