There’s this concept in fighting games that goes like this: In faster games (most commonly anime games), you can’t react to single moves because they’re too fast. You have to think about pairs of moves, or sequences. Don’t try to whiff punish Marth fair on reaction. Notice what their common sequences are. Fair > dashback? Fair > dtilt? Fair > fair? Edit: for anyone interested, I learned this concept through That Blasted Salami’s video on Pokes, Frames & Sidesteps in Tekken 7.
“Obviously” but like, sometimes putting things literally into words really helps assemble what you mostly already know. So thanks, this comment was actually super helpful ^_^
There’s actually another interesting thing about this point, which is that it applies to attackers as well as defenders. Basically, when someone is doing some crazy fast shit in neutral, or aping out, or doing “random” stuff, they’re not actually deciding on the fly what to do after each move. It’s a rehearsed, pre-planned sequence. Even when it feels like someone is playing “random,” they’re actually just cycling through a handful of their pre-planned sequences, and you just haven’t identified them, probably because you’re not used to seeing them.
This is actually so helpful to me as an ult player. The game is so lagless and has enough input delay that whiff punishing is really hard. This is so helpful for me to understand neutral in general!
Generally, unless you have a lagless grounded move like lucina dtilt, grounded buttons are whiff punishable. Unless you can sh double aerial you can whiff punish a lot of rising aerials. Landing aerials you hit before they use the aerial
@@DoomJoy666 the moves are lagless. the game has input delay. the moves are super extremely safe, and your ability to react to them is nerfed by the input delay
I forget the direct quote but this reminded me of something Wayne Gretzky once said, something along the lines of "I never go where the puck is, I go where the puck is going to be."
something to think about playing "reactive-ly" is the place of learning habits and reads. That's why whiff punishing aerials can potentially be good, just knowing the specific scenarios in neutral that your opponent likes to choose. there's also be something to be said about neutral not only being LOOKING for the hit, but looking for the ways you CAN look for a hit. It's downloading information, too
I understand the argument that aMSa is making, but I think it's helpful to not only consider the game itself and all of it's mechanics, but the way we play the game against EACHOTHER as individuals
Ah, see, you forgot my strategy here Toph. Where I swap between these three styles at random every 3-5 seconds because I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing and I only know sword big and shine fast.
i can feel my brain expanding by the second, loved the tie-in with other genres of games (specifically FPS) towards the end it really helped on a conceptual level
This is really insightful. I don't actually play melee, but this same theory can be applied into Ultimate, albeit a bit less since movement options are more limited. What sticks out to me though is the idea that "perfect spacing" is actually unsafe because of movement and hurtbox shifting allowing for punishes to beat it out.
i've thought about that triangle before when i was into SF4 ,i had it down as "active, reactive and empty" where empty is things u cant react to in a positive way, in street fighter, walk up throw is the most empty thing you can do, u can react and acknowledge walking, but it doesn't mean anything, reacting to walking, is just playing active. but i didnt think about what was in the elements of the triangle, and how the game rewards different parts of it. active and empty, are like decision making, awarenesses and reads, but reactive is like an athletic quality, if you have great reactions, like the 0.14s - 0.15s type of players, in street fighter 4, you were playing a different game because most of the options are nullified and not viable anymore, in street fighter 4, the top 10% players, their matches were so different to top 20-50 players playing, because how well reactive gameplay is rewarded in that game. melee is like football/soccer for how athletic qualities are valued. the ronaldos, vieiras and rio ferdinands, players with power, speed, height, stamina they are rewarded for it, while players like messi, are really limited, if you made messi play tennis, or fullback or centerback, he'd be really shitty, but he has other qualities, his decision making, awareness(of his team, of space, of movement, of opponents) are really high, and melee has that, None and Wizzrobe are really different, but effective with different strengths. wtf does yoshi whiff punish with anyway? doesnt he go around powershielding ?
Especially at low percents past zero where cc is the centralizing mechanic, I feel like baiting a grab and reacting to that is a huge part of the game.
