Q&A Mewtwo Philosophy - Q&A Ask Away

[MookieRah]

Taj, have you seen this post by TheCrimsonBlur?

In a nutshell it discusses how movement is going to play a much larger part in the metagame, and in fact already is. Well, that and how much of a badass Marth actually is. While many disagree with TCB when it comes to Marth's placement, I don't think many are challenging the idea that movement is the next big thing.

I think we should all re-evaluate Mewtwo based on this as well. How come, despite Mewtwo's glaring weaknesses, were you able to do some much with him? How was I able to have any success with him? If you look purely at his moves, it's obvious that he has some serious problems engaging his opponents, especially in the air. Mewtwo just can't cover his front, back, or bottom very well at all in the air. On the ground, his moves are a lot better off, but he can still be outspaced by many characters, and Sheik can do the same thing he does but only better. Yet still, despite all of this, one can still use Mewtwo in the current meta and not do absolutely terrible.

I think that has to do with the fact that, overall, Mewtwo might have the best movement of any other character in smash. Lets look at the numbers.

Mewtwo has the longest roll in the game, and one of the least punishable rolls.
Mewtwo has slightly below average running speed, but the third best wavedash.
Mewtwo is tied for second in horizontal aerial speed, but is second in horizontal aerial falling distance.
Mewtwo has good vertical movement overall, but due to DJC he can stop on a dime in the air.
Mewtwo also has teleport, which is a movement option no other character has.

So while Mewtwo might have a very had time landing a hit or a grab for him to work off of, considering his movement options, he has the best chance of any character to reset the momentum back into neutral. Here is a short list of things Mewtwo has that can seriously put a halt to your opponents momentum:

1: When pressured, Mewtwo can use his roll in way more situations than any other character without being punished.
2: Mewtwo can jump cancel teleport out of shield, allowing him to quickly flee from pressure strings in a unique way.
3: Mewtwo's wavedash allows him to GTFO out better than many other characters (wavedash OoS for example)
4: Mewtwo can stall on a ledge incredibly well, and has several options when it comes to returning to the stage.

You talked about how Mewtwo has different tools and that is why he is better than people thought, but I think this is it. You even discussed how Mewtwo gave you the ability to analyze your opponents better than your other characters. I honestly think that Mewtwo might even be better than you gave him credit for, but the thing about it is one would have to play extremely safe and patient 100% of the time. I think this is the reason why most people can't play him well, and why he has such a steep learning curve. To play Mewtwo, you have to thoroughly know your defensive options, and never get greedy.

The main reason why I ever did well with Mewtwo is because I played a very defensive, non-committal game and this caused my opponents to get impatient and I was able to get many shield grabs. People used to complain at tournaments often that my style of play was "gay" or "lame" because I wasn't playing like a Falco/Falcon on roids. That was from a 2005 or so perspective, and while the meta has changed completely since then I think the overall strategy should remain the same.

TLDR:
I believe Mewtwo has the best movement of any character in the game overall. I think he has the best options to escape pressure strings and reset the whole scenario into neutral. While he might have a hard time landing attacks, Mewtwo has the ability to "call the shots" more than any other character, and once Mewtwo has gained momentum his opponent can't reset like he does. I think people should start working towards shaping Mewtwo's meta towards very safe defensive play in which one only engages his opponent once their is an obvious positional advantage and use Mewtwo's movement to avoid confrontation when it is not to Mewtwo's advantage. Mewtwo should be played as an attrition character, and possibly as stated in the past, is best used to take a lead and run down the clock (as much as I hate this idea too, it seems to be effective on paper).

 

[6VI6]

^Great post, it's a shame the Mewtwo boards don't get much traffic now.

Just one point of dispute, upB has 8 frames of startup right? That would make it strictly worse than a roll unless you felt the need to go up or you're on a platform. However overall I agree upB is a good movement option.

While it might be a stretch to say Mewtwo has the best movement, I always found this to be the strongest aspect of Mewtwo's game and what kept him sort of viable. I think you can claim he has the most movement options considering what he can in the air or on the ground.

