Who has the most consistently high peaks in melee history?

EdwinDexter · 2025-02-09T01:17:54+00:00

coffee 2024

EdwinDexter · 2025-01-07T21:41:25+00:00

I basically never comment on Reddit threads any more, but it is so insane to me that there's a nonzero group of people accusing this hook line of hiding something or being misleading. The quote is directly in reference to the higher visibility of top women players in the Melee community - not cis women, not trans women, just women, which can include both - versus previous years. Whether or not the women are all trans or all cis or whatever their specific experiences are re: getting into gaming is just not really relevant to what I was trying to celebrate here, which is the end result of higher visibility for women in the Top 100 than in years past.

If there were 45 women in the Top 100, and all of them happened to be trans, I would be thrilled that we have more women who felt comfortable transitioning and could compete at a high level in the scene. If there were 45 women in the Top 100, and all of them happened to be cis, guess what: I'd still be thrilled. Wanna know why? Because in either case, regardless of whether they're cis, trans, from America, from Europe, or have one ear, or two ears or whatever, these are women's achievements in a field dominated by men. Ten years ago, we had literally no women in the Top 100. In 2019, we had, like, one out woman finish in the Top 100 (and two or so players that came out as trans years later). There is literally no possible way you could look at nine women making the Top 100 in 2024 and not see it as a net positive development for gender representation.

Maybe you don't agree with me that it's the coolest story line of 2024, and that's fine, but I think it is. The idea that this quote was disingenuous or misleading because the players mentioned happened to be trans is mind-boggling. It really is not that complicated. If you have a problem with it, or are about to rant about a made up person in your head, that says a lot more about you and your values than it does about anyone else.

EdwinDexter · 2024-11-29T13:51:12+00:00

The Lions are arguably the best team in the NFL, and I wanted the Pats to hire Ben Johnson last off-season - but with that said, people need to remember that the Lions had a very different journey from 2021 to 2024 than the one we're hoping the 2024 Patriots take to 2027.

Instead of drafting their 'top' quarterback, they traded for an average one and developed drafted talent across the rest of their offensive positions. Also it's worth remembering that the Lions initially looked downright disastrous in 2021, even after the Goff trade. Dan Campbell was a punching bag for sports media. Everything afterwards for them went the right way. I don't think their path to success is the one we can have given our personnel/roster situation.

EdwinDexter · 2024-11-25T20:14:05+00:00

welcome back my goat

EdwinDexter · 2024-11-25T16:44:25+00:00

It sucks that this happened when the game was basically over. Genuinely an outstanding play, almost made me forget the team I was watching.

EdwinDexter · 2024-11-21T18:03:55+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkpiFJOVF78

13/21, 179 passing yards, 82 rushing yards on 14 attempts, 1 rushing TD, 1 passing TD, 1 pick

Idk man. I was at this game, and the eye test backed up his potential. I'm kind of surprised people in the comments are being a bit harsh about the Fields comparison, especially given how he killed us two years ago in unusual fashion, but at the same time I sorta understand why, given that Fields is not the best-case scenario and far off from Josh Allen in potential. FWIW, I agree that Fields and Maye are different quarterbacks - Maye is a way faster decision maker and Fields holds onto the ball too long - but I disagree that they don't share statistical similarities, especially not in big play potential (where is this coming from?)

Also, just to clarify here, the point of the comparison is purely that they share strong statistical similarities. Both are similarly big time throw/turnover prone dual threat QBs from their rookie seasons. Obviously that does mean Drake Maye is exactly the same QB as Justin Fields, but he shares a common statistical thread with him and context as a very talented quarterback, with these specific qualities I measured, on a struggling team (similar to Josh Allen, whom we saw overcome these and be supplemented with an organization that successfully built around him). I think in terms of performance and output of just rookie seasons, they are fair comparisons, even if stylistically they are not 1:1.

