practicing by yourself

[Cruel Hand]

hey I don't have anyone to play melee with at the moment but I really want to play. Can anyone give me tips on how / what to practice when I'm playing by myself? For example, should I play CPUs, etc.

thanks

 

[ShroudedOne]

Well, an idea of what you know how to do already will help (as well as who you play), but it never hurts to grind shffls, or wavelands, or just general movement (learning how to dash out of lcancelled aerials, knowing the limits of your character's dash dance, being able to attack out of dash dance).

I found it humorous that the title of the thread is "Practicing by yourself" and that your username is Cruel Hand.

...

 

[Twinkles]

shroudedone

o you

 

[DerfMidWest]

Lol.
Anyway, basic techskill is always good to practice, as shroudedone said.
Ledgetechs are a pretty cool thing to learn as well.
Get a feel for your character's ledge and OoS game.
Etc.etc.etc.

I could help a little more if I knew what character you mained.
But movement is the most important thing to learn with any character.

 

[Cruel Hand]

ok thanks. I can l cancel but I can't apply it in battle yet, I just know how to do it by myself. I can't wavedash. I main falco.

thanks you guys

 

[ShrieK1295]

learn to wave dash, JC shines with short hop, laser from ledge, turn around laser in the air

 

[MasterShake]

What I do alone:

Infinite time, opponent is lvl 1 ganon, pick neutral stage.
Practice wavedashing (closer to ground is better/faster)
Wavelanding on platforms/ground (smoother angling, make sure I don't hear the sound of air dodge animation)
Practice doing L cancelled attacks as fast as I can on lvl 1 ganon.
Practice wavedashing from ledge (****ing hard to do well with Marth)

That's pretty much it, I spend about 10 min. on each thing, sometimes I screw around with shield dropping, sweetspotting, or see if different attacks hit through different platforms (I can't upsmash Ganon on platform with Marth on Dreamland WTF).

Pretty much improving muscle memory, fast efficient movement helps your gameplay ALOT.

 

[GhllieShdeKnife]

wak's advanced how to play videos are a gold mine for new players if u have not seen them, try watching those and u will definatly learn some thing also lcancel timing is different on shield, to practice this timing go into training mode and give a starman to a computer. if you attack them it mimics the lag a shield would have on the move, try to work on fast falls and consistanty short hops
theres always more to learn

 

[Cruel Hand]

awesome thank you guys

 

[♡ⓛⓞⓥⓔ♡]

My advice from personal experience is to focus on movement (fox trotting, dash dancing, perfect wavedash ) first before moving on to more complex tech skill .

There is a great guide on movement on the fox boards in a thread started by silent wolf.

 

[DerfMidWest]

Yea, honestly, the main thing that separates smash from traditional fighters, IMO, is the importance of movement. You need to learn basic movement skills/techniques before you can get good at this game.
Obviously, there is a lot more than just movement, the game is very complex, but movement is the majority of the game.

For falco, you really need to get L-canceling down on shield. Once you get that, learn to dair/nair->shine.
Wavedashing is pretty important too, as are wavelands.
But to start out, I suggest learning to SHFFL aerials and lasering (approaching/retreating and lasering at different heights)
Even if you don't want to be a campy falco, learning to laser well will not hurt you (I say this because my friend who is a falco player convinced himself that to be aggro he can't laser much and so his laser game isn't really there when he needs it)

Oh and learn basic combos like pillaring (shine->dair->repeat) and laser->fsmash/grab

 

[SSBMLahti]

Every post in this thread has very valid points, but everyone has failed to mention ISAI DROPPING.

Learning to Isai Drop your lasers through platforms is honestly one of the most useful things a Falco can have for their laser game.

Some other random things, such as jumping high/far enough from the ledge so you can phantasm cancel on Battlefield, Dreamland, and Pokestadium's side platforms, as well as shortening your phantasm are also very useful.

 

[BrahmenNoodles]

Having no one to play wif sucks I'm lucky to get a humanized game every other week or so.

Since most of what can be done has already been mentioned, the only advice I can offer is if you're going to practice shffling much, do it against a whatever-level bot, or in training mode (if you're not using the c stick or only doing nairs,) or a empty human if you have an extra controller. It's fine to just throw the shffls out without a target if you're just initially learning the technique, but if you do so too much and too frequently, one could have an unnecessarily hard time with the timing of the fast fall/l-cancel when shffling against a target. The short delay for/after hitting a target needs to be compensated for. A good example would be Fox's dair and waveshining out of shffl'd dairs; without hitting a target, the timing simply won't be right.

