The Ultimate New to Smash Guide

This is a guide written by superhylia#0413 meant to be an all-in-one guide/resource for those new to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (and intermediate players too)! From the basic controls, movement, and mechanics of the game to choosing a character, mentality, fundamentals, advanced techniques, and a whole lot more. This guide will take you from never having played Smash to being knowledgeable about the game, its mechanics, its intricacies, and metagame on your way to becoming a solid competitive player.

I will warn you: it is very long, so please use the document outline or ToC below to scroll between sections or use the find tool to look for something in particular. Read what you’re curious about and move on, absorbing this in one sitting will not make you instantly better. There’s no rush to improve or learn all of this: go at your own pace and understand what’s going on before moving on to the next section. We believe in you!

What is this game?

What do I need to buy?

What are the controls?

Movement

Base Mechanics and UI

Offense

Defense

Recovery

Advanced Mechanics

Selecting a character

Online Play

Mentality and Health

Asking good questions

Practice and Application

Gauging your Improvement

Fundamentals

Creating a gameplan

Advanced Techniques

Competitive Stages

Tournaments

Community

Where to next?

Credits

What is this game?

What is Super Smash Bros.?

Super Smash Bros. is a long-running platform fighting game series that features characters crossing over from all sorts of famous games, from Nintendo's own to the best of SEGA, Capcom, Square Enix, and more! It's probably the most popular fighting game ever, despite not being a traditional fighting game.

What is a platform fighter?

A platform fighter is a fighting game where the primary goal is to knock characters off a series of platforms that comprise a stage. In Smash, attacks or specials deal percent damage, and the more damage you have, the farther you'll be flown!

What is Ultimate?

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, commonly referred to as Ult/Ultimate/Smash Ultimate/SSBU, is the most recent game in the series and the game this guide is focused on. It features the most amount of content of any Smash game released before and likely after it, with over 80 characters, hundreds of stages and spirits, and more. Every character from past entries is here, along with several newcomers.

What are the differences between Ultimate and Brawl/4?

While there are too many differences to list here (you can visit this site on the Wiki to view some key differences from the prior entry, Smash 4), some of the major ones are:

- the game is significantly faster than either Brawl or Smash 4

- 1 on 1 fights now have a 1.2x damage multiplier

- the reintroduction of directional airdodging from Melee

What are the differences between Ultimate and Melee?

- Melee is significantly faster than Ultimate and the fastest game in the series

- Melee has far increased movement options such as wavedashing, advanced techniques like SHFFLs, and ground momentum is carried when jumping unlike Ult

- Melee has 26 characters compared to Ultimate's 89

- Melee is significantly more technically demanding as it features no buffer

- Melee has far better rollback netcode via Slippi than Ultimate’s delay-based netcode

What do I need to buy?

Sick! You’re interested in this game. What do I need to play it?

All you need to play Ultimate is:

- any Nintendo Switch model. Preferably the original or OLED models to play in TV mode, as the Lite is only in handheld mode and thus cannot use a LAN adapter without additional adapters.

- the game itself, either digitally through the eShop or physically with a cartridge.

- any controller that works with the Nintendo Switch. Preferably, either a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller or a Gamecube/Wavebird controller with the corresponding adapter.

- Piranha Plant and both Fighter Pass 1 and Fighter Pass 2. While it is technically optional, it's highly recommended to buy this major DLC. Each character pack is also available individually if you’re only interested in a couple, but the FPs have a slight discount saving you $6. With this DLC, you'll be able to play all the available characters and stages. Mii Costumes are a bonus and aren’t needed. If you can only purchase a few, I recommend Joker, Steve, Sephiroth, Pyra/Mythra, and Sora.

- a currently active Nintendo Switch Online membership. You need an NSO subscription to be able to play online. There are several different plans for individuals ($20/year) or families of up to 8 people ($35/year), as well as a more expensive tier called the Expansion Pack that features other benefits, but any NSO subscription will serve the purpose. You can also get a 7 day free trial from the eShop.

- a LAN adapter and Ethernet cable. I cannot stress this enough: you need a LAN adapter to play the game well with a consistent quality connection. If you don't have a router near you while playing, you may want to look into a powerline adapter as well. If you have an OLED Switch model, you won't need to buy a LAN adapter, as the dock included with it already has a LAN port! 5Ghz Wifi should be a last resort if you don’t live in an environment where setups near your router or a powerline adapter are readily available to you, but I still strongly encourage buying one as they are very inexpensive. You don’t need the official Nintendo LAN adapter, just one that works and has an AX88179 chipset.

What are the controls?

What are the basic movement actions?

What are the basic actions in Smash Ultimate?

Do you have any control recommendations?

The best control scheme is the one that you find the most comfortable to play with! However, there are a few common customizations that I'd be remiss not to mention.

- changing the R/C Stick from Smash Attack to Attack to have the right stick perform tilts instead of smashes

- setting a trigger/shoulder to Jump to jump while keeping fingers on attack/the right stick

- turning off Tap Jump as some prefer the easier ability to perform upward tilts

- turning on Tap Jump as some prefer being able to jump easier

- setting the stick sensitivity to low/high to make tilts (low) or smash attacks (high) easier: it’s a good idea to set it to the opposite of what you have set on the right stick

Should I choose a Pro Controller or GameCube controller?

There are a few differences between a Pro Controller and a GCC, however, there are lots of people that play with either and there are no distinct major advantages other than your own personal preference.

- Pro Controllers has an extra shoulder/bumper button (L)

- Pro Controllers has a more normal button layout, being shaped in a diamond

- Pro Controllers can be used wirelessly or wired (wireless has 1 less frame of delay)

- Pro Controllers are harder to disconnect, although this only matters when playing offline

- Pro Controllers have a smooth round surface on both sticks

- GameCube Controller has an abnormal layout, with the buttons having different shapes and sizes based on their priority (A for attack is big)

- GameCube Controllers have notches on the left and C-stick, which could be preferable for more precise angles in the 8 directions (mods can allow for even more notches)

- GameCube Controllers have a smaller C-Stick and deeper triggers

- GameCube Controllers can't be used wirelessly unless using a WaveBird (which requires the included receiver) or third-party GCC-like controller made by manufacturers like PowerA

- GameCube Controllers are harder to find and new, official ones can be expensive

Movement

Movement is easily the most important thing to get down as a new Smash player.

Interestingly, this section comes before learning the base mechanics or how to attack, but as Smash is a platform fighter, its core difference compared to regular fighting games is its utilization of moving around in a 2D space like sidescrolling platformers, and the inclusion of platforms is why movement matters so much. If you’re familiar with platforming games, you’ll feel somewhat at home already.

The Core of Movement

As we already went over these in the controls section, this will only give them a mention before going more in-depth below. Walking and running are how you move left and right on the ground. Jumping propels you into the air where you can move around. Crouching is done by pressing down on the ground.

Movement is essential to get down. Movement makes up everything as to how you’ll be approaching your opponent, being able to find openings to attack, getting back on stage, and much much more. Lots of more advanced techniques rely on a good fundamental understanding of movement and how to do it.

Ground Movement

Walking and running are the two types of ground movement.

Walking

To walk, tilt the left stick slowly. The further you tilt, the faster your walk speed will be. While walking, you're fully actionable and able to do Smash attacks and tilts.

Dashing

To run, smash the left stick. You'll have what's called an initial dash, the quick burst of speed before going into your slightly slower run animation. While running, you won't be able to perform Smash attacks and tilts, however, you can keep the momentum from running and cancel it by letting the stick go to neutral, then performing the ground attack you'd like to use.

By running and (while holding forward), pressing attack, you'll perform a dash attack! You can also grab and shield while running as well. Dashing is

Crouching

To crouch, just press down while on the ground. While there isn't a ton of use for purely crouching outside of maybe canceling your run, you can perform a crouch cancel, which will reduce the knockback by an attack if hit while crouching.

Turnaround/Pivot

The turnaround animation plays when your character turns around while running, and is relatively slow. If you're looking to turn around while running, you'll want to let go of the stick and let it go neutral, then dash back in the other direction. However, the turnaround animation is useful for allowing reverse aerial rushes and other techniques!

Aerial Movement

Every character has a ground jump and at least one aerial jump, with 10 characters being able to double jump more than once. In Kirby, Jigglypuffs, and Meta Knight's case, they can jump up to 6 times!

There are two types of grounded jump: full-hops and shorthops. Midair/double jumps are always the same height, although some characters like Ness or Sora have a delayed double jump with a unique animation.

Fullhop

Fullhops are performed by pressing the button down for more than 3 frames (longer than what’s called jumpsquat), as you normally would. As the name describes, these are the full height of your character’s jump.

Shorthop

Shorthops are performed by quickly pressing the jump button while still in jumpsquat (under 3 frames) or pressing 2 different jump buttons simultaneously. By pressing jump + the attack button and a direction for different aerials, you'll get a quick short hop aerial.  

Fastfall

A fastfall is done by pressing down at or after at the peak of your jump while in the air to instantly accelerate to your character's maximum falling speed. Aerials can cancel fastfalls as well. Combining shorthops and fast falling is incredibly useful for approaching, so definitely something to practice.

Footstools

By jumping while directly above another character, you’ll footstool and fly up into the air! You can footstool between 2-6 times consecutively depending on the character and footstooling a mid-air opponent will send them tumbling, unable to act for a short while.

Platform Movement

While Ultimate has reduced platform movement compared to prior games, it is vital to be comfortable with moving on platforms and understanding how they work. Being comfortable with platforms, making sure they don’t feel “sticky”, and mixing up your options of landing and falling through them with the combination of aerials is very important.

Platform drops

To drop through a platform, simply smash the stick down while standing on a platform. You’ll be able to perform an aerial while you’re falling through, which can be a good strategy if the opponent is below or approaching you while on the ground.

If you’re wondering how to fastfall when you platdrop, just continue to hold down or press down once you’ve fallen through. This can be combined with fastfalling aerials as well, although, for neutral airs, you may need to drop through, neutral air, and then press down again to fastfall to prevent performing a down air.

Landing on a platform

Since fastfalls and dropping through a platform are both done by pressing down, it's important to learn how to land on a platform. Landing itself is easy: just fall onto it from mid-air or jump onto it from beneath. If you want to land with a fastfall, you’ll need to quickly press the stick down and let go instead of holding it, otherwise, you’ll fall through.

Landing and dropping

Finally, let's combine landing and dropping through platforms. Let’s say we want to land with an aerial and then drop through a platform soon after. As we’re performing an aerial, we’ll have to go through its landing lag before being able to drop through, and holding down after landing on it forces us to crouch. However, we can land, let go of pressing down while the animation plays and then press down again. This should skip us performing a crouch animation, and instead have us just drop through.

Ghosting

Ghosting is what players call it when you just go through a platform. This is most commonly done by continuing to hold down while being above a platform in midair. Aerials can also clip the very edge of a platform while holding down as well.

Running off platforms

A very common way players get off of platforms is simply running off of them, then performing the move they’d like to do. This is a good technique for trapping and potentially punishing players ready to attack you from underneath, but needs to be used at the right times and mixed up with the other forms of platform movement above to prevent becoming predictable.

Practicing Smart Movement

Now that we have a basic grasp of the necessary movement options in this game, it's time to put them to practice! Just spend time in friendlies against the CPU in Classic Mode or Versus Mode or in training mode just moving around and making sure you can truly move around. One recommended drill is shorthopping across Final Destination, then shorthopping and fastfalling across the stage, then finally shorthopping, fastfalling, and performing an aerial across the stage, making sure you don’t miss a beat and can get used to the fast timing. Short hops, fastfalls, and aerials together are extremely practical ways to move around and approach.

That’s just practicing movement, though, and this section is called Practicing Smart Movement. This is where predictability and reaction comes in. Every action you take, offensive or defensive, causes the opponent to react and vice versa. Predictability is doing the same thing over and over again in the same situation and/or every situation. Predictability is acting in a way the opponent can expect and react to easily. Predictability applies to every facet of this game and is one of the biggest things new players and even intermediate players need to grasp.

I’ll be mentioning predictability throughout this guide a lot, especially with words like mix-up (when the offender has several different options to attack a defending opponent that requires them to guess how they’ll react), but practicing movement that’s unpredictable and reactive to the opponent is vital at an early stage. This can be as simple as dashing back and forth or as complex as ghosting and landing through platforms, then falling off with aerials. Maybe instead of running away from your opponent when they approach you, you jump over them? You’ll learn predictability as you improve, but it's important to take the time to use your movement options to avoid and react to  situations in unique ways, and is a core thing to understand. 

Base Mechanics and UI

What do these numbers mean? How do I get KOs? This is where that gets explained, and we understand how Smash at a fundamental level works.

UI and Damage Meter

1. Percent (Damage Meter)
2. Available stocks
3. Timer
4. Fighter Ability meter (unique, only for certain characters)

Damage

Of course, in any fighting game, players take damage from attacks. In platform fighters like Smash, the damage is often measured in percentages, and the higher the percentage, the easier they are to be knocked back and thus be KO’d. Players can die by being knocked into the blastzones of the stage.

At lower percentages, moves won’t send the opponent as far, and thus moves that are weak and don’t send opponents far are better for combos and are thus smarter at this range. At higher percentages, all moves will send the opponent much further and thus moves that can kill easier or lead into kills like Smash attacks are smarter at this range. While this doesn’t factor in directional influence, this is a general rule to keep in mind.

Stocks and Timer

A stock refers to how many “lives” you have in a game. In other fighting games, losing all of your health will end the round, and typically, you play to win 2 rounds out of 3. In Smash, however, typical competitive play features 3 stocks that go down whenever you’re KOd. The timer, typically 7 minutes in competitive play, makes sure games don’t go overtime and result in sudden death.