 

[Shadow Huan]

8 frames of startup on Teleport is absolutely stupidly bad. it's supposed to be a "fast" move lol

 

[lavagolem123]

Sure it might be bad, but it can be put to pretty good use. Like MookieRah said, Mewtwo has some pretty nifty movement options. When I used to play more often, I'd use it as a tech-chasing tool for people who make a habit of DI'ing and/or teching away to punish them. Plus, it looks pretty flashy too lol.

 

[swanized]

Did Taj go mainly with mewtwo at Evo?

 

[Taj278]

I did go mainly Mewtwo at Evo.

 

[S7GF]

So Taj, do you find yourself using Teleport while on the stage? It could be an interesting run-away/repositioning/mindgame tool.

 

[DJLO]

the 2 vids i could find of taj at evo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TItBmEUcrdE taj(mewtwo, marth) vs sfat(fox)

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_GYtfgEfYM taj(mewtwo) vs Darrel(samus)

 

[swanized]

the 2 vids i could find of taj at evo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TItBmEUcrdE taj(mewtwo, marth) vs sfat(fox)

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_GYtfgEfYM taj(mewtwo) vs Darrel(samus)

Thanks!

Taj do you happen to know where we can find more videos of you at evo?

Also what's this? a Mewtwo gets 9th at the biggest tournament ever and these boards stay silent ?___?

 

[6VI6]

13th and with a bit of Marth, but yeah it's sad. :/
Probably because there hasn't been a lot of footage. Only other Taj video I saw was marth dittos with PewPewU. Hopefully Ripple has some videos of Taj, looks like he has some videos left to upload.

 

[S7GF]

I'd certainly like to see them. Taj, you're a legend. I want to watch a legend in action.

 

[Эикельманн [РУС]]

hey guys. i'm working diligently on my mewtwo. i currently main ganondorf/bowser, so have experience with characters with **** matchups. please critique my most recent match with mewtwo as much as possible. tear me apart. thanks in advance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAEnfECyQXY

will provide more later.

 

[Taj278]

Your foundation is pretty solid. You seem to have a good feel for controlling Mewtwo on the ground. Most likely because his jump speed is the same as Ganon's. I'm not sure how to describe your decisions since they're likely just lack of knowledge, so I'll just bullet point some key things.

Learn up throw percentages and stage sizes. You don't need to know the exact percentage for every character on every stage, but you should learn the percentages for every character on at least one stage. That will let you infer KO percentages based on the stage sizes. For example, Fox dies at 163% (match-up thread) on FD. Battlefield is approximately 10% larger than FD vertically. Stadium is about 5% Smaller, Dreamland is about 30% larger, FoD is about 15% larger, and Yoshi's is about 20% smaller. With this knowledge you base your throw strategies purely around combo potential and stage control.

Against Fox, you want to down throw pretty much exclusively once he's between 30-163%. Of course you can back throw when your back is to the ledge for edge guard opportunities. Down throw gives you tech chase options when you have them cornered, and if you're close to the ledge, they tend to DI in and that's when you get free money. If they DI in, you get down throw > down tilt > forward air, and that kills earlier than up throw on Fox because he's lighter. Throws are purely based on fall speed for KO, weight only applies for throw speed. At low percentages on fast fallers, you can up throw and attempt a follow up with forward air. Afterward, all your money will come from down throw tech chases.

Mewtwo vs Fox is almost exclusively played on the ground. You did a good job of trying to play footsies against him with down tilt, but then you gave it up and started trying to counter hit with forward air a lot and you did long reaching neutral airs. You typically want to avoid doing that as Fox has way more of an advantage if you start trying to reach and hit with raw aerials on him. The only time you have an advantage on Fox with your aerials are when he's above you on a platform. That's when your up tilt and DJC up airs start working . Forward air is too tough to hit anyone and has too little range to be safe on shield. It will get shield grabbed often and you don't want to get grabbed by Fox ever.

Eventually you'll get to the point where at low percentages you have to recognize when your down tilt will work for you and when you're going to get blown up by crouch cancels. You have to recognize the spacing and determine if you should go for the grab, space another tilt, or stop tilting entirely and try to shield/run.

Most of your damage from Fox will come from catching him with neutral airs as he tries to move above you, from shield grabs because he hit your shield too high, or from a well timed pivot/wd grab on his approaches and retreats respectively.

