State of the Hunter; 1.08, and a Mid-level Smasher's perspective

[Fluidityt]

I'll to to be brief(ish) for the short attentioned (Myself included), and include some terminology definitions for the new guys. Sorry for the all male pronouns throughout:

I consider 4 levels of smashers:

Entry: From first time realizing that items suck to playing lots of FG
Mid: From consistent wins on FG to Silver on Anthers, + playing local / online tourneys
High: from Gold on Anthers, to winning/placing small tourneys
Elite to Pro: When smash provides a (somewhat) steady income source: Sponsors, twitch donations, winning tournaments, selling merchandise, etc

I don't think Samus is a viable character at the Pro level, mostly because I haven't seen anyone place at Regionals or use her as a main on Twitch or at Weeklies. I think she is viable up to the High level though (at least for now). At the high level, we may not be able to win consistently, but the first couple of games of the set should at least provide a good workout to the other guy. At the Mid level, I think Samus is a real contender, and not just Low-Tier trash. This is because the less experienced players can fall victim to a keen Samus player's mind and exploitation games.

As anyone who plays on Anthers knows, if you win with Samus you will get a compliment (or heavy salt). If you win some games at a local tourney with Samus, you will get compliments. Most people regard her as garbage, and anyone who does well with her as skilled.

I think it does take a certain skill to play Samus, however, winning with her doesn't necessarily make you more skilled than the person you beat; indeed, most don't know the MU (matchup)--and why should they, really? In fact, winning with Samus takes a different kind of skill, one that is less important than with higher tier characters.

In my opinion and experience, doing well with Samus is a lot based on "luck", relying on the opponent to make mistakes, get stuck in a pattern (and thus get read), or exploiting their lack of knowledge of the MU (like some of the CS tricks). This means the most effective playstyles for her involve lots of mind games, conditioning opponent to respond or expect one thing, then doing something else at an opportune time, as well as playing defensively long enough to try to figure out the opponent's habits.

All good players do these types of things; however, with the hunter we have to exceed at it and rely on it, since we can't approach half the cast safely, and we can't zone the top tier safely. Also, the higher tier characters have to do this LESS, since they have reliable combos and stronger / more kill moves, or defenses, etc. This means we start the game at a major disadvantage, and have to go into survival mode during the first neutral (start of the game, equal %).

My philosophy is that we can't lose if we don't get hit, so I start the game pretending that I am at 200% on my last stock, regardless of whether we are at neutral or not. Obviously this is just a mindset, and I am still aware of the rage and knockback mechanics, so it really is just a semi-governing "attitude" that keeps me focused on doing as well as I can right now at this exact moment. A lot of people get jitters and anxious at tournaments or when they are down a stock or a game; this makes you play worse. Keeping your head level is absolutely crucial when already starting at a disadvantage, otherwise you will find yourself in an unwinnable situation.

With the right mindset, you will never be in an unwinnable situation, and will have the most fun, learn the most from your battles, and in general have the best experience playing Samus (maybe even winning).


So articulating all of this into a practical "what to do when" guide is kind of implausible, and there are many ways to play our Hunter. The real key to doing well with Samus isn't just learning MUs or practicing ATs, or having lots of training time--it's mental: keeping your head straight, being conscious of WHAT you are doing right now and why, and coming up with new plans on the spot and in between games. Also, knowing the MU, being in control of the character, good muscle memory, etc, lets you devote less attention to playing well, and more time to thinking and being aware of yourself mid-match.

The great thing about Samus is she really allows for a weird playstyle and mind games. We can almost completely destroy anyone's momentum simply by slowly bombing our way down from a launch, or setting a trail of bombs out to retreat, SHAD / rolling around back and forth, walling with homing missiles or Zair, and/or really anything you can think of to change the pace of the game and force the opponent to do something else.

I can't tell you how many games I've had an amazing comeback, because the opponent got stuck on the aggressive, going for the same approaches, punishes, etc, or from simply from getting frustrated and making mistakes. For example, sometimes I will go 3 games playing normally (no spam), and on both of our last stocks at 120-150%, I'll get a ftilt, send him flying, run to the opposite end, missile spam, and he will run / roll / jump right into a full CS or some other trap. After games of solid, consistent play--really close, good games--you can turn the tides in an instant with a simple psychological "trick." Other characters do these sorts of things as well, such as Falcon / Pit saving forward special as a "clutch" kill move, or Little Mac charging in then rolling away baiting out a grab / special.

This doesn't work well at the higher levels, because players can be more patient, and will have no qualms about letting the game run to time. That, and they will most likely be using a top-tier character, and with their frame-perfect expertise, might crush the poor Hunter.