Blastzones

Blastzones, or blast lines, are the invincible areas around the edges of stages that will instantly kill a character if touched. Different stages have different sizes of blastzones.

Stages

Stages are the environment you play on. All stages have ground, ledges on opposite sides of the ground to grab onto, and blastzones. Some stages also have platforms that you can jump on or go through.

Stale Move Negation

Stale-move negation refers to how moves do less damage and knockback if they’re used multiple times in a row, even against shields albeit with less of an effect. As other moves are used, the more a move’s damage and knockback return to normal. A move that hasn’t been affected by stale-move negation is called fresh, and the mechanic exists to encourage players to use different moves.

Frames

A frame is a relative unit used to measure time in fighting games. Smash Ultimate, and all fighting games, run at 60 frames per second or FPS, meaning that 1 frame is 1/60th of a second or ~16 milliseconds. You don’t need to worry about frame data at this stage but know that it exists and is how we measure how long an action is.

Buffering

Buffering is the period of time where the game will accept an input during a move’s animation, then perform that action in the first frame possible. For Smash Ultimate, the buffer window is 9 frames before the end of an animation, however, holding the action you want to perform throughout the entire animation will buffer the input. This can be both beneficial and a hindrance, but something to keep in mind all the same.

Offense

Offense is the "fighting" part of fighting games, the part you're probably in for. The offense is very important but still only one side of the 2 side coin of Smash. There are a lot of parts of what's considered offensive mechanics, so I'll go over what's considered to be the basics.

The Core of Offense

Specials and attacks, along with grabs/throws, make up the core ways you'll be putting on the damage in this game.

Specials are, as the name describes, special signature attacks that are unique to every character and are done by using the B button. Attacks are every other form of attack: jabs, dash attacks, tilts, Smash/strong attacks, and aerials. These are done by using the A button. Grabs are how you throw in this game, with each grab allowing for a pummel, and 4 throws based on the four directions (up, down, left, right). Grabs go through shields. These are done by pressing the shield + attack button, or by pressing the grab button.

Being familiar with your character's entire moveset and attributes; which attacks go far, which ones do lots of damage, which ones combo well, how fast is my character, etcetera forms the crux of offense. Know which attacks are best in different scenarios and which attacks you can swap between for combos, mixups, and kill setups. Capitalizing off of opponents' defensive options and recognizing when and where they perform the same action is extremely handy as well and can get you into offense even when you’re far away if you can predict based on their prior actions.

Jabs and Dash Attacks

Jabs (or neutral attacks) are the basic attack characters can perform, requiring no direction needed to perform them. These are typically fast, simple moves. Pressing the attack button while grounded will perform this move. Holding the button without hitting the opponent will cause a rapid jab. Characters will often have multi-part jabs, typically 3 stages to form a basic combo.

Dash attacks are done by pressing the attack button while running, and while typically fast to come out but somewhat slow with lots of endlag, cover a lot of distance and launch the opponents upwards.

While lying on the ground after being launched, you also have a getup attack, though this is generally slow and only used in certain scenarios.

Tilts

Tilts are grounded attacks performed by pressing the attack button while tilting the stick, or if your right/C-stick is set to tilt attack, using the right/C stick. Every character has a side tilt, a down tilt, and an uptilt. Typically, tilts are ranged moves that are set up well for follow-ups and are good for spacing.

You may hear "dtilt", "utilt", and "ftilt" be thrown around. Those refer to a shorthand of the direction of tilt used. Down tilts are "dtilts", up tilts are "utilts", and forward/side tilts are called "ftilts".

Smash Attacks

Smash/strong attacks are grounded attacks performed by pressing the attack button while smashing the stick, or if your right/C-stick is set to Smash attack, using the right/C stick. There is also a macro by default to always perform a Smash attack by pressing A+B simultaneously. By holding the button/stick, you can charge your Smash attack: a fully charged Smash attack takes 1 second and does 1.4x the damage, although they can be held for a total of 3 seconds with the same multiplier.

Typically, Smash attacks are your kill/damage moves: doing a lot of damage and knockback perfect for KOs. However, they are also usually very slow both to come out and finish and can be punished if used at the wrong time.

You may hear "dsmash", "usmash", and "fsmash" be thrown around. Those refer to a shorthand of the direction of Smash used. Down Smashes are "dsmash", up Smashes are "usmash", and forward/side Smashes are called "fsmash".

Aerials

Aerial attacks are, of course, aerial attacks performed by pressing the attack button and a direction while in mid-air. You can also press jump + attack (and a direction) at the same time to get an instant shorthop aerial, which will do .85x the damage of a regular aerial.

Every character has 5 aerials: neutral, forward, back, up, and down aerial. Aerials, especially in Ultimate, are very important: they're used for approaching, spacing, combos, and much more, so it's imperative that you take to getting your character’s aerials down and how to use them.

From here on out, we'll be mainly using the shorthands for referring to these moves, so feel free to come back here to freshen up.

Specials

Every character has at least 4 specials: neutral, up, down, and side (left/right). While every character has a unique special, there are some common trends between characters for what special attacks do. All of them typically do a lot of damage and/or allow for more tactical play, and are one of the core parts that make every character distinct from each other.

Grabs and Throws

Grabs are attacks that temporarily hold the opponent in place in preparation for a throw, another form of attack that sends the opponent in the corresponding direction. Grabs are notable for being the only universal attack to go through shields, so use them tactically if your opponent seems to shield a lot.

Every character has 5 actions available to them while grabbing: pummels (fast and weak attacks that keep the opponent grabbed), up throw, down throw, forward throw, and back throw. 

Be careful while grabbing, however: opponents are able to get out of grabs if you take too long to throw them or they get out faster by button-mashing! The more percent the opponent has, the longer they'll be grabbed before being able to escape.

Types of Grabs

There are 4 main types of grabs in Ultimate: standing, running, pivot, and command grabs.

Tethers

Finally, some characters like Samus have what's called a tether grab. These are often the slowest type of grab but have the widest range as the character uses another object to grab other than their own hands. These characters also often have an extra attack in what's called a grab aerial or zair done by pressing grab in mid-air. These let the character tether onto the stage's ledge from a distance for more ways to recover.

Common Types of Attacks

While these aren't specific classifications of attacks like aerials or specials, there are some common types of attacks/specials that several characters have.

Practicing Smart Offense

Even at an early level, it's really important to consider your attacks and tools compared to the situation you’re in and try to look at situations from different perspectives in order to find the best ways to attack. Don’t use the same attack or basic combo over and over again; instead, notice what your opponent is doing and react to that. The key to Smash is the constant influence two players have against each other, action and reaction. A solid offense is built on being able to capitalize off action with your own unpredictable reaction.

If the opponent always knows you land with a neutral aerial and punishes accordingly, next time try approaching with a back air while behind them or approaching on the ground. Does your forward tilt go pretty far? Use that ftilt to get at the opponent from far away to keep them at bay! When the opponent figures out what you’re doing, try a different combo that starts with a down tilt or bait their shield by landing and then grabbing.

The goal of unpredictability isn’t to throw out random options, rather to recognize the influence the actions you and your opponent take have on each other and act in ways that aren’t consistently reactable. Forming the crux of a good offense is acting in a way the opponent didn’t expect or can’t easily react to, or reacting to something you could expect or react to with an attack.

Defense

Defense is often the "game" part of fighting games. While offense is very important and fun, it's still only one side of the 2 side coin of Smash, and defense is just as important. There are a lot of parts of what's considered defense mechanics, so I'll go over what's considered to be the basics.

The Core of Defense

Every character has 6 universal defense options: shield, spot dodge, roll, air dodge, perfect shield/parry, and tech, with there being several different types of tech as well.

Using and adjusting shield resourcefully, knowing where and when to roll or dodge, and utilizing your character’s best moves while getting out of shield make up the core of defense. Of course, you need to shuffle how you defend in different scenarios and find cracks in their offense to get yourself out of defense and back into a neutral state. Remember: you are technically at the disadvantage here, so it’s important to keep a level head and play around your opponent, not force yourself back into offense where you can be in a worse position.

Shield

Shields are how you block or guard in this game. Holding the shield button will put a round bubble around your character, blocking any attack that hits it.

If you hold it too long or take too many hits, your shield will decrease in size; if it gets too small, it will shatter and leave you stunned for several seconds. Opponents can also hit the outer edge of the shield when it’s decreased and actually hit you, so be careful! This is often called a shieldpoke. Shields will not work against grabs.

When not in use, shields will recharge. You can move your shield by slightly tilting the control stick while shielding, or more practically, holding shield + special and moving the stick. You can use this to aim your shield to where your opponent is attacking and prevent yourself from being shieldpoked.

Options out of shield

You have several options out of shield (OoS), which is a term you'll be hearing a lot, as having good out of shield options are important. The following options can be used out of shield:

• spot dodge
• rolls
• grabs
• jumps, which can then lead into aerials or midair specials
• up smash
• up special

Knowing when and where to use your out of shield options is vital for playing effectively, and character-specific resources will often list the best out of shield options for every character. You can use this site to check out of shield options for every character and matchup. 

Rolling

Rolling is one of the 3 types of dodging in Smash and is performed by pressing left or right while holding shield. Rolls are slower than spot dodging, but move your character out of the way while still intangible. Rolling can be useful for quickly getting out of the way of predictable or slow attacks such as smash attacks, although used in moderation and with caution as they are very punishable and can get spammed easily.

Spot Dodge

Spot dodging is one of the 3 types of dodging in Smash and is performed by pressing down while holding shield. Spot dodges are the fastest compared to rolls or air dodges but require more precision to use, as they only last for 15-16 frames (about a quarter of a second). Using spot dodges can be a quick way to reverse the situation and nearly instantly punish a move like a grab or approaching aerial if timed well, as spot dodges can be canceled into any grounded attack.

Air Dodge

Air dodging is one of the 3 types of dodging in Smash, and can only be performed while in mid-air. They're done by pressing shield while in the air (neutral air dodge), or by pressing shield and a direction at the same time (directional air dodge).

Air dodges can be very useful for recovery but in different ways. Neutral air dodges are much faster and like spot dodges, are hard to time but have less punishment and are thus better for quickly dodging attacks already approaching. Directional air dodges can be aimed in any direction but are slower and can be more easily punished. Knowing when to use each in the right places is a good skill to practice.

Dodge Staling

Dodge staling is a new mechanic introduced in Ultimate that punishes spamming rolls, spot dodges, and air dodges by reducing the amount of time they’re intangible and for rolls and spot dodges, making them laggier by increasing their cooldown. Staling applies up to 5 times and refreshes about every second any type of dodge isn’t used. Dodge staling exists as a punishment for continually using rolls and other forms of dodging to get away from the opponent, so try to only use dodges when necessary.

Perfect Shield/Parry

Perfect shielding, often referred to as parrying, is a risky and precise way to immediately get a quick counterattack on an opponent. They are done by getting hit within the first 5 frames of your shield drop animation.

While parrying is incredibly precise, it has the benefit of applying more endlag to the attacker, giving you frame advantage and allowing you to act slightly earlier than they would, with the amount of frame advantage depending on whether the attack is a direct hit or a projectile. You can use that to your advantage by attacking them with a fast move, repositioning, or grabbing them.

The shield drop animation takes 11 frames total, and as shields can't be dropped until 3 frames after putting it up, you can parry an attack 4 frames after initially shielding at the earliest.

Teching

Teching is an essential technique for players of all skill levels to learn, as it allows you to break your fall on the ground, wall, or ceiling! There are several types of tech: standing, rolling, wall, wall jump, and ceiling. All types of tech have the same input requirements and the common use case of preventing being KOd at higher percents but have different use cases individually which we'll go over.

To tech, you'll need to press the shield button within 11 frames of hitting the ground/wall/ceiling. If you miss this window, you won't be able to tech for another 40 frames, so mashing will not work. If you get the tech, you'll be intangible for a few frames.

There are also rare situations where the knockback is too high and thus you are unable to tech. These situations are marked with a red effect when colliding with a wall or being spiked against the stage while standing on the ground.

Practicing Smart Defense

Just like we did for offense, practicing using different defensive options in unique scenarios is key to having a strong defense. As you’re on the defending side, pay attention to what your opponent is doing and try to get into a situation where you’re able to react and then counterattack their options or at least get distant from them.

For example, if you’re shielding, try leaning your shield towards where the attack is hitting and try to get its rhythm. Once you notice that the attack has ended, go for a grab or fast attack out of shield to counterattack. If they’re continually pressuring your shield, roll away one time, and the next time it happens, jump or spot dodge instead. Figure out the opponents rhythm of attack and play accordingly, while being unpredictable by using your options to counter them.

Mixing up your defense and reacting to what the opponent does makes sure they have to pay attention even when they’re in an advantageous situation, and playing along with their rhythm can get you out of defense faster and back to trying to start your own offense.

Recovery

Recovery is the act of trying to return to the stage in a platform fighter after you have been launched off by an attack. Since you don’t die until you hit the blastzone, practicing being able to recover effectively is vital to staying alive longer.

The Core of Recovery

Everyone has at least 3 universal recovery options: at least one mid-air jump, an up special, and a directional air dodge. Around 33 characters also have a walljump, and 14 characters have a tether (8 of which have one that isn’t their up special).

Knowing when and where to mix up your usage of your mid-air jump(s), up special, and air dodge is key to getting back on stage. While most up specials place the character into freefall, it might be useful to see if your characters up special or other recovery special does, as being able to do up special and still use an air dodge or wall jump after can be very useful for massive vertical recovery.

