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Competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee Discussion Thread

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ec0ec0

Member
edit: ups double post, sorry

Another thing, why does this notion exist that everyone is forced to play fox against hungrybox!?

I think that, more than puff heavily beating everyone else (she doesn't), it has more to do with the fact that fox is the only character who has relatively easy to land moves, that kill puff super early:
- unlike with other top tiers, puff can't duck under fox's grab
- up air (up throw -> up air, nair -> up air, raw up air)
- up smash (jab -> up smash, raw up smash)

Fox being able to kill puff that much easier and earlier, would probably be enough for those who dislike having to win a lot of neutral interactions to kill puff with other characters (i.e. puff slowing the pace of the game down and "not playing melee").

But then you add the fact that the other top tiers (marth, shiek, falcon,...) have very linear recoveries (also with higher landing lag), and are almost definitely f*cked each time they get hit near the corner and put off stage, unlike fox, and it makes the call even easier.

Fox is also that much better at tanking her hits, right? (getting hit at crouch cancel percent without getting knocked down). He also gets to force puff to approach him for free, thanks to lasers.

Like, if fox really deals that much better with all the traits that people dislike about puff:
- not being able to kill her with combos, edguards, or by landing a grab, like they would against pretty much everyone else
- being helpless when off stage
- puff being "lame", not being able to approach her like a regular character, having to play the "one hit at a time" game.

why would someone who can play fox, not put his time in that match up instead, if he's going to have to deal with it for years to come?

Also, isn't playing the matchup with someone other that fox, going to be more draining?

Armada said that, in Syndicate (a european tournament), trif (a peach player) went marth against him, because playing the peach dito was "too draining" to end up losing anyway, and that he would prefer to "reserve" that energy for the losers bracket.

Couldn't someone who mains marth, sheik, or falcon, but can also play fox, use a similar reasoning to justify going fox, instead of trying with his main? (aside from the fact that fox does better in the matchup)
 
F

Fugu

Member
I feel like we'd be seeing the Falco-Puff matchup a lot more if the character didn't inexplicably die at the top level.
 
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ec0ec0

Member
Fugu said:
I feel like we'd be seeing the Falco-Puff matchup a lot more if the character didn't inexplicably die at the top level.
Click to expand...

I agree. I didn't say anything about falco because, unlike with the other top tiers (marth, shiek, falcon), i don't know what his problem against puff is? Like, sure, a double fox/falco main is going to use fox instead, and sure fox has it slightly easier, but still, if falco is not perfectly fine for fighting puff, then what is every other character in the game doing playing any other matchup? At that point, you may as well only be able to use fox.
 
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chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
I'm pretty sure Puff is a relatively poor matchup for Falco at the top level, but it's hard to say since Falco is barely being developed at that level.

Falco doesn't really have any of the tools that make the matchup good for Fox. He doesn't have the kill setups, his laser is worse since it builds damage slower and is worse at forcing approaches, and his shine isn't as good since he has no followups or gimp potential. He basically has to play keep away with lasers and win a ton of neutral exchanges to build percent, then find an opening for utilt/dtilt/fsmash/double dair at the ledge/shine off the top. All of which are easier said than done when the Puff is playing patiently at high percent.

Then on the other side Puff kills Falco easily as soon as he's off stage due to his poor recovery, and all those same rest setups that work on Fox also work on Falco.


IIRC Hbox mentioned something about it being Puff favored or really hard for Falco when he played Shiz on netplay.
 
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ec0ec0

Member
chaosblade said:
[...]

IIRC Hbox mentioned something about it being Puff favored or really hard for Falco when he played Shiz on netplay.
Click to expand...

If people really think that this is true, then they would have to put puff super high on the tier list, which i'm sure hungrybox wouldn't do.

Like, if puff clearly beated falco (meaning that it would be obvious that she had, at least, a slight advantage), how would anyone else even be even with her?

So puff clearly loses to fox, but beats everyone else!? i mean, if she clearly beats falco, how is someone going to arguee that marth is even with her, let alone beats her?

are they going to say that "in theory" marth wins, because he has more range and he is faster, and he can, theorically, kill her early with pivots? when in practice landing a dash grab on a crouching puff, then reading the di, to land a pivot at the correct percent, is not going to happen like a fox up throw -> up air? and, when in practice, the puff is going to f*ck up the marth if she catches him (either with a combo or a edguard)?

So falco loses, marth loses, sheik and falcon lose a bit harder, peach and ice climbers get bodied, and puff doesn't have to play against herself. Outside of clearly losing against the most common character in the game (like almost everyone), puff is looking pretty good?

edited.
 
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chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
ec0ec0 said:
If people really think that this is true, then they would have to put puff super high on the tier list, which i'm sure hungrybox wouldn't do.

Like, if puff clearly beated falco (meaning that it would be obvious that she had, at least, a slight advantage), how would anyone else even be even with her?
Click to expand...

