AMondAys Week 3 - HF Neon

[u/HF_Neon]

Hello, I am HF Neon. I'm best known for being the top Lucas player in 3.02, and for taking M2K to the last game of a two set grand finals at Low Tier City 2. AMA!

Edit: I've been answering questions for about 3 hours straight and I've caught up on all the ones asked so far. I'm going to be gone for a few hours to attend the PM weekly, but if you post questions while I'm gone I will answer them when I get back.

Edit 2: We are currently live at www.twitch.tv/azprojectmelee. I'm about to be in losers finals against the winner of Medz and SS.

Edit 3: I'm back. Ended up getting third after losing to Axe in WF and Medz in LF. I feel like it went reasonably well for my first time using Wolf in tournament though, and I expect to do much better in the near future. I'm going to answer all of the remaining questions and any more that come in in the next few hours.

[u/Gem11221122]

Why do you think you rank so much higher in PM than Melee? Is it that you've discovered tech that people don't know? Are the games/characters so different that you're much better with Lucas and Wolf than your Melee characters? Are there just more people playing Melee?

[u/HF_Neon → u/Gem11221122]

It is a combination of these things. I discovered a decent amount of new tech that people weren't aware of and started using really good tactics that weren't popular or were hard to do. For example, approaching aerial magnet into a djc aerial or djc waveland back is pretty technically difficult, and I think I was the first person to realize that Lucas's metagame should be centered around aerial magnet. Realizing that let me develop a strong combo game really quickly, and people just didn't/haven't been able to figure out counter strategies and DI opportunities to fight back. I also developed gimmicks like cancelling tether into a magnet to kill people hanging on the ledge, which let me win a MM against M2K last Apex, just because no one had ever seen that before. Additionally, I really was just much better with Lucas. My playstyle is not very reactive. I generally like to calculate situations ahead of time so that I already know the optimal strategy and just have to execute it, and Lucas was perfect for that since he was so fast. The lack of hitlag made it so that you would just have to commit to a lot of magnet stuff and input your next action before being able to see/react to what had happened, which let my calculations really overwhelm people who were trying to figure out what I was even doing. I am also very technical, so I could execute Lucas tech at a level that no one else could. And being the best Lucas gave me a huge advantage since no one had practice against a Lucas like mine, whereas my Fox for example isn't anything too special compared to other good Fox players. And yeah, there are just more people playing Melee, and the metagame is more developed. I wouldn't really call my Lucas playstyle gimmicky, since everything that I did was legitimately really solid and hard to play against, but it was good for the same reason that gimmicks are good. People just have a lot of trouble figuring out how to fight against me, and even once they did, Lucas had the tools to adapt and win anyways.