Making the Transition from Casual to Competitive?

[Oooopz]

Hi. I was reading over a few other threads that address this issue, and I think I've got most of the information I need, but I have a few questions/things to run by the more experienced players. All help is greatly appreciated, and thank you in advance.

First of all, I have been a casual smasher for around five years; I can beat all of my friends relatively consistently, but then again we're all casual smashers. I'm looking to enter into the competitive arena, however. I own SSBB and SSBM, but I feel like delving into advanced tactics in Brawl with SSB4 looming over the horizon would be a waste of time (because as soon as SSB4 comes out Brawl will be obsolete - Melee will forever remain the most deep and competitive of the smash games I feel like. But this is just my novice opinion after reading a bit. If anyone would like to correct me go ahead, but this is all kind of beside the point). As such, I have decided to try to up my game in Melee. However, I am completely overwhelmed by all the guides, videos, and such that I am confronted with when I search for "SSBM advanced tactics" or whatever. So I found this by a guy on this forum called Massive:

"I have used an iterative approach to ease new people into more advanced tactics in the past.
In my experience, this route can allow people to intuit their character's bread-and-butter tactics reasonably well and shows them why and how we use advanced tactics.

The order of steps I present information in is usually like this:

1. Recovery: Become incredibly familiar with your character's recovery. Learn every character specific trick there may be, as well as range, speed, and how to stall/delay if you can. Learn to recover both high and low. If your character can sweet spot, practice and master that.

2. Dash Dancing: Dashdancing is a core skill that is not very technical, but very powerful. Learn exactly when your character's dash turns into a run, so you know exactly how far you can dash and still turn around. Learn to down-cancel a run into a smash or whatever other option you may need. Become acquainted with and practice using Jump-Cancelled grabs (they're quite easy to execute) out of dash.

3. Ledgeguarding: Learn about basic ledge mechanics. Learn how to drop > Jump > Attack back onto the stage. Learn how to drop > jump > ledgeguard away from the stage. Learn about sweet-spots and ledge techs. Become familiar with ledgehogs, how long your roll-on occupies the ledge, and when you become vulnerable again. Learn when to get-up attack, when to stand up, and when to roll-on.

4. Directional Influence: Learn what DI is and how best to DI when you're on and off-stage. Learn about smash DI, survival DI, situational DI, and bad DI and be able to identify situations where all of these either occur or are necessary. Wakeup mechanics (I think of it as roll DI, lol) are also covered in this step, as well as grab DI and ledge/wall techs.

5. L-Cancelling: Learn to use L-cancels to shorten your landing lag. The best way to learn L-cancel timing is through rote practice (that is, practicing it over and over until you have the timing in muscle memory). This is something you should keep practicing, L-cancelling can be a lot harder to do reliably than many people think. Learn that shield tilt, light-shield, power shield, full-shield, no shield all have different timings. Also learn about auto-cancelled aerials.

6. Wave Landing: Learn how to smoothly land out of an empty jump or finished jump attack to keep your landing from being completely predictable. This segues well into wave dashing and also covers waveland onto stage.

7. Wave Dashing: Building on the waveland timing established in the previous step learn how different waveland angles make different wavedash lengths. Learn how to wavedash out of shield and how to use wavedashes to augment dash-dancing, bait grabs/attacks, gain positional advantage, and maneuver quickly around the stage.

Around step 4 or 5 most people understand enough of the basics to start looking into character specific advice on the sub forums.
After all of this stuff almost everyone seems to be able to pick up most other stuff on their own. The basics seem to "click" at different times for people, but until they do this is a pretty good framework to go on."

It seems very comprehensive and well organized; I have a couple questions however.

1. If I follow Massive's guide and add in specific character guides depending on my main, will that be enough to elevate me into the competitive arena?
2. Can someone explain this: "shield tilt, light-shield, power shield, full-shield, no shield all have different timings" I've done reading on SSBM advanced techs, but I had no idea there were different types of shields. Could somebody elaborate on this?
3. What is smoothly landing and wavelanding?
4. How do I go about deciding a main? Of the characters in the upper end of the tier list, I was drawn to Doctor Mario and Jigglypuff simply because I like the characters. Is that a bad reason to pick a main?
5. I guess this sort of goes in with step 5 in Massive's guide, but should I add in shorthopping and SHFFL?
6. I don't have any competitive friends to play with; can I just play with computers and my casual friends?

Thanks so much!

Edit: I found this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vckV2MJgBzo to add to my competitive training

 

[bearsfan092]

1. Technically yes It's using those techniques in a live-fire situation that's difficult.
2. If you tilt your control stick while in shield, the shield will move (shield tilt). If you partially press a shield trigger, the shield will be bigger and behaves differently on hit (light shield). Power shield is when you fully shield within 3 frames (I think?) of getting hit. You'll suffer less stun. Full shield is what most people think of shielding (fully depressed trigger). No shield is obvious. Since your character momentarily freezes on contact, having different shields changes when that moment is, which screws with L cancelling.
3. Try doing something like a wave dash out of a full hop or onto a platform. You should see your character smoothly glide. In some cases, you shouldn't hear your character make an air dodge noise (ie fox won't say otah)
4. That's not a bad reason at all, especially since both are viable characters. You should be having fun while playing.
5. Of course you should be.
6. Limit your computer play to specific and focused practice. Combos are different on computers since they DI and react weird. Playing casual friends is better, but you'll still probably pick up garbage habits you'll need to break later. Instead, try organizing some trips with your friends to local tournaments. You'll get spanked so hard, but you all will learn so much faster. Make sure you keep your friends' spirits up. Discouragement is something you have to go through... a lot.

