General questions about getting good

[FroMan]

So I haven't put a good amount of time into a smash game since brawl came out, I nearly completely skipped smash 4 only playing it at party's. I am just getting back into the series and I want to try to be good at this game. I've been doing okay until the last maybe 3 days were my online 1 v 1 play has been almost entirely losses. In fact, especially Fire Emblem characters, Ive been pretty much man handled on occasion. So obviously I'm doing something wrong, I've gone around and read a bunch of stuff and heard a lot of different things about what I should be doing.

First off I've been hearing not to practice online but that seems strange to me, I'm trying to win online so shouldn't I practice there?

Secondly should I be jumping with button or pressing up on the directional stick? my entire time playing smash I've always jumped with up and forcing myself to not has me pressing up frantically to jump till I remember I turned it off I'm kinda wondering if it worth the switch.

Thirdly how much practice do you put into this? I'm into it right now but I don't know how long it will last and I like to play other things. if it takes a really long time (Which I pretty much expect the answer to be yeah it takes forever) and a ton of consistent daily practice I might just stop trying so hard as I'm not sure how serious I am right this second. Not really trying to go pro just actually get some wins.

Either way the last couple days have been pretty frustrating and I could probably rant but I'm generally enjoying it, I guess I should expect to be bad because I may have been playing these games for a really long time but I'm clearly a competitive style smash noob. Any advice would really help, from what I'm reading I pretty much fall into every noob trap and I'm trying to not do stupid things like rolling everywhere and wasting my air dodges.

 

[Syprone]

Addressing your first question, you should not practice online because people can be at wildly different skill levels, making it hard to get some good practice in. If it gets to the point where online is your only 1vs1 challenge (level 9 cpus give you 0 challenge), then go ahead and practice your combos online. But practicing offline is more consistent. Addressing your second question, it doesn’t really matter wether you have tap jump on or not. It depends on the player, so I recommend that you keep using tap jump.

 

[12Tables]

I have a friend who plays competitive who I talked to cause I wanted to be as good as them. This is what they told me. Everyday Choose 1 tech to practice. Go to training practice that one thing for a few hours till you can do it well. Then go to fight against other people trying to do that one tech as much as possible. (he also said how when learning spot dodge he would suicide if he input a roll dodge in matches). He didn't really address playing online but more talked about playing with better people who are also into the game. Since you are not trying to go pro I'd say spend a week working on one technique for like 1~2 hours a day then try using it in game play for another hour or two. Like my friend said the most important thing is to perfect the basics, and you can only do that if you only play one character. So try out every character then play the one that feels best to you.

2. Do what is most comfortable to you. I don't use it but there are plenty of pros who do and don't. Control's are a personal preference.

3. Professionals play 12+ hours a day. To get good you just need to play a few everyday.

Remember practice makes permanent. So practice perfection.

 

[Marmotbro]

For your first question: Local play is better then online is better then CPU. When you play online you have to compensate for lag, you play with people of random skill levels and you might get a 4 person free for all with items on great cave offensive. CPUs are only good when you are doing very basic practice, like trying to do combos and such.

Second, I would say have tap jump off, unless you set your tilts to c-stick. It is much harder to uptilt when you have tap jump, and uptilt is very important on some characters.

Third, more then average. If you are just trying to sneak wins then every day, maybe every other day.