New to Smash. Need some tips.

[Jason Pai]

Hello Smashboards. I am new to Smash in general. I went out to buy a gamecube and started with Melee until I heard of Project M. Now I am playing that but I don't have anyone to play with. So what I am trying to do is find a way for me to practice on my own because I do want to play this competitively down the road. I was hoping you guys can give me some tips. I main Ganondorf because hes awesome.
So skill wise, my wavedashing is medicore and I am just starting to get the hang of SFFLing. I watch alot of videos and I try to mimic the players until I can develop my own style.

What should I focus on and what kind of training regime should i apply? Thank you guys.

 

[CORY]

don't worry about wd, honestly. it's the last thing that you should work on. shffling is much much (muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch) more important. get very good at that, first. like, lab time hitting nothing, hitting one computer (not moving), then hitting a few at the same time (it'll change your timing a bit, so you'll want to get used to it), along with some moving computers (like, level3-5, probably) so you can work on how to know when to use "hit" timing vs "no hit" timing and stuff.

also, get used to your spacing. ganon has some pretty impressive range on his long limbs and you'll need to know it and how it works if you want to do anything with him.

past that, it gets hard to say because you'll really need to get good at getting reads and conditioning people to play ganon. like, jump in with fair, lcancel to your jab. lower level opponents will probably eat the jab trying to grab you. once they learn, you jab, then jab again until they learn, then you can start jab-ftilt to space them away or jab-flamechoke (if they're REALLY conditioned to shield). or if they've started to roll more, jab-ftilt-wizkick...

so, yeah, basically, work on your basic shffling. everyone needs that, and it's very important. then, get very comfortable with your spacing. then, work on movement (wd, waveland, ganon's ledge recovery options, etc...). and remember that your comboes in training and on live cpu's aren't always going to work on humans, due to di (even with the live cpu's using some random di, they don't know how to properly di away for survival vs combo and stuff...)

 

[Jason Pai]

Thanks for your reply. I have a group of friends that dont really play on a daily basis so thats the most practice i can get with real people and Ive noticed that they like to roll alot and dodge alot. I see that pros dont really do that because there must be a downside to rolling and dodging all the time. I just don't know what it is. =/ I pretty sure all that is very punishable.

 

[CORY]

that's literally it. once you know "if i do [x] they roll. if i do [y] they dodge." and you start punishing them for it, they'll hate you. if they care, they'll get good, especially if you're all like (while doing [x]) "yeah, roll" (starts punish before they roll).

 

[Jason Pai]

what would be a viable punish? Flame choke and Down B?

 

[CORY]

down b is almost always good. it's consistent, and at high percents super good.

however, getting the most out of punishes means it's very situational. if you do something like aerial slam jam near the ledge and you know your opponent REALLY REALLY likes to tech toward the center, you can run towards where his tech would end and do a shffl'd dair, then hit him with a fair/bair/dair to put on around 40% and either setup for another tech chase (dair) or set them off into a scary position, potentially (fair/bair).

you could also do another side-b, if the opponent was too high to combo out of dair, but not high enough to get them offstage with wizkick.

or, alternately again, you could just run to where they would be and fair/bair immediately, to push them out of the center and potentially off stage.

and that's a really easy thing i would start paying attention to: when you chokeslam (especially aerial and allow them to land and tech), watch what they do. most people, once they learn to tech, will instinctively tech towards the center of the stage. it makes sense to do this, it's safe; why would you tech towards the ledge? but, if they're predictable with it (or predictable with not teching it, letting you just straight up punish in place), you get a free hit. and ganon likes that. a lot.

so, try that. get them conditioned to shielding by using safely spaced aerials/jabs/ftilts, then go for chokeslams. see how they react to being put in a tech chase situation and just keep those notes going in your head. if they're predictable, get your free hits.

(i'm ignoring the fact that ganon shouldn't approach much on his own right now, btw. we can deal with that once you get your basic tech skills and reads down better).

 

[Jason Pai]

Wow. I must be really noob because I think you are a genius. So much good information for beginner smash players. Thank you sir for your knowledge. I will try to get videos up of me playing soon.

 

[CORY]

well, thank you, but i'm far from a genius : p i just happen to have a good scene with some players who are pretty good at explaining stuff to me : p (one time at a smashfest one of them paused midmatch and told me to stop rolling after he jabbed my shield because he was getting free usmashes on me all the time. he basically explained a lot of what i just put up there : p).

 

[Jason Pai]

Ok. I think I know what the big problem is. I think my defense is very poor. Whenever I get knocked into the air, sometimes I feel that I freak out and start mashing the jump button and tech button (L or R). I don't fully understand when you should be pressing Jump or even the tech timing of R or L. Can someone explain the defensive mechanics of the game?

 

[Yanoss1313]

Can someone explain the defensive mechanics of the game?

one of the most important defensive mechanics to learn is DI (Directional influence)
this is you'r limited ability to influence the direction you go flying when your opponent hits you.
It has two main purposes, 1: Survival DI: Allowing you to survive a smash attack the would otherwise have killed you. (so your percent will need to be higher before your opponent can kill you)
and 2: Combo Di, Helps you to get out of combos/juggles.

