Smashboards

Which reminds me, is there any sort of mindset you go into, when you play online? I realise that if you're just looking to beat people and score better in the GSP, you're not necessarily improving. I'm going to start going in with the mindset of practicing specific tech and combos, even if it means losing. I've already "gotten" 3-stocked by killing myself three times in a row, so pride's completely out the window.

Indeed, I always swear I'll quit after the many times I stop playing due to the lag dropping some input causing me to SD or otherwise lose the game, but I end up wanting to play again tomorrow or even later that day lol. That's all the weight of a loss really carries at the end of the day, because we still can play again and do better next time.

For mindset, it really depends on how I'm feeling that day. If I'm feeling tired but still want to play, I'll just screw around with other characters and try to get them into Elite or just play in general. I'm still learning passively and am understanding subtle nuances about the characters I play which will help me fight against them as well as see the game from different perspectives.

If I'm feeling alert and competitive, I'll play Zelda and try to focus on MU and opponent variety. One thing you can't get from locals, is that variety since there's only so many people and characters. Online is good for fighting a variety of people and MUs, so you don't get beat by some rando due to inexperience. Even MUs you know well can played in subtly different ways by different people, so it's good to get a variety of different players playing the same character.

In that vein, rather than significantly change up my approach and style, I'll change small interactions instead. Even minor differences in spacing and DI can make or break an edgeguard or flub advantage, so I'll try to do different things against different characters. So I might play the Ganondorf MU how I normally do, but try to DI back when edgeguarding him offstage, instead of chasing him. This ended up helping me catch his DI towards the stage, which normally chasing him with Dair would cause you to slightly overshoot and miss. It's subtle, but is the difference between a successful edgeguard and getting reversed.

I played a really good Mario earlier with a pristine connection that felt similar to offline. We played like twelve games and I had to make many small adjustments from my usual game plan. Some worked, some didn't, but I ended up gaining some new insights to a MU that I've struggled considerably in since Smash 4. And of those that worked, it opened up entirely new scenarios that I'm going to have to learn and explore. For instance, I've found that Up-Smash might actually be useful for hitting his aerial shield pokes and cross-ups, where any of Zelda's other options would be too slow or not versatile enough to keep up with his movement. Having a long lasting intangible hitbox could be useful for catching any follow up aerials that covers his landing or tries to catch your OoS. I'm not entirely sure about that yet, so I'll test it out next time I play a similar MU. But it could fill a hole in Zelda's kit that allows characters with quick aerials to endlessly poke Zelda's shield and always DI safely out of her OoS range, like Mario or Peach. This too, is another thing Online can be useful for, is testing out Zelda's tools in different situations you wouldn't normally think of, especially more underused and obscure moves like her Up-Smash.