Learn to do vertical teleport ledge cancels. Basically what Fox/Falco/Sheik can do by directing their up B and grabbing the ledge from any angle above the ledge including directly above. That gives you another save option on recovery, because you obviously want to avoid having the landing lag on teleport and lag or not, Fox can cover all of your options on stage if he's there. Going to ledge more often keeps you safer and makes him think.

You don't want to challenge Fox air to air much at all, as you experienced in your match you'll often trade and Fox does more damage than almost all of your moves, as well as the ability to kill you finishing at 87% from up throw up air. Even earlier with up smash. You have to be able to constantly switch from defensive to aggressive to feigning aggressiveness, because Mewtwo's rush down is not very good and Fox hard punishes you for looking at him funny. (Including Disable)

Oh yeah, Mewtwo's Confusion works just like Marth's/Mario's forward B. It refreshes the lift only after you land on stage and don't l cancel an attack. When you go for ledge confusions, it is actually very risky if they're aware that they die if they jump. I typically just release from stage and then just instantly forward B to keep my double jump instead of just doing it from the double jump. It comes out faster, it still has the same range and you have a better chance of living if you miss or they don't kill themselves from getting hit by it.

Up throw does the most damage, but you give up a lot of potential follow up, back throw is awesome against floaties at low percentage if you can throw off stage, because you often get a free back air follow up. Down throw and back throw do the same damage, and forward throw is the weakest throw Mewtwo has, use that sparingly. Make sure to pummel when you can, because Mewtwo's pummel is the highest damaging pummel in the game and has some of the most hit stun. You can't pummel multiple times like you can with Pikachu, but you should almost always get at least one in, because Mewtwo needs every percent he can get. Mewtwo is one of the most honest characters in the game in the sense that he has no guaranteed combos from throws and he has to build percentage slowly to get to his guaranteed finisher (up throw) and he only has gimp opportunities on fast fallers after they've pretty much hung themselves in the first place. Once your opponent learns that half your special moves don't actually work and they can hurt you, it's all you completely out playing them from there. Mewtwo has one low attack with good range and hit boxes, the rest are all short range and for how slow they are, low damage. All of Foxes normals do more damage and come out faster than Mewtwo's except for down smash, forward smash, and M2's full hit neutral air. Mewtwo is typically out classed in every way and his only strong point is his recovery when he has his double jump. Without his double jump his recovery is pretty free.

For just starting out, you look really good. Once you get a feel for how to flow out of down tilt and follow up, and you start down throwing... pretty much all the time since it's his best throw for position to damage, you'll be stronk! :D

 

[Эикельманн [РУС]]

Thank you so much. I'll make you proud.

 

[MookieRah]

I've been compiling lots of stuff from the Marth Q&A thread to improve my Marth, but I've also been thinking about how it applies to Mewtwo as well. Strangely enough I think both characters are played very similarly, especially in the neutral game.

As Taj said, in the neutral you want to keep to the ground game. There isn't much point in doing insta-DJCed fairs or any aerial at all from neutral. Mewtwo's approaches should only be with movements, and you should poke with his tilts. You shouldn't even bother trying to make any sort of attack outside of pokes until it is more or less guaranteed you will connect. Also, think about your stage control. Try to put yourself in the best position possible to prevent yourself from getting KO'ed and try your best to pin your opponent in a bad spot (close to the ledge or on a platform above).

Also, on the second match at 3:18, I'm pretty sure you could have landed a ftilt there knocking Fox off stage. Against spacies you always want to be on the lookout for when they DI toward you like that cause it usually means a free f-tilt to possible edgeguard. The last thing I noticed is that you need to focus more on your spacing with grabs. You make a lot of missed grab attempts that cost you : (.

 

[Эикельманн [РУС]]

Yeah, I'll work on understanding Mewtwo's grabs better. Thanks for the wise words, Mookie :D

 

[DJLO]

Make sure to pummel when you can, because Mewtwo's pummel is the highest damaging pummel in the game and has some of the most hit stun.

huh, i did not know that! as a grab-heavy mewtwo, this is great news for me! do you know the stats for his grab range/lag?

