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Things to practice by yourself - Marth Edition

InterimOfZeal

InterimOfZeal

Smash Champion
Joined
Apr 7, 2005
Messages
2,932
Location
Aurora, Colorado
Okay, so I got this idea to make a mega-guide on how to step up your game when you have no one to play with.

Now, obviously for tech-skill, you can go into melee vs comp, set their ratio to .5 with a 1, 9 handicap (you having the 1, obviously), and then just wail on them as Fox. I'll put this part more in-detail on the Fox boards (and I stole the idea from RaynEx, so credit where it's due.) In less than 3 days, I went from missing l-cancels and having sloppy waveshines to being able to do the walking waveshine with reversals in it, as well as double shining and ending it with almost any option.

What I'm wondering is, how can I step up my Marth game like this? I went into Fixed Camera mode and practiced edge-canceling everything I could think of (I even tried to do it with neutral-b, lolol). I learned how to waveland more smoothly with him/get max distance outta his wavelands.

What else can I practice? I want people's tricks for leveling up their tech-skill, combos, and chases. Give me all the info in da world. I plan on eventually making a megaguide with all the info I gain from each character specific board, so we can further raise the general level of players across the country (obviously, I don't mind getting better, myself.)

I'm only going to make this thread for a few characters right now (Fox, Marth, Sheik, Peach, and prolly ICs or CF), but as things fill out, I may end up doing it for more characters, going in the order of what's needed/what I want to learn.

Soyeah, spill your secrets. I'm particularly interested to learn what top-level Marths practice. I know the best practice is vs people, but sometimes, you just don't have that luxury.

Thanks in advance! :D
 
Construct

Construct

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Do you have a link describing number 20 a bit better? I don't actually know what the crazy Taj movement is off the top of my head, lol.
 
Tee ay eye

Tee ay eye

Smash Hero
Joined
Jun 1, 2008
Messages
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AZ
most of my tech skill comes from practicing fox, falco, and falcon against lvl 1 computers and practicing actual marth stuff against humans and in-between stocks.

i feel like practicing my main against computers develops way too many bad habits for it to be worth it especially considering that i main marth. back when i was a fox main, i still felt like playing my main against computers was still conducive to bad habits and mentally lazy play, but the problem is a lot worse with marth.

marth can't approach nearly as freely or easily as fox, falco, and falcon can, so he suffers more than those three from mindlessly wailing on computers in that department. on top of this, those three characters have much faster inputs and technical shenanigans they can do.

as for things to practice, i'd recommend most people to practice edge cancels and running shield drops.

also, i think it helps to make little routines to do between stocks or against computers. doing some silly technical thing as part of a routine or something even more natural than that helps you (imo) to do it in a real match as opposed to doing 1000 repetitions in a vacuum. so, instead of practicing edgecancels or running shield drops, something that i like to do with fox (especially on dreamland) is to do a....

running shield-drop on the side platform -> shine -> turnaround -> jump -> edge canceled aerial off the platform -> edge canceled aerial off the stage -> shine -> up B -> zhu stall

i generally only do isolated repetitions if i want to examine the timing or get a feel for the timing, but pretty much all of my actual practice comes from wailing on computers with space animals, doing little tech skill routines, or actually fighting people.
 
ArcNatural

ArcNatural

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TheCrimsonBlur said:
There are a lot of new things I do now but this post/thread is a good place to start
Click to expand...
I like a lot of these ideas (especially using a handicapped Bowser on platforms) to get used to timings on platform strats). I don't know why I never thought about this before even though I've done it with fox and falco to practice pillaring and consistent shffling.

What I'm curious to know is if there are any characters that Marth can short hop over their grab? I know I've baited grabs before by rising sh fair to the first overb. Another one I have tried is sh bair into them to double jump fair. I'm just not sure if there isa window where they can just grab me anyway or if their are characters that you can just sh over the grabs.
 
