Picking a main

[Dubforce]

Okay so after reading through a lot of the 10,000 words of power post, I still am having trouble choosing a main. The writer says to pick your main based on your own personality. I am going to list a few of my important qualities and I want you guys to help me make a list of characters that fit my personality, and then I will choose from that list the character I like the most. The most important thing is that it has to be a character I enjoy so I can actually stick with it.​

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1. I dont take criticism well. When I am criticized I tend to take as a personal offense and so I try hard not to **** up at all so I can avoid criticism. I guess this links in with picking a main in general, and getting good enough with a character that you **** up minimally.​

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2. I am an objective thinker. I like to remove myself (theoretically) from a situation before I analyze it, both in game and in life. Not sure what this means towards character choice.​

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3. I like to tackle difficult things. Between college and my personal life, I tend to tackle goals that are above average difficulty and put a lot of effort into them. Maybe this means I should choose a character with a high tech skill requirement?​

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4. I like to show off knowledge when I have it, and I try to impress people with that knowledge. Maybe this means I need to choose a flashy character.​

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5. I am a fighting-game hipster. I tend to choose female characters or odd characters and I like choosing characters that people think are bad or for some reason just do not use a lot.​

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6. I am too comfortable off-stage and so I tend to stay there too long and die because of it. This means I should probably choose a character that has a high ability to get back to stage. (Mobility)​

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So, any ideas?​

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The characters I already think fit my personality are: fox, falco, jiggs, (the hipster in mean screams no for these first three), peach, pika, lucario, ROB, pit, squirtle

 

[Kally Wally]

Whoever you enjoy playing and feel you're good with.

No, seriously. No amount of personality quizzing will tell you more about yourself. Only you can do that.

That said, Lucas satisfies the tech-skill, flashy, and hipster criteria, but I might just be saying that because I like Lucas and want there to be more people doing cool stuff with him. Take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Muhti]

Luigi is good on air and can go back on stage nicely. (IMO)

He is difficult to use yet fun to play with. He is also ridiculed a lot and placed in low tier, both Project M and Brawl.

That's just my two cents.

 

[SpiderMad]

Cougar
10 Cougars

Soon I'll have a tutorial video thing for Diddy that will make u main him, just need to pick a good song for it..

Edit:
http://youtu.be/9yZaBPp5ZF0

 

[Dubforce]

Not gonna lie that doesn't help spider, but thanks anyways...

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

You're gonna have to focus on fixing #1 no matter what character you pick.

 

[Dubforce]

I know. Its a really bad character flaw.

 

[Giygacoal]

You know, Jigglypuff isn't really that anti-hipster. She may be top tier in Melee, but she's kind of underused, both in PM and Melee.

Lucario is the character for both uncommonness and flashy style. You can really show off what you know with ROB as well, since he requires lots of projectile micromanagement.

Dedede is pretty solid too. He could do stuff like wall of pain.

 

[leelue]

Dedede is pretty solid too. He could do stuff like wall of pain.

Pretty solidly garbage

OH
do yourself a favor and don't get attached to a character that might get hit with the "tweak" hammer. Cough Sonic Cough Diddy. It's really annoying when you have to realign yourself after something drastic

 

[SpiderMad]

I'll defend you Diddy, my hopes and dreams should be strong enough to protect you this time

 

[Dubforce]

I've pretty much lowered it down to Peach, Pit, Lucario, Lucas, and Ike, but I've decided to pick peach because I can't make up my mind and she is probably who I am already best with.

 

[The_NZA]

Okay so after reading through a lot of the 10,000 words of power post, I still am having trouble choosing a main. The writer says to pick your main based on your own personality. I am going to list a few of my important qualities and I want you guys to help me make a list of characters that fit my personality, and then I will choose from that list the character I like the most. The most important thing is that it has to be a character I enjoy so I can actually stick with it.​

​

1. I dont take criticism well. When I am criticized I tend to take as a personal offense and so I try hard not to **** up at all so I can avoid criticism. I guess this links in with picking a main in general, and getting good enough with a character that you **** up minimally.​

​

2. I am an objective thinker. I like to remove myself (theoretically) from a situation before I analyze it, both in game and in life. Not sure what this means towards character choice.​

​

3. I like to tackle difficult things. Between college and my personal life, I tend to tackle goals that are above average difficulty and put a lot of effort into them. Maybe this means I should choose a character with a high tech skill requirement?​

​

4. I like to show off knowledge when I have it, and I try to impress people with that knowledge. Maybe this means I need to choose a flashy character.​

​

5. I am a fighting-game hipster. I tend to choose female characters or odd characters and I like choosing characters that people think are bad or for some reason just do not use a lot.​

​

6. I am too comfortable off-stage and so I tend to stay there too long and die because of it. This means I should probably choose a character that has a high ability to get back to stage. (Mobility)​

​

So, any ideas?​

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The characters I already think fit my personality are: fox, falco, jiggs, (the hipster in mean screams no for these first three), peach, pika, lucario, ROB, pit, squirtle

I completely relate to everything you say. Always have been all of those things. I played Ivy in Soul Calibur 2. But in Smash, I've always played Ness. I think you should give Lucas a try though.

