Tag Archives: Training

Improvement in Smash 4 BONUS XII – Practice Methods III

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**If you’re unfamiliar with Smash, this probably isn’t the post for you unless you’re curious. In order to get a full understanding of this, you should be familiar with Smash’s game mechanics and lingo (EX: Forward Air = Fair), specifically the mechanics for Super Smash Bros. Wii U.

Let’s talk about who you play with.

A good way to improve and grow as a player is to find a person (or a group of people) to practice with regularly. A Practice Partner or Practice Group (I would assume this could be called a crew) is the general term I’d use for this. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, and they change how you practice compared to just grabbing a friend.

These people are more than just practice partners, though. Improving your own mindset and attitude is also a big component of Super Smash Bros., and even having just one practice partner can really help you with that. You’ll celebrate big wins, get through tough losses, and generally support each other as you both strive to improve and get better. If you’re in a group, those people are your best picks for doubles because of the synergy you’ll be building with each other. You’ll keep each other honest and not let you take crazy rash decisions. It’s a great experience to have that kind of support while improving. I highly recommend it.

But let’s get into the more technical aspect of practice partners/groups. There are some inherent advantages and disadvantages that come with this kind of practice that differs from playing with friends or in friendlies. These will be written as if you have one practice partner, but these all apply to a practice group as well.

Advantages

– Deeper Conversation
: you can really take the time to talk out scenarios and explore each and every aspect of a MU or about fundamental aspects of your play. While you can achieve thoughtful conversation when playing friendlies, I’m telling you right now that it’s much easier to achieve with a practice partner. There’s a different atmosphere.

– MU Knowledge
: you’ll be playing this person so much that you’ll have a very solid understand if the more objective part of the MU between your character and theirs.

– Studying
: it’s much easier to ask a practice partner to sit down for a couple hours and watch videos of yourselves playing and talk about it.

– Doubles
: because you’re playing with each other so often, you’ll be better equipped to deal with their tendencies in doubles, and you can practice team combos/setups more easily.

Disadvantages

– Playing In Bracket
: This is the one person you never want to see in bracket. They know how you play better than anyone, so it becomes a grueling duel of neutral when you two play. And it’s frustrating when you lose, even though you want to be happy for their win.

– MU Knowledge
: surprised? This is actually a double-edged sword. You become so used to their style of play that when you play someone else that uses that character, you might find it to be extremely difficult to win if they play differently. I’ve seen this happen countless times back in the Brawl days.

So, when I said that this is a person you practice with regularly, I’m talking at least twice a week outside of tournaments. This isn’t just a “hey, wanna hang and practice a bit?” thing. It’s a “yo, time to practice – my place or your place?” thing.

If you’re looking for a great way to jump start yourself on improvement, I suggest grabbing a practice partner or joining a crew (if any are around).

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Being able to utilize this kind of practice can really help improve your game. Just try to be cognizant that while you’re also gaining MU knowledge, you’re also becoming conditioned towards a certain style of play. being caught unaware because of this can spell the end of your tournament life, and you don’t want that to happen when it really counts at a monthly/national/major.

Also, having a strong support group, especially when it comes time to travel to out of state tournaments and majors, is such a huge boon to you and to your mental game. You really have to experience it for yourself.

Just Sayin’

I – Fundamentals
II – A Different Way to Look at Match Ups
III – Attitude
IV – Friendlies
V – Stages
VI – Preparing for a Tournament
VII – Training Regimens
VIII – Character Loyalty

Check out the BONUS series!

IX – The Plateau
X – Practice Methods I
XI – Practice Methods II
XIII – At a Tournament
XIV – Practice Methods BONUS IV
XV – Game Flow

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Improvement in Smash 4 BONUS XI – Practice Methods II

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11

**If you’re unfamiliar with Smash, this probably isn’t the post for you unless you’re curious. In order to get a full understanding of this, you should be familiar with Smash’s game mechanics and lingo (EX: Forward Air = Fair), specifically the mechanics for Super Smash Bros. Wii U.

Last time, I talked about things you can do to practice by yourself. Now it’s time to talk about ways to practice when with a friend (or two, or three, or etc…)!

You can practice all the things you can practice on your own – Match-Up knowledge, your technical ability, and your fundamentals. You need to practice all 3 to be a great player. While I went over how to practice them very briefly in my post about creating a Training Regimen, this post will expand on those concepts.

