Hi I'm new and need some help getting started

[Double Helix]

So many walls of text. Thanks Terry. So if you enjoy reading this is THE thread to be XD

 

[Iron Dragon]

Yeah, I'd highly advise it personally =p

 

[StoryTime]

And I will apologize for the amounts of walls of text you are going through because of this thread you started. But we really do love this game if you can't tell XD Anyways, you should be having fun.

XD I don't mind the walls of text. I find those constructive walls of text to be really helpful for me anyway and they do have great advice, obviously. The more I read them, the more similarities I find that occur between those walls of text which is also helpful. For now I'm just trying to get my SHFFL down completely so I can work on other things while integrating SHFFLing. And I can tell now some stuff is already muscle memory like my L-canceling and short hopping. I got really excited when I realized this :D

 

[Double Helix]

Lol. You found anyone to play with yet? That will help a lot. The advantage of not having someone to play with is you just simply work on tech skill. The disadvantage is it takes awhile to actually see results of your work. XD It took me a year.

 

[Iron Dragon]

Check the regional threads for anyone in your area, and often times now Facebook groups as well.

I just went real quick and found this for you for people in your area https://www.facebook.com/groups/350398944989752/

And that's really good that those things are already becoming muscle memory for you. As I said I also think dash dancing is really good for Falcon. If you do the exercises I told you to do you'll develop a good base for starting your DD game. Then as you play more matches vs various different people you'll find what dash dances work at what times and ways to change it up vs different people. So while DDing doesn't help in the immediate grasp of playing by yourself, what it DOES do is help you gain a grasp on how you generally want your character to move and what you want them to do. The more fluid your control is, the better you'll feel about playing the game.

 

[StoryTime]

Lol. You found anyone to play with yet? That will help a lot. The advantage of not having someone to play with is you just simply work on tech skill. The disadvantage is it takes awhile to actually see results of your work. XD It took me a year.

Unfortunately, I don't have anyone to play with, and I probably won't until I start going to events which isn't happening soon >.>

Check the regional threads for anyone in your area, and often times now Facebook groups as well.

I just went real quick and found this for you for people in your area https://www.facebook.com/groups/350398944989752/

I did join the Facebook group but I have no transportation with which to go to events But whatevs, gotta get in that tech skill practice anyway XD

 

[TerryJ]

I did join the Facebook group but I have no transportation with which to go to events But whatevs, gotta get in that tech skill practice anyway XD

The community is usually pretty cool about carpooling. Find someone to come over to your place to play for a day and practice! :D

 

[Iron Dragon]

I agree with Terry. Try and carpool to smashfests. Find people who are close by that would be willing to pick you up. Try and reimburse with gas money if at all possible as well but if you can't I'm sure they still wouldn't mind too much. If you have the drive and can show others that you have said drive, they'd be willing to help you get better.

 

[TerryJ]

I agree with Terry. Try and carpool to smashfests. Find people who are close by that would be willing to pick you up. Try and reimburse with gas money if at all possible as well but if you can't I'm sure they still wouldn't mind too much. If you have the drive and can show others that you have said drive, they'd be willing to help you get better.

A bike isn't a bad idea either. I rode 15 miles back and fourth which is about an hour and a half each way to get to a fest. When there is a will, there is a way.

 

[StoryTime]

The community is usually pretty cool about carpooling. Find someone to come over to your place to play for a day and practice! :D

Man I wish it was that simple... It's just certain circumstances prevent me from doing something as simple as that. For now I can't really do anything about it but I'm sure things will change in the relative near future.

 

[TerryJ]

Man I wish it was that simple... It's just certain circumstances prevent me from doing something as simple as that. For now I can't really do anything about it but I'm sure things will change in the relative near future.

Well I wish you the best of luck on getting it figured out. I love how many new people I've been getting to play against lately and I feel like the community is really starting to pick up speed. Every person that shows up to fests/tournaments counts you know!

