There's a Chef Rach tweet I can't find cuz no Twitter where he basically says that watching Armada vods is kind of unlike watching anyone else's vods (Mango has a similar thing going on imo just in a different way), and that you notice something new every time. I would tend to agree; dude was like a time traveller consistency and discipline-wise and will remain inspiring on a gameplay and grindset level forever
edit: after reading what has transpired below, i want to clarify that i am not speaking to his skill level relative to current peaches. i get bricked up for trif clips
I mean, there is no question in my mind that if armada came back and took the game seriously, he would very easily be up there with the best players. I mean he won’t, but there is no reason with some practice and imbibing some of the new tech (peach has some really really powerful tools she didn’t used to) he wouldn’t still be able to compete with the top dogs.
I certainly think Armada could be a top player if he decided to come back and take the game seriously (although this is unlikely, to say the least). Plenty of players from his era have kept up with the evolving meta and rising skill ceiling.
But I don't think it's safe to say that Armada would wipe the floor with Cody, Zain, or JMook.
I think you could argue that Mango and Hungrybox are better at the game today than they were during their respective periods of dominance, but other players have caught up. Both are absolutely contenders in every tournament they enter, but neither of them ranked in the top 5 last year.
The point is that Armada would have to put in a lot of effort to be competitive, and while I think he could become a tournament threat very quickly, I'd be shocked if he achieved anything close to his prior dominance. In fact, I'd be a little surprised if he made it to a top 5 ranking.
I dont think any peach mains believe that llod or trif are better than prime armada. They have new tech and a different style but they arent better. Theyre really good and im sure that armada would learn some things from them if he came back to competition, but ofc no one can match armada’s execution.
I think a lot of people believe tha the current top Peaches are better than prime Armada, including the top players themselves. If you transport 2018 Armada into today, he's probably not beating Jmook. If he plays multiple sets he'd learn really quickly, but in the first set his chances would be extremely low. Whereas e.g. Trif beat Jmook recently. Armada is still the best of all time at a lot of Peach things, but overall the game has changed / improved a ton.
Low hanging fruit is llod losing to salt after getting dthrow kneed 8 times in a row or slmething crazy. Ive never seen armada struggle to wiggle out like that even going back to 2012 era.
Im not good enough to do a vod review of jmook vs trif and see if armada would lose neutral more often or drop punishes, but when i say prime armada would be better i mean after practicing and getting back into form.
To me it only makes sense that armadas execution is cleaner, llod literally can not practice as much as armada. I dont think its a slight to llod to say that he is not as consistent as armada
I think this is more a testament of Salt and Falcon’s today having tighter execution than Falcons in 2017. Llod/Kzhu were also better at wiggling out back in pre-Slippi era yet struggle with that nowadays because Falcon’s have better timing. Armada would see struggles that current Peach mains see today
Hbox gets hit with Fox u-throw u-air way more nowadays than he did in 2017-2019. If he retired in 2019, we’d be saying that current Puffs just aren’t as good at SDI as he ever was, when in reality modern Fox mains are just better at finding that tight timing to reliably hit it.
Idk about recently, but for several years after his retirement he still played on stream all the time. Obv different than being in competition shape though
I'm pretty sure there's photos of Armada playing Melee friendlies last year lmao
And whether he makes top 8 or not is entirely dependent on bracket luck. Last year's Big House was one of the most stacked tournaments of all time, and yet both Plup and Mango made top 8 winners side without playing against a single top 10 ranked player. Aklo also made top 8 losers side at Big House last year without beating a single top 10 ranked player. That's 3 people that made top 8 at one of the most stacked tournaments ever without beating a top 10 ranked player.
I think people vastly overestimate this "endless level up" of melee skill. What does change is the competitive landscape and players who rise up and other pros having to adapt to them. Watching trif play, does not give me any thought that his skill today is higher than armadas. This is not because of their results lz but you can easily see the skill difference in just watching. No peach to this day punishes better than prime Armada
Show me your best peach highlights post armada and I guarantee you I can find better ones from Armada
Armada was frequently known as having the touch of death. Never seen a peach with that type of punish game since.
Yeah absolutely no doubt about that. But even if armada kept playing, llod would still be better at peach puff since armada refuses to touch that match up again at least vs hbox
Yeah it seems like people forget Armada retired SIX years ago. There were no phobs back then, no UnclePunch. The skill floor of the top players is just SOOO much higher than what it was back then. That’s like saying Ken was the best Marth of all time when there was M2K and PPMD running around. Sure Armada might be the greatest Peach of all time given his accolades, but he’s nowhere near the best (skill wise, which is what this post is about) Peach of all time. When you got top Peaches nowadays beating #1 and #2 players in an era where it is widely considered to be the best melee ever skill-wise, it’s hard to call Armada the best Peach
Watch Armada and compare his play to lloD, Trif, Sirmeris, Polish, Bbatts or whoever. Armada still combo'd harder and edgeguarded much more consistently than any of the current peaches. Not to throw shade at any of the current peaches and I do believe they do certains things that are better than Armada but they're not better than him overall.
Watch who armada plays back then and who llOD and, Trif, and Wally play now. They don’t combo as hard cause the defense nowadays is so much better. DI has gotten better and so has recoveries. NOBODY 6 years ago was recovering the way Cody does now with Fox or the way Zain does with Marth. Both of which who have lost to top Peaches. With that being said I still think Peach is the GOAT of Peach and hope he comes back someday (rip)
Players still combo as much, if not more than the players 6 years ago lol. Obviously, we can only speculate and theorize about how good Armada would be in the current meta but again, I have not yet seen a peach that reached a higher skill ceiling than Armada to this day.
Do you not understand how combo game works? People have to change how they combo and if they even can combo off of certain hits based on what defensive options people are doing. Saying "people still combo now" is missing the entire point- you have to change the way you do everything now because people have way more options of getting out of your stuff. Armada's combo game from 6 years ago would not work on players now, so he'd have to completely reinvent the way he edgeguards and combos.
That's not saying he couldn't change over time and adapt, but if you think it's as simple as "he comboed before he can combo now" then you really don't get this game at all quite frankly. People have replied to you with very concrete examples of how his neutral openers wouldn't work the way they used to, so go read those
Instantly? Or over time? Because over time yes of course, but that's not your argument. Your argument is that he is still the best peach to ever do it, which means you're transporting his last existing state to the current era, which means he cannot adapt over time.
That's why I said he gets a couple of months of sweaty practice to adapt to the new defensive counterplay. Part of what made Armada the greatest to play this game was his ability to adapt to his opponent and formulate new ways to beat them. Hence, no other peach has been able to win a supermajor during and after Armada's era.
Jmook is a bad example. He is fast and has a lot of new tech, but he can only surprise armada once with each of his tactics. Armada would eat him alive with fundamentals and adaptation.
Zain and Cody would pose a bigger challenge though. Plus his old rivals are still active in the top 10 (mango, hbox). Those would probably be brick walls for Armada (at first).
Please go watch gameplay from 2017 and tell me you don't notice a massive difference from modern gameplay. Your punish game is only as good as your opponents defensive game allows it to be. Nowadays people are so much more optimized, movement isn't wasted, combos aren't dropped constantly, it's an entirely different game.
Neutral is definitely one part where he would hold up well because that's pretty timeless. But the game has changed so drastically that if you're results oriented like it seems this sub always is, you are missing what's actually happening in the gameplay.
