I've been casually playing this game with my friends since its launch. A few weeks ago I met this guy in my work who also plays Smash, so we agreed to play that night.
I had a lot of confidence, I know that rolling it's not too good against experienced players (which I met before playing online) but if you have a good timing you can win eitherway.
Oh man I was wrong. This dude never used his roll, like, never. What he did instead?
Perfect shields, grabs and perfect pivots. If I tried to rush him with a dash attack, he shielded and then punished me. When I thought he was going to block, he did grabs or perfect pivots. Oh, do I want to spam **** from far away? Let me present you
shield dashing.
So that's where I found that some mechanics are simply better because you can:
-Avoid damage
-Do more damage
For instance, if you Roll Spam, a Marth can expect that and punish you with his side B. Or, someone can go directly to grab you and execute a combo.
What can I do instead? Get out while foxtrotting; try to pull a perfect shield and then punish; pull a perfect pivot and tilt attack, etc. Doing a roll is the worst that you can do usually.
A simple foxtrot will take you as far as rolling, while having much less ending lag. A perfect pivot too, but also, you can do damage or perform a grab. Anything gives you better results, even dodging in the place will do the trick.
And what really changes everything for me is shield dashing, you can shield faster and also cover spaces. Someone is spamming missiles? You can aproach while shielding. What can you do instantly out of a shield? Grabbing or jump cancelling to up smash.
Sorry for the long story by the way, I recommend you to watch the
Izaw's Art of Smash, everything there is worth to watch. Learn other mechanics,
Specially shield dashing.
tl;dr: If you learn to perform perfect pivots, tomahawks, shield dashing consistently, you will forget about rolling and start to shield constantly.
