Too often in the Melee community there is a stigma that if you’re not playing a top-tier, you have no chance of winning. While it is inherently true that certain characters are better than others, it’s not even close to being impossible to succeed with a mid-tier. While the range of talent within in the mid-tiers’ varies, these overarching tips of advice can help a mid-tier player realize the potential in their character and challenge the tier list altogether.

Weakness Realization

Realizing your character’s weakness is step one in succeeding with a mid-tier. As mid-tiers, your moves and mistakes typically get punished much harder than that of top/high tiers, so realizing what these weaknesses are is very important. Understanding what’s holding your character back is important not only to understand how your character is going to be punished (because some of that is unavoidable) but more so how to keep yourself out of those punishable situations.

Characters such as the Luigi, but more so Mario, Doc, and DK have exceptionally poor recoveries, granting them very little vertical and horizontal range. Yoshi doesn’t even have a recovery move, aside from his double jump and the armor it provides. Since recovery options are limited in size and scope, spending time off stage to secure edge-guards can be very dangerous, because if the tides turn off stage, you can lose a stock in a heartbeat if you’re hit just a little too far from the ledge. Staying on stage to camp out recoveries and punishing the enemy’s landing is a much safer technique for these mid-tiers.

DK and Gannon are slower characters with massive hurt-boxes, so being slippery and evasive in the neutral is a must for these characters so succeed. Gannon can pull this off by utilizing wavelands on both the stage and its platforms. This gives Gannon the boost in speed he desperately needs to be able to position himself to space his aerials well. In DK’s case, couple the size of the character with his poor shield coverage, and avoiding your opponent’s combo game becomes the main goal in every match.

DK can use his excellent dash-dance to bait the enemy into a whiffed attack or trick the opponent to when he plans to move in for an attack. Even with the good dash-dance however, DK doesn’t have as effective movement options, and rather depends on his hyper aggressive combo game and decent out of shield options to get combos started and tilt the match in his favor. Link, while not a massive character in size, also struggles due to his sluggish speed. While he typically cannot compete with the speed of his enemies, he can keep them at bay with his assortment of projectiles, giving him the breathing room he so desperately needs in order to feel comfortable.

Avoiding the dangerous situations that your mid-tier struggles with is half the battle of succeeding as a mid-tier. In most cases, your character isn’t as privileged as the top tiers, so securing center stage, staying grounded, and playing a campier playstyle will help you close out stocks. Rather than the seeking out the flashy combos and aggressive plays, playing more reserved and intelligent will help you in your quest as a successful mid-tier.

Don’t Write Off Your Mid-Tier’s Offensive Prowess

Mid-tiers are mainly ranked where they are in the tier list for two reasons: available options and quality of recoveries. While good offensive options may be limited to a few moves within a mid-tier’s move-set, they can still be extremely powerful and effective attacks. In fact, some of the mid-tier cast boasts some of the strongest moves in a specific given situation, making them excellent choices for a main if you know how to succeed with the character.

In terms of edge-guarding, Doctor Mario and Mario’s side-b cape is one of the strongest moves available. It has a huge hitbox, fast startup, and completely denies the recovering character any chance of getting to stage. Accompanied with Mario/Doc’s fast and powerful b-air, you have one of the most powerful edge-guarders in the game. Pikachu also joins the discussion when talking about mid-tiers with great guarding, able to secure edge-guards with a single well-placed u-air. Similarly, with the previous point of understanding your character’s weaknesses, you also want to know how your character excels offensively and use those strengths to your advantage.

Luigi has arguably one of the strongest aerial move-sets in the game with a powerful and fast f-air, long reaching b-air, an air juggling u-air, and extremely powerful kill move in his d-air, and a n-air that combos into itself. However, because Luigi has a very inconsistent recovery and poor aerial movement, his move-set is not complimented by his character attributes. This is part of what makes Luigi a mid-tier. Through using long wavedashes, smart grounded play, and capitalizing on openings in the air, Luigi can be taken to the next level as we’ve seen with players such as Abate, Eddy Mexico, and even Plup. AMSA has taken Yoshi to the absolute highest level of play with the mastery of the parry technique, shield drops, and deadly combos from a character formerly thought to be unviable.

Although Yoshi struggles with his recovery being exploited, his combo game is quite strong when fully realized. This realization, practice, and perfection helps these mid-tiers succeed where otherwise expected to fail. Even Link, thought to be the bottom of this group of characters has strong options following his projectile barrage in the neutral. Powerful kill setups exist within his up-b OoS, u-air, and d-air. Understanding that these offensive tools exist and can be used to surprise the opponent makes mid-tiers more than meets the eye. Practice combo follow-ups in training mode on characters with varying weight and fall speeds in addition to studying sets from players who excel with your desired mid-tier.

Capitalizing Match-up Inexperience

This is by far the biggest benefit of playing a mid-tier character. Match-up inexperience will propel you as a mid-tier player if you can learn how to capitalize on the typical player response to your actions. What I mean by this is that, with the top/high tier match-ups, there is most often a most optimal way of dealing with situations. These optimal solutions get practiced and engraved so much into the minds and muscle memory of these players, that it becomes the initial (and sometimes only) response considered for that situation. A Fox player who is used to the effectiveness of 20XX like tech skill abuse towards their foes will be surprised when the usual combo set-ups don’t work out against the mid-tier cast.

While it is easier for players to adapt offensively, what you can really capitalize on is the defensive inexperience. Not many Marth players know how to defend against an aggressive Link, and not many Captain Falcon’s know how to recover against a Doctor Mario. It is this defensive inexperience you can use to your offensive advantage. Getting the control of the flow of the match is the most powerful position you can put yourself in as a mid-tier, for all the on-paper advantages are still in favor of your opponent. Controlling the flow of the match also puts a lot of mental pressure on the opponent. There is a stigma of embarrassment to lose to a character that is worse than yours, and you can use the frustration and pride of the other player against him. Often you’ll see top/high tier players start to mess up a lot in matches with mid-tiers due to their own sense of pride being compromised. Use these openings to punish the player hard and secure the game and ultimately the set.

Avoid Flubs/Be Consistent

As a mid-tier player, your mistakes are punished much more severely than that of top/high tier characters. This being the case, it is almost more important to be 100% consistent with your tech skill. While you won’t be practicing stylish waveshines and flashy multishines, practicing simple combo follow-ups and OoS options to arrive at the point of 100% consistency is so important for the mid-tier player.

Consistency is honestly the name of the game when it comes to maining a mid-tier, for the amount of options you have is limited. Making the few good options you do have work whenever you need them to the most important thing. It is harder to find openings in the opponent’s play as a mid-tier, so having your punish game well-oiled and ready to run is very important. Mid-tiers do have surprising technical tricks up their sleeves, like Samus’ platform cancelled missile barrages and Doc’s up-b cancel. Having these prepared and practiced can help make the difference against a player who might be more capable against your style of play.

Never Give Up

It sounds cliché, but it’s very true. The only way to truly succeed with a character who isn’t as good as the majority of those you’ll meet in tournament play is to never give up. It is truly a commitment to main a mid-tier, but it’s one of the most rewarding things to see the skill you have with a worse character, overshadow the blanket advantage other players have over you with their better characters. The connection you make with the character and the ownership of the character you play is part of the fun in and of itself. It will require more practice and more talent in order to succeed as a mid-tier, but it is 100% possible as we’ve seen with players such as Abate, HugS, Kage, Saus, Axe, A Rookie, and AMSA. If it’s your goal to rock the bracket with a mid-tier, you should get practicing and wield the confidence to do so.

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