Dark.Pch
Smash Legend
- Joined
- May 13, 2006
- Messages
- 16,918
- Location
- Manhattan, New York
- NNID
- Dark.Pch
- 3DS FC
- 5413-0118-3799
There are a lot of people in the smash community who wanna be good at smash In ths case, smash 4. Some wanna be top players. Some wanna be the best. Some wanna win tournaments. Some wanna stand out in the community and be seen and somebody big. What ever it is, a lot want it. There are many guides around this site on how to get to those levels, so be sure to check out all the wonderful resources here. But with all of that. I feel you should also set goals. Having a plan is really important. You can't say that you wanna be a video game designer and then just simple make videos game that people buy at the start. There are certain things you have to do in order for you to make a game and then get paid for it.
So what I am gonna do here is give you some small goals to achieve. Once you achieve one, you will have gain some experience to help you improve your skills. Then go on to the next goal. Achieve that goal and you will gain more experience and become a better player. Then so on till the dream goal is achieve. Also none have to agree with this and can clearly go on about it your own way as you see fit.
1: Get use to the character you decided to play
When you pick a character, decided if you are gonna be using them a lot. if you just switch on and off, you are wasting time and you are not really getting better. Also it's best to keep your focus solo on one character for the time being. Rotating between too many characters is too much and you are gonna see slow results. Finish what you started then move on.
So you have your character. First thing you should do is go to training mode. Don't go straight to playing people just yet. In training this is the time to learn. You wanna understand how your character works. The moves, speed, spacing, ways to approach, ways to defend, your air game, ground game, movement. Control. When you understand all of how their moves work and the range, practice moving around. See how well you can move in and out. Then mix in air attacks for air spacing. Same with the ground.
Once this is done see what links to what at low %, mid % and even high%. If you noticed something links ups, do it over and over and over till it seriously becomes second nature. Where you don't have to question if you can get this off. Once you see the chance, you take it without fail. Mix and match what you do and practice your execution
ALOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT. ABUSE IT. Feel comfortable with your character. Can do anything you want with lil to now error? Feel so dam smooth with them? Great! First goal complete. And you just became a better character. Cause now you have a character you can control quite was and have great execution with them.
2 Practice pressure, patience and corner locks.
This is where you can practice how to keep someone close to you and how you can bait/punish rolls. what you do is go to training mode. And set the computer to run. The will evade all your attacks. When they do they will ether jump or mostly roll. So if you go near the CPU they will evade. This is telling you you can not just go in swinging. Its to obvious and the CPU will just move out the way. So what you do is you go near them and jump back to a spaced air attack. So if they decided to roll back they will get hit by it. if they don't and roll away, you simply follow them. Till they are pinned to a corner. From here they can't roll back anymore, So Now you can practice punishing people on rolls and how to keep that corner pressure. get use to a lot of characters rolls and how to space your attacks if you sense they will roll. This teaches you how to be a patient player and look for ways to bait, space attacks and punish. Which is all very important. Do this a lot. With characters who have slow rolls to characters who have quick ones. And try ways to punish them both in the air and grounded. This will soon sink into your brain and make you a very patient player. Got that down? Woo-hoo!. Goal complete. Good control of your character and patients. observing what the enemy does and looking for ways to deal with it. Lets move on.
3 - Level 9 CPU.
Now this is kinda the same thing as setting the CPU to run. Difference is, they will approach you and attack you this time. They will still evade your attacks if you go in swinging or block them. So what you wanna do here is not try to swing at the CPU. You wanna go in for a punish when you see them do something that is can punish for free. Like if they go for a dash attack and it wiffs. Or you shield it. That is a free punish. No baits, no mix ups, no educated guess. You just get the punish for free. This also testes your execution and timing depending on this distance. When you cant get any more hits. You Start this all over. Space your moves just incase the CPU goes in on you with attacks. Try to stay close to the CPU as much as you can while being out of danger for incoming attacks. Then when you see a free moment that you can get an attack in, go for it.