Matchups don't work like that, just because Marth might be even with Fox doesn't mean he wins against every character below him.

And outside of Hbox it's probably 50/50, but it's hard to say due to the lack of currently successful players for both characters.
 
E

ec0ec0

Member
chaosblade said:
Matchups don't work like that, just because Marth might be even with Fox doesn't mean he wins against every character below him.

And outside of Hbox it's probably 50/50, but it's hard to say due to the lack of currently successful players for both characters.
Click to expand...

i edited my comment to add more before i saw your reply.

Basically, what i'm saying is that people would arguee that marth beats or goes even with puff based on "theory" alone, when in practice it doesn't look like that, and if puff catches him he's dead.

If marth has "theoretical" potential against puff, how does falco now have that, and then some.

It's a pretty popular opinion nowadays that marth goes even, or even beats puff, which is based on nothing aside from "theory", yet falco clearly loses to puff now!?

At that point, not putting puff 4th or higher on the tier list sounds like a joke?

edited.
 
C

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
Marth has a range advantage on Puff that Falco doesn't have, so from a purely theoretical standpoint Marth having a better matchup against Puff than Falco isn't exactly unreasonable.

And I do think Puff would be higher if she wasn't carried by a single player, but she is. Even Peach has a number of notable players backing her (Bladewise, Llod, MacD, Trif) while the only other Puff main is Abu, and he's not even all that consistent.
 
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ec0ec0

Member
I wonder when a marth is going to try to prove that marth actually beats puff? (about that...)

Because, even if PPMD was feeling good and was able to come back, and even with him saying that marth actually beats puff, i bet that he would go with falco instead.

So much for marth beating puff. Like, marth suposeddly beats her in neutral the easiest, doesn't have to be scared about dying at any moment from up throw -> rest... what is everyone waiting for?

There was a time where i was really hoping that mew2king would learn the marth-puff matchup for hungrybox, but i have lost all hope since then.

To make things worse, mew2king said very recently on stream that he will absolutely never learn pivots, so him having the throw -> tipper forward smash on lock in the future, for the marth-puff matchup, is not going to be a thing.

Falco-puff and marth-puff would be amazing to watch instead of fox-puff over and over.
 
F

Fugu

Member
chaosblade said:
I'm pretty sure Puff is a relatively poor matchup for Falco at the top level, but it's hard to say since Falco is barely being developed at that level.

Falco doesn't really have any of the tools that make the matchup good for Fox. He doesn't have the kill setups, his laser is worse since it builds damage slower and is worse at forcing approaches, and his shine isn't as good since he has no followups or gimp potential. He basically has to play keep away with lasers and win a ton of neutral exchanges to build percent, then find an opening for utilt/dtilt/fsmash/double dair at the ledge/shine off the top. All of which are easier said than done when the Puff is playing patiently at high percent.

Then on the other side Puff kills Falco easily as soon as he's off stage due to his poor recovery, and all those same rest setups that work on Fox also work on Falco.


IIRC Hbox mentioned something about it being Puff favored or really hard for Falco when he played Shiz on netplay.
Click to expand...
I haven't been a really good Melee player for around a decade so believe me when I say that I recognize my own ignorance here, but how is Falco's laser worse at forcing approaches in this matchup than Fox's? Yes it builds damage somewhat more slowly but it's far more threatening.

I would also just be generally wary of conflating the Hungrybox matchup with the Jigglypuff matchup. It's obviously a bit hard to separate the two (since he is the only relevant Jigglypuff player at top level) but it's important. Nobody's going to sit here and argue that Peach has a favorable matchup against Fox because Armada has the capability to make it work, but it's arguably more tempting to make the same (flawed) argument in Jigglypuff's case since there at least other relevant Peach players in the current metagame.

ec0ec0 said:
i edited my comment to add more before i saw your reply.

Basically, what i'm saying is that people would arguee that marth beats or goes even with puff based on "theory" alone, when in practice it doesn't look like that, and if puff catches him he's dead.

If marth has "theoretical" potential against puff, how does falco now have that, and then some.

It's a pretty popular opinion nowadays that marth goes even, or even beats puff, which is based on nothing aside from "theory", yet falco clearly loses to puff now!?

At that point, not putting puff 4th or higher on the tier list sounds like a joke?

edited.
Click to expand...
It only doesn't look like that because the second best player in the world is a Jigglypuff player and there is right now a notable gap in results between #2 and #3.

Matchup charts are tricky and I think the reason people haven't really put much effort into updating them since 2010 is because they're in a really complicated place. They imply that a strictly theoretical approach is somehow useful in predicting actual game outcomes while acknowledging that characters aren't used anywhere near their theoretical output; these two facts are impossible to reconcile on its face and the lack of predictive value of matchup charts even at top level play indicates the flawed reasoning. The tier list at least gives them the wiggle room and ambiguity to say "we're not certifying anything other than that we believe theory + meta tells us that this is how things are".

