When picking apart any competitor, each have their own strengths and weaknesses in their gameplay and identifying it is their first step to improving. A complex game such as this has a high number of aspects to the game you have to learn and master to keep yourself in peak performance. These include basic tech skill such as wavedashing, wavelanding, and L-cancelling. This is followed by more advanced tech such as multi-shining, edge cancelling, aerial interrupts, and so on.

All of this tech skill means nothing if you don't have at least a basic knowledge of game fundamentals. Neutral and punish game are often talked about as low to mid level players seem to struggle with one or the other, leading to losses in tournament. Players can research plenty on flow charts, options after DI, and combo percents online; when practiced, this can be understood easily. However, neutral is a little harder to explain and teach.



Every fighting game requires a basic knowledge of neutral. Contrary to a slightly popular belief, neutral does not just mean 'spacing'. Many players don't realize the tools they have to use in neutral and underthink the ability to trick and twist their opponent. You can make your competitor play into your hands and control the situation in neutral! Conditioning and baiting helps this a lot! It can also give you a better understanding of your opponent and it'll show you how they deal with each situation, their ability to adapt to it, and what weaknesses you can take advantage of from there on out.



(Left: EG | PPMD overshooting a jump while lasering. He ends up behind Tempo Storm | S2J's shield in an attempt to punish him from behind with a back air. S2J dashes away in time. Right: After rolling back to centre, TNC | Army spotdodges Rishi's special move and gets a grab on him, then continues to punish!)

There are a lot of ways to improve your neutral and understand it better when you consider what your opponent's options are. Here are some things to consider in neutral while playing your opponent.



Spacing

To start off with what seems like the easiest to understand, we can talk about spacing. Spacing isn't just reading an incoming aerial and wavedashing back to punish. There's more to it! When joining the game, new players aren't taught the full use of dash dancing. It's thrown out that it's 'for spacing', but many aren't educated further than that. This leads to mindless dash dancing and a frustrated player that doesn't understand why his character is already three stocks down. This is why you must consider your opponent's 'effective range'. This means that you need to analyse and take a look at where they are and also what area of space they can cover with their tools. Going on, this means you can use a counter option to help avoid getting hit or grabbed by the opponent.

It's regularly said that you shouldn't throw out moves for no reason as it is punishable if your opponent knows which mistakes you are making. This also goes for any movement that you do in neutral. Unnecessary movement is punishable. For instance, if you're simply dash dancing in the middle of the stage with no set plan, your opponent can just aerial in or grab you to win the neutral.

Though it is a much different game, when watching Street Fighter, you can see the players moving ever so slightly to accommodate to their opponent's effective range. Many players struggling with neutral watch Street Fighter to understand these fundamentals better as it's a little easier to follow. It's not as fast paced as Melee. It can be hard to follow exactly what is happening in a match without slowing them down on YouTube. In either game, placing yourself in a safe area is key but you eventually need to place yourself in a position where you can attack safely when the time is right.

For example, many sing the praises of Marth's down tilt as you can dash back out of it pretty fast, making it hard to punish when used effectively. Characters such as Falco and Peach can use their projectiles to keep an opponent at bay without getting too close. They can rack up percent on their opponent without endangering themselves drastically. Peach has a slight disadvantage as her turnips take a lot of time to be pulled, so she has to place herself in a safe position so that her animation frames don't put her at risk of being punished.



(Left: TSM | Leffen running in and using down air to approach. Liquid | Hungrybox simply wavedashes back and gets a grab to begin his punish. Right: Dignitas | HugS getting a jab and attempting a grab but Dignitas | Lucky rolling away just in time to escape. He rolls out of the grab's effective range and runs back in to punish Samus' slow recovery frames.)



Baiting

Using baits is key to your neutral. Many characters rely on the opponent to approach them as they may not have strong enough approaching tools themselves. Despite that, they can rely on a punish from an unsuccessful approach. The opposing characters' approach is more likely to be unsuccessful if you bait them into a position that you can easily remove yourself from.

How do I bait my opponent? Wavedash back is one of the most common but there are endless ways to trick your opponent. Another common bait includes running, jumping and simply wavelanding back to confuse your opponent on your final positioning. You can throw out a move that you don't intend to hit your opponent with. If it's fast enough, your opponent will try to punish this and will likely be unsuccessful, if your bait is well placed. You're making your opponent believe that you are punishable.

Another way to trick them is to space aerials on their shield. If well-spaced, it will be hard for your opponent to shield grab or attack out of shield and you can get a free punish. Beware, opponents with long range grabs such as Sheik and Marth may add more risk to this bait. They're more likely to punish you if your spacing is a little off. Most commonly, dash dancing is used to bait opponents into making a move. You can threaten their space by dash dancing near them. This will cause them to try to attack you to catch you out, or they may even throw it out in a panic. It's up to you to make sure your movement works around how they react to your threat.

