Gadiel_VaStar

Dude I love your status and your signature!

Were you the Pikachu i played yesterday in 3DS For Glory? I wanna hit up a few more games man!

I noticed you have no doubles partner registered for paragon like me. Are you interested in teaming up? We have until Thursday night to pick a partner, so lmk if you are interested. I registered under the same name as my Smashboards name aka Big O.

you luh god? cuz i luh god too!

Can't wait for Smash 4! God is good.

Haaaaaaiiii, out of curiosity, did you try the Smash 4 demo?

The new smash looks soo much fun! Can't wait for it; it's gotten me re-inspired to continue smashing and aiming for top player status.

If you wanna improve at the neutral game you should read through TKD's blog at AiB. Best info available on that subject.

http://www.smashboards.com/threads/334155/

and this time there's no conflicting event

Read the message you wrote me again: you've essentially layed out the difference between a good player's defensive decision making and that of a "lesser" player completely. That's some damn good observation you made there! Make something out of it! If you haven't found a way to beat that approach towards defensive play yet, try to implement it into your own game and make the best out of it. You will improve with hit! You've come to understand a big reason why some players are better than others: because even their defensive choices are active choices, not habits. You've learned that on you own too. Perhaps you've already learned how to learn. Keep it up!

The fact that it helped you beating mid-level players is already a good start. Reading defensive options is VERY difficult and will not work against players that are better than you - because a big part of *why* they are better than you is their advanced used of defensive moves. Everytime you manage to beat a player by reading his defensive choices you can rest assured that you're a level above him. But rising a level above somebody can take its time. You've just made the first step!

Oh hai Gadiel.

Don't have Skype atm but here's something you should remember when you play today: Observe the opponent's defensive choices. Punish accordingly: If you read a shield drop shoot an arrow. If you read a shield grab him. If you read a dodge crossup pivot grab him. If he rolls away, corner him. If he rolls through you react quickly and attack behind you. Try all options you can think of and remember which options work in a situation. Since you're there to learn you should focus on your reads - winning is only of secondary importance!

Try to record videos and don't forget about reseting to neutral!

Unfortunately, another tourney popped up during this time. This past weekend we had a 9 man bracket (people were still getting over Apex). It's region specific too. GA/SC/AL is closer to Charlotte than Raleigh is.

if you came to the nc tourney on feb 9th how many people would you bring with you?

What's your Skype again? I got a new one now.

Yea search is still not working - we were going to attempt to fix it but choose to wait until after Apex.

yea sorry I don't get on skype much anymore

I will ask a couple people I know and get back to you and Zinoto about it.

Unfortunately I don't live too close to the venue, and I'll be staying at Vex's. Ask him if you can stay there, as he's usually willing to house anyone.

sadly idts =[ we have no tourneys planned atm. If something comes up ill let you know.

Saw you beat P1 yesterday. Good job

Hey man, me and neo need housing for WABA. Do you know any one in GA who can house us?

Hey Gadiel,

Sorry for ignoring you for so long. When you asked me questions that I couldn't answer again or answer at all, I felt frustrated and just didn't want to give the wrong answer or even no answer.

I see your dedication to the game and realize I can't keep up anymore with anyone far as meta analysis and current events with this game. So I apologize again, that I haven't dealt you or other Pit mains (or friends in general) a good response on such things.

Just letting you know I still think about ya and hope you're doing well, game or not! Been busy with school so I wanted to pop something on your page while I was thinkin about it.

BACK TO ADVENTURE! (exams...)

looked for it, couldnt find it. Seems you cant get into the old threads of knowledge easy anymore unless there is some threadarchive somewere.

I JUST now saw this post. I'm sorry I didn't get to it when you initially sent it. You still playing?

Desyncs are all dependent on the matchup. To grow as a player, play constantly with ICs. Watch as many videos as possible, but don't copy anyone. Learn your own rhythm.

In my high, I was doing well. It was about a year and half ago. I could place top 5 occasionally, almost always top 7.

I sent you a contact request at Skype. Let's talk.

Do you have Skype?

try to find the marth downtiltguide on melee. The best guide on the boards. Not sure but might be how to approach in general. Even though this advice might seem irrelevant, it really isnt. ICs takes the most effort in the game since they rely on creating openings where opponents make a mistake and you cant do those yourself, and if you dont know how to get the chaingrab going the answer is always practice more!

Yea, I definitely want them lol.

What I learned on the bus was to try and make myself have fun with the game. Don't be incredibly serious in every match. Don't stress yourself out because you made mistakes. It's all a game, treat it as such and have fun with it. You play better happy than you do upset or stressed. That's really the basis of what I learned.

