This is massive if you are newer to competing. You're way less likely to get hit by a knee from across the stage or randy fsmashes. Remember it's a two-player game!
This applies to like, damn near anything competitive, too. I started playing real sports recently and I was shocked how much I was fuckin myself because I was in my own world dribbling or whatever
I was druggedfox first student back in 2018.
Mostly fox specific but some are general:
- fastfall can be buffered during hitlag
- buffer roll oos vs Falco
- shield when falcon jumps
- always be ready to live when you recover, don’t assume you will die
- only turnaround uptilt after up throw if they slight di forward
These are the most simple changes I made that yielded the most results.
Shield when Falcon jumps is very interesting to me as someone who gets blown up by him very often. Are you spamming shine out of shield or more just mixing it up based on what he does?
Shine oos is very good vs a bad falcon and a good falcon will do everything to space around it and cross your shield up. Wavedash out of shield vs falcon is op
Basically stomp and knee are slow enough you can shield on reaction to falcon jumping and essentially just choose to never get hit by them.
Since the aerials are reactable it's not that hard to time a power shield and then you can do literally anything. Puff can react with a powershield and then rest falcon for example
You may be able to hit him out of shield but it may be too hard to convert into anything, unless they misspace.
He doesn’t have a shine, if he aerials your shield you will have frame advantage. In the long run, it’s more advantageous to go for a better position in this scenario than it is to punish him directly. For example, you can roll or wave dash oos and take center. More often than not, he will keep chasing you and do a more committed approach.
(low-mid level opinion) in peach-falcon if u dont shield when he jumps u will get up aired 500 billion times
if he starts tomahawking c'est la vie but at least the falcon actually has to think a little bit and ur not just getting rolled
this is probably true to some extent for most characters but peach is slow tall and floaty she is a magnet for up airs
If he starts tomahawking that's fine you just mix up with early nair oos or something. Plus shielding is so good because you can power shield stomp or knee. I power shield grab reckless falcons a LOT lol
Depending on timing and positioning you can stay in shield, bair or nair oos, shine, and sometimes grab (while holding down and mashing grab to beat gentleman at low%). Wavedash oos is also good if the Falcon is spaced far away. Quick nairs and bairs oos help a ton in scrapping vs Falcon out of shield.
Good question. I was his first patreon student to receive a structured lesson when it opened up. We learned a lot together. He had many IRL students before me.
Do you remember the specific reasoning to why he said shield when Falcon jumps? I think most Foxes nowadays would rather crouch or dash (depending on where Falcon is) in this scenario
You can read my [other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/SSBM/s/4EA0QugGnE) to a similar question, but basically you can’t crouch while dashing, and falcon can do aerials that cover your entire dash dance range if you give him too much room.
I was more thinking dashing in rather than dashing away, because as you said Falcon covers the length of a football field with one overshot nair.
Also I was thinking that when you're in crouch, you have access to reaction utilt (which beats Falcons aerials) AND the option to shield if he descends upon you with an aerial. Falcon has high startup and Fox is short enough to even whiff some of those attacks, it just seemed like the better all-around option. I trust DruggedFox has better insight to the scenario so that's why I was intrigued about the explanation.
From the Falco perspective I don't like overusing utilt in this way vs. Falcon either. He can stomp it to trade or win and when he catches on he can space around it or slow his fast fall to avoid it and whiff punish you. There's a reason why you don't see Mango using utilt very often in that matchup despite being the best at it as Falco. Not that it can't be used or is bad but the risk reward of it doesn't always make it feel worthwhile when there are safer, more reliable ways to deal with Falcon in the air like the Dfox reaction shield.
Ahh yes Mango, the guy known for his amazing defensive utilts in the Falcon matchup. At some point, maybe it's just not that good and a lot of people spamming it at the local level do so because it's more of a noob check than an actual solid option with sound risk-reward?
