Improving at Melee

[PolishSmash]

Didn't know how to title this thread but hope that's a good title Anyways, this is more of a question to the people that are very experienced at smash. So they have their tech skill down and basically rank decently or above average in tourneys. So, in the beginning when you started playing smash, how did you get better? How long did it take you to learn L cancelling for example and actually use it in tourney play without choking? (Or perfecting your SHFFLes) And how did you guys practice? Did you practice every day at home perfecting your tech skill? Did you learn it by playing in friendlies, getting ***** at first but then eventually learning to apply it? What is your story? And if you are still learning tech skill like I am (only know how to wave dash and dash dance, learning L cancel now) how do you practice? When it gets boring, how do you keep going? I'm new to the competitive scene and want to improve as fast as possible because I know melee is 10 years old and a lot of people have these things down already. How do I catch up? Thanks

 

[Krynxe]

So, in the beginning when you started playing smash, how did you get better? How long did it take you to learn L cancelling for example and actually use it in tourney play without choking? (Or perfecting your SHFFLes) And how did you guys practice? Did you practice every day at home perfecting your tech skill? Did you learn it by playing in friendlies, getting ***** at first but then eventually learning to apply it? What is your story? And if you are still learning tech skill like I am (only know how to wave dash and dash dance, learning L cancel now) how do you practice? When it gets boring, how do you keep going? I'm new to the competitive scene and want to improve as fast as possible because I know melee is 10 years old and a lot of people have these things down already. How do I catch up? Thanks

I'm a rookie myself too, but I was very quick to step in and start competing with high ranked players in my region. I practiced completely on my own, the only friendlies I ever really played against good players were at the regionals I went to (3 total so far). I did everything I could do on my own to improve though, due to my dedication. I watched tons of videos, read tons of threads, and talked to people about how to improve. (ty Jungle :3)

Catching up with today's meta game isn't difficult if it's all you're exposed to. If it's all you know is good, you'll naturally know what you should and shouldn't be doing in matches. But remember that this applies when fighting good players. Don't forget why the metagame evolved and what makes it more effective than what we saw working years ago. Don't try to be doing 2011 stuff if you're opponent is still able to pull off some 2005 crap on you. And vice versa, don't be afraid to pull out the 2005 crap on someone who doesn't know how to deal with it.

Remember that improvement is centralized far more around knowledge than physical experience. Though both are highly necessary. Hope this helps.

Edit:
I never really said HOW to improve lol, sorry. What I'm trying to say is, what worked for me is making sure that my knowledge of the game is one step ahead of my experience so I always know what to improve and work towards. Practicing character control and over all tech skill is extremely important, otherwise you can't keep up with your mind. Hope I'm making sense lol.

 

[PolishSmash]

I'm a rookie myself too, but I was very quick to step in and start competing with high ranked players in my region. I practiced completely on my own, the only friendlies I ever really played against good players were at the regionals I went to (3 total so far). I did everything I could do on my own to improve though, due to my dedication. I watched tons of videos, read tons of threads, and talked to people about how to improve. (ty Jungle :3)

Catching up with today's meta game isn't difficult if it's all you're exposed to. If it's all you know is good, you'll naturally know what you should and shouldn't be doing in matches. But remember that this applies when fighting good players. Don't forget why the metagame evolved and what makes it more effective than what we saw working years ago. Don't try to be doing 2011 stuff if you're opponent is still able to pull off some 2005 crap on you. And vice versa, don't be afraid to pull out the 2005 crap on someone who doesn't know how to deal with it.

Remember that improvement is centralized far more around knowledge than physical experience. Though both are highly necessary. Hope this helps.

Edit:
I never really said HOW to improve lol, sorry. What I'm trying to say is, what worked for me is making sure that my knowledge of the game is one step ahead of my experience so I always know what to improve and work towards. Practicing character control and over all tech skill is extremely important, otherwise you can't keep up with your mind. Hope I'm making sense lol.

Thanks for sharing That helped a lot Did it take you long to get your tech skill down? Like did you have to sit down and just practice L cancelling for example?

 

[Krynxe]

It actually didn't take me very long, I got wavedashing and shffling down within about a week. (Practicing mostly daily.) And of course I, as I'm sure almost everybody, had to sit down and take time to master their simple tech skills. I still have difficulty doing a lot of the advanced tech skill for characters that aren't my main/secondary.

A lot of times I'll put a lot of practice into something and be mediocre at it, and literally wake up the next morning and have it completely down. Don't be frustrated or disappointed if your progress is slower than mine or other peoples', everyone moves at their own speed. And never be discouraged if something seems ridiculous or impossible at first, I thought I'd never have things like L-canceling down when I started and now I do it habitually with every character. It seems cliche, but it's really true. Keep your mind set to improvement and be dedicated, it's the fastest way to make progress.

