User:1337 B33FC4K3/The Fundamentals of Melee: What Separates the Pros from the Noobs

A short while ago someone asked me what separates the good melee players from the bad. Here was my response:

It comes down to mastering fundamentals. When I was a noob, all I had was the first fundamental: tech skill. I learned everything I saw on youtube religiously. Wavedashing, L canceling, Ken combos, shine combos, powershielding lasers, you name it I pretty much had it all. But the problem was I knew how to play my character but I didn't know how to fight people. This is the second fundamental, what the FGC calls "Yomi" which is figuring out your opponent. This is the neutral game, reading, baiting, punishing. This took me awhile to grasp, but eventually I trained my eyes to look for patterns.

Now at this point I was good enough to totally destroy anybody I call tech skill zombies (what I was in the beginning: all tech no brains), but I still couldn't make it out of pools. That's because there are deeper layers of Yomi and within those layers are more fundamentals you need to master. These are: spacing, stage control, and timing. What truly separates good players from great players is their understanding of these 3 high level fundamentals. Now you might think spacing is a low level fundamental but it isn't. That's because its easy to have good spacing, but it's hard as **** to have excellent spacing. Good spacing is just comparing your range and mobility to your opponents and doing math: my range + my mobility > your range + your mobility => I win. As good an intuition as that is, it isn't enough. Excellent spacing is manipulating HOW YOUR OPPONENT PERCEIVES your range to bait reactions, not you doing math. Here's an example. Say I'm 6 feet away from you and I strike an offensive pose throwing punches in your direction (they hit air; my arms aren't that long ). Do you feel threatened? Probably not. Now let me close that distance to 2 feet. Now you're probably preparing to raise your arms to block punches. If your intuition is quick, you can probably see where this is going. Lets go to the game. Me being 6 feet away and throwing punches would be me on the opposite side of the stage and doing random moves. But me being 2 feet away and in your face is me putting pressure on you. I've made you feel threatened and I bait a defensive reaction from you. I won't actually throw my smash attack. I'll wait for your shield/roll/spot dodge/wavedash back and punish that. This is how you approach people. You use this intuition of spacing to create openings.

And thats where stage control comes into play. High Level Stage Control is like high level spacing in that you manipulate your position to find openings, but it differs in that you play on the defense instead of the offense. Instead of looking for openings, you position yourself such that you close your opponent's openings. This is also known as option coverage. Why is being in the center of the stage better than being near the edge? It's because from the center you can move more and cover more options. You get the luxury of punishing off your reaction whereas your opponent must guess what options you plan to cover and pick an option you're not prepared to punish. This is also the key to edgeguarding and why it is in the edgeguarder's favor in Melee/PM. (In Brawl recovery options are too hard to cover so the recovering opponent gets the advantage). You can stay on stage and have the movement to simultaneously cover most of the recovery options your opponent has. Now here's the catch, you can maintain stage control while moving. Suppose you've outread your opponent once and hit them once now you've effectively enclosed a circle of space your opponent can't enter without getting hit. Now continue this over and over, getting small hit after small hit. Eventually you will have taken all safe stage space from your're opponent and then you can lay down the strong punishment. This is a defensive counterpart to the mindset i described of spacing earlier, where you pressure and force through defense to create openings, but you should note that going for those openings is risky and if you fail you lose your own stage control. Great players (not me lol) have mastered this dynamic of switching between offensive spacing and defensive stage control. It's a well designed balance I might add; playing defensive will ensure you won't lose, but only by going on the offense can you solidify your lead and take control full of the match.

The last fundamental is the hardest to master and its what separates the best players from the top. You guessed it, it's timing. Melee/PM is a very precise game and 1 tiny mistake very well cost you a stock. Strong_bad said it the best: he stated when you make a mistake, you didn't outright do something dumb; you did the right thing in a slightly less correct way. When your opponent is pressuring you, you will probably want to roll or wavedash out of shield to get away. But what if you jumped the gun and did it too early. You get hit. You had the right idea, but you executed it wrong. You MISTIMED it. And this applies to every action you input in the game. The few miliseconds you are wavedashing, when you are applying pressure. They matter! Everything you do can be timed and more often than not, it will reveal a pattern. The great players have almost no patterns when they move and this is why they are unstoppable. You get most of your reads off timing; once you got their pattern memorized you can react to the options they pick. But good players mixup what they do. At low level play this can just be changing what option you do. But at high level play you don't have to do something that obvious; you can alter the timing of your previous option. You don't have to jump out of your shine the instant you can. You can delay your aerials when you approach or shield pressure. Mango is godlike at this and probably better than every other active top player. What you see and call "Mango spacing" is an artful blend of the 3 fundamentals I just went into detail about. To conclude while, I haven't mastered these fundamentals like Mango has, I consciously try to incorporate them and improve on them whenever I play. This is what separates pros from noobs.