Character-specific Options

Some characters may also have additional recovery options outside of their up special that help with vertical and/or horizontal recovery and can even be combined with other recovery methods. Mario is a good example: he can use his mid-air jump and walljump off the side of the stage, then use his Cape (side special) to stall and turn around and then use up special. Using Cape at different times can help mix your opponent up while they edgeguard.

Grabbing the Ledge

If you reach the very corner of the stage, you’ll grab the ledge! Grabbing the ledge gives you a few different options to get back onto the stage within a limited time before you fall off. Knowing when and where to get back on stage by skipping the ledge or grabbing it, what getup option is best in the situation, and figuring out the best timing to getup is essential for recovery.

Directional Influence

Directional influence (DI) is a key mechanic that lets you slightly adjust the direction you travel when you get hit, however, it does not completely change your launch trajectory. To DI, you need to input a direction while being in hitstun (when you’re frozen after an attack). As the name describes, this can be very useful for being able to remain alive from launches. There are several different types and applications of DI that are essential to understand. This is shown in-game with blue streaks briefly shown before launching.

Combo DI

Combo DI is done by holding out of combos and is done at low percentages.

Survival DI

Survival DI is done by holding in the adjacent direction of the angle you’ve been launched. Of course, very few moves send players exactly horizontally so you’ll need to move the stick in a more precise angle, but up for horizontal attacks and left/right for vertical attacks is a general rule needed to survive high knockback attacks.

Smash DI (SDI)

SDI is not entirely a type of normal DI, however, it’s still very useful for rapid jabs and other multi-hit attacks as it allows you to slightly alter their position after being hit. To SDI, input a direction on the stick while in hitstun. You can input it several times, every 4 frames, but this is generally a more advanced technique so it's best to rely on regular DI at this stage. This also works while in shields, called shield SDI.

Launch Speed Influence (LSI)

Launch Speed Influence (LSI) or is a mechanic that slightly multiplies a character's launch speed depending on upwards or downwards DI. DIing upwards sends you at a higher launch speed (1.095x max) and thus launches you farther upwards faster, whereas DIing downwards sends you slower downwards. (0.92x) LSI mainly only really matters on horizontal attacks like side smashes.

Landing

Finally, an underrated part of recovery is landing back on the ground while in the air. The key to good landings are considering risk vs. reward and keeping in mind the distance between you and the opponent.

There are several options to land: while in the air, you can use any of your aerials or specials to be on the offensive, use your remaining jump or horizontal recovery options to move around your opponent, or fastfall or air dodge to quickly land to the ground. However, the core of landing is mixing up your timing and options. Different landing options have different risks and rewards to them and should be used in different situations to yet again be unpredictable. The opponent will catch on and adapt to how you land and play around that: if you always land with an aerial, they’ll start to shield or move out of the way then hit you, so try to use another option.

Landing directly on top or in front of an opponent has more risk: you can easily be anti-aired (an attack that hits a mid-air opponent) or they can shield and then punish you with a grab or grounded attack. However, if they don’t expect you to land on top of them, you can start a combo by landing with an attack or grab in front of them. For you, the risk is getting hit and the reward is getting a combo off, and for the opponent, the risk is choosing the wrong covering option and the reward is predicting what they’ll land with and punishing accordingly. Landing away from them is less risky since there’s more distance, but there’s also a lot less reward since you’ll now have to approach them from afar or prepare for them to approach you.

Using movement and weaving around them in combination with other landing options is a great tool, since you can evade your opponents options quickly and then punish their reaction with your own moves. Adding in a jump here, fastfall there, or retreating aerial can all be useful and advantageous strategies if done at the right times.  Keep in mind however that your opponent can use movement to their advantage as well, moving around on the ground to confuse you as to where they’ll be when you land and be able to approach.

Practicing Smart Recovery

With all of these recovery options at your disposal, it's good to get used to practicing recovering with different options or several options in order to, once again, mixup and confuse your opponent and act in ways they won’t expect. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and that applies at the ledge too.

Using someone like Sonic for example, use up special to spring yourself upwards, then air dodge towards the ledge, or wall jump against the stage. If you’re high up and close enough to land on the stage, you could use Spin Dash instead of falling back down. Once you reach ledge, if the opponent is near the ledge, using a getup attack could be the best option; if they’re far away, jumping onto it or simply using a neutral getup might put you in a better position. Once you do one of these options and the opponent catches on or is preparing to react to said action, try using another a different time.

If you’re landing on stage, if the opponent is shielding, try using a fast retreating aerial to get out of their range and hit their shield, then dash back and then inwards to fake them out and whiff punish their grab. If they’re ready to attack, use fastfalls or air dodges to land quickly and get out of the way. Even though you’re the one coming back on stage, the opponent now has to cover the different options you have, putting you both on more equal footing.

Having a strong recovery can keep your opponent on their toes and not know how you’ll get back on stage by not being able to react to all the potential ways you make your way back up. And as recovering on stage is generally disadvantageous, that’s a really good thing to have.

Advanced Mechanics

Earlier, we went over the core mechanics of Smash: damage, blastzones, staling, and the like. However, Smash Ultimate also features a lot of additional or advanced mechanics that can be very useful to keep in mind.

Radar

The radar is a small graphic that shows on the side of the screen when a player is outside of the stage’s camera zone. This can be useful to see where exactly you or the opponent are off-stage. It has 3 options: off, small, and large, but small is recommended.

1v1 Multiplier

A new mechanic introduced in Ultimate, the 1v1 multiplier (1-on-1 damage) increases the damage taken from all moves by 1.2x when a match is between two players and has items off. This is done to speed up 1v1 battles, increase tension, and encourage more offensive play. 

Instant Short Hop Aerials

Another new mechanic for Ult, due to the universal 3 frame jumpsquat introduced in this game potentially making it difficult to perform shorthops, by pressing jump and an attack within those 3 frames (essentially at the same time), you’ll perform an instant short hop aerial, otherwise known as a rising short hop aerial, short hop attack, or the short hop attack macro. This makes it very easy to perform rising short hop aerial attacks, however, they will have .85x the damage of normal aerials to compensate.

Getup Options

When knocked back and fallen to the ground without teching, a character will be able to perform a few getup options. These are generally unfavorable as the opponent can punish them accordingly.

Tripping

Tripping is an attribute applied to certain moves, most notably a majority of the character’s down tilts, that has random odds to cause a trip animation for the opponent. These will force the player that tripped to use the getup options, thus allowing the opponent to get a relatively easy punish.

Sweetspots and sourspots

Sweetspots are a specific hitbox of an attack that sends the opponent considerably farther away than any other part of the move, either due to timing or range. Good examples of sweetspots are Marth’s tipper or Captain Falcon’s knee. Not every character has a sweetspot, but if they do, definitely take the time to learn and execute them.

Sourspots are the direct opposite, instead having much weaker knockback than the rest of the attack. These are of course not as useful but a smart player could utilize fast moves with sourspots for combos or gimping.

Invincible and Intangible

Invincibility and intangibility are two very common types of character states that often get confused for each other and armor (below), but have subtle differences.

Invincibility is a state where characters can’t be damaged: attacks will connect but knockback and damage will be canceled. Invincibility is mainly seen on throws, respawns, and certain moves. Intangibility is a state where characters can’t be hit at all, as attacks have no effect in any way, and affects all dodges, wall jumps, techs, ledge/floor recovery options, parries, and other specific moves.

Priority

Priority is a mechanic that comes into play when two attacks collide at the same time. For grounded attacks/projectiles, this is decided by a high/low system where if both attacks are within 9% of each other, they will cancel out and both characters will be in a unique rebound animation. However, if an attack is more than 9% in difference compared to the other, it will beat out the other attack and connect. Aerial attacks do not follow the high/low system for grounded attacks, although they do apply for projectiles. There is a short list of moves that are exceptions to this mechanic, either by not causing a rebound animation or will transcend the priority system.

Spikes/meteor smashes

Spikes and meteor smashes are often used interchangeably, but both refer to attacks that hit the opponent downwards. In Melee, spikes and meteor smashes had differences, but in Ultimate, spikes as they were in Melee don’t exist and thus both terms are used. There are also stage spikes, which are moves that knock the opponent into the stage and knock them downwards.

Hitstun

Hitstun is the period of time after being hit by an attack where a character can’t act outside of DI or techs, being dependent on knockback.

Armor

Armor is a state where a character can absorb a hit without entering hit stun, which lets them continue to attack or move. There are several different types of armor in Ultimate.

Super armor prevents you from flinching or taking any knockback, and is seen on moves like Little Mac’s KO Uppercut. Damage-based armor applies armor up to a certain percent before they just get interrupted, such as Byleth’s Aymr. Finally, knockback-based armor applies to armor that is persistent until a move with enough knockback connects. This is most notably seen on Bowser’s Tough Guy and Kazuya’s Tough Body mechanic.

Rage

Rage is a mechanic that gives increased knockback to attacks when a character is at higher percentages, giving up to 1.1x multiplier in knockback when rage is at its max (150%). Some characters like Lucario (Aura), Kazuya (Rage), and Sephiroth (Winged Form) have additional rage mechanics that work a little differently.

Locking

Locking is a mechanic where if a player lands on the ground without performing a tech, certain low knockback moves such as most jabs can “lock” them without them standing up if done fast enough (within 25 frames) by the time they land. This can be done up to two times before the player is able to use a getup option, which could result in a tech chase.

Item toss/grab

Item tossing is an action where characters throw an item that they’re holding. As competitive play doesn’t use traditional items, the only items that are available during regular competitive play are things like Link’s Bombs or Diddy Kong’s Banana Peels. To pick up items, you can just press attack while right next to the item, or pressing attack or airdodge in mid-air right as you touch it. By holding a direction and pressing grab or attack, you can throw it up, down, left, or right. Performing the throw as if it was a smash attack increases the throws range.

Item Dropping/Z-Drop

By pressing grab without any direction and holding an item in the air, you’ll perform an item drop/Z-drop which will drop the item below you. This can actually be a useful technique as they have no cooldown, meaning you can incorporate items into your combos in unique and intuitive ways.  

Attributes

Every character has a few universal attributes and characteristics that vary. There are several different attributes (including ones that are more niche and thus aren’t mentioned) that apply to characters that can have an effect on characters and scenarios.

Air acceleration is the rate at which a character can change their horizontal velocity in mid air. Air speed is the maximum rate that a character can move left or right midair. Fall speed is the rate at which a character moves downward in midair and air friction is the rate of deceleration when not moving. Gravity is the value that determines how fast a falling character reaches their max fall speed. These attributes are the main ones that affect how well a character can recover and move around in mid air.

Weight determines how much a character can resist knockback and is used to calculate how far you’re sent flying. There are several different weight classes: lightweights are characters like Pichu or Jigglypuff, middleweights are characters near the average weight (95.92) such as Mario or Pit, and heavyweights or super heavyweights are characters have have high or extremely high character weight values such as Samus and Bowser respectively.

Walk speed and dash/run speed determine how fast a character can walk or run. Meanwhile, initial dash are how fast they accelerate at the start of their dash.

Selecting a character

Finally, the most critical thing you need to get for a new player to Smash is the fabled choice of character. This is easily the most common question that new Smash players and those wanting to find something new have. There are lots of different ways people can choose their character: maybe one character has a really cool design, they’re a fan of that character’s series, they like how a top player uses them, or they just looked at the tier list and want to pick the best character available. All of these are valid reasons.

However, the most important tip to find a character that will stick is a question you have to ask yourself: is this character fun and cool to me? 

If the answer to that question is yes, th5en keep playing them! You’ve already found who you want to play as. If that answer is yes, but…, then consider the rest of this guide but keep in mind that at a low-level things like matchups, tier placement, or popularity mean very little to you and what matters the most is whether you’re having fun and understand the fundamentals.

If the answer to that question is no or I have no clue, then this will help you lead into potential ways to find a character that you decide satisfies that fun and cool factor before dedicating to them.

Stick to one main

Playing as more than one or maybe two characters at a new level can be a very dangerous thing. At a beginner level, your main goal is trying to set a foundation for fundamentals: spacing, how to play in game state (neutral, advantage, disadvantage, edge), pattern recognition/reads, mixups, and effective movement. Playing more than one or two characters while being new can make learning those fundies and truly improving at those characters more difficult and take more time. Playing more than your main character in friendlies is good sometimes to get a different perspective on matchups and general character strengths and weaknesses, but at this level, try to stick to 1 main character.

Familiarity with the Character

One common reason people choose characters might sound a little weird but makes sense. Smash has such a large roster of dozens of playable characters from different popular universes in gaming, so some players choose their characters because they’re already familiar or are a fan of a certain character or their universe.

You might be a really big Kingdom Hearts fan and thus want to check out Sora or at least some of the other Square Enix characters like Cloud or Sephiroth. You might be a die-hard Fire Emblem fan, in which case I hope you’re able to pick one of the 10 characters you have (lucky). Choosing a character because you already like your series is a perfectly fine and good way to figure out who you want to main.

Difficulty

Some players want to pick a character that’s relatively simple for them to dig their teeth into. If I’m being honest, I would highly recommend choosing a character that you’re interested in regardless of difficulty. All characters will have some form of depth to them, even the relatively easy ones, and everyone is at least somewhat pick up and play, so it’s best to delve time into the characters you personally find fun rather than worry about how difficult they are.

That being said, some characters are notably good for beginners so here’s a few of them.

Archetypes and Playstyle

One way to decide what character you’d like to play is by a character’s archetype, a way to categorize a character's general playstyle, based on their best moves and general gameplan. Fighting games typically have a lot of archetypes with a lot of cross-over, but the 3 core archetypes in traditional fighting games are rushdown, zoner, grappler, as well as the all-rounder/footsies character.