To keep practicing tech skill entertaining, I guess listening to music while practicing may help. I often times do that. When you get the techskills 'down' but not fully mastered, playing against low level CPUs with unlimited time helps a ton. Practice you're tech on them, between their lives, have fun killing something rather than just practicing tech skill. Gives you a feel for using everything you learned in a match. With unlimited time you never have to feel pressures that you have to kill them to win, and killing yourself or dying isn't an issue at all.

And good luck improving. If you do live in NY you're in a fantastic region for smash, tons of great local players.

 

[PolishSmash]

It actually didn't take me very long, I got wavedashing and shffling down within about a week. (Practicing mostly daily.) And of course I, as I'm sure almost everybody, had to sit down and take time to master their simple tech skills. I still have difficulty doing a lot of the advanced tech skill for characters that aren't my main/secondary.

A lot of times I'll put a lot of practice into something and be mediocre at it, and literally wake up the next morning and have it completely down. Don't be frustrated or disappointed if your progress is slower than mine or other peoples', everyone moves at their own speed. And never be discouraged if something seems ridiculous or impossible at first, I thought I'd never have things like L-canceling down when I started and now I do it habitually with every character. It seems cliche, but it's really true. Keep your mind set to improvement and be dedicated, it's the fastest way to make progress.

To keep practicing tech skill entertaining, I guess listening to music while practicing may help. I often times do that. When you get the techskills 'down' but not fully mastered, playing against low level CPUs with unlimited time helps a ton. Practice you're tech on them, between their lives, have fun killing something rather than just practicing tech skill. Gives you a feel for using everything you learned in a match. With unlimited time you never have to feel pressures that you have to kill them to win, and killing yourself or dying isn't an issue at all.

And good luck improving. If you do live in NY you're in a fantastic region for smash, tons of great local players.

Wow thank you so much for the tips :D And yea I'm in NY

 

[Krynxe]

Yeah np. And you probably won't see much more input from people because most people are gonna be too lazy to read all those walls of text rofl.

 

[Geenareeno]

I know how you feel. Here's what you have to do. Just play smash. And don't stop. Find someone who doesn't compeltely **** you and play with them as much as you can. The techs will come.

 

[The Star King]

I don't think you should worry about it too much. The basic tech skills will start to feel natural pretty quickly after you get them down.

 

[P-99]

It depends on which character you want to master actually. I started out with Falco and had the biggest issues with learning how to do certain techs exactly (like timing the ledgehop double lasers right or doing shinebairs, etc.).

What worked best for me was to practice techskill with another controller plugged in in VS-Mode (because of the C-Stick) and when I had a technique down I would try it against a CPU (pillaring vs. Fox for example).

The first thing I did was to practice everything that was in the "Advanced How To Play Melee" movies. Then I watched character related videos and read everything about the AT's of the character in the boards.

It is so important to have the techskill down IMO in order to exploit everything the character has. Because if you don't you won't be able to beat the tactics your opponents throw at you and you will become predictable very fast. After that you can start to worry about how to gain experience and improve your spacing and so on.

I highly recommend the Drastic Improvement thread by Umbreon for this also

 

[stelzig]

I got most of the basic things down from playing stadium mode. I remember learning SH aerials from playing doc's 10-man melee strategy for instance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkdSBbonPFg)

I think trying to learn to do stadium mode strategies and then learning to do them quickly is a pretty good alternative to simple drills that people might find more boring. I guess it depends on how much of a high score gamer you are though

Edit: The high score part of the community isn't too easy to find though. I don't even know where they are anymore. I guess you can search on gfaqs or youtube though. And at least finding strategies should not be a problem anymore, thanks to youtube.

 

[Zodiac]

The bottom line is getting better is to play as many people as you can and get learn how other people play, and how to observe.

 

[PolishSmash]

It depends on which character you want to master actually. I started out with Falco and had the biggest issues with learning how to do certain techs exactly (like timing the ledgehop double lasers right or doing shinebairs, etc.).

What worked best for me was to practice techskill with another controller plugged in in VS-Mode (because of the C-Stick) and when I had a technique down I would try it against a CPU (pillaring vs. Fox for example).

The first thing I did was to practice everything that was in the "Advanced How To Play Melee" movies. Then I watched character related videos and read everything about the AT's of the character in the boards.

It is so important to have the techskill down IMO in order to exploit everything the character has. Because if you don't you won't be able to beat the tactics your opponents throw at you and you will become predictable very fast. After that you can start to worry about how to gain experience and improve your spacing and so on.