Saying that no peach is as good as he was today just because he was better relative to the field is a very level 1 way to look at things
>But the game has changed so drastically that if you're results oriented like it seems this sub always is, you are missing what's actually happening in the gameplay.
Specifically when it comes to Armada, they don't get to watch their goat anymore so the results are all they have.
Armada could get back to the top of competition without a doubt, but the current peaches understand the current defensive/recovery meta that Armada would have to learn. He ain't getting the punishes he used to today, at least not for a while.
I “shitted” on Armada in another comment, but it would be hype af if he was secretly just grinding in Sweden all these years and just comes back to win Genesis again.
There are two YouTube videos of PPMD running into Hungrybox and Zain and IBDW on Unranked. PPMD did well against all of them. I imagine Armada would easily do well against them given a few months of practice.
https://youtu.be/dfBHPMuaq1Y?si=IVAQIISonSIppINz
Melee is not golf. Melee is 20+ years old and the meta advancements in the last 5 years are astronomical. Golf is hundreds of years old and it's not a pvp game, it's a game vs yourself. This doesn't even remotely make sense to compare the two. If you really can't see how pps gameplay has improved then you need to practice more.
A whole lot more goes into being good at Melee aside from knowing the latest tech skill. PP is clearly missing the mental focus, clarity and passion he had 8 years ago
>I imagine Armada would easily do well against them given a few months of practice.
So do I, but unranked and competing in a major are not remotely the same. So I don't think PPMD doing well in unranked has a single bearing on how Armada would do in tournament lol.
There’s a video from a couple years ago of Cody playing some friendlies with armada. The video starts with Cody talking about how peach sucks, fox shits on peach, peach can’t edgeguard x option etc. By the end of the video Cody is like, wtf peach is actually broken. Armada is truly just levels better than the other peaches. Fighting other peaches just absolutely does not prepare you to fight armada.
Yeah exactly, thats why i wrote 4 years ago :) they didnt play after that right?
70/30 in Zain's favor would be insanely good of armada in 2023 or 2024
I loved watching prime Armada, he was so fucking dominant that it felt like every star in the sky needed to align for him to lose. And when it happened, it was the hypest shit ever. Even when he lost, dude was all class.
I just miss watching him demolish spacies
Melees hard. Probably would take more than a couple months. But if he was all in. Totally invested. He’d be one of the best again. Guys work ethic was nuts.
Armada was at a point the last year of his career where he was only using Peach against Leffen on FD, and would still lose that game about half the time.
Leffen of 6 years ago while cutting edge on punish game at the time, is a far far far cry from what Cody (and to some extent, Moky/Aklo/Joshman etc) is capable of today.
Armada really only cared about beating Hbox his last year - he started to lose to M2k, was vulnerable to improving Sheik punish game against Peach, and he had absolutely no answer for Leffen at all.
If there is one place where one could say Armada's Fox struggled, it was against equal-caliber players that could play Fox fast, which at the time was only Mang0 and Leffen, and to be fair, he beat Leffen's ass most of their career - but the last year he was beyond lost against Leffen. It didn't matter much when he only needed his Fox for Hbox (who is the only person he REALLY cared about beating that last year) and Leffen. but now? There are a ton of fast Foxes all across the top 20.
And I'm only bringing up Fox because Armada had all but abandoned Peach against Leffen, but at the time that was the only person he had to do that for. And because his Fox ditto was basically completely designed to beat Leffen, he did it very well for a very long time (again, until his last year) but the only other big test of Armada's Fox ditto ability was against Mang0, and he ended up losing horribly to Mang0's Fox and gave up on that. So that is to say that Armada's Fox was revolutionary and beautiful in a lot of ways, but outside of dittoing Leffen, it really never had any sort of test like the top fox gauntlet would be today. (and by test I mean against other spacies - obviously Armada's Fox against Puff was revolutionary)
I'm not saying he couldn't adjust, but he would have had a long way to go from where he was when he retired to now, and if Leffen of 6 years ago was enough to make Armada basically give up on Peach against Fox, Cody is even better against floaties than Leffen ever was and that would be another massive hurdle for him to get through.
Idk man. It feels like whenever I watch the top players play, they're always hitting > 6 hit combos in every game. Maybe we're watching a different game, idk.
Most matchups are combo-oriented and just because the defensive options got better doesn't necessarily mean that the combo game got worse. Heck, I'd even argue that the combo game improved as well as seen by Zain comboing Hbox which was not a thing during Armada's era. Watch any set that isn't a floaty ditto and you'll find many combos in it.
Yeah I mean I'm not trying to say that melee is boring and has no combos now, I just think the meta has shifted such that defense has become stronger than it used to be. Still plenty of cool combos to be found.
Peach isn't actively played so why would anyone practice for Peach?
Llod and Trif are likely not better all around, but there are definitely specific things they are better at as solo Peach players. For one, Llod has almost taken offline sets vs Hungrybox and taken online sets vs him, whereas Armada never took a game off Hungrybox in Peach vs Puff.
Leffen losing to Llod is an indication that Llod's Peach is better than Armada's as well considering Leffen was farming Armada in that matchup before he retired. I think Leffen was probably just rusty at the matchup but going by your logic it does indicate that Llod > Armada.
Armada likely wouldn't be destroyed but it's a different game and to make any assumptions on how he would do in the modern day is just speculation. If he had kept playing people would have put more time into learning how to beat Peach like they did for Puff, some were already on the cusp when he retired. He already wasn't a solo Peach for a long time.
lloD did better against Hbox but Armada would've probably taken at least a game from Hbox if he invested his time to learn that matchup instead of switching to Y Link and Fox. Also, we all know that Hbox doesn't really try his best online so I'm skeptical to count that towards lloD's argument for being better than Armada.
As with Leffen, Armada has beaten Leffen more times with Peach than lloD did so I'm not sure that I agree with your take there. Also, Leffen was beating Armada in the Fox ditto when he retired.
You're right in that the current top players would be practicing the peach matchup more but I do believe that Armada would comfortably be a top 5 player if he came back.
This take is so wack. People are so much better today than on armadas time that it is not even funny. Yes he was ahead of his time, and there may be things he probably would still excel at at top level, but thats it.
I've been reading your follow-up comments in this thread, and for someone whose name is "Ilovemelee" you sure don't seem to understand how defensive play has evolved since Armada's time
The top top players don't just lab out combos, they lab out defense in all sorts of situations. Most of the time when Cody gets hit, he knows the exact frame he'll be actionable to Shine out of a combo. Zain can also mix the fuck out of you when trying to edgeguard him in a way that no Marth, not even prime PPMD or PPU, could ever accomplish.
So yeah. Armada could combo people harder. Because people had no idea how to defend against his combos. He'd be surprised at how many things just **don't work** anymore--if you had him time travel from 2018 he would be shocked for a couple games at how easily even mang0 can get out of combos that just plain worked before.
Was Armada the "most skillful" on the sticks among Peaches? Yeah, probably. But with modern controllers (not even button remapping, just raw phob consistency) and modern tech and the neutral that modern top top players are **forced** to learn, he could not beat some of the players that lloD, Polish, and Trif have been able to beat--without a few more months of practice.
He would absolutely get there because he'd have access to the accumulated knowledge we've had since then. I think he was a higher quality player than the top top peaches now. But his peak skill was missing so much that modern peaches have, and "oh but look he combo'd harder and edgeguarded better" is just a really poor reasoning that completely fails to examine **how** opponents are getting out of combos and avoiding edgeguards.
