how to approach in this game and how jumping works?

[RnG 413]

Hello everyone! I've been a smash casual for a while now but i'm starting to make a transition to a more serious mindset. I come from a background in street fighter where being on the ground is safe and where most of your ground moveset is best, jumping is almost frowned upon. smash however seems to be reversed (correct me if im wrong here) i know this can be character specific though. My problem is how do i use my jumps effectively and approaching with aerials...i cant seem to approach on the ground at all and everyone i play against is hopping around and rolling 80% of the time i almost feel like a sitting duck trying to poke people with normal's. any advice would be much appreciated!

 

[popsofctown]

In melee and smash 64, you don't want your feet to be touching the ground, true. In Brawl and smash 4, it's not as universally true, and depends a lot more on your character.

One important thing is not to approach if you don't have to. If you have a better projectile game, or even can zone and repeatedly throw out high ranged moves while waiting for a mistake, you don't need to move in on your opponent.

If you do need to get in, there's several different approaching strategies, the validity of which depend on character:
1. Short hop aerial (sometimes fastfalled)
2. Roll behind
3. Dash attack
4. Dash grab
5. Full hop aerial (hit them on the way up, if they shield, the fullhop puts you a safe height in the air)
6. Dash cancelled into shield (sounds ridiculous but works great against opponents expecting previous options)
7. Dash cancelled spotdodge (often worse than 6)
8. Short hop fastfall grab (really neat trick against players expecting 1).
9. Certain special moves provide an adequate, canned approach. Yoshi's egg roll in Brawl, as an example, is a bad approach, it's too obvious. But Luigi's tornado in brawl has enough speed and safety on block to be a reasonable approach. So is Meta Knight's tornado, of course.

You should rarely double jump while in neutral, it's for recovering and followups while you're at an advantage.

 

[RnG 413]

Thanks for the tips. Ive mostly played Project M and Melee so the transition is taking time not to mention i hate the circle pad with a passion.

 

[Arturito_Burrito]

So it says your 3ds main is g&w, I'm not really sure what tricks he has this time but in brawl he would approach with varying short hop/full hop back airs.

Also empty jumps can help you gain a little ground and keep you safe to dodge anything coming at you.

 

[RnG 413]

Yeah i'm using G&W, captain falcon and diddy at the moment. Ive noticed the turtle is a pretty good and captain falcons bair is my favorite. My other problem seems to be getting grabs off of people who roll constantly. I almost feel its impossible to grab unless some whiffs.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Punish roll away with dash attack; it's really easy, and it is more rewarding than a grab on a lot of characters anyway (dash attack across the board is really buffed in smash 4). The air/ground balance and the approach/don't approach game comes down a lot to match-ups and characters though; someone like G&W is not going to win much if he keeps his feet planted, but you may have a lot more luck jumping a lot less with your Diddy. Letting Sonic come to you while you just focus on controlling some space may often be wise, but giving Duck Hunt breathing room could be your last mistake. The characters are really diverse in this game so you definitely have to be more prepared than in many other games to play the match-up and not just play the engine.

Most of your Street Fighter fundamentals and that style of thinking will work well, but the main thing to keep in mind is that you still have very free control of your movement in the air so jumping doesn't represent a very big commitment and in fact is often desirable because you can control your movement while attacking (you can begin fastfalling or air control left/right while executing a standard aerial attack), but you do have a lot more different moves on the ground and in most match-ups being directly underneath an opponent is a good positional advantage (upward aimed attacks tend to have much more speed and priority than downward ones). So I wouldn't say that being in the air is inherently better or worse than being grounded just meaningfully different. I'd also just think of your spacing in a planar way instead of a linear one and then just expand the same basic "my options versus theirs based on spacing and current game state" that you do in Street Fighter to this game. When you stop thinking so much about jumping and instead just think of airborne/grounded as two states and think of up/down spacing as being as fundamental to play as left/right spacing, a lot of things will probably make more sense and you'll probably begin to discover just how much smash really does have in common with traditional fighters. Your avatar is Marvel based so when you dealt with airdash/flight mode characters in that game you probably ran into many of the same issues (many smash players like marvel because they find the movement in marvel intuitive!).

Landing is also inherently unsafe in smash 4 which you may find particularly useful. Airdodges have landing lag and there is no blocking in the air which means you can do the following. Time one of your own attacks against a landing opponent such that it will hit *just* before the opponent's feet hit the ground. If the attack is well chosen and they airdodge, you'll still have active hitboxes as they land and will hit their aerial landing lag. If they do not airdodge, you'll hit them before they're grounded and before they have an opportunity to shield. Unless they have some great character specific option (like a counter), they have no way at all to avoid your attack if you set everything up correctly. Your character Mr. Game & Watch in particular has several long range moves that are persistent enough to do this effectively, but any character can exploit this to make the opponent exercise more care in jumping around.

 

[RnG 413]

Wow thanks guys! this really helped alot applied it to some games last night and already seeing a huge improvement. Starting to really enjoy this game alot now, more like a fighter than i anticipated. really appreciate the detailed responses