Fly_Amanita
Master of Caribou
A brief note: people considerably better or more experienced than me will probably find much of this totally obvious, but hopefully this will help people around my skill level or lower.
One of my biggest weaknesses has always been my inability to adapt to unfamiliar tactics/playstyles on the fly. I had accepted that I wasn't good at thinking at the spot , but Wobbles' recent blog post on resource management and my own recent failure at dealing with unfamiliar playstyles have led me to re-evaluate the situation and I came to several noteworthy realizations. The most important of these is that if you encounter any sort of problematic situation, it doesn't matter when you come up with a solution or how long it takes you to come up with a solution as long as you solve the problem before this situation next arises.
This sounds obvious, but it's worth thinking about. Consider the following example: let's say you're ICs and you're playing against a Jigglypuff. The Puff is applying some sort of shield pressure that, off the top of your head, you don't know how to punish. You try something that fails and Puff uairs you. Suddenly, Nana and Popo are separated and you're focused on re-syncing the ICs before one of them is killed. You succeed and bair Puff far offstage and wait for her to come close enough to the stage to do something. She manages to make it back, applies the same sort of shield pressure as before, and you still don't have a good answer to it. If you found yourself in this situation (and I bet a lot of people around my skill level or lower often experience similar situations), there are two crucial, related mistakes you made here: you were always focused on the present and you didn't take full advantage of a situation with low cognitive requirements.
When Puff first uaired you, you probably briefly thought something like "Okay, this punishment doesn't work" or "Why did I get hit?", but then your attention immediately shifted to not getting ***** by any of the stupid things that Jigglypuff can do, which is fine, but if you hadn't come up with a satisfactory answer to her shield pressure yet, you'll need to find time later for thinking about this problem. Let's flash-forward to the time right after you bair Puff offstage. Jigglypuff isn't the fastest character to get back to the stage and there isn't a lot you can do to stop her recovery until she's kind of close to the stage, so there's a decent amount of time that you're just sitting there waiting. What are you doing during this time? You might be mindlessly shooting ice blocks that have no chance of hitting and waiting until Puff is close to you. Maybe you're thinking "This is boring" or perhaps you're fantasizing about your significant other. The point is that you're not doing anything productive. Since this situation isn't mentally strenuous, why not use it for thinking about Puff's shield pressure?
If I said anything absurd about the Puff vs. ICs match-up that would never actually happen, don't dwell on it too much. What I was trying to emphasize is that even if you're not an amazingly fast thinker who can immediately identify an answer to every problem that you encounter, you can still find other times to solve problems and as long as you can solve them before said problems next arise, this is just as good as solving them right after coming across them.
Of course, doing this requires identifying situations with low cognitive demands. These situations vary a lot by match-up, but here a few ones that pop up particularly often.
-Recovering: Making it back to the stage with Sopo tends to be time-consuming and straightforward. You side-B, you get knocked off again, you side-B again, and so on until you either die or make it back to the stage. This procedure takes a while and there aren't a lot of other options you have for making it back to the stage, so you can use this time for addressing things that have been going wrong. Even if there isn't anything in particular on your mind, you could still find something else to think about. Why are you left with Popo? What did you do that led to Nana dying or being separated from you? Why were you knocked offstage? What could you have done to prevent any of these? Also, keep in mind that you can stay on the recovery platform for a few seconds when you respawn; there's rarely a need to rush back into the action!
-Edgeguarding: Characters like Jigglypuff and Samus tend to take forever to safely make it back to the stage. Don't simply spend this time lollygagging!
-Being camped: This is only really applicable to forms of camping that don't put a lot of pressure on you, but there are a lot of those. There's no hurry to get to your opponent, so feel free to think about whatever you need to address. Don't panic if you don't immediately see how to beat a certain form of camping when your opponent has a 30% lead and there are 5 minutes left.
-Camping!: I think the idea is clear here.
Another really obvious case that I'm sure most people already take advantage of is the time between rounds, but I wanted to mention it nonetheless.