I highly recommend the Drastic Improvement thread by Umbreon for this also

Yea that's what I'm doing first too, learning the techniques in the Advanced How To Play movies. So far I'm on L cancelling only. I have WD down though. And yea I main Marth so maybe its harder or easier to learn tech skill with him. But I imagine Falco must be harder because he's a fast faller and hes faster.

 

[Levingy]

These will come in handy I think:

1. Play a lot.

2. Play a lot against good ( the best players).

3. Travel frequently to tournaments and to visit good players all over the World.

4. Watch videos, particularly from your characters best players, and try to learn the stuff they do, and think why they do it.

5. Master your techskill vs. lvl-1 computer in the meanwhile when you have no chance playing against real people. Try to learn all techskill and setups ( offense and defense side) against every character, starting with the most played characters. Though level-1 computer does only certain DIs and stuff, so you could try different setups against differen lvl-computer, or ask your friend to DI other way so you can practise all setup-variations.

6. When you're not playing melee, think your played games; what you did, why did you lose, what habits your opponent had and how could you punish them the most brutal way. Also think about what habits you yourself have/had, and try to get rid of them when you play next time.

Optional and kinda off-topic: 7. Think how much are you willing to put into your improving in this game. To be one of the best in this game, melee needs to be pretty much your "life".

 

[PolishSmash]

These will come in handy I think:

1. Play a lot.

2. Play a lot against good ( the best players).

3. Travel frequently to tournaments and to visit good players all over the World.

4. Watch videos, particularly from your characters best players, and try to learn the stuff they do, and think why they do it.

5. Master your techskill vs. lvl-1 computer in the meanwhile when you have no chance playing against real people. Try to learn all techskill and setups ( offense and defense side) against every character, starting with the most played characters. Though level-1 computer does only certain DIs and stuff, so you could try different setups against differen lvl-computer, or ask your friend to DI other way so you can practise all setup-variations.

6. When you're not playing melee, think your played games; what you did, why did you lose, what habits your opponent had and how could you punish them the most brutal way. Also think about what habits you yourself have/had, and try to get rid of them when you play next time.

Optional and kinda off-topic: 7. Think how much are you willing to put into your improving in this game. To be one of the best in this game, melee needs to be pretty much your "life".

Thanks Good pointers. I'm working on my L cancels right now. It's my third day so far and its getting a little better but I still have to look where my character is in accordance with the ground so I can get the L cancel properly, meaning I can't focus on what my opponent is doing yet. (I'm playing Lvl 1's) I haven't added in the FF yet which is really hard right now. (The whole SHFFL I mean). Its so fast when you FF and I can't L cancel as easily as without the FF :/

 

[Metal Reeper]

When you play, don't play blind. Go in with a plan. Learn to adapt to your opponent, this is very hard but you will get better at it. Experience is everything. Posting on the boards helps sooo much (which you've been doing, im very glad) If you play fox/falco and you aren't good at shine OoS go into your friendlies thinking, im going to practice that. Little milestones like that will make you a much rounded player.

 

[Cleod]

Practice as usual, L-canceling isn't incredibly hard to master either, just have good motor skills and lots of experience and before you know it, L-canceling is similar to instinct. Same said for wave-dashing and fast play.

 

[NopeTYBG.64]

Anyone have any good pointers at Falcon finishing? By that I mean knee punishing for a final kill.

 

[StaffofSmashing]

I think I am the only melee player on these boards who does not use advanced techniques, but rather position fast strikes instead of wave dashing all over the stage and then SHFFLing about.

 

[Red Rice]

For the longest time from about 7th grade to senior in HS, I would mostly play by myself because there was no one I could play with due to my lack of transportation. During that time I would only play with CPUs and solidify my tech skill. It took me about a few weeks to get consistent with all my basic tech skill and then a couple months to get my character specific tech skill. Something I really enjoyed doing was watching tournaments videos and trying to emulate what people like Mango and M2K were doing. This was the time period where tournaments were rarely streamed or recorded, only the big tournaments like Genesis and Pound. So I was super excited when the next tournament came. My skills pretty much plateau'd around 10th grade, my sophomore year of high school. But there was nothing I could do about that because I was limited to playing with CPUs and maybe one of my friends casually (who I absolutely destroy now).

