Welcome to Smashboards, bigmo.
Since you're new, I'll let you know that a lot of people here lose patience quickly when the same questions are asked repeatedly. The best solution for this is usually just to use the search function to see if any existing threads might answer your question. I only say this because yesterday a thread was started specifically asking what short hopping (SHing) was and how to do it and a few people (including myself) responded, explaining just about everything you need to know about it.
As for your other questions, Smash Balls are generally considered something for casual players (some people like to refer to them as noobs or scrubs). If you are planning on playing this game competitively, they should definitely be disabled, along with all other items as most tournaments will be played without them. There are item tournaments as well, and if you plan on entering those, it would be wise to search through the tournament forum and find what item settings they are using so you can practice accordingly.
There is an advanced technique (AT) thread in the Brawl Tactical Discussion forum,
here. You should read through at least the first post to familiarize yourself with some of the more common names and abbreviations of techniques in Brawl.
As for some Zamus specific terms and general terminology probably not covered in that thread...
- Spikes are moves that send people downward.
- Meteors (official name is Meteor Smash) send people downward but can be Meteor Canceled (you can actually jump while you're being sent downward, canceling your trajectory almost immediately).
- Pillaring is the ability to combo someone while only knocking them upward, and then downward. This name comes from combos that Falco could perform in Melee, but we use the term with Zamus via her up+B (which knocks people upward and the final hit spikes them allowing to combo repeatedly).
- Fast Falling (FF) is when you tap down after the peak of your jump (any jump), which makes you fall faster than normal.
- Directional Influence (DI) is when you hold a direction the moment you are hit with a move. This influences the direction you fly (the most effective directions seem to be orthogonal to the normal trajectory of 45 degrees away from the opposite direction you would normally fly). Ex: If you would normally be knocked straight to the left by a move, you'd want to hold either up, or up-right to change your trajectory as you get sent back. Note that you MUST be holding the direction by the time you begin flying otherwise the effect is greatly diminished.
- Auto cancel is when an aerial move automatically cancels itself when you land, resulting in no landing lag.
- Interruptible As Soon As frames (IASA frames) are the point at which a move can be canceled into some other action/move, even though it has not finished its own animation.
- Attacks that can be used specifically in the air are denoted as fair, bair, dair, uair, and nair. Each one corresponds to pressing a direction and A (nair is neutral, so no direction is held). The names are also be written with a dash (like f-air). Some characters have a zair, which is performed by pressing Z while in the air (Link, Toon Link, and normal Samus only, to my knowledge), which performs a tether recovery that is also considered an attack.
That's about all I can think of at the moment. I hope you enjoy your stay at smashboards, and be sure to use the search function to avoid angering some of the veterans.
