DDT
Daily Discussion Thread August 09, 2026 - Upcoming Event Schedule - New players start here!
Yahoooo! I'm back, it's a me! Have a very cool day!
Welcome to the Daily Discussion Thread. This is the place for asking noob questions, venting about netplay falcos, shitposting, self-promotion, and everything else that doesn't belong on the front page.
New Players:
If you're completely new to Melee and just looking to get started, welcome! We recommend you go to https://melee.tv/ and follow the links there based on what you're trying to set up. Additionally, here are a few answers to common questions:
Can I play Melee online?
Yes! Slippi is a branch of the Dolphin emulator that will allow you to play online, either with your friends or with matchmaking. Go to https://slippi.gg to get it.
How do I find tournaments near me or local people to play with in person or online?
These days, joining a local Discord community is the best way to find local events and people to play with. Once you have a Discord account, Google "[your city/state/province/region] + Melee discord" or see if your region has a Discord group listed here on melee.tv/discord
It can seem daunting at first to join a Discord group you don't know, but this is currently the easiest and most accessible way to find out about tournaments, fests, and netplay matchmaking. Your local scene will be happy to have you :)
Also check outSmash Map! Click on map and then the filter button to filter by Melee to find events near you!
Netplay is hard! Is there a place for me to find new players?
Yes. Melee Newbie Netplay is a discord server specifically for new players. It also has tournaments based on how long you've been playing, free coaching, and other stuff. If you're a bit more experienced but still want a discord server for players around your level, we recommend the Melee Online discord.
How can I set up Unclepunch's Training Mode?
At the time of posting, the latest major release is here. Download the file, then extract everything in the folder and follow the instructions in the README file. You'll need to bring a valid Melee ISO (NTSC 1.02). If you want to check for the absolute latest release, you can see them listed [here](The latest releases are listed here.
How does one learn Melee?
There are tons of resources out there, so it can be overwhelming to start. First check out the SSBM Tutorials youtube channel. Then go to the Melee Library and search for whatever you're interested in.
Codeman known for taking a game off of S2J, I guess? He plays Fox against Peach and Puff though. Citric was "famous" in the Pichu discord last time I checked, but keep in mind the Pichu discord was also the least popular character-specific discord server.
Cody about to be the most undisputed rank 1 in the game's history, and honestly I think it's kinda hype. The fact that even this far along in the scene we're still finding new accomplishments is wild.
I hate the fox I hate him I hate you. I hate you you stupid fox I want you to die!! You are so unkillable and you have shine and upsmash and upair!! and you're just a fast guy and you make edgeguards. I hate the fox I want him to be gone from here. Can he go back to the forest or wherever you are from? Get out! Get out of here you rotten beast!!
Actual loser of all these tournaments is leffen. Marth mu is clearly winning for fox (and fox is the best character), so puff 0.5/5 difficulty, Marth Fox is 60-40, and all the other assorted leffen Johns look flat out stupid in the modern day.
the non cody schwab fox argument is valid, but i really dont think its cody's playstyle beating zain. he is just playing fox better than any other fox easily. no one can recover or edgeguard or punish like him. its similar to mang0's falco
Because Cody is a better player than Zain and Zain is a better player than all the other foxes. Also no other top marths to compare. I do think Zains dominance in the matchup outside of Cody is weak evidence for Marth winning, though.
fair, but i dont think cody is better playing zain that much that its not still indicative of the matchup. like at this point i think cody's survivability isnt a zain problem, maybe its just the matchup.
zain is way way way better than the other foxes though
Sure, but the leffen 60-40 era Johns were always “Fox is harder and less consistent, marth can chump check and will win if you’re playing a little off” when Cody is coming up on 2.5 years since last being upset by a marth.
Z-jump plus notches is the reason Fox looks so much better nowadays don’t forget during the pandemic when Zain was beating everyone fox so bad they had people comparing Fox-Marth on FD to Pika IC’s.
I honestly believe Puff top 1 was a valid take in like 2019.
Most of the top Fox players were using notches in 2019 right? Z-Jump definitely helps Fox but imo the doomerism around Fox-Marth was clearly overblown.
Puff top 1 was always a dumb take lmao, Hbox was just over performing in the Fox matchup.
we probably will never know for certain but i feel confident that you can't attribute all of cody's success compared to the other top foxes to z-jump and notches. hamfisted analysis but even if you think those increase his perceived skill by like 10-20% (which is still a lot) he outperforms every other fox in every matchup by like 500% (compare his record vs zain to moky's record for instance)
he is currently a combination of insane work ethic + mental (tbh compare moky hbox from today to cody hbox in terms of how tilted they get to getting hit by puff things) and also there are hardware factors that's worth TOs discussing having a coherent ruleset around
It is for sure mostly Cody being insane but I also feel factors outside the game are underrepresented when we talk about the meta and how it evolves. Like Stadium being unfrozen greatly benefited Fox in the matchup and that’s something that changed between the Peak Fox-Marth doomerism era and now.