TheCrimsonBlur

TheCrimsonBlur

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Jan 2, 2005
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LA, CA near Santa Monica
I have to agree with Tai that practicing against CPUs with Marth can be very unproductive. They have horrendous DI, don't recover, don't tech, don't shield...its very tough to get any legitimate combo practice on them. There have been plenty of times where I'd been practicing against CPUs for hours, but play terribly when someone sits down and plays me; it takes me a little while to remember I have to <space> and ****.

But M2K makes it work for him so idk. Overall, I've found much more success practicing alone and with no CPU (either w/name entry or a controller plugged in), than with CPUs. They have some limited uses that are worthwhile though: practicing chaingrabbing on FD, juggling multiple floaties, 4 lvl1 ICs L-Cancel practice, etc.

Spacie tech skill is universally useful as long as you don't let it get to your head and start thinking your Fox is anything special lol

ArcNatural said:
I like a lot of these ideas (especially using a handicapped Bowser on platforms) to get used to timings on platform strats). I don't know why I never thought about this before even though I've done it with fox and falco to practice pillaring and consistent shffling.

What I'm curious to know is if there are any characters that Marth can short hop over their grab? I know I've baited grabs before by rising sh fair to the first overb. Another one I have tried is sh bair into them to double jump fair. I'm just not sure if there isa window where they can just grab me anyway or if their are characters that you can just sh over the grabs.
Click to expand...
Hrm not sure. Feels like I've done that plenty of times too though. I bet ICs are one of them.
 
Tee ay eye

Tee ay eye

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5,635
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dude my fox is so dope

in all seriousness, though, half the reason that i have secondaries is to show whiny scrubs that i can expose them without using my main
 
knightpraetor

knightpraetor

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Joined
Oct 20, 2005
Messages
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i used to keep fox around for the sole reason of proving to fox mains taht i could beat them without thinking cause fox requires so little thought...decently good spacing on your insane nair get you, nair shine nair shine JC grab

then you have shine out of shield

double shine gimps......all these crazy tech skills to block others' options

but then i realized that at really high level foxes actually have a few hard matchups where they have to try as well, so then i stopped playing fox and just played secondaries i thought would be useful
 
BairJew

BairJew

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My fox is hella bad, cool idea for a thread. Interested to see what comes up for sheik, seeing as it's sheik.
 
A

AustinRC

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Joined
Dec 11, 2005
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1,482
Go into practice set up a red shell on the ground and practice wave dash oos. Also a cool setup that you can use as Marth is intentionally miss space your fair but do it REALLY late and ff and l cancel of course. Right when your finished doing that do up tilt in the opposite direction. This works against people whom try to grab you out of shield. Only grabs that will work are the longest grabs in the game like Link/ Samus/ and I think one other person... cant remember. This does not help against opponents who nair oos though so it's not a very reliable set up it does however trade some times though which is awesome.
 
odinNJ

odinNJ

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I like practicing reverse fair edge cancels, double revers fair edge cancels, and random wave dancing stuff
 
InterimOfZeal

InterimOfZeal

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Thanks for all the help, guys. I'll be going over this info over the next few weeks, editing what I like (words of wisdom about not letting playing vs CPUs and other things that I take for granted but newer players are unaware of), and putting it together in a nice little directory.

Tai, I like that shield drop stuff. I actually need to practice shield dropping in general. Any tips for how to get it to work consistently? Some place I should aim to get the stick or anything like that?
 
InterimOfZeal

InterimOfZeal

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH

I wish I could just afford to go out and play good players again.

I want to know where I stand in the grand scheme of things. :(
 
Tee ay eye

Tee ay eye

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InterimOfZeal said:
Thanks for all the help, guys. I'll be going over this info over the next few weeks, editing what I like (words of wisdom about not letting playing vs CPUs and other things that I take for granted but newer players are unaware of), and putting it together in a nice little directory.

Tai, I like that shield drop stuff. I actually need to practice shield dropping in general. Any tips for how to get it to work consistently? Some place I should aim to get the stick or anything like that?
Click to expand...
the easiest way to do it is

dash -> tap down -> shield

for some reason, it makes a shield drop happen.
 
