Reaching the Pantheon: An Analysis of Ascending to the Next Level

[Uck]

King working hard to implement these efforts to my game play.
3 weeks have past with results that were very poor although I found myself still even.I felt a slow on the draw.I stuck with it though.

I think it was very hard to constantly look for the how on everything and it effected my gameplay.

Well for the past two days I suddenly found myself 3 stocking my brother constantly who plays Samus and I feel very fluid and the thought on the how comes natural to me now.

I want to give credit to Wobbles of Phoenix also because I have been working on some of his material at the same time.

I do want to state that I am not new to this game whatsoever and I know my techs.I know strategy and I know to look for weaknesses in others gameplay yet these types of threads still helped alot.

 

[Leoneri]

The King, would it be alright to put this in The Next Level on SmashWiki?

 

[JBM falcon08]

king, mad props man this was an amazing read and i've finally started to realize just now exactly what you had said.
everyone should read this, its a MUST.

 

[Volvagia]

Thanks The King. This helped me a lot.

 

[L5LM_Gtlink]

Bravisimo. An excellent read imo

 

[Banks]

yea definitely a good thread except for all the spam that follows the original post >_>

 

[Cort]

I'm confused why I haven't posted in this amazing topic yet. I read it ages ago and I need it in my User CP.

Great post.

 

[Banks]

lolz cort, too good. I agree that everyone should subscribe and receive email to alert of any activity. I know I have.

 

[Zombie Lucille Ball]

amazing post by King. thanks.

 

[Sabro]

I am going to print this and masterbate to it later.

Good essay.

 

[ChozenOne]

I am going to print this and masterbate to it later.

Good essay.

lmfao .

 

[fleapy]

Awesome. You helped me out!

 

[Kio Iranez]

This is definitely a great guide to playing better. Something that most people don't realize is that when they get frustrated, they change up their whole game to try to gain the lead, but that usually ends up bad, if you work out of emotion. Again, great guide, king.

 

[pwndj00n00b]

This post is where its at. After reading your post King it made me realize that there is a point to how well you can be before you learn everything you posted. After you overcome that stage your ability may become much greater.

 

[Hal-Yur-Azn-Pal]

This guide = Pro

'nuff said.

 

[dReAMCloUd - Assault K 40]

Like termites coming out of the rotten woodwork....how long has it been?

 

[Teczer0]

this thread and king's overlook on the way to improve is really deep. it is defintly a great way to to improve althou many people truly dont have the patience for it.

i think most of us are missing some of the ideas king shared.. for me it probably is confidence since i always seem to get nervous no matter what game or tourney i go to and its so hard to break such a terrible habit

good stuff king it just goes to prove that there is always room for improvement......

 

[ꓰspeon]

Uff it looks like debates have calmed down.
King, that is quite some magnificent way of putting right toughts into good and organized thoughts. I was imaging you had to do something like what you said to get better, but they just remained under doubt; now I'm gratefule to the smasher that has opened my eyes (along with a lot others)

P.S. Wow I'm becoming a Wobbles fanboy reeeeaaaaly quickly.

 

[Fallen C]

amazing guide and good read. good stuff thanks for writing it.

 

[MookieRah]

I just noticed this thread, it makes me sad, cause I wish I was in on it earlier on.

2.) Figuring out what it is in our game that needs improvement. There are two extremely distinct facets of one's game that always require focus and development, and while the two facets walk hand in hand, for the sake of this article I will break them into two phases, with this one (in my opinion) being the far easier to develop. Before your game can progress, self-analysis of the technical side of your game needs to be performed. Contrast to the next phase, this one requires nothing more than practice and muscle-memory. You need to learn the boundaries of your character(s) inside and out. Take your character to training mode and work on the advanced techniques of the game (such as Lcanceling, wavedashing and shorthopping for starters) until the movements feel natural, to the point where the effort of performing the techniques fades away from your consciousness.

Now, the single-biggest factor holding back the development of your game is YOU. It is your mental awareness, stability, maturity, and confidence. Sadly, this is also the phase for many gamers where the road to improvement ends, or at least slows substantially. It's just that this phase of improvement requires more focus, determination and analysis than most people have the patience for. This is the phase where you stop analyzing the game in general, and begin analyzing YOUR game. Seeing as how this is probably the most extensive and diverse analysis you will be doing to improve, and since there are so many different ways to analyze your game for improvement, I'm going to break this phase down into subchapters.

Now for another quote.

Once someone makes the transition from casually to tournament play and is making a serious attempt to get better their overall skill in the game will increase rapidly. Most of this is due to an increase in tech skill and the application of various higher level techniques. A lot of players begin to think at this point that they are incredibly badass, and tend to get cocky. This is more prevalent than ever before, due to the large amounts of videos online. It's easy to increase your skill early on due to mimicking techniques and combos off already skilled players. Due to this incredibly rapid gain in skill, a player will believe that they are indeed special and capable or ****** known great players: IE Ken, Azen, NEO, etc or that they will be able to in the near future. Players at this level don't understand that once they top out on their tech skill that they will hit a plateau. They don't realize that the better you get at the game the slower your skills progress.

