How to set up kills in Melee 

Thanks! Yes, I definitely think there are two different sides to melee tutorials and I wanted to deliberately break them up. Sometimes it's nice to answer questions like "how do I beat sheik's forward tilt?" while other times it's important to cover stuff like "How to read your opponent" (both upcoming videos). Again, thanks for the kind feedback! Really makes me want to keep producing.

That's the plan! They're a lot of work but I'm hoping to make this a weekly series. Either a Micro Melee video or a Macro Melee video :)

Emilio Wong keep your eyes peeled this Sunday then!

Melee is one of those games where there are so many things to focus on, that it's easy to forgot what's most important. A lot of my tutorials are based on my own journey learning melee. This is one of those things I realized a while back was so important and something I didn't really focus on enough. Plus, I used to play puff and it was super common for puff mains to learn like...all possible rest setups, and that made me think "why don't other characters learn all possible kill setups?"

MichaelRadar That's a good point. I think with rest there is a clear large reward for landing it so there is a lot of incentive for learning all the setups. For other characters it's likely just as important, but the reward is a little more subtle and requires more steps.

Thanks so much! Yeah, you can expect a new video this Sunday! I didn’t do one last Sunday because I flew home for the holidays and didn’t have access to my computer.

Spencer Holmes one of the demographics I’m hoping to somehow with the Macro Melee videos is players of other Smash games. Most of the concepts I’m planning on explaining are applicable to ALL smash games, but I could see people assuming it’s not relevant to them because the clips are Melee

:')

have you seen izaw's videos? you're starting to remind me of him. he focuses on the nuances of smash 4 and i love that you're doing the same for melee

Awesome! I'm so grateful for everyone who subscribed :')

Shh, don't expose my design secrets! Kidding. Being real, thanks dude, yeah the look and design of any video is super important. While I can't always make it look exactly how I want it, I try to clean up the video as much as possible. I used to do production for my university's newspaper, so I worked on the photography, supervised layout, video etc, but beyond that graphic design is just a hobby. Right now I'm working as a copywriter, which I do have a portfolio for hahah, so I'd still writing is my primary area of expertise.

MichaelRadar just putting credit where credit is due. Keep it up!

Liam Slywchuk eventually yeah, but at the moment Falcon isn’t a character I’m knowledgeable with. While I still play him, I don’t think it would be fair to make a kill setups video with the limited knowledge I have. That being said, I think a lot of falcons kills come off of knee, so learning the different ways to combo off knee, and tech chase into knee would be useful. Also learning how to use bair and up air to kill would be useful....it’s really all about learning what your characters moves do and see how you can use them. Hopefully I’ll get a video on this soon, but in the meantime I’d just watch some wizzrobe/s2j sets and see how they end up finishing off stocks.

Speed Grump is this directed at me or in general haha I’m confused

Girthquake as I explain in the video description, Micro/Macro has nothing to do with video length. It has to do with the content itself. Macro focuses on larger scale situations applicable to all characters, Micro focuses on small scale situations, sometimes involving only one character. Think Macro and Micro economics. Being concise is almost always better. There’s no reason to make this video longer than it is, but it covers a topic that’s not specific to one character and can even be applied to all smash games, so it’s a “Macro” type of content

MichaelRadar Good point! I typed that comment before actually watching, ignore my ignorant comment. Thanks again for the videos, they're seriously some high quality stuff.

Hahaha no worries dude, glad you liked the video.

I see what you're saying, but the point generally isn't to constantly consider 6 options all at once, but to be aware of those six options, then choose to search for an opening to use one. Here's an example: Let's say you're going for a raw back air with Falco, that can be a great way to kill/setup for an edgeguard but you can also use jab into an aerial instead, or grab into aerial. Even by mixing in these three options you're way less predictable. One is a pure aerial approach, one is a grounded approach (loses to crouch cancel/shield) and one is grounded and beats shield. . The idea is that if you keep going for the same kind of move, you become predictable, which is bad. The other thing is that not everything in melee is reactable, so your analogy isn't really applicable to playing melee as a whole. There are TONS of situations in literally every game where you're forced to play rock paper scissors with your opponent. There are plenty of situations where you cannot react, so you have to choose one option and hope it works to counter your opponents option. The benefit of recognizing when you're unable to react in a certain situation is that you can just choose an option and not worry about straining yourself mentally. One of the biggest problems beginner-mid level players have is assuming everything is reactable, or even that 75% of melee is reactable. So yes, more options makes it harder to react to, but not everything's reactable in the first place, and being unpredictable is equally important.