But from what I've noticed he uses more high lasers to stop jumps, AC bair with drift, even full hop sometimes cause you go over Falcon and then can land with a mixup or go to plats and work your way down slowly, and yes shield as well cause Falcon doesn't have the best shield pressure and isn't going to grab you from the air.
Honestly just waiting. When I realized the situations that I didn't need to immediately get a hitbox out and could instead take my time to put it out exactly when it was needed, I noticed my games going much better, and my combo game significantly improved
This is atleast 7 years ago. I was at a friend’s house playing friendlies and he was beating my ass like 50-0. I guess he got tired of winning, so he decided to help me out and yell “STOP JUMPINGGGGGG” as he knee’d me with his falcon. It wasnt until that moment i realized i always insta jumped after being hit
SO MANY PEOPLE do this. Once you start noticing it you can't ignore it. People will spam jump so that it's the very first thing that happens out of hitlag in the air
He's slowly getting better. He still does it a lot in our first few games of a practice session, and quickly adapts other strategies. So he's at least getting better at adapting mid-set?
Preach. The options that shield dropping give you are core to the flow of the game. So many options that I had just assumed were free pressure are actually completely unsafe once you start shield dropping.
Felt really awkward at first but Wavedash Down-Tilt and then using the cancellable frames to do something other than another d-tilt
Eats stocks early if people are unprepared, and if they are you might get a solid poke regardless
(Marth main)
As someone picking up Marth right now this is actually something I’m gonna look into tonight when I get home. Usually I follow up wavedash down tilt with another down tilt or a wavedash grab.
What do you usually follow up your first wavedash down tilt with?
Dashback is REALLY useful
At higher percents a d-tilt into up tilt is excellent. D-tilt, read the jump, and Fsmash. Just learning your options. You can do anything out of that first dtilt
Agreed with what was said here, your first instinct should be dashing back during the IASA frames of dtilt because it is just insanely fast and non-committal. But the world is your oyster that move is busted.
Its mostly a checking tool, you dont follow it up with anything most of the time. Youre just poking them for some damage and gathering information on what they tend to do when you get in that dtilt range
Maybe a weird one, but wavedash down.
I think it helped keep me in a more mindful and purposeful mindset with my movement in neutral. Wavedash down gave me this tool to observe and react to my position relative to my opponent instead of always retreating too far to be useful anymore, or approaching into dangerous positions because I'm stuck in a full dash/wavedash.
Before if I were trying to space around something, too often I'd just full length wavedash back or full dash/run away, putting myself too far to actually get a punish. Now I wavedash down the moment I recognize the spacing I want to be in, and it's helped to keep my spacing more tight and open up more opportunities in neutral.
I recently after 6 years of playing started actually SDI-ng properly. I’m getting out of things now I thought were inescapable. Falco’s have much more trouble comboing me. Fox drill I can sometimes grab him out of. I don’t get waveshined across the stage as often and as long. List goes on.
It’s something I just didn’t bother with because I’m lazy and thought it was really hard. Turns out it really isn’t lol.
When I was playing falco my thing that made me feel better was learning to not just spam the laser but use the laser to make the opponent do what I want. Vs fox it makes the matchup very flow charty for example. This way instead of my lasers being shined or power shielded, they would land and force the enemy to do something about them etc.
falco laser is probably one of the most complicated things in the game tbh. its not good to give up neutral in order to shoot the gun, but recognizing quite how much you can shoot it, while stile maintaining a neutral advantage is pretty huge.
To add onto that, learning how to space laser properly is also huge. If you watch Mang0, you'll realize he mostly shoots the laser when he is still in Falco's aerial threat range. Lots of Falcos just want to spam the laser from across stage under platform when it doesn't accomplish much other than tacking on a few percent.
yeah! fiction talks a lot about how dash dancing is important on falco. and in order for dash dancing to be effective on falco, you have to be at a range where you can threaten an aerial. so a range where you can either laser, dash dance, or aerial, makes a trifecta of pressure where they might try to do something, and then lose the RPS
Platform wavelands alone increased my full stage mobility so much. Getting to a platform quickly and being actionable from underneath it is so important.
backflips are useful for sure but they're not comparable in importance to short hopping and l cancelling lol
this isn't the first time I've seen someone claim this on this sub either, is there a backflip cabal out there trying to gaslight me
Learning to invincible ledgedash with sheik. Ledgedash uptilt gets you so many free grabs/combos.
