feardragon, I feel your lack of motivation all the way from PR.
Me and about the whole PR community are dedicated to finding new Brawl players who want to become solid smashers, then polishing them and teaching them everything we can about their characters, helping them "click" with them faster so they can start learning by themselves. We still have a couple of players who we 3-stock from time to time, but when you compare them to the rest of the gaming community in PR (not the top level one), it is clear who is superior and by how much.
"Clicking" to your character might be an issue here, even if it sounds like a crappy john. If you use a character and try to recreate what you see in videos, then you'll come to a point where you just can't improve anymore. You have to develop your own strategy, one that you're able to handle. If you're a ZSS main like me, and in the videos from the pro's people don't pay much attention to the pieces, then you believe pieces hinder you more than they help you. I didn't believe this back then, and started playing around with all my 3 pieces at the start of matches. In a couple of weeks, my item game was good. In a couple of months, it was above par compared to everyone else around me. Today, compared to almost everyone else whom I've met that uses character-spawned items, I was better. Not even I believe the crazy things I pull off with a simple cannon piece! And when I see my opponent just lost a stock, and I still have 0% and an armor piece in my hand, I have to compliment myself for not giving up and taking the easy way out: forgetting about it and moving on.
We all have slumps. When I switched mains from ZSS to Kirby in order to master Kirby, I was crap. I believed I was good and getting better to motivate myself into improving even more. 3 tourneys after I started using Kirby, I found myself kicking some serious butt, more or less about the same as I did with ZSS, but things were easier to me than before. I heard a couple of people in the background say "Nice kirby", and that made me feel even better! I met new people that day, and regularly played with them to make sure I improved in as many things as possible, from powershielding consistently, to learning my grab's range, to learning my attack's hitbox-activation frames. Now, I am very VERY pleased with how far I've gotten, if I were to challenge myself when I thought that I was the "best ZSS in PR!" simply because there were no notable mains, I'd most probably 3-stock my old self.
What I'm trying to tell you by this here small story is: things are hard when you start up. While you get better, others get better as well. Sometimes, it's not that YOU don't get better, it's that others get better faster.
Oh, and a good way to practice how to dodge an Ike Fsmash, or how to spike while not sd'ing in 30%, is to play against computers. It helps you learn your moveset, the effects of each attacks, what works against what characters usually, and helps apply what you've learned so far. Once you start going to tourneys, you'll learn the next step, which is mindgames, baiting-and-punishing, and any other prediction skills, as well as perfectly spacing and avoiding common character-specific attack strings.
Step by step is the way to go, and in due time, you'll see that you can improve. Just brainwash yourself with the corniest line: "I want to be the best in the tourneys that I go to", then play with as many different people as possible, as many times as possible. Some habits are hard to break, but it's definitely possible, they just take wayy longer than you would believe. One of our adopted smashers still finds himself rolling on-stage from the ledge right into character KO options, ot jumping from the ledge without ledgedropping, leading us to take advantage of his vulnerability frames and killing him before he has a chance to retaliate.
Me and about the whole PR community are dedicated to finding new Brawl players who want to become solid smashers, then polishing them and teaching them everything we can about their characters, helping them "click" with them faster so they can start learning by themselves. We still have a couple of players who we 3-stock from time to time, but when you compare them to the rest of the gaming community in PR (not the top level one), it is clear who is superior and by how much.
"Clicking" to your character might be an issue here, even if it sounds like a crappy john. If you use a character and try to recreate what you see in videos, then you'll come to a point where you just can't improve anymore. You have to develop your own strategy, one that you're able to handle. If you're a ZSS main like me, and in the videos from the pro's people don't pay much attention to the pieces, then you believe pieces hinder you more than they help you. I didn't believe this back then, and started playing around with all my 3 pieces at the start of matches. In a couple of weeks, my item game was good. In a couple of months, it was above par compared to everyone else around me. Today, compared to almost everyone else whom I've met that uses character-spawned items, I was better. Not even I believe the crazy things I pull off with a simple cannon piece! And when I see my opponent just lost a stock, and I still have 0% and an armor piece in my hand, I have to compliment myself for not giving up and taking the easy way out: forgetting about it and moving on.
We all have slumps. When I switched mains from ZSS to Kirby in order to master Kirby, I was crap. I believed I was good and getting better to motivate myself into improving even more. 3 tourneys after I started using Kirby, I found myself kicking some serious butt, more or less about the same as I did with ZSS, but things were easier to me than before. I heard a couple of people in the background say "Nice kirby", and that made me feel even better! I met new people that day, and regularly played with them to make sure I improved in as many things as possible, from powershielding consistently, to learning my grab's range, to learning my attack's hitbox-activation frames. Now, I am very VERY pleased with how far I've gotten, if I were to challenge myself when I thought that I was the "best ZSS in PR!" simply because there were no notable mains, I'd most probably 3-stock my old self.
What I'm trying to tell you by this here small story is: things are hard when you start up. While you get better, others get better as well. Sometimes, it's not that YOU don't get better, it's that others get better faster.
Oh, and a good way to practice how to dodge an Ike Fsmash, or how to spike while not sd'ing in 30%, is to play against computers. It helps you learn your moveset, the effects of each attacks, what works against what characters usually, and helps apply what you've learned so far. Once you start going to tourneys, you'll learn the next step, which is mindgames, baiting-and-punishing, and any other prediction skills, as well as perfectly spacing and avoiding common character-specific attack strings.
Step by step is the way to go, and in due time, you'll see that you can improve. Just brainwash yourself with the corniest line: "I want to be the best in the tourneys that I go to", then play with as many different people as possible, as many times as possible. Some habits are hard to break, but it's definitely possible, they just take wayy longer than you would believe. One of our adopted smashers still finds himself rolling on-stage from the ledge right into character KO options, ot jumping from the ledge without ledgedropping, leading us to take advantage of his vulnerability frames and killing him before he has a chance to retaliate.
