The Ganon CPU Training Thread

[Triforce of Love]

To all you Ganons out there with few people to train with on a regular basis, I know how hard it can be to get solid training in by yourself against a CPU or in training mode. For my first year or so after deciding to go competitive all I did was play level 9 CPU's and im now questioning how effective that is. So the purpose of this thread is to gain knowledge for Ganons on effective ways to solo train.

TO ALL THE MORE EXPEREIENCED GANONS: How do you train while by yourself?

Hopefully the Ganon Elders in the community can shed some light (or darkness) on the ways in which they train or have trained that they find particularly useful. Do you play multiple CPUs at once? Do you set the timer to 20 and just practice evasion? I hope people will find this useful as solo training seems a particularly relevant aspect to any smashers career.

 

[XLAX_OVERDOSAGE]

Hello there, and welcome aboard the ganon train! This is my opinion on the best way to train by yourself.

One of the best ways to practice by yourself as a ganon is to master the name-entry glitch, letting you roam around stages by yourself. Practice your wavelands, edge wavelands, L-Cancels, SHFFLs, moonwalking(If you're super pro). You will soon get a feel for ganon's movement on the stage, and will rely less on camera movement for your newly-developed stage knowledge. It sounds weird when you read it, but once you get to real fighting, you realize how much easier and less-stressful it is to conveniently get around in tough situations.

Knowing the movement is one thing, applying techskill in combat is a whole new story. The best way to do this alone, is to practice on lv.1-4 CPUs. You want to find easier ways and opportunities to combo, using them as some sort of sandbag reference to human combat to help familiarize yourself. Practice proper techskill, edgeguards, spacing and reads when fighting low-level CPUs, and once you fight against other people, you will already have a decent knowledge of the matchups and situation.
Higher-Level CPUs are good for practicing spacing, edgeguarding, and chaingrabs due to their inferior DI and movement. Don't train too much with level 9 CPUs, because it can lead to getting used to bad habits, and uneducated opportunities.

Go against 3 Lv.1 ICs on teams without friendly fire to practice timing for L-canceling and SHFLLs. The electric effect on Ganon's Dair makes it tougher to properly L-Cancel. It takes time to really get used to it.

Go on training mode, and chaingrab a level-1 Fox to practice perfect chaingrabbing. You must be very fast, but also note that you can only perfectly chaingrab if Fox doesn't DI the throws whatsoever. Nevertheless, it's a good skill to keep in mind.

Practicing perfect 180 degree wavelands is great. In battle I will almost never perfect waveland, except for out of ledge. This is because of timing, spacing, and stress. I waveland diagonally most the time, but perfect wavelands, accompanied by timed tilts and jabs can greatly influence your punish game.

To practice infinite ledgegrabs, there's 2 options. The simplest is to go on brinstar via name-entry glitch and practice. It's very difficult to master. The other way is simply going against a team of 3 Marths on FD, and infinite edgehog to avoid getting edgeguarded.

Practicing teching by yourself can be tricky, because resources are very limited alone. One way is to go on Falco/Fox/Jigg's/Ganon's(We are lucky enough to have it on ours too) target test stage and tech from the hurtboxes/spikes. Teching from spikes requires faster timing and proper spacing to be able to tech.
If you could get a practice partner, put damage ratio on high, no time limit, and battle at the bottom of hyrule temple. This will greatly help.

This is all I can think about at the time. As you can see, I love playing with myself.

EDIT: 69th message

 

[Superspright]

Just flex in the mirror a lot and do your best Ganondorf laugh. It's mainly how I train.

 

[X WaNtEd X]

Threads like this make me sad. When I first started posting here about a year ago, any newbie question was answered by a highly experienced player. Now, half of the questions asked in thread format are completely ignored by any of the more advanced players. The only thread that gets any important attention is our general thread, and half the time the posts are off topic. Nothing wrong with letting the conversation go somewhere else every once in awhile, but it's frustrating to read threads and posts made by newer players with a clear desire to improve that go unnoticed.

There's a bunch of mid/low level Ganons here that want to also help people out, but just aren't qualified. I consider myself one of these. I regret giving the advice I have in this board because while some of it was probably correct, I've come to learn that I was just wrong about a lot of things. And right now, I'm afraid to respond to this thread even though I could probably give the OP a billion ways to practice by himself because I'm afraid of giving false advice.

So this is me calling out the better Ganons. Help out the new guys so we mid level Ganons don't **** them up with bad advice.

 

[-ACE-]

The only sad thing is that the OP isn't closer to other smashers and has to train with cpu's. But I see your point.

I used to practice cg'ing lvl 1's since they DI full behind, and that is the hardest regrab to get (helps you work on dashing out of stun... a vital skill).

Other than that, tech skill and hitbox knowledge (so a small amount of spacing knowledge can be gained from beating up cpu's.... not a whole lot else though imo. Unless I'm forgetting something.

 

[X WaNtEd X]

You can also use CPUs as targets to see if you can get a hitbox in a certain area. For example I'm learning how to shield drop fair through a platform consistently right now so I put a computer to lv 1 and continuously try to hit it with shield drop fair when it gets close to me on a platform.

 

[XLAX_OVERDOSAGE]

Threads like this make me sad. When I first started posting here about a year ago, any newbie question was answered by a highly experienced player. Now, half of the questions asked in thread format are completely ignored by any of the more advanced players. The only thread that gets any important attention is our general thread, and half the time the posts are off topic. Nothing wrong with letting the conversation go somewhere else every once in awhile, but it's frustrating to read threads and posts made by newer players with a clear desire to improve that go unnoticed.

There's a bunch of mid/low level Ganons here that want to also help people out, but just aren't qualified. I consider myself one of these. I regret giving the advice I have in this board because while some of it was probably correct, I've come to learn that I was just wrong about a lot of things. And right now, I'm afraid to respond to this thread even though I could probably give the OP a billion ways to practice by himself because I'm afraid of giving false advice.

So this is me calling out the better Ganons. Help out the new guys so we mid level Ganons don't **** them up with bad advice.

A big reason for the lack of replies/majority of replies on general threads is due to the merging to social media. Top players tend to use Facebook/Twitter more often than smashboards, and same goes with the general smash scene.

While also being a mid-level ganon, I prefer giving out my advice. Even if my experience is quite limited, I still have enough understanding of basic metagame, matchups and strategies to competently analyze most problems/situations.
Knowing the problem is the first step in improving yourself as a smasher. Knowing how to overcome the problem and to effectively/efficiently apply it in battle is a whole new ball game.

Even if my advice is wrong or lacks knowledge, I can still improve myself as a smasher by doing exactly that in the above paragraph.

 

[Triforce of Love]

I saw somewhere that its a good idea to practice comboing on a level 7 because they have the closest thing to real life DI or something. But i also know people who practice on level 3s because its just a simple sandbag with justthe right amount of DI. What do you higher ups think?

Also im a low level ganon and Ive definitely achieved the vast majority of my ganon knowledge and a decent amount of tech skill just by messing around with L9s. But it has definitely led to some bad habits.

On a different note Shoutouts to Ace, Bizarro and generally a large part of the ganon community. @ X WaNtEd X Ive gotten a lot of decent advice, and you guys always seem to be willing to help another ganon out. So thanks!