Let’s start with MU knowledge.

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MU’s

You should try and learn all kill throw/combo % ranges with good DI when you’ve got a friend. Again, I suggest recording these with and without rage at key points of a stage.

Learning to fight against a character can be a double-edge sword here. You want to focus on move interactions/spacing, and habits that a player of said character might develop. While against a bot you can just practice move interactions and range, with a human you can practice spaced move interactions and the options that are opened/closed in the MU compared to fighting a bot.

It’s a good idea to talk about what the MU between your character and their character. Test out scenarios, get into the theory of it. Just don’t sit there and talk without doing anything. Just talking isn’t going to get you anywhere if you’re making assumptions about the way the MU should work. And don’t forget that your play style and its importance in the character MU should work its way into the discussion. With a human, I think talking is more effective than playing when it comes to MU training.

Technical Ability

I’m going to be honest – I don’t think this is really the ideal way to practice your tech when you’re trying to become proficient at first. This is further along the road, once you’re comfortable executing in the middle of a match vs bots. When you’re playing with a friend, the goal here is to be able to incorporate your tech without messing up. You’ve already practiced becoming efficient in a controlled setting (Training Mode) and have some comfort in performing it on the fly (against bots, I hope), so now you can feel the pressure of someone reacting and playing to your tech. Does messing up cost you the stock in friendlies? It might be time to get back to execution in a controlled space. It shouldn’t matter when it’s useful – the goal here is to be able to execute it flawlessly mid-match with the pressure of another player looming over you.

This is really crucial – you don’t want to mess up execution when in a tournament match. As someone who played Project M, missing any kind of execution can and will result in the loss of your stock.

So make sure you play against friends as much as possible when getting to the home stretch of technique execution.

Fundamentals

If you need a refresher on what fundamentals are, go check out my very first post on improving in Smash 4. Most of the fundamentals are easier to practice with a friend since a lot of them involve your abilities against another player.

The two you can practice on your own, Reactions & Punishes and Option Coverage, can be explored differently. Instead of exploring the mechanical side of them, you can simulate situations with a friend and test out different punishes, option coverage moves, etc… I still suggest you practice your reaction time, but with a human I suggest exploring the more open aspects of these two fundamentals. What options is a player feeling afraid likely to take, and how would you try to cover them? Can you react to their panic options? What’s your most optimal punish at x %? These are things a human player can help you simulate much more effectively than with a bot.

As before, try and practice both of these at the same time when playing normal friendlies.

Before I go into the ones you can practice with a human, I want to make a note here: watching a match with a friend (or friends) and discussing the match can be really helpful and beneficial instead of watching on your own. It’s not required, but it’s definitely something to look into.

Now onto the other fundamentals!

Practicing your Spacing is pretty simple. Test out maximum ranges for your character. Can you be punished? Is there an advantage to spacing close instead of at maximum range? This is very MU dependent, so make sure you’re practicing this and exploring your spacing against a lot of different players.

Positional Awareness is something I think is very hard to practice mid-match. This should be a heavily conversation-based. Start playing a friendly and when you feel like you don’t understand your advantages or disadvantages at that point, pause the game and start talking about it. Your opponent can voice his thoughts on the subject and a conversation can start about it (obviously, make sure you and your opponent are okay with the both of you suddenly pausing). While whether on the offensive or defensive can be apparent at times, it’s good to employ this during neutral and see if you truly are in neutral or on the defensive. The duration of true neutral (that being a point where neither opponent has an advantage or a disadvantage) in a single game can be as little as 10%.

Identifying Habits can be practiced by playing an opponent and trying to predict moves based on habits, but I think the best way to truly practice this is to watch a video with your friend (or watch two players play in front of you) and try to pick up on the habits of both players. Talk about it, see if you’re correct or incorrect. This is a great time to employ all the other fundamentals you’ve learned to try and pinpoint habits and when they’re exploited.

Obviously, you’ll need to practice identifying them mid-match or mid-set, but you need to create a solid foundation first.

As for Neutral: to be honest, practicing this is simply practicing everything else and being thoughtful while playing. Be thoughtful while practicing. Neutral, to me, is the combination of every other fundamental. It’s a skill that is the most important during true neutral. If you can’t win in true neutral, you’ll be disadvantaged more than advantaged, and that leads to losing. My advice for practicing this is playing friendlies and trying to employ everything you’ve been learning.