Shadoninja not sure how I would use a patreon though, because I’m definitely not in a position to put out extra content just for patrons. Also don’t they take a decent cut?

I am not sure if they require you to put out extra content on the site, but I do know they take 5% of the donations. There are fees as well, but I think you have those with Paypal too. I have never had a Patreon before, but I support creators through it since it is so convenient to setup monthly contributions.

Shadoninja the one thing I worry about is burning out and not producing enough content to justify people’s monthly donations. I’m working full time so I do the videos in my spare time. Balancing this, a job, and a girlfriend makes me think it’s likely I’ll have weeks where I don’t upload. I wouldn’t wanna disappoint anyone

One guy I support charges per podcast. You could do a per-video subscription probably to deal with that aspect of it.

Took your advice! www.patreon.com/michaelradar

Matt Zwieger what do you mean? Mario still has kill setups, and you should still learn them. Watch videos of Mango and A Rookie to see how they get kills and try to copy that. Think of your strongest moves and figure out which moves combo into those moves. I.e. how do you combo into f-smash. Tbh I don’t know much about Mario but he’s no different from any other character. Every character has ways to convert into guaranteed kills and edge guards, so you should learn them!

Chike Esedebe haha it’s a term some melee players use to describe how marth kind of struggles to get kills at higher percents. It’s actually a pretty valid complaint, especially in some matchups. Watch March vs Peach and Fox vs Peach and check the percents when Peach dies and you’ll see what I mean. Despite this, (as I mention in the video) Marth still has ways to secure kills and a lot of new players only know side-b up-tilt lol

bigdaduhbouncer I think as it becomes more popular this will become less of an issue considering Micro Melee is also a thing. My subscribers have more than quadrupled since I first released Micro Melee, so I’m not too worried about the name lol.

If anything, my mouth is probably making those noises because it’s dry. Some clips take a long time to record because I’m revising them as I’m recording them. I usually write a script, edit, and then when I’m recording things I realize I need to change it still. The whole process takes ages and by the time I’m done my voice is kind of tired. I try to drink water throughout the process so that could be he problem but it’s a lot easier said than done to fix this problem

You could just get noise removal plug ins from Izotope if you have a little bit of money for it

Nah, I still owe several thousand in student loans loooool. Plus right now I've only made like $10 from the last four videos... So I'm not in a position to do that (yet??)

Caleb Gadwah sometimes I’ll stumble over a clip and end up drinking a fair amount of water by the time the entire process is over. You’d be surprised how easy it is to do this when reading out a script. I feel like eating an apple and then drinking water would just negate the purpose of the apple. Also, this seems like a strange thing to complain about to be perfectly honest lol.

Caleb Gadwah on top of that, I re-record a lot because I’ll realize my script could be shorter, or things aren’t as clear once I hear them out loud. There are a lot of little tweaks that go into the recording, so I’m not sure your solution is as easy as you’d think

MichaelRadar I know lol, I wasn't complaining. I still really liked the video, I'm just offering some advice if you want to get more professional with this. I assume you already have a pop filter which is good. An apple cleanses your pallet and sort of gives you a blank canvas to start on, and drinking lots of water is good but drinking too too much is bad lol. I've worked with audio recording in the past and voice clicks are usually unwelcome.

Caleb Gadwah I actually don’t have a pop filter but I’m planning on getting one. I used to be in a band so I have a limited but likely above average understanding of what makes good audio. Thanks for the advice either way and glad you like the video!

It's pretty obvious I'm referring to the fact that Leffen's commentating the clip. The most important information in that clip comes from Leffen, not Mango.

thank you for the clarification!

Haha rereading this it sounds kinda salty but that wasn't how i was trying to sound. Glad you liked the video!