Raiyan v Larry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWkoKzxDfOY&fbclid=IwAR14YSWvqYcojTr4dr_JU5W0OMXbr5rf2ckQ0VoMz5U-RdDmvcJr7YQ63BA

0:05 - illusion is tricky, don't blame you for getting hit by that; however, the best opening for falcos is to drop through plat with a laser, so your run off fair would have been hit anyway; consider waiting on the plat for a second before reacting to what they're doing; run off fair can work if you wait a second for them to drop through laser and dash into center for example

0:08 - very common for cornered falco to laser aerial out; take laser wavedash/dash back is excellent to whiff punish this; imo take (or shield) laser -> wavedash back is more solid for marth than dashback, although that has its place because dashback has the hurtbox distortion working to its advantage

0:11 - you start dashdancing in the corner; this is the range you're trying to establish in this matchup, close enough to hit falco if he tries to laser, but far enough away that sh drift forward dair can't hit you; once you get here, you want to start threatening him with late fairs, nairs, and run up grabs; the dashdance that you did answers nothing that he's likely to do here; you're opening yourself up to get lasered or naired

0:13 - jab was good, but you dtilt after; the most likely response from him would be to dair immediately or dash away, neither of which dtilt covers; if he did dash forward, then grab or nair would do more and cover more than dtilt

0:14 - after you closed space with the nair, you jabbed; remember, you want to get close to falco so you can threaten him directly with nairs, fairs, and especially grabs; nair or fair if you think he's going to attack/aerial/jump, and grab if you think he's going to dash or shield

0:15 - take laser nair is excellent, but at that spacing you needed the safer arc of fair to answer the dair; just a situational awareness thing

0:16 - I assume you meant to wavedash, not roll; he put himself in the corner and you've got advantage on him now, but by rolling away you surrender all of it; simply wavedashing forward would maintain your positional advantage

0:18 - good anti-air nair; as long as you start them early and don't drift forward, they are excellent vs falco's approaches; the dash attack after is fine as well, but you don't react to the knockdown or respect the get up attack; could have been a death combo off one anti-air

0:22 - he's aerialing into you when you're cornered pretty much every time; I'd just put up nair walls to beat this, but dashback grab could be good too; you do a random dash attack instead that doesn't answer what he's shown he likes to do, or even what he's currently doing on screen

0:26 - mash up when you get uthrown by falco to sdi the lasers; impossible for him to follow up; next level is for him to fish bairs as you try to land, so be prepared to mixup by going to plat, stage, edge, and falling with an attack

0:30 - definitely could have sdi'd this dair into the stage

0:39 - better punish on his habit of chasing you down with nairs; work that marth advantage and grab his ass

0:41 - unfortunate miss on the uair; however, after landing the first uair, unless another one directly combos, I really recommend waiting and reacting to what they do; you can stand underneath them and get an easy utilt, or dash and fair/uair if he techs to the left; best to get damage and keep the pressure up; people crack eventually, and usually very quickly

0:45 - love the awareness on the tipper; firm believer in tippering falco in the 65-90 range; even if he expects it, his recovery is so poor you can kill him anyway

0:52 - two big patterns in this game so far happening at once; you dash attack out of corner again, and he nairs into corner again; you know the dash attacks are bad, and I mentioned earlier how he's almost only nairing at you when you're cornered; a simple nair or dashback grab (if you have space to do it) would net you openings and kills

0:57 - ALWAYS always wait for the shine if a spacy hits your shield; you know it's coming, and it's going to hit absolutely any attempt to jump or wavedash out; think of it as a two-beat attack you have to wait out to punish; aerial-shine, aerial-shine

1:03 - once again you get into that sweetspot range vs falco, then merely jab him; jab is supposed to catch jumps, especially sh laser right?; you've already put him on the defensive by getting this close; a nair or fair will eat right through his short hop, and grab will counter grounded options; you don't need ANYTHING else once you get in range; you can play around with raw fsmash reads, utilts, side bs, dtilts, they're all situationally useful; but you gotta base your game around getting close and nairing, fairing, and grabbing this bird; the jabs are pointless here

1:04 - you nair preemptively rather than as a reaction to his jump startup; only throw out walling nairs if you're out of range of immediate attack

1:11 - died because you didn't sdi the lasers on uthrow

1:15 - excellent uair; people on top plat love to fall through, and that late uair is the ideal answer in many situations

1:20 - again, although you landed the second uair this time, consider waiting and utilting/fairing/fsmashing; you'll get more consistent followups; however, considering you did land the uair, you drifted perfectly to cover the entire top plat with an uair; however, instead you naired and got nothing; think of platform combos as decision trees