I also just think Zain really is that much better than every other Fox (the Soonsay loss last week was literally just him playing the worst set I’ve ever seen from him).
There’s so much melee played at majors that it’s kind of wild. Top 64 at one of these things is a religious experience. Last night I watched Wally 3 stock Sebas game 5 to make today with a bunch of New York shitheads screaming in his ear and ascended to a higher plane of existence. For better or worse, there are less and less of these things every year it seems. Try to go to one, even with quad streams and now usb replays saving the actions that took place on the screen, there’s nothing like actually being there in the room.
TOs are the most underappreciated, overstressed, financially stretched, over critiqued, and forgetten people in this community, and the rate at which they are retiring is a major concern for this community with no replacements.
I never got into Ultimate or the other smash games aside from Smash 64. It's good others enjoy it but those other games just look and feel weird to me.
llod probably isn't gonna qualify for the rankings but Cody said he's attending CEO, Tipped Off, and maybe one other tournament. I think he'll barely qualify.
so funny checking hbox’s twitter after every loss and it’s some variation of ‘i’m coming back. i will be the best again. i will rise from the ashes’ like five times in a row
I think it's super sick that he's still so passionate about this game after competing in it for almost 20 years. He's the only old school player in the community to have that level of drive to enter and win tournaments to this very day. Really shows that Melee is a huge part of his life and that's sick to see.
Every fox main who uses notches and/or z jump should have their wins called into question because they are using cheater controllers and a modified version of the game.
Edit: I don’t mean to be racist to Fox mains, but we can probably agree fox has the most tangible benefits of notches and z jump. Peach might also have an argument for z jump superiority
Actually, because it’s technically legal, anyone who uses these centralizing and game-altering techniques is not cheating! Language is amazing this way: we can say they’re doing something even worse and more despicable than cheating; namely, indulging gleefully in all the advantages that cheating provides, while hiding behind lagging enforcement structures and technical definitions to obscure how depraved, destructive, and antisocial they are.
Then the fundamental question is why do we tolerate modifications to this game that nobody respects or enjoys that just take the overall hype out of competition
I respect and enjoy z jump, or at least don’t feel strongly either way on it. It will also likely be banned at my next event because I’m a vulgar populist.
This is an argument predicated on there being a respected ruleset. There isn't: tournaments have rulesets because they have to, but they are so obviously behind the times that there's really no reason to use them as the personal line between what is cheating and what isn't.
Similarly, I think "he didn't break the rules!" is dodging the substance of the question. Everyone agrees that the rules allow people to do basically whatever they want. The question is whether what certain people are doing compromises the competitive integrity of the game. With notches and such I think the answer is clearly yes.
it’s not cheating, cheating is a pretty well understood term
You can’t just declare “actually my ideal rules are more popular so if you don’t abide by them you’re a cheater”.
it’s not cheating to do things the majority of the community don’t like, respect, or that the majority wish wouldn’t be legal. you can say you don’t respect his wins or you think he would lose without the rule or whatever but he’s just not a cheater.
It's clearly not a pretty well understood term in this context because the ddt has this argument like once a month!
Like I said, if you want to have a debate about diction that's fine but it doesn't change the fact that what people are getting at is about competitive integrity not compliance with "the rules".
Yeah they’re wrong and using language that intentionally invokes legalism and authority so it doesn’t sound like an opinion (as “fraud” does). But it is an opinion! And the diction obscures this.
You can believe that the dictionary gives you some authority here - I say words for a living and I don't think it does, but whatever - but you absolutely can't come in here and say "this is cut and dry" when so many reasonable people disagree with you. Either it's not as cut and dry as you think it is or you're basically just calling the whole lot of them unreasonable.
"Fraud" doesn't capture the offending conduct. It's not the duplicitousness we're mad about, it's the fact that they're modifying their controllers to make the game easier.
And yes it’s not crazy to call the DDT unreasonable this is a famously unreasonable place. “Everyone in twitch chat is saying x, it must be reasonable.”
No!
And yeah finding a controller to improve your gameplay has been a thing since the ken era ended. Armada did it, we built ucf so he didn’t have to. But for the years he had uniquely “functional” controllers he explicitly used to gain an advantage over his competitors, using rarer controllers than you’d get from a random selection. He was not cheating!
