Tips for a novice

[RadishRun]

Hey guys, kinda new here so sorry if this isn't the right forum for this. I'm looking to become a competitive smasher, and figured asking around here would be beneficial.

Brief (unimportant) history: Been playing smash since I owned it on 64, got Melee when it came out, as with Brawl. I grew up playing Link and only Link. He's probably my best character, and he's definitely my favorite. Unfortunately, most of the time I spent playing 64/Melee was when I was a child, so I never really knew too much about the game. Like a lot of people, I was the best out of all of my friends by far until I came to college where I met my roommate and got bumped down to second best ever. Then I watched a couple smash videos and realized I'm probably closer to second worst ever.

Anyway, I'm tired of c-sticking like an incompetent moron and getting beaten by my equally trash roommate. (He beats me because I'm as readable as a book.) So I started reading extensively about advanced smash techniques, as well as watching videos of professional smashers to see it in action. It took forever, but I think I'm finally overcoming the hurdle from pathetic to half-decent.

I noticed Marth seemed to be extremely simple to use, and also good, so I've been using him a lot lately. I've been improving a lot, but I'm still nothing special. Eventually I want to learn how to use Fox perfectly, even if it means carpel tunnel... but that's more of a long term goal.

Some of the most useful tricks I've learned so far are:

• Grabbing out of shield (I had no idea this was a thing and omg is it a godsend)
• Dash Dancing (semi-intelligentely rather than slapping the control stick back and forth for the sake of whipping up dust)
• Wavedashing (Haven't perfected it yet but I understand it's use and am getting better fast)
• Short-hopping (laugh all you want but I seriously had no idea how useful this actually was until recently)
• Chain-grabbing (only spacies so far)

Stuff I know I need to work on:

• Shffling (work-in-progress, this is wicked hard for me for some reason. not even sure how useful it is (with Marth))
• L-Canceling (this is a complete pain in the ass to remember and actually do correctly)

What else am I missing? I want to really perfect Marth specifically, so please share some tips, even if you think they're extremely basic, because they'll probably help me. My ultimate goal is to perfect Marth, and Link, then maybe another character like Mario/Lucario. Fox doesn't seem realistic yet.

Oh yeah. My roommate mains Samus/Luigi so tips on how to absolutely demolish them would also be appreciated.

Sorry for the huge post, hopefully you guys can help me.

 

[9bit]

For Marth you can watch Ken's Marth tutorial. It's in Melee but everything should still apply.

Marth foundation tutorial guide

He also did one on DI

 

[RadishRun]

Thanks, I watched both of those videos. (the first one is what got me into Marth in the first place)

Regarding the second one, is what he says about DI true? He says he doesn't believe the whole double stick thing, but other than that the guide was really helpful.

 

[Mera Mera]

Check your messages. I pm'ed you. Also yes, what Ken said about DI is true. He doesn't seem to fully understand it though. To change your angle the maximum amount you hold the direction perpendicular to the angle you are sent flying at. Also, the "down DI" / crouch canceling is significantly more effective when you are actually crouching. If you are crouching (and ONLY crouching, not down tilting or crawling), in addition to DI'ing down, you take two thirds knockback. Since you can't always be crouching, it's not as absurd as his video makes it look. Plus if you are closer to the edge of the stage, you will slip off the edge and go straight down, which makes it hard/impossible to recover.

 

[RadishRun]

So if I'm getting launched to the top-left corner of the stage, I should push the joystick to the top-right? For some reason I've always had this habit of holding the joystick in the exact opposite direction of where I'm hit, (hold it down if I'm launched straight up) that doesn't do anything after all? And this is all with the regular control stick, right, not the c-stick?

Also, crouching is the same as DI'ing down, right? Kinda lost on that part. I know what you mean about slipping off the end though, I down tilt a lot and sometimes I get launched completely off the stage and end up d'airing to my death lol.

 

[9bit]

@ R RadishRun In general, you want to aim yourself towards the top corners. So if you're launched to the top-left, you don't really want to DI at all.