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To reiterate: all of your fundamentals tie into MUs and your technical abilities. Remember that you need to combine all three together at some point to morph yourself into a truly great player.

Next time, I’ll be talking about training partners/groups.

Just Sayin’

I – Fundamentals
II – A Different Way to Look at Match Ups
III – Attitude
IV – Friendlies
V – Stages
VI – Preparing for a Tournament
VII – Training Regimens
VIII – Character Loyalty

Check out the BONUS series!

IX – The Plateau
X – Practice Methods I
XII – Practice Methods III
XIII – At a Tournament
XIV – Practice Methods BONUS IV
XV – Game Flow

GUEST ARTICLE – 3 Steps to Training an Offensive Amiibo

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Wow, what a week last week was! I was so busy I didn’t get to put up anything I wanted to. This week, you’ll get two posts – tonight’s guest article and my review of Steins;Gate tomorrow!

Now, I’ve always been a fan of Amiibos and the concept of “training” them. Hell, I’ve won a few money matches with my Kirby Amiibo, HUPBOYZ. This guy, Glenn Cravens, is a tournament Amiibo trainer, which I think is pretty cool. Unlike my style of keeping an Amiibo itemless, he attends events where utilizing different combinations of items and skills is the way to win. If you’re interested in something like this (I know I’ll definitely be doing it with at least one Amiibo!), you should check out his stuff! There’ll be some links at the end of the article.

This is an article he wrote about training an offensive Amiibo. Enjoy!

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There are so many ways an Amiibo can be built and trained to dominate the competition. Some people like a balanced attack, while others prefer a defensive style or offensive style. I have tried several different Amiibo builds, including ones that are completely focused on offense. I use these Amiibos as sparring partners to get my main Amiibos ready for tournaments.

Recently, I had one of these offensive Amiibos play a few friendlies against other trainers’ Amiibos, and they dominated the competition. Perhaps this offensive Amiibo could be just as good if put in a tournament. Today, I want to share with you the five-step process I used to create one of these offensive juggernauts so you can build a similar Amiibo and take down fellow friends’ Amiibos.

First, I want to present to you my Charizard Amiibo. He is perhaps the most offensive-focused Amiibo I have and the greatest sparring partner for my main tournament Amiibos. Here are his stats:

  • 200 points Attack
  • 120 points Defense
  • -200 points Speed
  • Critical Hit
  • Double Improved Trade-Off Ability (60%)

I’m sharing with you how Charizard is built so you can get a quick idea of how I set him up to be heavily offensive. I’ll reference him a few times in this post. With that, let’s get to building your Amiibo.

It doesn’t matter whether your Amiibo is already at Level 50. Because Amiibos continue to learn even after Level 50, it should be able to take the lessons you are teaching it and apply it to future matches. For this lesson, I’m going to be teaching as if your Amiibo is already at Level 50.

Step 1: Visualization

The first thing I tell every trainer is to envision how their Amiibo will act under the build they are creating. So before we start, envision how your Amiibo will play in games as a heavily offensive character. It is going to do a lot of smash attacks and go for big damage early and often. It’s all about taking its power and using it to destroy everyone in its path. Spend a couple of moments envisioning your Amiibo in action destroying the competition.

Step 2: Creation

Now that you have an idea of how it will play, the next thing is to get to building said Amiibo. You’re going to enter into the Amiibo settings, where you can customize it with equipment upgrades and bonuses.

Since we’re going for power, I’ve saved you some time in trying to figure out what is best. First off, let’s start with the point distribution. You can feed your Amiibo equipment upgrades and bonuses to buff its Attack, Defense and Speed concentrations. For power purposes, there are three combinations you can go with. I’ll explain the reasoning behind all three.

  • 120 Attack, 0 Defense, 0 Speed: This is a typical offensive build. Since you’re allowed a maximum of 120 cumulative points without going into the negative on any concentration, it makes sense to slam it all toward Attack.
  • 200 Attack, 0 Defense, -80 Speed: You can go into the negative on one concentration in order to overload another concentration. That’s what this combination is all about. You’re giving the Attack concentration the most points possible to make its moves as strong as it can be. However, we’re taking away from the Speed concentration, which is OK because your Amiibo will still have some mobility. It should be able to recover if knocked off of the stage.
  • 200 Attack, 120 Defense, -200 Speed: With this combination, we’re maxing out the stats. Your Amiibo will be all power and will have a chance to withstand some attacks, but it will have no mobility, and if it is knocked off of the stage, there’s little chance it returns.