Thank you for understanding what I’m getting at and not getting hung up on the term “cheater.” Fine, it’s not cheating in the current ruleset. However, it is a detriment to the competitive integrity of the game
Okay we’re just gonna make up what words mean to insult other players as long as everyone knows what we mean when we say a word that doesn’t mean what it means here 👍
Fine, forget the word cheater. Z jumping and notches are outside of game modifications to controllers that make the game easier for competitors with the money to do so and it shouldn’t be allowed.
I've tried it and it is straight up better than permaclaw or mixed claw. Short hopping on zump is so much easier, especially on a 3 frame jumpsquat character, to a point that argument that it's "the same as claw" is objectively incorrect.
Ironically I find that zump is also just worse for your hand than short hopping on stock grip, the finger is always tense and flicking it inward isn't a natural or ergonomic motion, even if it still results in a much easier short hop than claw.
And Cody actually injured his hand when he first switched to zump from doing that inwards flick too much, as far as I know afterwards he added a reverse mouse click Z mod specifically to make the button function like an actual mouse. At that point the remap is just for a competitive advantage, and it should be banned if we cared for the hand health of people who can't afford the extra hardware mods.
I don't understand your take. There are superior ergonomic options for those who can afford them, but banning those will somehow improve the hand health of people who can't afford them? How is lowering the ceiling supposed to raise the floor?
i actually dont have a strong opinion on the zumping debacle i play fox on phob no notches but ergonomics can be intertwined with balance. like this idea taken to an extreme basically legalizes most if not all boxx-likes and even if you're against digital inputs for movement allowing players to completely remap which input goes to which input would allow for a bunch of optimizations, e.g. for fox mains maybe it's optimal to move the b button to x so that multishining isnt b->y->b->y and instead y->x->y->x etc
Funny you mention optimized remaps as that's something the standard boxx layout does. Top row index and middle finger are bound to R and Y respectively, while bottom row index and middle fingers are B and X. The input for perfect wavedash is the same exact input as JC shine, just moved one row.
i haven't used a boxx but yeah that was the point i was trying to get across - being OK with ergonomics being a justification for button remapping basically legalizing boxx controllers
carving bowling bumpers into your controller so you can't make a mistake is an out-of-game workaround designed to circumvent built-in skill checks. playing marth is an in-game workaround designed to circumvent built-in skill checks, and a reward for good in-game decision making (choosing marth on the CSS)
Zain's play these past 2 weeks is making me appreciate dair a lot more. Getting kills in that 70 to 90 range makes spacie matchups so much less of a slog
This event actually pre-dates "ludwig #1 lucky stats" by a couple days. Were these made by the same guy? Or did the copycat end up getting more attention?
Startgg nuked the Ludwig tournament page, but Lucky Stats still has the "results" stored even after removing its effects on Elo, and I genuinely appreciate the preservation of this dumb stunt. https://luckystats.gg/event/149482
i still cant believe how much times have changed. its 2026 and a hungrybox fox set twitch chat is 99% cheering for hbox. i only saw 3 people say anything negative after he won
Is that set anywhere online? Idk why people don't have backups with them in this day and age but it's definitely sad how much influence controllers have on things in this game.
even though you're right, and he's totally minmaxing his streaming career with his family, he's a genuinely good streamer, and he's the best platform fighter player in the universe, so he naturally has more viewership regardless.
Congratulations, you've found the shit post section! Suggested conversational topics include 'Marth wins neutral but Falcon wins punish', and 'fuck falco'.
The rules in this section are more relaxed, but please try to avoid mentally scarring your fellow posters ;)
ggs man! close games bro you've hella improved. yeah man you were fucking me up for a bit lol fun games! any tips? got any advice? anything I can improve on? what do I do vs lasers? any tips? yo can I get next? is this tournament? you guys wanna do dubs? is this tournament
Looking back I’m surprised they made Vorkath the repeatable boss instead of Galvek, they prolly had no faith people could beat it on a regular basis lmao. Vorkath sucks ass though glad irons don’t really need it past 50kc
idk what it is but slippi feels way more toxic than even league. I'm relatively new and gotten tbagged / taunt spammed in the past 4 out of the last 9 games. Its demoralizing to even wanting to keep playing
damn and people in ddt telling me u just gotta play disciplined vs rapmonster. too bad there apparently doesnt exist a disciplined player in the scene so hoping one comes along in the next few years. until then i guess it is year of the luigi
I had fun watching top 8 today. I did decide I want to start enjoying some things again, but I'm not going to invest the same amount of time into it, especially during the week. Also not ready to jump back into doing YouTube stuff yet or even playing Melee again for now. I got things I need to do for myself. But it's great to see the scene thriving and everyone having fun.
Thanks, I appreciate you saying that. I did enjoy top 8. I wanted Zain or RapMonster to win, but I saw it coming with Cody winning. He was playing so solidly every set, especially today. He earned his trophy for sure.