Hey toph, thank you so much. I am a fgc player but I do play melee but my neutral in melee is strange. It's not a traditional fighting game so I couldn't figure it out. The moment you said melee is like a anime fighter, the neutral in my head just made sense. The way amsa described neutral is how I play gg xrd/uni/Tekken. Thanks to you, I have a new perspective of melee and how to approach the game. Thank you toph!
Also, I've played n0ne, plub, sfat, westballz, and several other top 100 players online. Along with lots of expert ranked in the melee discord on unranked. So when people talk about unranked slippi being "bad" players, idk who the heck they are playing. My games are usually hella skillful and top level.
Yeah I have issue with the wording here too. One reason because the skill is fairly diverse with a huge chance of meeting a professionals compared to others games. And another reason as a public speaking tactic (type casting a large group of assumingly invested people negatively).
Hey toph loved the content. If I may ask, as someone who has played smash ultimate you said the problem with its neutral is that whiff punish is weak, not only that but overshooting is also bad. So the only good option is to undershoot. Could you please elaborate on those aspects and why overshooting in ultimate just does not work unlike melee. Thanks and keep up the good content.
iirc from the stream its because the risk reward is so bad for overshoots, characters don't have much follow ups from their overshoot connecting in general
This made me think, if ult (or really more like brawl) is a game where preemptive play is too good, and launch For Honor is a game where reactive play is too good, what's a game where proactive play is too good?
@@ividboy7616 I think any 3v3 fighter best rewards being proactive because having 2 assists help cover more options which leads to high pressure to force out bad plays from the opponent.
I mean certain 'whiffs' aren't punishing attacks in like the traditional sense of the word, but punishing common accidents like tourney winner. Hbox/Armada could literally sit by ledge watch them do a tourney winner and just gobble the stock up. I think there're specific instances where things are punished, but I agree when it comes to punishing whiffed attacks it usually not worth it because oftentimes if you're slightly late on the reaction you can just get deleted.
Great video but I don't agree that whiff punishing isn't an essential part of melee's neutral, especially with certain characters like Marth like you said. I went on Smash Summit 11 GFs, clicked to a random part, and saw Zain whiff punish Mango twice (11:37 dash dance grab and 12:02 forward air an undershot nair). You can see Armada whiff punish a bunch as well. Simply put, I don't think drift is enough to do unpredictable safe aerials and I don't think that it's not unreactable.
Is getting better that important❓ Fighting games have much more to offer than winning, and some other part of Melee (like, I dunno, Break the Target speedruns) might b more worth your time 🤷♂️
That's not his point You're just not going to be excelling competitively beyond a certain level if you're exclusively playing unranked. Which, if your goal is competition, shouldn't be the case in the first place I'd posit
it seems that reactions are much more beneficial in advantage (techchasing, reacting to DI, etc.) It's weird. I keep thinking about the whole pill thing way back when people were saying 2-3 frames off reaction time would be absolutely broken. Is someone with Wizzy's reactions able to actually whiff punish, or is it just that their advantage is that much better?
If Marths grab was normal sized would that actually put him lower on the tier list? I don't think it does in play, in theory It Def does, but I don't think It'd matter, unless he had like Pikachu grab, then it's a problem xD
Yes 100% also wiff punish is the lamest Also if everyone play this way run up shield become better Then we can realy start to interact and its 10x more fun playing melee this way
"Whiff punishing sucks in Melee" as his character finds openings by tanking hits with double-jump armor lol I guess that's the most outsider-looking-in perspective you can find.
This is kinda jumbled in its logic. By saying that playing to “whif-punish” is bad purely because a whiffed aerial can’t always be punished is a contradiction in itself. That is because, to punish, by definition in this context, is to capitalize on one’s mistake. At the end of the day, winning neutral is always and inevitably about out-reading your opponent. It’s not about playing reactively, proactively, or preemptively. All of these are just tools that can be used to out-read and outplay your opponent.
