Thanks a lot Daftatt, that helps a lot. What tech would you recommend I learn for squirtle? I can hydroplane smash, TACUS, sling jump and shell sling, and do the JC grabs.
What should I try to tackle now?
Tackle your vocabulary son! It's not TACUS, turnaround attack cancelled up-smash, it's reverse hydroplane up-smash or RHUS (pronounced Russ, lol).
I recommend you learn to consistently hit full speed short hop sling jumps and learn the correct way to do aerials out of them. Such as to do rising bair/nair hits out of it for approach/crossovers and deep nair/bairs(as in way offstage) for edgeguards. As well as ninja up-airs on opponents that think they're safe above you and drift controlled slingjump fair/dair. You DC (hold the control stick in a direction to influence how squirtle moves in the air) back immediately coming out of slingjump and fair people for throw followup mixups, or to surprise people coming down on you from above. For slingjump drift controlled dair, you do a slingjump the space the c-stick down input so you can travel through the air a bit before you start DCing back as to not dair through someone laterally. Remember if you full sling jump and immediately dair you should be able to waveland out of it always (and I think, maybe, even if you fast fall).
Next learn how to do specials out of slingjump perfectly, most notably bubble, which I recommend inputting soft slingjump for. I call short hop slingjump b-turnaround bubble, "Bubble Blitz". It's one of his best crossup/approach options and can stomp characters that are trying to zone you. Which you can see me do at this point in the video.
I love this next strategy, first, sling jumping towards your opponent. If they don't shield immediately withdraw out of slingjump into them, if they do shield however you fly past them, as you fly past them if they drop shield you immediately withdraw out back into them, if they don't drop shield you full speed waveland backwards out of slingjump and grab them out of their shields, you have to freaking nail the waveland here (in which case you basically teleport) but you can definitely slide back past them and grab in time. You can also use this strategy to cover a huge amount of space for the opponent's techroll options AND it can punish getup attack. I do it at this point in the video.
After those you should learn perfect control of hydrograb's distance, it's really important for squirtle's neutral game.
Then learn how to empty hydroplane with hydropivot, first just get down basic hydropivoting, then move onto hydropivot D-smash, hydropivot forward f-smash, then finally hydroshield.
Then for fun you learn how to hydrotaunt.
After all of those, you start going cobra and learn how to incorporate wavesling and waveshift into your movement, you then have enough tools to create elaborate dash-dance like movements that can help you space, punish, approach, gain/hold stage control, and setup for edgeguards. You will practice your wavesling and waveshifts until they are always frame perfect and control stick perfect for the perfect length wavedash for the situation. (this is the part of squirtle I'm still learning)
Then finally, the holy grail of squirtle ATs, the hydrocrawl. First you need to find the window for hydroreversal/turbocrawl. Then comes a long grind of practicing the controlstick motions and frame window for forward facing empty hydroplane, the hydrocrawl. Once you can do this all proficiently amazing sorts of cool options in movement become available to you and you're basically god at that point, 20SS is here, and we can all go home people.