The position of your control stick has the most affect on your trajectory when it's held perpendicular. This means if you get hit straight up you want to DI fully to the right or fully to the left (straight up or straight down won't do anything). If you're hit straight to one side you want to either DI up in the hopes of aiding your recovery back to the stage or down in order to try and tech off the ground.

But perpendicular DI is not always the best. It's just the direction that affects you the most. Remember, you want to aim towards the upper corners (unless you want to DI down to tech the ground or a platform).

Imagine the stage itself is the horizontal line going from 180° to 0°, 360°. Generally, for survival DI, you want to aim for either 135° or 45°, because these angles lead to the zones on the map that not the blast zones (death). Because of how squares work the corners are the best. That description was bad.

Let's say you're sent flying at the 60° angle. The angle that would most affect your trajectory would be 330° because it's perpendicular. But that might affect your trajectory too much and send you at too low of an angle, thus causing you to die off the side boundary. Maybe you want to hold the stick somewhere between 330° and 360° to get you aimed directly to the 45° mark.

Anyway you don't always want to be exactly 135° or 45° because different stages have different boundaries. If a stage has a low ceiling, you'd want to aim yourself a littler lower, etc.

This is all for like optimal DI.

When you're just starting out the general rule of thumb is: if you're hit to one side, DI diagonally up in the opposite direction. If you're hit to the right, DI up and left. If hit left, DI up and right. Hit straight up, DI to either side. Bish bash bosh.

 

[Saito]

Go back to link.

Link is cool and in PM is a champion.

If I recall, a certain someone said he was the best character.
You know a certain....

 

[RadishRun]

@ 9bit that explanation was clear as day, thanks so much. Only question I have left is, is my DI input a one time thing (when I get hit) or can I alter it mid-launch? Would doing something like rotating the stick from 330 to 360 have a different effect than simply holding it at 330? Also still not really sure about the c-stick but your explanation definitely clarified a lot in regard to the control stick, so thanks again.

@ Saito I can't wait to go back to Link because he is totally the best (his shield is baller), I just think he's really hard to learn advanced techniques with. Wavedashing with him seems really hard/ineffective and I can never actually do his bomb jump when I'm knocked off stage, only in training mode.

Thanks for all the helpful replies, this seems like a great community.

 

[RadishRun]

Also, I take it a huge part of good DI consists of knowing where each character's individual moves launch you? Seems like a lot of information but I guess it'd make sense.

 

[Saito]

If you don't believe you can do it...then you can't.

You have to believe.

 

[9bit]

@ 9bit that explanation was clear as day, thanks so much. Only question I have left is, is my DI input a one time thing (when I get hit) or can I alter it mid-launch? Would doing something like rotating the stick from 330 to 360 have a different effect than simply holding it at 330? Also still not really sure about the c-stick but your explanation definitely clarified a lot in regard to the control stick, so thanks again.

Thanks for all the helpful replies, this seems like a great community.

You'll want to be holding the control stick at the moment you're hit (so you can hold it early, but pushing it late will do nothing). In accordance with this: no, you cannot control your DI after the point of getting hit (the "freeze frame").

However, you can do something called Smash DI. Each time you get hit (during the "freeze frame") you can smash a direction on either the control stick or C-stick (or both) to actually move your character a couple pixels in the direction you pushed. This is most useful for ledge-teching and when you're getting hit by multi-hit moves. Holding the c-stick in a direction will not affect your trajectory though, it will only physically move your character's body a bit each time it is smashed during freeze frames. So you could like, hold the control stick for survival DI while mashing the C-stick in a different direction, etc.

Also, I take it a huge part of good DI consists of knowing where each character's individual moves launch you? Seems like a lot of information but I guess it'd make sense.

Yes that's right. People who are really good at DI blow my mind because of this.

 

[RadishRun]

Next time I play, I'll use Link! I just bookmarked a page from here that contained hyper(link)s to the best players of each character, so maybe I can pick up a thing or two from them.

@ 9bit Wow, that sounds like some crazy reflex type stuff, maybe I'll save smash DI for when I'm getting falcon punched or something because I don't think I'd be able to react that precisely lol. Finally I completely understand DI!