Different types of people will have different classifications but for the sake of this guide, I define platform fighters as having two archetypes: rushdown and zoners that are defined by being more grounded or aerial focused, as well as the all-rounder of course.

There are lots of other archetypes people often mention, which I’ll go over here with a cool chart to see where a character you’re interested in lands, but the ones above are in my opinion, the core archetypes in platform fighters.

Archetype List

Turtle - characters that play overwhelmingly defensively, with as few offensive risks as possible. Players who turtle will largely prefer blocking, putting up strong defense with powerful, pre-emptive pokes or projectiles, and in general, will almost never instigate an offensive attack.

Trapper - characters that have heavy projectile games that rely on trapping opponents in their web of projectiles, disrupting the opponent’s available space to move and making an approach all the more treacherous for the opponent.

Hit and run - characters that try for lots of stray, low damage hits on offense, while using good movement options to keep the distance from your opponent the rest of the time.

Grappler - characters whose primary offensive tools are throws and command throws. Grapplers usually move and jump slowly and fight poorly from long distances, but are terrifying when they get close to their opponent and apply their very strong throw-based mixups.

Mixup - characters that have a relatively versatile moveset, often lacking the safety to properly contest opponents the way rushdowns can but are able to switch from a bait and punish/zoning playstyle to a more aggressive one.

Brawler - characters that are strong close-up.

Footsies - characters that rely on their strong ground game, more often than not relying less on “low damage/high combo” but more so on their explosive power.

Shoto - characters that feature a long-range horizontal projectile, invincible anti-air reversal, and projectile-invulnerable forward-facing move. Ryu and Ken are shotos and are where the archetype is based, whereas Terry and Kazuya are simply characters from other fighting games. They may have some shoto elements, but otherwise are not shotos and have their own differences.

Waller - characters that rely on disjoints, play midrange and attempt to take center stage spacing.

Opportunist - characters that are all-around, but have neutral that rely on midrange play with footsies and baits that can create game plans that feed off the opponent.

Tier Placement

Of course, many players think that choosing who is a strong character on a tier list is the best step to choose a character. In a lot of older fighting games, that somewhat held water: choosing a top tier helped since there was a lot more difference between the balancing of the entire roster.

Nowadays, however, most modern fighting games are actively receiving patching or have been patched with balance updates, and Ultimate is no different. Ultimate is easily the most balanced game in the series thus far, with pretty much every character being able to do well with the right player and skillset. Are there characters better than others? Yes, Aegis is a much better character than someone like Little Mac. Can any character win a major tournament? Probably not. But every character in this game with the right skillset and a player motivated to do their best with them can win and most importantly have fun, and that’s really what matters.

If that hasn’t convinced you, however, and you simply want a list of the most common best characters in the game, here’s a list of some of the more commonly agreed upon ones. Some people will rate some characters higher than others so the order isn’t super relevant or accurate, but these are generally agreed upon to be among the stronger characters in the game.

Joker, Pikachu, Wolf, Pyra/Mythra (Aegis), Shulk, Palutena, Roy, R.O.B, Peach, PAC-MAN, Snake, Mario, Zero Suit Samus (ZSS), Sonic, Fox, Mr. Game and Watch, Lucina, Wario, Pokemon Trainer, Sheik, Olimar, Shulk, Steve, Sephiroth, Inkling, Min Min, Cloud

Watching gameplay/clip montages

A great way to find a character that you like if you have a few candidates and want to narrow them down is to watch high-level gameplay or clip montages of them. This is a great way to see how they’ll normally be playing at a high level which can help you see if they have a playstyle you like, and clip montages can really help motivate you to put the time and work in to perform awesome combos.

Playing as candidates

If you have your final few candidates, or just want the game of life to decide for you by selecting random/playing as every character, the next step is to play them in-game. It’s very beneficial to play against preferably a friend or CPU to get their moveset down. While playing against CPU for serious practice isn’t great for several reasons I’ll explain later, you’re trying to get the basics of your character down so it’s fine. Figure out what specials they can do, how good are their tilts, aerials, or Smashes, how fast they are, and other attributes. Checking their SmashWiki page for further information can also be useful. Your goal isn’t to immediately figure out the most optimal thing they can do right off the bat, but to find and understand the moves they have and their basic use cases. Think of this move as being useful for recovery or this other move as reaching very far, or noting that your character feels heavy or fast. Base level overviews of your character’s moves and characteristics are then built up as you play them more often and improve at both the game and your proficiency with that character.

Finding fun and motivation

You’ve done it! You think you have a good idea of who you want to play. That’s great! But now you’re wondering, “okay, I think I’ve chosen a character or 2 that I really like, but this one combo is really hard to perform or I’m having second thoughts after playing another character”. You should always play a character that you can find fun and can have motivation for. If you aren’t having fun with a character, you may need to reconsider.

If you’ve never played that character before, it will take time to get good at them. I’ll go over good practice methods later, but you need to put in good and useful practice. Not just doing their bread-and-butters (BnBs), but how they approach, what moves can be used for spacing, and the like. Try to play a few matches against friends and think in your mind what you did well, what you didn’t, and how you’ll do better next time. You won’t be amazing and you’ll probably lose at least a little bit, but don’t let that get you down or be discouraging. Switching characters will not make you amazing at the game overnight and losing is just a part of that process along with practice and self-analysis to become a better player. By playing to have fun and improve instead of playing to immediately be the best, you’ll have a lot more patience with that process that affects everyone. Look back at where you were when you first picked up the game and think about how much you’ve improved since then and that might help motivate you.

Online Play

Online play is crucial for being able to practice. Not to date this guide but with the current way the world is, being able to play friends and foes offline isn’t super viable right now, so playing online is really the only option people have to practice, friendlies, and tournaments. That being said, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is infamous for having pretty bad delay-based netcode instead of the significantly improved rollback netcode recent games like Killer Instinct (2013), Guilty Gear Strive, and even Melee with Slippi, a fan-made revamp of emulated Melee to feature rollback netcode and other great matchmaking features. Smash is a much more popular game than any of the games I mentioned and likely stands with Brawlhalla as being the most popular fighting game by player count, so you’re more likely to find people near your area than other games with delay-based netcode. That being said, and I cannot say this enough…

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE INVEST IN A LAN ADAPTER FOR A WIRED CONNECTION!

If you want to play online with a much higher batting chance of good connections, less stuttering or freezing and have a significantly smoother experience, a LAN adapter is required for a decent online experience. Not everyone is able to have a traditional LAN setup in their home with their Switch directly connected to their router, in which case, I recommend purchasing a powerline adapter to mitigate those issues. Many online tournaments will bar you from being able to enter if you do not have a wired connection. If you’re looking for where to purchase all of this stuff, I mentioned them at the top of this guide.

With all of that out of the way, there are many ways both in and outside of the game to play the game online, some more recommended than others.

The Fear of Playing Online

Wait, wait, wait, we’re going a little too fast. Like it or not, as a beginner player, you’re probably really scared to play others. You just picked up the game recently, learned the basic mechanics. You can move around and attack, you know how to shield and dodge, you can recover when you’re knocked off stage, and you think you’ve solidified a main to dedicate your time into. But one thing that’s circling through your mind is…when will I be ready?

I want to make this clear: this is not an irrational or stupid thought and you aren’t less of a player for thinking this. Playing people you’ve never met before that could potentially beat you up really badly can be discouraging, nerve-wrecking, and make you feel like “okay, I’ll play online once I learn all of the advanced techniques and bread and butter combos and maybe I’ll buy a really expensive GameCube controller just to be on the safe side”. Speaking from someone that has a lot of fighting game experience, I’ve felt the exact same way, ‘I’m not ready to play people’ or ‘I barely know what I’m doing, I’m going to get my butt kicked’ are things I’ve thought and still feel about fighting games. However, I’ve learned something throughout all of that fear and distress over playing people and pressing the Online Match button for the first time.

To a new player, the truly best way to improve is to just play the game. A lot. (but only if you’re having fun and can have an open mind to it)

Playing the game a lot against actual human opponents teaches you a lot of things. For one, all of the base mechanics for knockback and damage, all of the advice for offense/defense/recovery, all of the cool moves your newfound character can do need time to sink in. What’s the best way to have them sink in? Using them in an actual match. Playing against CPUs through Classic Mode or using Training Mode is fine when you’re learning the controls and base mechanics: you need to see how things function in a safe and closed environment. But to actually know when and how to use those mechanics to your advantage and truly play the game at a competent level, you need to play against other people. It's the harsh but sad truth.

You will lose. That is okay. You may lose a lot. That is also okay. You will make really dumb mistakes and use side B instead of using your neutral special that’s actually the projectile and now you’re getting combo’d for 50% by someone that’s been playing Smash since Melee. Good. Throughout all of that losing, you are, slowly but assuredly, getting better at Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. This is just a small part of an entire mentality thing, which will be the section after this since having a good mentality, knowing what and when and why to practice, and establishing confidence in yourself is far more important long term than learning how to attack cancel tilts into aerials or ledge slip nair as a beginner.

I believe in you. Err, the text says I does so I can’t really prove that, but promise me, deep down, I do believe in you (I have zero clue who you are). Success will not be instant, but progress is as flowing as a waterfall: it's just up to you to believe that you’re progressing. Think about when you picked up the game. Did you know how to get back on stage without being attacked? Probably not. Boom: you’ve gotten better. The following section is written just so people know they aren’t alone in feeling scared to play Ultimate online and that there are other people just like them that they can play with.

Quickplay/Elite Smash

Quickplay is the default “ranked” mode of the game, found by going to the Online submenu, Smash, then Quickplay or Background Matchmaking, which allows you to be in other modes while queueing up for a match, but not very useful as matchmaking is generally pretty quick.

It’s “ranking” system, Global Smash Power, is, in all honesty, not a good quantifying way to determine skill and doesn’t really rank you up with players that are accurately close to your skill level. You have very limited options with only being able to set a recommended (assuming competitive) ruleset of your preferred time, stock count, and a choice between Battlefield, Final Destination, and Small Battlefield, meaning you’re unable to practice character-specific matchups or play on other competitive stages.

Overall, Quickplay is an okay option for playing friendlies online and warming up, and maybe could be an alright introduction to online, but is not recommended for serious practice and you’re much better looking for other beginner players on Discord or friends to play with directly with the Battle Arena system. Speaking of…

Arenas and Discord

The best way to practice Smash online is via the game’s built-in Arenas feature. Arenas are this game’s private lobbies and can be accessed by going to Online, clicking on Smash, then Battle Arenas. Some Arenas are available publicly and you can allow or deny public lobby access depending , but this guide will assume their use as private lobbies.

As you can imagine, Arenas allow for a lot more options compared to Quickplay, such as being able to set a complete ruleset, limit the amount of players between 2-8 total, spectating, rotation options (winner stays/leaves, for example), and even the room music.

Creating a lobby is simple. While in the Battle Arenas menu, select Create Arena. You’ll be able to select a type of lobby, but Playground lets you choose your own ruleset and thus should be what you select. Set visibility to Public (or Friends if you’d like), format to 1-on-1 or Team Battle, and press X to enable passwords. By clicking on Rules, you’ll be able to create a Ruleset. There will be a template ruleset down below, but set it to whatever type of match you’d like. Enable the rotation option to your preference, and press Y to configure max players, choice/random stages, and other options. Once you’re set up all of the settings you’d like, you can enter an optional name for the arena and select a 1-8 number password, but most use 2 numbers. Voila! You have created a Battle Arena! The arena ID will be in the top right corner of the arena and the password if you forget (or need to change the ruleset) will be in the info section next to the leave button.

Joining a lobby is even easier. Battle Arenas gives you the option to join Public Arenas, Friends’ Arenas for when people on your Friends List have an Arena open, and Enter Arena ID. Entering an Arena ID is simple: every Arena has a unique ID as well as a password, with the former found on the top right corner of the screen while in an Arena and the latter in the Info menu selectable in the top left corner of the screen. Put in the ID, select the open Arena, put in the corresponding password and you’re in.

To queue up, select your player icon and drop it into The Ring or the blue walkway. If you’d like to spectate matches, drop your player icon into the Spectator Stands. If you’re just wanting to wait in the Arena without spectating or queueing up, drop your player icon in the Waiting Area (blank space outside of the walkway). If you want to customize your player icon/Smash Tag, by the way, head back to the base Online menu and click on the cog icon. This will take you to settings where you can configure your Smash Tag among other things.

Battle Arenas are great and if you have friends you can play with online, you can easily text/DM them the Arena info to play just by doing (Arena ID here/Arena Password here). However, one very popular use of Battle Arenas is Smash Discord community servers. These often feature one or several matchmaking channels, often called #matchmaking/#friendlies/#competitive/#arena, where you can find other people to play with. They will often have a self-assignable role available in a channel marked #roles or #flairing to ping so you can get notifications when people are looking for games or notify other people when you’re looking for games. A few servers even have dedicated #beginners and #intermediates channels or even just full-on ranked matchmaking systems where you can talk and play with people that are also new to the game or just at your same skill level.

Ruleset Template

An example (in-game) Ruleset for competitive matches or friendlies based on standard tournament rulesets. Feel free to create your own Ruleset or tweak this one to best fit you or what type of match you want to play at the moment.

