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Competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee Discussion Thread

Can we talk about how Armada is having one of the strongest years ever? He's really making a case for himself as the BOAT. Many Melee figureheads feel the same about the following: it feels like "peak" Armada is back, similar to his pre-retirement reign. The skill-gap isn't huge between the rest but he's so ridiculously consistent.


  • He's placed at least second in the four Super Majors this year, the tournaments that matter the most. He's been in Grand Finals every time. Not even Mango in his dominant 2014 can say that for himself. He won two of them - and they the biggest Melee tournaments in history in terms of entrants. He's also won several other stacked majors such as I'm Not Yelling, Sandstorm, Summit and Eclipse. He's also won a dozen more smaller tournaments with one or two top players in attendance.
  • Armada's up against the top 6 life-time

    Mango = 17-11 [7-2 this year]
    Hungrybox = 14-7 [7-2 this year]
    PPMD = 12-8 [3-2 this year]
    M2K = 12-1 [2-0 this year]
    Leffen = 29-12 [8-7 this year]
  • Not only is he up against the top six but the last time he dropped a serious non sandbagging set to someone outside the above players was over five years ago against Amsah and Silent Spectre. He hasn't lost since, players like WestBallz, Axe, Plup, Lucky and PPU while they get close sometimes - they've never taken a set.
  • General placement consistency. His worst placing this year was 5th at Paragon - otherwise he's placed 1st-3rd. He doesn't get 17th or 9th like other top six players do.
  • In terms of winnings he's made over 70 percent of his total life-time winning this year alone.
 

peter0611

Member
Even a casual observer of Melee can see that Armada is clearly the best player. It's not up for contention. The other elites are really going to have to step it up next year. Plus, Leffen is only getting stronger...
 

Anth0ny

Member
I'm really close to giving Armada a position above the gods. He is the undisputed best in the world right now and since Evo he's made the 5 other gods look FREE. His Fox is unreal right now.
 

Mumei

Member
Can we talk about how Armada is having one of the strongest years ever? He's really making a case for himself as the BOAT. Many Melee figureheads feel the same about the following: it feels like "peak" Armada is back, similar to his pre-retirement reign. The skill-gap isn't huge between the rest but he's so ridiculously consistent.


  • He's placed at least second in the four Super Majors this year, the tournaments that matter the most. He's been in Grand Finals every time. Not even Mango in his dominant 2014 can say that for himself. He won two of them - and they the biggest Melee tournaments in history in terms of entrants. He's also won several other stacked majors such as I'm Not Yelling, Sandstorm, Summit and Eclipse. He's also won a dozen more smaller tournaments with one or two top players in attendance.
  • Armada's up against the top 6 life-time

    Mango = 17-11 [7-2 this year]
    Hungrybox = 14-7 [7-2 this year]
    PPMD = 12-8 [3-2 this year]
    M2K = 12-1 [2-0 this year]
    Leffen = 29-12 [8-7 this year]
  • Not only is he up against the top six but the last time he dropped a serious non sandbagging set to someone outside the above players was over five years ago against Amsah and Silent Spectre. He hasn't lost since, players like WestBallz, Axe, Plup, Lucky and PPU while they get close sometimes - they've never taken a set.
  • General placement consistency. His worst placing this year was 5th at Paragon - otherwise he's placed 1st-3rd. He doesn't get 17th or 9th like other top six players do.
  • In terms of winnings he's made over 70 percent of his total life-time winning this year alone.

I'm really close to giving Armada a position above the gods. He is the undisputed best in the world right now and since Evo he's made the 5 other gods look FREE. His Fox is unreal right now.

In other words.
 

Tomohawk

Member
I'm really close to giving Armada a position above the gods. He is the undisputed best in the world right now and since Evo he's made the 5 other gods look FREE. His Fox is unreal right now.

Armadas really good, but he still looks beatable, axe almost beat him this tourney and at summit m2k and mango made it close.
 

TrickRoom

Member
Just caught up with the VODs for axe, armada, and leffen. Axe v. Armada... just wow. This was one of those games where both sides were showing peak performance and going back and forth because of it. After Sandstorm, I had assumed that Armada had Axe on lock and that he'd never get to where he was at EVO2014 again, due to Armada just knowing Pikachu as opposed to then. With a set like this, I am so glad to be proven wrong.
 

Mumei

Member
Just caught up with the VODs for axe, armada, and leffen. Axe v. Armada... just wow. This was one of those games where both sides were showing peak performance and going back and forth because of it. After Sandstorm, I had assumed that Armada had Axe on lock and that he'd never get to where he was at EVO2014 again, due to Armada just knowing Pikachu as opposed to then. With a set like this, I am so glad to be proven wrong.

Yeah, Wobbles got Armada to talk specifically about that set, and Armada talked about some of the changes Axe made between Sandstorm and today. If you missed it, you should give it a listen. It's right around the beginning.
 

sinxtanx

Member
due to trash talk Leffen will be first-to-5 $1000 moneymatching SFAT at Dreamhack and Westballz at GENESIS 3

<3 Leffen
<3 SFAT and Westballz for accepting
 

Daouzin

Member
AZ Rewired was a pretty fun tournament. Almost didn't enter because I haven't played Melee or PM more than 5-6 times since EVO, but I decided to enter anyway and I'm glad I did.

13th/120 in Melee Singles
25th/80 in PM Singles

Went 2-2 in PM Teams with a for fun team mate.

I'll post my streamed match once it's live. I tend to avoid getting on stream so I can get through my matches faster.
 
SFAT is probably my favorite top level Smasher

He's cool at my locals and now this

Westballz is one of mine for the same reason.

Mr. Lz will play basically anyone too - and not in the M2K way where he'll have you help him practice techchases for no reason and you don't actually get to play him.

