Practicing Alone with Squirtle

[DKMikey]

So recently, I decided to pick up Squirtle. I never go to tournaments, and all my friends (no offense friends, I love you!) severely suck at this game, so I normally play level 9 CPU's. Today, I decided that I would simply run away from a CPU for the full 8 minutes as Squirtle. Surprisingly, this taught me way more about the slimy little guy than fighting CPUs over and over again.

Here's what I did:
Random CPU (level 9) vs. me on any legal P:M tournament stage.
I can't rigorously attack the CPU, I can only run away. (I can lightly attack to escape, however)

Here's what I learned:
1. **** you, level 9 CPU
2. **** you, powershielding
3. **** you, free fall suicides
4. Squirtle can grab the ledge with his crouch. Simple face away from the ledge, crouch, then return the analog stick to neutral and Squirtle will immediately catch the ledge. You can also wavedash into the ledge, but I feel that this method is much harder to mess up.
5. Slingshot Shell (or whatever it's called), is not a safe option in all instances. Slinging in front of the CPU's face got me repeatedly punished. But boy does it push me far.
7. When using bubble up-close against an opponent in mid-air, Squirtle can easily be punished.
6. Watergun is too slow to punish fast projectiles on reaction (i.e. shadow ball). However, it is VERY useful for aerial movement, I think I'd like to see more Squirtles use this move to manuever in the air more often.

I also personally believe I got much better with wavelanding, withdraw, sweetspotting and recovering, and judging the space of other character's moves. The experience was much, much harder than simply fighting the level 9.

Anyway, does anyone have other suggestions to practice Squirtle by myself? Besides squirtle tech, of course (which I will be practicing).

 

[tripp6313]

I spend a lot of my time learning stuff out of SS... And a lot of what I've here is a bit of needing to learn the spacing with the character. I suffer a similar situation as you, by the fact that I only have one dedicated player to play against and we're constantly preparing for our potential plateau. I would definitely look into seeing what leads into what and practice the Hydroplane techs if you haven't spent time with those yet. level 9 bots are generally a good practice tool but unfortunately once you reach a level where the bots are just punching bags and get boring because the AI is to consistent with what it does. I'd also say practice tilt options and air game with the little guy.. he's got a lot of tricks to offer you and is always willing to give you his best.. and bubble is quite an AMAZING tool... you just gotta get used to the spacing

 

[Dream Land Works]

As far as number four goes, I believe every character who can crawl can actually do this, I don't know if that is common knowledge though or not.

 

[tripp6313]

So I tried this out and my friends and I have started to calliit Benny Hill Training because it just feels like we need Benny HiIll music playing in the background.

This is actually a pretty neat way of practicing. I modified it a bit and added that I couldn't just run but i had to do wavedashes and dodges to avoid my opponent and it turns out that evasion tactics are actually really poor. However, with this practice i did reach a new level of play that is quite exciting because my friend who usually kicks my butt hard got his butt kicked because he wasn't sure what to do with squirt in this situation... so thanks for the training tips.

 

[DKMikey]

So I tried this out and my friends and I have started to calliit Benny Hill Training because it just feels like we need Benny HiIll music playing in the background.

This is actually a pretty neat way of practicing. I modified it a bit and added that I couldn't just run but i had to do wavedashes and dodges to avoid my opponent and it turns out that evasion tactics are actually really poor. However, with this practice i did reach a new level of play that is quite exciting because my friend who usually kicks my butt hard got his butt kicked because he wasn't sure what to do with squirt in this situation... so thanks for the training tips.

So, I heard Benny Hill music on YouTube today. I actually laughed out loud after hearing the music. So appropriate.

Yeah, this kind of practicing alone has helped my game tremendously. Since I'm not just mashing buttons and hoping stuff hits, I actually think through everything I'm doing. Whether the opponent can hit me, how far my waveland will take me, whether it's okay to sling, etc. This kind of training is insanely hard with other characters though (I've since switched mains to Lucario). Kudos for you for doing it without running. There's no way I would be able to survive a whole 8 minutes without squirtle's run.

@Dream Land Works: You are correct. I had no idea that this was possible, but I still find it pretty cool.

 

[tripp6313]

squirtle's wavedash is almost as along as the stage a lot of times so it isn't to bad... and I play a bit of Lucariyu too... He's pretty insane... actually the guy I play against all the time is a Lu main and it does get pretty crazy.

 

[Mumble]

Squirtle's wavedash is great. That combined with shellshifting makes for some pretty good mixups imo. I've been practicing tech chasing with shellshift into grab. It can get pretty silly.

 

[Daftatt]

I pretty much learned everything I know by playing bots. Just working for hours on squirtle's movement. It has really started to work for me, my tech skills are to the point where I do really well at my local weeklies.