 

[traffic.]

Your second statement is that you remove your ego from the situation, asking that we help you improve; and you follow it up with a set of rules everyone has to abide by in order to coddle your soft ego from criticism. If you were playing the game objectively, you wouldn't be concerned with your personality making it a vital part of your meta experience to play a female hipster this sentence is ****ing ******** because that doesn't mean anything. Play the game, and if you would just focus on how the game works you will get better. You will expose what you are bad at, and you will understand which character will be the best practice to improve that area. Don't play one character and expect to master all aspects of the game, you will come to a point where you hit walls and need to improve in different areas. Being objective means knowing what you are doing wrong, taking offense to criticism means you don't believe you can be wrong.

 

[drsusredfish]

5. I am a fighting-game hipster. I tend to choose female characters or odd characters and I like choosing characters that people think are bad or for some reason just do not use a lot.

you sir have my style of picking characters.

My Mains
(if i liked MvC3 Hsien-ko or Felica would probably be on this list )

go with zelda. nobody likes Zelda
Its hard to mess up with her but takes some thinking to get really good with her. she has a great recovery and can get high damge moves to hit while she's off stage and still recover from long distances. just hope speed isnt one of your requirements.

 

[Ima_Ninja_Snack]

How I found my main was that i went from the bottom of the tier list up and i ended up with zss and marth and sometimes Wolf.

 

[Doctor X]

Okay so after reading through a lot of the 10,000 words of power post, I still am having trouble choosing a main. The writer says to pick your main based on your own personality. I am going to list a few of my important qualities and I want you guys to help me make a list of characters that fit my personality, and then I will choose from that list the character I like the most. The most important thing is that it has to be a character I enjoy so I can actually stick with it.​

​

1. I dont take criticism well. When I am criticized I tend to take as a personal offense and so I try hard not to **** up at all so I can avoid criticism. I guess this links in with picking a main in general, and getting good enough with a character that you **** up minimally.​

​

2. I am an objective thinker. I like to remove myself (theoretically) from a situation before I analyze it, both in game and in life. Not sure what this means towards character choice.​

​

3. I like to tackle difficult things. Between college and my personal life, I tend to tackle goals that are above average difficulty and put a lot of effort into them. Maybe this means I should choose a character with a high tech skill requirement?​

​

4. I like to show off knowledge when I have it, and I try to impress people with that knowledge. Maybe this means I need to choose a flashy character.​

​

5. I am a fighting-game hipster. I tend to choose female characters or odd characters and I like choosing characters that people think are bad or for some reason just do not use a lot.​

​

6. I am too comfortable off-stage and so I tend to stay there too long and die because of it. This means I should probably choose a character that has a high ability to get back to stage. (Mobility)​

​

So, any ideas?​

​

The characters I already think fit my personality are: fox, falco, jiggs, (the hipster in mean screams no for these first three), peach, pika, lucario, ROB, pit, squirtle

Be warned, this post is a criticism. It is intended to be constructive, though.

Your list here is a recipe for naught but rage and disappointment, mostly because item number one is wholly incompatible with most of the rest. Picking difficult, flashy characters (items 3 and 4) will certainly not have you "****ing up minimally." Maining an odd character that people think is bad (item 5) will provoke criticism from almost every single good player you run into. Number 2, though, is the biggest disconnect here... You can't really call yourself an "objective thinker" if you can't take criticism.

Make no mistake, no matter what you do, if you play this game you will face criticism-- from your practice partners as well as random people who you've never met in your life-- and not all of it will be as nice as I'm being. Like others have said, the sooner you discard item number one, the better. If you can't do that, though, you definitely don't want to be maining a flashy, difficult, or bad character.

 

[Shun_one]

Sounds like you should choose a few of your choices and see how they feel. That, or watch videos of your chosen characters.

I must admit, choosing a main based on personality is something I've never heard of. I hope this goes well for you.

 

[Professor Pro]

........Play the game.......test out characters.......stick with a character who you enjoy.......end.