 

[Taj278]

I don't remember the exact stats, they were from M2K's post when he was 13 years old. Mewtwo's grab range was like 12th best, or just right below Zelda. His pummel damage is the highest and is tied with Pikachu and a couple of other characters for most hit stun, but has slower pummel speed. So you usually want to try to get at least one pummel in to maximize your damage in most cases. Sometimes, the best option is just to throw and finish them though.

 

[Renth]

 

[Ripple]

I still have videos on my camera. but I can't upload stuff at my house. terrible internet.

.2 up is only so tolerating

 

[DJLO]

an example of a time to not pummel: you grab fox with your back to the edge and he is at 0%. you are playing someone who you know is good at breaking grabs. better to just go for the back throw to bair gimp than chance him getting away.

also,

had to gif it. reddit liked: http://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/1kanc4/mew2king_living_up_to_his_name/

 

[KAOSTAR]

hey guys. i'm working diligently on my mewtwo. i currently main ganondorf/bowser, so have experience with characters with **** matchups. please critique my most recent match with mewtwo as much as possible. tear me apart. thanks in advance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAEnfECyQXY

will provide more later.

Try to control your grab impulses a bit better. Youre reaching pimp....GP style. and work on your movement a bit as well. I think you can get more out of the character if you can WD a bit more smoothly. I use to go to training mode play mewtwo vs falcon and put him on evade...and I just tried to shadow him as best I could and then I started beating him to the spots he was trying to go to. its a lil trick that can help boost your overall speed with the character.


edit: taj is my *****!!! ur crazy solid defensively my dude. Im starting to get it but It still amazes my how you do it.

 

[The Phenom]

I saw the matches a couple weeks ago. You know how to order your movement against fox. I'm a sec. Mewtwo main.

Situational
Not mentioned by the premiere mewtwos, shadowball(charging) to grab. Its a good call when fox is inside the bair range(fox is in the air) and your in the air coming to a land.

 

[Эикельманн [РУС]]

I love that you guys are still giving me critique. I just recently got 13th at a 71 person "local" here in Orlando, Florida and went Mewtwo for quite a few of my matches. None recorded, sadly. Thanks so much for all of your help! Hoping to find videos soon.

 

[Dru2]

Question: How do you approach a Marth with Mewtwo?

 

[Taj278]

You have to get in a certain space where you can wd down tilt or grab and he can't react to your approach easily. You also want to try to invade that space using baby shadowballs and check his reactions with WD or dash shields.

 

[TyMy]

Sup you guys/girls. I'm new to smashboards and glad to see fellow Mewtwo mains. I'm sure theres some rule against posting links, but I made this remix song and video dedicated to MEWTWO like 4 years ago that needs to be shared with the Smash community. I've always felt other Smashers who use M2 would appreciate this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccf40wo3uJU

 

[.K1]

since mewtwo is one of the few characters that can tech any grounded shine from Fox, shouldnt this help in the matchup considerably? Im not saying the matchup is in mewtwos favor, but I mean fox cant get easy mode shine combos or shine mixups on mewtwo......anytime he chooses to shine mewtwo (grounded shine) hes inherently putting himself in a tech chase situation which is sub optimal.....right?

Or am I just theory fighting too much?

 

[Taj278]

Mewtwo has slow tech recovery. He gets owned kinda hard from shines in center stage. If he goes off stage from the shine, it's a bit better.

 

[Swann]

How're you liking PM Mewtwo?

 

[Zekersaurus]

Continuing where I left off from last night, I don't think Mewtwo is necessarily my best character. I think that the playstyle that I've created with Mewtwo kind of focuses all of my strengths and helps me hide some of my weaknesses. Kind of like the armor that helped Mewtwo focus his power in the MOVIE!

But in all seriousness, where I feel like I would have lost had I played Marth, my Mewtwo gave me a lot of second chances at tournaments. Off the top of my head, winning against The King at NCT2, Omar at AZOne, Chu Dat at one of Ken's Biweeklies, Plank at Pound 2, and second round pools at Pound 4 against Adam and PKM Vodka. A lot of that success just came from not knowing the match-ups, but it also came from the required level of focus I need when I play Mewtwo. What's weird is that Mewtwo is so fragile, but at the same time, he is quite resilient.

