Which character takes the most mental skill to play?

[UncleSam]

I'd say between having the largest amount of character specific ATs and having a ton of difficult match-ups, Link has to be the most difficult character to play well. It's hard to explain, but easy to see. If you don't believe me, just watch videos of the trifecta (or triforce) of link players: Legan, Izaw, and Deva.

I'm not too sure Link has the most but he does have a lot, and
Ganon has more difficult match-ups

 

[SpongeBathBill]

^Interesting point. To all the people saying that CF requires the most mental skill to play simply because he's at the bottom of the tier list, does Ganondorf now require the most mental skill to play?

 

[Raizo]

snake and diddy mainly

 

[Z-Striker]

Definately Link thats part of the reason he is so low on the tier list because his learning curve sucks. You have to do like 40 ATs just to make it by. A lot of Links Ats do the same thing as other charcters but are just harder. My friend mastered Diddy and then tried Link and was like this sucks Links to hard so I would say Link is probably the hardest from the mix of bad match ups and intensive tech skill.

 

[Kitamerby]

Definately Link thats part of the reason he is so low on the tier list because his learning curve sucks. You have to do like 40 ATs just to make it by. A lot of Links Ats do the same thing as other charcters but are just harder. My friend mastered Diddy and then tried Link and was like this sucks Links to hard so I would say Link is probably the hardest from the mix of bad match ups and intensive tech skill.

down B. pick up banana. throw banana. peanut gun. glide toss to dsmash. I am now a master of Diddy Kong. =D

 

[VLD]

PIKA for sure. I laugh at so many people who fail QAC. So what, you make him move twice, then what? Can you land it, can you use it without getting punished? can you Qac to grip the ledge from the stage. Pika has some of the most flashy and complex combos(eg. footstool combo QAC lock).
Try it!
The least skilled to play? Marth. Your disjointed hitbox gives you the advantage in battle, allowing you to repeat the same move(fsmash...with a lil tapjump)...over and over again, maybe a counter if opponent gets too close, and finish with a nice spike. DONE! Why so many like marth? Now you know why

 

[UncleSam]

PIKA for sure. I laugh at so many people who fail QAC. So what, you make him move twice, then what? Can you land it, can you use it without getting punished? can you Qac to grip the ledge from the stage. Pika has some of the most flashy and complex combos(eg. footstool combo QAC lock).
Try it!
The least skilled to play? Marth. Your disjointed hitbox gives you the advantage in battle, allowing you to repeat the same move(fsmash...with a lil tapjump)...over and over again, maybe a counter if opponent gets too close, and finish with a nice spike. DONE! Why so many like marth? Now you know why

... ... ya' know the QAC is fun to do,
but Marth, least skill? I'm not too sure about that, I agree he's spammable but...

 

[Yoshi Kirishima]

Originally Posted by VLD
PIKA for sure. I laugh at so many people who fail QAC. So what, you make him move twice, then what? Can you land it, can you use it without getting punished? can you Qac to grip the ledge from the stage. Pika has some of the most flashy and complex combos(eg. footstool combo QAC lock).
Try it!
The least skilled to play? Marth. Your disjointed hitbox gives you the advantage in battle, allowing you to repeat the same move(fsmash...with a lil tapjump)...over and over again, maybe a counter if opponent gets too close, and finish with a nice spike. DONE! Why so many like marth? Now you know why

Yeah I agree with this a little.

But... I hope you're exagerating your input about Marth at least a little, because you it wrong . Marth doesn't use fsmash to space. You can't spike that easily... and you also don't use Counter very much at all. Like may be once every 10 matches.

 

[adumbrodeus]

The least skilled to play? Marth. Your disjointed hitbox gives you the advantage in battle, allowing you to repeat the same move(fsmash...with a lil tapjump)...over and over again, maybe a counter if opponent gets too close, and finish with a nice spike. DONE! Why so many like marth? Now you know why

OMG, that is by far the most horrible Marth strategy I have EVER seen.

F-smash, dair, COUNTER? Those are all among marth's worse moves, I can't even remember the last time I used counter (oh, yeah, I can, gimped an Ike), and the others I use sparingly because bair and fair are much safer edguards then dair, and f-smash is EXTREMELY unsafe, and it's not even that fast (10 frames). Counter is even more unsafe, and requires you to predict your opponent exactly when there are plenty of options that require less exact prediction and are more powerful, it's only useful against moves with REALLY laggy start-ups.