 

[Kink-Link5]

I just picked the character that felt the most awkward to use in 2.1 (Charizard) and have stuck with him through to 2.5. My reasoning was that "There's something about this character that I'm not seeing, I'll keep exploring until I figure it out." Doing so helped me stick with the character. In 2.5 those characters are Squirtle and ZSS for me.

 

[SpiderMad]

I like how I don't understand the intricacies of item play, so when I started playing Brawl after 2.1 had been out for a while I ended up with Diddy Kong for mostly the sake of his goodness and just making people trip all that much more in the game lol, then 2.5 came out and Ike had his broccoli sword replaced with a salami stick and a stupid 2 frame non-JC thing on QD that ruined half his RAR Bairing potential (which metroid never mentions how much he must miss) and Lucas didn't feel right for some of his specific changes as well as input/engines changes, so I eventually liked the way how Diddy Kong could move almost like 2.1 Lucas could with his slipperyness and played him more and realized even more how intricate dealing with items can be (I also believe I inceptionated Vro to play him back at this one tournament). The bad part is he has so many options from Brawl as well as like 5x more stuff from the momentum Melee's AD gives AGT'ing and Peanut gun stuff that it's pretty impossible as of now to see me developing him more in Brawl with the huge differences (besides being like the true and speedy version of himself in P:M) so I'm left without the only character I'd really want to play in Brawl. Diddy has a lot of bad MUs though, and Pit is basically as strong almost as 2.1 Ike so I've been playing him too. Don't get me wrong though, If a few of the right things were changed with Ike I would play him again: Diddy and Pit still don't compare to how a great character he can and use to be [stupid stuff like reducing his Up-air hitboxes in size as well as power which was his only half- decent escape from combos he had that stopped him from being the biggest punching bag he now is]. Right now he's this reduced option Captain Falcon, there's a ton to explain about what's wrong with it but basically he has to hit with this "optimal" spacing that's so messed up in a lot of ways regarding the hitting with the inner portion (normally called bad spacing) as well as plain weak/lots of hitlag on the moves that you can't really even be close to CF but more so his Brawl self where if you watch any footage you'll notice he has like ONE very specific right spacing for every move he has to not get punished or actually secure a kill with to the point there's like not even potential in reversing moves or trying anything cus it ain't gonna work and just be super punishable.

Pit got buffed in the opposite direction 2.1 Ike did so he became the new one lol (though obviously 5x more gay, "THE FIGHT IS ON!" NOW LET ME UP-SMASH YOU AFTER I SHOOT A BUNCH OF ARROWS).

In Demo 2.1, one of the complaints was that Ike’s gameplay was too shallow; it seemed like there was little reason to space attacks to get the sweetspots because his sweetspotted attacks weren't that much better compared to his tipped attacks....With these tweaks, Ike’s spacing game now requires more precision on the user’s part in order to take him to his fullest potential!
http://www.smashmods.com/forum/thread-6016.html
The other major goal I wanted to accomplish was expanding Pit's kill potential. When looking at Pit's power moves in a vacuum, he actually seems to have a decent amount of power moves. The problem lay in how those moves worked. Moves like back air and up B had precise sweetspot timings, limiting their use to specific combos or hard reads. Up smash and Forward smash failed to function properly, often allowing the victim to drop out of the attack between hits. Down air's sweetspot was especially unrewarding - it was meteor-cancelable, extremely hard to hit, and weak on top of that. His strong forward tilt wasn't too hard to land, but required Pit to space deep into his opponent. When compared to good Melee characters especially, Pit's finishers just seemed overly finicky. To address this, I opted to go over each of Pit's kill moves and make them less demanding to use.
http://www.smashmods.com/forum/thread-5824.html

 

[Mithost]

Just from reading your blurb, I would suggest ROB. However, the ONLY way to pick a main is to play with a bunch of other people close to your level and play trial-and-error until you get 2-3 characters you consistently play well as.

 

[Kink-Link5]

Ike changed to need sweetspots

Pit changed to eliminate sweetspots

Remember that the pmbr has a pretty notorious track record with its PR, and that all the reasons that exist for changes can not be simplified down to "this wasn't working so we changed it to do this."

 

[Scrambles_Prime]

........Play the game.......test out characters.......stick with a character who you enjoy.......end.

And what do you do when you have 8 characters that you can't not use?

 

[Kink-Link5]

And what do you do when you have 8 characters that you can't not use?

Suck it up and stick with the one whose mechanics you want to explore.

 

[Professor Pro]

And what do you do when you have 8 characters that you can't not use?

Play with all 8, play with 2, 3, 5, 1....whatever you feel like.
This situation isn't really as complicated as it's being made out to be, play the characters you like......

