How much would tech skill help?

[SomebodyTookSup]

Hello everyone, sup here. I am pretty new to the smash community, but have been playing the game for a good while now. Anyways ever since I joined the community and took the game more seriously I've gotten better, however I seemed to have hit a wall recently. I just can't seem to push to the next level for my game play. I was told by someone PRed in my state that I need to practice more tech skill and that will get me going forward again. My only issue is I'm not sure how much it will help. I main rob and understand he has some crazy tricks with his gyro, up b, and so on. I can not pull them off consistently, but know how to do almost all of them. How much does doing this stuff consistently really help?

Some other information: my mind games are decent.
I'm usually good at mixing up unless I feel like I can't do anything (then I get nervous and tend to do the same thing over and over.)
Also pretty good at figuring people's play style out and changing my own play style to counter theirs.
So I guess my main question here is would really grinding out tech skill help me get to that next level, or would working on mind games and mix ups help more.
Any input is helpful!

 

[infiniteV115]

Depends; how often do you feel like you can't choose an option that would work, because you're not able to execute it?

 

[SomebodyTookSup]

I'm not to sure. At this point I think tech skill would give me more options for landing and mind games. So it would defiantly help me with different ways of approaching and spacing.

 

[infiniteV115]

If improving your tech skill increases the number of viable options you have (which it almost certainly will if your tech skill is as bad as you make it sound) then yeah, get to training.

 

[BlueXenon]

Learn how to do these things with at least 95% consistency:
1. B reverse laser while landing to the ground.
2. Run, shield, b reverse laser.
3. Run, short hop, b reverse laser.
4. Go to the ledge, jump back a little to decrease the chance of getting hit, then shoot a laser onto the stage.
4. Run, shield, b reverse gyro.
5. Jump from the ledge, b reverse gyro, immediately cancel the charge
6. Run, short hop, b reverse gyro.
7. Go to the ledge, jump back a little to decrease the chance of getting hit, then shoot a gyro onto the stage.
8. Land using a b reverse gyro, cancel the charge immediately, and then do any aerial or a b reverse laser.

Rob is extremely easy to stage spike, so make sure you practice teching the stage. Perfect shielding is important too for specific match ups.

Be careful not to develop bad out of shield habits just because they work on low level players. Rob has many out of shield options, but none of them are great against experienced opponents.

Rob's biggest weaknesses imo are landing to the ground, and being on the ledge. Even though Rob has many options to land and to get back on stage from the ledge, they can mostly be easily reacted to and some of his options are too slow. Additionally, Rob is a very large character which makes landing and getting back from the ledge even worse.

 

[SomebodyTookSup]

Thank you for the input guys, I will get to working on that list of things. Then I will apply them to my game play. Cheers!

 

[Shadow the Past]

Tech skill has debatable importance in the grand scheme of Brawl's metagame. Things like B-reverse laser have debatable importance during matches, and other B-reversals just give you a bit more mobility. However, practicing these techs does get you more comfortable with your character, which is very important. During a match, you're almost always going to have your eyes focused on your opponent's character. Being able to not look at your character and move fluidly without looking away from your opponent can be very vital during a match.

Mister Eric, a good ROB from my area (currently PR ranked #3 in KY), has been playing ROB since 2008 and has nearly flawless control over his character. He does B-reverse gyro back-to-back-to-back like it's nothing, and it's always clear he's in complete control of what he's doing.

Basically, practicing tech skill is to make you feel comfortable with your character. If you feel uncomfortable/unnatural doing something, practice it until it feels natural.

 

[infiniteV115]

I'll just mention that run --> shield --> b-reverse laser and run --> shield --> b-reverse gyro are unnecessary, not because they're bad options but because they involve an unnecessary step (shielding)

You can just run --> b-reverse. And if you're going to shield in between, you can just buffer a turnaround laser/gyro out of shielddrop rather than dropping shield and b-reversing (which - unless executed frame perfectly - will be slower)

 

[BlueXenon]

I'll just mention that run --> shield --> b-reverse laser and run --> shield --> b-reverse gyro are unnecessary, not because they're bad options but because they involve an unnecessary step (shielding)

You can just run --> b-reverse. And if you're going to shield in between, you can just buffer a turnaround laser/gyro out of shielddrop rather than dropping shield and b-reversing (which - unless executed frame perfectly - will be slower)

Thankyou for the correction! I thought shielding in between was faster than just running --> b-reverse because it cancels the dash.

 

[infiniteV115]

Np. You can cancel your dash with both downB and nB. Watch either myself or Salem play and you'll see us run away --> b-reverse laser a lot with ZSS.
Watch Will play and he'll occasionally use run --> downB to tech chase.

It's either that or you can cancel the skid animation that occurs when you stop dashing...but either way I'm pretty sure it's faster than the 3 frames of shielding + 7 frames of shield drop = 10 frame total of shielding first

 

[Phan7om]

@ infiniteV115 yeah thats definitely true, all characters can B-reverse their specials to cancel any of their dash momentum at any point of the dash.

