Melee Improvement Tier List 

If there's anything Smash players like, it's tierlists

i play ult but i absolutely love the way melee players look at improvement so i always turn to them for inspiration

PP is special among top-level Smashers. If you have ever been to his dream he honestly loves to and puts in great effort to help guide and educate players. If you ask him a question he won't actually give you an answer. " hey I am a marked player struggling in this matchup what can I do" and he will tell you he will tell you to use this move more often to watch for spacing on this specific move to look out for this move and with punish that specifically. He truly cares and wants to educate and that is incredible

Kodorin videos LETSGO

Being in good shape and healthy is super underrated. I remember noticing Wizzrobe packed lunch to a major tournament, where all the regular tourney monsters usually eat fast food near the venue. That's a huge advantage.

I know of KoDoRin but have never watched his content this is some great stuff

Your "trifecta" is a great way of adapting learning to melee. I'm a chess coach of over 10 years now, and the 3 components we use are solo practice (tactics, combinations, openings/endgames, etc.), coaching, and serious tournament play (although over the past year that has had to be substituted for serious competition, preferably with someone you know IRL). I'm sure that's similar for many other sports/competitive games and they have their own methodology that's incredibly similar too. Really good advice and cool to see someone who clearly knows about improvement talking on the subject! Keep up the great Marth play too, can't wait to see you keep taking some more big heads in bracket!

I think it's hilarious how oddly specific these melee tier lists are getting

Can you do a vid on how to analyze yourself? I do friendlies and solo practice, but I literally learn nothing from watching myself and trying to analyze.

The 2 hours spent scripting was time well spent in my book, great video!

Super great video, a lot of these points can also apply to fighting games in general. Keep it up 👍

Very good video! I especially like the "Trifecta" advices, which seems like a key and self-explanatory concept

Fantastic video. Love the part about goals, cause I always tell my friends this. Loving the game you play is priority #1!!!

Such a good video. I didn’t realize how many things I was wasting time on and wondering why I wasn’t improving.

Okay you got a talent for this type of video. Coaching stuff rlly good

The entirety of the multi main section was just one big compliment to m2k lmao

Great video. You earned a new subscriber and fan!

this also helps with ultimate! Thank you for making this.

Damn this is great content. Subbed!

damn this is a fire video, applies to many things outside of melee

Thank you for this video!

This was all well explained, especially the part around 10:20 .

KoDoRin content pog subbed, great vid, keep posting :)

loved the tier list topic, the logo/symbol choices, and the level of detail and insight you went into each methodology. if you're open to yt comment suggestions, have your script on your monitor so it looks like you're relatively looking at your camera rather than looking down throughout the whole video. Also would have loved a little more concrete examples (i.e. bringing up how Armada had to train his YL and fox for years before bringing them to tournament in the main switching/multi-main sections) Overall loved this different take on melee tier lists, especially as a newer player. looking forward to more of this content!

Absolute banger of a video

Excellent video

This video is REALLY good! I’ve realized just how much I’ve neglected analysis, and it’s because of my mindset making me see my mistakes in the moment, which isn’t that good for me to do. Also, I lowkey thought that the falcon knee represented “getting bodied” lmao.

I have a healthy gamer coach too! He’s actually helped me a bit in understanding why I choke when I play in tournament so I’m glad other players are having good experiences

as someone that coaches other games and used to compete directly as a player in esports, this is all mostly spot on. special shout out to you kodorin for having my all time favorite twitter john. was a 10/10 post. :]

listening to the video and noticing a lot of things you said mirrored what i heard from Dr k. it makes so much sense now that i've learned you watch him too

I'm all about improvement so I can't wait to watch this video

INSANELY GOOD VIDEO

The RU-vid algorithm took too long to recommend this channel.

Great Video!

Great stuff

“What does this Kreygasm represent?”

great stuff. as an ultimate player, this is all applicable to competitive ultimate as well.

Can’t wait to see watch this and learn from the improvement god himself Also incredibly devastating to hear we started attending tournaments at nearly the exact same time lmao love ya Kodorin-leroydankins

NICE. You’re so sick dude. Subbed

great video idea.