I main Snake
But I also can play Squirtle, Ivysaur & Wolf (and my Melee main but no point in listing that lol) and I pretty much just play whoever I want to.

 

[Vashimus]

And what do you do when you have 8 characters that you can't not use?

You mean like how it is in Melee?

 

[Yobolight]

Which characters in PM can be played the most aggressively/offensively?

 

[Spiffykins]

Aggro Wolf is pretty effective, unsurprisingly. I think anyone who's got all the necessary tech skill will be very challenging with that alone because people aren't going to know how to punish all of his options yet. Personally, I think Wolf plays more like Fox than Falco in that regard. And most regards, to be honest.

Lucas is similar. He's a combo machine, if you can get good enough with his pressure game and not get your approaches punished, he'll practically finish the stocks for you as long as you keep pressing buttons.

 

[The_NZA]

I dont know, falco? Fox? Lucas goes "in" if that's what you are looking for.

 

[Kink-Link5]

Which characters in PM can be played the most aggressively/offensively?

Which ones are safest on block you mean?

Peach, Fox, perfectly spaced R.O.B. maybe?, Sheik can be with tight spacing, Jigglypuff easily can be. Depends on what you mean by aggressive and offensive. They aren't terms to describe any particular playstyle, but really just super vague descriptors.

Because some people see Falcon as an "offensive" character when he's just a momentum-based defensive character that gets good and easy reads/rewards.

Peach probably has the most options to use against a passive player, if that's what you're looking for.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

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3. I like to tackle difficult things. Between college and my personal life, I tend to tackle goals that are above average difficulty and put a lot of effort into them. Maybe this means I should choose a character with a high tech skill requirement? (Tackle)​

​

4. I like to show off knowledge when I have it, and I try to impress people with that knowledge. Maybe this means I need to choose a flashy character.​

​

5. I am a fighting-game hipster. I tend to choose female characters or odd characters and I like choosing characters that people think are bad or for some reason just do not use a lot.​

​

6. I am too comfortable off-stage and so I tend to stay there too long and die because of it. This means I should probably choose a character that has a high ability to get back to stage. (Mobility)...Tackle!​

​

So, any ideas?​

​

 

[Phaiyte]

Well, no matter how silly OP sounds, I think this post wins. Ellondu, you're picking Wario and that's final.

 

[Eisen]

You remind me of myself in ways. Which is... really weird.

And that's probably the only reason I'm even replying. Honestly though, it's Project M. You can pick pretty much whoever and they'll have at least a decent chance at winning. Though if you're picking up a character or are new to competition, it's not like you'll be winning any tourneys any time soon anyway.

If you like a lot of characters for who they are, play them. If you don't really care and just want the technical criteria you described fulfilled, I'd say you should go with Lucas. He's really flashy, his combos look sick and if you pull them off, it's super rewarding. I'm just now learning PM and Lucas myself, and I can say he's an absolute thrill to use once you get a general feel for how he works. Lucas isn't used all that much compared to other fighters so there's your hipster points. Wario would also make a good choice as Pickle pointed out.

As a side note: I avoid Fox and Falco pretty much for the reasons you do; and because I have a long-standing rivalry yet quenched with Falco.

But like I and others have said, you should worry about yourself first. Who do you want to play as? Do you even want to be competitive if you can't handle criticism? Again, try out a bunch of characters if you're unsure. If you prefer being casual with some/all of them, then do what you prefer. I have to say that it'd be hard to main several characters, so play the game for a while and see who you like playing best.

Also, keep in mind that 6 characters aren't even in the game yet.

 

[Dubforce]

My fave character is probably going to be either Icies or Olimar, my fave's in melee and brawl, respectively. For now though, I'm sticking with pit, seeing as he's probably my best, and I definitely am the most comfortable with him.

The criticism thing is just part of who I am now. I lived with someone who treated me ****ty and criticised me for 18 years, and now I'm only 19 and still trying to break out of the mentality I had up until moving out. I want to get into the competitive scene, so I'm just going to stick with pit. Hes good, and I enjoy him. Not much else matters, I guess.

 

[Sandtru27]

jesus, you still play? just ****ing go sheik and learn off of that. once you can actually take games you can transition (or just stay sheik)

you went from getting absolutely ***** to being able to take games (when you didn't throw **** away) before you pussied out of the scene

no1 gives a ****, just play and stick to something (we would all still recommend your sheik over anything else)

 

[SAX]

I honestly agree with geoff. However, if you're favorite characters are Olimar and Icies, then waiting is the only thing you can do until 3.0 comes out, and then you could gage how you like them in terms of playability. But as for now, I would highly recommend sticking with sheik until you learn the game better. That's what I did, and I'm going toe-to-toe with Wizzy's sonic right now. (Turns out my new condo is like 10 minutes away from wizzy's house hah) I've branched from sheik, to wario, snake, and Sonic in the P:M and to Marth and Sheik in Melee. And now I have a pocket sheik in P:M too, and I also know how to play marth, since he isn't that different from melee. It really pays off to learn the game with an easy character at first, because then the "harder to learn" characters become so much easier to learn, because you've learned what that character does in the Sheik Match up, giving you a good idea on where to start when playing said character.