If your Amiibo has multiple jumps, I recommend 200/120/-200 because of the built-in advantage of returning to the stage should it get knocked off from there. That’s why I went with that combination for Charizard, given he has multiple recovery options in addition to his jumps.

Next, let’s focus on the bonuses we want to give our Amiibo. There are plenty that are geared toward offense, some better than others. I’ve come up with three specific combinations you should give your Amiibo if you’re focused on offense.

  • Critical Hit, Double Improved Trade-Off Attack (30%): Since Critical Hit is going to be in every combination I mention, let me break it down for a moment. With Critical Hit, any attack your Amiibo does has a 1-in-5 chance of doing extra damage. A single-digit percentage hit suddenly becomes 35 to 40 percent. A regular smash attack can turn into a one-hit KO. That’s how lethal Critical Hit can be. If you’re thinking offense, this is why you must have Critical Hit equipped as one of the three bonuses. With Improved Trade-Off Attack, your Amiibo starts off at 30 percent damage, but every hit does 1.15 times the damage. You can stack this bonus, which means starting off at a higher percentage but doing more damage. With this combination, your Amiibo is doing stronger attacks than normal, and there’s a chance it will get an additional attack boost.
  • Critical Hit, Double Improved Trade-Off Ability (60%): With Improved Trade-Off Ability, your Amiibo starts at 60 percent damage. However, the Amiibo slowly gains strength, defense and speed the longer it stays alive in the current stock. With two of these added, the Amiibo starts at 90 percent damage, but it gains twice as much strength, defense and speed. That’s why I have this equipped on my Charizard. Although Charizard is at minus-200 speed, it is regaining his mobility, and if he stays alive for a long time, the negative effect is gone. Oh, by the way, it’s also gaining attack power as well to go along with his already boosted attack.
  • Critical Hit, Double Improved Attack/Speed at 0 Percent: With the 0 percent bonus, an Amiibo gains a boost as long as it stays at 0 percent. Equipping two of these bonuses is huge, because one or two hits can result in a KO. However, the downside of the bonus is that even being at 1 percent means the bonus is gone. You can swap out one of the Improved Attack/Speed at 0 Percent bonuses for Auto-Heal, but you’re better off taking the risk of going for the early KO. If you can’t go with one of the previous two bonus combinations because you don’t have the bonuses available, consider this one.

Step 3: Training

Now that you’ve equipped your Amiibo, it’s time to train it to be the offensive juggernaut it should be. The training comes down to two lessons – grabbing and smash attacks.

If you went with one of the first two bonus combinations, your Amiibo will be at a percentage disadvantage as mentioned. Its mentality, even before you train it, will be to catch up in percentage to its opponent, which is probably starting off at 0 percent. The quickest way for your Amiibo to get there is by performing smash attacks, which your Amiibo will do constantly because it will feel it needs to pull even as soon as it can.

With this first game, we’re going to teach it to harness the power of its smash attack instead of just going for it randomly. Enter into a game against your Amiibo and play in a timed match, preferably five minutes. You can choose any character, although I prefer to use the Amiibo’s character. You’re going to play on an Omega-style stage or Final Destination.

When the game begins, walk up to your Amiibo and try to forward smash it. Even if you miss in this one attempt, make sure you do it. If you hit it, follow up with another forward smash. At some point, your Amiibo will predict it and attack you in some form.

When your Amiibo gets you, that’s when it’s time to change up. After recovering from whatever hit your Amiibo did, you’re going to wait for the Amiibo to attack again. When it does, roll dodge or spot dodge to get out of the way. If you get the dodge, then follow up with a smash attack. If your Amiibo dodges, then it will likely follow up with an attack of its own, which you’ll try to dodge, etc. This is the process you’re going to do for the full five minutes.

If you’re wondering about the outcome of the game, don’t. Winning and losing should not matter when you’re training your Amiibo. The ultimate goal is to teach it what you want it to learn, and in this game, we’re teaching it to rely on its forward smash.

After you’re done with the five-minute game, you’re going to play another five-minute game. In this game, our goal is to grab and throw the Amiibo. This is a tougher task because your Amiibo will attack you with the smash attacks you tried to teach it in the previous game. Like you did in the previous game, you can wait until the Amiibo attacks, spot dodge or roll dodge out of the way and then get the grab. You can also stand several body lengths away from the Amiibo and then do a dash grab.

