How to train properly

So I came about making this blog when I was struggling to make imporvements to my own game, and wanted to help people who are going through the same issue. So chances are if you are here, you aren't the best player, and want to get better. The first thing you should do is find where you are lacking, and see what better players do that you don't. once you can locate some things that you are fundamentally lacking, go practice these things. Many of these could be the neutral game, or spacing. But some of these things include reactions, which aren't possible to train. So the first thing I recommend doing is just taking time to learn your character. Learn the moves that work well together, learn the good combos, learn the max range for each move. Learn what percents moves kill at. After you know everything about your character you need to learn major things about the other characters. These are going to be like things that Ness has a good back throw and to avoid that, or how to avoid bayonetta combos. But just learn the things you need to about the other characters. Next is to practice character specific match ups, and learn just how you are supposed to deal with a character, in a few different situations. These tips will help you. Hopefully you also are going to go to training mode and try out some new combos with characters that you haven't used before.

Clone Characters in SmashBros

So there are an obnoxious amount of clone characters in this game and I felt like ranting about it. There are tons of characters that have so few changes that they could have just been separate skins instead of entirely different characters. So the first and most obnoxious one is Marth and Lucina. They are literally the same character with the same stats, frame data, moves, and practically everything else. There is only one difference and that is the sweet spot sizes and locations on their sword. This was unnecessary and made me rather mad. Lucina is actually objectively worse than Marth and just a copy of him. The next one, Sakuri's favorite, is Pit and Dark Pit. Pit was introduced in Brawl and then in this game he mare a return, and brought with him dark pit, a character with the same stats, skins, damage, and all but 2 of the moves are the same. The main difference is the side special and neutral special. Both are the same except dark pits is slower and stronger. Besides that, the characters are practically interchangable. Another one of the clones we see is between Mario and Dr Mario, where the only thing that is different is they made Dr Mario far worse than mario in smash 4. They have pretty much the same moves, just different speeds and percents. Another one of the clones that we see is only in melee, but with Pichu and Pikachu, where again the added character is just worse than the original character.

So, this rant was pretty much just to point out that every clone of a character is just worse than the original character, and was a waste of dev time.

The best way to play online

Many of you, like myself don't have the best ability to play offline do to the lack of people to play with, means to get there, or time you can play, but for whatever reason, there is a possible solution. Playing online is a fun way to get in some practice, but make sure you are aware it is not great practice. There is some input delay when dealing with wifi, and sometimes some flat out lag. But, it is fun none the less, and if you don't have another way to play smash, it's your best option. So hopefully this guide will be helpful to those of you who need it.

Many of you know For Glory,  but are tired of playing against scrubs, or dealing with people who steal wifi from a kmart and lag awfully. So there are a few solutions. First thing is to go out and buy a lan adapter, this will help remove some of the lag when playing online by connecting you straight to the internet through Ethernet, instead of Wifi. The next thing I suggest doing is making an account on Anthersladder.com This site is great for finding people who want to play any game of smash bros since you are able to play melee, pm, 64, 3ds, wii u, or even brawl. So, this site has it all. Once you are on here there is a chat for the respective game you are playing. There are ranked matches and just friendly matches. But, whichever you do, just have fun. It's online, it's not really that competitive, but it is a way to play. I love playing online and highly recommend it to anyone who does not have many people to play with in real life.

Marth Vs Lucina

There has been a lot of talk about Marth and Lucina recently, and I feel like I wanted to talk about the differences and if one is better than the other or not. So Marth and lucina share the exact same moveset.... not a single move is different. But what differs between the two is the sword that each character uses. Lucina's soword has no weak spots, every part of the sword does the same amount of damage and knock back. This is different from marth, who has a series of weak and sweet spots. Marth's tip of his sword is considered the sweet spot that does more damage and knock back than any of lucinas respective moves, but marth's weak spot does less damage and less knockback. This means that spacing to certain points is crucial for marths game play. Now i'm going to talk about the advantages of each character.

Lucina has the advantage over marth that her combos are easier to land. In her combos the moves just have to land on the opponent, where as in marth's they have to hit certain spaces on his sword to get optimal combos. This is useful when playing the neutral and trying to lead up into a combo. Lucina also has the advantage that any hit from her smash attacks kill, not just the tipper area, which can be difficult to land.

Marth has almost every other advantage. he can do more damage, better combos, kill earlier, and overall is just better than lucina. Unfortunately, I think that they actually just made a worse clone of a character, but to those who play lucina there may be some other special difference keeping them away from playing marth. Hopefully this little bit was helpful for those of you trying to decide between the two of these characters.