...All this is to say that looking at Marth and saying that he's better than Jiggs in that matchup on paper is a valuable enterprise even if we can't enumerate that difference. That's relevant because the results don't have to support that contention for it to be true since we all acknowledge that theoretical output has little at all to do with what's actually happening in the game. It might be at this certain point in the flux that Jiggs is simply a more developed character than Marth so the top Jiggs player is good enough to beat all the other Marths consistently even with the matchup advantage that Marth clearly has.

In terms of Falco, I just think Hbox develops on a very individual basis since he's basically an isolate and he views the problem in practical terms: Most of his threats are Fox players, so he's less worried about Falco. At his level especially he's playing against people far more than he's playing against characters.

EDIT: Peach is actually fairly well-represented on the Summer 2017 power rankings, even if you account for the fact that they include some people who really don't play much Peach at all (like M2K). I'm a Peach player myself and have never felt the character to be particularly stagnant, at least not in the post-Armada era.

She's currently doing better than Falco. What an age we live in.
 
E

ec0ec0

Member
About falco, i've always thought that Mango could be a true falco main if he wanted too.

He does not need fox for ice climbers, or sheik, and he could definitely win against armada's peach with falco if he actually tried. Sure, fox is better in those matchups, but he wouldn't need him.

Puff would definitely take much more work (i don't think that him being close with armada's peach, using falco, wouldn't take much work at all). Changing from fox to falco against puff, would be harder to justify, considering how good he does with fox already, but it probably wouldn't take much time to get there.

just speculation, of course.
 
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chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
Fugu said:
I haven't been a really good Melee player for around a decade so believe me when I say that I recognize my own ignorance here, but how is Falco's laser worse at forcing approaches in this matchup than Fox's? Yes it builds damage somewhat more slowly but it's far more threatening.
Click to expand...

Falco lasers a lot slower. There are less lasers so they are easier for Puff to get away from on basically any stage except FD. The stun is a mixed bag, it can keep Puff out when you hit but it also keeps Puff from coming in when you want to try to punish something.

Fox's lasers are more threatening because he can throw a lot more of them out with SHDL so they build percent faster and are harder to avoid. So it makes the Puff more likely to want to approach to avoid taking laser damage to KO percent.
 
F

Fugu

Member
chaosblade said:
Falco lasers a lot slower. There are less lasers so they are easier for Puff to get away from on basically any stage except FD. The stun is a mixed bag, it can keep Puff out when you hit but it also keeps Puff from coming in when you want to try to punish something.

Fox's lasers are more threatening because he can throw a lot more of them out with SHDL so they build percent faster and are harder to avoid. So it makes the Puff more likely to want to approach to avoid taking laser damage to KO percent.
Click to expand...
I feel like if you try to use Falco lasers like Fox lasers then this is a problem, but if you play very passively it seems to me that Falco's lasers are a lot more useful than Fox's at stuffing an approach since they have the ability to actually stop you from getting hit. How many times have you seen Fox hit Jigglypuff with six lasers only to eat a back air and end up behind?
 
D

Dyle

Member
Holy shit, a bomb squad was brought in to destroy a crt left outside the big house venue. Clearly a sign that we won't need them anymore after Melee HD is announced at the Nintendo World Championships tomorrow /s

AUZfwZy.jpg
Click to expand...
https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/...e_bomb_squad_blew_up_a_crt_that_was_left_out/
 
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chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
You would think they would have done some minimal amount of investigation and ask some people if they knew anything about it.
 
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Codeblue

Member
Man, tons of upsets, but the top 6 look like they're holding really strong. Hope M2K sends Plup to losers so he gets another shot at Armada.
 
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chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
SFAT looking weak this tournament. Doubt he makes top 8.


Lol at the point that all the upsets were in Armada's bracket. Looking at the bracket it's so clear, the average player ranking for that quarter of the bracket is way lower than the others. Others probably averaged like 15 or so, that one is probably like 30.


I think every Amsa set is being put on the EMG stream. He's been on there constantly and just keeps winning.
 
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chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
So the final auto-invite for summit will be Crush (vs Mango), Wizzrobe (vs SFAT), Swedish (vs M2K+S2J) or S2J (vs M2K or Swedish).

I'd say in terms of likelihood it's probably S2J > Wizzy > Crush > Swedish (who is currently down 0-2 and losing game 3).
 
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Fugu

Member
Really hard to cheer for M2K after that Swedish Delight set.

It's fair and whatnot but I still don't want to watch it.
 
C

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
M2K is a troll and a weenie.

Crushed is playing like a god.


Was that a platform cancel dair? What? I didn't think that was possible?
 
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chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
Codeblue said:
Hope Wizzy can pull it off. Has he ever been to a summit?
Click to expand...

Nope, and I think he opted out of the voting the last time to play BotW.

S2J getting an auto invite would be good if only because he's basically guaranteed to get in through voting. I think he's been to every summit despite never getting an invite.
 
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