Papa, from nooga's thead. I like your opinions, tell me more about everything melee. Help plz.
I see that you have consulted me for some smashing advice, and I can assure you that you have come to the right man. Just a few credentials about myself are that I have the single strongest Doc in the southern region to date, and have been awarded the award for fastest improving young player on a single occasion(i only got it once because i havent been in the eye of the media too long) so you have a good idea of my sincerity. Lets get started.
Punishing-
The single most important aspect for all upcoming or intermediate level players who are looking for a way to improve their play and are serious about getting better. Armada himself agrees with this notion and has stressed the importance of a solid punish game on msny occasions. Having the ability to several cripple your opponent based on a single opening is seriously useful and every top player has been working on it, so you should too. All exciting combos stem from punish practice and make the game more fun to watch, and falcon himself is rather weak when he wiffs his punishes. If you neglect your punish game you might as well be playing project m which is filled with quitters and whiners who dont have the winner spirit to practice and improve themselves, so they nerf whatever works.
How to improve your punishes-
Working on punishes is very character specific; no matter how similar two characters may seem they each functiob differently and will likewise require different inputs to punish and will be able to react with punishes on different circumstances. The methods used also drastically change depending on the character receiving your punishment. However practicing is not nearly as complex. There are two steps to acheive punishes solid enough for your own combo video; the first is to go practice against low level cpus or go to training mode and see what attacks link into others at specific percents. This will boost your familiarity with your characters moveset and allow you to adapt on the fly, improvise combos, and understand your options and your limits. If you do not understand your character then you will be too focused on the technical aspects such as being fast enough to keep up with your opponent or simply connect attacks that you will have no room to focus on the mental aspects of the game. Your characters sbilities should be second nature to you before you can begin making progress, this comes from someone who has been self trained and understands every level of progress from pain staking experience. The second step is simply seeing how quickly you can react out of your ground attacks, aerials, and shffls, which will build your familiarity and also your speed with your character. There is a reason that so few falcons are capable of doing his uair juggles which looks simple enough to most viewers, and this is because they simply dont understand the timing or do not have the timings muscle memorized.
Tech skill-
Tech skill is essential for all the reasons listed above, as a means to get your character to do what you need. Once you have your tech skill down(timings, lcancels, wavedashes, and any character specific tech, which you can look for in the character boards) you should not have to worry about it any more. If youre the kind of person who slips up easily then you can always try warmups in the morning. Practice for tech skill is simple enough, just repeat techniques until you have them down, and if youre not physically fast enough and need quick improvement, then i suggest the marble champ workout which involves caressing a large pink rubber eraser 500 times per finger a day, 5 days a week. Soon enough you shoukd be conditioned to attemped even the hardest of lcancels.
Fundamentals-
Fundamentals are the mental aspects of the game and include spacing and mindgames. First of all mindgames is a fake ass bs word made up by nerds attempting to sound cool when telling people they play professional video games(which does not sound cool at all and if you want proof then look up kens survivor interviews where he fondles his leg a little too much and makes melee players look the lamest people ever, albeit pretty true). Mindgames is simply using your mind and abilities to outsmart your opponent in combat, and this includes dashdancing, feinting attacks(every single one so watch out for it) and waiting. These are the extent of melee mindgames- scaring your opponent into think you will do one option and instead surprising them with another. This is again acheived by putting large amounts of pressure on your opponent to condition them into expecting offensive pressure, and then following up by either jumping, waiting, or dashdancing while you bait out a response. It is a very simple process and the fastest way to improve is to make friends with smashers, attend smashfests, or go to tournaments. If you are too uncool to play with smashnerds(a rare circumstance) then you can always pretend when playing alone or you can kidnap helpless sorority girls and force them to play. Also a sidenote: if youve seen the documentary then you mightve heard prog/an urkel refer to mango/nerd jesus as 'the natural'. This is bs and only makes him seem like some impenetrable beast. All that happened is mango plays more than everyone except for maybe wizzrobe and this nerdy facade is where he got his powers from. This applies to everyone except for me and a few others like dashizwiz perhaps. You too can be as good as mango if you want to and follow an effective training regimine.
The othet fundamental is spacing which is pretty much becoming familiar with every one of your opponents options per character and understand the range at which they can threaten you while staying in a same range and vice versa. Maneuvering around these ranges stresses expert use of dashdancing and wavedashing. If you play a character wothout either then you must learn to attack the opponent at every opportunity they expose themselves since you have no maneuvering ability, which is impossible against high level players even mango who plays cideo games all day.
I hope you enjoyed my guide and found it helpful, and hope you consult me in the future for all of your melee related needs.
