Smash Wii U Starting Smash 4

[FernGully]

Hello Everyone,

I recently bought a Wii U and Smash Bros. with the intention of becoming a good, competitive player.

TL;DR: What should my first steps be if I'm a relatively new player? What do I need to do and focus on to become good?

History and details: I played a bit of Smash 64 growing up. I rarely played against other humans. I had a childhood friend that had Melee, and I played at his house a couple of times, but never had a GameCube myself. Never really played smash again until a year ago, and I got really into it. I like the game. The competitive nature and challenge is exciting and thrilling, and I like the characters.

Those experiences made me want to play it seriously, so I bought a Wii U and Smash 4.

I have a GameCube controller, and I'm still adjusting to the controls. I turned off tap jump and rumble. I haven't chosen a main character, yet. I'm leaning towards Rosalina, Lucina, DuckHunt, Mewtwo, or Sonic.

So... What should my first steps be? Get used to the controls? Find a main? Play people offline and online? Train technical controls? Find a local Smash community? Go to tournaments?

Do you guys and gals have any videos or other threads you can link me to?

Thanks for your input and help.

Gratefully,
FernGully

 

[FamilyTeam]

Hello, mate, welcome to the Smashboards!
In my opinion, first, you should enjoy the game casually and try to see if it is something that you'd actually enjoy enough to want to take seriously.
Go unlock all the characters and stages, first of all. If you feel the need, buy all the DLC characters as well, as they'll be needed if you want to learn all the characters, especially since two of the DLC characters, and, are very popular in the current metagame worldwide.
After that, you should focus on finding your main. You said you're leaning towards Rosalina, Lucina excellent choice , Duck Hunt, Mewtwo and Sonic. Play as many matches as you can with those characters and watch/read as many guides as you can for all of them. Watch competitive matches of them and see how the players tend to use those characters and how well they fare in tournaments for the most part. If you have the time, you could probably do 500 matches (1000 KOs) with each of them. Not only is that more than enough for you to learn the basics of all of them, but this way, you will discover which character out of those you like the most, and thus which will you try to main.

After you found your main, you should probably try to learn absolutely everything about it. Learn how the generic techs (Dash Dancing, shorthopping, Up Smash out of shield and a myriad of others) the game has can be applied to them, and all of the character specific techs and their uses.

Finally, after that is all said and done, you should try to find a secondary to your main to cover their back in case they have particularly bad matchups. No character is safe from bad matchups. Not even Mario. For example: if you are a Ness main, Rosalina is your worst enemy, thus you should probably know how to play as someone who can pose more of a treat to her, like characters who don't focus on projectiles as much.
And then... the only thing left is to train. Train hard. Play against your friends, go to local tournaments, it's time to improve and hone your skills with the two characters you chose to play as. This is a road that I'm afraid you're gonna have to pave yourself. No one can help you with this step other than yourself. This is also the roughest step.
You will fight.
You will lose.
You will fall.
This will be a test of your might, and this is the step that separates people from being pro players or just players with knowledge of tech skill.
If you ever reach this step... good luck. And I hope you're ready.

 

[FernGully]

Thank you very much for your response. I'm going to do what you said. I finally got my first win in For Glory after about 50 straight loses.

 

[FamilyTeam]

Thank you very much for your response. I'm going to do what you said. I finally got my first win in For Glory after about 50 straight loses.

The problem with For Glory is that it's anything but an optimal place to train. All the lag and coward tactics don't help it. You really are better off training with friends or even alone.

 

[Cartarian]

Thank you very much for your response. I'm going to do what you said. I finally got my first win in For Glory after about 50 straight loses.

I would like to recommend anthers ladder, while it is still online, it has a lot of players who are experienced and use their characters effectively. It's a good place to train online if need be.

 

[Simperheve]

One thing that you might find handy is using the C stick for tilts. Smash attacks are easier to pull off with the Analogue stick than tilts are (with Up-Tilt being pretty annoying) so you might find that more beneficial.

Also, since you haven't played Smash for a while, try and give every character a go. It might turn out that you happen to find one that you gel quite well with!

 

[FamilyTeam]

If you ever plan on going back to the old games, however, I recommend you just using the default layout. You can't change anything in Melee, not even Tap Jump, if you disable that.

 

[FernGully]

This is all great advice.

I agree with the tilt advice. When I was playing as Sonic, I found it difficult to make basic attacks. When I get home today, I'll change my C-stick to tilts.

I also plan on playing with every character through Classic Mode. I finished all the Mario characters. Interestingly enough, I kind of like Bowser Jr. 's move set. Maybe a bit slow, but powerful and somewhat unpredictable.

 

[WinterShorts]

Well yeah, first find a main you like to play (I recommend using only 1 main character for your main. Of course you can experiment with secondaries, I do that all the time, but having 1 character for a main will keep a consistent playstyle.

Second, I'm going to emphasize the effect of this post and what Omni said in one of his videos:

I would like to recommend anthers ladder, while it is still online, it has a lot of players who are experienced and use their characters effectively. It's a good place to train online if need be.

FAR BETTER than For Glory for online competitive practice, featuring people with good knowledge about the game allowing for better competitive experience. Remember that there's still young people on For Glory who probably won't take competitive smash seriously.

Third, yes of course you want to do your best to find local tournaments. Facebook is a nice website for searching those kind of things (assuming you have a facebook) and even Smashboards has an Event tab for looking for events for as long as you type in your location and the maximum amount of miles you'd be willing to go through to get there.

Fourth and final: This is the kind of response you'll get if you ever ask a player, "how do I improve?"

"Focus on learning, not winning." (Or at least something along those lines).

Just remember to take every loss as an opportunity to realize what you could do to improve your gameplay. Do you see a move you do too often? Go for different options. Playing campy? Play a little more aggressive. Playing a little too aggressive? Vice-versa. Opponent keeps getting on the stage when you knocked him / her off? Find ways to edgeguard (assuming you can easily do that in Smash 4). Things like that.

All of these are more so reminders than tips I feel, so I post with the sole purpose to keep these in mind when focusing on a more competitive journey through smash. I hope this helps!

 

[FernGully]

I think one thing of note that other newer players may not have is that I live in Japan. I know there is a Smash community here, but I think it's mostly in Tokyo. Though, I don't live in a small city (Sendai, Japan), so I'm sure I could find other players if they exist here.

So far in For Glory, I've played with players far far better than myself. I felt that their play styles were genuine and credible, but I will try Anther's Ladder as well.

Thank you for responding so generously.