What do you do in the online waiting room?

[Enemy Birds]

You know how it is: you find a server with two other people on thinking that a fourth will join the party soon, so you pick your character and press start, only to find that your prediction isn't coming true. You wait the timer down, ready to start a 3-person match, and then at the last second someone connects, and immediately disconnects, starting the timer over (and this happens at a minimum of 5 times per session). The question is: what do you do in the meantime?

Myself, I practice my footstool jumping on my still-standing double. I'm lucky if I pull off 1 footstool jump in my entire play session, so getting to do 5 in a row is pretty fun. How about you folks?

 

[Swampertrulz]

Sometimes I just practice my combos and shield breaks as Lucina.

 

[Nexin]

It depends on what character I'm using.

If I'm playing Palutena, what I practice in the waiting room changes between each session. In one session, I could mainly be practicing converting into combos at low percentages, and in the next session I could be trying to sweet spot her ledge-canceled warp. It really all depends on what mood I'm in and what I feel I need to work on most before the match starts.

Since I'm not as experienced with Ryu, what I generally work on with him is activating his True specials consistently and canceling his tilts into them. Until I get them completely into muscle memory, practicing those receive top priority. The last thing I need to happen with him is attempting to cancel tapped up tilt into True Shoryuken only for True Hadouken to come out instead.

 

[salaboB]

I like to just jump around to pass the time. I'd beat up on the dummy, but then I have to deal with it moving and being annoying.

 

[AreJay25]

Yeah, depends on who I'm using. I just destroy the dummy with Falcon. Combos and spikes galore.

 

[Riuvee]

I just Footstool the dummy, overall. In other cases, I practice wavebouncing and various means of mobility......especially recovering on certain stages. The times where I lose a stock due to a slightly misdirected Extreme Speed... *sigh...*

 

[Purin a.k.a. José]

I like to test my combos as Kirby...

 

[WhiteLion]

dunking w Mario B)

 

[Tino]

Just do some drills with the training dummy.

 

[Splooshi Splashy]

I try to find some tech with whoever I happen to be, like "What can I follow up Triple D's DThrow with at 0% that's quick & easy under heavy lag?" "Answer: UTilt for 10 or 12%" and "Is there a quick & easy high-damaging combo I can go for as Ryu upclose if I need to send a Hydrant flying quickly?" "Answer: Strong UTilt --> Strong Up B [No DP motion here])."

The waiting room is definitely where I experiment numerous techniques with, like "Which aerials can I autocancel out of a shorthop with?", "Is this a stage I can easily wall-jump off of?", and "How far can I hang out off-stage for the deep edgeguards and still comfortably recover afterwards?"

The absolute biggest daily piece of intel the waiting room gives me is whether or not I get the Omega version of a stage I want. Whenever I'm a Koopaling, I want an Omega stage with NO or far-away-from-ledges walls underneath to help mix-up my recoveries (VERY useful against Bowling Ball happy Villagers). Whenever I'm Duck Hunt, I want walled Omega stages to help boost my recovery via wall-jumps, both for going deep for the edgeguards, and simply trying to recover.

 

[Alph Aran]

Fight the dummies as normal, but when I see that everyone is ready, I try to time it so that my chosen fighter is departing from the screen before the blackout.

 

[Aphistemi]

I practice my ledge trumping

 

[David Wonn]

Here is what I used to do in Brawl's wifi waiting room. Fortunately you can still do this in Smash 4's custom character test screen:

With proper timing of the ground jump and mid-air jump, Wario can eat 4 sandbags while airborne before touching the ground. See how many times in a row you can eat exactly four. Start over if you accidentally eat three or fewer.

As for Smash 4's wifi waiting room, it depends on my character. For most characters I will slowly walk the dummy to the edge and then charge up my strongest attack to see if I get a cheap KO. With Ganondorf, I might instead opt for the easy Ganoncide. The respawned dummy usually won't retaliate at all, and I just repeat.

 

[aidspup]