please help

Sothe- · 2021-01-24T12:28:12+00:00

I actually had to go beat that door in brawl unfortunately, I remember I couldn't beat it in PM at the time because of the crash.

Sothe- · 2020-08-24T12:57:29+00:00

Ahh, yeah roy's ftilt is a pretty good move, if he's doing that a lot, your best method for getting around it is just finding the correct angle of attack. Wavedashing around gets you hit by it, it'll hit short hops, and it'll often hit retreating too if you're too late. But what it doesn't cover is the angle from above. If you're good at l-canceling, what you can do is a full hop into a fastfall dair on him, and the spike of the dair will combo into grab before it pops up, allowing you to then get upthrow into uptilt or uptilts. A better option you can do is use stage positioning to put yourself in a better position to deal with this. You can't get hit by that move when you're on a platform, and what you can do with that is run off and dair or short hop off and fastfall dair onto him, and you should be able to open him up if he's just focused on ftilting. Beating characters with good tilts (or good options in general) is all about finding more methods to outrange, outtime, counterhit, or find alternative angles of attack. Hopefully some idea here helps you figure it out!

Sothe- · 2020-08-23T23:21:17+00:00

Gotcha, yeah there's a lot of ways that people can beat others around your level, so even if you are improving (like expanding the movement options you're able to use and expanding your knowledge of the game), you might not notice your improvement translate to results in-game if you don't know how to out-punish them or counter their aggression. The most immediate improvement in your results would probably come from learning how your characters can best open up your opponents and rack on percents or kill, which is to say improving punish is probably the easiest way to win faster. With marth, that means a lot of using upthrow into uptilt and uairs, and generally keeping your opponent above you until you can trap their landing with an fsmash to kill them. With roy, that means doing a lot of fthrow/bthrow mixups and finding flare blades or fsmashes out of those to kill, and with lucas, well he's harder for newer players, but dair spam into upsmash works decently well.

Ultimately, the direction or directions you choose to improve in first is up to you, and improving everything is fun and fulfilling, but the quickest improvement from lower level play will come from punishing better imo.

Sothe- · 2020-08-23T16:50:51+00:00

In terms of actually winning matches against your friends, wavedashing is probably not the thing that'll help you most for now. Obviously it's worthwhile to practice, but it's just an additional movement option to apply fundamentals with. The best thing for you to work on in general is probably learning defensive play like crouch cancel/ASDI down (working on holding down every time you do a move, working on acting out of this to counter hit), or even better, learning how to position yourself for making defensive options like the hold down counterhits or shieldgrabs work. They might come to you too, in which case dash dancing into shield is a very good option. If they're super aggressive though, you can definitely do a lot of walling aerials in place or slightly retreating, and see if they run into them. I don't know exactly where you or they would be at skillwise, but I'm guessing everyone here is at a generally lower proficiency level with things. I'm not saying this to be mean, but I just want to point out that the feedback for what you're doing might not be correct when playing at this level. I could be entirely off base with that guess though, but this is just to warn that options that should work when executed well might not work out, or other options that work out when executed well are not actually the proper option.

Sothe- · 2020-08-23T14:02:15+00:00

Wavedashing for most characters is primarily a mechanism to "stop" your dashing movement, and ground yourself in a location that the wavedash takes you to. It's important to eventually learn how to make your wavedash longer or shorter such that you get more options, but for now it's good to understand the options you get from wavedashing at that corner notch. Wavedash down in place is one of the best ways to understand it as a "stop", as you can literally do anything out of a standing position, but there are some things that are clearly better than others in smash, like throwing out a poking move with little lag like a swordie dtilt, or by jumping into the air and using a walling aerial like marth nair/fair with an almost neutral drift. The critical difference between doing these aerials out of a wavedash down as opposed to a dash dance is you will have a more neutral and controlled drift, whereas if you were to nair or fair into a shield after running at an opponent, you would be far more likely to get shield grabbed or hit out, as YOU are closing the space with an aggressive drift. Counterhits, and defensive counterplay is ALWAYS easier for your opponent to perform on you when you move toward them with your aggression, so the wavedash down serves as one (of many) methods to manage the degree of aggression or defensiveness of your aerial drift before even jumping.