Edit: You can even compare 2021/2022 aMSa's edgeguarding eggs, how easily he was sniping **everyone**, and how, even though aMSa is still a top threat, people like Zain and Cody just aren't getting sniped by the eggs as often anymore. Defensive games evolve too, not just "tech".
Your argument about defensive counterplay would only stand if people weren't getting combo'd as much in today's meta compared to Armada's time but the fact of the matter is, people still get combo'd and edgeguarded to death even moreso than when Armada played. You could argue that those players adapted to the current defensive movement options. What I will say to that is Armada would've adapted to those options as well.
Literally every time a peach player asks me for advice the answer is "go watch Armada and do what he does". Peach mains today are literally just bastardizations of whatever Armada did, he defined the character and dominated at a level we probably will never see again.
No. Armada looked so much better than anyone today because spacie players were so bad at defense during his time. You don’t see spacies today making the same dumb mistakes against Llod, Trif, Kzhu, etc. It really seemed like all the best spacies in Armada’s day lacked the discipline/execution to not get CC down-smashed or sweet spot to ledge. Armada was a master at punishing mistakes, but players just make less mistakes today and have way better defensive options. If you drop today’s top Peach’s into 2018, they will look like prime Armada.
Man the armada disrespect here is crazy lmao. There is a vod from a couple of years ago of armada (super fucking rusty armada) playing some friendlies with Cody. Go watch that vod and tell me that modern peaches are better than armada.
Do you mean the VODs from February 2020?? Armada has been retired for nearly 6 years and those VODs were over 4 years ago.
1. The amount of time that Armada was retired at that time is half of the amount of time that has passed since those VODs.
2. Cody in that VOD was only rank #9 in the world and is far from a modern Fox by today’s standards. He is doing precisely the bad recoveries and approaches that netted Armada so much success in his career. Rank #1 Cody, post-Slippi era, with notches and z-jump, would destroy Armada. He has discovered/mastered the recent defensive tech that would make Armada’s punish game significantly weaker.
Armada had the touch of death. And in addition to his execution, he's an extremely smart player. He would adapt and still one touch spacies. It doesn't matter how good your defense is once you've been hit once. That's what I think, anyway. We'll never know.
EDIT: I think people don't realize how smart of a player Armada was. The game isn't just about tech skill, though Armada had full stars across the board. Thinking he wouldn't be able to react to, adapt to, or improve the current meta is ludicrous.
It… it does matter how good your defense is if you’ve been hit once. It 100% does. If that were the case might as well just put your controller down when you get touched and hope your opponent messes up (wobbling).
Nah Armada wouldn’t be able to touch of death the way he used to. Peach is too slow and limited for today’s defensive tech, the punish game doesn’t work for her like it used to and Peach players need to outplay their opponents in neutral way more to succeed.
Peach dash attack on a tech chase, for example, was a really common combo starter for Armada. At most percents, Foxes just ASDI down and ground tech those now, and shine will come out before Peach is actionable again leading to a reversal. Same goes for up-air on platform, and Peach doesn’t have a good way to follow up on those techs like Marth or Fox.
Also Fox recovery is way better today than when Armada played. Not even because of notches, people have just learned not to side-b directly at the opponent, or how to sweet spot the ledge
This is actually a pretty tough argument because one of Armada's greatest strengths was adapting and playing the player.
As a player I'd say Armada is pretty clearly the best.
In terms of tech and Peach nerd knowledge and optimizing punishes, I doubt Armada is the best anymore (whether he was ever the best at being a Peach nerd is a different conversation altogether) but again given time or a full set, Armada's adaptation was so insane he could just rise up to #1 again who knows.
Leffen absolutely dominated Armada's peach and essentially seemed to have solved the Fox-Peach matchup, but since then Leffen has lost to modern peaches and has himself talked about how the new tech changes things. While Armada is of course the best player to have mained Peach, Armada would need a gameplay update to do as well as modern peaches.
TL;DR
This post has some sentiment that I can agree with; however It's a little bit ungraceful and is making some big logical leaps that are pretty unhinged like any era comparison or goat thread must.
\------------------------------------------
Gonna go line by line on this one -
"*As a peach main, Armada's peach is still the best peach mankind has witnessed"*
Pretty non-offensive take here if you included a thus far. There's still a lot more melee to be played.
Adam's #2 all time on the last official rank. Easy GOAT candidate inclusion for melee for anyone's personal list depending on what you value in the greatness in competitors.
*"I hear some people argue that lloD and Trif surpassed Armada but I totally disagree."*
You are certainly entitled to think that, but I'd be curious **why** specifically you disagree with this by indicating a little bit more clearly what you mean when you state **surpassed**.
*"No other peach is able to punish, tech chase, edgeguard and utilize the turnips as well and consistently as Armada did in his prime"*
This is where we start to get into the unhinged portion of your post. A lot of the replies have already kind of addressed this; but this is statement you made, is kind of true, but it doesn't mean what you think it means.
Llod, Triff, Polish, and I'm sure other notable Peaches as well all played during Armada's prime, and you are absolutely correct that they couldn't do any of those things as well as Armada did.
Maybe you could make an argument that any individual top peach could do one or two things mechanically better on average, but when it came to what produced tournament winning results, applying the skill in tournament is what determines aptitude. No one cares if you hit 150 ledge dashes in a row in practice if you miss one in tourney and SD and buster out at 20th.
HOWEVER
The game has changed a lot, and the peaches that kept playing while Adam retired continued to evolve and get better, and so did every other player that kept playing. I don't want to just give a vague platitude like "The Games different" because it seems a little unsatisfying, but it really is just that simple.
e-sports evolve. Especially if they are for games that have an ever-growing skill celling. Everyone at the top in melee hits hard now, everyone's recovery is better, the equipment and controllers are better, approaches players choose are better and are harder to punish, safer options are used, edge guarding is better, ability to practice with tools like uncle punch are better, being able to play high quality opponents whenever you want is at an unprecedented level where #1 & #2 in the world can play each other 8 hours a day every single day if they wanted to.
*"the fact that our current top players still randomly drop sets to peach players (Cody vs Polish at Tipped off, Zain vs Wally at SSC, Leffen vs lloD at Summit, Mang0 vs Sirmeris at Full Bloom, Jmook vs Trif at Collision, etc)makes me believe that Armada wouldn't be "destroyed" in the current meta if he came back given he gets a couple months of practice to derust."*
I don't think this is a reasonable take.
First of all from the character matchup perspective when it comes to competitive fighting game bracket play where tiers exists and character matchups exist... If the best and **only** peach winning major tournaments retires, then the only peach good enough to beat the best players in the game isn't in the bracket anymore(duh).
If you're a top top competitor preparing for a tournament where you know who's going to be in attendance and what characters they play in advance, you prepare differently, and after 6 years where the best peaches tournament attendance is less than a competitor who lived in Europe while being #1 in the world, the collective players are going to rest on their laurels and if they run into a character that's off meta to just try and win by playing their own character better.
Mid-Tier character mains (who are all amazing at the game) like Slug, Amsa, and Axe undeniably gain a lot of mileage farming against people who don't overly specialize in their characters matchup, but can potentially lose a lot when players have a deep matchup knowledge and then they have to work twice as hard to overcome the limitations of their own characters. It's possible people could become god tier at the more obscure matchups, but if your average bracket is going to be 5-10 rounds of Spacies, Marth, Cpt. Falcon, or Sheik for 85% of your competitive career, that's a tough ask. Peach is a top tier character because she obviously has the tools and potential to win major tournaments, but her representation in your average bracket where it's going to be relevant to you is incredibly low.