Style: Stock
Stock: 3

Time Limit: 7:00

FS Meter: Off

Damage Handicap: Off

Items: None, Set None (turns off all items, displays Set All when Set None is enabled)

Random Stage Selection (on): Battlefield, Small Battlefield, Final Destination, Yoshi’s Story, Pokemon Stadium 2, Smashville, Kalos Pokemon League, Town & City, potentially Northern Cave, Hollow Bastion, Lylat Cruise (if Stage is set to Random in the arena settings, this allows for a playlist of standard competitive stages)

Stage Hazards (under Advanced): Off

Team Attack: Off

Launch Rate: 1.0x

Score Display: Off

Show Damage: Yes

Notable Discord Communities

There are lots of popular Discord servers out there for Smash Ultimate, some even focusing on specific characters or coaching or tournaments or just anything in general. Of course, I can’t list them all in this guide, so I’ll be limiting it to the more popular ones. I must admit I have somewhat of a bias towards them due to already being experienced with them or even helping there, so your experience may vary. If you're looking for more than just this, I recommend checking out the Smashcords site for a full registry of charactercords, tournament servers, and general Smash servers.

discord.gg/ssbu - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (SSBU/maincord)

The largest and most active Smash community on Discord by far and the server this guide was intended for. There are several extremely active matchmaking channels for different types of games and skill levels including beginners, friendlies, intermediates and 2 competitive channels, as well as a smart voice channel feature. There’s also active free coaching with coaches willing to offer tips and play sessions, resources like this and replay critiques, and chat channels available for Smash meta discussion, questions and advice, and just general off-topic fun. If you’re looking for a server that has everything you’d need, this is it, although I’d actually recommend joining all of these.

discord.gg/ssbutg - SSBU Training Grounds

Another partnered Discord community, Training Grounds has several matchmaking channels and roles, as well as free coaching, ranked matchmaking, and 2 weekly tournaments. It also has a vibrant and active community, so definitely recommended.

discord.gg/crazyhand - r/CrazyHand Discord

Yet another partnered Discord community, the official server of the wonderful r/CrazyHand subreddit has several friendlies and Smash-focused channels, as well as running weekly tournaments to practice your skills.

discord.gg/scrubcity - Scrub City

Initially grown as a server for the MDVA region, Scrub City has an intuitive ranked matchmaking system to pit you against other players of the same skill level, as well as occasional ranked tournaments.

Installing a LAN Adapter

If your Switch is close to your router, all you have to do is plug the USB adapter into the dock (if you have an OLED dock, you do not need a LAN adapter, just a cable) and connect the Ethernet cable from the adapter/port to an open port on your router.

If you’re unable to have your Switch setup directly near your router, I would highly recommend either moving setups closer to it or trying to get wires installed to reach it, however, not everyone has the time/money/knowhow on doing that. If that’s the case, you may want to look into a powerline adapter, which works like a LAN adapter but through your house’s electrical system. Powerline adapters will come with a base unit that you connect to your router via an ethernet cable, as well as a remote unit that you plug into the outline. Pair the two units however the manufacturer has set the pairing process to be, connect the remote unit to your Switch LAN adapter with an Ethernet cable, and you should be good to go. Powerline adapters can be a nice boost over WiFi but depend on your house.

Of course, if you absolutely can’t get a LAN adapter or if you own a Switch Lite and can’t readily connect a LAN adapter, a speedy 5Ghz connection at minimum can do the trick but at your own caution. It won’t be as stable or solid as a wired connection.

Mentality and Health

Mentality is often a nebulous concept that’s often only really encouraged for intermediate players to learn, but mentality is fundamental to improving at the game. Mentality isn’t talked about as much as it should be for how vital it is: having a negative mentality towards improving at the game is one of the main factors beginner players just give up on playing fighting games, because they have the mindset of needing to be perfect or good immediately and thus get disappointed when it takes longer than they’d like. I’ll also go over good health regime as well.

The “Cycle”

The cycle is what I like to call the constant feeling of success and disappointment with practicing and application from an improving player. You spend hours in training mode getting all of your characters bread and butter combos, and you get that dopamine hit when you finally get it. Then you go into a match and can’t pull the combo off for the life of you. Maybe you can’t execute it as well as you thought, don’t know when the best time is to use it, or are playing against an opponent that notices you’re autopiloting and trying to go for that sole combo. You go from “This exists?” to “I’m able to do this, great!” to “I’m never going to get better at this…” in just a few hours. The chart above describes what this type of cycle is called: the Dunning-Kruger effect. I just call it The Cycle.

This affects every player at some point, from the smallest of individual improvements to their entire path and career of being a Smash player. You might feel like this for everything or have this happen to you several times, and that’s entirely alright. What’s important isn’t that The Cycle happens, but that you understand that it's a part of the process and keep that drive to keep going. If you’re able to go from “I’m never going to get this” to “It’s starting to make sense” without feeling like quitting, that's the mark of the positive, open minded mentality you need to push through those down spots.

Staying Open-minded

The first key to building a good mentality is staying open-minded. Staying open-minded means being willing and ready to consider new ideas, differing opinions, and unique scenarios despite whether or not those things are beneficial or negative.

Staying open-minded to learning and trying out new things is important. You won’t know everything at once, but relying on the same 3 options because you’re afraid you’ll mess them up does not make a smart player. If you see some new tech or combo your character has, give it a shot! The worst thing that can happen is that you don’t get it for a while, but you’ll never find out if you’ll get it if you aren’t confident enough to even try.

Another element to staying open-minded is being accepting of the fact that losing very will is a possibility. In some ways, in every match, you’ve lost and won individual scenarios several times because no player plays perfectly and that’s alright. You have to learn to be accepting of losing and the fact that it will come at some point or another in big and small ways to be able to be more confident, bold, and smart with your play. If you’re scared to lose, you’ll play sheltered and thus make more mistakes than if you were confident in yourself and took individual scenarios as wins, even if at the win screen, you're not the one celebrating. Being open to loss in the ultimate goal of improvement is how you build passion for the game, which you need to stay motivated and improve.

Staying Constructive

Another important element of mentality is staying constructive, being receptive to advice, criticism, or actions in the core goal of self-improvement.

Stay constructive with how you improve and try to take all matches, win or loss, into account. Instead of thinking of games as a binary “I won or lost” situation, try to think of them as a whole and as something richer. I like to think of matches like this:

• This is what I did well and poorly
• This is what my opponent did well and poorly
• This is what steps I’ll take to do better next time
• This is what steps I’ll take to capitalize on what my opponent does poorly

This is called self-analyzation and while it sounds (and is) complicated, having that type of thought process at an early level is good, as it’ll create a base for your understanding of how to improve at the game as you get better. Just by taking note in your mind one thing you did well, one thing you didn’t, and one thing you’ll actively practice to improve on that per match gets you so much further than just going I lost because of x, y, z and never dedicating a way to get better. As you improve and can thus analyze your matches better, you can then introduce thinking about what your opponent does well, poorly, and how to practice to capitalize on that. Finally, think about how you performed in a match vs. how your opponent performed in a match, compare them, and see if the two are linked. If it helps you remember these analyses, taking notes on paper/documents is another good method.

Staying Positive

Finally, the last part of good mentality in this guide is staying positive. Keeping a persevering attitude in the face of failure or frustration.

This can sound like the toughest step of all of these: you’ve learned all of this and yet still lose. You might have moments where you’re salty (intensely frustrated) or feel like you’ve done all of this work for nothing or that you just want to quit, and as someone growing: those thoughts are entirely reasonable. Most will tell you to simply just not have those thoughts, but ironically, in the section about positivity, I’ll tell you that to most people, that doesn’t work and is unrealistic. Everyone at some point gets frustrated with this game in some way or another, some more than others. But what matters isn’t about the fact you got frustrated, but what you do after.

Using that frustration to blame the game isn’t being constructive: in 1v1 fighting games every mistake boils down in some form or another to your ability. Not being able to see past the game and recognize your own mistakes and being open-minded and willing to make mistakes and learn along the way are what separate competent players from great ones. Think “this character use x option a lot, what can I do to punish it” more than “this character’s x option is broken, I’ll never be able to beat it”. This game is very balanced but some elements slip through the cracks. Some characters do have very strong moves or have playstyles that can be trying to deal with, and there’s not much you can really do about how the characters are designed other than trying your best to play around them and the opponents tendencies.

Instead of stressing about if you won a tournament or first to 10, try to take small victories in stride! At a novice level, a victory could be anti-airing your opponent or performing a punish. At higher levels it could be successfully edgeguarding your opponent, effective spacing, or getting a difficult to execute combo: you want those small victories to scale in importance as you scale in proficiency. You need motivation to keep playing and improving, so you could combine this with your self-analyzation and prove to yourself that you’ve gotten better. “Hey, last match, I got punished for spacing well, but this time, I spaced well and poked the opponent, which set me up for a combo!” is so much better and shows that

Having an open-minded, constructive, and positive mentality is one of the most difficult things to do in Smash, but it will take you extremely far and learning it at a base level is extremely important. You won’t know if you don’t try, so don’t be afraid to take leaps, try new things, and critique yourself when you make mistakes. Once you’ve figured out what those mistakes are and how to go about them, try your hardest to practice them and implement them in your play, and celebrate when you’re able to get them! Persevere through the dark points to make the ones where you shine so much more rewarding.

Mental Stack

One concept that we’ve discussed several times throughout the guide is the topic of mutual influence (action/reaction) throughout a game. In this section, we’ve mainly gone over mentality through the guise of motivation: staying open-minded to new things, becoming constructive with self-analyzation, and being positive. However, the discussion of mentality also includes so much more than having a positive attitude, and for that, we have what’s deemed the mental stack. The mental stack is pretty much the optimization of the process of thought that comes through while playing a fighting game. For example, opponent does a jump, so you decide to do attack them while they’re in the air with a high-reaching attack, called an anti-air. Then you think, okay, which moves do I have that attack uwards? You decide on a move, up tilt, and then act. Seems reasonable, right?

The mental stack is all about reducing that, removing all of those steps in that thought process to be able to go from recognize opponent in the air > do anti-air > decide which moves anti-air > choosing up tilt > doing up tilt to recognize opponent in the air > up tilt. This simplification of thought proceses of course, increases your reaction speed and helps you prioritize on your gameplan, but you might be thinking: what happens if the anti-air doesn’t work? Do I stop thinking? Why is this useful? All of those questions comes into play when we talk about mental stamina.

Mental Stamina

Mental stamina is what it sounds like: how long you can go while focusing or observing something. In a fighting game like Smash, having a strong mental stamina of course is very useful. When combined with good mentality, solid gameplan, and the ability to have an optimized mental stack, you’ll be able to act competently on your own without needing to think and thus use that energy spent observing your opponent and how your actions/reactions influence the match rather than thinking about which moves are best in different situations and then performing that. It’s a very complex topic with a lot of different facets that you might have heard of.

You may have heard of auto-piloting. Auto-piloting is both beneficial and detrimental. For a player that’s new, auto-piloting is generally something to avoid: you act predictably without thinking or considering how to adapt to your opponent. You rely on your fundamental habits or a flowchart of similar actions in common situations, which an opponent can quickly adapt to and punish if you aren’t prepared for it in your gameplan. Recognizing when you’re auto-piloting requires focus and time to know when to use well in balance with your mental stamina.

For someone that is willing to learn and has a bit of experience under their belt, however, auto-piloting can be extremely beneficial. Since you’re able to “automatically” play the game competently, you’ll be able to free up your mental stamina to free up your mental resources and think or observe other, more important things. For example, true combos. At a certain level of play, combos essentially become auto-piloted; you don’t need to think about how to execute it since you’ve become practiced with performing it. This means you can think about what’s more important: what you’ll do after the combo.

Auto-piloting will never be as good as acting with full purpose, but that’s the point: you’re relying on your fundamental play to think steps ahead to react to and observe your opponent and plan out your next move. A good auto-pilot will let you focus on the match and how the decisions you make influence the match rather than the execution.

Keeping good health

Finally, this is a short addendum to this section, but it's important to keep good physical health while playing. Playing for long sessions can cause weakness, soreness, or pain, especially in your wrists and fingers, so it's important to stretch and warm up before a long play session or tournament. I’ll share a few tips and videos below to browse at your leisure since everyone has different techniques and stretches that will work for them best.

https://twitter.com/CaptainHanyuu/status/895395297383395328 (image below)

Hurt Less, Play More with Dr. Caitlin McGee

Staying Healthy - A Guide to Playing Melee Better and Longer | Smashboards (intended for Melee, but still applies)

Asking good questions

You’ll likely have to ask questions to other people to get matchup experience, advice on how to use a character, and other tips. Asking for help is entirely alright and encouraged! However, lots of new players don’t know how to ask good questions that can help them get what they need faster and easier for the person answering them. Being specific with a clear intent and purpose is really important.

Instead of asking “what character should I choose”, ask “I don’t know what character to choose, but I think I would like ones that are easy/fast/do lots of damage/etc. Do you have any recommendations?” This gives the person answering the question a much easier time answering what you actually want since they don’t have to consider as many factors in such a broad question. It doesn’t have to be that specific, but at the very least, ask questions that give an idea of what the end goal you’re looking for is.

Questions should at least propose who/when/where/why/how/what you’re curious about and be kept concise. Once they answer your question, feel free to ask follow-up questions and ensure you understand their advice to better help you!

You should also ask yourself whether asking a question is necessary. Are there any resources that you’re aware of that can answer your question? If you’re asking for a guide on how to play neutral, it might be more beneficial to search for it on YouTube or Google and find the answer yourself. Asking questions isn’t a bad thing, but can be a timewaster when the question is already readily answered for you.

Before you ask a question, ask yourself:

• Who/when/where/why/how/what am I curious about?
• Are there resources available where I could find the answers?
• Why am I asking this?
• Is this to start a discussion?
• Is this question concise?
• Is this question focused on something specific?