Marth is about spacing and zoning with fair and nair, using the same to apply shield pressure, spaced dtilts, and punishing with (mainly) dancing blade, or otherwise dolphin slash, f-smash, up-smash, etc depending on the situation. But generally Dancing blade. Also grab games.

It sounds easy, but it's very reliant on spacing, moreso then any other character except in specific match-ups, because a few pixels is the difference between move safety and getting punished. You also need to know instinctively what your safe punishing options are.


1. Any Marth that plays like the one you described should die immediately against any player of any character with any skill whatsoever (yes, even a Ganondorf player).

2. Judging a character's difficulty level by the habits of individual players is stupid.

3. Generalizing an individual's habits to the habits of every person who plays that character is even more stupid.


The fact that you happen to be judging it off some of the worst Marth players on the planet just proves this, watch one of NEO's matches, heck even watching some of mine would show how wrong you are about Marth.


Moral of the story: Learn at least a little about the character before shooting your mouth off.

 

[UncleSam]

^^
waiting for someone to answer it for me...
and it worked

 

[Yoshi Kirishima]

1. Any Marth that plays like the one you described should die immediately against any player of any character with any skill whatsoever (yes, even a Ganondorf player).

Aw you said Ganondorf instead of Captain Falcon? I miss the old Tire list XD

 

[kozimoto]

i think snake is the most overrated "hard" character to learn. theres nothing challenging about tilting

 

[kozimoto]

PIKA for sure. I laugh at so many people who fail QAC. So what, you make him move twice, then what? Can you land it, can you use it without getting punished? can you Qac to grip the ledge from the stage. Pika has some of the most flashy and complex combos(eg. footstool combo QAC lock).
Try it!
The least skilled to play? Marth. Your disjointed hitbox gives you the advantage in battle, allowing you to repeat the same move(fsmash...with a lil tapjump)...over and over again, maybe a counter if opponent gets too close, and finish with a nice spike. DONE! Why so many like marth? Now you know why

where the hell have you been? foward smash spam is a dead tactic(we've all known it with the introduction to shieldgrab spam.)

 

[adumbrodeus]

Aw you said Ganondorf instead of Captain Falcon? I miss the old Tire list XD

Actually it's cause Ganondorf himself does worse against Marth then Captain Falcon, 80-20 to 75-25. Ganondorf's more appropriate, regardless of his tier list position (and IMO, he's still slightly better then Captain Falcon anyway).

yeh, foward smash spam is dead.............. now shieldgrab spam is king

Ummm, no, shield-drop to dancing blade spam, that's where it's at.

 

[kozimoto]

Actually it's cause Ganondorf himself does worse against Marth then Captain Falcon, 80-20 to 75-25. Ganondorf's more appropriate, regardless of his tier list position (and IMO, he's still slightly better then Captain Falcon anyway).




Ummm, no, shield-drop to dancing blade spam, that's where it's at.

good observation, as u mention NEO b4 the fact that the way he racks up damage is just through dancing blades and usmashes is plain awesome

 

[basilioyugi]

least mental skill required to win= G&W
most mental skill would be snake or diddykong, mayvbe ganondorf

 

[Yoshi Kirishima]

Actually it's cause Ganondorf himself does worse against Marth then Captain Falcon, 80-20 to 75-25. Ganondorf's more appropriate, regardless of his tier list position (and IMO, he's still slightly better then Captain Falcon anyway).

Oh ok I thought you said Ganondorf just cause he was at the bottom of the new Tier List XD

 

[adumbrodeus]

good observation, as u mention NEO b4 the fact that the way he racks up damage is just through dancing blades and usmashes is plain awesome

More like practice, note the little icon, I'm a Marth main. I abuse dancing blade like there's no tomarrow, and anybody on the Marth boards will hammer that into your head.


Up-smashes are just because he's NEO.

 

[cmness]

Of course it gotta be ness because as everyone knows ness owns
pk fire then a pk thunder and he's pretty much killed the person

 

[AranOcean]

Of course it gotta be ness because as everyone knows ness owns
pk fire then a pk thunder and he's pretty much killed the person

It's easy to DI out of PK Fire you know. <.<

 

[Framerate]

People who lobby for their main as most difficult should be ignored. Unless they main Link.

Everyone is gonna think that their main is the hardest character to play. They need an excuse for when they lose. It's so simple to come in here and talk about the little things you need to know to main your character. It's not hard to make a list. But that's just the thing: every character has little things you need to know to be good. The point of this thread is to find out who has the most difficult learning curve, who requires the most mindgames in their strategy. So please, if you're going to post, leave your mains at the door.