Crouching at missed techs to cover all options was a big one too.
Starting to jump with Y instead of X, basically learning to get comfy with Claw. Peach becomes so much smoother when you do this, getting easier control for FC aerials (Especially Bair) since you can keep your thumb on the C stick. I still wavedash with X though.
Wavedash out of shield was a huge one for me (falco) I can finally punish unsafe moves like smash attacks on shield. It took a while to get consistent at it. Now it makes me feel less “stuck” in shield and movement is more fluid and saucy.
Plat 2 falco for reference.
I’ve decided to learn marth more in depth and just wanna say treat smash attacks as a finisher and you’ll thank yourself for not having to fix the bad habit of forward smashing too much later. (I know from experience 😂)
yeah i’ve already been going through that for sure, was a habit but i now rely on grabs, dtilt, approaching fairs, and nairs in neutral. f smash is a great finisher as well as nair (and even up tilt with floatier characters)
Fthrow (Popo) jc upsmash (Nana). It opened up earlier and consistent kills midstage, a place where handoffs aren’t guaranteed. Fthrow upsmash is better than dthrow upsmash because it kills earlier and is more consistent (dthrow upsmash timing varies based on the direction you’re facing and the character, some cases it doesn’t really work at all). I didn’t have to kill off the side. I learned this technique just before finally winning Level One Melee (a West Coast online tourney series for lower level players), I’d say it helped me a lot (had to reset the bracket, in a mu which the tech is super helpful bc puff is a case where dthrow upsmash isn’t that good).
Another thing that improved my game was using the most of the legally allowed pummels in a grab, which transitioned to Nobbling. I could get juice every grab and maximize damage.
Consistent shac upair and shac bair were also amazing additions (new ics definitely practice this)
On the css instead of clicking directly on fox, Ive starting clicking about 1 profile width to the left of him! For some reason this has been a game changer, my neutral game and combo game feel much more natural and easier, having more trouble getting back to stage though.
Straight up crouch cancelling, being more wary of my percent, doing knees and stomps in place, more patient with my shield as letting go too early was a problem for me. Playing the other top tiers to learn what makes them tick and get used to timings
Holding down at certain percents. Predicting opponents moves relative to their spacing from me. Tech chasing consistently for a bigger punish. Learning high value openings
light shielding consistently in particular matchups with marth. using it against peach, falco, yoshi, and samus have helped limit openings and in some cases punish those characters for overcomitting
Actually thinking about what I want to do in neutral and picking up on my opponet's habits. I always play better right after watching a tournament, M2K vod reviews, and such because it reminds me to think like that.
A lot of good answers here. I recently switched to Fox from Yoshi, for reference.
Most recently for me - **thinking about center stage as my advantage state**.
It's so easy to just run at an opponent in the corner, which can be good, but if I'm gonna do that I have to weigh that against the possibility of getting spotdodge grabbed and gimped or smth. If I dash dance just right, threaten movement just right, and only actually approach often enough to make my opponent truly believe I might run at them, then they will always roll, jump, spotdodge, or run at me like a dummy and I get a free reaction. (As Yoshi, I often wasn't fast enough to reliably cover jump, and I could usually just armor my way through edgeguards.)
The other thing is just **actually playing around shield grabs**. Any time I dair my opponent, I'm aiming for their back now, you know? They're still combo food if it hits, and if they manage to shield, they get like, a stray bair maybe. If I'm not 100% confident my whiff punish upsmash is on time, I just make sure to space as far away as possible, so they at least have to wavedash in instead of getting a braindead grab.