“I’ve been struggling with countering Samus’ projectiles. Any advice on how to play around them?” instead of “I can’t beat Samus’ projectiles help”

“Really need help with getting kills with Little Mac, are there any recommended kill confirms?” instead of “Little Mac can’t kill”

“What type of moves should I use in the matchup? They tend to use far-reaching moves for spacing.” instead of “How do I attack in the matchup my character can’t do anything”

Practice and Application

Now that you’ve understood the base mechanics, have selected a character, found ways to play online, and are keeping up a good mentality, it's time to learn how to practice and learn new things, and how to apply them to see our progress and where to move forward. Both are two sides to the coin of improvement: if you don’t practice, you won’t learn anything new or get better at what you know. If you don’t apply what you’ve learned in matches, you won’t be able to see your progress on the things you’re working on and whether or not they’re effective in actual play.

Determining what to practice

You can’t practice without knowing what you want to practice. It’s really important to have goals on what you actually want to train on, otherwise, you’re sort of wasting time. This is where self-analysis from the last section comes into play; figuring out what you and your opponent did well and poorly in a match and working on that is a great starting point to have practice goals. You shouldn’t practice only on what you’re bad at, nor only on what you’re really good at. You should practice both but plan things accordingly and focus on what you really need. If you’re already good at movement but need to work on your edgeguarding, take a little bit to practice movement to warm up and then spend most of your time working on improving edgeguarding.

Diversifying practice

Another important thing to keep in mind is ensuring that your practice regime is diversified. With the amount of characters, matchups, skill levels of different players, and techniques this game offers, it’s beneficial to exercise in as many different scenarios as you can. It doesn’t have to be all at once or in one session, but something to keep in mind for recurring sessions. If you have problems with a certain matchup, try playing as that character and put yourself in the opponent’s shoes to better understand it.

Consistently practicing

Finally, the last note I’ll mention is consistently practicing and creating a routine. It’s been demonstrated by studies in lots of different spaces that spacing out your learning over time instead of cramming it all in at once dramatically improves your ability to retain information, and that applies to Smash as well. By creating a routine to practice even an hour a day on one specific goal a week, you’ll go so much farther than spending those 7 hours at once on one day for that specific goal. You have more opportunity to practice and apply that learning in different scenarios, get tired or frustrated less, and can focus on building up that execution bit by bit if it becomes difficult.

Applying that practice

This section is called practice and application for a reason: if you don’t spend time intentionally using what you’ve learned in real matches, you won’t know how effective you are at your goals. Spending hours upon hours in training mode and not using what you’ve spent that time in a real match isn’t a great way to learn. After practicing in training mode for an hour or whatever you set your routine to, play online for a few games and intentionally try to do what you practiced as much as you can. For example, if you’ve been working on a combo to perform, when the opportunity rises, go for it! For some people, just trying to go for it at all times may or may not work very well, but at a base level, you should at least have the goal of intentionally applying what you’ve practiced in friendlies after a practice session at least once or thrice.

Creating a practice routine

Now that we know what we should practice, how and why practice is important, and applying our practice to test our growth, we can get to creating a practice routine! While everyone will have a different routine that works for them, this will be some general tips that might work for you that are recommended to experiment with.

One thing that’s definitely beneficial is adding warm-ups to your routines. By warm-ups, I mean having an intentional set of exercises you perform before getting down to business on what you want to work on. A great analogy from a highly recommended fighting game content creator called Sajam fits perfectly with this: take warm-up routines as if you’re brushing your teeth. Start and end your play session with warming up before you delve into what you had set as a goal to practice, and if something important comes up during a play session, feel free to go to training mode and experiment with it!

Warm-ups should focus on the essentials: start with moving around and bread and butter combos, then move on to any goals you’ve had in mind to practice that are lower on your priority or already have some progress. This should be a warm-up to get your hands and head ready to play, and not super exertive.

Then, if you’re in training mode, practice on the higher priority things you want to work and improve on. This can be anything and scales as you get better. It can be as simple as learning a character’s bread and butter combos to specifically spending time to improve your fundamentals. Spend as much time as you believe you should spend to get it down to some degree. You might not get it on the first try or even fully, but break it down into steps and try working on those individual pieces until you feel that you’ve got them. Once you have one part, move on to the next part, and then combine them and so on and so forth.

Once you feel you’ve practiced sufficiently enough, get some games in with a friend or random foe! Like mentioned earlier, we’re playing in an actual match to apply our learning so try to intentionally look for scenarios to use what we’ve practiced before. After a few games, you may feel a bit tired, so feel free to take a few minutes (5-30 or whatever works best for you) to break at any time!

Finally, repeat the cycle or add in things that will personally help you improve. This can be going back to training mode and using those match experiences as a guide on what you need to work on or reviewing your replays and seeing how you matched up. Remember that an effective practice routine is one that works best and is comfortable for you! Imitating a top level player's routine can help you create yours, but it needs to be tailor-made to be the most effective for the type of player you are.

Training Mode

Training Mode is an option available in the Games and More menu that allows players to play in a safe, configurable environment. Training mode is useful for practicing combos/techniques/movement and testing new things, but should be used accordingly. Training is very useful for practice and learning hard-to-execute maneuvers, but using those skills learned from training mode need to be applied in friendlies for them to stick and further develop. It’s been described before as a good way to find solutions to problems you’re already aware of and want to fix.

You should use training mode when you’re…

• Looking to practice combos, techniques, movement, etc in a controlled, safe environment
• Looking to see how the mechanics and inner workings of the game work
• Looking to discover new combo routes, ways to play, and things to do
• Looking to fix specific parts of your gameplay that you know are an issue

Options

L+R+A - resets position.

Right trigger - shows a characters movelist (only specials).

Y - toggles camera options, including Normal, Zoom, Max Zoom, and Fixed.

No. of CPUs - increases/decreases the amount of opponents.

CPU Damage % - sets the damage percentage for opponents.

Fixed Damage - toggles having the damage percentage for opponents increase/decrease when attacked.

Trajectory Guide - toggles displaying the opponents launch trajectory, with 0% for red, 50% for green, and 100% for blue.

CPU Behavior - enables several CPU options. This includes stop (opponent doesn’t move), CPU (enables whatever CPU behavior level was set on the character select screen), walk (walks around without falling off), run (avoids the player), jump (continually jumps in place), neutral special (performs opponents neutral special while standing still), side smash (performs opponents side smash), and control (allows additional controllers to control the opponent).

Speed - controls the speed of the game. Options include 1x (default normal speed), 1 frame (moves game one frame forward), slowmotion options for 2/3, 1/2, and 1/4th normal speed, and 1.5x speed.

Combo - toggles displaying info such as total damage, number of repeated hits (combo), and damage of attacks on the side. The combo counter tends to be inconsistent however on what is considered a true combo,  so take it with a grain of salt.

Invincibility - toggles showing when a character is intangible (blue)and invincible (green).

CPU Shuffling - toggles DI/SDI on the CPU opponent with 2 different levels (A Little, A Lot). If Fixed Damage is enabled or the CPU is set to CPU or control, this has no effect. 

Stale Moves - toggles stale-move degradation and rage.

P1 Damage % - sets the damage percentage for the player.

Gauging your improvement

This goes hand in hand with the prior section on practice and application, as well as mentality somewhat. Improvement is a nebulous topic and is different for everyone: every player defines getting better in their own way at different times. This section is about common and recommended ways to gauge and further your improvement at the game.

Match/VOD Critique

One really nice way to directly see what you and your opponent did right and wrong and how to improve on it after the fact is saving replays and reviewing them after. Saving replays is really easy: while on the results selection screen and viewing the summary, you can press Y and save a replay. These replays are then accessible in the Vault menu under Replay Data. Side note: replays have a lot of customization options and Smash Ultimate actually features a built in basic video/clip editor to upload in Shared Content or on YouTube by going to the Video option under Vault.

This is a bit more advanced and time-consuming: it's helpful to take notes while watching matches to mark trends, succeeding/failing interactions, and question why mistakes happen to keep them stored for future reference. It’s also useful if possible to send replays to other people to review them and get lots of different perspectives that might give you a new way to solve a problem you can’t seem to figure out.

Frame Data

We know that frames are how we measure time in fighting games, but frame data refers to all of the information and properties of a move. Frame data allows us to know the startup, active, and endlag (also known as recovery) frames of every move, as well as other info like how much damage each move does, how safe or unsafe a move is, hitboxes, and more. As an improving player, you’ll reach a point where looking at your characters' frame data will be very useful for a lot of reasons, however it can be really confusing for players to get a grasp of. Frame data is not meant to be memorized and when split up into 3 core parts, the startup, the active frames, and the endlag of a move, the rest of it makes a lot more sense.

Startup

Startup is the period of time that occurs after pressing your attack button, but before your attack is capable of making contact with the opponent, and the first of the 3 stages of an attack.

This shows how fast a move is to actually start attacking. For example, Mario’s jab has a 2 frame startup, which compared to the rest of the game, is extremely fast. This means it only takes 2 frames for Mario’s jab to start the attacking animation.

Active

Active is the period of time where a move has a hitbox and can do damage to the opponent, and is the second of the 3 stages of an attack. It’s often the shortest part of the move despite being the one that damages the opponent, and most moves don’t have more than a couple of active frames.

Active frames aren’t as important as startup or endlag despite being the phase that attacks the opponent. However, knowing how long a move’s active frames are out for can help see which moves are best for covering landing or the ledge. Mario’s ftilt is active for 7 frames, meaning its hitbox (the part of a moves animation that hits the opponent) lasts a long time.

Endlag

Endlag (a.k.a recovery, cooldown) is the period of time that occurs after your attack has finished hitting, but before you gain back control of your character for more actions. It’s the third and final stage of the stages of an attack.

Endlag is really important: this is how long it takes for an animation to end so you’ll be fully actionable. Moves with short endlag are typically best since they give less room for the opponent to punish you if you whiff (miss hitting them). Mario’s fsmash has 30 frames of endlag, meaning missing it can leave you to be punished easily.

Landing Lag

There’s also a different type of endlag specifically for attacks done in the air called landing lag which is how long a move takes to finish its animation while landing on the ground with it. Moves with short landing lag like Mario’s nair, which has 6 frames of landing lag, make them good moves to land with and approach. Some moves have an auto-cancel property, meaning their landing lag is canceled at some point in the move.

Safety

Now that we know the 3 core parts of a moves frame data, we can use that to help us in several different situations. Move safety is a common use of frame data. A safe move is one that when hit/whiffed has animations that will successfully, or in the case of unsafe moves, unsuccessfully avoid possible retaliation from the opponent. Knowing which moves are generally safe and will get you out of being punished is very useful. This is also often referred to as frame advantage or disadvantage.

Safety on shield is the most important type of safe move. This tells us which moves are safe and unsafe on shield by listing how many frames a shielding opponent has to attack you. For example, Mario’s dsmash is at most -31 on shield, meaning the opponent shielding has 31 frames between being hit with the attack and the down smash animation ending to act. This is an example of an extremely unsafe move on a shield. In comparison, Mario’s nair is -2 or -3 on shield, and combined with the shield stun (endlag on a shield animation after an attack hits it) and shield lag (how long it takes to drop shield and perform an action), you’ll be ahead of the opponent and be able to evade before they can counterattack. Good spacing can also make more moves safe as if far-reaching moves are used, the opponent will need to also use long-range moves or move closer to counterattack

Knowing which moves are safe or unsafe on shields is a useful tool to keep in mind when attacking someone that’s shielding.

Out of Shield

Out of shield (OoS) refers to moves that are done while shielding. For example, Mario’s best out of shield option is his up B at 3 frames, meaning that performing an up special while shielding takes 3 frames to attack the opponent. Being aware of your character’s best out of shield options can be useful while being shield pressured.

Hitboxes

A hitbox is an area where a move connects with a character and does damage during the active frames of a move. These are invisible during play, but using frame data resources can show us where a move has hitboxes and that tells us a lot: what’s the farthest range this move reaches, does it have any stronger or larger hitboxes at different points throughout the move, and etcetera. A hurtbox is somewhat similar to this but refers to the invisible area that shows where a character can be hit with an attack.

Where to find frame data

Thankfully, lots of community members have created very useful frame data resources for your benefit! Ultimate Frame Data is the main one, with GIFs that show the animations of every move (which you can move forward and backward frame-by-frame!), the startup, active frames, endlag, landing lag, and shield safety of moves, and miscellaneous info such as character properties like speed, the best 3 out of shield options for a character and frame data for dodging. Out of Shield is also another good site if you’re looking to quickly find characters best out of shield and shield safety moves and can compare characters to one another for matchup experience.

Matchups

Matchups are the strategy and knowledge between two different characters. They’re the context for how a player plays since it adjusts which moves are beneficial to use, strategies that only apply to certain characters or even your entire gameplan. Learning matchups can be a long process and is built off of personal experience, asking lots of questions, and observing how a character plays and what their best tools are for the recommended counterplay. If you struggle with a matchup against a certain character, try to play against that character as much as you can. Ask others in a charactercord on how they deal with a matchup, try to watch your own replays or a top-level player's matches with the matchup you’re working on, and take notes on what you observe to use and practice against on your own time. Some matchups will be very trying to deal with and not all of them are even, often demonstrated on a matchup chart that ranks a character’s matchups, but with practice and increasing knowledge, you can lessen the struggle with more experience.

Levels of Play

Finally, defining the levels of play can help give context as to where you’re at so far, what types of players are near your skill level or are better/worse than you, and help you see where you need to improve on. This can be shown by using the levels of competence and the Dreyfus model, methods used to show the psychological states of improving at a skill over time, and the levels of competence at a skill. The difference between different levels of players gets dicey depending on who you talk to, but using this method, we can have a verifiable difference between them. What separates low-level players from high-level players isn’t necessarily execution or amount of hours (although they are undoubtedly factors), but rather, how aware of the happenings of the game they are and how much effort it takes to become aware.