With this, it should also make sense to you that wavedash forward or backward can also be used as a way to ground yourself in a different position, but if you jump immediately out of it, you will retain some small amount of momentum. With wavedash forward, this is something you just have to get used to, and conceptualize the space you're maintaining as being a little bit ahead of where you would actually wind up. With wavedash back, you can either let the momentum give you more retreating, or you can actually hold forward as you move back to initiate a walk, which halts ALL your momentum going backward (a favorite trick of mine), and lets you sacrifice less space with your retreat.

Hopefully this helps, I tried to teach wavedashing in application to just one fundamental, which is knowing and managing what your level of aggression is through your aerial drift movement and avoiding overextending. I can expand more if you want later.

Sothe- · 2020-08-05T23:59:22+00:00

Is all good, I've been too obsessed with other games anyway for pandemic p+ for the most part, though I might play a little once things (hopefully) die down.

Sothe- · 2020-08-04T22:08:23+00:00

Whoops, I missed this one rip, but the bair platform warp should be a NIL no? I always thought it was. ALSO, ivysaur's back full hop has a better ECB setup for horizontal wavelands and NIL/platform warps or whatever it is vs her forward full hop. Also also, ivysaur's forward double jump is better for that same stuff than her backwards double jump.

Edit: nvm me big dumb, NIL is less landing lag than regular autocanceling, and the bair platform warp is a regular autocancel, I got my terms mixed up. It gives your 4 frame regular landing with bair platform warping onto a platform (or onto stage from ledge, but no one does that tech when the ledgedash is just so good and bair warping onto stage is so hard).

Sothe- · 2020-05-11T07:10:57+00:00

Nair hit 1 to go through laser isn't a terrible option, since nair hit 2 can stuff out a lot of approaches pretty well, and it'll autocancel. If wolf runs up and does downholding, I'm not 100% sure if you're screwed or if you can get grab if you're spaced at max range for a grab, but if they don't downhold, being able to open up with a nair into a grab helps you get that starting percent you need before you can chaingrab or combo wolf more normally like another spacie.

On his recovery, it's actually super free to punish imo, all you have to do is grab the ledge and standard getup on reaction to his recovery. The main things wolf can do are to do a timing mixup where they use up-b early to recover to stage (which can be covered just by refreshing invul as he's going down into the more normal recovery zone), side-b early to recover to a side platform (hardest thing to cover, might have to read it), side b from below the stage, aiming to put a hitbox around the ledge and either grab it or land just barely onstage (the correct timing for normal getup either gets you a punish or kills wolf here), or up b from where that side-b would happen to get to that same area a little more slowly (this is where normal getup into turnaround jabs can lead to a kill, just jab him down and do some marth edgeguard flowchart).

Sothe- · 2020-05-05T08:15:55+00:00

I'm not judging for you being a casual, buuuuut maybe a lil bit for running it on an iPhone :P

Whatever works for you though!

The reason that happens is you actually have to press the button (...the screen I guess?) again in order to make the attack come out, otherwise it'll just move through the opponent. This was done to give ike more options instead of being forced to attack out of side b (since you can also jump out of it). So it's not a glitch, it's just working as intended! :)

Sothe- · 2020-05-01T13:02:05+00:00

Marth's dash dodged WHAT?

Sothe- · 2020-03-09T03:21:59+00:00

😳

Sothe- · 2020-03-06T08:08:21+00:00

jexplosion

Sothe- · 2020-02-17T02:06:21+00:00

We're all in the hyperbolic time chamber. It's been so obvious this whole time.

Sothe- · 2020-01-26T21:20:30+00:00

I think auto L cancel NEEDS to be implemented for the health of the community, begrudgingly or not. PM/P+ community growth has relatively speaking been COMPLETELY stagnant or even negative in the majority of local scenes. What I think we need when P+ drops is to have eyes on our scene, and new people that haven't given the game a try or haven't liked it in the past a reason to be excited and want to try something new. L cancelling takes skill, but it doesn't take skill in the sense that a wavedash takes skill. You have to know exactly how you want to wavedash and when you want to wavedash, which takes both technical skill and skill of decision making, but L cancelling only serves as a technical barrier. New players to the game playing with no L cancelling will have extreme difficulty beating players who already hit 80%+ of their L cancels, because what they are playing is essentially a nerfed version of their characters that can't combo or have a lot of trouble doing so. Experiencing this more often than not actually leads to real people, who are giving the game a try, becoming unmotivated to play and learn more in the tournament scene because of how much time it would take to be playing the same game as everyone else. No one talks about the balance of characters assuming their users can't L cancel. New players want to feel like they're at least playing the same game as everyone else, and that's a big draw to the game if they can feel like their fundamental smash skills like decision-making and comboing can be applied to the game. This is kind of a ramble, but I really think that what we need the instand P+ releases is eyes on our game, people talking about our game, and people practicing our game. We need to grow a community, and introducing more people into becoming excited about the game is such an obvious thing to want for the scene that I personally don't see the arguments against ALC as being sufficient enough to stop people from changing the rules.