Part of what's been irritating me when I play Marth is how EASILY and hard I get punished when I mess up and the probability of me getting shine spiked against someone I'm not familiar with is instantly 50% or more. If anyone knows me personally, they know I have TERRIBLE luck when it comes to RNG and when it comes to gambling, I'm sure to lose. Fox shines me, and that's it... that's my stock. I ledge hop neutral air, Sheik CC down smashes... that's it. I'm forced to the stage and I get down air > down aired or down smashed.

When I play Mewtwo, I don't get chain thrown by Sheik, I can recover from the bottom of the stage and relatively safely, I do get owned by easy up smashes and up throw up airs, but so does Marth. Marth is a better character, and I on average would perform better with Marth, but with Mewtwo the play styles are radically different.

I was joking with Tai about Marth's recovery sucking and how Mewtwo would recover from all of those situations because Mewtwo is ALWAYS being forced to recover. That's what makes Mewtwo so unique though. My playstyle basically forces me to spend my stocks finding ways inside of everyone's wall of gay while evading their **** instead of the other way around. I can spend my entire stock getting destroyed, but when I finally land that grab/tilt/baby shadowball, I turn that penny into a dime, into a quarter, into a buck until I get Benjies. If anyone has been following Hajime no Ippo's manga, Mewtwo is just like Ippo vs. Woli. You set your goals each stock and scratch once, scratch him five times, then go for the KO.

My best strengths are response inhibition, quick decision making, and reaction. Mewtwo just forces me to use them and allows me to rest during the long matches with ledge stalls and defensive teleports away. Mewtwo can't be cornered very easily, and when you're cornered that's where you can turn things around as long as you stay flexible and focused. When you lose focus, you make those critical errors like letting them read your teleport, your wavedash >tilts, and your attempted ledge sweet spots. Because I don't make those errors often, it feels like Mewtwo is very forgiving and sturdy despite not being able to obliterate people with 4 stocks like Marth. Winning a 2 stock low percentage game as Mewtwo now is almost comparable to the same feeling as a 3 stock game with Marth. It really doesn't matter if you win by 1 stock or 1% when the time runs out if you're the one in control of the match start to finish.

I don't think I'm going to main Sheik right now based off of an epiphany, and I don't think I'll take my Marth to Apex Singles unless requested, but I'm definitely going to try to show you why I'm the best at what I do and right now, that happens to be Mewtwo.

My question for all of you Mewtwo players:

Would you have kept playing Mewtwo if he was even WORSE than he is now?

Silly question, I know, but what if Mewtwo was even less polished (lol) and statistically worse than Kirby and Pichu combined? Shadow balls were as laggy as PK Fire, Mewtwo had a Zelda standing grab, a Bowser jump speed, and teleport only went straight up. Obviously this isn't the case, but if it were this obvious that Mewtwo was an unfinished and unplayable character at any competitive level, would you still play him?

You know, I can be way too stubborn for my own good. Back when I was still a noob I mained Mewtwo, not realizing how bad he was. Once I started getting into the competitive scene I was told that he was Bottom tier and worst character in the game. From that point on I made it my mission to prove Millions of people wrong about a character from a game that's been out for over 5 years. At that time I may have been stupid or blind enough to play Mewtwo even if he was 10 times worse than he was in melee.

I've matured since then. I realize now that that was a terrible reason to play a character... but 7 years later I'm still playing him. Now a days when people ask me "why do you play M2" I just say" I'm not trying to prove anything. I just play the characters I like to play". If Mewtwo was God tier I would still play him and without shame.

My question to you Taj, is what type of advice would you give a Mewtwo player trying to move up in the competitive world and a competitive player who's choice of character has nothing to do with how good or bad the character is.

 

[Taj278]

I'm really not sure what advice I'd give to Mewtwo players nowadays. I probably wouldn't try to give any advice, because I feel like it would make things worse.