Again, you’re not going to worry about the outcome of the game. Your goal in the second game should be to grab and throw the Amiibo as much as you can.

When you’re done with the two games, you have the option of going through the two games again or moving to the next step. It doesn’t hurt to give your Amiibos as much practice as you can, so feel free to go back and do the lessons a couple more times.

In the final step, we’re going to have our Amiibo go up against another opponent. It is preferred that the other opponent is an Amiibo. If you use a CPU character, be aware that it will take some of the lessons learned from what the CPU does. You can also have a friend or family member go up against it.

You’re going to have your Amiibo play under tournament settings: 2 out of 3 games, 2 stock, 6 minutes, Omega-style stage or Final Destination. You’re going to watch to see how your Amiibo does in action against its opponent. It should be going for power in some situations and grabs in other situations.

When the match is done, you’ve completed the guide! However, Amiibo training is nonstop, and to keep your Amiibo in top shape, you need to train it consistently. I suggest going back into training against your Amiibo and then putting it in more matches against other Amiibos. The more your Amiibo plays, the more experience it will have, which will make it stronger.

Happy training, and I hope to see your heavy hitter at a future tournament!

Glenn Cravens is the host of the Amiibo Trainer Podcast, which runs Monday through Friday on iTunes, Stitcher and Soundcloud. For a free training guide, head to amiibotrainer.com/amiibo15.

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Just Sayin’

Improvement in Smash 4 VII – Training Regimens

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7

**If you’re unfamiliar with Smash, this probably isn’t the post for you unless you’re curious. In order to get a full understanding of this, you should be familiar with Smash’s game mechanics and lingo (EX: Forward Air = Fair), specifically the mechanics for Super Smash Bros. Wii U.

Let’s talk about how you train. Back in my post about fundamentals, I said that you had to play for at least 30 minutes every day if you wanted to improve. However, just playing for 30 minutes isn’t going to help you. You want to narrow down what you’re practicing on any given day, much like how an athlete trains different skills and works out different parts of their body on different days. You need a Training Regimen.

Now, what your regimen should be is a fairly loose subject. It can range from practicing a certain technique with a character to match up knowledge. Whatever you choose, there’s a certain way to practice those techniques. Now, I’m not going to say that the way I practice is superior; everyone learns differently. You need to find what works best for you when it comes to training. If you’re lost, follow my guidelines to at least set up a base. These are if you’re practicing alone against CPU’s. Obviously, you can practice with other players, but make sure that when practicing a MU you play someone who uses the character you want to practice against in tournament.

Match-Ups

Play the MU you want to practice 10 times in a row. Pick the stages you want to practice on (if you don’t care, choose the stages you know you’ll be playing the MU on and pick randomly).

Fundamentals

Play against any character, any (legal) stage, and practice only a couple fundamental skills at a time. Don’t just beat up on the CPU – really think as you try to apply those fundamental concepts. This includes pausing to

Techniques

Techniques are tricky. A lot of players will practice a technique and then go into a match and try to use it and fail horribly. Why? Because they’ve only been practicing in training mode. They haven’t applied the technique to an actual match where they’re not in complete control of the situation. The way I practice a technique is to practice execution, and then try and use it while fighting CPU’s in the same training session. I keep doing this and reserve using it in friendlies until I’m comfortable using it against CPU’s, and then I’ll start using it in friendlies. Once I become comfortable in friendlies, I’ll use it in tournament.

The key here is to practice execution, then application. Rinse and repeat that for techniques.

Creating Your Training Regimen

Okay, let’s get down to creating your training regimen. The one guideline you should follow is at least half your time should be dedicated to fundamentals. You should plan out your regimen each week based on the previous week and try and improve on what you think you need to improve on. For example, recently I went to Mashfest, and I lost very decisively to Luigi twice, and struggled to win against another. I would definitely include MU practice against Luigi in the next couple of weeks to try and see what I can do to improve my knowledge of the match up. If new tech has been discovered, start dedicating some time the following week to implement it.

Here’s a sample from when I was playing Project M heavily. I only played for 30 minutes every day I trained, 5 days a week.