1:25 - you're dashdancing because you don't want to get hit by him falling from top plat with an attack, right? look what happens; he falls from top plat and hits your dashdance; any time you go into dashdance because you're vaguely afraid of being hit, your time was probably better spent doing something else; in this case, simply wavedashing back under the side plat and waiting to see what he does would have been safe and effective; you could also late uair/utilt if you're confident in his timing like we talked about earlier (when you did it successfully)

1:32 - you wait to run off fair his jump into center stage just like last stock, which is excellent; it's one of marth's mains tools vs falco and punishes a verrrry common falco habit; however... you nair instead of fair and get hit?

1:40 - you haven't take laser utilted yet; here, it would have saved you from what he - again - is doing every time you're in the corner; either immediate nair in, or laser dair in; take laser wavedash back would have been fine too

1:53 - you do well nairing after lasers to dissuade him from attacking... then blow everything by dash attacking and giving him a free opening; don't bring your body to him when you're working so hard to keep him away from it!

1:55 - he's not edgeguarding marth correctly at all, so maybe think about how you can mixup your recovery vs a falco who really makes it hard on you; you don't want to be completely flummoxed by the first falco who edgeguards you well and wins on that merit alone

2:10 - you've done well dashdancing around his get up attacks, which look like a larry habit; however, when you throw him off stage, whatever you decide to do (jab/fair/empty jump/wait) you HAVE to account for the possibility of airdodge; it is by far the most common response here; if you had held the neutral b in anticipation of reacting to an airdodge, you would have gotten a kill

2:24 - same thing here; you land the first uair, great; you go for the second, which I don't think you should do every time, but you land it so ok; then you go for the nair again instead of reacting and covering the entire top plat with one uair; giving up kills here

2:26 - opponent on top plat seems to be something you don't have an answer for; you're improvising each time; you want to stand off-center (under side platform away from danger) and go for the shark hit when you know it's safe to do so based on their movement; don't make this a scary spot; you have clear answers

2:33 - hey! you late uair and get the hit; it's a great mixup to throw in vs the standard take off-center and observe

2:35 - you're off-center, but not aware that this is where you wanted to be! he falls through and misses, which is the exact point of you standing here, and you had the easiest whiff punish if you only knew the strength of your position; taking up the right position at the right time is a huge part of doing well in melee; you have to figure out what the right position is, and what your best tools are in that position, for common situations in a matchup; that's mostly what building a gameplan is all about

2:39 - he's been doing the same laser-attack you in the corner thing here, but this time you take laser jab him; this is excellent and beats what he's hit you with the past 5 or 6 times; imagine if you always did that, or take laser utilt, or take laser nair, or take laser wavedash back; how hard would falco's life be to ever approach you?; however, you dtilt right after the jab, which you've done twice before and is starting to look like a muscle memory habit; after the jab, he's going to immediately dair or run away, and dtilt answers neither of those; I'd nair him most of the time and run up grab as a mixup after this jab you like to do

2:50 - I know we've talked about this one before, but beautiful nair to cover them moving off the side plat

2:51 - he retreats to side plat and you move off-center, but you're wildly dashdancing; you're already safe under that platform!; just get there and wait to see what he does; if he fell through with laser and you were just standing there; you could calmly treat it like any other laser; go for powershield, take it into some action, or what ever you think is best for the situation; instead, by blindly dashdancing you open yourself up to be hit

3:02 - LOL gg

3:10 - last stock with the pressure on, every player in existence is techrolling here; strongly advise wavelanding up and reaction techchasing them when you KNOW they're going to roll

3:11 - I've talked to both ryan and adam about this idea before and they've implemented it wonderfully, but last stock, most players are going to spam shield; if, instead of panicking as you do here with this nair, you calmly look for grabs, you can sort of overcome spaghetti melee and win these last stock situations; grabbing a lot last stock has been a big part of my career in comebacks

3:18 - marth NEVER wants to double jump at edge like this with an opponent hanging there; side b at this spot is almost as bad; this is what everyone is hoping you do; fall below them and mixup your timings with side b and double jump down low!


takeaways:
-fight for the optimal range in every matchup, and know what you want to do from there
-respect positional advantage and fight for that as well
-work for your gameplan, and don't abandon it just because you feel antsy; the person who sticks to their guns more often usually ends up winning
-build more effective punish trees, especially ladder comboing on platforms
-own last stock situations by slowing down and looking to grab shields
-don't dashdance because you don't know what to do; get into a good position and WATCH; wait a second before deciding what to do next; you'd be amazed at how much you're missing because you blind yourself with these dashdances