Low Level/Novice

A low-level player or novice is defined as having unconscious incompetence. Low-level players often are still learning the game and thus don’t know how to play the game or recognize the mistakes they make. Low-level players tend to only play in response to themselves and their own character with the limited knowledge of the options available to them. When situations come up, they don’t know how to capitalize on them or take advantage of patterns. At this stage, the most important factor is learning the mechanics through experience and having the will to continue onwards in order to recognize when mistakes are made and improve them.

Mid Level/Advanced Beginner

A mid-level player or advanced beginner is defined as having conscious incompetence. While they still make mistakes and are still learning their characters options, they are able to become aware of how their opponent plays and play in response to that and notably, are able to recognize when mistakes are made, even if they aren’t at the point where they can adapt to them. At this stage, the most important factor of improvement is continuing to get a grasp of character options and learning to recognize the mistakes both players make and act accordingly.

Above-Mid Level/Proficient 

An above-mid-level or proficient is defined as having conscious competence. They are finally at the stage where they are able to recognize mistakes and act accordingly, adapt and react to the current game, and make observations about repeated patterns and make educated plays around them. However, while they tend to have notable execution, they also tend to be very concentrated on observing while performing. At this stage, the next step of improvement is continuing to observe and react to the opponent based on their ability until it becomes natural without deep planning/thinking.

High Level/Expert

A high-level player or expert is defined as having unconscious competence. Players at this level are able to have fundamentals as second nature and can be performed relatively easily with superb execution. They mainly play around manipulating and conditioning the opponent to gather information, then playing mind games around them to bait the opponent’s approach options that they have several ways to adapt around. At this stage, they can recognize which options across both players are prioritized at different times by intuition.

Top Level

Finally, a top-level player is an evolving high-level player: they play in response to and around the adaptation of their mindgames, have extremely deep and world-class knowledge of the game, nearly perfect technical execution and skill, rarely make mistakes unless against other top-level players or other extreme circumstances and revolve around a deeply analytical perspective of the mentality aspect of Smash rather than the pure execution aspect.

Fundamentals

You’ve set up your controls. You’ve learned how to move around and attack. You’ve selected your character. And now, it’s time to set the bedrock foundation of a good Smash player: fundamentals. Fundamentals, often called fundies, are essentially a collection of basic skills that will help you win. Spacing, effective movement, being able to mix-up your opponent, and more are core to dramatically improving and becoming a competent player. While simpler or less gimmicky characters like Mario or Lucina rely more on fundamentals and thus can be good characters to learn them, every character has basic fundies that every player must know. This is not an exhaustive list, but a general overview of what different types of fundies are. If you still don’t get offensive, defensive, or recovery mechanics, I advise making sure you’ve gotten those down before coming here.

Pattern Recognition

Throughout this entire guide, every facet of this game's base mechanics has been mentioned in the perspective of keeping the opponent on their toes and not performing the same actions over and over again. This is where that really comes into play.

Pattern recognition is noticing how your opponent reacts to certain scenarios (which attacks they use all the time, how they defend and avoid you, what options they use to recover) and capitalizing on that, called adapting. It is also taking notice of how you attack, defend, and recover and make a conscious effort to not do the same thing over and over again. A lot of fundamentals below rely on recognizing patterns, so I thought I would mention and highlight it first.

Edge-guarding

Edge-guarding is the act of trying to keep an opponent who you've launched off the stage from returning back to the stage, either by spacing/timing attacks for their ledge getup while remaining on stage (ledgetrapping), hopping off stage yourself for a ledge trump, or with an attack to gimp (intercepting a recovery) your opponent, or a combination of the two. This can be very risky, especially when going off stage, but also very rewarding, as preventing the opponent from reaching the stage while increasing their damage and knockback gives them even less of a chance to recover unpredictably.

Punish

A punish is getting a guaranteed attack or another advantage on the opponent soon after they make a mistake or try to play offensively against you. A whiff punish is a good example of what punishes are like: whiff punishes are simply attacking the opponent (or getting closer to them) after they use an attack that misses you. Punishing your opponent is an essential thing to learn and built off of the foundation of pattern recognition and adaptability.

Approach

Approaching is what it sounds like: the game plan used to get near an opponent and start their offense. Options like running up to them are easy approach options and can be used in the right circumstances, but are generally very unsafe and can easily leave you being punished. Other options like using shorthop aerials with short recoveries are more difficult but have a far greater reward. Use character resources or just your own practice to see what type of approach options are best for how you play.

Pressure

Pressure refers to trying to force your opponent to react by performing an action that limits their options. An example of pressure is continuing to use far-reaching tilts and safe aerials on a shield to force your opponent to roll or grab, then following up with your own attack since you were predicting their actions and were thus able to capitalize on their mistake. Pressure can be a very deep and complex mindgames and while matchups or character-specific options are useful to know, it generally comes with experience and experimentation.

Mashing

Mashing is just pressing a lot of buttons at once. You probably did this the first time you played Smash. In most situations, mashing is actively bad: you’re just going for the fastest option possible rather than the smartest option possible, and it's highly discouraged. However, in some situations like being grabbed or stunned, button-mashing is the best way to get out of those moves and escape since you input so many things at once. Also, as Ultimate has a good amount of buffer, if you’re looking to ensure a move comes out as soon as possible, during the last 9 frames of an animation, holding the action you want to perform will perform the action the first possible frame it can with no need to mash and potentially damage your controller.

Spacing

Spacing refers to being able to gauge the distance between both players and what moves are most effective at a range where you can hit the opponent but the opponent has to try and hit you back. Good use of spacing can allow for mixups and lead to combos or other situations that place you in advantage.

Moving in and out of range is often called playing around spacing or footsies, and using this effectively can take a little bit to learn but allow you to further apply your own pressure and continue to play in advantage.

Mixups

Mixups are situations where the offensive player has several ways to attack that each require a different defensive action to stop, and often contain several fast options that are extremely difficult, or impossible, to avoid on reaction, and thus the defensive player must make a read to escape taking damage. Mixups can also apply to defense or just any situation where a player performs a different action that what would be considered normal for that situation in order to keep the reacting player on their toes. 50/50s are mixups that have two primary attack options for the offensive player.

Reads and Conditioning

Reads are informed guesses on what the opponent will perform now based on the most common actions they have done in similar situations prior and capitalizing on them. Reads are important to understand, as recognizing common patterns and tendencies through both players actions and reactions throughout a match as well as outside information like matchup knowledge are vital to being able to find a way to succeed, even in situations where you’re at a disadvantage. As we mentioned before with mentality, reads do not come naturally and are only a tool to act and react in a match.

Conditioning is taking advantage of that mutual influence by behaving a certain way so that you can act unpredictably at a crucial moment later. This is somewhat similar to baiting, doing an action that causes a reaction you expected and countering accordingly but done over a longer period of time. Proper conditioning can result in the match sliding towards your favor in crucial moments, so use conditioning smartly if the opponent tends to react the same way to your actions.

Timing

Timing is also a fundamental skill. Whereas spacing is mainly the where to use attacks, timing is the crucial when. Smart use of mixing up the timing of moves can further condition or lead to reading your opponent.

Mindgames

Mindgames are a more advanced combination of reads, conditioning, and pattern recognition. Mindgames are all about trying to trick your opponent into performing an action that you can easily counter, commonly by appearing to do one action and instead performing another, then punishing the opponent's reaction to your fake action. Players that use mindgames are often very crafty and have a grasp on being unpredictable and the proper ability to get in their opponent’s head.

Tech Chasing

Tech chasing is knocking your opponent down and then predicting or reacting to how they choose to tech or getup, chasing them down, and continuing your offense again. In standard fighting games, this is most similar to okizeme. Tech chasing is generally something that comes with skill and experience with pattern recognition, reads, and reaction.

Anti-airs and Pokes

Anti-airs are attacks that hit the opponent mid-air while you are still standing, and are often moves that are at an upwards angle like utilt or up smash. Anti-airs can be crucial for restarting your offense and punishing opponents for jumping at you.

Pokes are moves that are typically long-range, quick attacks like tilts, and are meant to enforce the space in front of you. Effective pokes can force your opponent to respect your spacing and keep the neutral game going.

Space control

Space control, often called stage control or footsies, is controlling the space you have available. This is done in tandem with proper spacing, and significantly changes the amount of options you have. Controlling mid-stage is much better than the corners since you’re able to go in either direction, meanwhile being near or on the ledge forces you to move inwards towards the opponent with much less room to move around and work with. Having proper stage control is a core part of neutral and finding your way in.

Camping

Camping is a common strategy used for stage control. This usually applies to ranged characters with projectiles, however, any character can camp. Camping is simply described as staying in an isolated place of the stage to avoid the opponent, usually platforms or the corner of a stage. Camping, while frowned upon, is a useful strategy to bait the opponent, determine how they’ll approach, and force them to come to you.

Juggling

Juggling is the concept of comboing an opponent into mid-air without letting them recover or land back on the ground. A good way to think about it is what options the opponent has to get back on the ground and how you can best cover them, as well as when and where to juggle. For example, if I continually use my up air to juggle them and they start jumping out, I can then move to where they tend to jump towards and prepare for a landing aerial, getting into a better situation that I would be otherwise.

Solidifying a gameplan

Finally, creating and solidifying a gameplan. A gameplan can be described as the combination of strategies and goals that you want to use to win. These can be character/matchup-specific as well. We can cover how to create a gameplan by discussing game phases, the concept of the core periods of gameplay that are swapped between throughout a match. You might have heard of the phrase neutral or advantage/disadvantage. Those are what game phases are. These are a core part of the make up your gameplan: how you move around, when you attack, why you defend, where you turn on the heat or play slow and use ranged moves.

This ties everything this guide has taught you together, from fundamentals and smart movement to keeping track of your mental stack and stamina to stay one step ahead of your opponent. These topics can be taken super in-depth but as I’m sure you’re aware, this guide is just a little bit long, so for your sanity and mine, I won’t go extremely in-depth on them, however resources will be provided at the end of the guide to check out these topics if you’d like further research.

Why it’s important

Creating a gameplan, at least to some new players, seems like a nebulous concept. “I do x or y to win and it works most of the time, I don’t need to think about a gameplan” or other similar concepts. However, we don’t use gameplans to overcomplicate how we play the game: rather to understand how we can play the game without needing to rely on intuition but on what works best. We can use our gameplans to compare to our own knowledge or others. We can use it to figure out a few of the best options for reacting to opponents or influence our gameplay to adapt to what they do. A gameplan doesn’t need to be extremely complicated; just a compilation of the best options and strategies and a compilation of counter strategies to the situations we find ourselves in the most. By creating a solid gameplan, you can spend less time thinking about exactly what to do and more time on adapting your play to the match as is.

Neutral

Neutral is the state where no player has a distinct advantage and have an equal amount of options, typically seen at the beginning of a match or when neither player is playing offensively or defensively. In this state, stage control, safe approach options, and smart movement and spacing are vital. Your goal is to try to determine how your opponent will approach, and then capitalize on an opening by using safe moves and approach options to get in on the opponent and start your offense.

One example of neutral is at the start of the match, as mentioned before. Both players may start using projectiles as they get in closer to each other, or run in and use fast and safe short hop aerials to start their own offense. In response, the other player may shield to block the attack and grab the opponent afterwards, or run just out of range and run back in to whiff punish the opponent.

Advantage

Advantage is the state where one player has more options than the other and is the opposite of disadvantage, usually during a combo or punish situation. In this state, consistent combos, good utilization of punish game, and high pressure are key. Your goal is to try to get as much damage on the opponent as possible before they are able to defend and retaliate and to keep the pressure on to condition their options.

Let’s use this example situation. One opponent misses their aerial and the other opponent whiff punishes with a combo starter such as a down tilt. The offensive player then begins a high-damage combo that isn’t true, which the defensive player air dodges out of. However, the offensive player is able to react to this and up tilts the opponent from where they land.

Disadvantage

Disadvantage is the state where one player has fewer options than the other and is the opposite of advantage, usually during a combo or pressure situation. In this state, focusing on what patterns the opponent has used in similar situations beforehand, using relevant recovery or defensive options to react, and seeing what options you have that are hard to react to are important. Your goal is to get away from the opponent using DI or mixing up the timing and direction of air dodges, using your shield and rolls effectively to get out of shield, and then using options that are hard to react to or put space between you and the opponent to regain neutral and stage control.

In a example disadvantage scenario, the offensive player is performing a combo, while the defensive player is, of course, being hit. The defensive player notices the combo is taking them rightwards and thus DIs out of the combo to avoid further follow-ups. The combo is no longer true or ends and thus the defensive player has the choice of air dodging, jumping, using their aerial movement to get out of the way and reposition, or attack if nearby to avoid getting in disadvantage. Noticing the offensive player approaching them, the defensive player moves inwards to the stage and air dodges right as the opponent whiffs their attack, allowing them to retaliate and start their own offense or return to neutral to reset their gameplan.

Edge

Edge is my own term to describe the state where both players have limited options at the ledge, depending on whether they’re off or on stage, typically while a player is either recovering or edgeguarding the opponent. This is where I would consider concepts such as edgeguarding and ledgetrapping to be. I came up with this state as I felt that scenarios at the edge had their own meta to them that involved all 3 prior states. For example, in edgeguarding, one player is in advantage (the one on stage) while the other is in disadvantage (the one recovering). In this state, smart usage of recovery options, pattern recognition, spacing, and being aware of both players actions and reactions are essential. If you’re recovering, your goal is to use the appropriate ledge options to get back on stage and avoid being edgeguarded. If you’re on stage, your goal is to edgeguard the opponent effectively by predicting or conditioning their ledge getup and capitalizing on it.