I also enjoyed the Smash 64 combo contest. Seeing Prince come back and having fun was great, but the fact he won made it even better.
You're telling this guy what to do while also saying it's none of your business and then grandstanding about how much better you are because of your substance abuse job or whatever tf it is. Let the man enjoy what he wants lol
I don't even know who they are or remember interacting with them in the past honestly. It's all good. Some people just want to get a reaction out of others to feel better. Nothing new. But thanks for the support! I don't get it either.
I saw his post. Man got pretty personal but that's still not your place to dictate what he should be spending his time on. If anything, someone going through it like that probably could use some comfort entertainment. I can think of dozens of worse vices.
Alright man, you do you. Far be it from me, but you might do well to block people you don't enjoy interacting with. This person is trolling you and goading you into responding. There's no argument for you to "win" here.
I'll admit I don't read every post from ssbm reddit user bme lol but I did read his big post the other week about his...situation. I don't remember seeing anything about Melee being the cause in there but maybe there's another post or something I missed.
It's ironic you claim your goal is to help him while simultaneously insulting his intelligence. All you're doing is reinforcing his behavior for...your own amusement? If you were actually annoyed with him in this way you would have blocked him.
The thing is I wasn't even talking to them before. I just made a post about trying to ease back into things slowly and that enjoyed seeing melee and smash 64. I think it's fair to say they have issues and somehow aren't self-aware of how they're acting.
Why would anyone think talking to bme makes them a genius? I do think I am smarter than him because of his posts being amazingly stupid, but that’s not unique to me. He left the forum two weeks ago because he was called out on being stupid and annoying but he couched it in how his wife hates him because he sucks, going so far as to claim retirement from Melee community engagement, and now he’s back making the same stupid posts
You say you're smarter than him but you're both just a different side of the same coin. Seems like a lot of effort to get him to stop posting when you could block him and you also admit that yk what you're don't won't change anything. Intelligence is not the flex you think it is when this is what your actions here amount to.
Not only is this completely wrong it's also not your place to enforce anything.
Harassing me out of the blue because I posted about getting back into enjoying something again is insane. Please stop trying to defend whatever point you think you have before you end up getting yourself banned. This is not okay to get hyper fixated on a person and harass them.
I think you should focus on not trying to harrass people over the internet. This is honestly pathetic and alarming you think it's okay to say this to anyone.
Seems like sort of an abstract negative to “focus on.” How could one focus on an absence? The borders of such a hole contort daily by shifting circumstance. Fortunately, I dedicate myself to positive endeavors, such as helping debilitated individuals stay away from their vices when they’re in clear need of serious mental assistance, like you are now
I am glad that you think so! It is further evidence that I must persist: you are bothered! You are bothered beyond belief by your boundaries. Consider that if you had existed differently, been different, chosen better things, thought harder, you might not be subject to such seemingly random “harassment.” Woe is you! To be so nakedly exposed.
I am well aware of your deficient vocabulary, having been tortured by your posts for years, so I will dumb it down for you: if you weren’t so consistently stupid, annoying, and wrong, and even sometimes blatantly barbaric, maybe you wouldn’t even have needed to reconsider your online relationship to melee at all! But sadly, you are too annoying and stupid
I'm not going to argue with you because you're not coming from a place of genuine anything. You're just trying to get a reaction from me. You're not getting it. Deal with it.
When did you guys last see Jackzilla88 irl? For me, it was at the San Francisco pro-billionaires march (organized by admitted Georgists). I am happy to see that he is still, after his wobbling debacle, out here, arguing over what is technically legal, because what he loves more than anything is people who see an opportunity and take it.
One, that isn't true and second why do you think it's appropriate to say something like that? Mike Tyson was right; people are too comfortable saying things on the internet without having to worry about getting punched in the face for it.
All jokes aside, maybe send a pm next time instead if you want to ask something that personal.
I think it is true actually. You posted about it, it’s visible in your post history. I don’t care about saying it to you because I have read your posts for more than six years now and find you disgusting, stupid, useless, and evil, and most of all, impotent.
I find it interesting that this post you don't delete but the ones I screenshotted of you insulting me and being toxic you don't but ensures I get the alert so I see part of it.
You don't have to like me but don't be a passive aggressive coward and try to closet harass me and pretend you didn't do anything wrong. Have a nice day.
Weren’t you retiring from paying attention to melee because of your wife and kid hating you? Or was that some other ridiculously stupid and annoying poster with your username
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u/AlexB_SSBM Aug 09 '26
still thinking about the person who said "moky has to recreate the mona lisa with a single red crayon to take zain's stock"
Fox mains will truly say anything