Trying to improve your smash game and aren’t sure how to take your game to the next level?
These techniques should be practiced only once you know and can apply the basics of Shields, Attacks, Grabs, Dodges, and can recover proficiently. If that is the case, read on!
Here are a few techniques that you should keep in mind when trying to improve your smash game. Listed in order of how you should introduce yourself and practice these techniques.
At first, it may be difficult to change any muscle-memory that you have learned from playing the game, but it doesn’t take too long to overwrite that! Eventually, try to implement them into your gameplay. It may be slow starting off, but as you practice, you will definitely notice the payoff.
If you are unsure of any of the terminology used, reference this post!
Short Hop: Tapping your jump button lightly will perform a short hop. This is useful to use attacks on standing characters. It is less punishable than a Full Hop, since you are in the air for a shorter amount of time.
Shieldgrab: Pressing Attack while in shield initiates a grab. This is very useful if your opponent incorrectly spaces their attack, and hits your shield too closely.
Fast Fall: Tapping the control stick downwards while airborne will cause your character to fall faster, a good technique to get back to the stage quicker, close gaps on your opponent quicker, and essentially speed up your entire gameplay.
Tech: Whenever you are in a tumble animation, if you press Shield as you hit the stage, you can speed up the time it takes you to stand back up (or roll!), while also granting you invulnerability frames. This is called a Tech. This technique is also used offstage, when a character is hit into the stage, the character can Tech off of the wall to prevent them from being spiked into infinity.
B-Reverse: Right after using any Special Move, if you input the opposite direction your character was facing quick enough, it will flip your character around. Good for mixups, and adds momentum to your character, which is situationally useful.
Jump-Cancelled Usmash: While running, if you press jump right before you input an Up Smash, you will cancel your run and your jump and slide a little during your Usmash. Length of the slide varies by character. Also a great Out of Shield option (depending on the character’s Usmash), because jumping out of a shield and canceling it with an Usmash requires quite a few less frames than dropping your shield, and Usmashing (this will be further explained in another post, perhaps with a video).
Pivoting: Turning around before using a move. Useful for grabbing, and other quick moves.
Perfect Shielding: Shielding exactly as you get hit will cause you to perform a Perfect Shield, and your shield will take no damage, and you will be able to react faster our of shield. The timing is difficult to get the hang of, but crucial at higher levels of play.
That’s all for now!
– parson
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