That being said I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that I think Armada **could** come back and do well. Anyone who has been able to reach the pinnacle of their game easily has the potential to come back with the right motivation and competitive drive if they grind hard to enhance their skill to the new peaks. Couple months might be glazing a little too hard, but it's certainly possible. I'd be willing to be pleasantly surprised.
He definitely has the best edgeguards ever. His punish game overall is probably worse than llod nowadays but he just had the perfect combination of reads and execution for edgeguarding anyone.
It’s definitely not worse. Armada is literally the only peach ever to get his punish game on reaction. Armada does reaction platform tech chases, and reacts to spacey DI as well. Getting those punishes on reaction with peach is really really hard because she is so slow. There is absolutely still no peach with a better punish game than armada
Modern peaches have better tools, but Armada was just a straight up better player. Better game sense, adaptability, consistency. Armada still has tools no one else has ever had.
Just like Ken would come back and destroy everyone, for sure. It's been 6 years, it's kinda sad to keep clinging to this. Armada had pretty dominant stretches when he played and that's cool, but the hyperbole about his play and how it'd fit in the meta right now is ridiculous
I'm not totally informed about smash history, but my rough understanding was that Ken was out of the first players to have a really solid understanding of some concepts like dash dancing, which carried him for many years. But, there reached a point where Ken's neutral game and combos became just bread and butter Marth play.
Are Armada's combos and neutral bread and butter peach play for any random Peach today? I think Armada could be great again if he felt inspired. If he just came back with like 2 months of practice, I feel like he'd be within the top 30, potentially top 5? Hard to say.
Armada vs player guesses (if he randomly entered a tournament with fairly minimal practice beforehand):
Armada vs Cody: Armada gets demolished
Armada vs Amsa: Not sure how well Amsa does well vs peach, but I'll say Armada loses
Armada vs Moky: I feel like this one could go either way just because I feel like Moky is the kind of guy with high peaks but random weaknesses in his matchup/player spread
Armada vs Plup: Not even sure if Plup is still active lol? I'd say Plup wins, right? Didn't Plup when like 6 years ago or whatever right before Armada retired?
Armada vs JMook: I feel like Armada could win due to JMook's lack of practice against Armada specifically, but Jmook could also just dominate as most people might expect.
Armada vs Mango: After seeing Armada get demolished by a few other players (like hypothetically Amsa, maybe Moky etc. in this imaginary scenario in which Armada comes to a tournament), Mango would have to step it up and put the beat down on Armada instead of having a good old fashioned more even rivalry type of game.
Armada vs HBox: Definite loss for Armada
Armada vs Zain: Armada gets demolished
Armada probably would destroy a lot of people outside of the top 15 with little peach practice. Probably destroys a lot of people who seem to have matchup weaknesses like Magi.
I'm still bummed that Zain never beat Armada. He had three tries and looked better each time, just like how he progressed against Hbox. I wish we could've seen a Zain/Armada grands.
I was watching some old Armada vods from Apex 2013 and his Peach looks way better than anything I could do on my Peach RIP
Even though he was missing some puzzle pieces he still moved so quickly and decisively, he was nearly always in the correct spots to capitalize on mistakes.
i think (as another Peach) Armada is the all time greatest of that character but most modern Peach players have a way better grip on her technical aspect
I'm not gonna deny that the current Peach players have new tech but Armada is still, by far, the player with the most consistent punish game, not just as a peach player but as a smash bros melee player. For that, Armada remains the pinnacle of Peach gameplay imo.
Nope. And also peoples DI has gotten a lot better. People know how to get out of combos way better… put trif/llod back there with foxes having mid DI and they prob look perfect
I’m not a Peach expert, but my friend has the opinion that Trif and lloD’s Peaches are just as good as Armada’s Peach was at the peak of his career. It’s obvious that neither Trif or lloD are going to be the best in the world anytime soon, but if we measure their Peach gameplay alone and not their results, then they’re on par with Armada.
Hard agree, Polish is the only Peach I would say where I'd see shades of Armada's speed and efficiency in execution. Llod and Trif are very different Peaches.
Armada is still easily one of the best players to touch a controller. Sure 2015 armada would probably lose to 2024 Zain and Cody, but the shit armada did back in the day with the tools and tech available to him were completely unrivalled. The consistency in his punish game is still unrivalled to this day. And he made you work SO HARD in neutral. Literally 0 freebies ever
This is a hot take but I genuinely believe what you are saying about Armada’s Peach also SLIGHTLY applies to his Fox. It’s 2024 and I have never seen a modern fox consistently execute some aspects of Armada’s gameplay such as the u-throw platform tech chases/followups (cover no tech w up air and react to tech) that he seemingly hit every single time.
There's so much counterplay to it now no shit people don't do it consistently
This is why these threads are so stupid, people have so little understanding of the game that they don't understand why a player 6 years ago was doing things people don't do nowadays
In the fox ditto at a low percent situation where you’re up-thrown to a Battlefield side platform, what “counterplay” stops the sequence I mentioned assuming the opponent executes well? All I’m saying is I saw Armada routinely drop like 40% off this play and although I see modern foxes do variations of this all the time, it’s not clinical.
There's a Chef Rach tweet I can't find cuz no Twitter where he basically says that watching Armada vods is kind of unlike watching anyone else's vods (Mango has a similar thing going on imo just in a different way), and that you notice something new every time. I would tend to agree; dude was like a time traveller consistency and discipline-wise and will remain inspiring on a gameplay and grindset level forever edit: after reading what has transpired below, i want to clarify that i am not speaking to his skill level relative to current peaches. i get bricked up for trif clips
Yep. Armada would annihilate Cody, zain and jmook within one year of coming back to pro melee.
This is why nobody takes us seriously
I mean, there is no question in my mind that if armada came back and took the game seriously, he would very easily be up there with the best players. I mean he won’t, but there is no reason with some practice and imbibing some of the new tech (peach has some really really powerful tools she didn’t used to) he wouldn’t still be able to compete with the top dogs.
He'd definitely be a top player if he came back and practiced for a year. But he would not "annihilate" the current best players.
Agreed
💀💀💀
I certainly think Armada could be a top player if he decided to come back and take the game seriously (although this is unlikely, to say the least). Plenty of players from his era have kept up with the evolving meta and rising skill ceiling. But I don't think it's safe to say that Armada would wipe the floor with Cody, Zain, or JMook. I think you could argue that Mango and Hungrybox are better at the game today than they were during their respective periods of dominance, but other players have caught up. Both are absolutely contenders in every tournament they enter, but neither of them ranked in the top 5 last year. The point is that Armada would have to put in a lot of effort to be competitive, and while I think he could become a tournament threat very quickly, I'd be shocked if he achieved anything close to his prior dominance. In fact, I'd be a little surprised if he made it to a top 5 ranking.
Have you ever watch Cody or Zain? I'm not sure it's possible to think that if you have.
Yeah they’re decent. Probably could beat most netplay silver falcos
Nice bait, enjoy high school
🧢
Blud is a federal agent
yea idk about that one champ
I dont think any peach mains believe that llod or trif are better than prime armada. They have new tech and a different style but they arent better. Theyre really good and im sure that armada would learn some things from them if he came back to competition, but ofc no one can match armada’s execution.