** If you want a real challenge to test you on this, pick any character that has a counter move. They will counter you a lot for what you do. Letting you know you need to relax and play more patient with baits.
The CPU does shield a lot and will not always evade. So this is also good for spacing practice and being safe from counter attacks. And sometimes with good spacing and pressure, they will start rolling. Use the experience you gained so far to deal with that.
What this does is teaches you how to be patient, and looking for good openings to attack. Then abusing it. Also baiting and being safe. With projectile characters you can do this as well. And practice how to just simple keep the opponent out if you out range them. This is also a good way to practice being hard to hit without having to evade so much yourself unless you seriously have no choice. You are also taught how to deal with an opponent that you can't really tell what they would do since the computer is so random. Can't really tell what they are gonna do. They have no set way of playing.
So you have this down? This is all second nature? Weeeeeee!! Goal complete. You just leveled up. evasion and speed stats got a boost!
4 - Time to play people and lose:
Wait what. Play and lose. The hell was all that crap I just went through on my own like you said to get better. Now All that work for me to lose?
Might be what some are thinking. But just hold that thought for a sec.
While you got al of this stuff down thus far. You have yet to really learn how to certain characters. Some characters you cant fight the same way. And there are somethings that are not safe to do on them as to it being safe on others. So since you don't know, its time to find out. And you find out by playing and seeing the results. You may not get it and lose the match for it. But when you lose you thinking about what you was doing and why you lost for it. Then try something else. You keep trying until you see something that could work and showed some results. They you keep trying to get better at it till you get it down and things start getting better for you in the match up. You are learning a lot from your loses. And staying on point with your winnings.
You could be facing another player who follow these same steps as you. So one of you has to go down. And with all of that happening you are both learning. Even If you win, you can still learn something. But you learn more from the lost. So take a lose as learning something new about yourself, the character or match up. Not as a sign of you being a terrible player or you suck. No one sucks. Those that suck are the ones that complain and give up. Don't care how long they been playing. Those are the scrubs. Not you. So don't even call yourselves bad players.
This is more of a learning experience then a goal. But you do wanna get better and find stuff out right? So its kinda 2 for the price of one.
Now if you follow these steps and practice a lot, you will become better. Abuse training mode a lot, play people a lot and don't go into a mindset of you having to win the match. You don't really gain much from winning. Its not a tournament nor was there a prize. If you win, you just go into the next match. If you lose.............you just go into the next match............
Well that was a lot eh? But there is still some ways to go before you can reach that dream goal of here. Time to test your skills against others and duke it out.
5. Go to a lot of tournaments.
Go to as many tournies as you can. You get to play all sorts of people. And people play differently with the same said character. This helps you be always to all the things people are doing as of now and you learning ways to deal with it. or just staying on point beating it as usual. So the many ways people think and react when they do something or when you do something. This is seriously a ton of experience on its own just going to a lot of tournaments. Now add all of that with the ones you just gained before this.
6. Enter a lot of tournys while having a goal:
What this means is when you enter a tournament don't really try to shoot to win. Really If it's your first one. You can though. But its best to take things one step at a time to make sure you can actually win it. Try to see if you can beat a number of people in a row. That's a small simple goal. Once you feel you can do that, see if you can beat the average type of players. These are sometimes the ones that are like round 3 of the bracket. Sometimes you might get a top player due to you not really doing anything in tournament. Your skill in tournies is very low and have to work your way up to avoid killers so early. To a point you become a killer. Once you can do that, see how high you can place. Set a number from 33rd. Got that, Now lets see if I can go one better and hit 25th. Boom! Got it, NEXT! And etc. As you work to reach these placings one step at a time you will become much better as a player at a quick rate and learn so much from the loses that got you here. And will get you further. And soon enough you will know so much already that you have a good shot of winning your first smash 4 tourney.
Now the next tournament you might not win. But you still placed pretty far. Now its allow being on point and winning tournies more often. Once you do, you will be seen as really good player or even a pro. Now for these tournies, they could be near your area. Try to test your skill in regionals and nationals. And set the same goals for those. As you did at your local events. And learn form all the wins and loses. Then you can get a good shot at taking the tournament. from here when you do, its official. All that work, all dem dam loses, all that practice, freaking payed off. You are now see as one of the best smash 4 players in the world. If not, THEE BEST. Congrats.