No, he's saying those tools are not all equal in strength. The person putting the move out has many options to mix up the opponent, with different drifts and lags. The task of whiff punishing gets harder and harder the more someone abuses these options. And I disagree winning neutral is all about out-reading your opponent
But uh... Isn't this just a reflection of Yoshi's strengths for proactive play? Makes perfect sense to me that a committed Yoshi player wants to believe that reactive play is relatively weak. How biased is Amsa here?
ive never understood thinking about whiff punishing as a reaction and not a read, that isn't how it works in most fighting games, including smash 64, melee, and ult
...Sure it's good practice to focus less on whiff-punishing and more enforcing 🤚 your threat ranges, but most fighting games have MANY moves that are balanced around whiff-punishes ⚖ (like most Smash attacks)
@@bcan5512 That is entirely untrue 😒 Projectiles, dash attacks/grabs, reactive aerials, dash canceled attacks (side smash/usmash/specials), the list goes on. Like I was saying, pre-emptive attacks are good practice, but y'all are exaggerating 🤷♂️
Nice vid. But you keep saying unranked is "bad". I suppose it might be you being provocative (or contracting bad melee), but it is not bad. It just is what it is. One of the biggest populous of melee players.
For example one does not go into a pickup basketball game and expect professional play. The best future players will still be forged by the play environment. I'm sure Lebron/Messi/McDavid played their fair share of pickup games.
@@yourbellboy I wouldn't try to speak for him if I were you. He does say what you quoted. I think how you approach unranked determines what you can get from it. Talking about "best" is so ambiguous. To make a stand, I would say: In this era where you run through a gauntlet unknown players in a double knock off ladder, you're met with a diverse group of people. Unranked is "best" for improving your mental durability of playing many games in succession, exposing flaws in what playstyles you preform poorly against, and gaining you a holistic view on how people react to the unique position you prefer to put your opponent in. Playing prior to slippi only gave you access to a handful of players with any skill, and playing a samus would morph into playing "Bob" with "Bob's" habits and skill. Which obviously had its problems.
There’s this concept in fighting games that goes like this:
In faster games (most commonly anime games), you can’t react to single moves because they’re too fast. You have to think about pairs of moves, or sequences.
Don’t try to whiff punish Marth fair on reaction. Notice what their common sequences are. Fair > dashback? Fair > dtilt? Fair > fair?
Edit: for anyone interested, I learned this concept through That Blasted Salami’s video on Pokes, Frames & Sidesteps in Tekken 7.
Cool!
Obviously. Otherwise there would be no point in reads lol.
Pattern recognition + option selection. It's crazy how fast these pros' brains can go.
“Obviously” but like, sometimes putting things literally into words really helps assemble what you mostly already know.
So thanks, this comment was actually super helpful ^_^
There’s actually another interesting thing about this point, which is that it applies to attackers as well as defenders.
Basically, when someone is doing some crazy fast shit in neutral, or aping out, or doing “random” stuff, they’re not actually deciding on the fly what to do after each move. It’s a rehearsed, pre-planned sequence.
Even when it feels like someone is playing “random,” they’re actually just cycling through a handful of their pre-planned sequences, and you just haven’t identified them, probably because you’re not used to seeing them.
This is actually so helpful to me as an ult player.
The game is so lagless and has enough input delay that whiff punishing is really hard. This is so helpful for me to understand neutral in general!
You're totally right. In Ult, I think you'd often rather have someone hit your shield so you can up+B than whiff even a moderately laggy move.
Generally, unless you have a lagless grounded move like lucina dtilt, grounded buttons are whiff punishable. Unless you can sh double aerial you can whiff punish a lot of rising aerials. Landing aerials you hit before they use the aerial
really pog pfp
Its lagless and has input delay? So it's do lagless its lagy
@@DoomJoy666 the moves are lagless. the game has input delay. the moves are super extremely safe, and your ability to react to them is nerfed by the input delay
I forget the direct quote but this reminded me of something Wayne Gretzky once said, something along the lines of "I never go where the puck is, I go where the puck is going to be."
