Improve at movement and edgeguarding

[Daburu]

Hey !
Currently looking for a good way to improve my movement and my edgeguarding, i'm pretty new to smash and i think this is one of many things i have to improve.
Do you guys have any routine/training so i can move my character as i want and precisely ?
Also, i'm playing ike/fox, so if you guys have any tips on how to improve at edgeguarding, i'm currently facing a CPU in training, throw him out of the stage and try to cover his options, but CPU is CPU you know, it don't really help me that much on matches.
Thanks a lot for reading !

 

[Oneiros5321]

I don't know about edgeguarding, but for movement I think the best way would be to go into practice mode and do some series of exercises every day.
Like 20 short hop > fast falls in a row, 20 rars, apply that to whatever movement you wanna learn.
Try to do that and restart the process if you fail.
The goal is to make the inputs execution kind of a second nature so you barely have to think about it.

If you don't think you can do as many as 20 and spend too much time, maybe start lower. It's going to quickly become natural.

I would say that for edgeguarding the best way would be to have a training partner. Other than that, maybe playing against CPU (not in training) at level 6 or so. I would avoid going too high level as the CPU will have unrealistic reaction time.

Don't know if those are the best way to practice but it's a way that I think could work.

 

[LightLV]

for edgeguarding it's important to know your options and ranges for actually stopping people from coming back. There are 2 ways to edgeguard:
a) stop them from touching the ledge (meet them offstage, projectiles, 2-frame them, ect)
b) cover their ledge options and punish their recovery.

in most cases you can't really do both in one attempt -- meeting them offstage usually puts you at a neutral, a scramble or even disadvantage if you fail too hard.

And there are 3 things to consider with edgeguarding, all are important:
a) your options and ranges for stopping them
Consider your kill moves. Fast bair? spike dair? sex kick with high actives? gimping move? Consider which is best/most likely to hit and how you can SAFELY execute it and still get back to the stage.

b) their options for getting back and protecting themselves
Consider things that would make this difficult. Sometimes a recovery is so good in some circumstances that it's not worth attempting (K.Rool for instance). Link has a terrible recovery but the hitbox can be deceptively large. Ganon can suicide you if it's beneficial for him.

c) their habits and the current situation of the match.
Consider the habits of the player....Do they tend to airdodge towards the ledge? Do they use ledge attack often? Do they roll alot? Do they prefer to recover low, or horizontally? How do they save their jumps? Do they prefer to choose risky options (airdodge onto stage), if so, what triggers them to? Villager characters LOVE to ledge drop > Fair to turn the tables. K-Rool players will almost always opt to get under the ledge as much as possible. Fox/Falco will Illusion if you let them.

I'd say A and B come pretty naturally with playtime, but C is where all the success in edgeguarding happens i've noticed. You can do A and B instinctively but keeping track of player habits usually requires a conscious effort. Also....something to consider that helps alot is that gimping/killing isn't always an option, sometimes it's best to just let them come back, but better position yourself to keep stage control


Goes without saying, the vast majority of the edgeguarding improvement you get is going to be coming from players.

 

[popemanz]

no cpu is good for edge guarding practice get good boi to help

 

[Dr. Sci-Fi]

Learn how to condition your oponent and predict which ledge option they will use and punish it for a kill or an extended edgegaurd

 

[Baby_Sneak]

A CPU is good for practicing movement and edgeguarding, but only on lower levels.

The reason why people say to never play against CPUs is because they react within 1/60th of a second (1 frame, lvl 8 and 9, maybe 6 and 7 too). This is completely different from people who react at around 12 frames. However, this doesn't matter when you're playing against lvl 3s and below.

The trick is to treat them like a punching bag. Don't fight against them serious. keep their lvl to 3 and below in order to reinforce that idea. do this for an extended period of time to develop flow and get used to moving with your character.

Practicing movement outside of that though, is just messing around with your character (practicing running, dashing, pivoting, and seeing how early you're able to act out of it. Movement is probably one of the hardest things to master in smash, or any competitive game for that matter). For example, back in smash 4, I mained . Charizard had a unique skid animation (running then stopping) that lasted a very short time, shorter than most characters. This allowed him to effectively do anything out of running, which boosted his ground movement. On top of that, his pivots were very "tight" (he didn't sway much. He turned on a dime) and this made his ground movement even better (especially when combined with extended dash dancing ad infinitum). He had amazing ground movement, but I never got to really tap into it.

I learned this by messing around in training mode and testing new things, and I got the hang of some things by playing against punching bags (lvl 3s).

 

[Up0n]

Just play the game more and focus on one main; don't get stuck in the fear of playing online from inexperience. I haven't played smash since melee and I came back to play ultimate with no experience on Smash 4 or Brawl and now I'm at about 3.3-3.4m GSP just consistently playing with a partner and online