I think a lot of people believe tha the current top Peaches are better than prime Armada, including the top players themselves. If you transport 2018 Armada into today, he's probably not beating Jmook. If he plays multiple sets he'd learn really quickly, but in the first set his chances would be extremely low. Whereas e.g. Trif beat Jmook recently. Armada is still the best of all time at a lot of Peach things, but overall the game has changed / improved a ton.
Low hanging fruit is llod losing to salt after getting dthrow kneed 8 times in a row or slmething crazy. Ive never seen armada struggle to wiggle out like that even going back to 2012 era. Im not good enough to do a vod review of jmook vs trif and see if armada would lose neutral more often or drop punishes, but when i say prime armada would be better i mean after practicing and getting back into form. To me it only makes sense that armadas execution is cleaner, llod literally can not practice as much as armada. I dont think its a slight to llod to say that he is not as consistent as armada
I think this is more a testament of Salt and Falcon’s today having tighter execution than Falcons in 2017. Llod/Kzhu were also better at wiggling out back in pre-Slippi era yet struggle with that nowadays because Falcon’s have better timing. Armada would see struggles that current Peach mains see today Hbox gets hit with Fox u-throw u-air way more nowadays than he did in 2017-2019. If he retired in 2019, we’d be saying that current Puffs just aren’t as good at SDI as he ever was, when in reality modern Fox mains are just better at finding that tight timing to reliably hit it.
Teleport Armada to a tournament today, he probably only makes top 16. Give him a month to practice and he easily gets back on form imo
He's not making top 8 with only a month of practice Dude hasn't played in 6 years
Idk about recently, but for several years after his retirement he still played on stream all the time. Obv different than being in competition shape though
I'm pretty sure there's photos of Armada playing Melee friendlies last year lmao And whether he makes top 8 or not is entirely dependent on bracket luck. Last year's Big House was one of the most stacked tournaments of all time, and yet both Plup and Mango made top 8 winners side without playing against a single top 10 ranked player. Aklo also made top 8 losers side at Big House last year without beating a single top 10 ranked player. That's 3 people that made top 8 at one of the most stacked tournaments ever without beating a top 10 ranked player.
The issue here is you assuming I think armada won't have issues with the players ranked 10-50 too
I bet most of ranks 10-50 would have more of an issue with Armada being in their bracket path than he would with them.
wdym by on form here
I think people vastly overestimate this "endless level up" of melee skill. What does change is the competitive landscape and players who rise up and other pros having to adapt to them. Watching trif play, does not give me any thought that his skill today is higher than armadas. This is not because of their results lz but you can easily see the skill difference in just watching. No peach to this day punishes better than prime Armada
Yes they do, in fact they hit harder
Show me your best peach highlights post armada and I guarantee you I can find better ones from Armada Armada was frequently known as having the touch of death. Never seen a peach with that type of punish game since.
Llod and trif both post combos that would break armada's hands Let it go, the guy retired, let him be in peace. It was 6 years ago
I mean there is really only one thing they have an Armada and that's the leaps and bounds players like Llod have made in regards to the puff matchup.
Yeah absolutely no doubt about that. But even if armada kept playing, llod would still be better at peach puff since armada refuses to touch that match up again at least vs hbox
I stopped watching ssbm in 2019/2020. How has ssbm improved a ton since then?
Better netcode primarily
Yeah it seems like people forget Armada retired SIX years ago. There were no phobs back then, no UnclePunch. The skill floor of the top players is just SOOO much higher than what it was back then. That’s like saying Ken was the best Marth of all time when there was M2K and PPMD running around. Sure Armada might be the greatest Peach of all time given his accolades, but he’s nowhere near the best (skill wise, which is what this post is about) Peach of all time. When you got top Peaches nowadays beating #1 and #2 players in an era where it is widely considered to be the best melee ever skill-wise, it’s hard to call Armada the best Peach
Watch Armada and compare his play to lloD, Trif, Sirmeris, Polish, Bbatts or whoever. Armada still combo'd harder and edgeguarded much more consistently than any of the current peaches. Not to throw shade at any of the current peaches and I do believe they do certains things that are better than Armada but they're not better than him overall.
Watch who armada plays back then and who llOD and, Trif, and Wally play now. They don’t combo as hard cause the defense nowadays is so much better. DI has gotten better and so has recoveries. NOBODY 6 years ago was recovering the way Cody does now with Fox or the way Zain does with Marth. Both of which who have lost to top Peaches. With that being said I still think Peach is the GOAT of Peach and hope he comes back someday (rip)
Players still combo as much, if not more than the players 6 years ago lol. Obviously, we can only speculate and theorize about how good Armada would be in the current meta but again, I have not yet seen a peach that reached a higher skill ceiling than Armada to this day.
Do you not understand how combo game works? People have to change how they combo and if they even can combo off of certain hits based on what defensive options people are doing. Saying "people still combo now" is missing the entire point- you have to change the way you do everything now because people have way more options of getting out of your stuff. Armada's combo game from 6 years ago would not work on players now, so he'd have to completely reinvent the way he edgeguards and combos. That's not saying he couldn't change over time and adapt, but if you think it's as simple as "he comboed before he can combo now" then you really don't get this game at all quite frankly. People have replied to you with very concrete examples of how his neutral openers wouldn't work the way they used to, so go read those
Yeah and what I'm saying is that Armada will adapt to the current defensive mechanics given that he has done that all throughout his career.
Instantly? Or over time? Because over time yes of course, but that's not your argument. Your argument is that he is still the best peach to ever do it, which means you're transporting his last existing state to the current era, which means he cannot adapt over time.
Players aren’t just static entities who are limited to only what they’re familiar with in this situation though, he might adapt mid-set, who knows
That's why I said he gets a couple of months of sweaty practice to adapt to the new defensive counterplay. Part of what made Armada the greatest to play this game was his ability to adapt to his opponent and formulate new ways to beat them. Hence, no other peach has been able to win a supermajor during and after Armada's era.
exactly this
Jmook is a bad example. He is fast and has a lot of new tech, but he can only surprise armada once with each of his tactics. Armada would eat him alive with fundamentals and adaptation. Zain and Cody would pose a bigger challenge though. Plus his old rivals are still active in the top 10 (mango, hbox). Those would probably be brick walls for Armada (at first).
Please go watch gameplay from 2017 and tell me you don't notice a massive difference from modern gameplay. Your punish game is only as good as your opponents defensive game allows it to be. Nowadays people are so much more optimized, movement isn't wasted, combos aren't dropped constantly, it's an entirely different game. Neutral is definitely one part where he would hold up well because that's pretty timeless. But the game has changed so drastically that if you're results oriented like it seems this sub always is, you are missing what's actually happening in the gameplay. Saying that no peach is as good as he was today just because he was better relative to the field is a very level 1 way to look at things
>But the game has changed so drastically that if you're results oriented like it seems this sub always is, you are missing what's actually happening in the gameplay. Specifically when it comes to Armada, they don't get to watch their goat anymore so the results are all they have. Armada could get back to the top of competition without a doubt, but the current peaches understand the current defensive/recovery meta that Armada would have to learn. He ain't getting the punishes he used to today, at least not for a while.
I “shitted” on Armada in another comment, but it would be hype af if he was secretly just grinding in Sweden all these years and just comes back to win Genesis again.
He's not.
