is there a good accessible smash fundamentals video y’all would recommend? i’m pretty experienced with fighting games & i want to learn the quirks of smash as i’m really enjoying ultimate, but gamer youtube is a terrifying hellscape
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Are you looking for explanation of concepts or just like general advice or what to do in neutral?
Are you unfamiliar with any of these terms?
- Tilts
- Fair/Bair/Nair/Uair
- Short hop
- Fast fall
- Tech
- Perfect Shield / Parry
- Edge trump
- Rage
- DI
- B-reverse
- RAR
Here are a few videos I think are pretty useful for concepts/techniques that aren’t that easy to figure out (vaguely ordered by importance):
DI
Hold Buffering
Advantage of tilt stick/doing moves out of run
Mashing (for Smash 4 but works the same in Ultimate)
Jab Locks
Untechables
(I’m not sure if they mention it in the video, but there is a visual cue when something is untechable. If the impact circle is blue, then it was techable, otherwise if it was red it was untechable).
I’m not finding a good general video to explain everything, but I can answer questions or try to find good resources for specific things.
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for the record, I was being dead serious when saying that you should buy Rivals of Aether and play through its tutorial
it has an interactive section on DI, which is probably worth 4 bucks (ON SALE RIGHT NOW) by itself
(also it’s a good game)
You should watch the DI video I linked above; Rivals of Aether’s DI works like Melee, while Ultimate and Smash 4 have slightly different mechanics which pretty dramatically changes what directions you need to press to DI correctly.
I’ve found that red impact bounces usually denote if a move was untechable
semi-related to this: if you want to practice, just go online and play actual people, don’t play CPUs. CPUs, especially level 9s, will tech, dodge and perfect shield everything and reacting to that stuff will build bad habits and discourage good ones (going after a level 9 off stage is a fool’s errand because they will tech anything and everything until they reach an untechable percent)
haven’t had time to watch yet but these look like what i’m looking for! thank you <3
i think the main things i struggle with when playing smash online (i basically abandoned singleplayer after unlocking everyone):
- successfully KOing anyone with the faster combo-heavy characters. i think i’ve taken to maining palutena because she’s both relatively maneuverable and her smashes hit like a truck, making the KO issue less of a problem. tho she definitely has downsides
- air stuff in general, as basically no other fighting game i’ve spent much time with has such a heavy emphasis on controlling vertical space
- preventing opponent recovery
there are some execution issues i’m trying to work through as well. i am entirely too used to not having to worry about which direction i’m facing, particularly after a jump, so i wind up throwing a would-be-decisive smash attack the wrong direction fairly often. i also frequently tilt when i mean to smash, and vice versa. not sure there’s any fix for that other than playing more (and maybe buying a pro controller, i’m just using the joycons + plastic shell thing that comes with the switch)
might be worth looking into setting the second stick to tilts, though i’ve had trouble adjusting to it
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Yeah, this stuff is going to be mostly character specific. A lot of characters have kill confirms, but it’s just going to take either a lot of experimentation or watching character specific videos. The tricky part about smash is that a lot of combos or confirms only work at certain percents, and those percents aren’t even always the same depending on what character you’re fighting (weight and hitboxes change) or how much rage you have (the higher your own percent, the more knockback your moves have).
In general, the combo-oriented characters have fewer guaranteed kill confirms. They normally rely on getting the opponent in a disadvantaged state (say, offstage or above you) and either capitalizing on mistakes or watching their habits and making reads.
A couple examples of ways to kill relatively “safely” (that might not apply to all characters): strong aerials close to the blastzone (either offstage or up high), spikes off stage, throw setups (some characters have combos out of certain throws or throws that kill outright). Smash move kills typically require some kind of read or capitalization on an opponent’s disadvantaged states (whiff punishes, recovering, etc).
Yeah, Smash is almost entirely a game about movement and spacing. With the increased shield stun in this game, a lot of aerials are safe on block, although some require drifting back out of their range after hitting. Jumping has also been normalized in this game, and only takes 3 frames with all characters. This means jumping is really strong, although it’s still character-specific whether you should spend more time in the air or grounded.
Crossups also work in Smash; it’s typically harder for an opponent to punish you if you land behind their shield with an aerial.
Finally, look out for juggle situations. Some characters have really good u-airs with disjointed hitboxes. Since air dodging leaves you in a much more vulnerable state in this game, juggling characters above you can be a really quick way to rack up damage. There are even frame traps you can set up where if the opponent air dodges through your attempted juggle, you can still punish them before they recover from the air dodge.
This you’re just going to have to practice. Don’t be afraid to go off stage and see what situations your character can and can’t get back from. Typically it’s better to be diagonally below an opponent when they’re recovering. That way you block their path to the ledge (if they continue to fall), and you’ll be able to react to their movement options. If they start an up-b or use their double jump, you can jump up to meet them. If they air dodge you can stay where you are and punish. If they aim onto the stage, you can punish their landing.
If they recover very low, running directly off the ledge (w/o jumping) and doing an immediate aerial can catch them or put them in a situation where they need to tech immediately or get stage spiked. Palutena’s nair is actually very good for this because it’s a meaty long-lasting/lingering hitbox and is relatively disjointed.