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THURSDAY
30 mins Fundamentals

FRIDAY
15 mins Fundamentals
15 mins IDC stuff

SATURDAY
15 mins Fundamentals
15 mins Fox MU Practice

SUNDAY
15 mins Fundamentals
15 mins Wolf MU Practice

MONDAY
30 mins Fundamentals

TUESDAY
15 mins IDC stuff
15 mins Falco MU Practice

WENESDAY
Wave Dash Wednesday – no training

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You can probably tell which MU’s I struggled with since I was practicing them. If you notice, my week starts with Thursday and ends with Wednesday. That’s because the local tournament, Wave Dash Wednesday (WDW), was on Wednesdays, so there was no need to practice on that day. It’s also the day that I would re-evaluate what MU’s or other techniques I wanted to work on and update my regimen. Again, this is just a base to help you get started. The most important thing to do is stick to it and keep updating it as you improve.

If you’ve got locals you go to, make sure you factor those in. There’s absolutely no need to practice on the day of a local. You don’t want to burn yourself out by training too much. Also, if you’re serious about doubles, make sure to try and include that in your regimen as well. As you can see, doubles wasn’t a big priority for me back then.

With a training regimen, you can start taking charge of how you’ll be improving instead of just playing and not having any focus. If you’re serious about winning, I highly suggest you implement one.

Just Sayin’

I – Fundamentals
II – A Different Way to Look at Match Ups
III – Attitude
IV – Friendlies
V – Stages
VI – Preparing for a Tournament
VIII – Character Loyalty

Check out the BONUS series!

IX – The Plateau
X – Practice Methods I
XI – Practice Methods II
XII – Practice Methods III
XIII – At a Tournament
XIV – Practice Methods BONUS IV
XV – Game Flow

Closet Training

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Now that I’ve been back from teaching at summer camp, I’ve thrown myself back into my local competitive Smash scene at EXP Gaming (link to their Facebook page at the bottom of this post). They hold a weekly tournament for Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. Project M called “Wavedash Wednesdays”, and while I haven’t been there in months, I’ve been able to keep up with Chicagoland’s better players by playing CPU’s every day. But what, some players might ask, do I practice?

Execution, or as I call it: “Closet Training”!

I’ll admit it – my neutral game isn’t always on-point because I don’t play with people a lot. Sometimes I revert to bad habits and spacing in neutral, but I make up for it in combo and edge guard execution, meaning my punishes are hard and I generally convert a hit confirm into really big damage or a KO. Playing CPU’s is notoriously bad for neutral and habit-forming because you become accustomed to fighting an opponent that generally reacts the same way to different stimulus. You can even manipulate a CPU with movement to KO itself.

What you can do with a CPU is practice DI follow-ups on combos, bad recovery edge-guarding, and tech-chasing.

A CPU Marth and a human-controlled Marth both only have 3 options out of a tech: tech in place, tech roll right, or tech roll left. This ends up being really useful. You can practice reacting to different rolls and techs in place on the whole cast as CPU’s, and when it actually happens in a tournament, you’ll be ready for any of the 3 options available to that human-controlled Marth player.

A CPU will DI horribly , but sometimes they’ll DI incredibly well and do techs you wouldn’t dream your opponents could perform. But if they ever do, you’ll know if you can follow up such good DI and if you can, how to follow it up the most effectively depending on the character. You get to try out a ton of different combo scenarios and test your reactions on DI mix-ups because even CPU opponents will change their DI.

You’ll be able to test your reactions on hit confirms when both of you are attacking each other. You can see match-up specific interactions for moves. Can your character’s move beat a certain character’s move at this range? Can you edge guard against a move effectively?

The point I’m trying to make here is that, while you can’t really practice your neutral game solo, you can practice your execution game, which is just as important as neutral. You can practice your edge game so that you don’t suicide during a tournament match because you tried wave landing from ledge to get an invincible tilt or grab in to punish an opponent’s attempt at edge guarding you. You can practice your combo and punish game to make sure you get the most out of every hit you make. High-level Smash involves being able to capitalize on every situation that favors you – you can practice all of those situations solo.

Even if you play with others and work on neutral, I recommend players who really want to start placing high to play for a half hour every day and focus on execution and combo game. You’ll be surprised how much more mileage you get once your punish game is refined. No one wins games in Melee or Project M simply be winning in neutral for 5 minutes. That’s only half the battle, and sometimes makes the difference between a win or a loss in tournament.

Closet Training helped me finally achieve one of my goals in Smash, which was reaching top 5 at a tournament. Think of how much it can help you, too!

Just Sayin’.