How to maintain full control in online laggy environments?

[genesis_SOC]

It's my #1 problem currently: being unable to punish missed attacks/rolls and instead getting perfect shielded or them rolling through my attacks. I also end up facing the wrong direction a ton with the laggier matches. How do you do it? I see some people maintain really good control with their character in lag and sure, they probably are more used to the lag and can "abuse" it, but instead of giving excuses how can I learn from the laggy matches to improve?

 

[JingleJangleJamil]

The way I maintain control in a laggy match is by not playing in the match. If you want to get good at the game, trying to play well in lag is not the way to do it because in a local tournament (which is how I think all competitive tourneys where you want to win, play well, or learn how to get better in should be) lag won't be a factor. What type of lag are you talking? Laggy like you are playing a slide-show, or laggy as in you press a button and your attack comes out half a second after without the slide-show part? If you can play fine in a match offline or a online match with little to no lag then you don't have to worry about not playing well in lag.

 

[genesis_SOC]

Well I think it's pretty obvious you won't have to deal with lag in offline competitive lol but there's gonna be lag in some of your For Glory 1vs1s every now and then and that's why I made the thread. Even in competitive online tournaments or just laddering there's gonna' be some lag that really differentiates how each character plays. I should've been more clear, sorry.

And it's a mix of both input delay and the stutters. The input delay doesn't come up nearly as often as the stutters though.

 

[Diamond DHD]

I think it's actually quite good to play a laggy match occasionally, the most powerful tool in Smash Bros. is the ability to adapt, if you can adapt your playstyle to work in a laggy environment, that's good. I'm no where near being considered a competitive player, but here's my two cents.

• Don't bother going with reaction time, the input lag will mean you won't have enough time to react.

• Lingering moves are your friend, if your opponent is rolling around in a laggy environment there is almost no chance of being able to perfectly time a punish, but a lingering attack that you can just put out there and wait for them to roll in to will land you an attack.

• Playing defensively will probably result in your loss, to play defensively in this game you need good timing, a thing that's hard to come by in laggy matches, go on the offense with lingering moves that they won't have the ability to defend against due to lag.

• Safe projectile moves are a good option, you don't have to worry about laggy defense if you're at a distance where you don't have to defend.

• Going for the KO is one of the harder things to do in a laggy match with certain characters, luckily you play Link, with a character like him you have your two-hit smash attack, if the first misses you have a second chance with the second hit, also down smashes are a good move, since most do linger.