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[RussianSauce]

I am very inexperienced smash ultimate player. This is my first smash game. In my office we do a little smash competition every lunch (me and 2 other co workers) and I always come up last. The people that I play against are not very good either. They just slightly better than me. They have their c stick set to smash and they constantly do that and specials. I feel like I just need a little something to set me over this phase of sucking against them. I told them that I am going to start training for real (training mode, short hoping, areals, grabs, combos, etc) and I told them that come May 1st I will be dominating because they are not willing to work on their basic movements (everything I just mentioned). So I have a month to consistently beat them. I am already working on my movements and combos and what not. But I was just wondering, Is one month enough for me to improve dramatically? I really want to beat these guys, and I am being very patient. Since I work every day I only have about 2 hours a night to practice.

I should say that we play 3 vs 3 mode. And I play with Ike, Cloud, Richter. I know it is ideal to only have 1 main. But due to our tournament I have to have 3, However, I dont think that is what important. My strategy is to get very good and consistant with movements and then i feel like i would be dominant against them. Do you guys agree? Who is willing to play against me online and see what i am doing wrong and help me out/train me lol? Thanks for advise in advance.

 

[comfortable_lamp]

I think you can easily get significantly better in a month, but it takes practice. You'll have to play A LOT. and not just fun matches too. You'll also have to go into practice mode and practice things like parrying, RAR's, etc. Also, i think it will help to watch top players play (especially ones that share your main).

 

[RussianSauce]

I think you can easily get significantly better in a month, but it takes practice. You'll have to play A LOT. and not just fun matches too. You'll also have to go into practice mode and practice things like parrying, RAR's, etc. Also, i think it will help to watch top players play (especially ones that share your main).

Okay cool! I just started going into practice mode and working on movements like RAR, risen and falling areals, consistent short hop fast fall, dashing, and what not. How much is “A LOT”? Is 2 hours a day enough? I do watch many videos of pros play my main. I just have a problem reacting quickly and fast, consistent movements. I just wanted to make sure one month is enough if I put 2 hours a day

 

[comfortable_lamp]

Okay cool! I just started going into practice mode and working on movements like RAR, risen and falling areals, consistent short hop fast fall, dashing, and what not. How much is “A LOT”? Is 2 hours a day enough? I do watch many videos of pros play my main. I just have a problem reacting quickly and fast, consistent movements. I just wanted to make sure one month is enough if I put 2 hours a day

I think two hours a day is fine, but I think you should just try to play as much as possible, but not to a point where it starts to feel like a chore. You should just play till you get tired. However, obviously, the more time each day you spend, the better you'll get.

 

[JiggyNinja]

The first thing you need to work on is not any specific technique, but a change to your mindset.

I can guarantee that you are being far to recklessly aggressive. If you can't fix this, no amount of techniques will help you. Just because this is a fighting game doesn't mean you have to spend every second of the match aiming to hit your opponent with an attack. Aggression is risky. If you pay attention to professional matches one of the things you should notice is that most of their attacks miss. They're using their quick tilts and aerials just outside of the range where they will hit. This is to try and catch an overly aggressive opponent before they get too close, with less risk of retaliation to yourself if your opponent has the same idea.

Be more disciplined in your aggression. Poke more cautiously, don't just fly in guns blazing. Evade them if you thing an engagement would be on unfavorable terms. If you can, make them come to you. A Belmont spamming axes and cross or a Cloud charging limit is something they aren't going to want to ignore. Punish anything bad in their approach.

Richter is especially bad up close, use all of your specials to lame them out, and try to use the full length of your whip. The tip is more powerful than the chain, so spacing is of extreme importance for the Belmonts.

Ike has a counter. Use it against their Smash spam, and make them respect it.

 

[Prison]

I think something that will vastly improve your play is just having good movement. A lot of people think Smash is about being able to hit hard and consistently. But I find that you tend to do a lot better if you can consistently rack up damage, without taking any on your own. IE: Learning how to go in, drop your combo, and get out before they can react.

Of course knowing when to punish, your'e characters kill percents and edge guarding can be the difference of taking an early stock, and your opponent getting up to 200% on a single stock.

I've found going through this video has dramatically increased my movement capabilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrBWKkO9OeU

But the best experience you can get right now is to play people significantly better than you, and ask them to point out what you do wrong. If you can't get to locals, training mode to hone in movements and online ARENAS are your best bet. Arenas mainly because QP will only teach you how to deal with online spam, as opposed to someone playing with a more competitive mindset.