My bad advice would be, to be realistic with your expectations. You can play what you want, as long as you understand and you're honest with what you're capable of doing. You have to have a certain threshold of skill with a lot of characters to get any kind of results at all, if you're looking to play a bottom tier competitively. Depending on who you play against regularly, you might not get the development you need to play the character you want to play competitively. I was fortunate in that I was naturally good at the game in my area AND I started developing my Mewtwo with Forward. I ended up getting good Sheik, Fox, and Falco practice against Forward. I got IC/Mario practice against Wobbles. I received plenty of Marth practice from the other Marth players I've trained in AZ as well as Forward/Axe/Wobbles when they felt like playing them. I get to go into matches knowing very well what to expect from just about any character. I put in tons of hours perfecting my movement with the character, and I have a strong understanding of the game in that even if the player is really good, I can do a lot of things to remove the player from the game and just focus on the character I'm playing against. At the end of the day, there are so many ways Marth/Fox/Falco can recover, and the better players will find slightly more creative ways, or always do the more optimal recovery routes, but as long as I know them it doesn't matter.

You have to realize that they can do the same to you, and often much worse. Some characters just win against Mewtwo, the only way I can beat them is if they don't know how to beat my character and they only try to beat me. All of the great players are very good at doing this, that's why they can just beat everyone without knowing much about the other player and they can stay consistent. Execution is big in any game, and you need to be able to make the most out of everything that you get with a weaker character to keep yourself in line with a character that gets more for less effort.

Know what you want to do, understand if what you want to do is actually obtainable, and then work on executing it. Do you have the reaction time, the decision making, and the awareness to make this character work? Do you like this character a lot and can't play it? Or do you like this character BECAUSE you can play it? How far are you willing to go to find success? Your answers to these questions based on my personal experience are what can allow you to be competitive or simply casual.

In retrospective, if I didn't find success in some of my Hail Mary Mewtwo picks against people, I probably wouldn't have developed Mewtwo as much as I did.

 

[Zekersaurus]

Ok. Good answer. Thanks.

 

[Uncivilized Elk]

So... when I try wavelanding platforms with M2 about 1/3 of the time I slide off the platform in a tumble (one which you can jump out of but can't do aerials) instead of sliding off it normally.

WTF is this all about? It doesn't seem to happen when I use other characters, or at least incredibly rarely. It feels horrible too, and I assume it has something to do with leaving the edge of the platform at a certain part of the WD, but like I said, M2 is the only character who is giving me problems with this.

 

[Uncivilized Elk]

Also, I just can't moonwalk backwards. Can somebody help me?
I mean I can do one individual moonwalk motion, but how do you actually slide backward while moving "forward"? I keep moving forward at a very slow pace instead of actually staying in place or sliding slightly backward.

 

[MookieRah]

As an addendum to what Taj said earlier, I think it's a pretty easy to transition from Mewtwo to Marth. Look no further than Taj himself, but I've also hopped teams to Marth. A new guy in my crew here has actually went in reverse fashion from Marth to Mewtwo (although his true main is still Marth) and I'm quite impressed with his M2 after only a month or so of playing with him. I think they share a lot of traits, although I can't really pinpoint exactly why it works. I always played Mewtwo very defensively/reactively, and that style really works with Marth as well. Marth can also punish a lot of things that Mewtwo just can't. That's my biggest disappointment when I play Mewtwo lately is that I see so many opportunities to punish things but I am not equipped to punish them (or if I can punish it's a very weak punishment).

So my point is, if you want to still play Mewtwo in a competitive setting, it's not a bad idea (nor is it that hard) to also train up a Marth as a secondary.

 

[Taj278]

@ Uncivilized Elk ,

1. If you hold your shield while you waveland off of a platform you will go into an auto tumble iirc.

2. Do half circles with your control stick. You want to start your initial dash, but immediately roll your stick in the opposite direction (touching all corners) until it is 180 degrees from where you started.

 

[LiteralGrill]

This is going to sound dumb, but I'm having a rough time finding what in the power of an uncharged Shadow Ball? I need it for some Oil Panic testing.

 

[Taj278]

Post Apex semi drunken reflections- Part 1 (I'm allowed to John a little, right?)

I'm sorry to anyone that was hoping to see me play at Apex. I haven't been taking Melee very seriously for about 6 years now. I never made a formal retirement post, but I've pretty much been done with trying to improve and compete in Melee for about 5 years now. The main reason I never made a formal post was because it is pointless as I'll always love this game and I may enter other tournaments on a whim in the future. I'll also end up playing with people that seek me out and want to play from time to time as well.