Personally, I really really regret not actively participating in the community earlier. Not only would I be better at playing but I'd know a lot more cool people.

By the way, I love your avatar. I was thinking of going as cosplaying as him for Sakuracon but I ended up not going.

 

[StoryTime]

By the way, I love your avatar. I was thinking of going as cosplaying as him for Sakuracon but I ended up not going.

Yeah hopefully I can get things to work a bit. And you like Gintama too? YAY! Gintama fan! Wooo~ In any case, once I get my overall tech skill to a reasonable point, I might ask my parents if I can go to a local tourney or something. I'm just a kid (15) who can't drive after all >.>

 

[Nimbus]

Might be joining the conversation a bit late here, but my first piece of advice I always give anyone wanting to get better at Melee is to get as comfortable and familiar with your main as possible. Everything is simpler to approach if you can do that because you know your character's strengths and weaknesses (To an extent, of course. You can't REALLY know all of a character's strengths and weaknesses until you've applied the necessary ATs). For instance, I mained Marth for two years before I even knew competitive Melee was a thing. Once I started watching professional videos (Mostly Ken, Azen, and M2K back in those days), my familiarity with my character helped me greatly. And honestly, it's just a lot of grinding and hard work. The game obviously takes a HUGE amount of dedication, but if you're having fun with it, it's not tedious.

 

[Zone]

When I was learning the game I would try to learn different things at different time and over time while playing with my friends try to include a new tech into my game one at a time.


The only problem with this is when you're adding new tech into your play, you tend to have a mind to look for that situation more, and even sometimes try to create it even if it's not advantageous to do so. and you may end up doing this unintentionally.

This sometimes leads you to think you were better off before the tech, don't let this fool you. You just need to get it down so it becomes 2nd nature, so when the situation comes because it was natural and smart to do it. Then you capitalize.


Also best thing is to work on basic tech skill until your consistent play with people who are equally motivated, eventually try for a tournament. If at all possible if you run into a strategy or gimmick that's giving you problems ask for help, or record yourself losing to that style/strategy so we can easily see any holes and can properly explain the problem you are having.

 

[Nimbus]

^^^^ I second that wholeheartedly.

I think that's especially true of character-specific tech. The example I'd use for that would be shine grabbing. It's like the most situation-oriented technique a spacy can learn, and I know that when I'd try to practice using it effectively (I second Fox) I'd do the grab, but the shine had actually connected and I wasn't fast enough on the grab, so I was just like, "Well dangit. Shoulda just waveshined and carried on from there."

Experience is a fantastic teacher though. Awareness of different situations comes when you've played the game and been around different playstyles enough.

 

[Double Helix]

Another thing that may help is going to the Falcon boards. It probably wouldn't hurt your game much XD

 

[StoryTime]

Actually, turns out one of my old friends is into competitve smash so I'm trying to see if we can try and play some smash together but I'm hoping our schedules don't conflict too much. And I have checked out the falcon boards and i read through a thread about the future of Falcon's metagame. It was really interesting.

 

[Corona]

StoryTime is the becoming board's favorite little brother. Keep at it. I'm just now learning the advanced techniques of the game as well for my 2 mains. Let us know how you're progressing; it would be good to see how my progress stacks up against someone else out there who is about at the same stage of the game as me.

 

[StoryTime]

StoryTime is the becoming board's favorite little brother. Keep at it. I'm just now learning the advanced techniques of the game as well for my 2 mains. Let us know how you're progressing; it would be good to see how my progress stacks up against someone else out there who is about at the same stage of the game as me.

Haha that's heartwarming ^.^ but unfortunately i have been out of town for the past few days so my techskill improvement has come to a halt but that ends tomorrow. I have a Dazzle at my dad's place so I might hook it up and record me failing at tech practice XD while I was out of town, however, I started to get a little friendly with my region's facebook group so that was cool. I extend the same hand I extended to the DFW smashers, if you wanna skype, hit me up with a friend request, whenever im online on skype im up for a call. Im gonna try and see if i can set up melee next to my computer at my moms so i can skype and melee at the same time (right now ar my moms the gamecube is upstairs and computer downstairs. In any case feel free to hit me up with a skype call.

