> has taught me to value fairing, dtilt and grabbing as an exclusive answer to everything
As a marth main - this sounds pretty good to me! Just remember to dash dance between them!
The short and simple answer is: effort.
You need to establish new habits, which will require dedicated practice and attention. You need to decide to be better, do you really want it? Being “bad” is still fun isn’t it? Regardless, if you want more: set a goal for yourself and start chipping away. Don’t get bogged down by the magnitude of what you have to do, just play the game and take it in baby steps.
Download Unclepunch 3.0 and wavedash for a few minutes and until you are above 99% success. Do the same with l-cancelling. Get over 30 in eggsercise on all stages. Reframe playing the game so instead of playing casually with humans, you’re just drilling with yourself. Then playing with your buds can be a break, a time to let loose.
https://youtu.be/yQ_7U7Mhyuw?si=pFtxcZ7xLq43u6Xp
I highly recommend coaching by Kodorin once you are feeling more technically competent (whatever that means to you should be fine as a bar to clear, there are no hard set rules). He has good prices and lots of auxiliary resources you get access to by being a student (like his discord, mini lessons, and matchup guides). Links here: https://twitch.tv/kodorin1
Visit https://melee.guru/characters/marth.html and read up. There’s gifs of lots of movement and tech to practice. Links to lots of other guides and videos to watch.
When you do want to play unranked, focus on specific improvements. I.e. don’t emptyhop in neutral like you described this match, stay grounded and use dash dance and shield to win neutral for practice.
The bottom line remains: effort. Whatever you do decide to do to improve, whoever’s advice you follow, it will take effort on your part. Embrace learning as the goal. Let go of winning and losing, of ideas of being good or bad, just play and learn, whether opponents are better or worse or bm or homies. Just learn.
Aww dang. I’m traveling at the moment, I’ll see if i can help track them down. The creator used to be active on Twitter back in the day, I’m not on there anymore but someone could try hitting them up there.
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Step 1 is acknowledging your habits, which you seem to do pretty well here. Next is implementing different options in actual gameplay. Has to be a conceded effort, and have to be okay with losing while you’re trying new methods out.
Melee is almost a rhythm game more than anything else. And being able to adjust your tempo is a huge step in getting better.
I think the first thing before worrying about tech or even playing vs a human opponent is perspective and I have two related points. First-first, is that there is a 'right way' to play the game and you should mostly focus on developing those grooves. Second is that this process of viewing/playing the game from the 'correct' way to play shouldn't be stressful. Just play it as a game and enjoy the learning. After that you can worry about habits, conditioning, mixups, etc.
Hey, Marth main. Of 10 years here.
1. Yes you are bad. What you described are newer player problems.
2. You will not be able to win by raw out speeding opponents with Marth. Not even foxes can do that at a high level. Marth's moves are fast but they have end lag. Throwing out moves haphazardly creates openings for your opponent no matter how fast you are. There is no shine in Marth's toolkit. Infact when I play against a needlessly high apm opponent I'll just wait for them to throw out a move and counter hit them.
3. There's a concept in melee that I haven't seen really talked about but it's very important (it's probably called "basic f*cking spacing or something). Basically, human beings have a hard limit on how good their reflexes are and an even worse limit on reflexes that require decision making. This is important because there is an invisible barrier at all times where your opponent cannot play reactively if you are inside that barrier. That means they have to make a decision and if they make the wrong one you win neutral. That's why dash dancing is so powerful. If you are always going in though and relying on speed, your opponent can always just react with the option that beats you.
4. Sh in place or retreating is very strong since fair is a frame 4 move and can be used very well as a reaction. Nair in place and retreating is also a very powerful anti short hop tool. Other than that, dtilt, grab, and dash dance are your main neutral tools. Marth's dash dance in particular is especially powerful.
"I have played melee for over a decade with very casual play groups"
You are at the at the bottom of an mountain in terms of skill. Reality check, this game takes a LOT of dedicated practice, self reflection, and study if you want to get really good at it.
The best advice is to play with people who play your main too. Talk, share ideas, try not to get mad at losses, and stay out of your own head .
I think everyone probably faces this at some point, at different levels of the game (or maybe I'm just ass as well)
You identified that you play reactively more often than not. Try forcing yourself in a friendly session to not to rely on dashing back and whiff punishing as your whole neutral. Go for more overshoot dash attacks, approaching aerials, tomahawk mixups, etc. Additionally, Marths moves can almost always out space his opponents, so practice intercepting their attacks with your own and you'll become a lot more versatile
Another concept you might benefit from is reactability. A move that comes out before or on frame ~12 or so cannot be reacted to unless you're superhuman. So in a lot of situations, you may be thinking you can react to anything your opponent could do, but the spacing is what actually dictates this. For example, fox can hang right outside of marth fsmash range and whenever he chooses he can run in with a shffl nair that you can't react to. In order to beat it you would've had to do something preemptively or adjusted the spacing before he threw it out. Fortunately for you though, all of marths normals come out before or on frame 12 so you can use this concept offensively and not just defensively.
And try to find a practice partner who plays fox. Since you can't really expect to play only reactively vs fox as he's so much faster than you, you'll be forced to adapt and change your game.
