Why I'm quitting PM

Got 5th today at Project M Showdown 5, losing to ike and squirtle. Thought my sheik could handle my ike problem, but didn't realize that I'd die every time I got grabbed. I could try other characters (lucas, lucario, etc) but it wouldn't be worth it unless I had fun playing peach in PM, which frankly I don't anymore.



I've used Peach in PM for a long time, and managed to scrape through 3.02 thanks to a last-minute Lucas pickup towards the end of the patch. In 3.5, Peach didn't get any better, but most of the major threats were nerfed, and so I was able to win one of the most stacked Xanadu weeklies ever (with a REALLY long loser's run). In 3.6, I had great runs at SSC 2015, Pound, and EVO 2016, but only because my brackets were filled with matchups I knew really well (Fox, Diddy, Lucas, Peach, Lucario). In the past year, most of my PM losses were against characters I had never played before (Toon Link, Snake, Rob, Dedede, Wario). It's pretty difficult to have to learn an opponent's playstyle while simultaneously trying to figure out what their character can do. To top it off, many people would come up to me after my losses and say "Oh, that's just a bad matchup for Peach." I used to think that I'd be able to just learn the matchups and beat them next time, but I quickly realized how many awful matchups Peach actually has.



If my opponent plays a character that is faster than me, has better punishes than me (because comboing a floaty to 60% makes so much sense), kills easier than me, lives longer than me, has better edgeguards than me and has a better recovery than me, then this game becomes pointless to play. Peach works in melee because she makes up for her weaker neutral game with insane punishes. Yes, Dsmash is great on spacies, but she still has great combos on characters like marth/sheik (Dtilt->FC Uair->Nair, or Dtilt->FC Nair->Dash attack->FC Uair->Nair). In PM, she can't combo any of the relevant characters (besides fastfallers and Diddy). Dsmash only hits Ike once (13%) and doesn't lead into anything. Dtilt could lead into maybe a 40% combo if you're fast, but dtilt is pretty hard to land against someone whose sword reaches halfway across the stage. So many PM characters have bairs/fairs similar to Puff's from melee, which nullifies her aerial mobility. She can't combo/kill any of the heavy mid-floaties, while they can all beat the crap out of her. It isn't like I'm playing the character incorrectly or can't combo or anything, because frankly I probably have some of the fastest followups of all PM Peaches. I'm just constantly forced to make hard read after hard read, with bad punishes and losing trades. There are just too many characters that flat out destroy her if played properly, that I've lost all motivation to play this game.



I'll probably still enter some events for fun, if only to glide toss around, support my region's scene or try to do cool things with Lucario. I'm just tired of not reaching that "top player" status because I keep losing to characters that beat mine. If Peach had some kinda wow factor that other "bad" characters have (like techchases, wobbling, cape, rest/shoryuken, fart) that could lead into a death, then sure I'd still play. But if I make a super hard read and nair them at 150% but it still doesn't kill, then I'm done.



Maybe I'm just bitter about losing today, but I think it's time to say farewell to PM. It's been fun, but I guess now I can focus 100% on Melee

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