 

[Dubforce]

Geoff, I never stopped playing, ever. I know I was a ******, and my bad. Read number 1 and you'll see that I realize the problem is there and that I'm working on it. Thanks for the advice, and you too SAX. I'm currently kinda stuck on Gdubs and Marth, Gdubs cause he's my favorite, and Marth cause he's Marth. I'll give shiek a try as well. Maybe I'll replace Marth with Shiek, idk.

Btw, Ian says I've gotten loads better since he last played me (we started playing together again like a month ago or so). And also, theres not really anyone good other than Ian to play against.

 

[SAX]

Your second statement is that you remove your ego from the situation, asking that we help you improve; and you follow it up with a set of rules everyone has to abide by in order to coddle your soft ego from criticism. If you were playing the game objectively, you wouldn't be concerned with your personality making it a vital part of your meta experience to play a female hipster this sentence is ****ing ******** because that doesn't mean anything. Play the game, and if you would just focus on how the game works you will get better. You will expose what you are bad at, and you will understand which character will be the best practice to improve that area. Don't play one character and expect to master all aspects of the game, you will come to a point where you hit walls and need to improve in different areas. Being objective means knowing what you are doing wrong, taking offense to criticism means you don't believe you can be wrong.

Geoff, I never stopped playing, ever. I know I was a ******, and my bad. Read number 1 and you'll see that I realize the problem is there and that I'm working on it. Thanks for the advice, and you too SAX. I'm currently kinda stuck on Gdubs and Marth, Gdubs cause he's my favorite, and Marth cause he's Marth. I'll give shiek a try as well. Maybe I'll replace Marth with Shiek, idk.

Btw, Ian says I've gotten loads better since he last played me (we started playing together again like a month ago or so). And also, theres not really anyone good other than Ian to play against.

Traffic basically summed it up in the best possible way. The part I underlined in his reply is exactly when I started to branch out. After maining sheik, I was having trouble with the Falco match-up in Melee. I did some research and found that Marth does very well against spacies on FD, providing an optimum CP option, which gives you a different area (character) to improve in.

Sheik is great in melee because she does everything the game offers extremely well. She has good options out of CC, great, simple combos to get used to hitstun, good wavedash for spacing, teaches you to space well with her Ftilt, AND helps you get in the habit of reading rolling habits out of Dthrow tech chase. Which is why I think if you just stick with sheik, things will work out better for you in the long run. At least, that's how is worked out for me.

Hope you get what you're looking for out of this! We should play when I get back to jax. I've been playing with Wizzy and Plup regularly and Wizzy said I could prolly top 5 at a FL P:M tourney (haven't entered one yet lmao) so I'm more hyped than ever for P:M!

Oh yeah btw, I still have your headphones!

 

[Strong Badam]

i play dk, ike, mario, wario, pikachu, and soon wolf all at a significantly high level. i can also play ssbm w/ fox, marth, sheik, peach, and falco. i decided a long time ago that dk was the best character i have for 99% of tournament situations and more often than not the benefit to using a different character to win doesn't outweigh the satisfaction of seeing "1: Strong Bad $BIG MONEY" by itself in the tournament results thread, so he's who i use in tournament. but he's actually my least used character in friendlies, because the others don't get to shine in many of my tourney games at all and i love using them.

having said that, choosing your main is a delicate operation that can have huge consequences later on in your smash career. for me personally if it weren't for PM i would have become frustrated with competitive smash and quit about a year ago as DK is a very poor tournament character in SSBM and i reached a point where i no longer desired to be known as "that good DK player" and rather strived to be known as "that good player". i don't think this will ever be a problem in PM since it's actually, you know, balanced, but yeah. if you pick a main now and realize 4 years of dedicated practice and tournament experience later that hey, i don't really like using this character, you've got a pretty big problem.

 

[Sandtru27]

Well i'm glad you see the light. If you host events, I'll come. (i'm back at UNF for my masters this fall) this is assuming i'm not busy and i plan to be focusing my time a lot more on other ****

also, "delicate operation?"

com'on... a rose by any other name; and if you aren't complete ass transition to another char should only hurt performance for a month or 2