Baiting works in other parts of the game too. When you're comboing the opposing character, while they are trying to escape, you can bait them into thinking there is a safe way out. The same applies when you are being comboed yourself; you can escape by making it seem as though you're removing yourself in a certain way and changing it last minute. Hax dashing is another useful bait; you are tricking your opponent into believing that you'll be back on the stage again at that moment, then following it up by wavelanding back to safety or choosing to jump to platform. This makes it difficult for the opponent to pinpoint your positioning.



(Left: TSM | Leffen wavedashing in place then dashing back then jumping into a down air when Alliance | Armada tries to punish the close range positioning with a down smash. Right: G2 | Westballz making it tricky for Leffen to read his neutral positioning with a full hop waveland back. Westballz full hops, Leffen believes Westballz will land directly in front of him and attempts to grab. Westballz then wavelands back and Leffen misses his grab.)



Recovery Frames

Whiff punishing is a huge part of neutral. Whether you are catching your opponent with an aerial, grounded or grab bait, a lot of neutral is punishing the opponent's bad moves. What's the best way to not get caught out yourself and which moves will allow you to succeed more frequently?

More often than not, especially among the higher tier characters, aerial attacks have shorter recovery, meaning that you are actionable much sooner after throwing out a move. The animation frames will be fewer after the hitbox has come out. Providing you L-Cancel these aerials, you have your freedom to move sooner. Although, that doesn't mean aerial attacks are completely safe. You still have a short amount of time that you're not actionable so space your aerials well and only commit to a move if it's safe to do. Alternatively, you can do so if your intention is to bait them to try and approach you.

Choose the right moments to commit to an attack that doesn't put you at a disadvantage. A common move used in neutral by Falco is his back air. It's super fast and comes out on the 4th frame and it also autocancels so you can move immediately on landing, making it a reasonably safe move to use in neutral, as long as it's spaced well. As opposed to perhaps Link or Young Link's down air which takes a slow 13 frames to come out and then has a slow recovery count of 26 frames when L cancelled (or a heavy 51 frames wait if you miss your L cancel!)

Tilt moves are pretty good in the neutral! Moves such as Marth's downtilt (Especially as this is IASA) and Fox's uptilt have smaller count of recovery frames. Marth's downtilt comes out after the 7th frame in the animation and it's only 10 frames wait before you can dash away. Fox's uptilt comes out on frame 5 and you only have to wait 12 frames after the hitbox has come out. Falco's uptilt has only 11 frames wait and Sheik's forward tilt has 17 frames of recovery. Dash attacks can also be useful, especially if you overshoot them.

It's hard for your opponent to weave around them. If they shield a dash attack, you can cross up their shield and end up behind them. This makes it harder for them to punish the recovery as many characters struggle to punish when you're behind them. One of the best dash attacks belongs to Peach! The hitbox comes out on the 6th frame and it's pushed out in front of her. Her hitbox lasts a whole 15 frames and then only takes 16 frames to recover to her neutral state.

Finally, as we all know, some of the worst moves to use in neutral are the smash attacks as the recovery frame count after the hitbox is very high. It's easier to punish these; Marth's forward smash is a whole 35 frame wait after the hitbox comes out and it also makes his hurtbox easier to hit as his whole body moves forward. Fox's up smash is only slightly fewer with a 25 frame recovery and 18 frames recovery on a forward smash. Jigglypuff has a 25 frame recovery after her forward smash, just like Fox! Captain Falcon has a whopping 39 frame wait after his forward smash comes out and Falco has a 36 frame wait on his downsmash!

Some of the quicker smash attacks include Falco's forward smash which has a 19 frame wait and Peach has an 18 frame wait after her downsmash but it seems more reasonable to use tilts and aerials so as not to make yourself too vulnerable in that space. Though these are lower frame counts, they still aren't as low as some of your other character tools.



(Left: CLG | SFAT trying to catch Cloud 9 | Mango with a risky upsmash but misses as Mango wavedashes back! Upsmash has a lot of recovery frames so Mango could safely punish SFAT's error. Right: SFAT misses a grab after he jabs Mango. Mango's tricky movement then makes it difficult for SFAT, he then whiffs his second grab and is punished. Mango makes great work of staying out of SFAT's effective range)

Neutral comes down to more than people realize. It's not just getting out of the way in time. It's not just dash dancing until you can find a way to attack your opponent. It has a lot of intricate details that include tricking your opponent into doing multiple things like attacking, dodging or whiffing a grab. It includes being aware of your effective range and keeping the opponent far enough away at all times. It's about spacing yourself so that you can get in at any moment but being able to keep yourself safe at the same time. It's about taking an opportunity at the correct time; without this, you'll lose a chance to punish your fellow competitor. When playing keep in mind all of these wonderful options and good luck!

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