TechnoMonster
Smash Ace
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2008
- Messages
- 836
I'm not really maining the little guy anymore, though I'd like to again one day, so I figured I'd go ahead and post up my story and my bag of tricks, and see if I can't give/get ideas. It all begins on a day long ago, when I just picked up the game, and I saw my favorite T-shirt on a little kid and totally had to main him for sure. And so our story begins...
Like many players upon picking up Brawl, I was a competitive melee player, and was just starting to really get my game on lock-down and play well when Brawl came out, and I decided that I didn't just want to get good at the game and play, I wanted to compete with great players and be the best. I took inspiration primarily from Mew2King and Forward and their dedication, and from great adaptive and creative minds like LuninSpectra and G-Regulate.
I think the first question that really rocked my thought process was, "How do I become better than a solid, smart player? How do I beat this player consistently enough to become dominant?" My answers have very much developed my style.
First, I felt that the average player will punish openings, have some decent combos, and give away some openings. In order to dominate this player, I needed to do a few things.
1- Use stronger and better combos and more powerful and better attacks.
2- KO effectively.
3- Present no openings.
4- Take great trades and small risk/high reward situations when possible.
My early wifi career consisted of a no-wasted-motion style of extremely patient camping. I used my up-tilt juggle to build damage (which if any of you remember back in the day on wifi was pretty much an infinite on everyone), and KO'd with shield-dropped forward smashes, and used spaced safe forward airs and PK fire intermittently, and this style worked well on most everyone because there were no really good spacers or rush-downs at the time. If I wasn't confident a move would fit an opening, I didn't do one, and used my free time to reset my spacing.
So, I worked aggressively on my movement techniques, auto-cancel timings, approaching with a shield, reverse grabs, platform work, and moving with air-dodges. Some of what I practiced I don't use, but I feel that doing the homework made me a better player, so here is a complete list of the technical aspects I've practiced and learned about.
With good tech skill, I was able to play more effectively on a variety of stages with a wide moveset. I could adapt to any style and hit any spot on the stage with a safe attack. I wasn't limited to out of shield camping anymore, I could move and attack freely, and intimidate opponents with a smooth style and effective style, and avoid risky moves like short-hopped f- and b-airs.
Eventually, I adopted Battlefield as my hometown, even though I submit that many other characters have an advantage over Lucas there. I was mentally and technically prepared to fight anyone using the stage's platforms and the small fighting area. Initially, I actually hated the stage because Lucas didn't have an effective platform poke to use from below, but I solved my problems with rising full-hop n-airs, and SH u-airs, as well as a few PK thunder tricks (tail-whipping near an edge into an upward angled PKT ftawesome). Just for an example, in pools at AZOne, I 2-stocked T0mmy's ROB on Battlefield after getting 2-stocked on Smashville.
Control is the easiest and the more important of the two. You want to force your opponents into situations where you hold the cards, and make him feel his limited options. You can do this by controlling the stage space, which is relatively easy to do with Lucas as he has a lot of good options for stage control.
With my Lucas, my control game revolved around three areas, in tight, horizontal spacing, and controlling the full jump. I realized that with effective use of well-timed PK fire, I could force spacers to tone down their aggression and free up a lot of my options, eventually leading to a win there because their strategy revolved around pressure and my inability to act. However, this left me open to fast approaches, so I ended up developing my jab game quite a bit to deal with them, and developing my smashes and n-air to punish spot-dodging. It also turned players to using full-jumps a lot, which I found very interesting, so I started doing full-jump F-airs as a zoning tool, just into the air, to force them to stay in my projectile's accessible range. I would even do full-hopped PK Fires against habitual full jumpers, and especially against Peach, to drive the point home. Against most uninitiated players, this setup ***** brutal face and can result in some intense and deep matches against very skilled players.
To extend the mindgame further, the most powerful position you can be in in this game is one where you are definitely going to win if the game continues at its current pace. You can win most matches well before the stocks run out by putting your opponent in a spot where they NEED to change their style and adapt to beat you. I attempted to do this naturally by creating a shut-down style, however, if you are having trouble with a particular matchup, get out a pen and paper and write down what you are going to do to stop them from doing their worst stuff to you, and then go do it. Remember, most people when on a smash trip pack a controller, a snack, maybe some clothes and a bottle of water, but rarely a change of style. Get into their game and beat them and you can win without effort.
