Moving to Smash 4, get me up to date!

[Prince Longstrok]

Haiya, Prince here. Some may remember me from Project M threads awhile ago, but.. with the recent..erm. announcement *holds tears back*, ive been thinking more and more of getting into Smash 4. When it first came out I was pretty "Why play this when I can Play P:M?", but over the months and patches, i noticed in tourny play that Smash 4 seems to have changed.

To put it into perspective, last I played was pre DLC, and vectoring was the thing and not DI. So.. im looking for someone to catch me up with what happened exactly. :D Did the patches speed up the gameplay? People just found ways the speed it up?

What are the tourny legal stages I should get to know? Any oddball rules (no custom moves, banned characters, etc)

Any specific techniques to Smash 4 I should read up on and learn?

Is online a good practice method, or should I stay away?

tourny rules? (stocks, time, etc).

Thanks in advance, you incredibly beautiful, helpful people. Look forward to playing with you. :3

 

[Tickle Me Trotsky]

I wasn't paying attention to competitive in the early 3DS tourney days, but I can answer most of this...

Tourney legal stages:
Battlefield/Miiverse
Final Destination/Omega stages
Smashville
Town and City
Lylat Cruise
Dream Land 64
Duck Hunt (counterpick)
Delfino Plaza (counterpick)
Halberd (counterpick)
Castle Seige (counterpick)

I think that's all of them for the Wii U version? 3DS ones include whatever is shared in the above list, plus Yoshi's Island, Tomodachi Life, Prism Tower, and Arena Ferox

A big basic mechanical change in Smash 4 from previous games is that edgehogging isn't a thing anymore, you can actually steal the ledge now. They call it trumping. There's also perfect pivots, B-reversals, DI is still a thing, shield hitlag is sort of a thing. There's a certain amount of tech-ing for sure, but I'm way too bad at it to be of a ton of help. There's definitely a source for this somewhere in the competitive subforum here. Matches are 2 stock, 6 minutes apiece. No banned characters, there are custom-move specific tourneys and no-custom-move tourneys. Matches CAN be fast, but aren't always. Depends quite a bit on the characters and the players.

That's about the summary of it. Watch some competitive videos, play around with your main from previous games to get a feel for the mechanics. Playing online can be pretty hit or miss, but you are at least playing against people, which is better than playing AI.

 

[FalKoopa]

I suggest making a thread in the Competitive section.

 

[Wintropy]

I suggest making a thread in the Competitive section.

I'd honestly advise against that Fal, from my experience the Competitive board tries to keep things tidy and new threads to a minimum.

That said, there is a dedicated thread to this kind of thing in that board. That may be what you're looking for, Prince Longstrok !