 

[cmness]

It's easy to DI out of PK Fire you know. <.<

shhhhh
it gotta be a secret

 

[UncleSam]

People who lobby for their main as most difficult should be ignored. Unless they main Link.

Then the whole point of this thread becomes reserved for low tiers since they have to work the hardest to win one match,
Take Diddy and Wario, they used to suck but they work hard and look at them now! you're just going to dismiss them!
People can defend their mains all they want as long as they can hold a good argument
And why'd you say link, Ganon has worse match-ups
Link actually has ATs
or at least more than Ganon

 

[cmness]

but ness owns more than anybody
most pplz main ness so ness is awesome
toon link is awesome as well

 

[Framerate]

Haha the "unless they main Link" was kind of a joke. My point is that too many people are coming in here and saying that their main is the most difficult, only because it's the only character that they know the metagame for. There is a lot of personal bias going on without anything actually being said besides "Such&such character is harder to play because they have to use a DACUS, and if you don't do it right then you might lose."

Now if it ends up that the most difficult characters to play are low tier characters then I guess that's how things are. But no one is saying that every high tier character is easy to play. Of course MK and Snake players can (and sometimes do) place well at tourneys by spamming high priority/low risk moves. But characters like TL, Diddy and ZSS take a bit of finesse to master.

With that being said, I still find that Link takes the most amount of mental skill to play. He has a ton of ATs, fully utilizing the DACUS, craque walk, Smooth booting, stutter stepped smashes and tilts, projectile management, zair combos and recovery. He's just got so much to think about in one match. And while Toon Link is quicker and has more combo-ability, he is lacking many of the ATs that adult Link has to learn. I could go through the list of characters but that would take a while. Instead I'll address Wario and Diddy, as Uncle Sam mentioned.

Wario relies on his aerial speed to bait people into attacking or dodging or whatever. So mentally, I'll be short hopping in and out towards and away from my opponent. Throw out some aerials. Utilize his air grab (neutral b). It seems that his major intellectual hurdle is his recovery. So you have to bike off stage. Now I'm not trying to make Wario sound like an easy character, but I feel that Wario has an easier learning curve than some characters. He does not take the most mental skill.

Diddy Kong takes more. Mainly from his banana's. There's a lot you can do there: glide toss juggling, banana locks, dropping the nanner in the air and immediately grabbing it with an aerial (is there a term for this?). And of course there is a ton of different ways to recover with the chimp. I just feel that if you practice a bit with glide tossing you'll get a lot of Diddy's game. But of course when played correctly, this chimp is a beast.

I still think Link takes the most skill. Not because he is low tier, but because he requires the most from the player.

 

[Yoshi Kirishima]

Of course it gotta be ness because as everyone knows ness owns
pk fire then a pk thunder and he's pretty much killed the person

I hope you're not being serious... lol.


Hmm since discussing this topic in this kind of fashion will result in the lower tiers requiring more mental skill (because they need it to "catch up"), how about we discuss this topic considering each character is played to its best, and so some are better than others? (like MK is better than Captain Falcon. Excluding future potential, of course.

 

[OMNIKIDXXX]

mental skill ,, mindgames,,,,mmmm
no character really stands out to me that requires a lot of mental skill
but ther characters that r ez to learn=pikachu,ike,ROB,DDD
ther purrty basic,,, no critical startegizing required

 

[pacmansays]

Well coming from a relative newcomer's perspective and without having much knowledge of ATs I would think that a bunch of characters require good mental skills

Capt. Falcon requires very precise timing
Wolf's side+B move requires some mental skill to tell where you will head off
Snake needs a little with remembering where mines are but I use him a lot and admittedly my mental skillis not that good

 

[Darknid]

My list:

1. Link
2. Lucas
3. Snake
4. Wario
5. Bowser/Ganon

 

[Marteh]

I think any character with lack of kill movies, eg Sonic. You really have to think ahead how you need that all so necessary kill

 

[.Marik]

Low-Tiers.

 

[Koala]

The low tiers have to think more just because Ganon has such a disadvantage against MK that the Ganon has to be able to think at every moment.

But as far as playstyle goes, the most mental skill involved with the specific type of playstyle IMO it would be

Diddy Kong (Lots of possibilities with the naners)
ZSS (Recovery, Special moves, etc are very specific)
Characters that rely on projectiles because they have to be able to incorporate their advantages into the battle at any moment

Least mental skill would probably be G&W because you can be okay with G&W by doing bair, nair, and c-stick.