Control is why campers are frustrating to many players. Most people think that camping forces you to approach. It doesn't, only you can make yourself approach. Against a skilled camper, you have to win the control game and make them find another way to fight you. Lucas has a reflector and an absorbing move, as well as the ever-versatile shield and powershield, and shouldn't need to approach a camper for anything. A good strategy against pure campers (like some TLs) is to just walk towards them and powershield their crap, and if they try to pass you catch them with full-hop neutral airs or f-tilts and kick them off the stage. Now you are in a position to win, and your opponent has to uproot his whole style and come after you, and you can see what he's made of.
Conditioning is the art of making your opponent expect a certain move, and reacting to a predicted reaction to that move. With Lucas, most opponents either come totally unconditioned, or preconditioned to PK Fire spam. If you can only glean one gem of wisdom, one juicy fig newton of truth that you can snack on, salivate over this: DO NOT condition your opponents so that PK Fire becomes ineffective. It seems so obvious when I put it like this, but sometimes people feel that it is their only resort, spamming is the only way to win against whoever character. Turns out that if you can't beat Bob without spamming, your **** is weak and you need to work on it. PK Fire isn't a kill move and it builds damage slower and is riskier than a good mixup game. This is always true. I'm not opposed to spamming players that absolutely cannot adapt, and its great for control and should not be neglected. Remember, though, that anyone who has an inkling on how to powershield will **** your face once they take PK Fire out of the game.
With Lucas, my goal was often to use PK Fire to build damage and frustrate, and then KO with one of his powerful attacks. However, I quickly found that I fared better when I started off aggressive with smart-aggressive neutral air approaches, because people were predicting a projectile fight. In subsequent matches, when I would work in PK fire, I could often land 2-3 in a row because people were trying to preempt my approach, and then, I found more openings to approach with.
The most important part of any conditioning or control mindgame is that you work them out and test them on real people. Also don't abuse your mind powers.
Chapter 4
Fall From Grace
MetaKnight and Snake, as well as TZFR's Luigi (****ing top tiers) were always pains for me. Against Snake, I hated being forced to play his game because of his stage-controlling mines and grenades. Its almost impossible to beat Snake because he doesn't have to fight you, and therefore never has to get hit by your kill moves if he doesn't want to. I ended up learning to camp him as hard as I could with PK Fire, but eventually, the Snake weasels his way in and gets his hits. This matchup against my style was only winnable at best 50% of the time against mediocre Snakes, and that's a huge red flag for a tournament.
MetaButt was a different boat. I couldn't win the in-close game because his grab approach is ridiculous, and his downsmash can lead to a gimp, though I could hold my own. His aerials, up-B and tornado were always powerful answers to any sort of spacing and zoning I did. I ended up using a ton of jab and f-tilt and well-timed sticks and upsmashes. It was still a downhill matchup, and I've lost many tournament sets to a qualified MetaButt.
Losing the matches wasn't the real issue though. I was beginning to see my style as flawed. I was losing to SK92's Falco, Leo's Wario, and DannyKat's Marth badly as they adapted to me, even mid-match. My shut-down setup was being shut down. I wanted to play more reactive and more openly, more aerially, and more aggressively to prevent chain grabs and juggles. I was experimenting with Thunderslides and PKT1, jab locks, repeated down airs, spike setups, rolls and strings of different kinds of pokes. I found out that Lucas can do a lot of cool stuff, and is definitely one of the most fun characters in the game.
After a while, I guess, I felt like I was looking for an answer to an unanswerable question. I was a better Lucas player two months ago than I am today, though now I am much more technical, can do more things, and know more about the game. Everything I worked on just kind of fell apart as the game unraveled and became deeper, and now even simple stuff like n-air to f-tilt doesn't work for me.
So this is it guys. Between Seanson, Tyr, Levitas, ZMan, and Galeon, I think you guys have a great base of dedicated players. I couldn't hack it. I've picked up ROB and love playing him and learning about him as a character, he's totally different from Lucas. I hope to be a top ROB player some day
Chu Dat once said something along the lines of "If you can't handle a high tier, don't even think about a low tier." It's a quote I've used a lot, maybe that's an omen that you'll see me playing Lucas again some day.