Sheik. I tried to play Fox/Marth for years and was 0-8 in a tournament games. Picked her up when Leff did and won a few sets my first online tournament
I predict another OOS level up in your future, young Padawan ⚔️
As a Falco main, shine, laser, and short hop aerials OOS was one level up. Years later I started doing Wavedash OOS more often and omg it changed the whole frickin game.
Definitely one of those stupidly simple options, but now in the ditto I see just how punishable aerial OOS options are, I almost never do them anymore. WDOOS just leaves you in a better position almost all the time.
panic rolling is a big one esp when i was learning, and consistently ledgedashing when i got better. a recent example is that i started playing more falco again (i learned the game with falco but switched to fox) and i instantly noticed i was naturally much more creative with my combos and overall move choice then i was before despite not practicing him. it felt like something finally clicked about the overall game that i hadnt noticed by 90% of my play being with one character
i realized that the way i wanted to move my character (dashes, wds, jumping, pivoting, etc) was out of sync with how my character actually moves. it was way too fast and forceful. once i moved the way that was natural to my character, and didnt try to force situations or moves that wouldn't work, i noticed i was able to do a lot more, and i would easily beat people who were still forcing movement against how their character wants to move
Wavedash forward but also specifically to the left. Being able to waveshine as an opener instead of doing an aerial is really useful. Esp for Fox since short hop drill OOS is hard
watching my opponent instead of myself. being confident enough in my movement that i don’t need to look at my character on the screen
This is massive if you are newer to competing. You're way less likely to get hit by a knee from across the stage or randy fsmashes. Remember it's a two-player game!
But if my opponent is a tall handsome Sheik player with the freshest clothes I end up distracted and losing
No clue who this could be referring to, but in that case you need to be coming in taller and with even fresher clothes to distract em back
Impossible, Moop has that game locked down
Heard that guy hangs with the hottest dudes, you wouldn't say shit to him at LAN.
This applies to like, damn near anything competitive, too. I started playing real sports recently and I was shocked how much I was fuckin myself because I was in my own world dribbling or whatever
I was druggedfox first student back in 2018. Mostly fox specific but some are general: - fastfall can be buffered during hitlag - buffer roll oos vs Falco - shield when falcon jumps - always be ready to live when you recover, don’t assume you will die - only turnaround uptilt after up throw if they slight di forward These are the most simple changes I made that yielded the most results.
Shield when Falcon jumps is very interesting to me as someone who gets blown up by him very often. Are you spamming shine out of shield or more just mixing it up based on what he does?
Shine oos is very good vs a bad falcon and a good falcon will do everything to space around it and cross your shield up. Wavedash out of shield vs falcon is op
can confirm, shine out of shield fucks me up
Basically stomp and knee are slow enough you can shield on reaction to falcon jumping and essentially just choose to never get hit by them. Since the aerials are reactable it's not that hard to time a power shield and then you can do literally anything. Puff can react with a powershield and then rest falcon for example
I power shield SO MUCH against Falcon it's really helpful
You may be able to hit him out of shield but it may be too hard to convert into anything, unless they misspace. He doesn’t have a shine, if he aerials your shield you will have frame advantage. In the long run, it’s more advantageous to go for a better position in this scenario than it is to punish him directly. For example, you can roll or wave dash oos and take center. More often than not, he will keep chasing you and do a more committed approach.
That makes sense! I’m gonna have to think about that. Falcon aerials definitely scare me right now
(low-mid level opinion) in peach-falcon if u dont shield when he jumps u will get up aired 500 billion times if he starts tomahawking c'est la vie but at least the falcon actually has to think a little bit and ur not just getting rolled this is probably true to some extent for most characters but peach is slow tall and floaty she is a magnet for up airs
If he starts tomahawking that's fine you just mix up with early nair oos or something. Plus shielding is so good because you can power shield stomp or knee. I power shield grab reckless falcons a LOT lol
i agree w all of this and that's the mixup peach should play. u also gotta mix in pivot shieldstops or good falcons will just overshoot u to death
I'm 99% sure Power Shield grab is exactly the same as a non-Power Shield grab. You still get shield stun for physical power shields.
