Question from a longtime smash player who's newer to competitive smash.

[SPRINGS02]

I love smash bros(specifically melee) and i've put countless hours into all three smash games. I always used to play without items because it was more fun to me and i thought i was a beast until recently learned about actual competitive smash. Anyway, the question i have is, is it normal to suck when trying to play competitive and use advanced techniques? Before i learned about competitive play i felt like i dominated the game, but ever since i've been trying to adopt the competitive techniques/playstyle, i've been doing worse. Is that normal? Is it just a matter of getting the techniques down better? As of now i can wavedash pretty consistently, and short hop ok. L canceling isn't too bad, but some of these techniques just feel awkward to use for me during a match.

 

[BarlessPianist]

It's completely natural. It's almost as if you're relearning the game- or rather learning the second half of the game that you never bothered to learn in the first place. Not only are you learning something new, which effectively will put your level of competence with these skills near zero, you're learning things that are much harder than R + Sideways = Side Roll. So all of the focus is put on getting all of this down. What it all boils down to is muscle memory. Once you get to the point where you can L cancel, wave dash, tech, and whatever else without thinking, your level of play will start to dramatically rise once again. You just have to keep practicing until you can do it all naturally.

 

[The 2t]

It'll seem quite daunting at first and a lot of these techniques will be frustratingly fiddly and even awkward to pull off. It comes with time though. Once you've been using all these new techniques for a while in actual matches it starts to become a lot more natural, but that can also take quite a long time, so don't be discouraged if it seems impossible at first.

 

[SPRINGS02]

Ah ok, thanks guys that does make sense. I guess it just seems weird to be somewhat back to square 1 in a game i've played for a while. But it definitely makes sense, i think before i actually started practicing these techniques and just hearing about them and how the best smash players use them, i got excited and just expected these techniques to boost me to another level. But i didn't factor in that the techniques would be so tricky and i kinda assumed it couldn't be too hard since i had played smash for a long time lol. I guess practice makes perfect, just gotta stick with it. Any tips/tricks you guys recommend for getting comfortable with these techniques? Which techniques are the most essential to master, wave dashing, L canceling, short hopping, shuffling?

 

[Sedda]

All of those are essential, but some more so depending on which character you play.
Practice makes perfect, though. Just go into practice mode for the technical stuff and you'll get it eventually after trying to apply everything during matches. I highly advice you to go to a tournament though, or play people around your area (at the competitive level). You're going to get destroyed badly, but you need an eye-opener match and suddenly you'll start looking at the game from a completely different angle. Don't get too obsessed with technical stuff, because playing with people is a lot more important. GOOD LUCK!

 

[NightShadow6]

One thing I can say is don't worry about understanding spacing. Things such as dash dancing and wavedashing take time to learn when to use it.

Just learn when to use and how to space using the proper tactics against actual players. Don't play CPUs.

 

[Jockmaster]

It takes a lot of people months, even a year or so, to get down the basics of competitive play to the point where they are benefitting your playstyle.

The only thing you can do is just keep on implementing these techniques until you start picking up on the proper situations to use them. None of these techniqes are dumb, spammable things that you just do and win with (except maybe l-canceling).

 

[CloneHat]

Advanced techniques are designed for fighting advanced players. Sometimes this can make you susceptible to low level strategies (spamming the same move, never teching, CPUs).

 

[Luink]

yes its all about time man and practice

 

[-Ran]

You're thinking now. You're rewriting how you've previously played, and actively fighting against the grain that you've laid down. Due to this, you're sluggish in attempting to do a movement, and your execution won't be where it needs to be since you just started attempt the newer level of play. Because of all of that, you're going to be less effective.

It takes time.

 

[Renji64]

I'm still trying to get the hang of wavedashing.

 

[Pachinkosam]

Its easy try playing with luigi.

 

[Massive]

I have used an iterative approach to ease new people into more advanced tactics in the past.
In my experience, this route can allow people to intuit their character's bread-and-butter tactics reasonably well and shows them why and how we use advanced tactics.

The order of steps I present information in is usually like this:

1. Recovery: Become incredibly familiar with your character's recovery. Learn every character specific trick there may be, as well as range, speed, and how to stall/delay if you can. Learn to recover both high and low. If your character can sweet spot, practice and master that.

2. Dash Dancing: Dashdancing is a core skill that is not very technical, but very powerful. Learn exactly when your character's dash turns into a run, so you know exactly how far you can dash and still turn around. Learn to down-cancel a run into a smash or whatever other option you may need. Become acquainted with and practice using Jump-Cancelled grabs (they're quite easy to execute) out of dash.

3. Ledgeguarding: Learn about basic ledge mechanics. Learn how to drop > Jump > Attack back onto the stage. Learn how to drop > jump > ledgeguard away from the stage. Learn about sweet-spots and ledge techs. Become familiar with ledgehogs, how long your roll-on occupies the ledge, and when you become vulnerable again. Learn when to get-up attack, when to stand up, and when to roll-on.

4. Directional Influence: Learn what DI is and how best to DI when you're on and off-stage. Learn about smash DI, survival DI, situational DI, and bad DI and be able to identify situations where all of these either occur or are necessary. Wakeup mechanics (I think of it as roll DI, lol) are also covered in this step, as well as grab DI and ledge/wall techs.

5. L-Cancelling: Learn to use L-cancels to shorten your landing lag. The best way to learn L-cancel timing is through rote practice (that is, practicing it over and over until you have the timing in muscle memory). This is something you should keep practicing, L-cancelling can be a lot harder to do reliably than many people think. Learn that hitting a tilt-shield, light-shield, power shield, full-shield, no shield will alter your L-cancel timing. Also learn about auto-cancelled aerials.