Man what a lovely story. Almost cried there for a sec......don't judge me. Anyway, here are some last min tips and things to think about to help you out on your dream goal.
You have to want.
if you are not willing to put in a lot of time, money, practice and effort, this may not happen for you. Or you are making it way harder then it should be. It's also understandable if you can't Life can get in the way and nothing you can do about it atm.
Have a training buddy.
Someone who you can practice stuff with. Can't figure out how to deal with someone who walls you out. Go in a match with him with an endless timer and practice ways to get close to him and get your hits off. or start pressure/mixups. Then reset the situation and try it again. Do this a lot till you feel you have a good way to handle this. Also talk about idea on how to make this better or things to be aware of that you were not before.
Some characters are harder to win compared to others.
Keep that in mind when things really get tuff. But don't ever let that could your mind from getting better and getting a brick wall out of your way. Don't let what others say/think about the character you use. And don't worry to much about what others are doing with them. You can learn some stuff from them if you think you can. But don't try to be like them. Be you and play for you. You don't have to impress or prove a damm thing to anyone. Do your thing, focus on you and all that will be a given.
Shadow boxing.
When in training mode when the CPU is not moving but yourself in mental situations. For example. if I run towards the CPU I am gonna do it and then QFR (quick float release, where I ground float and then instantly cancel the float so I can do another action) and then ground float to a nair. I do this thinking to myself "If he decides to roll back out of fear I will go to attack him I can nair right here and hit him out of his roll." This helps with character control, execution, and always thinking about your options.
Ask Questions.
Not sure about something. Don't EVER, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR, be afraid to ask questions. There are a lot of people willing to help you. like me. So please do so and stay away from the negative jerks in the smash community.
Watch a lot of vids.
See what others are doing with your character. Good way to learn some new stuff. Or watch vids of other characters and see what they are doing. So you can be aware of it and be ready to deal with it.
I think that is all. Let me know how this went for you guys if you decide to follow this. Hope this was helpful. Any questions feel free to post them up here, or send me a private message. To keep up with more of my smash content on the spot, you can follow me at twitter and be the first to know. Thanks for reading and good luck to all the monsters I have created from this.
www.twitter.com/Dark_Pch
So what I am gonna do here is give you some small goals to achieve. Once you achieve one, you will have gain some experience to help you improve your skills. Then go on to the next goal. Achieve that goal and you will gain more experience and become a better player. Then so on till the dream goal is achieve. Also none have to agree with this and can clearly go on about it your own way as you see fit.
1: Get use to the character you decided to play
When you pick a character, decided if you are gonna be using them a lot. if you just switch on and off, you are wasting time and you are not really getting better. Also it's best to keep your focus solo on one character for the time being. Rotating between too many characters is too much and you are gonna see slow results. Finish what you started then move on.
So you have your character. First thing you should do is go to training mode. Don't go straight to playing people just yet. In training this is the time to learn. You wanna understand how your character works. The moves, speed, spacing, ways to approach, ways to defend, your air game, ground game, movement. Control. When you understand all of how their moves work and the range, practice moving around. See how well you can move in and out. Then mix in air attacks for air spacing. Same with the ground.
Once this is done see what links to what at low %, mid % and even high%. If you noticed something links ups, do it over and over and over till it seriously becomes second nature. Where you don't have to question if you can get this off. Once you see the chance, you take it without fail. Mix and match what you do and practice your execution
ALOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT. ABUSE IT. Feel comfortable with your character. Can do anything you want with lil to now error? Feel so dam smooth with them? Great! First goal complete. And you just became a better character. Cause now you have a character you can control quite was and have great execution with them.