Construct

Construct

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Yes. If you're facing to the left press the control stick down to about 7 o' clock, and if you're facing right you push it to around 5. If you spotdodge you're too close to six, if you roll you're too close to 8/4. Just keep fiddling about with it until you find the right spot, it's kinda tough to do.
 
knightpraetor

knightpraetor

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i practice wavelands sh retreating ac nair (aiming to move as little backwards as possible and go back and forth backwards across fd) and i practice shield drops...still nowhere near where i would need to be to use shield drops in games though.
 
Celestia

Celestia

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May 15, 2012
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ah, this reminds me of the time when my friend and i set up the gamecube in the car and practiced spiking with marths on a road trip... good times. but yeah, it's a bit tedious practicing.
 
Zinth

Zinth

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Joined
Feb 24, 2006
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Norman, Oklahoma
Does anyone know any tricks for doing empty pivots or pivoting tilts? I saw Magus make a post about pivoting tilts once, but I haven't been able to find it again (maybe there should be a stickied thread somewhere that contains quotes of every post Magus makes regarding Melee info).

Also, I didn't know that anyone in Colorado still played Melee, lol. Good to hear.
 
Tero.

Tero.

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Keep it coming.

Also that Chrimson Blur Post from ages ago -> #16 if you shield before jumping it wont stop your momentum unless you're waiting for ages, so it only has limited use.
You could also crouch (dash cancel) or wavedash in place which would be just as fast.

At first i thought: wow why didnt i knew this? Then it didnt work, awww

:phone:
 
leffen

leffen

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Shielding before jumping will completely stop your momentum after 1 frame as long as you aren't in a full run - as long as you can dash dance, it cancels your momentum instantly
 
InterimOfZeal

InterimOfZeal

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So jc usmash is always gonna be faster than cc dsmash

Makes sense

Sorry I haven't made the megaguide yet. Got hit with almost 2k in fines from the government and since I have to pay those or go to jail, I can't really do rent anymore, sooooo I'm looking for somewhere to stay in about a week. My life is pretty much awesome.
 
Tero.

Tero.

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leffen said:
Shielding before jumping will completely stop your momentum after 1 frame as long as you aren't in a full run - as long as you can dash dance, it cancels your momentum instantly
Click to expand...
i c

so this was meant to be used only during initial dash

well, still limited use, but better than nothing
 
Bl00dyBizkitz

Bl00dyBizkitz

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May 22, 2012
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you know, around
I don't mean to revive a (generally) dead thread, but are there specific handicaps for the Bowser on #1 and #2 in Crimson's list? I'd like to work on that list, since my movement in Melee in general is sluggish and needs some work. :p
 
C

.Chipmunk.

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Lawrenceville, GA
Bl00dyBizkitz said:
I don't mean to revive a (generally) dead thread, but are there specific handicaps for the Bowser on #1 and #2 in Crimson's list? I'd like to work on that list, since my movement in Melee in general is sluggish and needs some work. :p
Click to expand...
You want to set him to handicap 9 so he doesn't really go anywhere. Set yourself to handicap 1
 
Kyu Puff

Kyu Puff

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Zinth said:
Does anyone know any tricks for doing empty pivots or pivoting tilts? I saw Magus make a post about pivoting tilts once, but I haven't been able to find it again (maybe there should be a stickied thread somewhere that contains quotes of every post Magus makes regarding Melee info).

Also, I didn't know that anyone in Colorado still played Melee, lol. Good to hear.
Click to expand...
For pivot d-tilt, I dash in one direction -> move the control stick diagonally to the downwards position without going through the center. It's not actually that hard to learn; it took me about an hour to get 80% consistency.

I used to have a controller with a wobbly control stick and it made empty pivots a thousand times easier. The control stick on my new controller isn't nearly as broken in, but I can still do pivot d-tilts.
 
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