Send them here man! Got any Sheiks as well?

torn_soul59@yahoo.com

Also thanks for thanks on the results thread man. All that realization on the Whobo trip payed off big time for me!

It's under my contact info on here:
nobody0045

There's no "advice" that I can really give you. What I can do, however, is encourage you to contact me on AIM anytime you want and I can answer, pretty much, any question you might have on the game or any character. Additionally, if you want to send me a video of a set you believe you played well in, against a top player, I'd be happy to go over it with you and talk about decision making, reads, pressure options, etc with you.

There's no general "advice" that can really help someone break through to the "next level" of play when they're at that borderline area. It's really just a lot of experience and understanding of option choices involved. While I can't help with the former, the latter I am said to be excellent at and would be happy to assist if I can.

Teaming with Sync already man. Sorry.

i do but he's not gona wana talk about smash, i promise.

as such i can't give u his page, i sorryyy

Thanks, dude.

New members are:

Aerodrome
Big D
BSP
Cassio
Clowsui
Dakpo
Denti
DRN
Gonzalo ZeRo
Illmatic
JNig
kyokoro_pamuyo
Luigi player
MJG
Sync

Deal. I do it today. What are your best times so I know when to text?

Hey, no sweat man. ICs are a pretty demanding character, so it sounds like you're making the right choice for you. I'm sorry to say I probably won't be able to help on the Pit side of things since I'm not really a Pit expert, but in terms of how to grow as a player I think the same advice for ICs applies to most characters: find out what they do and make sure you can do it, get your fundamentals down, and THEN worry about tactical stuff.

I wish you well in your smash career, dude.

Hey there. Firstly I wanna point out that I am mainly just knowledgeable about ICs, I'm not a top player by any means, so take any advice I give about top level play with a grain of salt haha. But anyway, in my experience sticking with ICs is all about character dedication. They're a very high maintenance character, you need to know a lot, you need to practice tech a lot constantly, so I think just genuinely liking the character for what they are goes a long way to staying motivated on that road. For me it was the fact that their entire design was both unique and almost infinitely interesting. Unlike any other character they have crazy dynamics everywhere, so there's always something to refine or learn. If you want to win that badly then you might be able to get away without just liking the character, but I think it helps a lot. So, whether or not it's worth it to you I think depends on how willing you are to put in the work. If you put in the time they will reward you with great matchups across the board, and a huge fear aspect (CGs!!!), so it's really up to you if the constant maintenance is worth that. There are a lot of other characters you can do better with sooner, but there are only a few that you can do better with once you're at the top of the metagame. I think "just liking the character" also factors into this too.

As for tips, the main one I think is to just make sure you're on top of CGs. Practice daily, you don't need to practice every single character in the game (at first, anyway), but have a rotation of characters that you go through weekly and practice CGs on a few characters every day. Seriously, practice this before even desynching or "playing well". Knowing when and why and what to desync takes experience and matchup knowledge, and just playing a lot will develop your fundamentals naturally. But CGs are the active work component that will always be there. At first you WILL get grabs by accident even if you're not good at desynching or whatever, so make sure you fingers know how to go to work when this happens. Also, use the F/B CG and make it a secondary goal to learn to do it as quickly as possible. It's unmashable, untrippable, works on platforms, requires no space and works on everyone, so yeah, learn it now and reap the rewards. (Side note: it's unbelievably hard on Lucas though, so consider something else for him lol.)

To do well at a national level it's basically required that you never mess up CGs on anyone, ever. You can, and some do (eg 9B), do well with good CGs and little to no desync game, it's just that important. However at national level things like desync knowledge, great fundamentals, reading the mind and habits of your opponent, great character knowledge (in particular knowing what Nana will do in every possible situation, and being able to judge obscure things like whether your SoPo is able to solo CG a character given an arbitrary percentage and dthrow staleness), knowing how to setup grabs efficiently and knowing matchups well all become a lot more important for your ability to excel. It's a lot of stuff, but the good news is you will naturally develop a sense for most of those given a lot of playtime and some active problem solving along the way. Of course, there is a lot of information floating around the ICs board that can help tremendously with this process too.

So yeah, sorry for the text wall, and I hope all that work doesn't put you off, but I think I did a decent-enough job of covering everything. If you need any further advice or clarification, feel free to contact me anytime. It's always good to see new enthusiastic players of this character.

It really just comes down to practice and passion. I would sit for hours and just mess around thinking of new ways I could use desynchs and practicing chaingrabbing a ton. You see vinnie do this currently and you see his success because of it. That and playing the game a ton to just acquire experience. Most of the good players don't bother asking how to do things, they just go figure it out themselves and try to think of things themselves even if others have already done it.

Tl;dr practice/passion/playaton