Hitting a mental block.

[-AtlaS-]

Im not great at competitive smash but Id say Im better than most casual players who don't use tech. Ive recently set my sights on trying to become better at Lucas, which involves djc, waveshining, and a buttload of l-cancelling. At first I made real progress and managed to get down l-cancelling and waveshining pretty well. But recently something changed in my brain and I still cant figure it out. DJC is a tech Ive yet to perform on a basic level, but suddenly I havent been able to short hop consistantly. Before while playing I could get 8/10 shorthops that I needed and rarely miss one in training. But now I cant get more than 3 short hops before I start jumping too high to aerial. Its really messed with my head and changed my playstyle to a more dash-heavy ground play, which feels like a waste of Lucas' potential. Ive tried everything from flicking my finger over the jump buttons to trying to use only a nail to press them. And the block isnt just with lucas, I can barely short hop with most fastfallers. Any tips or ideas on how to get my brain out of this rut? Been in the lab for hours a day and still cant psyche myself out.

 

[CORY]

try taking a break.

like, go find another hobby you've been neglecting for your training time and just do that for a week. then come back and see if that helps you.

 

[-AtlaS-]

try taking a break.

like, go find another hobby you've been neglecting for your training time and just do that for a week. then come back and see if that helps you.

Guess that would help. Been smashing for the past 3 weeks, so I guess taking a break for a bit wouldn't hurt lol

 

[bandi]

Well, you could take a break. Break is good. Breaking bad is bad.

But what I think that YOU need to do is to hit the lab. Choose your character, whichever that might be (Lucas in this case), you take a deep breath and start moving. Explore your character, inherit his movement. YOU are lucas. It's not as difficult as you'd like it to be.
Walk with him, dash with him, wavedash, waveland - exploit every movement option possible that you know and try to get a feel for them.
The only downside to that is that it's going to feel repetitive. It's only plausible, after all the techskill needs to seep into your muscle memory.

Long story short - go play Ganondorf, you'll feel better. His SH are easy to do, has argueably the best SHFFL in da game and is overall easy to learn. Get the basics with him down and switch to another character when feeling confident enough. If you want to get gud you're going to need to invest time into smash, bruh.

Edit. Btw dude, I've been smashing since January non stop. I'm still not as good as I'd like me to be. But I'm getting there, and hopefully you too.

 

[-AtlaS-]

Well, you could take a break. Break is good. Breaking bad is bad.

But what I think that YOU need to do is to hit the lab. Choose your character, whichever that might be (Lucas in this case), you take a deep breath and start moving. Explore your character, inherit his movement. YOU are lucas. It's not as difficult as you'd like it to be.
Walk with him, dash with him, wavedash, waveland - exploit every movement option possible that you know and try to get a feel for them.
The only downside to that is that it's going to feel repetitive. It's only plausible, after all the techskill needs to seep into your muscle memory.

Long story short - go play Ganondorf, you'll feel better. His SH are easy to do, has argueably the best SHFFL in da game and is overall easy to learn. Get the basics with him down and switch to another character when feeling confident enough. If you want to get gud you're going to need to invest time into smash, bruh.

Edit. Btw dude, I've been smashing since January non stop. I'm still not as good as I'd like me to be. But I'm getting there, and hopefully you too.

Thats what I did before I hit this block. I still remember the night I decided to pick up Lucas. Spent 6 hours forcing myself to L cancel until eventually I was chaining aerials into combos fluidly. Then every day, I dedicated myself to just playing him. Loaded up a nice mix set, set up a random lvl 8 cpu and just played. Every day for about 3 hours in the last week and a half was spent progressing and getting more and more comfortable with Lucas. It wasnt until recently when I went to play against my usual training partner where things started getting hairy. It was a night before a local tourney and I was just airballing my aerials. I would get 2 dairs in before I would just jump to the top and got punished. I thought it was just my controller acting up, but when I used my spare at the tourney the next day, I was 2-0'd into losers then 2-0'd out of the tourney. I just couldnt play Lucas any more. It was frustrating going back to training the other day and successfully short hopping 40 times in a row without any other inputs. Once I started using aerials, it was back to the same old mental block. The best I did in training mode since has been 3 nairs and 1 dair before I did a full hop... Im gonna step back from smash for a bit. See if that helps. If not, then Im just gonna have to find another way to muscle through this block while hittkng the lab with everything I got.

 

[victinivcreate1]

Looking at your mains list, I think I know the problem.

Why are you playing Wolf. You're only talking about Lucas I see. You should focus on one main at a time until you get really good with him. M2K may have 3 mains, but he played each one individually for a year or so. I used to have several mains, but I narrowed it down to just MK, and Wolf when I wanna practice tech skill for fun lol.

 

[Boiko]

Looking at your mains list, I think I know the problem.

Why are you playing Wolf. You're only talking about Lucas I see. You should focus on one main at a time until you get really good with him. M2K may have 3 mains, but he played each one individually for a year or so. I used to have several mains, but I narrowed it down to just MK, and Wolf when I wanna practice tech skill for fun lol.

This.
Unless you're in a discovery phase of trying to pick a main and seeing what character feels best to you, stick to one.

Lucas isn't that easy to play. He's more advanced than most other characters. If you're new to smash, it's normal to struggle with his tech. Don't let it get you down, just keep practicing. Everyone has a different method for learning. I learned melee tech skill in the home run contest, lmao. Figure out what works for you and practice.

 

[Y-L]

Make sure you know that a short hop comes from the amount of time the button is depressed, not how lightly you push it. That's a common misconception. Essentially though, it's all practice. Practice just short hopping. Then when you get that down do a short hop aerial, then after that's down a shffl. I tend to recommend to new players to learn to fast fall and l cancel the same time. For the majority of moves you can press down and L/R at the same time to get a shffl.

 

[-AtlaS-]

Looking at your mains list, I think I know the problem.

Why are you playing Wolf. You're only talking about Lucas I see. You should focus on one main at a time until you get really good with him. M2K may have 3 mains, but he played each one individually for a year or so. I used to have several mains, but I narrowed it down to just MK, and Wolf when I wanna practice tech skill for fun lol.

I only mention Lucas because at the time I was spending hours practicing. I guess I use "main" too loosely. I meant characters I am more than familiar/comfortable with, but I guess I should stop trying to spread myself so thin and just play the crap out of Lucas until Im competitively ready. Thanks for the advice!

 

[-AtlaS-]

Make sure you know that a short hop comes from the amount of time the button is depressed, not how lightly you push it. That's a common misconception. Essentially though, it's all practice. Practice just short hopping. Then when you get that down do a short hop aerial, then after that's down a shffl. I tend to recommend to new players to learn to fast fall and l cancel the same time. For the majority of moves you can press down and L/R at the same time to get a shffl.

Ah yes short hopping was first described to me as "letting go of the jump button before the character actually jumps" I can do them very (veeery) consistantly without doing any aerials. For a short amount of time I would be able to shffl until i was interrupted by a whiff or something. Now, I can barely make it past 2 shffl before I high hop