 

[Corona]

I am not one to use Skype, but I do like the youtube idea. I have no problem taking vids of my probably just as equally sub-par tech skills and posting them to compare against yours.

 

[StoryTime]

Alrighty I got in SHFFL practice today and I feel pretty good about my SHFFLing! I think it's time to move on to something new :D so does DDing sound like a good area to work on next? Just DD across FD a bunch of times right?

 

[TerryJ]

Alrighty I got in SHFFL practice today and I feel pretty good about my SHFFLing! I think it's time to move on to something new :D so does DDing sound like a good area to work on next? Just DD across FD a bunch of times right?

Yeah pretty much, practice being able to do it first and then work up to doing it across FD. After that try DD'ing a specific distances. I like to do min to max over and over again to help train my consistency.

On a side note, I ****ing love pivots.

 

[Double Helix]

Pivots are pretty awesome. But should Falcon mains work on gentleman...ing? That was weird to type. I will try to never do that again.

 

[StoryTime]

Pivots are pretty awesome. But should Falcon mains work on gentleman...ing? That was weird to type. I will try to never do that again.

It's been a few days since the last post haha.. Since then I've been working on a few things here and there. I have the timing for the gentleman down, I use A-A-Z and it works pretty well. Of course I've been practicing my SHFFL to make sure I don't get rusty and I've been doing some DD practice too. DDing is hard haha not the actual execution but like the spacing and the timing and stuff. Oh and I've been messing with wavedashing a little more. Still can't wavedash consistently though. I found my capture card so I'll try and get a video up of me derping around with a low lvl cpu.

 

[Double Helix]

Well, I would recommend working on wavedashing before really getting into more DDing stuff. The only reason I say that is that WDing is a really good tool during DDing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrRwD8_63kU&t=9m5s

That is the best example I have off the top of my head, but Hax definitely wanted to be facing center stage there.

 

[Iron Dragon]

WDing can be good during DD but it's a lot more situational with Falcon because his WD isn't as good. Learning crouch cancelling is pretty good but that's sorta hard when you don't play against people haha.

If you just wanted to learn WDing as a whole though then you could try a character like Marth's WD to make your fingers feel better about the motion. As I said it's more about being able to build the general dexterity, and whatever way needs to be done to help do said things better is acceptable for the most part.

It's good that you have gentleman down though. Definitely useful to know. And yeah DDing is pretty difficult in application, it's one of those things that's just learned over time though. Through the course of playing the game your goal as Falcon will be to further refine your DD game as much as possible to try and become unhittable.

The important thing though is that you practice all of these things every day to keep your fingers feeling good about it. 20 minutes every couple of hours or just whenever you can is enough as long as you feel good about what you did in those 20 minutes.

 

[StoryTime]

Ive been practicing every day for about 30 min to an hour but when I go back to school in a couple weeks I might not find time every day... Also, that video got me thinking: when should I use the dodge roll? I dont see it used too often.

 

[KayB]

Ive been practicing every day for about 30 min to an hour but when I go back to school in a couple weeks I might not find time every day... Also, that video got me thinking: when should I use the dodge roll? I dont see it used too often.

Dodge roll is situational. Its a bad habit to have to do it instinctively since opponents can react to it, but sometimes those few extra invincibility frames could save your life. For example, when your shield is being pressured, you can dodge roll to escape it. Be wary though, because you have to dodge roll at the appropriate time for these situations or you'll get killed (ex. Falco is pressuring your shield with shines and dairs. Then, as he is about to do another dair, that would be the optimal time to roll. If you roll after he finishes the dair, then he can react appropriately and punish you). Its generally never a good idea to dodge roll on a platform because your roll is stopped by the ledge enabling opponents to reach you more easily. Some characters have slower dodge rolls than others (like Puff, G&W, and Samus), so if you ever try out those characters, dodge rolling might not be a very optimal solution most of the time. You play Falcon, so you'll be fine.