I don't advocate turtling, though it probably is a Samus player's best option. I do however, find that saving turtling for an opportune time can be very advantageous, when mixing it in with primarily balanced playstyle, and saving extreme aggression only for when the opponent is becoming visibly annoyed or distracted, or if you get in a good punish that throws him off his game.


All of this come backs to the patch, because as we continue to improve with Samus and her buffs increase, she may very well become a more known MU. Also, with other low-tiers getting buffed, we may find ourselves doing better against the high-tier, but have more challenging fights against others. We must also keep in mind that everyone else is improving too; I don't think anyone has reached the skill-cap with any of the characters yet (maybe ZeRo). ((I've really noticed that FG players are a lot better than they used to be a couple months ago.))

This will mean that we must continue to expand on Samus' core strengths, and really master the abilities that can't be buffed or nerfed with each patch: knowing what to do and when--being unreadable while able to predict your opponent's every move; because only this will really determine who wins or loses, not relying on character improvements to frame-trap enemies or get a lucky low-% kill off a punish (assuming she were to be buffed with some awesome stuff like that).


-Fluid

 

[DungeonMaster]

Good post. A lot has been said about the psychology and flow of fighting games, and there are some excellent essays and even you-tube videos on in.
I don't agree or disagree with the psychology of fighting, throughout history many exceptional warriors have chosen their own particular mix and mindset, there are a few commonalities but more disparity than anything else.
Even in modern competitive sport fighting you see a particular, individually tailored approach and options that prize fighters use (i.e. Tyson's uppercut, Ali's jabs, etc...).

Ultimately to win you have to successfully do enough damage to the opponent and this relies on a combination of reflexes, priority and reads.
If your character and moves are fast enough you can win primarily from being faster than human reflexes. Sheik, Fox, etc..
If your character and moves have high enough priority you don't need to beat human reflex, you always win a trade and you can simply aim for that. Rosalina, Villager, Projectiles in general, etc...
If you can read your opponent, that is fight in anticipation rather than reaction you will always win, that's why reads are so powerful and so sought after.

Pro player are masters at this last element. The reason Samus will not appeal to them is because Samus doesn't have moves that beat human reflexes, her moves don't have high priority, - she has a bad "neutral game" - and they are left with pure reads. Since they're all masters at reads, there's no edge. They have no interest in playing a game of reads, when someone else has an edge in the other two categories.

When I say "priority", it's more general than just connecting hitboxes/hurtboxes and includes projectiles, but really it just boils down to damage that doesn't compete with human reaction time. I'm not trying to beat your reflexes setting up a wall of missile projectiles in project M for instance.
If Samus' homing missile was better, she would immediately become a major threat, even though her basic attacks have skin tight hit and hurtboxes. It would give her a path to doing damage in neutral with setups.
Right now the only way you can beat human reflex is her mid-range attacks, f-tilt, d-tilt, z-air and to a lesser extent up-tilt and CS. That's why she "works" at mid range.

The only other option for success is how much damage you get out of a single read. If you do 2-3 times the damage you need 2-3 times fewer reads.
That's why I spent so much effort in the combo thread and learning the combos (and why everyone does). It's the only straightforward path to improvement of the ability to win.
Once I've achieved sufficient pattern recognition to go from combo starter to combo on reaction at a high return (~90%), then and only then can I make my final assessment of the character as whole.

 

[Hark17ball]

Just want to say you 2 guys are awesome. Its not only the videos and the information... its these types of posts that make me see how solid a following Samus has behind her.

I'm not nearly as good at finding things out or keeping calm in dire situations because honestly im impatient and i get frustrated KNOWING i should have won or done better....but I'll be damned if I didn't say seeing everyone be positive with our "limitations" is inspiring. Keep up the work Samus legion!

 

[Fluidityt]

Just want to say you 2 guys are awesome. Its not only the videos and the information... its these types of posts that make me see how solid a following Samus has behind her.

I'm not nearly as good at finding things out or keeping calm in dire situations because honestly im impatient and i get frustrated KNOWING i should have won or done better....but I'll be damned if I didn't say seeing everyone be positive with our "limitations" is inspiring. Keep up the work Samus legion!

Seeing you play well at that tourney with the Champion Luigi was inspiring to me, considering how little practice you'd had and how bad your roll habit was, and didn't know all of Samus' AT yet >.>

Keep balancing out that natural talent of yours with knowledge, practice, and most importantly, keeping your cool when things don't turn your way; a lot of times players will get overaggressive if they have the lead, which can set them up for a quick salty-runback.