The second was from a thread I made a long while back. I'm with King on this too, A LOT of people don't realize what it is that takes them to the next level. A lot of people get to a point and just flatten out and never really get much better. This site has a LOT of focus on technical skill and a lot of focus of people babbling about mindgames when a lot of people don't even know what the later really is. Very very rarely do I ever hear someone talking about the importance of observing your opponent and finding problems/habbits in their play, which ALL top players do. A lot of people would improve faster if more people realized this and started talking about it as opposed to "I'd like to know better fox combos!"

 

[SpruceTengu]

Wow

King- Having been recently introduced to more serious smash play myself, and being by all means a "beginner", I'm thoroughly impressed and inspired by your post. Though in essence i am doing little more than adding another to the now countless flow of "thank you" and "good post" replies coming to this thread, I still find it important that i thank you for such a thoughtful and thorough outpouring of your philosophies and opinions on the subject. I have to say i was incredibly impressed; one of my major hobbies involves the study of martial philosophy, to which i've been able to draw quite a few connections with your post. Naturally, then, as a martial artist looking for both inspiration and a perspective of competitive smash play, I'm infinitely grateful for the chance to read such a detailed explanation of the competitive mindset and "professional" (the term is used loosely, i assure you) attitude toward the game. Having been shown (by the friend who referred me here) quite a number of videos of you and the EVOLUTION team I was spellbound by your skills, and jumped at the opportunity to get a closer look at your style and the thought that drives it. You have my thanks.

-Spruce

 

[SCOTU]

Don't be afraid of getting in their face while they're recovering, get in their mother ****ing way and force their hand to choose the worst option for recovery

I once (in a friendly) double jumped a falcon punch toward a recovering mewtwo, it came startlingly close and caused him to mess up his recovery (u-b'ed premeturely to avoid the puch rather than jump earlier) since this was his last stock, and not my last, i won.

EXCELLENT POST KING!

 

[Nick Nasty]

Now I know why you are one of the best players. Excellent thread and I hope to play you someday.

 

[Virgilijus]

That is some very sound and good advice, King. I know it will help me out a lot; I believe I am stuck on the confidence part.

King always has the most informative posts. Too bad they only come every month or so

 

[Binx]

Thanks king, I have been working on improving really hard for the last year since I discovered the boards, and I just want to say that this is really nice of you. I thought i was getting good, I know im not pro yet, but I thought wow my tech is up there I just need to work on blah blah blah and now I understand how bad good poeple own me, and I want to practice and step up and beat them eventually.

 

[jonno128]

Dude, this essay is incredible. You're my new hero.

 

[Atomicwaist]

Sound advice, maybe I'd like it more if you didn't just spam Fox's blaster gun the whole match

 

[Coselm]

I'm impressed with the essay. If I were a teacher I would give you an A. You 4 stocked my class.

 

[CaptainCrunch]

Very very nice king. I might've done better my last tourney had I read this earlier but I definetely learned my lesson. Colbol sorta told me something similar at the tourney. It was confidence really. I got 2-0d by people i know i can beat. It's just nervousness. What you just wrote is probably one of the best smash guides out there. thx

 

[Micheloxx]

this is the bestpost ever, pretty old of course, but this is the besto topic..

 

[HugS]

Wow why did it take me so long to run into this?

Excellent post. Yes some of it is common sense, but could you really put it into words? I look at it this way:

Learning lies in the conscious mind.
Expertise lies in the subconscious mind.
Mastery lies in the ability to bring forth that which lies in your subconscious.

So King, my friends, is a master.

 

[AvariceX]

I just signed up here today and with this as one of the first threads I've read I've gotta thank you King. As someone who's spent his share of time as the "neighborhood champ" I've always been looking for other ways to improve myself. I already knew most of this but it was still a good read, I learned a bit from it, and it's always good to be reminded to think about this kind of stuff.

 

[Mr.Crapper]

You may all be glad to know that after reading this, I believe it may have even given me ideas for the writing of my Msc thesis in computer science. Muscle memory, and avoiding impatience, are key ideas that could be integrated into new and revolutionary robots. Those are my two cent-tence-s.

 

[Nerock]

Very ensightful ty, you really know what your talking about and great at teaching it and explaining it in a simple but very helpful way. and weeG if you see this thanx for showing me this.

 

[JesiahTEG]

Bumping this because of how amazing it is.

 

[debaser]

holy ****

"And when there is an opportunity, I do not hit. It hits all by itself"

I see that quote in an entirely new light now

 

[BrianTheLion]

this is awesome

 

[Tyser]

Good read. King, quit fishing in WoW and play Melee again :D

 

[Vts]

Good read. King, quit fishing in WoW and play Melee again :D

wow reading that i lost a little bit of respect for king but then gained it back realizing i fish for hours on animal crossings

 

[Eaode]

This is STILL an awesome read, King.

I think another thing to remember in conjunction with this is to always be conscious of the game. This may sound dumb, but you should never drift away and start playing automatically. This happens to me a lot and costs me a lot of close matches. You always have to be consciously mixing up your game, and actively strategizing about your next move. Once you start playing by habit, you become 10 times more predictable, and fall into patterns that can easily be taken advantage of. If you keep your mind on the game, your decisions can be actively unpredictable, your predictions uncanny, and your overall game a lot better.