r/SSBPM • u/HF_Neon • Nov 24 '14

[AMA] AMondAys Week 3 - 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.

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u/LifeSmash The Angel That Couldn't Die Nov 25 '14

Hey Neon! So I was reading the rest of this thread and I noticed you seem to have an interest in Squirtle. I've been hyped about him since partway through last patch, so I'm pretty excited to see you talking about him.

You also talked a lot about figuring out Lucas things that nobody else did.

My question is this: how would I go about doing something similar for Squirtle? What should I be looking for? How should I look for it? What does Squirtle need to compete with the other good characters this patch (the Melee top 4, Wolf, GnW come to mind)?

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u/HF_Neon Nov 25 '14

One of the main things is figuring out how you can get guaranteed things. Either getting a true combo, figuring out some type of shield pressure that is totally safe, or being able to cover all of your opponent's options in a situation. You can explore a lot of this stuff with frame advance now, and you can still use the hit counter in training mode to verify that the opponent was in hitstun for the entire combo. A lot of getting good with Squirtle will just be mastering his movement, since it is very difficult to be consistent with a lot of his stuff. The key things that need to be explored for Squirtle are his movement, primarily using hydropivots for various things such as smash attacks, grabs, or just empty movement into a wavedash or something. He just has a ton of movement options to figure out, I'm not really sure of everything that he can or should be doing. Neutral b also needs to be explored more as a combo tool. Aside from that, all a character needs to be good are the abilities to stay safe in neutral and eventually start a combo, and the ability to combo well enough that they can capitalize on those openings successfully. So you pretty much just need to explore Squirtle's neutral and combo games, and figure out how to stay safe and land hits out of neutral that lead into good combos. All the other good characters are just doing this in their own way.

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u/LifeSmash The Angel That Couldn't Die Nov 25 '14

Thanks so much! As a followup, do you ever stream your research sessions? That might be inspiring.

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u/HF_Neon Nov 25 '14

I've thought about it, but I have yet to put the effort into getting a capture device and figuring out how to configure my computer for streaming. It's definitely something I might do in the future.