Melee Principles

Note: the body of this outline depends on a few concepts that I’ve defined in Key Concepts, including Reaction Time, Relative Frame Advantage, The Unreactable Zone, Reads/Reactions, Risk Reward, and Mixups.

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Melee Principles

1. Everything you do should punish your opponent. (Melee is a game of punishes).


2. There are four characteristics to exploit. (There are four things to punish).

    2a. Errors (abuse his mistakes or ability).
    Misclicks or other unforced errors temporarily take your opponent out of control, as if he is off balance. If pushed, he will fall.
    Similarly, if he doesn’t have the skill or speed to keep up, he will be overwhelmed by technical skill and speed of decision-making.

    2b. Character (abuse the matchup).
    A character is a set of resources. At least some of those resources cannot profitably contest your own. You can develop tactics to consistently beat that character’s options or else avoid them, while consistently engaging in EV+ situations.

    2c. Gamestate (abuse game mechanics).
    These include stage position (by which tactics are locked/unlocked), relative %s (CC/trades from center or from winning), projectiles/timer (who is obligated to act, zugzwang), down-holding, etc.

    2d. Decisions (abuse his (mis)understanding).
    You can interpret his ideas. PE/CP. Interpreting how he uses tactics renders them easy to abuse. You can use feints to counterplay his counterplay.
    A mixup inside of the Unreactable Zone is a game of incomplete information.


3. There are two types of punishes. (Melee is a game of direct and indirect punishes).

    3a. Direct (in this moment).

        3a.1 Reads
        You can interpret his behavior and guess at/simple react to his option to punish it.

        3a.2 Reactions
        You can position to allow yourself to punish overcommitments on reaction.

    3b. Indirect (in a following moment).

        3b.1. Staggered Reads/Reactions.
        Instead of attempting a direct hit now, you can instead contest the next thing he does. Depending on the time you have and the options available/displayed, you can punish that option on reaction or it might require a read.

        3b.2. Positional Punishes
        Instead of attempting a direct hit now, you can move to a superior position/take space.


4. Melee is won by accumulating winning chances better than your opponent.

    4a. Curating EV+ situations while maintaining the flexibility to capitalize on unforced errors or flashes of insight is the shape of a high-level neutral game.

    4b. The stronger your punishes, the fewer winning chances are required to win the game. It’s entirely possible to win a game off of as few as four strong capitalizations.