Game 2
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-Immediately, you get into the right position (within your nair range but outside his dair range) and hit him with nair; then you do it again! If you'd only done this last game instead of jabbing in the same spots

4:15 - Uairing simply makes more sense considering the height of his jump by the time you start fairing; you should have been able to simply react here

4:16 - Assume you dashed too far back, because you do try to get the grab anyway; Falcos love to fall through platforms with dair, and you should always be ready to do a quick little dashback grab and punish them for it

4:17 - He loves to laser out of the corner, as most Falcos do; committing hard to this dash attack makes sense if you know the Falco likes to laser in place a few times, but Larry has shown he moves forward with laser the entire first game; against approaching laser, and so against Larry nearly every time he pulls out the gun, you want to take or shield the laser, then attack in place or move back to catch the aerial

4:24 - This was a great fsmash into edgeguard or fair combo off stage; the dair was silly considering he wasn't anywhere near being over the edge

4:27 - One of the worst things Marth can do to himself in this matchup is waveland up to the lip of the stage and shield; Falco has 30 million mixups to completely destroy you for doing this; Marth has few options to deal with any of them, and he's always guessing off the back foot; your best options are to stay on edge a bit and fair him away if he gets close, allowing you to get on, to attack onto stage and immediately jump or roll away, and to do a full waveland onto stage to perhaps get under the laser or around his timing; you make this a classic bad Marth death vs falco by getting grabbed, in shield, by the edge, and not SDIing the uthrow up so he gets a cheesy kill off it; dying at 70 before the hit isn't ideal!

4:36 - Wow, Larry doesn't immediately laser aerial... this is a Christmas miracle; so the next level of mixup Falcos will incorporate is to laser, dashdance ONE time, THEN come in with the aerial; that's Mango's bread and butter according to Ginger; it's important to be ready for the good thing your opponent's character can do as well as the scrubbier things they're probably actually doing; vs the laser dashdance, your standard take laser wavedash back is perfectly fine, although take laser nair does lag you up enough to get hit; you can also pick up on their dashdance and take laser -> dash attack to catch them and start a death combo, which M2k is infamous for doing in the matchup; regardless, the direct reason you die is trying to act in between aerial and shine again; aerial-shine is a two-beat action you gotta wait out

4:48 - Silly fsmash, but importantly here you get your shield up in time; why do you still get hit then? It's because you're acting between aerial and shine! Almost ONLY move out of shield AFTER shine; that one adaptation will take you a long way; shine hits your shield -> you wavedash away is amazing vs both spacies

4:53 - If you think laser grab is coming, and it usually is when you're trapped in the corner, then spotdodging after the laser hits can get you disgusting reversal situations; now they're getting dthrown off the level and life is wonderful for you

5:01 - Acting between aerial and shine again; if you take one thing away from this, it's to FIX THIS RIGHT HERE

5:08 - Excellent wait; Falcos are spamming out an action like he did here quite often, and if you learn when to wait for it more, you can start manhandling them; you're very good at landing the initial uair on side platform, which is great; however, you don't seem to know that the same thinking applies to landing the uair on the top plat; drift across the plat and throw out uair when you see them tech; if they're laying on the ground and refuse to move, fall down and double jump back up to catch them as they try to stand up

5:14 - The only thing you're covering with these jumps is the most amazing perfect full ledgedash into center stage; think about what your actions are really meant to achieve and you can probably optimize a ton of your game

5:26 - May have been accidental, but SDIing Falco's dair causes his shine to miss on Marth quite often; you can just stand there and grab him in these situations; this was a possible dthrow dtilt gimp setup off one SDI!

5:35 - Great take laser side b; a common pattern here is your successes in neutral are a lot about punishing Larry's HUGE laser -> aerial approach habit; he does it almost any time he gets his feet back on the ground, and if you were only conscious to specifically scoping out and punishing it, you'd beat him on that read alone; in any case, it works again for you here; transform your "I trained this instinct and sometimes it's gonna catch you" to "I know you're going to do that and I trained this instinct specifically to beat it"; intention!!!

5:39 - When you get a grab on side plat, bthrow them; you can simply fall through with an uair and there's no way for them to avoid it; that's the zain

5:46 - Again, he laser grabs you in the corner; buffered spotdodge might have helped; the uthrow dair working right after is THE most classic "yeah the falco is winning this set gg marth player" thing ever; it SHOULDN'T WORK