Chapter One
Developing a Style
Developing a Style
Like many players upon picking up Brawl, I was a competitive melee player, and was just starting to really get my game on lock-down and play well when Brawl came out, and I decided that I didn't just want to get good at the game and play, I wanted to compete with great players and be the best. I took inspiration primarily from Mew2King and Forward and their dedication, and from great adaptive and creative minds like LuninSpectra and G-Regulate.
I think the first question that really rocked my thought process was, "How do I become better than a solid, smart player? How do I beat this player consistently enough to become dominant?" My answers have very much developed my style.
First, I felt that the average player will punish openings, have some decent combos, and give away some openings. In order to dominate this player, I needed to do a few things.
1- Use stronger and better combos and more powerful and better attacks.
2- KO effectively.
3- Present no openings.
4- Take great trades and small risk/high reward situations when possible.
My early wifi career consisted of a no-wasted-motion style of extremely patient camping. I used my up-tilt juggle to build damage (which if any of you remember back in the day on wifi was pretty much an infinite on everyone), and KO'd with shield-dropped forward smashes, and used spaced safe forward airs and PK fire intermittently, and this style worked well on most everyone because there were no really good spacers or rush-downs at the time. If I wasn't confident a move would fit an opening, I didn't do one, and used my free time to reset my spacing.
Chapter Two
Learning to Swim
Too many people in the smash world jump in the pool after watching a great swimmer do his laps, and flounder. LuninSpectra said that the first step to becoming a professional was to master the technical aspect of the game to the point where it was completely thoughtless, so that you could focus on everything else. I wanted to master the technical aspect of my character, and I wanted to do so without developing bad habits that would haunt me.Learning to Swim
So, I worked aggressively on my movement techniques, auto-cancel timings, approaching with a shield, reverse grabs, platform work, and moving with air-dodges. Some of what I practiced I don't use, but I feel that doing the homework made me a better player, so here is a complete list of the technical aspects I've practiced and learned about.
- Move duration, Hit- and Hurt-Boxes, Damage, Kill Percents, Trajectories, Lag and Shield Stuns, Character Weight
This comes naturally with time to most players, but until you fool around and study them you will never have precise knowledge of what they hit and don't hit. THIS IS THE REQUIRED GRUNT WORK TO GET GOOD WITH LUCAS. I can't count the number of times I've practiced walking up the the sandbag and hitting with just the very tip of a bat, upsmash, or forward air.
Some useful tips:
F-air covers you effectively under your butt, and has pretty good duration for that part of the hitbox, making it a better option than most of his aerials from above.
Its better to auto cancel your f-air than to fastfall it.
U-air and B-air are great if you can line them up just as you land, U-air particularly combos at low percents into a forward air or another u-air.
A well spaced, autocancelled B-air or F-air is essentially unpunishable by most characters out of shield except with a running grab or fast dash attack with perfect timing, though it does leave you at a small disadvantage. Poor spacing will leave you vulnerable to attacks)
Many characters can punish your aerials at low percents almost immediately with a retaliatory f-air, however, some characters have slow F-airs, like DK, DeDeDe and especially Snake and can pretty much be frontally assaulted after a low % f-air without much fear.
Fastfall N-air during the peak of their rise (they'll follow you without DI) to give you maximum time before your opponent lands.
For god's sake learn the fastfall timing and spacing on your D-air. - Movement
Learn your fastfall timings on your full-hop, short-hop, and double jump. Learn how to Fox-Trot and shield-cancel dash. Learn how to fastfall onto platforms. Learn how you Lucas' aerial movement reacts to your control (you have fast airspeed but slow control). Learn your speed relative to other characters in the air and on the ground.