Glad to see you making videos. Preparing for the necessity of having a following when you reach god tier lol

These apply to other video games like league, but to any skill in life. Great video 👍🏽

Banger vid

Godlike vid idea

pretty good, only problem i had was with the "setting concrete goals" part. When I was on the come up in SoCal, I would frequently set other competitors as "goals" to beat. It started off small with beating the best in my little city, then beating the best in my county, and then slowly taking off sets from the socal pr players. I don't think settings goals like this is bad unless you have a weak mindset. But you should be working on that anyway. Other than that though, this is a great list on how to improve. I'm glad you mentioned the mango thing, the better you get, the more you realize "top players" aren't nearly playing the same game as us.

Great vid :)

This video is important

Hell yeah I subscribed before 1k subs, I'm cool

Must-have for anyone serious about improvement: Having a coach), the trifecta: solo practice (tech skill), analysis (see what you did wrong), friendlies (cycle), watching/reading guides, mindset training (mentality, choking, cognitive exercises), using tools (ikneedata, uncle punch, slippi analysis) Will probably help you improve: discussion groups (discord), entering tournaments, health (eating, sleeping, etc...), Might help you improve: unfocused practice session (unranked), only doing one or two of the trifecta, copying top players, learning obscure tech (multishines), having concrete goals (get PR) Unlikely to help you improve: Casual friendlies (items, hyrule temple, etc...) , dual maining/secondairies, switching mains,

So I'm not nearly as interested in improving my melee as my Tennis, but the point about tournaments really hit me. I don't play enough stakes and so when i do i struggle even bringing my B game. Going to try to add in more competition.

This is timely for me

This is a great video and I honestly think you can expand this to Smash Ultimate (or even other fighting games in general) and the tips would remain pretty much the same. If you want to reach out to a bigger audience then maybe consider changing the title to “Smash improvement tier list” instead of Melee and edit the description, but that’s your call.

Dr. K is a good recommendation for that category of self improvement.

Good video:)!

Sweet video! I can definitely vouch for Healthy Gamer coaching - I started group coaching in September of last year and saw noticeable improvement in my day-to-day life and in my Melee mindset. It's well worth it! If anyone is on the fence, give it a shot

If only I cared enough to improve. I am rather quite happy becoming stagnant but goddamn for those that wish to improve or those who are upset that they are not improving this is a great guide

23:01 where can i find this google doc of PPMD's posts?

Somebody should make a tier list of tier lists...

good shit

earned a sub

Great video! Could you link some of the things you mentioned? Trying to find ' ID data' not sure exactly what u said there in the last tier item

very nice

Good video and I have 2 questions: What mindset tips do you have when practicing within the game (friendlies and solo practice? Got a link to PPMD's google doc compilation and the mindset tips he gave?

Honestly this tier list is probably more important to your performance than literally any other tier list

Do you have any tips on how to pick a main? I have like 4 choices but want to focus on one. i have been mostly spectating melee for a few years and want to start playing but its extremely difficult for me to just choose a character in any game and looking to get rid of constantly switching and actually beat someone lol

I've been playing competitive Melee since late 2006 and I've improved more in the last 2 years than all the rest combined. The biggest difference was mentality, but not in the way most people talk about it. I heard so much about not choking in tournament. Not letting anger/frustration ruin your play. Learning from your mistakes instead of blaming the game. "Playing to learn" rather than "playing to win". Not getting hung up on certain match-up and play styles. All of that's good to know, but that wasn't my problem. No, my problem was that I felt like my life was hopeless and there was nothing I could do to improve anything (smash or otherwise). I put tons of hours into practice, not because I thought it would make me better, I just wanted to be able to say I had tried. Which is both true and false. I did put in a lot of effort and I made the best choices I could with my limited understanding, but I certainly wasn't paying attention and practicing efficiently. It's very hard to give something 100% of your energy and taking in all that's happening if you don't believe, deep down in your heart, that you effort makes a difference. The most tragic part about the whole thing is that I never worked on my mental issues because I didn't think that it would have helped.