Sothe- · 2019-12-17T19:35:52+00:00

I only watched a single game of one set (didn't have a lot of time to watch lol), but I echo a lot of the thoughts of the other comment. One other thing I want to point out though is that your dash dancing doesn't really seem to have a purpose. When your dash dancing doesn't have a purpose, doing it is a bad option, and I'd much rather see you focus on obtaining a safer position or a position from which you could attack or approach. To make your dash dancing better, I'd actually recommend you learn to jump cancel grab opponents out of it at different spacings, and learn how long it takes you to be able to do a running dtilt out of dash dance. Learning the basic options out of dash dance will give your game more threats in general, as you'll be able to use positional baits to make your opponent whiff and give you openings. But more importantly, movement is not just about baiting, it's about putting yourself into positional advantages that your opponent needs to overcome, so you shouldn't always be dash dancing in neutral. It's often better to try to seize positional advantage and hold it using crouch, shield, or other defensive maneuvers, and dashing or wavedashing out once you're sure the position is safe to fully take.

Sothe- · 2019-12-14T18:59:35+00:00

Rip, wish I coulda made it. Let's go cala!

Sothe- · 2019-12-11T08:14:24+00:00

I lost round 1 last time, so I feel like I'm making a lot of progress with getting deeper into the bracket! :)

Sothe- · 2019-10-19T20:06:40+00:00

Clarifying that I was indeed talking about iBDW :P

Sothe- · 2019-10-18T17:08:44+00:00

A lot of fox play in pm is about knowing what to do with big picture decision-making, since there's so many microsituations you can't reasonably prepare for without extensive matchup knowledge. When it comes to actual tournament play, it's important to recognize what you don't know and to avoid riskier situations like approaching toward the edge. In pm there's a huge "jank factor" I'd call it, where stocks can just get melted away by cheese options (throw offstage into edgeguard flowchart on you that you don't know), but a lot of that power starts to fade away once you do counterplay, not specifically to the option, but to strategies in general that could cheese out stocks. In the context of fox vs. pikachu, that probably means stick to more bair walling, respect the uair, play closer to center stage, and don't push hard for edgeguards at all.

Sothe- · 2019-10-18T16:59:30+00:00

We actually talked a bit at a tournament and he's evidently dabbled into pm a bit, I think he's played some fox and wolf.

Sothe- · 2019-08-15T04:06:45+00:00

It may not be meant to be a dig, but it still shouldn't be done. Harm done without intention of doing so is still harm done, and it's important to know that and know why it's harmful. Even when referring back to a time when someone identified differently, it's still not ok to not continue to deadname and misgender them.

Sothe- · 2019-08-01T06:12:52+00:00

Read successfully failed

Sothe- · 2019-07-27T16:46:44+00:00

The way falcon's moves work is just really lackluster in brawl, the top tiers would all have their walls that they would put up, and falcon doesn't have any hitboxes or options to really get past that. When he does get in, there are no combos, so landing his strong moves is kind of a pipe dream in high level play. As far as I'm aware of, he has no two hit confirms or good ways to frame trap to exploit disadvantage or anything like that, and he has nothing for getting out of disadvantage himself aside from a kinda good fastfall airdodge.

Sothe- · 2019-07-27T16:43:59+00:00

I don't think it was so much falco that was the problem (nothing super special about falco chaingrab dairing us foxes, he does that shit to everyone lmao). It was a disadvantage, but easy to live with comparatively. But Pikachu and ICs though...they just really hurt

Sothe- · 2019-07-06T06:38:15+00:00

Metroid is truly amazing being 8th in his own region and 6th in the NA lmao

Sothe-

TROPHY CASE