If there's anything about this post you feel like discussing or if you want to tell me I'm dumb for making a big deal about this or whatever, feel free to do so.
One of my biggest weaknesses has always been my inability to adapt to unfamiliar tactics/playstyles on the fly. I had accepted that I wasn't good at thinking at the spot , but Wobbles' recent blog post on resource management and my own recent failure at dealing with unfamiliar playstyles have led me to re-evaluate the situation and I came to several noteworthy realizations. The most important of these is that if you encounter any sort of problematic situation, it doesn't matter when you come up with a solution or how long it takes you to come up with a solution as long as you solve the problem before this situation next arises.
This sounds obvious, but it's worth thinking about. Consider the following example: let's say you're ICs and you're playing against a Jigglypuff. The Puff is applying some sort of shield pressure that, off the top of your head, you don't know how to punish. You try something that fails and Puff uairs you. Suddenly, Nana and Popo are separated and you're focused on re-syncing the ICs before one of them is killed. You succeed and bair Puff far offstage and wait for her to come close enough to the stage to do something. She manages to make it back, applies the same sort of shield pressure as before, and you still don't have a good answer to it. If you found yourself in this situation (and I bet a lot of people around my skill level or lower often experience similar situations), there are two crucial, related mistakes you made here: you were always focused on the present and you didn't take full advantage of a situation with low cognitive requirements.
When Puff first uaired you, you probably briefly thought something like "Okay, this punishment doesn't work" or "Why did I get hit?", but then your attention immediately shifted to not getting ***** by any of the stupid things that Jigglypuff can do, which is fine, but if you hadn't come up with a satisfactory answer to her shield pressure yet, you'll need to find time later for thinking about this problem. Let's flash-forward to the time right after you bair Puff offstage. Jigglypuff isn't the fastest character to get back to the stage and there isn't a lot you can do to stop her recovery until she's kind of close to the stage, so there's a decent amount of time that you're just sitting there waiting. What are you doing during this time? You might be mindlessly shooting ice blocks that have no chance of hitting and waiting until Puff is close to you. Maybe you're thinking "This is boring" or perhaps you're fantasizing about your significant other. The point is that you're not doing anything productive. Since this situation isn't mentally strenuous, why not use it for thinking about Puff's shield pressure?
If I said anything absurd about the Puff vs. ICs match-up that would never actually happen, don't dwell on it too much. What I was trying to emphasize is that even if you're not an amazingly fast thinker who can immediately identify an answer to every problem that you encounter, you can still find other times to solve problems and as long as you can solve them before said problems next arise, this is just as good as solving them right after coming across them.
Of course, doing this requires identifying situations with low cognitive demands. These situations vary a lot by match-up, but here a few ones that pop up particularly often.
-Recovering: Making it back to the stage with Sopo tends to be time-consuming and straightforward. You side-B, you get knocked off again, you side-B again, and so on until you either die or make it back to the stage. This procedure takes a while and there aren't a lot of other options you have for making it back to the stage, so you can use this time for addressing things that have been going wrong. Even if there isn't anything in particular on your mind, you could still find something else to think about. Why are you left with Popo? What did you do that led to Nana dying or being separated from you? Why were you knocked offstage? What could you have done to prevent any of these? Also, keep in mind that you can stay on the recovery platform for a few seconds when you respawn; there's rarely a need to rush back into the action!
-Edgeguarding: Characters like Jigglypuff and Samus tend to take forever to safely make it back to the stage. Don't simply spend this time lollygagging!
-Being camped: This is only really applicable to forms of camping that don't put a lot of pressure on you, but there are a lot of those. There's no hurry to get to your opponent, so feel free to think about whatever you need to address. Don't panic if you don't immediately see how to beat a certain form of camping when your opponent has a 30% lead and there are 5 minutes left.
-Camping!: I think the idea is clear here.
Another really obvious case that I'm sure most people already take advantage of is the time between rounds, but I wanted to mention it nonetheless.
If there's anything about this post you feel like discussing or if you want to tell me I'm dumb for making a big deal about this or whatever, feel free to do so.