Great video, only have a tiny nit pick. I think of concrete goals as a tool. Like you said, if you only focus on it, it can absolutely demotivate you but I think that if you don't look at the concrete results of what and how you're doing (either with gameplay or mentality) you might find it difficult to improve. I think that you tie bit into analysis but I wanted to leave a comment to help the algorithm.

Hello, I am a sheik main (you played me a few days ago in viewer games) who used to main fox. in the short term, even with 0 practice, my fox likely out performs my sheik vs ice climbers. Is it worth it to go fox just to get the win but practice sheik ics with the intent to go sheik eventually, since i am investing 0 hours of practice into fox? Thank you

Kodorin sensei, what should I do if I want to play 2 characters, not out of matchup necessity, but because I have fun with both? I know I should probably stick with one for my own improvement, but both characters have equal amt of pros and cons to maining.

Any advice on physical health? Specifically hands/wrists. My wrists are pretty fucked up and it led to me quitting melee. But the itch never left. I want to play again! But pain 😞

my practice is literally this upside down

KoDoRiN iS gReAt! :O

been watching dr k. all day, then your video pops up. don't think thats by chance

you're sick

I genuinely think the fact that I haven’t been able to stick to a character for more than a year ever is the main reason I’m still so bad even though I’ve been playing since 2015. I don’t know why it’s so hard but I just can’t pick one character and I hate myself for it. I just need to make myself stick to one but I have so much trouble choosing.

damn kodorin is mad smart

noti gang

First I thought this was a meme but this is actually really helpful. Great video and sub from me! :D

What is the ratio of time you spend on each part of the "trifecta"? Do you spend about the same amount of time on each section?

unranked helps me get comfortable with playing, sometimes i train so much that i dont ever play

I disagree with the placement of the goal setting, mostly because I just took a sport psychology class and a lot of the concepts apply to smash. If you really are aiming for the top, having a concrete goal such as pr or top in your region is absolutely necessary. It’s definitely more important to have a love for the game and be intrinsically motivated, but that shouldn’t put the goal setting process at a lower tier. Part of making the outcome goal effective is also making other goals that are smaller, and more in your control. Performance goals, like individual tournament records get a little closer, or performing a tech you practiced in a game. What’s incredibly helpful though is small process goals. Small mental or physical strategies that are fully in ones control. Practicing breathing, proper and positive self talk, understanding how you think about the game itself; these are goals that improve your improvement process, and many top athletes and coaches in physical sports use this goal framing strategy to map out an athletes “road to success,” so to speak. I think this will apply to video games as well, especially cognitively intensive ones such as melee. Finishing the video, I bet the healthy gamer coach would also help with the micro goals. Having that overarching goal is also an important ingredient in the goal mapping formula, and does need to be used responsibly to be effective. Since I don’t know the extent to which it’s mandatory at high level play, I’ll put it one or two tiers higher.

This represents

12:00 practicing doc up-b cancel

666th subscriber :D love ur content

Do you happen to have a link or something to the cognitive stuff for the unhealthy mentality? Great video by the way 8)

1:50 what does axe do???

Can you do one for ultimate I think it would be really interesting!

11:47 the westballz

this has a lot more credibility in my eyes because you mentioned healthygamer LOL

Is double shining considered an obscure hard tech with little return? I find that that its pretty useful espescially as falco against fox when shield pressuring, as fox can shine OOS after your shine to beat almost everything you do after your shine. Im asking because I dont know.

I wanted to be a Marth player starting out but I really couldn't just get him down no matter what even when I saw myself getting better at the game, so I switched to Sheik since I felt it would be more comfortable and I find myself not hating playing the game I guess But I've been playing Link since day 1 fuck what everyone thinks

The script was really good lol

neat

Not saying you're wrong, but Jerry switched mains between puff and fox several times I think, lol. And his results stayed the same/improved LOL. although i guess its fair to say he's plateaued

epic

Melee

dooooope

Didnt shroomed switch and got better? I supposed he falls under the top player category

Unrelated but ur marth is sick

Pp chat says hi for the algorithm