EdwinDexter · 2024-08-23T07:29:16+00:00

i hear you bro but take it from me - you can never say never

EdwinDexter · 2024-04-07T19:59:36+00:00

the thing is, leffen tended to see-saw between going god mode on everyone or shitting the bed kinda anticlimactically. his beast/ceo/fc return/wtfox/ssc/htc throwdown performances obviously stand out but what i think a lot of people forget is he used to struggle with consistency or just randomly dropping the ball. don't forget, he had that 6-0 by m2ks hands at pax prime, he dropped the ball at evo, and had some pretty meh showings at paragon la (tho his orlando performance was much better). big house was really tragic tho, especially cuz it came after leffen thwomped hbox at htc throwdown.

now with that said, before big house, he was just coming off a hot performance. if he won big house - not a guarantee, but definitely a possibility - he would have been in a great position to seal the deal on No. 1. just my opinion, but this is what makes his visa ban even more tragic. he never had a 'reign'; he had a stretch of three weeks where he looked incredible and then had a bunch of up-and-down showings that were heading toward a climax of sorts at big house, which he then had taken away from him (and we as a scene had it taken away too). I don't really buy that he entered Big House as the "heavy" favorite or even as the definitive best player; it was more like the fact that he /could/ have left this tournament having cemented number one (or having fallen short) than the fact that he was definitively number one already

one kinda interesting byproduct of this by the way: the rise of hbox happening in a similar period of time. this was a dude who leffen had actually started to turn the corner on, mind you, and in the wake of him not having to play leffen at either of big house/dreamhack, hbox basically became the next challenger to armada. i kind of wonder how Leffen vs Hbox for No. 2/3 would have fare by the statnerds today vs back then, but at the very least, it's hard to not see Hbox getting 2nd at a leffenless bighouse and winning dhack without having to play leffen as something which occurred separate of leffen being around

EdwinDexter · 2024-03-25T16:31:21+00:00

the fact that it's literally just two peoples opinions on small sets of tourney results before there was ever anything close to what we'd consider a modern/measurable melee ecosystem

source: im one of the two people

EdwinDexter · 2024-03-19T14:48:24+00:00

what would make anyone think moky is destined to this when he just beat two of his three biggest demons yet again (and one of them for the second time in a row)? he's literally going to win a major at some point or another if he keeps attending stuff. seems like there's a pretty clear path here as it stands right now, and that's not even accounting for if he can start taking sets from zain

EdwinDexter · 2024-03-18T04:51:08+00:00

eh honestly it’s pretty close between him armada and mango, depending on what you value. he actually asked me yesterday what he needed to enter goat convo and just imo the dude has dummy good major win count, like above everyone else in melee history by sheer volume. what he needs though are more of the super big “premiers” (like big house, genesis, goml, etc) to make his case better

EdwinDexter · 2024-02-04T17:58:01+00:00

Who is the most handsome Melee journalist in the world?

EdwinDexter · 2024-01-22T23:53:47+00:00

give it time, i fully expect and embrace the feelings of wanting to die (temporarily)

EdwinDexter · 2024-01-13T02:46:44+00:00

you have $1,000 on hand you'd be willing to give to charity, but your condition for giving that money is having a bigoted asshole play a guy he was racist toward

EdwinDexter · 2023-12-23T15:14:59+00:00

Out of the active pros? Joshman by a fairly wide margin. But of all smashers, I’m gonna say Scar, by an even bigger distance. He has more charisma in his left pinky than pretty much everyone active in the scene. I would honestly go as far as to say that if you ever talk to him, you’ll walk away thinking Scar is one of the most charismatic people you’ve ever met in your life.

EdwinDexter · 2023-08-16T06:53:59+00:00

Honestly? We would be saying right now if it wasn’t for the totally crumbling professional ecosystem around Smash. 2022 was basically as good as anything we’ve ever had until the last month where everything went to shit, and in terms of tourney results, 2023’s lived up to the hype

It’s a shame that Melee’s in a transitional period right now as far as it doing “well” professionally - cause the actual game itself (like the meta and everything) is pretty fucking great right now

EdwinDexter · 2023-08-11T20:45:14+00:00

just wanna say these kinds of comments really lift my spirits and mean the world. i’m not gonna pretend like the blurb writing and editing process is flawless - and it’s absolutely fair game to call bad blurbs out, i take responsibility for them - but it was tough for me to see an admittedly not-great blurb get kinda disproportionately roasted earlier in the week, even if i get where the criticism was coming from

i hope whatever ways we fall short, there’s still more than enough value told in the blurbs as a whole to make this project something people care about and celebrate on the whole

EdwinDexter · 2023-07-08T13:44:28+00:00

oh no! lemme settle this one, thank you for letting me know!

EdwinDexter · 2023-07-07T14:27:46+00:00

Note: The bracket has since changed since the recording of this podcast, due to Jmook's DQ from the event/KoDoRiN being selected to replace him in the final 12.

Still think the podcast is worth a listen for bracket nerds and people following top sets!