 

[StoryTime]

Yeah I kind of developed a habit of dodge rolling a lot when I played smash casually so I'll try my best to break that habit and rely on other movement methods instead..

 

[Double Helix]

The hardest habit to break when making the transition to competitive Smash on any of the three games is to dodge roll less. Sometimes people bait rolls and you would be better off getting hit than rolling. They prepare for the combo post roll and not for the one if they don't. At least...I have that problem. I feel less comfortable or smooth when I miss the read and keep the combo going. Oh well...for more baited rolls...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkF4KuDiRRs&t=4m10s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH8YrQJfwew&t=8m

How? How can he do that? Oh well. Those are two examples of worst case scenarios. There is almost always a better movement option, but it is a hard habit to break. I have trouble with staying out of my shield. It led to really limited movement, but it happened after I stopped rolling as much, so it is progress. Good luck.

 

[Nimbus]

The hardest habit to break when making the transition to competitive Smash on any of the three games is to dodge roll less. Sometimes people bait rolls and you would be better off getting hit than rolling. They prepare for the combo post roll and not for the one if they don't. At least...I have that problem. I feel less comfortable or smooth when I miss the read and keep the combo going. Oh well...for more baited rolls...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkF4KuDiRRs&t=4m10s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH8YrQJfwew&t=8m

How? How can he do that? Oh well. Those are two examples of worst case scenarios. There is almost always a better movement option, but it is a hard habit to break. I have trouble with staying out of my shield. It led to really limited movement, but it happened after I stopped rolling as much, so it is progress. Good luck.

Aaaahhhhh I love to see Mango, as he says, "eat rolls for breakfast." Best in the business at it, IMO.

But yeah, I've struggled pretty mightily with that transition as well. Learning to WD out of shield is something that really helped me, though. Also, just perfecting wavedashing and dashdancing in general does wonders. It frees you from seeing shielding as your only option. It certainly helps with Captain Falcon. Your best option with him is almost never to shield. Gotta run errrrrywhere with him. For Falcon, Running>Shielding, in most cases.

 

[StoryTime]

Oh another thing: when I'm running around beating up a low lvl CPU with throws and SHFFLs, I'm usually SHFFLing out of a sprint. Should I be doing that or should I stop sprinting first then do the aerial?

 

[Double Helix]

Oh another thing: when I'm running around beating up a low lvl CPU with throws and SHFFLs, I'm usually SHFFLing out of a sprint. Should I be doing that or should I stop sprinting first then do the aerial?

Uhm...if I am understanding what you are asking correctly, then it is just something that is hard to practice against computers, but becomes easier as you learn your character's moveset. Spacing. Sometimes you would want to SHFFL in place, sometimes you want to space your SHFFL so that you sweetspot a knee, sometimes you want to space your SHFFL so that you weak hit a knee to follow up with an edgeguard, etc.

Basically, learn Falcon's moveset. It will help you space against your opponents, and if you can outspace your opponents, it becomes really fun.

But yeah, I've struggled pretty mightily with that transition as well. Learning to WD out of shield is something that really helped me, though. Also, just perfecting wavedashing and dashdancing in general does wonders. It frees you from seeing shielding as your only option. It certainly helps with Captain Falcon. Your best option with him is almost never to shield. Gotta run errrrrywhere with him. For Falcon, Running>Shielding, in most cases.

Lately, its taken me getting **** on by Fox in order for me to finally not shield. I play against friends either quite new or not super serious, but like playing anyways, so shield-grabbing was enough. I could sit in a shield and punish. But you just can't play in a shield at a higher level. You. Just. Can't. In so many cases, it seems better to just get hit than to get grabbed. That seems more true as Falcon than most characters. He is that awkward not fast-faller but not anyone else weight that makes him comboable but not up-throw -> rest-able.