Then this past January, I transferred to UMass Amherst and suddenly, I was playing people all the time. People were telling me how they couldn't believe someone who had been playing CPUs for years could be so good at the game already. It really all came from watching videos and reading some threads here and there. But really, I think that playing a variety of people completely changes the way you play and rockets your skill forward compared to playing alone all the time. I started going out to tournaments with some buddies here and met people like @MattDotZeb and @-Darc- . I can't stress enough how much playing people better than you improves your game. It helps if your tech skill is already solid so you don't really have to focus on it while you play. Instead, you think about option coverage and reacting to what your opponent does, etc. So I think that really speaks to how important it is to have your tech skill down. Like people have said, make sure you know the basic techs (wavedashing, SHFFLs, etc). Every time you sit down to practice, you should have a goal in mind. It helps to pick a main so that you can focus solely on one character at a time. Then once you have a firm grasp of that character's tech skill, i.e. Falco's SHL, pillaring, sweetspotting the ledge, etc.., you can play other characters for fun in friendlies so you don't bore yourself too much.

Trust me, when you get into the competitive scene, you won't be bored. The moment people told me that I had so much potential and that I would get a lot better when I started playing more people? It just increased my motivation to practice and become better. So that's the shorter version of my story, hope you enjoyed lol

 

[Alexo30]

Don't always play the best players, play them occasionally and ask for advice and tips. I'd say that you need to be playing the most against people who are only a few steps ahead of you, using the advice that you received from the best players. Then go back to playing the best players, and see if you have made progress since the last encounter, while still asking for more advice and tips.

Grinding out a ton of matches against a player who is a lot better than you is nowhere near as helpful as grinding out matches with a player who is close to your level. I know from experience.

With tech skill, just practice a bit every day. Even if it is just for 5 minutes, it's building up your muscle memory.

 

[Bones0]

I love when 3-year-old threads get revived for no reason.

 

[Alexo30]

I love when 3-year-old threads get revived for no reason.

Damn, I didn't even notice ***.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

For the longest time from about 7th grade to senior in HS, I would mostly play by myself because there was no one I could play with due to my lack of transportation. During that time I would only play with CPUs and solidify my tech skill. It took me about a few weeks to get consistent with all my basic tech skill and then a couple months to get my character specific tech skill. Something I really enjoyed doing was watching tournaments videos and trying to emulate what people like Mango and M2K were doing. This was the time period where tournaments were rarely streamed or recorded, only the big tournaments like Genesis and Pound. So I was super excited when the next tournament came. My skills pretty much plateau'd around 10th grade, my sophomore year of high school. But there was nothing I could do about that because I was limited to playing with CPUs and maybe one of my friends casually (who I absolutely destroy now).

Then this past January, I transferred to UMass Amherst and suddenly, I was playing people all the time. People were telling me how they couldn't believe someone who had been playing CPUs for years could be so good at the game already. It really all came from watching videos and reading some threads here and there. But really, I think that playing a variety of people completely changes the way you play and rockets your skill forward compared to playing alone all the time. I started going out to tournaments with some buddies here and met people like @MattDotZeb and @-Darc- . I can't stress enough how much playing people better than you improves your game. It helps if your tech skill is already solid so you don't really have to focus on it while you play. Instead, you think about option coverage and reacting to what your opponent does, etc. So I think that really speaks to how important it is to have your tech skill down. Like people have said, make sure you know the basic techs (wavedashing, SHFFLs, etc). Every time you sit down to practice, you should have a goal in mind. It helps to pick a main so that you can focus solely on one character at a time. Then once you have a firm grasp of that character's tech skill, i.e. Falco's SHL, pillaring, sweetspotting the ledge, etc.., you can play other characters for fun in friendlies so you don't bore yourself too much.

Trust me, when you get into the competitive scene, you won't be bored. The moment people told me that I had so much potential and that I would get a lot better when I started playing more people? It just increased my motivation to practice and become better. So that's the shorter version of my story, hope you enjoyed lol

Amazing story, but what lvl did you use for CPUs?

 

[Red Rice]

Amazing story, but what lvl did you use for CPUs?

Haha thanks. At first I only played against level 9 CPUs because I thought they were the best practice. But then I read M2K practiced on level 3-5 CPUs because they have the most human-like DI so then I switched to that.

But now I choose the CPU level based on what I want to practice. If I want to practice movement, I choose a level 9 Marth and weave dash dance/WD around him. If I want to practice combos and tech skill, CPUs level 1-5 are pretty good IMO.
CPU levels 1 and 2 have little to no DI, so some combos are ridiculously easy (like for Falcon)

 

[Baby_Sneak]

I didn't know all of that. Going to incorporate it. I knew about using CPUs to practice tech skill, but not to that degree.

 

[Tails_Glados_Puff]

Tech skill isn't the whole game. Natural skill is a big part, so no matter how good your tech skill is, if you're not experienced, it wont matter. Playing people is number 1, just so you can gain experience, but the tech skill is more easily acquired imo. Tech can be done by simply training and training. Try your hardest to incorporate it into your play without it being too forced. If you don't NEED the tech skill don't use it. This should take a while though.