LiteralGrill
Smokin' Hot~
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Welcome back to another Mind over Meta! This week’s topic is something that matters with pretty much any competitive game: Character knowledge. So, without further ado, let’s jump in.
LEVEL 1
When picking up a character, whether it’s the first character you’ve ever picked, or just another secondary or tertiary, there’s always a lot you have to learn. Sure, some characters have more tools and are easier to learn than others, but there’s always a skill floor and a skill ceiling with each character. This skill floor and skill ceiling are generally determined by a few things: character aspects, character specific tech, tools, and options. Let’s take a look a quick look at all of these:
- Character aspects: These will generally be learned by reading or just playing a few games. How heavy is your character? What’s their fall speed? What are their matchups like?
- Character specific tech: This is usually the easiest part of learning a character. This just implies learning any tech that is specific to either one or a few characters. Examples include shine (spacies), float cancelling (Peach and Mewtwo), Fortress Hogging (Bowser), DJC (Ness, Lucas, Peach, Mewtwo, Yoshi), QAC (Pikachu), and Waddle Dashing (Dedede), just to name a few.
- Tools: This part is where things can get a bit tricky. Tools are basically what your character has to help them play their game. A tool could be something specific like a spike, a command grab, or a throw that leads into a tech chase, and they can also be simple, like having disjoint, range, or a good dash dance. Character specific tech is also generally considered to be a tool. Figuring out what tools your character has is extremely important for anyone to know.
- Options: Now for the hard part. Knowing a character’s options implies that you know what tools to use in every situation. For example, say your on the stage and someone is above you trying to come down with an aerial. If your character has a move with vertical range (preferably disjointed), you’d use that, or maybe you have a really good out of shield option, so you choose to shield it and punish. All of these are considered to be options, and in most situations, you usually have at least one option to choose from.
SKILL TREE
So, let’s start off this lesson by talking about tools. As I said above, tools are what your character has to play their game. Any move your character has can be considered a tool, but some moves may be more useful than others. For example: Ganon’s short hop fair has a lot of range, but f tilt is faster and has more range. That doesn’t mean f tilt is better, but it means that in a situation where you’re trying to outspace your opponent, you may want to use f tilt instead of fair. Of course, this can vary from situation to situation, but still being aware of any and all uses your character’s moves have is the fastest way to familiarize yourself with their tools.
Tools aren’t only moves and tech. They can be anything your character has: fast run speed, wavedash distance, good dashdance, jump height, recovery, etc…
A good way of learning a character’s tools is to use debug mode. Use hitboxes and frame advance to find their fastest moves, safest moves, moves with the most range, etc… Once you know all of these, you have a basic idea of what moves can be used for. But, you still need a better understanding of every move your character has.
Next, you should try and watch other people play your character. Watching someone with a lot of character knowledge can help you learn more about character’s tools and options. Maybe you’re having trouble understanding your character’s movement and how it can be applied. Just watch someone else do it, and try applying it yourself based on what you saw. Don’t know how to properly use your character’s spacing tools? Again, just watch someone else who does know and apply it in your own gameplay based on that.
Finally, learn from playing. You can’t learn how moves combo from a training dummy. You can’t learn whatever use moves that are considered “useless” have unless you try them out yourself (on that note, no matter what anyone says, no move or tool is ever useless. More on that later). You may even find your own uses for some moves that most people don’t use. Everyone plays differently, after all.
OPTION SELECT
Now that we know what our moves do, how do we apply them properly? This is where “options” come in. As I already stated, options are what you can do in any situation. Every single situation lays out options for you to pick, and the more you learn and play your character, the more options you’ll have available, and the more you’ll see what options are safe.
A good way to understand how options work and just how many options have is to analyze a tech chase between two characters from both perspectives. Let’s say Captain Falcon down throws a Ganon. The Ganon DI’s away and is about to hit the ground.
From here, the Ganon has to choose whether or not he wants to tech. Assuming he chooses to tech, he can choose to tech away, in, or just tech in place. Assuming he doesn’t tech, he can choose to roll away, in, do a standard getup, getup attack, or just wait to see what the falcon will do. Now, teching the throw is probably the safest option, as he can dodge a potential dair from the falcon. But, the Falcon might read this and either react to the tech or just outright read where the Ganon will tech. If the Ganon thinks the Falcon will read/react to a tech, maybe he’ll miss the tech and go for a getup attack to punish the reaction, or maybe just to see what the other will do. Or, the Ganon could try and read what the Falcon will read and tech/miss the tech in the opposite way to avoid a follow up.
Now let’s look at the Falcon in this situation. He can try and wait to see what the Ganon will do and react, which is arguably his safest option. He could also try and read a tech and punish with a down air. Or he could go for something more risky and rewarding, like reading a tech into him and punishing with an f smash. If he does wait and he sees the Ganon miss the tech, he can do the same things as before, or maybe he read it and went for a dair. The Falcon doesn’t have to follow up with dair in any of these situations, either. Dair may be his best option, since it would pop Ganon up for a follow up, but Falcon could also try and regrab, or go for something crazy like an up smash, assuming he can get to where he thinks Ganon will be fast enough.
So, based on that example, let’s assume options work like so: You have a few options in a situation that branch off into more options from there. Some options can be hard to do and not so rewarding, so those can often be ignored. Some options may cover a lot of your opponent’s options, and are probably your safest options. Some options are risky, but provide high reward.
MAX LEVEL
Now that we’ve talked about what you need to know about your character, how can you tell if you’ve reached the skill ceiling of your character? Anyone who would be considered a “Master” of their character is someone who can find a use in any tool a character has. Someone who can recognize all of their options in any situation, as well as what options would be the best and worst. Someone who knows every matchup like the back of your hand, and can analyze the situation when something new happens and adjust accordingly.
But that’s just when talking about one’s skill with a character. The sign of a truly good player is for them to not only be a master of their character, but to understand everyone else in the cast. They have to know what options their opponent has, and what their best options are. They have to be able to single out the most likely option their opponent will choose and punish with their best option.
Here’s a quick example of this in Melee.(Thanks to Dan Salvato for that gif). As you can see, he knows the Falco is using side b to the ledge, but he can’t grab the ledge in time so he chooses to go with f tilt. Next, he realizes that the Falco ledge teched, but he was ready to punish. He chooses to run forward, which could cover DI going to the left or right. The Falco DI’s to the left, so he goes for dair expecting a tech in place. The Falco doesn’t tech in place, but the Link chooses an option that would cover that would cover that, since dair ledge cancelled.
In that gif, Link chose the best options in almost every situation. He chose options that would cover multiple of his opponents and was able to get a good kill off of it.
Keep in mind that in PM, most characters have more options than Melee Link does in most situations. For example, if that were PM Link, he could have wavelanded onto the platform and up b’d, or he could have used one of PM’s methods to grab ledge before Falco did, just to name a few.
RECAP
So, what have we learned today?
- Learning a character takes a lot of experience and understanding
- Understanding options is really important
- Tech chasing is like a game of extreme rock paper scissors
- Dan Salvato is pretty good
-MoM HSS | L_Pag
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SmashCapps hopes readers enjoy these articles as he always finds them well thought out and insightful. To keep up with his own writing adventures be sure to follow him on Twitter.