Anyway, I spent the majority of Apex drinking and got coerced into entering Project M. I decided to go all Mewtwo since I'd assumed that's what most people wanted. I had entered a tournament in AZ last week where I lost to Silly Kyle and that was the first time I played PM since I had a session with the Alpha build Mewtwo a couple of months prior. I hadn't really touched PM that much or read up on it. I had no idea what the majority of the cast was capable of, or even if I did, I had no idea how to deal with any of it yet. It really shows in my playstyle at the tournament as I usually am able to microspace in Melee because I know the characters and trust my mechanics, but in PM I couldn't really do that. I had a lot of trouble sweetspotting the ledge in PM where I wouldn't have that problem in Melee. I didn't fully understand each character's priority and changes as in depth as I did in Melee. I especially don't know how to use the Brawl stages that well, and while I knew the major things about Mewtwo's changes, I ended up just sticking to what I know during the tournament and played it as close to Melee style as I could. Anyone that asked me how I felt about PM Mewtwo during the weekend would hear me say how I felt he was weak. Though I don't think Mewtwo is ACTUALLY weak in PM, I just felt that he was weak RELATIVELY to what the other low tiers and Brawl characters received.

I got a chance to talk with Shell after tournament and he listened to some of the things I had to say about Mewtwo and what I thought he was missing, what he needed, and what I thought would be cool. That discussion did give me a bit of a change of heart on how I feel about Mewtwo. I see Mewtwo's kit and while I don't like how other people are getting away with it, I think a large part of my problem was that I was overestimating everyone's ability to actually stop these ideas from working. A lot of people were telling me I was using Mewtwo's hover incorrectly or not at all. I didn't want to because I thought the risk to reward wasn't great enough. I was too worried about trades and people just avoiding it and encroaching my space and then reading my defensive patterns. That probably WOULDN'T have happened at this tournament. After watching KDJ and M2K, I realized just how many holes were open in the people entered at this tournament. I was scared of the other character's gimmicks, but at the same time, it seems a lot of people don't know how to punish or react to Mewtwo's as well. It also doesn't help that I don't know the full scope of Mewtwo's attack changes and ranges. I know that his tail is better overall, I just never really got to explore how far. If I ever do find time to play PM more, I'm sure these new mechanics will eventually make more sense.

I had a change of heart with how I feel about Mewtwo's direction in PM. I kind of wanted what Zelda got for Mewtwo, but in the end, people seem to really like his hover play. I think Mewtwo is solid, one of his major flaws was trying to deal with how much everyone else has in front of them and how I always had to learn how to get in and out. Shell was telling me that hover was supposed to be that tool, and I didn't give it an honest shot yet. I'm going to withhold my negativity on the character and PM in general until I more closely inspect every character's kit.

I went into Project M with the smallest of expectations. I was hoping that I would get a little bit better feedback than what I was receiving for entering, instead I kinda got nothing but negative feedback or neutral responses. I suppose that is to be expected when I didn't put much effort in the game other than my general thought. I had to learn how to deal with things within the time frame of a best of 3 set while being exhausted and a little hungover. I ended up getting 9th place, just shy of top 8 with a close set against Ally. I'm still terrible against Fox. I'm a little salty that Larry went Falco on M2K game one and not me. lol

I'm not sure if I have much more to say even though I said this is part 1. If anything, I would rather have some feedback on my matches and play in general (good or bad is fine despite my previous statements). This would be the first time in several years that I would be able to watch someone else play Mewtwo and quite possibly learn things and steal things. I never really considered myself a creative player and that was one of the things that always bothered me while playing Mewtwo. Everyone else kind of gave up on him, and I was pretty much alone for the rest of his development. It was great being called the best Mewtwo in the world, and it was something I wanted a lot as kid, but now it is a bittersweet departure and it's funny how quickly I've been relegated once everyone's favorite players start picking him.

 

[PrinceOfDalaam]

After lurking in/outta this board for so long, I gotta come out and say that you are amazing Taj! You inspired me to pick up mewtwo when I was a kid, and am now playing in PM. Thanks for the epic matches and 4(er, 3) combo vids!
And yeah hover is great, attack out of upB is too but I never really liked any char being able to do that.