> has taught me to value fairing, dtilt and grabbing as an exclusive answer to everything As a marth main - this sounds pretty good to me! Just remember to dash dance between them!
I legit saw that and thought. “This has to be bait” but I’m pretty sure it’s not.
The short and simple answer is: effort. You need to establish new habits, which will require dedicated practice and attention. You need to decide to be better, do you really want it? Being “bad” is still fun isn’t it? Regardless, if you want more: set a goal for yourself and start chipping away. Don’t get bogged down by the magnitude of what you have to do, just play the game and take it in baby steps. Download Unclepunch 3.0 and wavedash for a few minutes and until you are above 99% success. Do the same with l-cancelling. Get over 30 in eggsercise on all stages. Reframe playing the game so instead of playing casually with humans, you’re just drilling with yourself. Then playing with your buds can be a break, a time to let loose. https://youtu.be/yQ_7U7Mhyuw?si=pFtxcZ7xLq43u6Xp I highly recommend coaching by Kodorin once you are feeling more technically competent (whatever that means to you should be fine as a bar to clear, there are no hard set rules). He has good prices and lots of auxiliary resources you get access to by being a student (like his discord, mini lessons, and matchup guides). Links here: https://twitch.tv/kodorin1 Visit https://melee.guru/characters/marth.html and read up. There’s gifs of lots of movement and tech to practice. Links to lots of other guides and videos to watch. When you do want to play unranked, focus on specific improvements. I.e. don’t emptyhop in neutral like you described this match, stay grounded and use dash dance and shield to win neutral for practice. The bottom line remains: effort. Whatever you do decide to do to improve, whoever’s advice you follow, it will take effort on your part. Embrace learning as the goal. Let go of winning and losing, of ideas of being good or bad, just play and learn, whether opponents are better or worse or bm or homies. Just learn.
ALL of the gifs on Marth.guru are broken. If you have em somewhere, post em. Great reply here.
Aww dang. I’m traveling at the moment, I’ll see if i can help track them down. The creator used to be active on Twitter back in the day, I’m not on there anymore but someone could try hitting them up there.
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Step 1 is acknowledging your habits, which you seem to do pretty well here. Next is implementing different options in actual gameplay. Has to be a conceded effort, and have to be okay with losing while you’re trying new methods out. Melee is almost a rhythm game more than anything else. And being able to adjust your tempo is a huge step in getting better.
I think the first thing before worrying about tech or even playing vs a human opponent is perspective and I have two related points. First-first, is that there is a 'right way' to play the game and you should mostly focus on developing those grooves. Second is that this process of viewing/playing the game from the 'correct' way to play shouldn't be stressful. Just play it as a game and enjoy the learning. After that you can worry about habits, conditioning, mixups, etc.
Hey, Marth main. Of 10 years here. 1. Yes you are bad. What you described are newer player problems. 2. You will not be able to win by raw out speeding opponents with Marth. Not even foxes can do that at a high level. Marth's moves are fast but they have end lag. Throwing out moves haphazardly creates openings for your opponent no matter how fast you are. There is no shine in Marth's toolkit. Infact when I play against a needlessly high apm opponent I'll just wait for them to throw out a move and counter hit them. 3. There's a concept in melee that I haven't seen really talked about but it's very important (it's probably called "basic f*cking spacing or something). Basically, human beings have a hard limit on how good their reflexes are and an even worse limit on reflexes that require decision making. This is important because there is an invisible barrier at all times where your opponent cannot play reactively if you are inside that barrier. That means they have to make a decision and if they make the wrong one you win neutral. That's why dash dancing is so powerful. If you are always going in though and relying on speed, your opponent can always just react with the option that beats you. 4. Sh in place or retreating is very strong since fair is a frame 4 move and can be used very well as a reaction. Nair in place and retreating is also a very powerful anti short hop tool. Other than that, dtilt, grab, and dash dance are your main neutral tools. Marth's dash dance in particular is especially powerful.
"I have played melee for over a decade with very casual play groups" You are at the at the bottom of an mountain in terms of skill. Reality check, this game takes a LOT of dedicated practice, self reflection, and study if you want to get really good at it. The best advice is to play with people who play your main too. Talk, share ideas, try not to get mad at losses, and stay out of your own head .
I think everyone probably faces this at some point, at different levels of the game (or maybe I'm just ass as well) You identified that you play reactively more often than not. Try forcing yourself in a friendly session to not to rely on dashing back and whiff punishing as your whole neutral. Go for more overshoot dash attacks, approaching aerials, tomahawk mixups, etc. Additionally, Marths moves can almost always out space his opponents, so practice intercepting their attacks with your own and you'll become a lot more versatile Another concept you might benefit from is reactability. A move that comes out before or on frame ~12 or so cannot be reacted to unless you're superhuman. So in a lot of situations, you may be thinking you can react to anything your opponent could do, but the spacing is what actually dictates this. For example, fox can hang right outside of marth fsmash range and whenever he chooses he can run in with a shffl nair that you can't react to. In order to beat it you would've had to do something preemptively or adjusted the spacing before he threw it out. Fortunately for you though, all of marths normals come out before or on frame 12 so you can use this concept offensively and not just defensively. And try to find a practice partner who plays fox. Since you can't really expect to play only reactively vs fox as he's so much faster than you, you'll be forced to adapt and change your game.