That guy stole quotes from the office
something to think about playing "reactive-ly" is the place of learning habits and reads. That's why whiff punishing aerials can potentially be good, just knowing the specific scenarios in neutral that your opponent likes to choose. there's also be something to be said about neutral not only being LOOKING for the hit, but looking for the ways you CAN look for a hit. It's downloading information, too
I understand the argument that aMSa is making, but I think it's helpful to not only consider the game itself and all of it's mechanics, but the way we play the game against EACHOTHER as individuals
Ah, see, you forgot my strategy here Toph. Where I swap between these three styles at random every 3-5 seconds because I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing and I only know sword big and shine fast.
i can feel my brain expanding by the second, loved the tie-in with other genres of games (specifically FPS) towards the end it really helped on a conceptual level
This is really insightful. I don't actually play melee, but this same theory can be applied into Ultimate, albeit a bit less since movement options are more limited. What sticks out to me though is the idea that "perfect spacing" is actually unsafe because of movement and hurtbox shifting allowing for punishes to beat it out.
what a tease at the end
Just learned about “wont” thanks Toph
No prob Mekk
@@Tophbbq thanks for the new word per say
i've thought about that triangle before when i was into SF4 ,i had it down as "active, reactive and empty" where empty is things u cant react to in a positive way, in street fighter, walk up throw is the most empty thing you can do, u can react and acknowledge walking, but it doesn't mean anything, reacting to walking, is just playing active. but i didnt think about what was in the elements of the triangle, and how the game rewards different parts of it. active and empty, are like decision making, awarenesses and reads, but reactive is like an athletic quality, if you have great reactions, like the 0.14s - 0.15s type of players, in street fighter 4, you were playing a different game because most of the options are nullified and not viable anymore, in street fighter 4, the top 10% players, their matches were so different to top 20-50 players playing, because how well reactive gameplay is rewarded in that game.
melee is like football/soccer for how athletic qualities are valued. the ronaldos, vieiras and rio ferdinands, players with power, speed, height, stamina they are rewarded for it, while players like messi, are really limited, if you made messi play tennis, or fullback or centerback, he'd be really shitty, but he has other qualities, his decision making, awareness(of his team, of space, of movement, of opponents) are really high, and melee has that, None and Wizzrobe are really different, but effective with different strengths.
wtf does yoshi whiff punish with anyway? doesnt he go around powershielding ?
Nobody can react in .15s. that's 9 frames dude, you need twice that for something to be reactable.
I'm having way more fun with melee ever since I switched to Fox and stopped playing neutral
Lmao fuckin true
you know what’s up hahaha
Especially at low percents past zero where cc is the centralizing mechanic, I feel like baiting a grab and reacting to that is a huge part of the game.
thanks for translating and sharing
This is essentially the meta in ultimate right now - lots of movement baiting and whiff baiting. Greatly explained toph!
Thanks! This made me aware I cover my landing EVERY time! Helpful!
great video! really helpful neutral breakdown
Love these kinds of videos
Crazy interesting, love the video
"The last think you want to do is try to place a move exactly where the opponent is." I hate that I didnt really realize this
'and if you're confused by this, you're gonna want to get good."
Hey toph, thank you so much. I am a fgc player but I do play melee but my neutral in melee is strange. It's not a traditional fighting game so I couldn't figure it out. The moment you said melee is like a anime fighter, the neutral in my head just made sense. The way amsa described neutral is how I play gg xrd/uni/Tekken.
Thanks to you, I have a new perspective of melee and how to approach the game. Thank you toph!
Melees neutral is very similar to Umvc3s neutral, been saying this for years
9:40 damn, 5 multishines, wonder what he said :V
this is a really good video
Thanks aMSa for doing the thinking for me and toph for translating it
This is bonkers thanks toph
Geniussss 🧡🔥🙏
I know this is an extremely basic thing but watching melee and only paying attention to drift is super helpful
does Amsa talk about Yoshi's parry in the thread? I guess it would fall under the reactive category.
The only single moves I wait to whiff punish are grab and dash attack. Or shield and roll kinda. Otherwise its predicting a sequence
FINALLY GOT Y'ALL TO COP TO IT
i just became better at this game by watching this video
whats that translator extension
Also, I've played n0ne, plub, sfat, westballz, and several other top 100 players online. Along with lots of expert ranked in the melee discord on unranked. So when people talk about unranked slippi being "bad" players, idk who the heck they are playing. My games are usually hella skillful and top level.