 

[Crystanium]

Okay cool! I just started going into practice mode and working on movements like RAR, risen and falling areals, consistent short hop fast fall, dashing, and what not. How much is “A LOT”? Is 2 hours a day enough? I do watch many videos of pros play my main. I just have a problem reacting quickly and fast, consistent movements. I just wanted to make sure one month is enough if I put 2 hours a day

I try to play for at least 3 hours on Quickplay on my days off from work. On days I do work, I still try 3 hours. Pro players might play longer. Samsora, the Peach main, said something about playing against Tweek, I think, for like 5 hours, but said his fingers hurt. I suspect he doesn't play 5 hours daily. Another person said they played against someone for 4 hours. Two hours should be fine, but if you do 3v3 (six players total?), then the outcome may not always grant you first place. 1v1 is preferred, without items, and with at least 7 to 8 minutes. If GSP means anything to you, I am at 4.4+ million, I believe. Two hours should be fine.

P Prison
QP is probably the best and most convenient option for the OP. Your experience doesn't speak for everyone else's.

 

[Prison]

P Prison
QP is probably the best and most convenient option for the OP. Your experience doesn't speak for everyone else's.[/QUOTE]

I think calling that my opinion is an oversight, as that's a specific thing that people have brought up about the online system. QP teaches players bad habits, you're better off either spending your time labbing combos and getting things into muscle memory, or joining a discord and then playing arenas in there.

Aside from the infrastructure of QP and online, it also can be quite discouraging because on an unrewarding GSP system. Anytime I see someone here, on reddit, in discord truly getting discouraged from this game, its because QP either doesn't match your fairly, gives you bs rulesets, etc.

Humans like to win, but we can accept loss if we know it wasn't stolen from us. The OP wants to get better, he's still in a stage where can get better without developing bad habits. Since he mentioned he was practicing SHs, that already shows that he is willing to learn the techs needed to be competitive in the game. It's better he reinforces those behaviors with meaningful matches that he can get feedback from, as opposed to just playing the slot machine that is QP's matchup system.

 

[Crystanium]

P Prison
No, it's not. Spamming happens in and out of QP. If it teaches players bad habits, then I'm bad, even though my brother and I have fought pro players online, including Eon, Rival, falln, pu55yk1ng, Charliedaking (CDK). You wouldn't say these pro players are picking up bad habits, would you? And what of pro players who say they think one of the best ways to practice is QP?

GSP is irrelevant for three reasons. First, if you have 1M GSP and some player beats you, the reality is that you don't actually end up as being better than 999k players, but worse than the other 1k. Skill doesn't work like that. Second, GSP seems to utilize the Elo system, so those who lose by someone who doesn't have as much GSP (an upset) loses more. There are better ranking systems. Third, you should be learning to develop skills and strategies, not trying to win points through good old "one and done" matches.

My experience in QP has been fine. Very rarely do I ever bump into someone who has preferences that don't match mine. If the OP wants to improve, he might not improve much if he's playing against others who aren't as good or better than him. I do think before the OP jumps into QP, he should learn how to play his characters properly, but QP is very convenient. It's not as bad as people make it out to be. People just like to *****, moan, and groan, rather than develop solutions to things in their control.

 

[RussianSauce]

Thank you for all of your advices! I definitely have enough now to get started on improving. I think the link that nudie mags shared is exactly what I need to focuse on. And then when I can at least move my character effectively, I will start putting in some QP time. Remember that I still play against my coworkers daily so I’m not missing out on my playing time while I grind my movements tutorials. I think I’ll dedicate first two weeks of April on mastering movements as much as possible, and last two weeks trying to implement them in the game. JiggyNinja also had a good point of not to be too abrasive. Be smart and patient. I need to focus on that as well. Thanks again. I really appreciate everything you guys (and ladies if any) shared

 

[Prison]

P Prison
No, it's not. Spamming happens in and out of QP. If it teaches players bad habits, then I'm bad, even though my brother and I have fought pro players online, including Eon, Rival, falln, pu55yk1ng, Charliedaking (CDK). You wouldn't say these pro players are picking up bad habits, would you? And what of pro players who say they think one of the best ways to practice is QP?

No, I wouldn't say they're bad, because anyone who has been in the competitive circuit didn't gain all of their skill from random matchmaking. They played in locals. The OP isn't at the level where it matters, but since you want to bring top competitive players into the mix, there isn't a single person who would disagree that playing online is different than playing lan.

As you seem to have missed my point, I said the OP was in a point where he could very easily pick up bad habits, which it sounds like he already has, because he's agreed that he plays very agro. It's very common for people new to the game where they find something that works (ie: ness pk fire -> downthrow, or Fox dash, wolf laser) that rarely gets punished by other new players. That becomes their main damage output, which then becomes spam.

All I said was by playing QP, you will get more experience against people who play like that vs people who play at a more tournament pace.

