Rapid_Assassin
Smash Master
--Originally posted here--
Hello, boys and girls! It's time for a pop quiz. Ready or not, here it comes.. What does it mean to mindgame someone? If this question were asked to every member of the smash community, one would only come to two conclusions: it is the most overused and misunderstood term tossed around by our members. While some have a good grasp on its meaning, others will just toss it around without a clue as to what they're talking about. While I don't intend to give anyone a lecture about what a mindgame is, I'm looking for help in how to deal with a few of the more devastating strategies before it eats away at me inside.
As my friends play me more, they've been able to dive deeper into my head, breaking down the basis of my in-game thoughts for the purpose of messing with me more. As a result, the mindgames played on me have been getting more intense, and the evil little tricks used to scare me have been getting dirtier. Now, I'm pretty much stuck, and have been out of ideas for a while. By that, I mean I've been out of ideas on how to handle this since Melee, and trying to find some way to cover it up.
I admit it, I have a fsmash problem. Want to land one on me? Just move slightly out of the way at the last possible second, and place a fsmash where you were once standing. Or, just hit me out of the air with it as I come. As a bit of a history lesson, I'm pretty sure that this was the original problem that caused me to be too afraid to take damage to ever approach my opponents. The only solutions I've had for it involve overuse of the B button: Either play a projectile spammer and never approach, or play Metaknight and tornado my opponent so much that he couldn't even roll away. Notice how neither of these solutions fully solve the problem, or work on anyone remotely competent as a substitute for not being able to effectively approach? They work some of the time on some opponents (which is more than can be said about some people's "mindgames"), but I need something that can work all of the time against all opponents. Ironically, I've been mindgamed into approaching constantly back in August because I got fsmashed too often by even thinking about mashing b for an entire match. So obviously, it's not going to work if I go back to being afraid of approaching my opponents.
I also have a shield problem. Afraid of something hitting you? Press R and the problem goes away! Unless that problem is shield breaker, a grab, eruption, or a fully charged fsmash.. Or, in some cases, a random attack that does just enough shield damage that a shield breaker or fsmash would do the shield in. It's obviously a problem when my shield gets shattered at all, but it has probably been broken more than all of yours combined. But this has been my biggest obstacle in Brawl to gaining any kind of real speed, because of how easy it is to scare me into my shield, and how easy it is to keep me on the ground for most of the match. It also looks really amusing for everyone, except for me at the time, to see me hold the shield until it breaks on its own because I got scared into it and am too scared to do anything else at the time. No, this doesn't happen starting with a full shield (though I wouldn't be surprised if it did one day), but usually with a little dot after taking damage from one shield breaker or 2 fsmashes.
Want me to stop rushing you? It's easy, just take 2 steps back, charge fsmash, or shield breaker. I'll either get hit with it, shield, spotdodge repeatedly, or run to the other end of the stage until you're done. I realize this is probably the scrubbiest problem to have, but I need help solving it. I don't need more people beating me this way (though, now you know what to do, why not?), since I have opponents who are really good at making me scared of their fsmashes and my shield breaking. So much so that I need someone to help me come up with a real solution aside from making all people want to avoid me like AIDS because I can't do anything else besides mash b and run (and this isn't a solution against these guys anyway).
As you can imagine, most people can come up with something that messes with me, but a couple have found ways to completely scare me. Everyone has probably seen the infamous shield breaking I've briefly mentioned in my previous large wall of text, but since then a different shield tease has been done to me by Cheese. He was able to hit my shield just enough times to keep it tiny for an extended period of time. During that time, he yelled at me to "watch my shield" and "don't let it break" while I ran around erratically trying to avoid him but still got scared into the shield again at predictable times to keep it going. Eventually he ended my misery each time by either really breaking the shield, scaring me into breaking it myself, or killing me. Later on, he managed to pull off 6 successful breaks in one match (yes, that's right. 6), and through a complete stroke of luck I managed to survive 3 of the hits after a shield break that were meant to do me in.
But for the next dirty trick, courtesy of Master Raven, I have a real pop quiz, for all of you. Imagine this scenario: You are a stock behind against a DK, playing a character with no projectile or way to outrange DK. You have enough damage that a fully charged DK punch would do you in, but low enough damage that you'd survive a random hit that's not the DK punch or a charged smash attack. All of a sudden, the DK runs away from you and stops. He has no reason to approach you again, since he's in the lead, and is obviously waiting for you to mess up and kill you for it. What do you do? Before you answer that, keep in mind that the DK punch (which he already has charged) would be able to super armor through any of your attacks and kill you. By the way, I failed my pop quiz. But would you be able to pass it?