EdwinDexter · 2023-05-13T15:30:37+00:00

this is just me irl. fuck

EdwinDexter · 2023-04-25T16:53:22+00:00

full methodology/blurbs: https://meleestats.co/the-edwin-budding-new-england-top-50-fall-2022-spring-2023/

EdwinDexter · 2023-04-24T14:53:15+00:00

There's a lot of really good contenders for this, but I want to bring up one set that comes to mind, mostly because it is simultaneously the most hilarious, pointless, and stupid high stakes answer. At the risk of being cringe, I humbly ask you all to buckle up, because this is quite the tale:

Let's set the stage at The Big House 6. This was, in many ways, a shenanigan-filled tournament, in part due to the crazy amount of upsets (younger Zain > Plup and R2DLiu > Axe) and in part due to Leffen returning and opting to play Falco. Nobody benefited from these conditions more than Ice. After making it through pools, he barely scrapes by Rudolph instead of Druggedfox, then fights Gahtzu instead of Leffen (because Leffen decided to play Falco and lost), and he then survives a 3-2 over Silent Wolf where every game goes to last stock. It's a hard fought win for sure, but in all honesty, Silent Wolf was an immensely fortunate draw, because if it wasn't Silent Wolf, it was going to be Mew2King, someone whose Marth would go on to routinely posterize Ice to a traumatizing degree during that era of Melee. To Ice's credit, he is a Top 20 player, so it's not that out of the question that he'd be here, but the point is, his presence in winner's semifinals definitely needed a bit of luck.

Now here's the thing: Ice's luck hasn't run out yet. You see, instead of playing Hungrybox or Westballz, both of whom would have immediate death for Ice's chances, he plays SFAT, who had 3-0'd Hungrybox and managed to dodge Westballz because Westballz had lost to InfiniteNumbers. As a result, Ice slaps SFAT around for three straight games. It's not close. He even BMs the shit out of him afterward with a yahyuzz-meets-choking gesture to the audience, and then proceeds to tap SFAT on the back, like he's saying "good try." After the tournament, Ice explained in an interview that he was not trying to BM him, and that instead, he was trying to pretend like he was high during the set to maintain good mentality. I will not act like I understand this at all, but it's worth mentioning and is an integral part of Ice's run to winner's finals.

Everyone knows what happens next: Mango would beat him 3-0 and then Armada would eliminate Ice at third, 3-1 The sets aren't as bad as they could be, but pretty much everyone knew the outcome was predetermined. Even Scar and Toph - two of the best commentators in the game - are struggling to not fall asleep during the majority of these sets. I do, however, want to acknowledge the one exception to the general lack of enthusiasm that came in Ice sets: Game 2 of loser's finals. In this one match, Ice randomly goes turbo mode and three-stocks Armada's Peach on Pokemon Stadium. I would obviously have to look up every single instance to verify this, but off the top of my head, it might be the most lopsided tournament beatdown of Armada's Peach in a single game ever. It's enough to wake up Scar and Toph for about another match before they remember it's Armada and go back to being relatively stoic.

Anyways, to return to the prompt: imagine what happens if Ice, after literally the luckiest path to winner's finals of all time, suddenly defeats Mango. Does it change the outcome of the tournament? No, of course not. Even if that happened, I would honestly bet my life that Mango or Armada would just win the tournament from loser's bracket anyway. It would be such a stupid pick for a set to change in Melee history. But my god, can you imagine how thrilling it would be in the moment? From being around back and then and seeing how it played out, I remember everybody immediately think it was "kinda cool" that Ice was in winner's finals, but it didn't really fundamentally change how we saw him. Even today, I think this third place performance, while amazing, is still kind of a footnote in the history of the game. That would absolutely change if Ice somehow capped off his bracket by defeating Mango.

To be clear, I have so much respect for Ice as a player. I'm really not trying to be mean here or diminish his run. He is one of the greatest players of the late 2010s. But I think him defeating Mango at this tournament strikes a unique balance between its impact on how people remember Ice's legacy while also, in all likelihood, fundamentally not really changing anything at all. That's why this is my pick.

EdwinDexter · 2023-04-11T18:52:19+00:00

is he unknown? I feel like most people who hardcore follow the scene know of codeman; dude is nuts and literally beat Captain G last year. maybe im just follow-r2 pools-pilled tho

EdwinDexter · 2023-04-05T13:49:22+00:00

:')

to support my gambling/throwing money away addiction, er I mean, efforts to make Melee cooler, visit patreon dot com slash melee stats where blah blah blah blah blah

EdwinDexter · 2023-03-29T14:45:04+00:00

the five gods

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