How to improve at Smash! (SmashTube Edition)

[SmVshTube Invitational]

I guess we’ll have to post here often now, huh?

Well, it isn’t all that bad, at least we get to be useful for once.

So, you want to learn how to improve, but you don’t know how. So your best bet is to look at SmashBoards to find a post that will guide you, and that’s why we’re here to help you on that journey. Here’s our take on How To Improve At Smash.


Part 1 - Introduction

Before jumping in here, you probably saw a couple of posts and advice top players saying to “Just play the game a lot and you’ll get the hang of it.” That is simply not true, while practice does give you more experience in knowing your opponent’s character and predicting what they will do, it’s not the only thing you can do to improve at the game and learning how to use your character’s moveset to its full potential.

And if you did look for advice from top players, you probably asked: How did they become so good at the game in just a month when I played since release and I still suck? You might think it’s talent, and you might be right, talent can be part of their success, but it’s not everything. The answer to this is managing your time, and mind. There are far too many players who go online and think they’re improving, but they’re most likely wasting their time instead of thinking of what they could improve on.


Part 2 - Research

But before you learn what you need to improve on, you should learn your character first, and by that I mean looking at frame data, character tutorials, and competitive gameplay. Analyze how people use the character, what moves they use often, learn the strengths and weaknesses of every move, the pros and cons of using them. Before touching the controller, do your research and analyze every bit of important information.


Part 3 - Test

After all that research is done, you should start labbing and testing your research. Labbing your character basically means going into training mode and practicing all the possible combos you can do, practicing tech, etc. THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT, if you watch combo tutorials or combo videos, you can try and replicate said combos and practice them until you do them flawlessly. But my first suggestion is doing research on combos before replicating them, find if they’re true or not, because if they’re not true, you might’ve wasted your time practicing and will end up failing every time. If you find a combo that works and don’t have any information on it, start asking questions like:

• Why did that work?
• What can my opponent do to escape it?
• What can my opponent do to avoid it?

You’ll start finding some useful information that will help you learn which combos work, and which don’t. If you do a combo that isn’t true but worked against a real player, ask yourself the same questions.

Here’s a list that the user Conda made to point out some of the things you can learn through labbing and analyzing.

• Clever ways to use seemingly weak attacks
• When to and When not to roll
• How to overcome certain character matchups
• How to defeat characters that seem very powerful
• When to grab and how often
• Safest ways to recover when your opponent is edgeguarding
• How to punish someone who repeatedly uses certain moves, such as grants, projectiles, etc.
• How to utiliz fastfalling and shorthops
• How to utilize platforms in new and useful ways
• Item throwing tricks
• How to trick your opponent and bait them into being hit

Friends are also a good way of learning, practicing real sets instead of free play or friendlies helps you learn what to do in a real tournament set.

Part 4 - Health & Mind

Let me begin with this: DON’T PLAY TO WIN, PLAY TO LEARN. You will feel so much better with yourself if you have this mindset, if you lose a set. It’ll be so much more helpful, because you’ll find yourself with lots of information on what moves to use and what moves not to use in certain situations. You’ll start realizing “Oh, I could’ve done this move instead” or “I could’ve dodged this” and if you do find yourself in that situation, that’s great, you have room to improve and learn from your mistakes. Understanding why you lose is the key point of learning the game.

Always do your best, play at your peak in every set. To be able to play competitively means that you’ll HAVE to play your best every time. Physical and Mental health also apply to this, being tired/hungry in a venue with no air is tiring. You should be prepared mentally and physically for a game or you won’t be able to play at your best. Sleep well, Eat well, and you’ll be ready to play.

Now, when you’re playing, you shouldn’t be autopiloting or gazing off into space. Put all your attention to the game and the game only, then you’ll be able to play better. If your opponent gets hungry, thirsty, tired, stressed, etc. They will play worse, and you’ll realize that. If you follow these instructions, you won’t be in any of these situations because you made the choice of not doing so.


Part 5 - The Lost Bits

Here’s some bonus information we don’t know where to place but thought would be useful talking about:

1. Whenever you’re in the lead, play defensively. Try to keep that lead as much as you can, it’ll help you keep the advantage you need to win the game. Don’t get cocky though, play optimally for the whole match or you could end up losing.

2. Don’t feel defeated and don’t give up every time you’re at a disadvantage. Get back up and always look for your chance to get the comeback. And if you don’t make the comeback, go back to Part 4 and analyze why you lost and why you were at a disadvantage.

3. Bad habits are bad, don’t get into them. Don’t get used to doing wacky stuff because that’s what they are, hella wacky.







I think that’s all I wanted to point out, I kindly take my leave.



Peace.