Hello, boys and girls! It's time for a pop quiz. Ready or not, here it comes.. What does it mean to mindgame someone? If this question were asked to every member of the smash community, one would only come to two conclusions: it is the most overused and misunderstood term tossed around by our members. While some have a good grasp on its meaning, others will just toss it around without a clue as to what they're talking about. While I don't intend to give anyone a lecture about what a mindgame is, I'm looking for help in how to deal with a few of the more devastating strategies before it eats away at me inside.
As my friends play me more, they've been able to dive deeper into my head, breaking down the basis of my in-game thoughts for the purpose of messing with me more. As a result, the mindgames played on me have been getting more intense, and the evil little tricks used to scare me have been getting dirtier. Now, I'm pretty much stuck, and have been out of ideas for a while. By that, I mean I've been out of ideas on how to handle this since Melee, and trying to find some way to cover it up.
I admit it, I have a fsmash problem. Want to land one on me? Just move slightly out of the way at the last possible second, and place a fsmash where you were once standing. Or, just hit me out of the air with it as I come. As a bit of a history lesson, I'm pretty sure that this was the original problem that caused me to be too afraid to take damage to ever approach my opponents. The only solutions I've had for it involve overuse of the B button: Either play a projectile spammer and never approach, or play Metaknight and tornado my opponent so much that he couldn't even roll away. Notice how neither of these solutions fully solve the problem, or work on anyone remotely competent as a substitute for not being able to effectively approach? They work some of the time on some opponents (which is more than can be said about some people's "mindgames"), but I need something that can work all of the time against all opponents. Ironically, I've been mindgamed into approaching constantly back in August because I got fsmashed too often by even thinking about mashing b for an entire match. So obviously, it's not going to work if I go back to being afraid of approaching my opponents.
I also have a shield problem. Afraid of something hitting you? Press R and the problem goes away! Unless that problem is shield breaker, a grab, eruption, or a fully charged fsmash.. Or, in some cases, a random attack that does just enough shield damage that a shield breaker or fsmash would do the shield in. It's obviously a problem when my shield gets shattered at all, but it has probably been broken more than all of yours combined. But this has been my biggest obstacle in Brawl to gaining any kind of real speed, because of how easy it is to scare me into my shield, and how easy it is to keep me on the ground for most of the match. It also looks really amusing for everyone, except for me at the time, to see me hold the shield until it breaks on its own because I got scared into it and am too scared to do anything else at the time. No, this doesn't happen starting with a full shield (though I wouldn't be surprised if it did one day), but usually with a little dot after taking damage from one shield breaker or 2 fsmashes.
Want me to stop rushing you? It's easy, just take 2 steps back, charge fsmash, or shield breaker. I'll either get hit with it, shield, spotdodge repeatedly, or run to the other end of the stage until you're done. I realize this is probably the scrubbiest problem to have, but I need help solving it. I don't need more people beating me this way (though, now you know what to do, why not?), since I have opponents who are really good at making me scared of their fsmashes and my shield breaking. So much so that I need someone to help me come up with a real solution aside from making all people want to avoid me like AIDS because I can't do anything else besides mash b and run (and this isn't a solution against these guys anyway).
As you can imagine, most people can come up with something that messes with me, but a couple have found ways to completely scare me. Everyone has probably seen the infamous shield breaking I've briefly mentioned in my previous large wall of text, but since then a different shield tease has been done to me by Cheese. He was able to hit my shield just enough times to keep it tiny for an extended period of time. During that time, he yelled at me to "watch my shield" and "don't let it break" while I ran around erratically trying to avoid him but still got scared into the shield again at predictable times to keep it going. Eventually he ended my misery each time by either really breaking the shield, scaring me into breaking it myself, or killing me. Later on, he managed to pull off 6 successful breaks in one match (yes, that's right. 6), and through a complete stroke of luck I managed to survive 3 of the hits after a shield break that were meant to do me in.
But for the next dirty trick, courtesy of Master Raven, I have a real pop quiz, for all of you. Imagine this scenario: You are a stock behind against a DK, playing a character with no projectile or way to outrange DK. You have enough damage that a fully charged DK punch would do you in, but low enough damage that you'd survive a random hit that's not the DK punch or a charged smash attack. All of a sudden, the DK runs away from you and stops. He has no reason to approach you again, since he's in the lead, and is obviously waiting for you to mess up and kill you for it. What do you do? Before you answer that, keep in mind that the DK punch (which he already has charged) would be able to super armor through any of your attacks and kill you. By the way, I failed my pop quiz. But would you be able to pass it?
) and wait... you'll end up playing the stare and have physicological warfare by just staring at each other.
metaphorically of course.