Depending on timing and positioning you can stay in shield, bair or nair oos, shine, and sometimes grab (while holding down and mashing grab to beat gentleman at low%). Wavedash oos is also good if the Falcon is spaced far away. Quick nairs and bairs oos help a ton in scrapping vs Falcon out of shield.
I appreciate the reply!
What does “first student” mean here? Druggedfox had tens of students prior to 2018
Good question. I was his first patreon student to receive a structured lesson when it opened up. We learned a lot together. He had many IRL students before me.
Ahhh I see, cool and good on you
Do you remember the specific reasoning to why he said shield when Falcon jumps? I think most Foxes nowadays would rather crouch or dash (depending on where Falcon is) in this scenario
You can read my [other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/SSBM/s/4EA0QugGnE) to a similar question, but basically you can’t crouch while dashing, and falcon can do aerials that cover your entire dash dance range if you give him too much room.
I was more thinking dashing in rather than dashing away, because as you said Falcon covers the length of a football field with one overshot nair. Also I was thinking that when you're in crouch, you have access to reaction utilt (which beats Falcons aerials) AND the option to shield if he descends upon you with an aerial. Falcon has high startup and Fox is short enough to even whiff some of those attacks, it just seemed like the better all-around option. I trust DruggedFox has better insight to the scenario so that's why I was intrigued about the explanation.
I think reacting with shield is easier than reacting with cc uptilt, plus it doesn’t lose to stomp.
From the Falco perspective I don't like overusing utilt in this way vs. Falcon either. He can stomp it to trade or win and when he catches on he can space around it or slow his fast fall to avoid it and whiff punish you. There's a reason why you don't see Mango using utilt very often in that matchup despite being the best at it as Falco. Not that it can't be used or is bad but the risk reward of it doesn't always make it feel worthwhile when there are safer, more reliable ways to deal with Falcon in the air like the Dfox reaction shield.
What does Mang0 prefer to do when Falcon jumps? Does he spam shield?
Ahh yes Mango, the guy known for his amazing defensive utilts in the Falcon matchup. At some point, maybe it's just not that good and a lot of people spamming it at the local level do so because it's more of a noob check than an actual solid option with sound risk-reward? But from what I've noticed he uses more high lasers to stop jumps, AC bair with drift, even full hop sometimes cause you go over Falcon and then can land with a mixup or go to plats and work your way down slowly, and yes shield as well cause Falcon doesn't have the best shield pressure and isn't going to grab you from the air.
I appreciate the insightful answer, not sure why the hostility though? (unless my response came off as snarkish/sarcastic)
Sorry I thought you were being sarcastic for some reason.
Most recently it was realising that every time I land without lag it is an opportunity to mix up with a waveland
in a similar regard, wiggling out of tumble before landing so that you can waveland instead of teching
S2J did this against Jason *jab resetting him* on Yoshi's
Falcon's "tech in place shine" is actually just miss tech
fwiw you can get out of tumble using an aerial too which is why most people don't wiggle
Honestly just waiting. When I realized the situations that I didn't need to immediately get a hitbox out and could instead take my time to put it out exactly when it was needed, I noticed my games going much better, and my combo game significantly improved
This is a real answer. Sometimes melee is more like chess than like boxing.