If anything, OPs best bet is to just go to his locals and play there, but I know not everyone is as blessed to have a competitive scene near by, where I think arena makes a good substitute.

edit: this is of course assuming the OP likes this game and wants to play it even more competitively later on. Not just to beat these coworkers, then drop it.

if the latter is the case, QP is fine. But I'm assuming someone who will dedicate a month (atleast 60 hours) to it, probably wants to build good habits, strategy for the long run.

 

[RussianSauce]

No, I wouldn't say they're bad, because anyone who has been in the competitive circuit didn't gain all of their skill from random matchmaking. They played in locals. The OP isn't at the level where it matters, but since you want to bring top competitive players into the mix, there isn't a single person who would disagree that playing online is different than playing lan.

As you seem to have missed my point, I said the OP was in a point where he could very easily pick up bad habits, which it sounds like he already has, because he's agreed that he plays very agro. It's very common for people new to the game where they find something that works (ie: ness pk fire -> downthrow, or Fox dash, wolf laser) that rarely gets punished by other new players. That becomes their main damage output, which then becomes spam.

All I said was by playing QP, you will get more experience against people who play like that vs people who play at a more tournament pace.

If anything, OPs best bet is to just go to his locals and play there, but I know not everyone is as blessed to have a competitive scene near by, where I think arena makes a good substitute.

edit: this is of course assuming the OP likes this game and wants to play it even more competitively later on. Not just to beat these coworkers, then drop it.

if the latter is the case, QP is fine. But I'm assuming someone who will dedicate a month (atleast 60 hours) to it, probably wants to build good habits, strategy for the long run.

As you can tell, since I am willing to do all this work especially on my movements the right way ( no shortcuts such as jump + attack) I am definitely investing in a long run not just beating my coworkers. But beating them is a priority for me right now. Since I feel like a month is already pushing it. I will have to work hard and be consistent. But I am definitely not stopping there. I want to continue to improve and get out of the game as much as possible. I do have local tournaments by where I live so after I accomplish my first go I will look into those.

 

[RussianSauce]

I just wanted to confirm, and get a piece of mind that one month is realistic (if I only have 1-2 hours a day to practice), especially knowing that they DO NOT work on movements at all. They can’t even short hop without jump+attack.

 

[Knotw]

Something that can help with making shorthops easier if you have trouble is to push two jump buttons at the same time. That way you don't have to worry about an otherwise really precise input. To make this easier I set both of the shoulder buttons I use the least to Jump so that I could use the macro without having to fight against muscle memory. I use the pro controller for this, but this works with two joycons too. For gamecube controller it's a little harder to set up in a convenient way but still doable with a bit of experimentation or willingness to have to relearn muscle memory for either shield or grab.

Once you have your controls set up in a way that makes pressing two jump buttons while moving both sticks comfortable go into training mode and practice movement options and general control such as input accuracy while recovering, quickly turning around without dashing, doing things out of run, and other common but semi precise inputs for a while. Just have a goal number for how many times in a row you'll do these things correctly each day and go through them.

Other than input practice it's important to still play matches against actual people (online is ok for this) and focus on not doing things that get you punished. Even without any ability to do non Jump + Attack shorthops you can work on playing safer and more thoughtfully. All the movement techniques and other fancy advanced tech in the world won't fix bad neutral play, they'll just give another set of options to use incorrectly. Still practice the techniques, but for now focus on how to better use the options you can already do, then start incorporating more advanced things as you start to see what situations they should actually be applied in.

 

[Crystanium]

P Prison
They played in locals, I haven't. So if my only experience has been against my brother, others in QP, and a few in from Discord, explain how I managed to keep up or even beat them. I think your dismissal of QP is a tad exaggerated. The point is if the OP decides to be competitive, even at an amateur level, QP isn't a bad option.

People pick up bad habits from anywhere and from anyone, regardless of whether or not it's online. To overcome bad habits, it's up to you, the player, to acknowledge and correct these bad habits. This reminds me of a time my brother went to a local and his opponent accused him of being the source of picking up bad habits, just because he lost.

If the main concern is a competitive setting, then the OP can make those his preferences. While I can't speak for how his experience will be, I have from day one (1/2/19) had very few occurrences where my preferences weren't appropriately matched, which is to say having items on and all that nonsense. While QP isn't the best or only option, it is convenient and good enough to develop strategies, especially if locals are a rarity.

 

[Prison]

P Prison

My point wasn't to dismiss QP, it was that playing in a situatiuon where you can receive instant feedback is better. If you're playing QP and winning by just spamming the same combo, you won't realize that until you get punished. Which could be multiple games, given the variance of skill in QP.

However, if you're playing with someone in disc or at locals, after every match, you can talk about things you're doing and then you get that immediate feedback. Then you begin to focus on fixing that before it becomes muscle memory.