2 Practice pressure, patience and corner locks.
This is where you can practice how to keep someone close to you and how you can bait/punish rolls. what you do is go to training mode. And set the computer to run. The will evade all your attacks. When they do they will ether jump or mostly roll. So if you go near the CPU they will evade. This is telling you you can not just go in swinging. Its to obvious and the CPU will just move out the way. So what you do is you go near them and jump back to a spaced air attack. So if they decided to roll back they will get hit by it. if they don't and roll away, you simply follow them. Till they are pinned to a corner. From here they can't roll back anymore, So Now you can practice punishing people on rolls and how to keep that corner pressure. get use to a lot of characters rolls and how to space your attacks if you sense they will roll. This teaches you how to be a patient player and look for ways to bait, space attacks and punish. Which is all very important. Do this a lot. With characters who have slow rolls to characters who have quick ones. And try ways to punish them both in the air and grounded. This will soon sink into your brain and make you a very patient player. Got that down? Woo-hoo!. Goal complete. Good control of your character and patients. observing what the enemy does and looking for ways to deal with it. Lets move on.
3 - Level 9 CPU.
Now this is kinda the same thing as setting the CPU to run. Difference is, they will approach you and attack you this time. They will still evade your attacks if you go in swinging or block them. So what you wanna do here is not try to swing at the CPU. You wanna go in for a punish when you see them do something that is can punish for free. Like if they go for a dash attack and it wiffs. Or you shield it. That is a free punish. No baits, no mix ups, no educated guess. You just get the punish for free. This also testes your execution and timing depending on this distance. When you cant get any more hits. You Start this all over. Space your moves just incase the CPU goes in on you with attacks. Try to stay close to the CPU as much as you can while being out of danger for incoming attacks. Then when you see a free moment that you can get an attack in, go for it.
** If you want a real challenge to test you on this, pick any character that has a counter move. They will counter you a lot for what you do. Letting you know you need to relax and play more patient with baits.
The CPU does shield a lot and will not always evade. So this is also good for spacing practice and being safe from counter attacks. And sometimes with good spacing and pressure, they will start rolling. Use the experience you gained so far to deal with that.
What this does is teaches you how to be patient, and looking for good openings to attack. Then abusing it. Also baiting and being safe. With projectile characters you can do this as well. And practice how to just simple keep the opponent out if you out range them. This is also a good way to practice being hard to hit without having to evade so much yourself unless you seriously have no choice. You are also taught how to deal with an opponent that you can't really tell what they would do since the computer is so random. Can't really tell what they are gonna do. They have no set way of playing.
So you have this down? This is all second nature? Weeeeeee!! Goal complete. You just leveled up. evasion and speed stats got a boost!
4 - Time to play people and lose:
Wait what. Play and lose. The hell was all that crap I just went through on my own like you said to get better. Now All that work for me to lose?
Might be what some are thinking. But just hold that thought for a sec.
While you got al of this stuff down thus far. You have yet to really learn how to certain characters. Some characters you cant fight the same way. And there are somethings that are not safe to do on them as to it being safe on others. So since you don't know, its time to find out. And you find out by playing and seeing the results. You may not get it and lose the match for it. But when you lose you thinking about what you was doing and why you lost for it. Then try something else. You keep trying until you see something that could work and showed some results. They you keep trying to get better at it till you get it down and things start getting better for you in the match up. You are learning a lot from your loses. And staying on point with your winnings.
You could be facing another player who follow these same steps as you. So one of you has to go down. And with all of that happening you are both learning. Even If you win, you can still learn something. But you learn more from the lost. So take a lose as learning something new about yourself, the character or match up. Not as a sign of you being a terrible player or you suck. No one sucks. Those that suck are the ones that complain and give up. Don't care how long they been playing. Those are the scrubs. Not you. So don't even call yourselves bad players.
This is more of a learning experience then a goal. But you do wanna get better and find stuff out right? So its kinda 2 for the price of one.
Now if you follow these steps and practice a lot, you will become better. Abuse training mode a lot, play people a lot and don't go into a mindset of you having to win the match. You don't really gain much from winning. Its not a tournament nor was there a prize. If you win, you just go into the next match. If you lose.............you just go into the next match............