AZ Rewired was a pretty fun tournament. Almost didn't enter because I haven't played Melee or PM more than 5-6 times since EVO, but I decided to enter anyway and I'm glad I did.

13th/120 in Melee Singles
25th/80 in PM Singles

Went 2-2 in PM Teams with a for fun team mate.

I'll post my streamed match once it's live. I tend to avoid getting on stream so I can get through my matches faster.

Good stuff man! I need to ask the guy who ran Melee at Extra Life to upload the recorded matches.

I really need to start practicing my tech skill. My game knowledge is fine, but I just don't put in the time to really advance. I don't regress - I'm just at that point where I'm not moving forward.
 
I thought shiek's downthrow was supposed to be cripplingly nerfed in PAL? what makes using it properly so much harder? or is plup just so beastly that my scrubby non-shiek-player eyes can't tell how hard he works for each individual chase?

anyone have a link? I missed it!
The hitbox archive is where i watched it.

no clue how to timestamp the link directly, but it starts at almost exactly the 2-hour mark into that vid.
 

Daouzin

Member
I really need to start practicing my tech skill. My game knowledge is fine, but I just don't put in the time to really advance. I don't regress - I'm just at that point where I'm not moving forward.

I'm in a similar boat, Melee just takes too much of an investment and I can't stay focused on getting better for than 3-6 months in a year.

I'm pretty happy where I'm at though.

I thought shiek's downthrow was supposed to be cripplingly nerfed in PAL? what makes using it properly so much harder? or is plup just so beastly that my scrubby non-shiek-player eyes can't tell how hard he works for each individual chase?


The hitbox archive is where i watched it.

no clue how to timestamp the link directly, but it starts at almost exactly the 2-hour mark into that vid.

Awesome thanks, I missed all of this so I'm gonna check these out.

P.S. This is kind of crazy. This Melee video got uploaded yesterday and has over 100,000 views:
Top 10 Jeapie Falcon Combos - Super Smash Bros

People love Falcon
 
I'm in a similar boat, Melee just takes too much of an investment and I can't stay focused on getting better for than 3-6 months in a year.

I'm pretty happy where I'm at though.

I know, right?

Keeping the local community going seems to be my lot in the Smash life anyways.

Technically this Friday should be our next Biweekly, but there's been no talk of venues.

People keep playing dumb when I mention that new venues might be expensive but if we really want to smash we can put entry fees towards venue fees instead and not have payouts, for the love of the game.

No talk of what our price range should be, what people are willing to pay to cover it, what our dates / times should be, etc. Just "we don't want to spend money" and "we should find a venue".

I'm talking to my Alma Mater about doing biweeklies there, as that would save us money but they think any game with entry fees and payouts = gambling. Luckily on that front many of the CSU and UC schools already have events like that and have been running them for a while, and our little Podunk CSU likes having examples of stuff other schools do to follow along.
 
So plank finally did pound 5 payouts, really cool of him.

relevant:

OBF8229.jpg
 

GamerJM

Banned
Hard to believe that 14 years ago I was begging my parents to buy me this awesome game I saw in Nintendo Power along with a Gamecube as an early Christmas present.
 

xezuru

Member
I feel like i've always seen ken match videos around somehow somewhere, but I feel like it was either an Isai combo video or Shined Blind where something just floored me and peaked interest.
 

Pappasman

Member
I remember hearing about some guy named ken who was supposedly the best ever.

I went online and searched "marth ken". I honestly don't even remember what year that was. Maybe 04/05?
 

GamerJM

Banned
My first exposure to competitive Smash was some random NorCal local with a janky ruleset in like 2005 or something my mom somehow found out about and took me to, wherein I got eliminated by campy Links on big ass stages like Temple that weren't banned. My second introduction to competitive Smash was some article in Nintendo Power talking about it. About a year after all of this, I think I found this video online somehow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ODqZr9IcKM

I proceeded to mostly ignore the competitive scene for the next several years until I got into it when the EVO donation drive happened and I watched a bit of Apex 2013, and then I met people who played at my college like a year later.
 

Pappasman

Member
So ssbm tutorials did a survey recently. Here are the results.

CUeqg7HUcAE4_Db.png


I really disagree with this, but it seems that a lot of people have trouble with lasers.
 

Anth0ny

Member
So ssbm tutorials did a survey recently. Here are the results.

CUeqg7HUcAE4_Db.png


I really disagree with this, but it seems that a lot of people have trouble with lasers.

that's a really tough one, honestly. fox has the better moment but falco's lasers are really fucking good.

at a lower level I think falco definitely has the better neutral just because shooting lasers is an easier concept to grasp than perfect fox movement/spacing. but at the top level? it's pretty clear that TAS level 20xx fox wins the neutral game vs falco.
 

GamerJM

Banned
that's a really tough one, honestly. fox has the better moment but falco's lasers are really fucking good.

at a lower level I think falco definitely has the better neutral just because shooting lasers is an easier concept to grasp than perfect fox movement/spacing. but at the top level? it's pretty clear that TAS level 20xx fox wins the neutral game vs falco.

Definitely agree with this. As a low level player who has trouble with Falco I find it weird that other low level players don't realize that his neutral becomes a lot worse once you get better though >_>.
 

Daouzin

Member
new smash game = new players

can't be awful

Yeah, that would be amazing. What makes the most sense to me would be to release a Wii U disc that has Melee, Brawl and Smash 64 for $19.99 or buy each one for like $9.99 or something. It's a disc that could "unify" the community.
 

emb

Member
Yeah, that would be amazing. What makes the most sense to me would be to release a Wii U disc that has Melee, Brawl and Smash 64 for $19.99 or buy each one for like $9.99 or something. It's a disc that could "unify" the community.
Might as well throw PM on there too. I don't see why not.
:)
 
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