For the love of flying spaghetti monster, don't use level 9 Marths though. Nothing more fun than running head long in to endless jabs indefinitely. Some folks say using bots at all just builds up bad habits, but having no one to play with is never going to be ideal. Those bad habits can be consciously prevented in any case.

 

[Exeggutorr]

I've barely been able to play against anyone this summer and I picked up Falco at the beginning of the summer so I went to a tournament where my falco had never played someone before. Practicing by yourself sucks, but most of what they are saying is true. I prefer practicing against lvl 1's because it keeps me from getting frustrated from some of the **** that happens against CPU's, it's easy to just run off to practice some tech skill(ie; SH lasers, waveshines), and it's good practice for running around doing SHFFL's and comboing a crappy lvl 1. Now of course if you face CPU's you're going to have to adjust to tournament level play.

 

[KingofCereal]

Once I get bored with praticing tech skill over and over I turn the cpu to 9 and work on not getting hit. It pays to notice what situations get you hit against different characters.

 

[Cruel Hand]

I appreciate everything you guys said, thanks a lot. Yeah not having anyone to play with sucks a lot lol, and I think playing with CPU-s probably does build bad habits, but I don't really have a choice for now

luckily I'll have people to play with in less than a month when school starts again!

but yeah I'm going to be working on wavedashing and shffling...as if that's not enough lol


thanks everyone

 

[GunPunch]

wow, i wrote this awesome long thing about solo practice, cause thats what i do alot. then i screwed up something and lost it.

so, solo practice is great for combo practice. learn to combo different weighted characters. learn to tech. good and bad falco's can be seperated by their ability to escape combos and start their own. cpus have predictable recoveries: gain confidence offstage. learn how far/deep u can go offstage. get consistent edgeguards, and ask urself "if a human player tried this recovery instead, could i edgeguard it and how?" try to play as normal as possible, dont get annoyed and expliot cpu stupidity by move spamming or something. if u get weary of solo practice: set a goal. i usually do, "how bad can i beat this lvl9 without explioting its stupidity" or try another character for a match. i play characters who beat me bad sometimes, to learn the character's flaw and approach style.

(yea, i had more written before. maybe i'll edit this later) yea, good luck!

 

[DerfMidWest]

yo GunPunch is no joke at solo practice.
kid went from bad to **** in like a month.

 

[Cruel Hand]

thanks gunpunch that's sound advice. I was just thinking about gaining confidence off stage when I was practicing a few minutes ago haha

 

[DerfMidWest]

oh, but on the subject of edge guarding, don't get in bad habits from CPUs.
because real players do weird stuff to recover and you need to be ready for that.
but offstage confidence is very good.

 

[GunPunch]

yo GunPunch is no joke at solo practice.
kid went from bad to **** in like a month.

aw yea.

also, yea in my first post i put something about bad habits or edgeguarding cpus. ask yourself, "if this were a human and he recovered this way, how would i edgeguard it?" like, for fox: cpus will just go up at a certain angle every time (or go away from stage and die...). so dont get in the habit of going on stage and beating them with an aerial everytime. personally, i always grab the ledge, as an instant against foxes when they're a good distance off. because real foxes like to side-b to the ledge. or anything...to the ledge. like i said, the most important thing is to not get weary and bored and then exploit the stupidity. pretend they would do the smart thing. (then, when a real fox goes for a cpu recovery...as a mindgame or something. u'll get up from the ledge and laugh as they die)

edit: i mean, practicing against cpus will never be perfect. there's no substitute for real matchplay. but yea, these things should make u pro like me, lol. (i'm def not pro)

 

[DerfMidWest]

solo practice is still pretty important, imo. It lets you work out your technical errors a lot easier.
and there is less pressure to improve quickly like there is when you play against real people everyday, so I feel like it helps you to improve more sometimes (only in addition to real play, of course).

 

[Jockmaster]

do this when practicing alone!!

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=325971

 

[EPsilon933]

I never practice alone it's so boring. Although, I use this on a bi-daily basis. I think it works

I found it humorous that the title of the thread is "Practicing by yourself" and that your username is Cruel Hand.

too good

 

[SSBMLahti]

Also, if you go to the Falco specific character boards and go to Dr.PeePee's thread, he just recently made a massive post about practicing alone.

Check it out!