Corrin after the nerf

So, in patch 1.1.5 Corrin, of all characters, was slightly nerfed. This was rather unexpected, as she was pretty much unused for the most part and had just been released. So, now that she has had some time after the nerf, I feel like I want to talk about where the character ranks. Now Corrin is a pretty unique swordsman, and has probably the best special attacks of any of the swordsman except maybe worse than cloud. She doesn't see uch play in the competitive scene unfortunately, until recently when Esam revealed at Pound that He himself plays corrin, and pulled it out against Ally in loser semis. Now he didn't win, but he did show off the character quite well, because of this I feel like I really wanted to start the discussion on  where to place corrin in a comepititve  tier list. She seems to have a lot of things going for her; good range, good movement, good combos, and great kill power. Her up throw kills early, she has great reverse edge gaurding tools, and her aerials are godlike. I think overall that corrin actually has a ton of potential in this game, it just needs to be used by the right player. I think that she can abuse her bite to her advantage very well, and if someone is able to do that right they can get kills at like 70%.

How to pick a main character in Super Smash Bros.

For those of you who are just starting to play this game, or are maybe looking to start playing it at a different level, I am going to give you a small comprehensive guide to picking a main character in super smash bros. Now, I don't think this will work for everyone but it something that has worked for myself and thought I would share. So lets get started

Start by playing every character a few times. Just play a few short games with each character and see which ones you were able to be successful with, which ones you liked playing, ones that felt like you were in control, and ones that had a combination of these. If you liked any of these qualities about some of the characters, focus on those characters.

Now that you have found some characters that feel right, start finding out some combos you can do with these characters. If you like some of the combos on a character that feels right, you're on your way to being successful with your new main. I think that you can do this against a CPU or in training / practice mode.

Now that you have some combos down, try these characters out and see which one you are successful with. You want your main to be fun and give you the best chance of winning. It is important that you enjoy playing your character for some reason, and that should help you win.

Now that you are able to win with this character and you enjoy them, start playing this character more and more. You will soon find that they feel natural to you and you like most aspects about them. If this isn't right, pick up a different character you like and learn them for a little bit.

Once you find the character that feels right, you have got yourself a main. Hopefully you are successful with your character, and you find the best one for you. I personally love Ryu, and would never change mains again since his release. He is by far my favorite character in the game, and because of that I am very successful when I play him. Thanks for the read and hopefully I was able to help at least just a few of you who needed inspiration to find some character that they wanted to play whether with a few friends or for a few tournaments.

Fun vs Competitive

Now this argument pretty much has been going on for a long time in the communist, but I wanted to give my two cents on this hot topic. Now I will preface this by saying that I am a competitive person by nature, and that has made me a competitive player, or strive to be one at least. That does not mean that I do not have fun playing this game, but I enjoy winning the games I play and becoming one of the best as I play them. Now obviously there are a lot of limiting factors to the competitiveness of this game, some can't, some don't want to, some don't have the reaction time, and many others. But, I think that this game really isn't meant to be competitive, despite wanting it to be. To start off, Sakuri himself has stated that he did not intend to make Super Smash a competitive game when he set out to make it, it was meant to be something that friends would play casually. Now this game has been taken to some extremes by many players, wanting to always be better and striving to be the best. I think that this game just has too many flaws to try and be a competitive game, because getting to the point of being an eSport would contradict what this game can do. This game is extremely defensive, and most people don't play it as that. Most people like making things "hype" or entertaining, the thing that draw in a crowd for an eSport. But, to completely be the best at this game you have to be extremely defensive. This isn't fun to watch. Now if we were an eSport, we would drive our community away by having not very interesting games as we got more and more competitive. This seems extremely contradictory, and is not something that would be part of a competitive game. No matter how good of combos or flashy things you can pull off, someone can just be more defensive and not let you get in or even attempt to approach. This is probably my main claim that this game is not competitive. I want this game to be as competitive as possible, just as many of you do, but I am worried that that will mean it won't be as fun to play or watch anymore. So overall, what i'm trying to say is, have fun with this game. You only have so much time to play it. Not all of your are going to be the best. But don't let that make you not try and be better than your friends! I think this game is great a friendly competitive level, but wish that it could be so much more than that. This game is an escape for many of you, including myself, and I love it no matter the form it is in. I think that this game is overall extremely fun to play, and that is what makes us want to become better at it. Thanks for reading and I by no way meant to say that we shouldn't be having tournaments, just stated the paradox situation we could create if we don't prevent it.