Yeah I have issue with the wording here too. One reason because the skill is fairly diverse with a huge chance of meeting a professionals compared to others games. And another reason as a public speaking tactic (type casting a large group of assumingly invested people negatively).
Hey toph loved the content. If I may ask, as someone who has played smash ultimate you said the problem with its neutral is that whiff punish is weak, not only that but overshooting is also bad. So the only good option is to undershoot. Could you please elaborate on those aspects and why overshooting in ultimate just does not work unlike melee. Thanks and keep up the good content.
iirc from the stream its because the risk reward is so bad for overshoots, characters don't have much follow ups from their overshoot connecting in general
i'd guess it's bc air speed is so much lower in ult
This made me think, if ult (or really more like brawl) is a game where preemptive play is too good, and launch For Honor is a game where reactive play is too good, what's a game where proactive play is too good?
@@ividboy7616 I think any 3v3 fighter best rewards being proactive because having 2 assists help cover more options which leads to high pressure to force out bad plays from the opponent.
I mean certain 'whiffs' aren't punishing attacks in like the traditional sense of the word, but punishing common accidents like tourney winner. Hbox/Armada could literally sit by ledge watch them do a tourney winner and just gobble the stock up. I think there're specific instances where things are punished, but I agree when it comes to punishing whiffed attacks it usually not worth it because oftentimes if you're slightly late on the reaction you can just get deleted.
there's danger on the other side too, cut it too tight trying to be fast and you'll eat the hit and get combo'd
completely agree. it's more like mistake punishing than whiff punishing.
Great video but I don't agree that whiff punishing isn't an essential part of melee's neutral, especially with certain characters like Marth like you said. I went on Smash Summit 11 GFs, clicked to a random part, and saw Zain whiff punish Mango twice (11:37 dash dance grab and 12:02 forward air an undershot nair). You can see Armada whiff punish a bunch as well. Simply put, I don't think drift is enough to do unpredictable safe aerials and I don't think that it's not unreactable.
"don't think that it's not unreactable" ... the legendary triple negative :o
What's the extension he is using for japanese
I wanna hear the story for amsa:(
IT'S COMING...
@@Tophbbq hell yeah toph 👍
I just learned a new word thank you Toph
@10:04 i see this so often in netplay falcos, i literally throw out shine for the free damage 💀 theyre coming in regardless
never put it into words. this is exactly how i try to play neutral
Good too know That one year of practice on slippi was nearly pointless
How should I get better if I got no time to be attending tourneys
Is getting better that important❓
Fighting games have much more to offer than winning, and some other part of Melee (like, I dunno, Break the Target speedruns) might b more worth your time 🤷♂️
That's not his point
You're just not going to be excelling competitively beyond a certain level if you're exclusively playing unranked. Which, if your goal is competition, shouldn't be the case in the first place I'd posit
it seems that reactions are much more beneficial in advantage (techchasing, reacting to DI, etc.)
It's weird. I keep thinking about the whole pill thing way back when people were saying 2-3 frames off reaction time would be absolutely broken. Is someone with Wizzy's reactions able to actually whiff punish, or is it just that their advantage is that much better?
I love this
Why do I feel like this is the third time I've heard Toph say "as I am wont to do, wont with an O"?
he likes that word per say
Shoutout to Toph’s Japanese knowledge!
How'd you go about learning Japanese, I'm trying to learn myself but don't know what to follow
Good vid
What Japanese dictionary extension are you using?
Im inspired. My puff will no longer whiff punish :D lmao
is twitter an important social media according to whats going on on melee right now?
What okami remind is this?
What does the DX near the beginning of the tweet stand for?
Smash Brothers DX is the japanese name
it stands for deluxe
日本語分かったんですね♪
改めて感服しました!(^^)!
Damn, so true
If Marths grab was normal sized would that actually put him lower on the tier list? I don't think it does in play, in theory It Def does, but I don't think It'd matter, unless he had like Pikachu grab, then it's a problem xD
It is normal sized, he just has bigger arms than most characters.
I cant hear amsa
Unranked will always only have the benefits of casuals. Thats why we desperately need ranked
I just wanna say that this transfer to ALL smash games.