Well that was a lot eh? But there is still some ways to go before you can reach that dream goal of here. Time to test your skills against others and duke it out.
5. Go to a lot of tournaments.
Go to as many tournies as you can. You get to play all sorts of people. And people play differently with the same said character. This helps you be always to all the things people are doing as of now and you learning ways to deal with it. or just staying on point beating it as usual. So the many ways people think and react when they do something or when you do something. This is seriously a ton of experience on its own just going to a lot of tournaments. Now add all of that with the ones you just gained before this.
6. Enter a lot of tournys while having a goal:
What this means is when you enter a tournament don't really try to shoot to win. Really If it's your first one. You can though. But its best to take things one step at a time to make sure you can actually win it. Try to see if you can beat a number of people in a row. That's a small simple goal. Once you feel you can do that, see if you can beat the average type of players. These are sometimes the ones that are like round 3 of the bracket. Sometimes you might get a top player due to you not really doing anything in tournament. Your skill in tournies is very low and have to work your way up to avoid killers so early. To a point you become a killer. Once you can do that, see how high you can place. Set a number from 33rd. Got that, Now lets see if I can go one better and hit 25th. Boom! Got it, NEXT! And etc. As you work to reach these placings one step at a time you will become much better as a player at a quick rate and learn so much from the loses that got you here. And will get you further. And soon enough you will know so much already that you have a good shot of winning your first smash 4 tourney.
Now the next tournament you might not win. But you still placed pretty far. Now its allow being on point and winning tournies more often. Once you do, you will be seen as really good player or even a pro. Now for these tournies, they could be near your area. Try to test your skill in regionals and nationals. And set the same goals for those. As you did at your local events. And learn form all the wins and loses. Then you can get a good shot at taking the tournament. from here when you do, its official. All that work, all dem dam loses, all that practice, freaking payed off. You are now see as one of the best smash 4 players in the world. If not, THEE BEST. Congrats.
Man what a lovely story. Almost cried there for a sec......don't judge me. Anyway, here are some last min tips and things to think about to help you out on your dream goal.
You have to want.
if you are not willing to put in a lot of time, money, practice and effort, this may not happen for you. Or you are making it way harder then it should be. It's also understandable if you can't Life can get in the way and nothing you can do about it atm.
Have a training buddy.
Someone who you can practice stuff with. Can't figure out how to deal with someone who walls you out. Go in a match with him with an endless timer and practice ways to get close to him and get your hits off. or start pressure/mixups. Then reset the situation and try it again. Do this a lot till you feel you have a good way to handle this. Also talk about idea on how to make this better or things to be aware of that you were not before.
Some characters are harder to win compared to others.
Keep that in mind when things really get tuff. But don't ever let that could your mind from getting better and getting a brick wall out of your way. Don't let what others say/think about the character you use. And don't worry to much about what others are doing with them. You can learn some stuff from them if you think you can. But don't try to be like them. Be you and play for you. You don't have to impress or prove a damm thing to anyone. Do your thing, focus on you and all that will be a given.
Shadow boxing.
When in training mode when the CPU is not moving but yourself in mental situations. For example. if I run towards the CPU I am gonna do it and then QFR (quick float release, where I ground float and then instantly cancel the float so I can do another action) and then ground float to a nair. I do this thinking to myself "If he decides to roll back out of fear I will go to attack him I can nair right here and hit him out of his roll." This helps with character control, execution, and always thinking about your options.
Ask Questions.
Not sure about something. Don't EVER, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR, be afraid to ask questions. There are a lot of people willing to help you. like me. So please do so and stay away from the negative jerks in the smash community.
Watch a lot of vids.
See what others are doing with your character. Good way to learn some new stuff. Or watch vids of other characters and see what they are doing. So you can be aware of it and be ready to deal with it.
I think that is all. Let me know how this went for you guys if you decide to follow this. Hope this was helpful. Any questions feel free to post them up here, or send me a private message. To keep up with more of my smash content on the spot, you can follow me at twitter and be the first to know. Thanks for reading and good luck to all the monsters I have created from this.
www.twitter.com/Dark_Pch
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