Anyway, tech skill is pretty important. Being able to make your character do anything you want them to do is essential. What a lot of players, melee players specifically, think is that in Brawl you could win with little to no tech skill... which is completely false. Honestly, its almost about the same (except spacies). Tech skill is basically your movement, melee has wavedashing and l-cancelling, brawl has (for ROB specifically) auto-cancelling, platform cancelling, and glide tossing. Yeah i know 2 of 3 of those things are in Melee as well, but the importance of those things are much more relevant with the absence of the "physics" of Melee.
...
But anyway back to the point Be able to do everything that Xenon said, also just experiment with the way ROB moves around the stage. Its good to be able to make your character be able to move as fast as the game will allow it, and then slowing him down at certain points in the match whenever is best fit. Glide Tossing, and Insta-throwing should be a major part of your Gyro gameplay, but im sure you already knew that. Learn the auto-cancel timing on all of ROB's aerials, see how low you without having any landing lag. Learn to platform cancel consistently, most important on Smashville (even tho there are more stages that this will work on), itl help speed the character up. Learn how to sheild drop consistently, a lot of people never expect the player to sheild drop from the platform for some reason, some players can react to it tho, learning how to do it gives ROB a lot more options on the platform.

And yeah, thats basically all I have to say. Just try to make your character as fast as possible, and be able to do the things with ROB that you want him to. Its all about consistency! Once you can b-reverse laser, glide toss, etc, without even thinking of "how to do it" just like you would walking or dashing, you've mastered the tech skill imo.

 

[infiniteV115]

@ infiniteV115 yeah thats definitely true, all characters can B-reverse their specials to cancel any of their dash momentum at any point of the dash.

Not all characters can b-reverse their specials (eg Samus can't b-reverse any of her specials) and quite a few characters have at least one special that cannot be b-reversed.
Also it isn't the b-reversal itself that stops the dash momentum, or cancels the dash. It's the special that cancels the dash, the b-reversal comes afterwards and is irrelevant

 

[Phan7om]

Not all characters can b-reverse their specials (eg Samus can't b-reverse any of her specials) and quite a few characters have at least one special that cannot be b-reversed.
Also it isn't the b-reversal itself that stops the dash momentum, or cancels the dash. It's the special that cancels the dash, the b-reversal comes afterwards and is irrelevant

Welp. Today I learned.
Edit: I even knew that Samus, and a few other characters specials cant be b-reversed, yet I still said it lol.

 

[DeLux]

http://smashboards.com/threads/so-you-want-to-innovate-your-play-basics-on-getting-better.336364/

Seems relevant

 

[Elyssa Xey Hexen]

Hello everyone, sup here. I am pretty new to the smash community, but have been playing the game for a good while now. Anyways ever since I joined the community and took the game more seriously I've gotten better, however I seemed to have hit a wall recently. I just can't seem to push to the next level for my game play. I was told by someone PRed in my state that I need to practice more tech skill and that will get me going forward again. My only issue is I'm not sure how much it will help. I main rob and understand he has some crazy tricks with his gyro, up b, and so on. I can not pull them off consistently, but know how to do almost all of them. How much does doing this stuff consistently really help?

Some other information: my mind games are decent.
I'm usually good at mixing up unless I feel like I can't do anything (then I get nervous and tend to do the same thing over and over.)
Also pretty good at figuring people's play style out and changing my own play style to counter theirs.
So I guess my main question here is would really grinding out tech skill help me get to that next level, or would working on mind games and mix ups help more.
Any input is helpful!

I am going to make a ton of assumptions without actually seeing you play.

My take on new player plateaus are not understanding what characters can do, stuck at building up control over their actions, then knowing what to do at the proper times. It seems to be like you have played enough to know what things ROB can do, but you just lack the control to do what you want to do with great success. In this aspect, I can agree with you practicing tech skill. But, more just being able to execute what you want to do without mistakes.

From the rest of your statements, I would sort of guess you also might not be making the correct decisions at the right times. I think the sense of "mixing" things up has a lot of different flavors depending upon your point of view. Generally, there are optimal ways of play and bad methods. Most of your decisions should always be the most optimal possible, but you have deviations from the optimal way of play which constitute your mix-ups. Additionally, conditioning might be also be a better view point on "mixing" things up. Pretending you have a rolling habit is an example of conditioning. However, you sort of have to judge which of these methods are really necessary.

For example, some people might spam projectiles. You could attempt to camp back. Or a strategy is to beat this action by running up with a power shield and punish with snake's dash attack or ftilt to punish your spammy opponent. Unless your opponent actively changes against your method your method is optimal in this context. Once they start to adjust the timing of their projectile or simply wait for you to attack out of power shield your method is no longer optimal by itself and you will have to deviate with alternative methods.

The point I am getting at is I do not believe you need to mix-up randomly since you are betting at this point. Your mix-ups should be with purpose such as in response to your opponents actions or attempts at conditioning.

asf

But, I might be rambling. . . Delux, tell me I am an idiot please :D