But playing reactive is my favorite part of the game.
you can play like that until a certain point. prolly top 50 and up, you can not
You're not alone--
you might realize that top-level Melee isn't your style & another game may suit you better 😅
Yes 100% also wiff punish is the lamest
Also if everyone play this way run up shield become better
Then we can realy start to interact and its 10x more fun playing melee this way
Love this shit toph
"Whiff punishing sucks in Melee" as his character finds openings by tanking hits with double-jump armor lol
I guess that's the most outsider-looking-in perspective you can find.
This is kinda jumbled in its logic. By saying that playing to “whif-punish” is bad purely because a whiffed aerial can’t always be punished is a contradiction in itself. That is because, to punish, by definition in this context, is to capitalize on one’s mistake. At the end of the day, winning neutral is always and inevitably about out-reading your opponent. It’s not about playing reactively, proactively, or preemptively. All of these are just tools that can be used to out-read and outplay your opponent.
No, he's saying those tools are not all equal in strength. The person putting the move out has many options to mix up the opponent, with different drifts and lags. The task of whiff punishing gets harder and harder the more someone abuses these options. And I disagree winning neutral is all about out-reading your opponent
I guess there is no neutral when u play a counterhit spam cheese character like Yoshi...true
u wont m8
but wontons aren't japanese
But uh... Isn't this just a reflection of Yoshi's strengths for proactive play? Makes perfect sense to me that a committed Yoshi player wants to believe that reactive play is relatively weak. How biased is Amsa here?
WHAT WORD??? want with a know??? this is a word???
"wont"
Reactive still huge in melee for tech chase, following DI, etc. I think reactive in melee is just very different from every other game.
In both those examples you're reacting during your punish game/advantage state. Not neutral game.
How did u like game 8 🤢 poor nepo tough day
ive never understood thinking about whiff punishing as a reaction and not a read, that isn't how it works in most fighting games, including smash 64, melee, and ult
Where are you pulling this from? Whiff-punishing DPs on reaction, bad fireballs, etc is a fighting game staple lol
...Sure it's good practice to focus less on whiff-punishing and more enforcing 🤚 your threat ranges, but most fighting games have MANY moves that are balanced around whiff-punishes ⚖ (like most Smash attacks)
It's less of a thing in ult because the movement is more limited. Hard to whiff punish when you can't dash dance
@@bcan5512 Not only that, but having a ridiculous (by fighting game standard) amount of input lag is uhhh kinda hard to deal with
@@bcan5512 That is entirely untrue 😒
Projectiles, dash attacks/grabs, reactive aerials, dash canceled attacks (side smash/usmash/specials), the list goes on.
Like I was saying, pre-emptive attacks are good practice, but y'all are exaggerating 🤷♂️
can toph speak japanese or google translate just busted asf
You know Japanese??
this is somewhole speak
Tophハフか？どうやってそんなに日本語上手なのか？
Nice vid. But you keep saying unranked is "bad". I suppose it might be you being provocative (or contracting bad melee), but it is not bad. It just is what it is. One of the biggest populous of melee players.
For example one does not go into a pickup basketball game and expect professional play. The best future players will still be forged by the play environment. I'm sure Lebron/Messi/McDavid played their fair share of pickup games.
I suppose I should say more-so "rounded in the play environment" and less "forged by the play environment".
...he realizes his point near the end of the video: 'unranked is best for combo practice'
@@yourbellboy
I wouldn't try to speak for him if I were you.
He does say what you quoted. I think how you approach unranked determines what you can get from it.
Talking about "best" is so ambiguous.
To make a stand, I would say:
In this era where you run through a gauntlet unknown players in a double knock off ladder, you're met with a diverse group of people. Unranked is "best" for improving your mental durability of playing many games in succession, exposing flaws in what playstyles you preform poorly against, and gaining you a holistic view on how people react to the unique position you prefer to put your opponent in.
Playing prior to slippi only gave you access to a handful of players with any skill, and playing a samus would morph into playing "Bob" with "Bob's" habits and skill. Which obviously had its problems.
High skilled individuals learnt advanced tactics (undershoot/overshoot) by playing, and naturally so can others.