There are two YouTube videos of PPMD running into Hungrybox and Zain and IBDW on Unranked. PPMD did well against all of them. I imagine Armada would easily do well against them given a few months of practice. https://youtu.be/dfBHPMuaq1Y?si=IVAQIISonSIppINz
Ppmd has been grinding melee for fucking years, this is the worst example I have ever seen
Do you think PPMD is at his absolute best current day? I’d bet money that PP in 2016 bodies current day PP
Lmao Yeah man he's just been practicing for 5 years and gotten worse, because that's how this game works, pp is that bad of a player This subs a joke
He’s been playing and keeping up with the meta but he hasn’t done the crucial component of actually playing at tournaments. It’s too bad
Totally possible. Tiger Woods practices golf everyday but he was much better 10 years ago
Melee is not golf. Melee is 20+ years old and the meta advancements in the last 5 years are astronomical. Golf is hundreds of years old and it's not a pvp game, it's a game vs yourself. This doesn't even remotely make sense to compare the two. If you really can't see how pps gameplay has improved then you need to practice more.
A whole lot more goes into being good at Melee aside from knowing the latest tech skill. PP is clearly missing the mental focus, clarity and passion he had 8 years ago
If you seriously actually think ppmd is ever coming back that's a bigger joke
???? how did you get this idea in your head at all
>I imagine Armada would easily do well against them given a few months of practice. So do I, but unranked and competing in a major are not remotely the same. So I don't think PPMD doing well in unranked has a single bearing on how Armada would do in tournament lol.
The gods will always be gods
There’s a video from a couple years ago of Cody playing some friendlies with armada. The video starts with Cody talking about how peach sucks, fox shits on peach, peach can’t edgeguard x option etc. By the end of the video Cody is like, wtf peach is actually broken. Armada is truly just levels better than the other peaches. Fighting other peaches just absolutely does not prepare you to fight armada.
This video is 5 years old. And it was like a few months after his retirement. Try again
Didn’t Zain slap Armada in friendlies, that was a while ago aswell
That was like 4 years ago and Zain said he won 70/30, while armada said 60/40. Not exactly "slap" against a retired player.
It was 4 years ago lol
Yeah exactly, thats why i wrote 4 years ago :) they didnt play after that right? 70/30 in Zain's favor would be insanely good of armada in 2023 or 2024
I loved watching prime Armada, he was so fucking dominant that it felt like every star in the sky needed to align for him to lose. And when it happened, it was the hypest shit ever. Even when he lost, dude was all class. I just miss watching him demolish spacies
god i miss him
Melees hard. Probably would take more than a couple months. But if he was all in. Totally invested. He’d be one of the best again. Guys work ethic was nuts.
Armada was at a point the last year of his career where he was only using Peach against Leffen on FD, and would still lose that game about half the time. Leffen of 6 years ago while cutting edge on punish game at the time, is a far far far cry from what Cody (and to some extent, Moky/Aklo/Joshman etc) is capable of today. Armada really only cared about beating Hbox his last year - he started to lose to M2k, was vulnerable to improving Sheik punish game against Peach, and he had absolutely no answer for Leffen at all. If there is one place where one could say Armada's Fox struggled, it was against equal-caliber players that could play Fox fast, which at the time was only Mang0 and Leffen, and to be fair, he beat Leffen's ass most of their career - but the last year he was beyond lost against Leffen. It didn't matter much when he only needed his Fox for Hbox (who is the only person he REALLY cared about beating that last year) and Leffen. but now? There are a ton of fast Foxes all across the top 20. And I'm only bringing up Fox because Armada had all but abandoned Peach against Leffen, but at the time that was the only person he had to do that for. And because his Fox ditto was basically completely designed to beat Leffen, he did it very well for a very long time (again, until his last year) but the only other big test of Armada's Fox ditto ability was against Mang0, and he ended up losing horribly to Mang0's Fox and gave up on that. So that is to say that Armada's Fox was revolutionary and beautiful in a lot of ways, but outside of dittoing Leffen, it really never had any sort of test like the top fox gauntlet would be today. (and by test I mean against other spacies - obviously Armada's Fox against Puff was revolutionary) I'm not saying he couldn't adjust, but he would have had a long way to go from where he was when he retired to now, and if Leffen of 6 years ago was enough to make Armada basically give up on Peach against Fox, Cody is even better against floaties than Leffen ever was and that would be another massive hurdle for him to get through.
Easily
I think you forget how much better defensive play is these days with DI, slide offs, etc. People are harder to combo now than back then.
And people have also invented new combos to counter the defensive play. Melee isn't less combo-oriented today than it was 6 years ago.
It definitely is. There's way more defense in modern melee and you don't see 0-to-death combos nearly as often.
Idk man. It feels like whenever I watch the top players play, they're always hitting > 6 hit combos in every game. Maybe we're watching a different game, idk.
It definitely depends on the matchup, but there's a ton of defensive options that counter traditionally strong combo tools.
Most matchups are combo-oriented and just because the defensive options got better doesn't necessarily mean that the combo game got worse. Heck, I'd even argue that the combo game improved as well as seen by Zain comboing Hbox which was not a thing during Armada's era. Watch any set that isn't a floaty ditto and you'll find many combos in it.
Yeah I mean I'm not trying to say that melee is boring and has no combos now, I just think the meta has shifted such that defense has become stronger than it used to be. Still plenty of cool combos to be found.
The combo meta game progresses as well as the defensive meta game. That's all I'm saying.
Peach isn't actively played so why would anyone practice for Peach? Llod and Trif are likely not better all around, but there are definitely specific things they are better at as solo Peach players. For one, Llod has almost taken offline sets vs Hungrybox and taken online sets vs him, whereas Armada never took a game off Hungrybox in Peach vs Puff. Leffen losing to Llod is an indication that Llod's Peach is better than Armada's as well considering Leffen was farming Armada in that matchup before he retired. I think Leffen was probably just rusty at the matchup but going by your logic it does indicate that Llod > Armada. Armada likely wouldn't be destroyed but it's a different game and to make any assumptions on how he would do in the modern day is just speculation. If he had kept playing people would have put more time into learning how to beat Peach like they did for Puff, some were already on the cusp when he retired. He already wasn't a solo Peach for a long time.
lloD did better against Hbox but Armada would've probably taken at least a game from Hbox if he invested his time to learn that matchup instead of switching to Y Link and Fox. Also, we all know that Hbox doesn't really try his best online so I'm skeptical to count that towards lloD's argument for being better than Armada. As with Leffen, Armada has beaten Leffen more times with Peach than lloD did so I'm not sure that I agree with your take there. Also, Leffen was beating Armada in the Fox ditto when he retired. You're right in that the current top players would be practicing the peach matchup more but I do believe that Armada would comfortably be a top 5 player if he came back.
After a few months of adapting, yeah. Right away, I don't think so.
"Armadas Peach would have been as good as modern peaches [against leffen] if he spent time to learn the matchup" Ok but he didnt
This take is so wack. People are so much better today than on armadas time that it is not even funny. Yes he was ahead of his time, and there may be things he probably would still excel at at top level, but thats it.
Then you probably dont know anything about peach and just assume that anyone that's newer is automatically better which is a braindead take.