 

[Hark17ball]

Seeing you play well at that tourney with the Champion Luigi was inspiring to me, considering how little practice you'd had and how bad your roll habit was, and didn't know all of Samus' AT yet >.>

Keep balancing out that natural talent of yours with knowledge, practice, and most importantly, keeping your cool when things don't turn your way; a lot of times players will get overaggressive if they have the lead, which can set them up for a quick salty-runback.

Thanks man! Slowly been going over everything you guys mentioned to me.
- Way less rolling
- SHAD for mixups
- Saving CS more for mind games
- Uair/Utilt I use far more now...and LOVE it.

Soon to be practicing more ledge trumps and my off stage game. Just gotta get SHAD down to muscle memory.

 

[Xygonn]

Good post. A lot has been said about the psychology and flow of fighting games, and there are some excellent essays and even you-tube videos on in.
I don't agree or disagree with the psychology of fighting, throughout history many exceptional warriors have chosen their own particular mix and mindset, there are a few commonalities but more disparity than anything else.
Even in modern competitive sport fighting you see a particular, individually tailored approach and options that prize fighters use (i.e. Tyson's uppercut, Ali's jabs, etc...).

Ultimately to win you have to successfully do enough damage to the opponent and this relies on a combination of reflexes, priority and reads.

I don't know if this is a slight oversight or if you were paraphrasing or what. We don't have health bars. Damage doesn't kill you in smash. You have to send your opponent to the blast zone. You can do it at 200%, you can do it at 2%. Samus has some great tools for early kills and is hard to kill herself. She is hard to put into typical kill setups because of her low fall speed and high weight. She ends up out of hitstun much farther away than the majority of the cast. Samus is hard to challenge offstage because she has great tools to stall her recovery with bombs, use tether, and a very fast hard to challenge upb. If you play cagey/defensive/safe with Samus you should live to about 130% or more all the time. In most matchups Samus can abuse shield at high percents to get some extra credit or push the opponent to a more manageable percent. Basically no one gets a guaranteed kill setup on us out of throw. Some exceptions in terms of near ledge Bthrow. Even Charizard's new buff uthrow kills us at 136%.

Also, another thing characters need to be able to do is safely force reads. You can put yourself in advantage without doing any damage with missile, bomb, and CS especially offstage. Do Pacman and DHD arguably have better zoning/read forcing tools, maybe. See my most recent video in the Samus thread vs. Megaman. I killed him once because he air dodged a homing missile (getting hit would have been death by nair or fair most likely) then again with just a simple uncharged shot.

If your character and moves are fast enough you can win primarily from being faster than human reflexes. Sheik, Fox, etc..
If your character and moves have high enough priority you don't need to beat human reflex, you always win a trade and you can simply aim for that. Rosalina, Villager, Projectiles in general, etc...
If you can read your opponent, that is fight in anticipation rather than reaction you will always win, that's why reads are so powerful and so sought after.

Pro player are masters at this last element. The reason Samus will not appeal to them is because Samus doesn't have moves that beat human reflexes, her moves don't have high priority, - she has a bad "neutral game" - and they are left with pure reads. Since they're all masters at reads, there's no edge. They have no interest in playing a game of reads, when someone else has an edge in the other two categories.

When I say "priority", it's more general than just connecting hitboxes/hurtboxes and includes projectiles, but really it just boils down to damage that doesn't compete with human reaction time. I'm not trying to beat your reflexes setting up a wall of missile projectiles in project M for instance.
If Samus' homing missile was better, she would immediately become a major threat, even though her basic attacks have skin tight hit and hurtboxes. It would give her a path to doing damage in neutral with setups.
Right now the only way you can beat human reflex is her mid-range attacks, f-tilt, d-tilt, z-air and to a lesser extent up-tilt and CS. That's why she "works" at mid range.

And dash attack, fsmash, dsmash, and sh uair. All 10 frames or less. Dash attack spam is actually pretty good if you cross it up, and it conditions for dash grabs.

The only other option for success is how much damage you get out of a single read. If you do 2-3 times the damage you need 2-3 times fewer reads.
That's why I spent so much effort in the combo thread and learning the combos (and why everyone does). It's the only straightforward path to improvement of the ability to win.
Once I've achieved sufficient pattern recognition to go from combo starter to combo on reaction at a high return (~90%), then and only then can I make my final assessment of the character as whole.

Finally lets just talk about punishes in general. CS is by far the safest powerful punish in the game. You can punish air dodges, rolls, landings, etc. If they shield it or you miss you can stay out of range of being counter attacked. On top of that we have combo punishes that are pretty great, and largely start with sh uair or dash attack.