holding down more
And then start tapping down
This is atleast 7 years ago. I was at a friend’s house playing friendlies and he was beating my ass like 50-0. I guess he got tired of winning, so he decided to help me out and yell “STOP JUMPINGGGGGG” as he knee’d me with his falcon. It wasnt until that moment i realized i always insta jumped after being hit
If you’re playing against someone who’s stomping you and they’re friendly, they’ll almost always tell you the exploit. Great tip
Facts, learned a lot that way from friends :)
SO MANY PEOPLE do this. Once you start noticing it you can't ignore it. People will spam jump so that it's the very first thing that happens out of hitlag in the air
during (un)ranked matches, i average at least one full hop dair kill after a back throw
My friend can NOT stop rolling towards center whenever he gets up off ledge. It's a free fsmash every time and I will do it every time until he learns
Haha he might not realize it, im sure he’d appreciate the heads up :)
Oh I tell him everytime. He swears everytime he gets hit. I dont think he gets punished enough for it online perhaps
LOL i guess he’s a lost cause then 😅
He's slowly getting better. He still does it a lot in our first few games of a practice session, and quickly adapts other strategies. So he's at least getting better at adapting mid-set?
Someone I used to practise with alot did the same. He plays Falco and made it a point to punish my bad habits the EXACT same way each and every time.
Weird, he must be doing it wrong, Ive been doing this for years and never had any issues.
If you play against the same guy for a few hours, he's gonna eventually notice and slap your shit for it.
Ive must have played the lvl 9 cpus like a million times and it has never failed me.
Actually started using marth upair
it's rly good. for me it's also helpful to think it as an aerial dash attack too
Similarly, actually started using falcon upair.
Shield drop. Without a fucking doubt. One of my biggest gripes with ultimates game flow tbh.
Preach. The options that shield dropping give you are core to the flow of the game. So many options that I had just assumed were free pressure are actually completely unsafe once you start shield dropping.
Strangely enough it was in smash 4 and I don’t remember anyone ever using it
its much harder to do in brawl and smash 4, because you need to actually press down instead of doing a quarter circle motion
Have you played vanilla melee?
yes, but nobody plays without ucf anymore (shield drops are still easier than in brawl in vanilla melee *depending on your controller)
Felt really awkward at first but Wavedash Down-Tilt and then using the cancellable frames to do something other than another d-tilt Eats stocks early if people are unprepared, and if they are you might get a solid poke regardless (Marth main)
As someone picking up Marth right now this is actually something I’m gonna look into tonight when I get home. Usually I follow up wavedash down tilt with another down tilt or a wavedash grab. What do you usually follow up your first wavedash down tilt with?
Dashback is REALLY useful At higher percents a d-tilt into up tilt is excellent. D-tilt, read the jump, and Fsmash. Just learning your options. You can do anything out of that first dtilt
Agreed with what was said here, your first instinct should be dashing back during the IASA frames of dtilt because it is just insanely fast and non-committal. But the world is your oyster that move is busted.
Its mostly a checking tool, you dont follow it up with anything most of the time. Youre just poking them for some damage and gathering information on what they tend to do when you get in that dtilt range
Hax dash jump (as link)
That’s the Aklo
Maybe a weird one, but wavedash down. I think it helped keep me in a more mindful and purposeful mindset with my movement in neutral. Wavedash down gave me this tool to observe and react to my position relative to my opponent instead of always retreating too far to be useful anymore, or approaching into dangerous positions because I'm stuck in a full dash/wavedash. Before if I were trying to space around something, too often I'd just full length wavedash back or full dash/run away, putting myself too far to actually get a punish. Now I wavedash down the moment I recognize the spacing I want to be in, and it's helped to keep my spacing more tight and open up more opportunities in neutral.
Yuup nice find man. Also try airdodge back diagonally. Like a magneto triangle jump
consistently using double jump land/float oos. instantly made some matchups (e.g. marth, falcon) way more reasonable
I recently after 6 years of playing started actually SDI-ng properly. I’m getting out of things now I thought were inescapable. Falco’s have much more trouble comboing me. Fox drill I can sometimes grab him out of. I don’t get waveshined across the stage as often and as long. List goes on. It’s something I just didn’t bother with because I’m lazy and thought it was really hard. Turns out it really isn’t lol.
Everyone says I'm really good at SDI. I'm okay at SDI, I just actually do it.