 

[cmness]

all i knows is that i can beat most of u herez.

 

[Noobicidal]

By mental skill I mean mindgames, technical skill, controlling the characters movement and style, using extreme mental skill to overcome bad matchups, etc.

Which characters do you think take the most mental skill to play as?

That just SCREAMS Ganon.

 

[UncleSam]

all i knows is that i can beat most of u herez.

I want a background check on this kid, you don't talk trash here

 

[adumbrodeus]

all i knows is that i can beat most of u herez.

Nobody cares.

Stay on topic, this isn't the thread for comparing **** size.

 

[Veggi]

As far as mentally being ahead goes, Bowser requires a lot of it. He has a lot of decision making with his grabs especially, he has to read the opponent a lot and then punish, very heavily. Bowser also has amazing OOS options and the decisions for what he does out of his shield are all very different and effective. Firebreath spacing and usage needs to be watched closely to make sure he doesn't get punished for it. Koopacide decision making as well as finding a spot or a set up to KO with his somewhat situational kill moves. Bowser's reward for mind games, even minor ones is very high. He can get 18% just for landing one Klaw. Bowser has a couple AT's like Klaw Hopping that need to be used intelligently or the Bowser player gets punished for using it. The extent that he has to watch his opponent puts him up very high in my opinion.

For technical skill, I'd say Pikachu. QAC and all that stuff.

 

[VLD]

OMG, that is by far the most horrible Marth strategy I have EVER seen.

F-smash, dair, COUNTER? Those are all among marth's worse moves, I can't even remember the last time I used counter (oh, yeah, I can, gimped an Ike), and the others I use sparingly because bair and fair are much safer edguards then dair, and f-smash is EXTREMELY unsafe, and it's not even that fast (10 frames). Counter is even more unsafe, and requires you to predict your opponent exactly when there are plenty of options that require less exact prediction and are more powerful, it's only useful against moves with REALLY laggy start-ups.


Marth is about spacing and zoning with fair and nair, using the same to apply shield pressure, spaced dtilts, and punishing with (mainly) dancing blade, or otherwise dolphin slash, f-smash, up-smash, etc depending on the situation. But generally Dancing blade. Also grab games.

It sounds easy, but it's very reliant on spacing, moreso then any other character except in specific match-ups, because a few pixels is the difference between move safety and getting punished. You also need to know instinctively what your safe punishing options are.


1. Any Marth that plays like the one you described should die immediately against any player of any character with any skill whatsoever (yes, even a Ganondorf player).

2. Judging a character's difficulty level by the habits of individual players is stupid.

3. Generalizing an individual's habits to the habits of every person who plays that character is even more stupid.


The fact that you happen to be judging it off some of the worst Marth players on the planet just proves this, watch one of NEO's matches, heck even watching some of mine would show how wrong you are about Marth.


Moral of the story: Learn at least a little about the character before shooting your mouth off.

Whoa man don't take it that seriously. Actually I got fsmash confused with fair. When I speak of spamming Marth I don't exactly mean high level play, I'm talking about a trend the seems to happen with the typical Marth player(ya know...a person who doesn't go to tournaments every week, where he would have undoubtedly gotten his butt kicked enough to learn not to play that style)...and I DON'T just mean one person, many people play like that. A person who picks up Marth will have a good degree of success until people learn how to counter and punish that tactic. For a while, it seems like it works really well.
Also consider that...

I'm not a Marth main, so I'm merely stating a small part of my observation.
It really doesn't seem to difficult to space with fair and nair with Marth because his attack range is so great(yes it is the man has a SWORD for chrissake, common sense), and without good DI they can be kill hits. The counter turns out useful when deflecting projectiles and some predicted his. Playing someone who does this all the time can be frustrating, so I hope everyone understands my standpoint on this--and THAT was merely what I was putting forth earlier...ok? No offense to Marth mains so don't be hating

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRixxMH1E88
Don't you think the fair was a little excessive? Seems so to me, but it is effective nonetheless.

By no means am I a pro, but I figure that I have just as much right as anyone else to "shoot my mouth off". So come oooon now spare me the written anger please.

 

[xXLifTXx]

I agree, snake is only good if you keep your mind sharp. A lot of his attacks/combos rely on projectiles so really it is all strategy and thinking

 

[Mota]

Sonic, Diddy, Wario, Sheik and Peach are pretty hard to just pick up and pwn.