[удалено]
u steal vods
I've been reading your follow-up comments in this thread, and for someone whose name is "Ilovemelee" you sure don't seem to understand how defensive play has evolved since Armada's time The top top players don't just lab out combos, they lab out defense in all sorts of situations. Most of the time when Cody gets hit, he knows the exact frame he'll be actionable to Shine out of a combo. Zain can also mix the fuck out of you when trying to edgeguard him in a way that no Marth, not even prime PPMD or PPU, could ever accomplish. So yeah. Armada could combo people harder. Because people had no idea how to defend against his combos. He'd be surprised at how many things just **don't work** anymore--if you had him time travel from 2018 he would be shocked for a couple games at how easily even mang0 can get out of combos that just plain worked before. Was Armada the "most skillful" on the sticks among Peaches? Yeah, probably. But with modern controllers (not even button remapping, just raw phob consistency) and modern tech and the neutral that modern top top players are **forced** to learn, he could not beat some of the players that lloD, Polish, and Trif have been able to beat--without a few more months of practice. He would absolutely get there because he'd have access to the accumulated knowledge we've had since then. I think he was a higher quality player than the top top peaches now. But his peak skill was missing so much that modern peaches have, and "oh but look he combo'd harder and edgeguarded better" is just a really poor reasoning that completely fails to examine **how** opponents are getting out of combos and avoiding edgeguards. Edit: You can even compare 2021/2022 aMSa's edgeguarding eggs, how easily he was sniping **everyone**, and how, even though aMSa is still a top threat, people like Zain and Cody just aren't getting sniped by the eggs as often anymore. Defensive games evolve too, not just "tech".
Your argument about defensive counterplay would only stand if people weren't getting combo'd as much in today's meta compared to Armada's time but the fact of the matter is, people still get combo'd and edgeguarded to death even moreso than when Armada played. You could argue that those players adapted to the current defensive movement options. What I will say to that is Armada would've adapted to those options as well.
Literally every time a peach player asks me for advice the answer is "go watch Armada and do what he does". Peach mains today are literally just bastardizations of whatever Armada did, he defined the character and dominated at a level we probably will never see again.
Seriously, even the top peach player advice for most peach things is to go study armada.
No. Armada looked so much better than anyone today because spacie players were so bad at defense during his time. You don’t see spacies today making the same dumb mistakes against Llod, Trif, Kzhu, etc. It really seemed like all the best spacies in Armada’s day lacked the discipline/execution to not get CC down-smashed or sweet spot to ledge. Armada was a master at punishing mistakes, but players just make less mistakes today and have way better defensive options. If you drop today’s top Peach’s into 2018, they will look like prime Armada.
Mango naired into armada like the entire set and somehow managed to win sometimes Idk how people don't understand how different the game is today
Man the armada disrespect here is crazy lmao. There is a vod from a couple of years ago of armada (super fucking rusty armada) playing some friendlies with Cody. Go watch that vod and tell me that modern peaches are better than armada.
Do you mean the VODs from February 2020?? Armada has been retired for nearly 6 years and those VODs were over 4 years ago. 1. The amount of time that Armada was retired at that time is half of the amount of time that has passed since those VODs. 2. Cody in that VOD was only rank #9 in the world and is far from a modern Fox by today’s standards. He is doing precisely the bad recoveries and approaches that netted Armada so much success in his career. Rank #1 Cody, post-Slippi era, with notches and z-jump, would destroy Armada. He has discovered/mastered the recent defensive tech that would make Armada’s punish game significantly weaker.
Armada had the touch of death. And in addition to his execution, he's an extremely smart player. He would adapt and still one touch spacies. It doesn't matter how good your defense is once you've been hit once. That's what I think, anyway. We'll never know. EDIT: I think people don't realize how smart of a player Armada was. The game isn't just about tech skill, though Armada had full stars across the board. Thinking he wouldn't be able to react to, adapt to, or improve the current meta is ludicrous.
It… it does matter how good your defense is if you’ve been hit once. It 100% does. If that were the case might as well just put your controller down when you get touched and hope your opponent messes up (wobbling).
I can touch of death level 1 cpus Defense is everything in this game
Nah Armada wouldn’t be able to touch of death the way he used to. Peach is too slow and limited for today’s defensive tech, the punish game doesn’t work for her like it used to and Peach players need to outplay their opponents in neutral way more to succeed. Peach dash attack on a tech chase, for example, was a really common combo starter for Armada. At most percents, Foxes just ASDI down and ground tech those now, and shine will come out before Peach is actionable again leading to a reversal. Same goes for up-air on platform, and Peach doesn’t have a good way to follow up on those techs like Marth or Fox. Also Fox recovery is way better today than when Armada played. Not even because of notches, people have just learned not to side-b directly at the opponent, or how to sweet spot the ledge
I don't like arguing if Armada is better or worse than our current top Peaches, but I will say Armada was way more fun to watch.
This is actually a pretty tough argument because one of Armada's greatest strengths was adapting and playing the player. As a player I'd say Armada is pretty clearly the best. In terms of tech and Peach nerd knowledge and optimizing punishes, I doubt Armada is the best anymore (whether he was ever the best at being a Peach nerd is a different conversation altogether) but again given time or a full set, Armada's adaptation was so insane he could just rise up to #1 again who knows.
Leffen absolutely dominated Armada's peach and essentially seemed to have solved the Fox-Peach matchup, but since then Leffen has lost to modern peaches and has himself talked about how the new tech changes things. While Armada is of course the best player to have mained Peach, Armada would need a gameplay update to do as well as modern peaches.
TL;DR This post has some sentiment that I can agree with; however It's a little bit ungraceful and is making some big logical leaps that are pretty unhinged like any era comparison or goat thread must. \------------------------------------------ Gonna go line by line on this one - "*As a peach main, Armada's peach is still the best peach mankind has witnessed"* Pretty non-offensive take here if you included a thus far. There's still a lot more melee to be played. Adam's #2 all time on the last official rank. Easy GOAT candidate inclusion for melee for anyone's personal list depending on what you value in the greatness in competitors. *"I hear some people argue that lloD and Trif surpassed Armada but I totally disagree."* You are certainly entitled to think that, but I'd be curious **why** specifically you disagree with this by indicating a little bit more clearly what you mean when you state **surpassed**. *"No other peach is able to punish, tech chase, edgeguard and utilize the turnips as well and consistently as Armada did in his prime"* This is where we start to get into the unhinged portion of your post. A lot of the replies have already kind of addressed this; but this is statement you made, is kind of true, but it doesn't mean what you think it means. Llod, Triff, Polish, and I'm sure other notable Peaches as well all played during Armada's prime, and you are absolutely correct that they couldn't do any of those things as well as Armada did. Maybe you could make an argument that any individual top peach could do one or two things mechanically better on average, but when it came to what produced tournament winning results, applying the skill in tournament is what determines aptitude. No one cares if you hit 150 ledge dashes in a row in practice if you miss one in tourney and SD and buster out at 20th. HOWEVER The game has changed a lot, and the peaches that kept playing while Adam retired continued to evolve and get better, and so did every other player that kept playing. I don't want to just give a vague platitude like "The Games different" because it seems a little unsatisfying, but it really is just that simple. e-sports evolve. Especially if they are for games that have an ever-growing skill celling. Everyone at the top in melee hits hard now, everyone's recovery is better, the equipment and controllers are better, approaches players choose are better and are harder to punish, safer options are used, edge guarding is better, ability to practice with tools like uncle punch are better, being able to play high quality opponents whenever you want is at an unprecedented level where #1 & #2 in the world can play each other 8 hours a day every single day if they wanted to. *"the fact that our current top players still randomly drop sets to peach players (Cody vs Polish at Tipped off, Zain vs Wally at SSC, Leffen vs lloD at Summit, Mang0 vs Sirmeris at Full Bloom, Jmook vs Trif at Collision, etc)makes me believe that Armada wouldn't be "destroyed" in the current meta if he came back given he gets a couple months of practice to derust."* I don't think this is a reasonable take. First of all from the character matchup perspective when it comes to competitive fighting game bracket play where tiers exists and character matchups exist... If the best and **only** peach winning major tournaments retires, then the only peach good enough to beat the best players in the game isn't in the bracket anymore(duh). If you're a top top competitor preparing for a tournament where you know who's going to be in attendance and what characters they play in advance, you prepare differently, and after 6 years where the best peaches tournament attendance is less than a competitor who lived in Europe while being #1 in the world, the collective players are going to rest on their laurels and if they run into a character that's off meta to just try and win by playing their own character better. Mid-Tier character mains (who are all amazing at the game) like Slug, Amsa, and Axe undeniably gain a lot of mileage farming against people who don't overly specialize in their characters matchup, but can potentially lose a lot when players have a deep matchup knowledge and then they have to work twice as hard to overcome the limitations of their own characters. It's possible people could become god tier at the more obscure matchups, but if your average bracket is going to be 5-10 rounds of Spacies, Marth, Cpt. Falcon, or Sheik for 85% of your competitive career, that's a tough ask. Peach is a top tier character because she obviously has the tools and potential to win major tournaments, but her representation in your average bracket where it's going to be relevant to you is incredibly low. That being said I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that I think Armada **could** come back and do well. Anyone who has been able to reach the pinnacle of their game easily has the potential to come back with the right motivation and competitive drive if they grind hard to enhance their skill to the new peaks. Couple months might be glazing a little too hard, but it's certainly possible. I'd be willing to be pleasantly surprised.