 

[DungeonMaster]

I don't know if this is a slight oversight or if you were paraphrasing or what. We don't have health bars.

I'm talking completely generally. Yes you can gimp/spike in Smash as it's not a traditional fighter but in general damage remains king. I feel in Smash 4 with so many un-punishable / barely punishable recoveries damage is even more emphasized than any previous iteration.
And I don't disagree with you from a frame data perspective. The frame data is fine (except grab, which is tragic) and in fact overall quite good in my opinion. It is the combination of frame data, run speed and air-speed which means Samus does not have an explicit advantage in speed. That is what a pro-player is seeking. A speed or priority advantage, that's my point. Her kit is totally functional, it's just not at advantage relative to other cast member and human reflexes.
Pros will likely never pick her up because of those two basic realities. As long as there exists characters who can spit out moves quicker, even marginally, and/or have higher priority, pros will look elsewhere. And again, "priority" in the broadest definition of the term. If the homing missile was slowed down and fixed...

Finally lets just talk about punishes in general. CS is by far the safest powerful punish in the game. You can punish air dodges, rolls, landings, etc. If they shield it or you miss you can stay out of range of being counter attacked. On top of that we have combo punishes that are pretty great, and largely start with sh uair or dash attack.

Samus has the best punish in the game. No question in my mind at all. This is a punish character. Every combo is ~25% like the charge shot. Even compared to ryu - who is built around the same model.

 

[Xygonn]

I'm talking completely generally. Yes you can gimp/spike in Smash as it's not a traditional fighter but in general damage remains king. I feel in Smash 4 with so many un-punishable / barely punishable recoveries damage is even more emphasized than any previous iteration.
And I don't disagree with you from a frame data perspective. The frame data is fine (except grab, which is tragic) and in fact overall quite good in my opinion. It is the combination of frame data, run speed and air-speed which means Samus does not have an explicit advantage in speed. That is what a pro-player is seeking. A speed or priority advantage, that's my point. Her kit is totally functional, it's just not at advantage relative to other cast member and human reflexes.
Pros will likely never pick her up because of those two basic realities. As long as there exists characters who can spit out moves quicker, even marginally, and/or have higher priority, pros will look elsewhere. And again, "priority" in the broadest definition of the term. If the homing missile was slowed down and fixed...


Samus has the best punish in the game. No question in my mind at all. This is a punish character. Every combo is ~25% like the charge shot. Even compared to ryu - who is built around the same model.

No doubt her movement speed isn't what most pro players are looking for. As a counter point though, Luigi is just as floaty and slower movement wise and just makes up for it with a great kit.

I'm not trying to say she is pro level viable. I'd love to be proven wrong. I think that her end lag really seals the deal in terms of "bad" frame data.

 

[Jackal Eire]

Great write up fluidityt, look at what xygonn mentioned about that mega man fight and forcing a vunerable situation with a homing missile of all things. Sometimes all you need is the most inoccuous read to end a stock/match, something as basic as noticing say that your opponent always jumps/rolls over a super missile/bomb instead of shielding it. If I notice that trend mid match ill wait until my opponent is at kill percent to exploit it with a CS or meet them with a fair or something. I know that someone who is doing this constantly is probably not great competition, but the point is to always be looking for any kind of predictable behaviour an opponent has, something they may not even acknowledge as punishable, but if you know where they'll be or what they'll do before it happens, it can be punished (might make you look a bit stupid on occasion if you whiff though!).

Because we don't have an advantage in frame data/priority over most characters, it really makes reads and conditioning much more important for us I think than many other characters. So I think picking up on these habits and crucially picking the right time to punish them is huge for us...
Who cares how fast character x's jab is if you know when he'll use it and can blast him off the stage with a (CS) punish? I know that is so so much easier said than done...but there's a point in there somewhere?

 

[-_ellipsis_-]

I think all Samus would need to be pro level viable is a better grab.

 

[Tonetta]

I think all Samus would need to be pro level viable is a better grab.

it would also be nice if i didnt have to chain a bomb into my regular 1-2 attack to make it safe on targets sub 40%

 

[Afro Smash]

Kill throw or safer grab makes samus solid mid tier imo

 

[leiraD]

I think ESAM proved that she's viable even at pro level for particular match-ups, but she typically doesn't perform well against "high tier" characters. A faster grab and kill throw would definitely help to sway that, as would a dsmash that killed... (seriously, what up with a smash attack that hardly kills?) Also, if zair did more damage, I would be eternally grateful.