I spent, in particular, a lot of time timing the platforms on Smashville, and moving around battlefield using the Psi Magnet to cancel my double jump. - Full-Hop game
You can rise and attack a standing opponent with F-air, N-air, D-air, and U-air, and all three aerials have fairly low air lag so you can do a variety of things afterward. With good timing, you can often sneak in a PK Fire
- Approaches
Recognize that multi-hit attacks, such as d-air, n-air, your jabcombo, and d-tilt, are very useful for starting a rush-down because they hit dodgers and you can start them well in advance, instead of trying to time them. My best approaches are FH D-air, SH and FH fastfalled N-air, run behind to Reverse Grab, and run up and shield to AAA Combo, although I often throw spacers (f-tilt, f-smash) and do not approach. - Aerial Spacings
- Grab Game
Downthrow combos (up-tilt, n-air, and u-air and followups)
Learn kill percents on every throw! Easy reference:
D-Throw guaranteed kills for vert at 130% on MetaKnight up to ~175% on DeDeDe
Side Kills with F- and B- throw with bad DI near edges around 100% on most chars, up to 120 on Bowser and DeDeDe. - Platform Game
Learn how to move on and off of platforms quickly and safely. On BF, you can actually somewhat camp on top of the left and right platforms fairly safely using your fastfalled full jump to maneuver between them, and attacking with drop-through F-airs, Thunderslides, and drop-off PK fires. I do this often against Marth, even though it seems totally backwards, it keeps the grabbies away and prevents him from really effectively comboing you. - PK Thunder
Practice your Thundersliding kids! From a short run for the fastest and least predictable startup. Fun and effective, just don't kill yourself. You should also be able to hit perfectly every angle of PK Thunder, especially straight up and the downward angles, because against many characters, its best to sweetspot the stage from above, and you can also slide downward across the stage for an attack which is neat. This is easy enough to practice. For an easy perfect straight up shot, Up-B, hold away from the stage as the PK thunder comes out, then immediately circle down, let the PKT fall below you, and then press towards the stage and quickly circle back up. The trajectory should basically be a giant C. This is also neat because if they try to quickly hog you, it'll take some time to complete the loop and fly up there and you'll usually shock them off. You can also loop it around, and angle it down and towards yourself so you fall into it, though this usually results in a slight forward angle, and if you mess it up you can kill yourself pretty easily.
With good tech skill, I was able to play more effectively on a variety of stages with a wide moveset. I could adapt to any style and hit any spot on the stage with a safe attack. I wasn't limited to out of shield camping anymore, I could move and attack freely, and intimidate opponents with a smooth style and effective style, and avoid risky moves like short-hopped f- and b-airs.
Eventually, I adopted Battlefield as my hometown, even though I submit that many other characters have an advantage over Lucas there. I was mentally and technically prepared to fight anyone using the stage's platforms and the small fighting area. Initially, I actually hated the stage because Lucas didn't have an effective platform poke to use from below, but I solved my problems with rising full-hop n-airs, and SH u-airs, as well as a few PK thunder tricks (tail-whipping near an edge into an upward angled PKT ftawesome). Just for an example, in pools at AZOne, I 2-stocked T0mmy's ROB on Battlefield after getting 2-stocked on Smashville.
Chapter Three
Mindgames
I don't use mindgames in the form of tricky attacks per se very much, because with Lucas they are mostly risky and bad trades. They aren't safe and are often the mark of a bad player rather than a good one. In my opinion, there are two kinds of useful mindgames; conditioning and control.Mindgames
Control is the easiest and the more important of the two. You want to force your opponents into situations where you hold the cards, and make him feel his limited options. You can do this by controlling the stage space, which is relatively easy to do with Lucas as he has a lot of good options for stage control.
With my Lucas, my control game revolved around three areas, in tight, horizontal spacing, and controlling the full jump. I realized that with effective use of well-timed PK fire, I could force spacers to tone down their aggression and free up a lot of my options, eventually leading to a win there because their strategy revolved around pressure and my inability to act. However, this left me open to fast approaches, so I ended up developing my jab game quite a bit to deal with them, and developing my smashes and n-air to punish spot-dodging. It also turned players to using full-jumps a lot, which I found very interesting, so I started doing full-jump F-airs as a zoning tool, just into the air, to force them to stay in my projectile's accessible range. I would even do full-hopped PK Fires against habitual full jumpers, and especially against Peach, to drive the point home. Against most uninitiated players, this setup ***** brutal face and can result in some intense and deep matches against very skilled players.
To extend the mindgame further, the most powerful position you can be in in this game is one where you are definitely going to win if the game continues at its current pace. You can win most matches well before the stocks run out by putting your opponent in a spot where they NEED to change their style and adapt to beat you. I attempted to do this naturally by creating a shut-down style, however, if you are having trouble with a particular matchup, get out a pen and paper and write down what you are going to do to stop them from doing their worst stuff to you, and then go do it. Remember, most people when on a smash trip pack a controller, a snack, maybe some clothes and a bottle of water, but rarely a change of style. Get into their game and beat them and you can win without effort.