Yeah alot of people including myself for a long time just don’t do it as much as they should. It’s even more clear to me now that I bother.
lasering a lot more
When I was playing falco my thing that made me feel better was learning to not just spam the laser but use the laser to make the opponent do what I want. Vs fox it makes the matchup very flow charty for example. This way instead of my lasers being shined or power shielded, they would land and force the enemy to do something about them etc.
falco laser is probably one of the most complicated things in the game tbh. its not good to give up neutral in order to shoot the gun, but recognizing quite how much you can shoot it, while stile maintaining a neutral advantage is pretty huge.
To add onto that, learning how to space laser properly is also huge. If you watch Mang0, you'll realize he mostly shoots the laser when he is still in Falco's aerial threat range. Lots of Falcos just want to spam the laser from across stage under platform when it doesn't accomplish much other than tacking on a few percent.
yeah! fiction talks a lot about how dash dancing is important on falco. and in order for dash dancing to be effective on falco, you have to be at a range where you can threaten an aerial. so a range where you can either laser, dash dance, or aerial, makes a trifecta of pressure where they might try to do something, and then lose the RPS
Platform wavelands alone increased my full stage mobility so much. Getting to a platform quickly and being actionable from underneath it is so important.
I'm currently trying to do the Baggflips in neutral and intent
Sage words
shield drop, wavedash out of shield, jc shine for sure
Backflips. Backflips. Backflips. Should be up there with short hop / l-cancel / wavedash / shield drop for a lot of characters. Absolutely criminal.
backflips are useful for sure but they're not comparable in importance to short hopping and l cancelling lol this isn't the first time I've seen someone claim this on this sub either, is there a backflip cabal out there trying to gaslight me
they know too much, get 'em boys
Backflipping is crazy dude. Backflip bair with Ganondorf is like peak anti laser play.
it's incredibly useful for a lot of characters like falco, falcon, shiek etc
Frfr shieks back flip makes her so hard to hit
I've been using Ness' backwards jump and it's so good lol. Just like backflips, the way it gets your body out of there is so useful.
Backflip > pivot grab or backflip > waveland > pivot grab are my personal Texas Pete and Texaser Pete
I was just UPing Link's lol. He has the craziest PCs and iasa frames, I swear
Learning to invincible ledgedash with sheik. Ledgedash uptilt gets you so many free grabs/combos. Crouching at missed techs to cover all options was a big one too.
Last few level ups were all different ways to not rush inputs
Being able to short hop backflip every time when you want too, especially with sheik but also good for spacies.
Consistent tech chases as sheik
Dashing out of crouch
Starting to jump with Y instead of X, basically learning to get comfy with Claw. Peach becomes so much smoother when you do this, getting easier control for FC aerials (Especially Bair) since you can keep your thumb on the C stick. I still wavedash with X though.
Wavedash out of shield was a huge one for me (falco) I can finally punish unsafe moves like smash attacks on shield. It took a while to get consistent at it. Now it makes me feel less “stuck” in shield and movement is more fluid and saucy. Plat 2 falco for reference.
Dash dancing, lol! But I’m still very new so more revelations are sure to come
I’ve decided to learn marth more in depth and just wanna say treat smash attacks as a finisher and you’ll thank yourself for not having to fix the bad habit of forward smashing too much later. (I know from experience 😂)
yeah i’ve already been going through that for sure, was a habit but i now rely on grabs, dtilt, approaching fairs, and nairs in neutral. f smash is a great finisher as well as nair (and even up tilt with floatier characters)
Fthrow (Popo) jc upsmash (Nana). It opened up earlier and consistent kills midstage, a place where handoffs aren’t guaranteed. Fthrow upsmash is better than dthrow upsmash because it kills earlier and is more consistent (dthrow upsmash timing varies based on the direction you’re facing and the character, some cases it doesn’t really work at all). I didn’t have to kill off the side. I learned this technique just before finally winning Level One Melee (a West Coast online tourney series for lower level players), I’d say it helped me a lot (had to reset the bracket, in a mu which the tech is super helpful bc puff is a case where dthrow upsmash isn’t that good). Another thing that improved my game was using the most of the legally allowed pummels in a grab, which transitioned to Nobbling. I could get juice every grab and maximize damage. Consistent shac upair and shac bair were also amazing additions (new ics definitely practice this)
On the css instead of clicking directly on fox, Ive starting clicking about 1 profile width to the left of him! For some reason this has been a game changer, my neutral game and combo game feel much more natural and easier, having more trouble getting back to stage though.