I'll explain how Survival DI works (Combo DI takes allot of practice, and also involves some mind-games, but you'll get it)

Ok, so basically the way it's performed is by inputting a direction when you get hit, most new players sort of instinctively push the stick away from the killzone when they get hit, (this actually has little to no effect at all)
What you want to do is move your stick perpendicular to the direction that they'll be sending you to.
so if an opponent hit's you with an attack that would normally send you directly up and kill you out the ceiling, you'll want to try move directly to the left or the right.
If you get it right, the attack should now send you at an angle rather than directly up. Doing this will reduce the total vertical distance you travel when hit by the attack (hopefully allowing your to survive).
This form of DI works in any direction, So if they send you to the right, try to DI up, if they send you up, try to DI to the right or left, same for angles and stuff.

It will take some time to get used to instinctively doing this when you get hit by things, but keep it in your mind and eventually it becomes second nature.

there's also smash DI, but it's not something that you need to worry about yet.

any-who, I'm sorry this ended up being so long winded, but i hope it helped.

Cheers

 

[Jason Pai]

No worries. Every bit of information will help. Thank you. Sometimes I find myself scrambling before I get hit. Like I don't usually know when I'm about to get hit and if I do, I try to get away from it instead of remembering to DI

 

[CORY]

you need to not panic and mash tech buttons, as well. there is a fail window to it, so mashing can get you caught in stuff by making you miss techs.

basically (if i remember correctly...), you can tech up to 20 frames before you would hit a surface. if you hit l/r before that, you have to now wait 40 frames before you can tech again. and if you hit l/r during that "fail window", it resets it. so, mashing l/r basically dooms you.

jumping out of stuff is very character/attack/combo dependent, and can even be mindgamed in and of itself. especially offstage. you just need to get experience with it, so don't worry too much about that yet. focus on shffl-ing and spacing, offensively, then learning you opponents' patterns. defensively, start training yourself to not panic so you can tech properly, and try to make sure you don't fall into too many patterns yourself, while teching.

so, spend "lab time" practicing your shffl's, so they're consistent, and learning spacing, so you know how far you can extend attacks and still hit. spend your time playing people learning to read patterns (this is super useful, no matter what character, or even GAME! you play!).

 

[Time/SpaceMage]

Aren't you 30 minutes from LA? There's bound to be a Smash scene in a major city like that. There's a Tournament Listing board here where you can check for lookups, there's a topic on P:M General for finding local players, and sites like Facebook have local groups (I'm in MD/VA Project M for instance). I just started going to tournaments myself, but if you have the drive to get good then you OWE it to yourself to find players better than yourself. You will not regret it when you find a good organized tournament, so take full advantage of the resources we have here. Just get in as many friendlies as you can there and you'll get experience fighting so many different people than you would staying home.

 

[BladeOFLucas]

I am trying to get on the competitive scene in PM (maining Ganondorf, of course), and I know and try to practice a lot of what you guys are talking about, but what is SHFFLing?

 

[Yanoss1313]

I am trying to get on the competitive scene in PM (maining Ganondorf, of course), and I know and try to practice a lot of what you guys are talking about, but what is SHFFLing?

it stands for short hop, fast fall, L-canceling

So basically,
1: you short hop
2: do an aerial attack
3:then fast fall at the apex of your short hop
4: then you L-Cancel the landing lag of the attack when you land. (hit L just as you land to speed up the recovery animation)

Edit: this is a very useful skill to master and is critically important for 90% of the cast. But since you play Ganon, you've no doubt noticed that his best features are his aerials. so you may even be doing allot of this already (i know that's what i did when i first started playing, u just didn't know about the L-cancel part at the end... or that it was called SHFFLing. )

 

[BladeOFLucas]

Oh, yeah I already knew that, now I know what that's called. Thanks.

 

[Yanoss1313]

hehe, yeah, allot of players start doing it without knowing the term for it. (i guess thats what i meant in my edit, lol)

 

[Aerros11]

Ganondorf:
Recoveries::
>Down-B [Wizard's Foot] (Air)
.... renews double jump, use this with jump and an Up-B [Dark Dive] to recover onto ledges; also, don't be afraid to pause briefly if possible before using the Dark Dive

>Side-B [Flame Choke] Air
.... Use slightly under a ledge to recover without being hit by most ledge-guard attacks

Out-of-Shield Attacks::
>Up-B [Dark Dive] (While Holding Shield)
.... Dark Dive either forwards (diagonal forward up) or backwards (diagonal backwards up) to counter an opponent out of your shield with an Up-B

>A [Grab] (While Holding Shield)
.... to grab your enemy defensively

>Side-B [Flame Choke] (Air (Jump out of shield))
.... Tap the jump button to short hop out of shield, then quickly Side-B
--
Experiment the rest.
Also, the bounce the enemy has after a side-B air is broken... don't be too proud of yourself for linking attacks after a direct flame Choke air

contribute to this thread below if anything I said helped.
http://smashboards.com/threads/ganondorf-needs-to-be-closer-to-melees-version.351757/