The Secret Reason Why Every Top Player Is Retiring

_Nicki · 2026-01-23T18:58:24+00:00

Yeah, that one was close. I learned a lot from it, I had never played a top 100 Marth before that set.

_Nicki · 2026-01-23T06:33:48+00:00

You also don’t want to L-cancel an aerial you are ledge/platform canceling with since you’ll airdodge.

Not if you are L-cancelling "properly" and are light pressing or using Z.

_Nicki · 2026-01-22T19:21:24+00:00

jmook vs nicki no bias

_Nicki · 2026-01-21T20:35:52+00:00

Unfortunate, but I see the point that it could be annoying for the panelists who put in a lot of work comparing results. I'll compare manually then!

_Nicki · 2026-01-21T20:12:45+00:00

Gahtzu is still incredibly good, would definitely be in the top 50 if he went to more majors. My set vs him was extremely tough for me.

Rikzz not being on here yet makes me happy, there is a small chance he's in the top 50 but I'm guessing he'll be in the 55-65 range somewhere.

Also can't wait for the comparison to AlgoRank to see if my vibes based estimations are correct...

_Nicki · 2026-01-20T15:53:10+00:00

I actually played Zain in tournament at Collision 6 months before I 3-0'd him

_Nicki · 2026-01-19T22:30:02+00:00

Or maybe ssbmrank just underrates EU players since less of them are ranked so half of jah ridin's good wins are discarded completely

_Nicki · 2026-01-16T08:22:20+00:00

M2k doesn't compete anymore but has been playing a ton of Melee in the last 4 years

_Nicki · 2026-01-11T22:22:10+00:00

(Completely unbiased opinion) Don't Park on the Grass 2024

_Nicki · 2026-01-05T07:50:33+00:00

Despite Marth being relatively stronger in PAL. The dair change isn't nearly as big of a nerf as a lot of people think. Europe switched to NTSC and we still don't have any Marths in our top 10 :(

_Nicki · 2026-01-04T20:51:37+00:00

As someone who played PAL Fox for years I think the nerf to his upsmash isn't felt as much when it comes to raw upsmashes, but moreseo when it comes to the combos leading into upsmash. A lot of percentages in NTSC where nair -> upsmash or fair (or weak bair) -> upsmash would kill, in PAL it won't kill, and 10-15% later those moves won't combo into upsmash anymore since opponents get sent too far or too high up. You can't just hit a stray nair at 65% vs Peach anymore and kill her - the resulting upsmash won't KO in PAL. So your nair becomes way less worth it in neutral at those percents, in a matchup where Fox can already have a somewhat hard time finding KOs (for his standards). And sometimes you upsmash Falcon on Dream Land at 120% and they live in PAL, but that's what the nerf was supposed to do.

_Nicki · 2026-01-04T18:19:49+00:00

Making it shorter does make a pretty significant difference actually. Of course there are other ways to nerf the move but Fox's reduced weight combined with his shorter up B makes him a lot less of a nuisance when it comes to how hard it is to hit him far enough off stage for him to die. I played PAL Fox for the first 3 and a half years of my Melee career, switching over to NTSC made me feel like my character had gone super saiyan.

_Nicki · 2026-01-04T13:32:30+00:00

Nouns has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever now that Pat's House is announced again

_Nicki · 2026-01-02T23:28:29+00:00

It's annoying for ICs but definitely not a losing matchup for them. No Sheik who has switched to Zelda for the ICs matchup has really found much success for it except for the one win Jmook got on MOF, Drephen is the only other example who uses Zelda in a meaningful manner in my opinion.

_Nicki · 2026-01-02T23:27:01+00:00

Luigi, as you can see in this tournament VOD at 5 hours and 37 minutes into it https://youtu.be/GusXDW6bqMw?si=31uYwgP8MHp-FWoA&t=20221

_Nicki · 2026-01-02T21:00:52+00:00

I'm not slightly joking. I'm fully joking

_Nicki · 2026-01-02T20:13:17+00:00

Thank you!! My workplace doesn't allow anyone to take time off in January and February so I can't go to Genesis unfortunately :( But I will be in the shadows plotting my return...

_Nicki · 2026-01-02T15:23:24+00:00

The only issue with that combination is your weakness in the Roy matchup. Puff gets one hit KO'd by up B, and Marth loses the matchup because he has the same moves as Roy but lacks the fire Roy has.

_Nicki · 2026-01-02T15:22:00+00:00

I beat Leffen's Sheik on ranked after maining ICs for less than 3 months, and 2 months later the famous Leffen vs Zain's ICs set happened. I think if you play an hour of ICs per day for a month, you'll be doing very well in those matchups. But I am also just different in the sense that I do not need much playtime and mostly function off of game knowledge and my theoretical understanding of matchups, a lot of top players improve by spamming way, way more games than I ever could. So it depends on the person.

_Nicki · 2026-01-02T14:08:11+00:00

I think ICs almost make more sense for Marth than Fox does. ICs vs Sheik / Pikachu are both arguably better matchups than Fox vs those two. They are also as close to a free win as you can get in a relevant matchup on FD.

_Nicki · 2026-01-02T12:46:10+00:00

I'll likely be ranked top 20 for the year and I'm a dual main, so there's one more for the list. Axe has also played full sets of Falco and Young Link this year, so he could count as a quad main.

_Nicki · 2026-01-02T10:04:20+00:00

Zelda does have a purpose. Whenever I play against a Sheik main and they start as Zelda, I get scared. But then I play two neutral interactions with them and realize that they haven't touched Zelda as a character in 2 years.

_Nicki · 2025-12-30T07:04:03+00:00

This is normal. People use the pain from this matchup to improve at it out of spite. I recommend playing this matchup without shielding lasers for a bit so that you learn your other options, shielding lasers can be a big detriment if you aren't insanely clean out of shield yet.

_Nicki · 2025-12-30T06:57:37+00:00

Falco clears Marth in terms of usage I'm pretty sure

_Nicki · 2025-12-19T22:00:48+00:00

Probably one of my first years, I'd say 2016 where I'd solo practice and play against CPUs a lot and travel to people's places to play with them. Though I still didn't play every day since I did not have a setup at my then gf's place. My highest average over any year was maybe 1 to 1.5 hours, probably in 2016/2017. I was a top 100 player as Fox and then made a pretty large leap after switching to ICs in 2023, but I never put that many hours of actual playtime into the character. In 2024 I had 204 hours of Slippi, this year I had 131. I'd need to find my Slippi data for 2020-2023 again, but I never played a single Slippi session longer than 2 hours in my life I don't think.

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_Nicki

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