 

[swanized]

I can see the advantages to using C-stick for aerials like popping knees/bairs while going in either direction but should I always be using C-stick for non-nair aerials? I shouldn't have any problems with it if I play around with the C-stick for a couple hours since I L-cancel with L, which is a lot easier than I thought it would be. Having my left hand control the "FFL" in SHFFL is helpful so I don't have to SH, aerial, and L cancel with the same hand ^.^ in any case, I'm guessing C-sticking aerials comes down to quickly moving the thumb to the C-stick and jamming it in the desired direction right? Oh, and C-sticking will make uairing easier since its hard to SHFFL a uair with the control stick and A button (IMO)

Since you're still beginning I'd recommed you switch to a claw grip before you get too used to the normal grip, claw is much better even though it's counter-intuitive.

 

[StoryTime]

Uhm...if I am understanding what you are asking correctly, then it is just something that is hard to practice against computers, but becomes easier as you learn your character's moveset. Spacing. Sometimes you would want to SHFFL in place, sometimes you want to space your SHFFL so that you sweetspot a knee, sometimes you want to space your SHFFL so that you weak hit a knee to follow up with an edgeguard, etc.

Basically, learn Falcon's moveset. It will help you space against your opponents, and if you can outspace your opponents, it becomes really fun.

You answered my question well XD thanks. This helps a lot.

 

[Corona]

One more tidbit on rolling. Never roll towards your opponent. It may sound obvious, but if you roll too much then chances are you aren't doing it in the right direction 100% of the time.

 

[Double Helix]

One more tidbit on rolling. Never roll towards your opponent. It may sound obvious, but if you roll too much then chances are you aren't doing it in the right direction 100% of the time.

This is a bit misleading. You can roll toward your opponent if they are in the air. It would basically be trading places in that case. The best advice is to just roll less and less until you can recognize when rolling is the best option. Bad rolling is probably worse than getting hit in some cases (especially as Yoshi).

As for spacing: It is a bit difficult to learn when you aren't facing an opponent that isn't AI, but you can learn spacing of some of the other character's moves and how to dash dance out of their range until you have an opening. Facing a level 6 or 7 AI would be good. Go to FD and try to dash dance just out of their range using different speeds of dash dances. It helps some. It is part of how I learned some characters' spacing; the other part is just watching lots of Smash.

 

[StoryTime]

As for spacing: It is a bit difficult to learn when you aren't facing an opponent that isn't AI, but you can learn spacing of some of the other character's moves and how to dash dance out of their range until you have an opening. Facing a level 6 or 7 AI would be good. Go to FD and try to dash dance just out of their range using different speeds of dash dances. It helps some. It is part of how I learned some characters' spacing; the other part is just watching lots of Smash.

This is a great idea. I'm totally gonna try it. Hopefully if I choose the cpu to be Marth that he just wont spam neutral A or if I choose a spacie he won't just spam side-B's... Some CPUs love their special attacks so much, it's ridiculous.

 

[Double Helix]

This is a great idea. I'm totally gonna try it. Hopefully if I choose the cpu to be Marth that he just wont spam neutral A or if I choose a spacie he won't just spam side-B's... Some CPUs love their special attacks so much, it's ridiculous.

Well the AI love their jabs. I haven't done this in awhile, so I don't remember their tendancies, but I am pretty sure the AI love the forward smash and they tilt sometimes. Besides, even if they don't do the most useful of moves, if you are good at doing it against the ones they actually do (except the spacies' side-B), then you could just adapt to a move with more range if needed (Fox's SH -> nair). Just get good at the skill, and apply it differently when you learn more.

 

[milligraham]

I am definitely very guilty of using dodge roll way too much. It also leads to me getting punished because I end up rolling into someone's attack.
What's a good way to break the habit and what should I replace dodge rolling with?