6. Wave Landing: Learn how to smoothly land out of an empty jump or finished jump attack to keep your landing from being completely predictable. This segues well into wave dashing and also covers waveland onto stage.

7. Wave Dashing: Building on the waveland timing established in the previous step learn how different waveland angles make different wavedash lengths. Learn how to wavedash out of shield and how to use wavedashes to augment dash-dancing, bait grabs/attacks, gain positional advantage, and maneuver quickly around the stage.

Around step 4 or 5 most people understand enough of the basics to start looking into character specific advice on the sub forums.
After all of this stuff almost everyone seems to be able to pick up most other stuff on their own. The basics seem to "click" at different times for people, but until they do this is a pretty good framework to go on.

 

[wezai]

Everybody here gave you good advice so I don't have much to say. But I would like to point out one thing: Don't stress your fingers too much, always remember to stretch and warm them up before starting a match of Melee. At first they will ache a lot as you are not used to it, don't let that trouble you. Rest when you need to rest, because with enough time practicing, doing those motions become natural and they won't ache at all even after hours and hours of playing.

• Train your character's specific moves near the ledge, becoming comfortable on the ledge and knowing what you can do on both recovery and punishment is also a very good thing to learn.

Dedication is, of course, essential. Hope you can achieve the level of play you are aiming for soon, and it's always nice to see new players wanting to dedicate and play Melee on a competitive level. As competitive Melee being played is poetry in motion.

 

[SPRINGS02]

Great advice from everybody so far. Much appreciated. One thing i've kinda noticed is that i'm having an easier time doing some techniques with characters who weren't my favorite. I've found that wavedashing with mario/dr mario seems easier and i can short hop better with him. I'm actually starting to use him a lot, which is weird. Don't know if that makes sense. Either way, i'm gonna try to stick with it. And i agree about competitive melee play being poetry in motion.

Also, i never thought about stretching my fingers or anything before playing, but now that i think about it they do ache some when i play melee, which never happened until i started trying to learn competitive play. Guess it couldn't hurt to stretch them a bit, i'll give it a try.

 

[Massive]

Great advice from everybody so far. Much appreciated. One thing i've kinda noticed is that i'm having an easier time doing some techniques with characters who weren't my favorite. I've found that wavedashing with mario/dr mario seems easier and i can short hop better with him.

Mario/Doc's jump is airborne on frame 5 and his shorthop timing is really lax. I recommend practicing shorthops with fox though, since he has the shortest window to shorthop and that will transfer over to every other character.

Take a look at your main (or previous main?) character's hitbox thread and see when their jump goes airborne (what frame). The larger the number is, the "weirder" the wavedash timing usually feels (i.e. Bowser's wavedash feels outright bizzare, and you can wavedash with fox almost as fast as you can put in the hand motion).

 

[Zodiac]

Incorporating ANYTHING new into your game takes your game down a little while learning it, not a lot mind you, I had this exact same problem when I started using advanced techs, my game went waaaaaaaaaaaay down, and I mean it hit rock bottom. This is because I became so focused on wavedashing and l-canceling I forgot nearly all of what made me a good player in the first place, tactics.

I was just generally good at the game but I was sure using just wavedashing and l-canceling would make me better, I imitated a lot of what I saw in videos (Which in 05' was not a lot...and mostly bad stuff) and that also made me worse. So my point is this, yea is natural you to struggle A LITTLE when incorporating advanced techs and but not a lot. Remember what made you good at the game compared to your friends because even if you aren't top level like you may have thought you still had/have a good starting point, don't lose sight of that.

 

[knightpraetor]

My story is pretty common and similar to zodiac and most players. but I wanted to stress that typically adopting competitive elements to your game drops your skill to rock bottom. My skill level dropped to 20% of my original the day I picked up competitive skills. I would keep attempting to reverse wavedash in the right places but end up airdodging and getting punished, or I would try to shffl and go flying over my opponent's head.

For 2 months I was teased by my friends almost every day for using these "pro" tactics that "aren't actually any good"

around the 3rd month, they could no longer touch me and I was playing pichu just to keep the matches somewhat even

 

[Subrava]

Different characters have different timings for the short hop. Bowser is the easiest and you don't have much of an excuse to miss a short hop with him. Practice with characters that have longer jump crouches and work your way down as you master it. If you're getting better with Mario consider playing a bit with Marth or Captain Falcon, and then finally a 3 frame crouch character like Fox or Shiek (among others).

And with regards to L-cancelling. Attempt to L-cancel every single aerial you throw out. You will only get better with time.

 

[ranmaru]

I remember learning wd'shing in 07 and then I tried to use it in matches. Problem was that I wasn't just trying to wavedash, I was playing against a person, so there was pressure and if I messed up a WD I would be punished. So I would only WD after they lost a stock for some reason, for some time.

 

[Bones0]

I remember learning wd'shing in 07 and then I tried to use it in matches. Problem was that I wasn't just trying to wavedash, I was playing against a person, so there was pressure and if I messed up a WD I would be punished. So I would only WD after they lost a stock for some reason, for some time.

I only had CPUs to play with when I learned to WD, but I didn't really know how to apply it so I would only practice WDing by WDing onto the ledge to edgehog. I must have airdodged off the side a million times before finally getting consistent at it. I'm so dumb for not just taking 10 minutes to practice in Training Mode, but I just wanted to play Melee. lol

 

[KrIsP!]

That moment when you're introduced to the scene and take a look up the mountain and the tiny hill your standing on at the base.

We all have a long way to go, that's what's so fun about it. Noticing the immense improvements you've made after only a little while. Thinking back to when you thought X was impossible and now its second nature.