Control is why campers are frustrating to many players. Most people think that camping forces you to approach. It doesn't, only you can make yourself approach. Against a skilled camper, you have to win the control game and make them find another way to fight you. Lucas has a reflector and an absorbing move, as well as the ever-versatile shield and powershield, and shouldn't need to approach a camper for anything. A good strategy against pure campers (like some TLs) is to just walk towards them and powershield their crap, and if they try to pass you catch them with full-hop neutral airs or f-tilts and kick them off the stage. Now you are in a position to win, and your opponent has to uproot his whole style and come after you, and you can see what he's made of.
Conditioning is the art of making your opponent expect a certain move, and reacting to a predicted reaction to that move. With Lucas, most opponents either come totally unconditioned, or preconditioned to PK Fire spam. If you can only glean one gem of wisdom, one juicy fig newton of truth that you can snack on, salivate over this: DO NOT condition your opponents so that PK Fire becomes ineffective. It seems so obvious when I put it like this, but sometimes people feel that it is their only resort, spamming is the only way to win against whoever character. Turns out that if you can't beat Bob without spamming, your **** is weak and you need to work on it. PK Fire isn't a kill move and it builds damage slower and is riskier than a good mixup game. This is always true. I'm not opposed to spamming players that absolutely cannot adapt, and its great for control and should not be neglected. Remember, though, that anyone who has an inkling on how to powershield will **** your face once they take PK Fire out of the game.
With Lucas, my goal was often to use PK Fire to build damage and frustrate, and then KO with one of his powerful attacks. However, I quickly found that I fared better when I started off aggressive with smart-aggressive neutral air approaches, because people were predicting a projectile fight. In subsequent matches, when I would work in PK fire, I could often land 2-3 in a row because people were trying to preempt my approach, and then, I found more openings to approach with.
The most important part of any conditioning or control mindgame is that you work them out and test them on real people. Also don't abuse your mind powers.
Chapter 4
Fall From Grace
MetaKnight and Snake, as well as TZFR's Luigi (****ing top tiers) were always pains for me. Against Snake, I hated being forced to play his game because of his stage-controlling mines and grenades. Its almost impossible to beat Snake because he doesn't have to fight you, and therefore never has to get hit by your kill moves if he doesn't want to. I ended up learning to camp him as hard as I could with PK Fire, but eventually, the Snake weasels his way in and gets his hits. This matchup against my style was only winnable at best 50% of the time against mediocre Snakes, and that's a huge red flag for a tournament.
MetaButt was a different boat. I couldn't win the in-close game because his grab approach is ridiculous, and his downsmash can lead to a gimp, though I could hold my own. His aerials, up-B and tornado were always powerful answers to any sort of spacing and zoning I did. I ended up using a ton of jab and f-tilt and well-timed sticks and upsmashes. It was still a downhill matchup, and I've lost many tournament sets to a qualified MetaButt.
Losing the matches wasn't the real issue though. I was beginning to see my style as flawed. I was losing to SK92's Falco, Leo's Wario, and DannyKat's Marth badly as they adapted to me, even mid-match. My shut-down setup was being shut down. I wanted to play more reactive and more openly, more aerially, and more aggressively to prevent chain grabs and juggles. I was experimenting with Thunderslides and PKT1, jab locks, repeated down airs, spike setups, rolls and strings of different kinds of pokes. I found out that Lucas can do a lot of cool stuff, and is definitely one of the most fun characters in the game.
After a while, I guess, I felt like I was looking for an answer to an unanswerable question. I was a better Lucas player two months ago than I am today, though now I am much more technical, can do more things, and know more about the game. Everything I worked on just kind of fell apart as the game unraveled and became deeper, and now even simple stuff like n-air to f-tilt doesn't work for me.
So this is it guys. Between Seanson, Tyr, Levitas, ZMan, and Galeon, I think you guys have a great base of dedicated players. I couldn't hack it. I've picked up ROB and love playing him and learning about him as a character, he's totally different from Lucas. I hope to be a top ROB player some day
, or at least way better than Chozen and Nacker because they think they're all that but they kinda sucked in melee so I totally don't believe them.
Chu Dat once said something along the lines of "If you can't handle a high tier, don't even think about a low tier." It's a quote I've used a lot, maybe that's an omen that you'll see me playing Lucas again some day.
