Good advice for improvement?

[TheRealSkid]

Hi. This is probably the wrong place to put this thread, sorry anyway, I posted a similar thread for project m but I could use some extra help in melee. I play it frequently, train often, and can wave dash/cc/wave shine/ Ken combo and my mains are marth and fox. My only training partner DESPISES the game. Seriously, he has a problem even looking at it. Yet on the rare occasion that he does end up playing against me he randomly picks up falcon and DESTROYS me using no tech skill. He also beats me in smash 4 and used to consistently beat my mewtwo in pm. What can I do to improve tech skill, improve neutral game, and just get better at the game in general?

 

[necroTaxonomist]

Best option is to find someone who does like the game who you can train with. Playing with CPUs is not good.

If that is not possible, which it might not be, try netplay with Dolphin (unless of course your computer is a toaster).
There's a little bit of lag (usually 2-5 frames, depending on your distance), but the good thing about netplay is it's easily accessible and you can play with a variety of different people.

It takes a while after you first start playing seriously for your tech skill to give you an advantage. Don't get discouraged. Just keep playing with people and your reads and neutral game will improve.

(P.S. When somebody doesn't have much experience with the game, you can take advantage of that by doing things that they wouldn't know about, like chain grabs, edgehogging, etc.)

 

[mythbust4000]

Go to smash boards last
Try places like melee it on me or sites that have pros talking
I never see pro players on smash boards and you can't know ether the guy you are talking to is a scrub that never won in his life or Mr perfect there is Noway to know

 

[ECHOnce]

Start reading up on theory work about smash neutral game and improvement; it'll help to better your understanding of how you should go about improving, and what situations may be counterproductive to certain aspects of improvement. For example - you practice often, but are unable to beat an opponent who doesn't, despite them appearing to play much worse than you (tech-wise). This would imply that you're lacking in some other aspect of play; you may be improving or maintaining better tech, but it'll be useless if you don't tackle the actual root of the problem. Figure out what that is. From the sounds of it, it's neutral game and spacing, which are often common issues that players who don't get much player-practice have. Find players who are better than you. Neutral/spacing can be read about and integrated into your play by painstakingly teaching yourself against a player who doesn't also reciprocate the same effort/knowledge (since they're just using what they have and don't plan to improve; you're not learning anything from them), or finding better players who have a good neutral game and getting more interactive "examples" to draw from. It makes it much easier to learn a tactic when you're repetitively beaten by it, since it convinces you of how good it is, and you're gathering examples of where it seems to work best and not, so you don't even have to go out researching articles or observing top players (as much) and hoping you figure it out in your own. For that reason, even if you despise the lag on Netplay, it can be useful. If you're not going to any local tournaments anyways, it might actually be better for you to convert mostly to Netplay, and just maintain some tech practice occasionally on console. You'll find tons of crazy players who can prob best the crap out of you online lol.

Go to smash boards last
Try places like melee it on me or sites that have pros talking
I never see pro players on smash boards and you can't know ether the guy you are talking to is a scrub that never won in his life or Mr perfect there is Noway to know

This is awful advice. While 99% won't be top players you can recognize, smashboards and reddit are probably the most new-player-friendly, given that we often spend the time interpreting the information from other sources ( or just general advice) in a way that's more easily understandable. The middle-men.

 

[AirFair]

just think when you are playing the game. Echo has covered everything else.

 

[SSBF]

My suggestion is to get the 20xx hack pack, because you can activate Debug Mode
which you can go onto training mode and use these specified codes to make infinite shield
and Make P2 / The training bot, stuck shielding so you could MS (Multi-Shines) to be very
"Offensive," and it's great shield pressure!

 

[EPsilon933]

Enjoy playing the other Smash games with him. A bit more skill overlaps with Melee than you might think. You'll improve the human vs human strategic aspect of your game, at least (prediction, mix ups, neutral)

 

[Dolla Pills]

Think about the why- why you are getting hit, why you drop combos, why you missed an edge guard, why you couldn't recover, etc. That way you can improve quickly