 

[Bones0]

1. If I follow Massive's guide and add in specific character guides depending on my main, will that be enough to elevate me into the competitive arena?
2. Can someone explain this: "shield tilt, light-shield, power shield, full-shield, no shield all have different timings" I've done reading on SSBM advanced techs, but I had no idea there were different types of shields. Could somebody elaborate on this?
3. What is smoothly landing and wavelanding?
4. How do I go about deciding a main? Of the characters in the upper end of the tier list, I was drawn to Doctor Mario and Jigglypuff simply because I like the characters. Is that a bad reason to pick a main?
5. I guess this sort of goes in with step 5 in Massive's guide, but should I add in shorthopping and SHFFL?
6. I don't have any competitive friends to play with; can I just play with computers and my casual friends?

1. Yeah, touching on those aspects in that order seems appropriate. It probably won't happen as linear as you may think (or like) though. For instance, how you edgeguard is directly related to whether you can WD, L-cancel, or use other character specific techniques.

2. Shield tilting is simply pointing your shield in a direction to cover different areas of your body. If you are on a platform and someone is attacking you from below, you can tilt the shield downwards to cover your feet better so you don't get shield poked. If you roll and continue to hold left/right and the trigger, you will see that your character actually moves the shield origin in the direction you are holding. You can also do it without rolling or spotdodging by just tilting the stick. You can shield tilt different lengths (tilting a little vs. tilting a lot) in a huge number of different angles.

Light shield refers to lightly pressing the trigger so that your shield is larger. Your shield can be a ton of different sizes. To see your characters biggest shield, simply hold Z, and after grabbing your character will do the lightest shield possible. You can switch between hard and light shield by pressing the trigger down different distances. When you light shield, you take more shield stun from attacks on your shield, you are less likely to be shield poked, you slide further from attacks, your shield decays more slowly (that's when your shield decreases in size and eventually shield breaks), and attacks do more shield damage (shields have HP, so decaying reduces HP as you hold it, but attacks also take chunks of HP when they hit your shield).

Powershielding is the heavily timing-based shield concept. In order to PS, you have to press the trigger right before you get hit. You cannot powershield with a light shield, meaning you have to push the trigger all the way in until you hear the click. The timing window for powershielding physical attacks is slightly longer than it is for projectiles, and there's a whole slew of properties that come with each instance. Major things to know is that you slide further from powershielding physical attacks, powershielding projectiles will reflect them, and you don't take shield damage from powershielded attacks.

Idk full shield as a definite term. Someone using that could mean hard shielding, which is simply pressing the trigger all the way in as opposed to light shielding where you only press it part of the way. They might also be referring to the lightest light shield as your shield would be the largest, and I guess that makes some people think it is most "full". They could also be referring to how much HP your shield has with full shield being max HP. It's not a common term so I would just stay away from it, and just try to use context to figure out what someone means if they use it.

No shield is simply not shielding. Easy! lol

3. I pretty sure smooth landing was what the N64 version called L-cancelling. Wavelanding is when you airdodge diagonally from the air, as opposed to a WD where you airdodge diagonally immediately after jumping.

4. No, that's how most people pick their mains, especially since most Melee players picked their mains when they were like 10. lol Sticking with Doc and Puff sounds like a perfectly normal pair of characters to start out with. I'd recommend watching a bunch of different Doc and Puff combo videos and matches from different players just to see what's out there and get some inspiration. Hanging out on the character specific forums can also teach you a lot of good stuff, and the general discussion threads in each forum will give you a quick and easy way to ask about using different techniques to the best of your character's ability.

5. Yes.

6. NO! Well okay, sure you can, and for a while you'll still be able to improve, but the nature of competition will always mean that it's much harder to improve on your own or curb stomping your casual friends. I'd recommend trying to get your friends interested in taking the game more competitively as well (show them some combo videos or matches that will impress them). Be warned though, a lot of people just can't handle competitive Melee so they may turn into big babies when they either can't do something right away or get destroyed by you as you improve a ton. For that reason, it's important to find people in your local area who are already part of the community and attend tournaments. That's the most fun part about playing competitively anyway! Just go to the regional forums and find a FaceBook group for the smashers near you.

 

[Massive]

I'm constantly impressed by how many people have read that post, lol.

Keep in mind that it's not actually an official guide of any sort, more of a rough set of guidelines/milestones I have used in the past to transition someone from casual to competitive. I can clear up my nomenclature a bit too, although bones did a pretty good job.

When I refer to full shield I am talking about pressing the trigger all the way down until it clicks, producing the densest (and smallest) possible shield. Shield tilting and light shield are covered pretty clearly by what bones was saying, so I will leave his definitions in tact.

Smoothly landing in this case is actually a description of how it will look when you waveland correctly. You will appear to slide on landing instead of just stopping in place. Wavelanding is simply dodging into the ground at an angle, causing you to slide along the ground. Each character has a different amount of friction with the ground, so their wavelands will all be different distances. The common denominator here is that you will still be moving when you hit the ground, allowing you to space better and do better ground attacks.

I still regret not adding SHFFLing to the list on there, but I would include it right after step 5. My original thinking was that since not every character needs to SHFFL to be effective, it'd be a character specific tactic, but it is mentioned an awful lot for most of the popular characters.

As for deciding your main? I usually tell people to play an assortment of characters and pick the one that you feel is the most intuitive and the easiest to play. Usually it comes down to "this character feels so cheap, all I have to do is XXX and I win". Play that character, seriously.
That feeling of ease (cheapness) means that you intuitively understand something and it will be easier for you to expand from there into the more complicated stuff.

I do have plans to make this informal list into an actual guide (possibly with illustrations) in the near future (pretty much whenever I'm not being molested by work-monsters).