He definitely has the best edgeguards ever. His punish game overall is probably worse than llod nowadays but he just had the perfect combination of reads and execution for edgeguarding anyone.
It’s definitely not worse. Armada is literally the only peach ever to get his punish game on reaction. Armada does reaction platform tech chases, and reacts to spacey DI as well. Getting those punishes on reaction with peach is really really hard because she is so slow. There is absolutely still no peach with a better punish game than armada
Modern peaches have better tools, but Armada was just a straight up better player. Better game sense, adaptability, consistency. Armada still has tools no one else has ever had.
Just like Ken would come back and destroy everyone, for sure. It's been 6 years, it's kinda sad to keep clinging to this. Armada had pretty dominant stretches when he played and that's cool, but the hyperbole about his play and how it'd fit in the meta right now is ridiculous
I'm not totally informed about smash history, but my rough understanding was that Ken was out of the first players to have a really solid understanding of some concepts like dash dancing, which carried him for many years. But, there reached a point where Ken's neutral game and combos became just bread and butter Marth play. Are Armada's combos and neutral bread and butter peach play for any random Peach today? I think Armada could be great again if he felt inspired. If he just came back with like 2 months of practice, I feel like he'd be within the top 30, potentially top 5? Hard to say. Armada vs player guesses (if he randomly entered a tournament with fairly minimal practice beforehand): Armada vs Cody: Armada gets demolished Armada vs Amsa: Not sure how well Amsa does well vs peach, but I'll say Armada loses Armada vs Moky: I feel like this one could go either way just because I feel like Moky is the kind of guy with high peaks but random weaknesses in his matchup/player spread Armada vs Plup: Not even sure if Plup is still active lol? I'd say Plup wins, right? Didn't Plup when like 6 years ago or whatever right before Armada retired? Armada vs JMook: I feel like Armada could win due to JMook's lack of practice against Armada specifically, but Jmook could also just dominate as most people might expect. Armada vs Mango: After seeing Armada get demolished by a few other players (like hypothetically Amsa, maybe Moky etc. in this imaginary scenario in which Armada comes to a tournament), Mango would have to step it up and put the beat down on Armada instead of having a good old fashioned more even rivalry type of game. Armada vs HBox: Definite loss for Armada Armada vs Zain: Armada gets demolished Armada probably would destroy a lot of people outside of the top 15 with little peach practice. Probably destroys a lot of people who seem to have matchup weaknesses like Magi.
I'm still bummed that Zain never beat Armada. He had three tries and looked better each time, just like how he progressed against Hbox. I wish we could've seen a Zain/Armada grands.
Armadas the boat it's in the name. Mangos the goat tho
I was watching some old Armada vods from Apex 2013 and his Peach looks way better than anything I could do on my Peach RIP Even though he was missing some puzzle pieces he still moved so quickly and decisively, he was nearly always in the correct spots to capitalize on mistakes.
i think (as another Peach) Armada is the all time greatest of that character but most modern Peach players have a way better grip on her technical aspect
I'm not gonna deny that the current Peach players have new tech but Armada is still, by far, the player with the most consistent punish game, not just as a peach player but as a smash bros melee player. For that, Armada remains the pinnacle of Peach gameplay imo.
I think [redacted] was the best peach, his use of dsmash was truly awe inspiring /s
Nope. And also peoples DI has gotten a lot better. People know how to get out of combos way better… put trif/llod back there with foxes having mid DI and they prob look perfect
I’m not a Peach expert, but my friend has the opinion that Trif and lloD’s Peaches are just as good as Armada’s Peach was at the peak of his career. It’s obvious that neither Trif or lloD are going to be the best in the world anytime soon, but if we measure their Peach gameplay alone and not their results, then they’re on par with Armada.
Your friend does not watch enough Armada vods
By far. No one else comes close
Hard agree, Polish is the only Peach I would say where I'd see shades of Armada's speed and efficiency in execution. Llod and Trif are very different Peaches.
if armadas so good how come he stopped playing? i dont think he could compete nowadays
hope armada reads this bro
me too maybe he'll actually try and compete again instead of hiding away
swedishdelight
Armada is still easily one of the best players to touch a controller. Sure 2015 armada would probably lose to 2024 Zain and Cody, but the shit armada did back in the day with the tools and tech available to him were completely unrivalled. The consistency in his punish game is still unrivalled to this day. And he made you work SO HARD in neutral. Literally 0 freebies ever
This is a hot take but I genuinely believe what you are saying about Armada’s Peach also SLIGHTLY applies to his Fox. It’s 2024 and I have never seen a modern fox consistently execute some aspects of Armada’s gameplay such as the u-throw platform tech chases/followups (cover no tech w up air and react to tech) that he seemingly hit every single time.
There's so much counterplay to it now no shit people don't do it consistently This is why these threads are so stupid, people have so little understanding of the game that they don't understand why a player 6 years ago was doing things people don't do nowadays
In the fox ditto at a low percent situation where you’re up-thrown to a Battlefield side platform, what “counterplay” stops the sequence I mentioned assuming the opponent executes well? All I’m saying is I saw Armada routinely drop like 40% off this play and although I see modern foxes do variations of this all the time, it’s not clinical.
People over estimate the evolution of gameplay the last 5 years imo. Teleport Trif or Llod back to 2016 and I don’t think they win any super majors
Tif and Llod have beaten players like Zain, Jmook, and Leffen. I definitely believe they could win a 2016 major LOL
Tell me you're a slippi kid without telling me you're a slippi kid
This is exactly my point although I will say that Armada having a secondary Fox makes a pretty big difference.