New player here ; need help on the mental side of smash

[Ankur Patel]

So i started playing about four months ago. I am maining fox so i know i need to practice a lot of tech skill. I would just grind it out for hours atleast 2 hours a day against 99 stock cpu. I still do this.

I try to play others as much as i can. I proboby go to 2-3 tournaments a month and play friends 1-2 times a week.

Now my tech skill is good but my mental game sucks. I will be moving a lot and fast but run into my opponents move and constantly get beat by newer players who have not put in a fraction of the work i have. How do i improve?

 

[AscendantAquila]

Study matchups, play against a lot of people, be committed to improving. Much of improvement will honestly just come with time and experience.

 

[Ninjagamer1234]

I am in the same situation as you but my mental game is pretty good, I know if I just go to local tourneys I will eventually get better

 

[yttik]

try to break things down when you are getting hit, ask yourself why and what you can do to stop it. if anything, just try going into your next match with the mindset of only going for hits when you know for certain you will hit them. smash is more than this of course and sometimes you can't just back away until you can get confirmed hits, you need to be riskier but just try this to start off. i'm not exactly brilliant myself but i was once stuck at the same problem you have until i forced myself to learn spacing and the applications of dash dancing, then i improved.

also, most new players will have a common tactic that they will spam, like marths always fsmashing for example. if you can highlight this and figure out how to beat it mid match, it's a free win. another thing i see is people being super offensive, they might overwhelm you and you just get destroyed, you need to realise that these newer offensive players lack knowledge of spacing and punishes, they will hit you if they see you and not because they know they can hit you, capitalize on this.

 

[krazyzyko]

Usually technical players try to rush down alot and hangout in the edge. So to avoid getting gimped try staying on center stage, platform camp and remember that you don't have to attack if you do not want to.

BE PATIENT.

 

[bearsfan092]

Making a lot off inferences from what you said, but try looking at how far you're running when you go into attack mode. If you're dash dancing properly you shouldn't have to run very far to hit someone. If you do have to run too far to do that, you transition from the dash to run animation, which is often a cue for someone to put out a move that you can run in to.

 

[SuperShus]

Sounds exactly like me when I started. I would get bopped by people who just walked and fsmashed.

Say you want to hit someone, it works like this... you run up and hit them with your moves. I'm guessing you like to drillshine? Maybe nair shine depending on what matchup you usually play. Next time try running up and wavedashing back, or just straight down right in front of the range of their longest attack. They might just throw out a move, and if they do - go punish! You're techskill practice will pay off in that moment. If they don't throw out a move, just return to neutral - take some of the stage if you can. If you always do this they'll figure out some way to punish it. So then you ca't do this every time. Some times you have to just run right up. Now they don't know if you're going to approach or not, and they can't fsmash you out of it.

So basically you're not making them guess when you approach. They know what your favorite thing to do is, (often drillshine or jcgrab uthrow for new technical foxes) and they'll punish you for it because they've seen it a million times.

Something else to help with this is lasers. If you laser against the kind of people who camp with fmashes, they're likely to just run up to you hastily and that's when you read them and jc usmash or grab.

 

[1000g2g3g4g800999]

Visualize yourself winning and let victory come to you. Don't think of offense and defense as using attacks and using shield or other traditionally defensive options, both can be applied to either. If you're playing to the opponent's current position, you must consider all of their options, otherwise you better be punishing something or creating some kind of setup. Any other case, and you instead play to the next step. Don't always try to just act as fast as possible, people can react, and will try to play around this. You can bait out defensive options, or make most opponents "flinch." The neutral isn't a speed run, it's a war for positioning, and a game of applying different tactics on the fly. Force the opponent to react, or try to make them guess, or pick your options at a slower pace. Ideally, play based both on what the opponent is currently doing, and capable of doing by the time you get to them. You also don't have to be the aggressor as Fox most of the time.

Simply put, visualize yourself winning, and let victory come to you.