Been spending more and more time with Mega Man and re-tooling my strategy for the past few days. I've had some success against some of the randoms that I'll meet on 1v1, but if I come across any decent player that's rocking a brawler (Captain Falcon, Mac, and holy crap Mario!) I'll quickly find myself in a pattern of losing match after match.
Gotten into the habit of recording replays more frequently and watching them to get a better sense of what is working and what isn't.
The Mega Buster is definitely the most disappointing thing about Mega. It has great 'surprise' when you're not charging it - a lot of the people online are expecting you to charge it, and if they can reflect it, they're always priming that barrier - and if used properly, gives you a chance to get away and reset. Charged, though, it's a disappointment; even the 'shortest' shot takes too many frames to catch opponents off guard. Used effectively in mind games by changing your timing throughout a match is great, but hard for me to personally implement at the current time.
Top Spin is not useless (recently read that US Gamer article on Mega, who claimed it was frivolous) and, coupled with the Slide Dash and the non-charged Buster, has become my main mix-up entering into any melee situation.
The Uppercut, while a great call-out for fans, I have found also equally useless. Since most opponents immediately tilt and bias their direction on launch, it's hard to pull off Air Man's lifter right after the uppercut without completely missing, and there is far too much frame delay. The same goes for the downward smash; fantastic in clearing crowds, but too much downtime. Another strange caveat I've been having is my inability to do upward smashes properly with the Slide Pad; I can get it most often than not, but do frequently end up doing the uppercut more than I would like. Coupled with that after-attack frame again, and it can be frustrating.
I'm not giving up on Mega yet. I did have several thoughts of doing so while the game was fresh and I was getting absolutely destroyed online, regardless of whether the opponent was decent or not. I've been faring better, with a more respetable win/loss ratio, but it is definitely frustrating to go up against a brawler and just get floored. More work necessary!