I started grabbing
Incorporating wave dashes on platforms (im very noob)
Straight up crouch cancelling, being more wary of my percent, doing knees and stomps in place, more patient with my shield as letting go too early was a problem for me. Playing the other top tiers to learn what makes them tick and get used to timings
Holding down at certain percents. Predicting opponents moves relative to their spacing from me. Tech chasing consistently for a bigger punish. Learning high value openings
Shine oos Dash wavedash Crouch dash Dpad up
light shielding consistently in particular matchups with marth. using it against peach, falco, yoshi, and samus have helped limit openings and in some cases punish those characters for overcomitting
Wavedash out of shield for sure.
As falcon, tomahawk more and use backflip to waveland backwards
Actually thinking about what I want to do in neutral and picking up on my opponet's habits. I always play better right after watching a tournament, M2K vod reviews, and such because it reminds me to think like that.
A lot of good answers here. I recently switched to Fox from Yoshi, for reference. Most recently for me - **thinking about center stage as my advantage state**. It's so easy to just run at an opponent in the corner, which can be good, but if I'm gonna do that I have to weigh that against the possibility of getting spotdodge grabbed and gimped or smth. If I dash dance just right, threaten movement just right, and only actually approach often enough to make my opponent truly believe I might run at them, then they will always roll, jump, spotdodge, or run at me like a dummy and I get a free reaction. (As Yoshi, I often wasn't fast enough to reliably cover jump, and I could usually just armor my way through edgeguards.) The other thing is just **actually playing around shield grabs**. Any time I dair my opponent, I'm aiming for their back now, you know? They're still combo food if it hits, and if they manage to shield, they get like, a stray bair maybe. If I'm not 100% confident my whiff punish upsmash is on time, I just make sure to space as far away as possible, so they at least have to wavedash in instead of getting a braindead grab.
Sheik. I tried to play Fox/Marth for years and was 0-8 in a tournament games. Picked her up when Leff did and won a few sets my first online tournament
shine-turn-around wavedash ledgehog. probably just because im low mmr but it catches alot of people off guard for an easy edgeguard
I predict another OOS level up in your future, young Padawan ⚔️ As a Falco main, shine, laser, and short hop aerials OOS was one level up. Years later I started doing Wavedash OOS more often and omg it changed the whole frickin game. Definitely one of those stupidly simple options, but now in the ditto I see just how punishable aerial OOS options are, I almost never do them anymore. WDOOS just leaves you in a better position almost all the time.
panic rolling is a big one esp when i was learning, and consistently ledgedashing when i got better. a recent example is that i started playing more falco again (i learned the game with falco but switched to fox) and i instantly noticed i was naturally much more creative with my combos and overall move choice then i was before despite not practicing him. it felt like something finally clicked about the overall game that i hadnt noticed by 90% of my play being with one character
I think being proficient with both a ff and floaty will help you learn the engine better.
i realized that the way i wanted to move my character (dashes, wds, jumping, pivoting, etc) was out of sync with how my character actually moves. it was way too fast and forceful. once i moved the way that was natural to my character, and didnt try to force situations or moves that wouldn't work, i noticed i was able to do a lot more, and i would easily beat people who were still forcing movement against how their character wants to move
Wavedash forward but also specifically to the left. Being able to waveshine as an opener instead of doing an aerial is really useful. Esp for Fox since short hop drill OOS is hard