For smashing, the attack should come out the way you smash, regardless of your current facing. The only thing that facing really affects in this game is dash attacks and air moves. Watch the tilt stick video above for how to do reverse moves out of a run. I agree with @bib that tilt stick alleviates some of the issues doing tilts vs. smashes (which is what one of the videos is about above). Additionally, yeah, a Pro Controller would probably fair you better than the joycons. I personally use the GC controller, but I’m not sure if it offers any practical advantages over the Pro; I’m just more used to it. Perhaps the 8-way notches on the control sticks would help with getting cardinal directions, but otherwise it should be comparable
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This is probably a good basics video for Palutena, although the dude doing it (Leffen, a pro Melee player) can be really obnoxious sometimes so I apologize if there’s anything objectionable/lame in there.
I’ve seen some of his other character guides and he’ll go through each of the moves with some suggestions on how to analyze them/use them and you can see some example matches at the end.
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omg thanks for all the help! also i turned on tilt stick after watching that video and am already noticing a ton of improvement
also it’s absurd that switch pro controllers are $80 in canada ;_;
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As notbov alluded to above, there are also ways to punish players grabbing the ledge but the timing is really tight. When a character grabs a ledge, there are 2 start-up frames during which that character is vulnerable. Most characters have some move that, from standing on stage, will go slightly below the ledge and can catch that 2 frame window. It’s much easier if the move has a lingering hitbox.
There are also ways to punish opponents coming off the ledge. Shielding near the ledge is usually a pretty safe way to wait and react to what the opponent does. If they jump off the ledge you can meet with an aerial. If they roll on the ledge you can react and punish. Normal get-up can be grabbed and get up attack will get shielded and then you can grab.
Also, I believe the roll, normal get up, and jump options all have 2 start up frames you could exploit if you get a read, but get up attack is fully invincible in this game.
I’m not as familiar with these options because I’ve played more Melee and PM where the ledge is way safer for the person there so I’m still working on incorporating them too.
That DI and LSI stuff seems pretty unintuitive. Even after watching the video and understanding it, I still keep finding myself pressing in the opposite direction to the trajectory I am hit.
I feel like the pro controller doesn’t always register the inputs the way I expect it to, too many times I intend to do a down special and end up doing a side special instead
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Yeah, the DI in this game is very unintuitive. I thought it was more of a quick fix in Smash 4, but apparently they never revisited it.
Melee and Brawl both used perpendicular DI (like how vertical DI works in this game); holding directly against the knock back would have no effect. You could only affect the angle of the move by holding a direction perpendicular to the force.
When Smash 4 released they had completely removed perpendicular DI and replaced it with what the community called “vectoring”, which just involved holding directly against the force regardless of the direction (like how horizontal DI works in this game).
This was either poorly tested or a change they made late in the development cycle because it seemingly had some glitches and unintended consequences.
Some characters with fast enough air speed (most notably Wario) were able to completely reverse their momentum by holding certain directions in mid air.
Also, holding down against vertical launching attacks was way too effective. If vectored correctly, vertical launching moves would kill waaay later than if you didn’t hold down.
A patch in Smash 4 “fixed” this by replacing vectoring with perpendicular DI on vertical launching moves, but left horizontal vectoring untouched. This made vertical kill options potent again while leaving horizontal options alone.
I assumed the choice to have a hybrid system was just a quick fix – why would DI work differently depending on axis – but they kept the system unchanged in Ultimate.
And afaik LSI is a new system for Ultimate, which complicates the situation further.
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Fwiw I think there’s something they changed (at least from Melee/PM) in how they interpret diagonal inputs, because I semi-regularly get the wrong b moves too, even with the GC controller.
The situation that happens most often to me is that I fail to get turn-around up-bs, which I almost never failed in PM or Melee.
the number one thing you should work on is learning to read your opponents get-up options from edge and exploiting your options based on what they do or even slightly pushing them into some options. purposefully posturing aggressiveness by rushing the edge to bait out a getup attack which you can then easily shield and punish is great, as is putting a hitbox out in the hopes that you force a roll or jump recovery, which you can follow up with a punish or pressure
one of the easier ways of getting your bearings in this is getting a feel for the range on your down-smash - often a move that covers both sides of your character - and positioning yourself at a point far away enough from the edge that you cover both neutral getup as well as roll recovery (there are also other moves that can cover the same options with different rates of speed and recovery - Ike’s ridiculous up-smash and Charizard’s neutral-air short-hopped are such examples). at this point, you naturally flow from the kinetic state of the game to the meta-aspect of it and it can teach you a lot of the mind games you can play. which is important because it’s probably easier to improv some madness than it is to know 70+ matchups.
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(please take some of my advice with a few pounds of salt, my favorite true combo/kill option is Zelda up-throw into up-special, a thing that should rightfully paint me as a masochist)
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Oooh, I dunno if I’ve done up throw to teleport.
For Zelda, I’ve been doing teleport out of shield to teleport, because the initial hit of the teleport knocks them up into the air, where the second part of teleport hits them.
it’s terrible! it only works at very specific percentages! it requires playing Zelda in a game where the high tier characters are crazy rushdown sword assholes with giant hitboxes and fucking Pichu!
it’s okay, I can always fall back to other characters I like playing, like :checks notes: Jigglypuff? G&W? Duck Hunt?
I’m gonna pick a character with fucking limbs one day, I swear.
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@physical, have you seen one of these for sale in your area? In the brief time that Smash U has been out, this has become my favorite Switch controller in basically all situations.
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you don’t have a PM 3.6 ISO by any chance, do you? I have a 3.5 that I haven’t been bothered to update since it’s so much trouble