Edgeguarding

Edgeguarding is the state where the opponent on stage attempts to keep the opponent trying to recover from returning back to the stage. Edgeguarding is a very interesting phase of the game: the player recovering only has their recovery options (jump, up special, air dodge, etc) to return to the ledge or get back on the stage itself. Meanwhile, the other player thats remaining on the stage has all of their options, the entire stage to run around in, and can go offstage to prevent the other from getting back! Edgeguarding requires careful examination of the actions of both sides to benefit, all of which can depend on the stage itself, matchup experience, character-specific details, and much more.

For just one example scenario, the player on-stage may be able to go offstage: the risk is that they have the same options as the opponent recovering meaning they could potentially die offstage as well, however, the reward is that the recovering opponent may be meteor smashed or knocked too far away to have the chance to recover while the edgeguarding player remains close to the stage. The player offstage may be able to use this and react to them going off stage by airdoding a telegraphed attack or throwing out a fast and safe move of their own to push them out of the way.

Ledge-trapping

Ledge-trapping is the state where one player on stage attempts to react to the other opponents ledge getup option. This is commonly confused with or combined with edgeguarding. Whereas edgeguarding refers to the general concept of one player recovering and the other reacting to the opponents recovery to prevent them from getting back on stage, ledge-trapping refers to something much more specific and only takes place when one player is on the ledge and performing a getup option and the other is on stage preparing to react. The player recovering only has 6 options (neutral, getup attack, roll, jump, drop off and then jump/attack, or to wait it out), meaning they are at a significant disadvantage to the opponent on stage and must choose their options wisely. Meanwhile, the player that is on stage needs to consider their options and choose accordingly to go back into the edgeguarding phase or set them up for damage and go for a kill.

In an example scenario, the opponent on the stage can shield to prevent several options such as getup attack or stay just out of range to catch rolls or punish jumps. The opponent off-stage can drop off of the ledge and jump with a safe aerial if the opponent isn’t shielding or simply get up quickly and shield after if the opponent looks ready to punish.

Dealing with projectiles

Projectiles are often a common struggle new players to the game have, which is entirely understandable. Projectiles are long-range attacks and a lot of the best ones are droppable and can lead into both long range and extremely pressurized short range combos which can be trying to deal with. While projectiles will be handled differently for every matchup of character, stage, and player, there are some general tips to consider.

If your opponent has an item-based projectile, such as Peach’s Vegetable or Diddy Kong’s Bananas, you could utilize the mid-air item grab to pick up the item as its thrown at you or pick up the item to use for yourself if it whiffs. This can be a good way to quickly counter their attempt, especially if they’re in range.

For normal projectiles like blasters, the choice between shielding, jumping, rolling/spotdodging, reflecting, parrying, or using your attacks that can reflect or eat the projectile can be a tough one to make, so its useful to know which action does what for you and their strengths and weaknesses.

Burst range and options

Burst range is the distance that a character has to perform a quick, unreactable attack. These are often used to force the opponent to react. A common burst option for a lot of characters is dash attack, since most are fast moves that propel you forwards at high acceleration. Determining what the safest burst options are in your arsenal and considering them within your gameplan can be beneficial to figure out ways to set up your offense and lead into close range play.

Shield pressure

Shield pressure is an important part of every player’s gameplan, especially considering the changes to shields in Ultimate. It refers to the concept of poking at the opponent’s shield in order to force them to take certain, limited options. Shield pressure relies on safe, fast moves such as some aerials that the opponent can’t easily react to, and then punishing based on how they react. Shield pressure also includes the concept of out of shield (OoS) options, which are the best options a character has to use to stop shielding and start acting again. Fast moves are again common optimal OoS options, and every character has a couple that work best for them, but the player putting on pressure can be able to react to OoS options if used too much, essentially becoming predictable.

Creating a gameplan

A few sections ago, we learned about the mental stack, the concept of optimizing the thought process to act or react to an action the opponent does in a certain situation. You may have several anti-air attacks, but the mental stack is about going from “which of these 5 options should I use” to “use the best option for this scenario”. Makes sense, right? A flowchart is a more fleshed out a representation of that concept and your gameplan as a whole. It’s often used in negative connotations to refer to players that only do the same thing every time and never break from the flowchart. However, having a flowchart can be extremely beneficial as it organizes the best options for common scenarios, how to act on them, how to react to them if they go well or poorly, and what’s next to do. If that sounds complicated, flowcharts should represent the easiest and most effective “paths to success” for your character. It’s also a good visual way to demonstrate how you’ll generally be playing in a match in key, persistent scenarios.

This meme is often used to show an example of a flowchart for a newbie Ken in Street Fighter III: Third Strike. It looks very…interesting to say the least. Nearly everything leads into Shoryuken!!1 in some way, continually spamming it on block or hit until the sun burns out. While this seems like a bad flowchart at first, it’s actually a good example of what a basic but effective (at least for a beginner) flowchart looks like. Most importantly to understand, there’s a clear dominant strategy that this Ken is building around: Shoryuken!!1 However, that domintant strategy often leads the Ken into differing and sometimes awkward positions. That’s why it’s also important that they have a set of counter strategies based on context to fight back. There’s options for the start of a match (jump backwards into Hadouken, jumping heavy kick), actions to take after the opponent reacts (jumping HK into Shoryuken or sweep if it hits, Hadouken if jumping HK misses, Shoryuken if the opponent jumps or is close), and reactions to those moves to restart offense (return to Uh… if either opponent isn’t dead). This forms the crux of what a good flowchart looks like. They don’t always have to be intensive maps detailing every possible option because that sort of defeats the purpose: just good, easy to remember paths to success to act and react to the most common of scenarios without needing to think about it too much, tying actions to context in order to allow for reaction and mixups. Here are a few examples of concepts (non-exhaustive) to think about when formulating a gameplan.

Range and positioning

One thing to consider is range and/or positioning. “Is the opponent above you?” If so, what moves are best to catch landings or anti air? “Am I close to the opponent?” If so, I can grab or throw out an ftilt. “Did the opponent whiff a move?” If so, what are fast moves that are in range that can set up my offense. Stage control is also an element of this. If your character has a projectile or counter to them, thinking about ways to use them effectively to maintain or gain stage control is also a good part of your gameplan. “I can use my projectile under a platform to keep distance and evade when approached” is one.

On hit, whiff, or block

Another important thing to consider when crafting a gameplan is the reactions to an action you just made, in this case an attack, depending on if it hit the opponent, if it whiffed/missed the opponent, or if they blocked it. “Did this move hit?” Use a combo starter to go into advantage state. “Did this move get blocked?” If it was a safe aerial, grab or evade a counter attack. “I whiffed this move.” What’s the fastest way to regain control, whether it be shielding, running back or using another quick and safe move?

Percent

You can also build your gameplan around what actions to take when the opponent is at low/mid/high/kill percent as well. “Is the opponent at high percent?” Try to use your best kill moves or confirms. “Is the opponent at low percent?” Do I have a move thats safe and can start a combo? “Am I at high percent?” Try to rely more on ranged moves to keep stage control and maintain distance to prevent being killed until you can capitalize on the opponents play.

Common options

Finally, a good concept to build a gameplan around is a selection of common options for different scenarios. This can be your common burst options, moves for poking and spacing, combo starters/fillers/enders, approaching moves, best options for pressure, which moves are safest on shield or fastest out of shield, etcetera. Knowing your array of actions for common scenarios can help you choose which moves are best on the fly if one is stale or the opponent knows how to react to it and quickly switch between.

Examples of gameplans

Mario

Neutral goals and archetype

- use speed + great aerials to create pressure

- get in for grabs to setup for damaging combos

- edgeguard with dashattack/dtilt to 2frame

- fludd and fireball used to maintain and create space, cover for lack of range

Low percents (0-35%)

- up throw > fullhop dair > potential aerial/up b

- landing bair/nair > grab/tilts

- landing dair > aerials

Mid percents (35-80%)

- up/down throw > up air > aerial string

- landing/rising up air > aerial string

- d/utilt > aerial string

Kill confirms (80%+)

- down throw > uair > uair > fair meteor

- up throw > uair > uair > up b (platforms)

- dtilt/dthrow > turnaround bair

- landing soft nair/fair > f/dsmash

- kill moves: usmash, bair, fsmash, bthrow

Burst options

- dash attack

- rising aerials

- dash grab

Poke options

- bair

- ftilt

- dtilt

- fireball

OoS options

- up B (3 frames)

- nair (6 frames)

- uair (7 frames)

Safe on Shield options

- nair (2 frames)

- bair (2 frames)

- uair (3 frames)

Best moves in offense

Bair - jack of all trades, best spacing aerial, pokes, crosses up, etc

Fireballs - creates pressure, covers approach

U/dair - catches the opponent in air, sets up for combos

Fludd - creates space

Sonic

This is the character that I main and have been playing since Brawl, so even if there are other characters likely better for understanding gameplans at lower level, I think people could still find it useful.

Neutral goals and archetype

- use fastest in the game speed w/ movement and burst options to bait and punish + apply pressure + control stage

- use spin dash/charge for damaging combos

- use movement + aerials to force/cover landings + juggle

- edgeguard + ledgetrap with fair/bair/tilts/homing attack/gimp with spring

- use movement to stay in and out of range

Low percents (0-35%)

- spin dash/charge > aerial

- falling nair/uair > grab/tilts/aerials

- down throw > spin dash/charge/tech chase

Mid percents (35-80%)

- up throw > aerials (use spring for more height)

- spin charge > homing attack > potential aerial

- aerial spin charge > spin charge jump > bair

Kill confirms (80%+)

- spin dash/charge > reverse homing attack > bair

- soft nair > fsmash

- up throw > spring > up air

- kill moves: fsmash, bair, fair, homing attack, usmash, bthrow

Burst options

- dash attack

- spin dash/charge

- dash grab

Poke options

- bair

- ftilt

- dtilt

OoS options

- up B (4 frames)

- fair/uair (8 frames)

- nair (9 frames)

Safe on Shield options

- jumping spin dash/charge (1 frame)

- nair (5 frames)

- uair (9 frames)

Best moves in offense

Spin Dash/Charge - basis of his game, movement, combo starter, allow for mixups

B/fair - best reach of aerials, allows for spacing + pressure

Nair - lingering hitbox good for landing, sets up for combos

F/dtilt - spacing + poking

Advanced Techniques

There’s a lot of tech in this game, especially getting into character-specific stuff. This will mainly just be a brief overview of the most popular ones in increasing order of difficulty, not priority or usefulness. Learning these and when to use them can definitely improve your game, but it’s best to understand the above part of the guide before getting down to business and truly practicing them.

Dash-dancing

Dash-dancing is a useful technique for baiting your opponent on where you’ll be moving next. It’s done by quickly moving the stick left and right. Extended dash-dancing or foxtrotting can be done by dashing, letting the initial dash animation finish, and dashing again in the opposite direction.

Crouch Cancelling

Crouch canceling is a technique that reduces the amount of knockback by .85x of its original value and freeze frames are reduced by .67 simply by being hit while crouching. This is not a widely used technique as you’ll likely be sent flying anyway, but could have its nice uses.

Instant Dash Attack

By pressing forward and immediately after, right on the right stick, you’ll be able to perform an instant dash attack while standing, without the need to get a running start.

Reverse Aerial Rush

Reverse aerial rushes (RAR) are a very useful mechanic by allowing you to approach your opponent with bairs while keeping your running momentum. It’s done by running, turning around, canceling the turnaround animation by jumping, then performing the aerial. Compared to attack cancels, RARs aren’t as fast but are more versatile due to working with both full and shorthops and allow for different timing if you delay the attack or landing/rising with the aerial.

You can also perform what’s called an instant reverse aerial rush (IRAR) by inputting dash, input in the opposite direction and jump at the same time, then performing the aerial. This is harder to execute, but much faster than a RAR and has the benefits of both a RAR and an attack cancel.

A-Landing/Lagless Landing

A-landing or lagless landing is using an aerial’s autocancel frames to cancel a tumble animation. You’ll need to use UFD to figure out which attacks have autocancel windows, and it takes practice to get the timing down, but the technique can be very useful to allow you to land without any lag and continue your offense. It’s also useful as a mixup against players that like to tech chase a lot.

Boost grabs

Boost grabs or dash attack cancel grabs are done by running and performing a dash attack, then canceling the dash attack within the first few frames with a grab. Depending on the character, this can extend their grab range.

B-Reverse

B reverse, also referred to as a special reverse, is a very easy mechanic. Just perform a special move and input the opposite direction immediately after and you’ll turn around while performing your special move and reverse your momentum.

Turnaround B

Turnaround-B or turnaround specials are a related technique done by tapping the opposite direction before performing the special move. This will just reverse your direction.

Wavebounce

Finally, wavebounces or recoil specials are the last related technique to B-reverses and are done by doing both a B-reverse and a turnaround-B. Tap your stick in the opposite direction, perform your special, then tap in the other direction.

Wavelanding

While wavedashing isn’t a viable mechanic in Ultimate due to the large amount of recovery frames from directional air dodges and the mechanic of recurring dodges increasing that recovery, wavelanding can be useful occasionally. The difference is that wavedashing is air dodging into the ground immediately after jumping, whereas wavelanding is air dodging into the ground while you’re already in the air. This can be really useful for platforms or slightly adjusting out of the opponent’s range, then using a poke.

Pivot Boosting

Pivot boosting/canceling is done by running, pivoting, and then quickly performing a tilt in the forward direction. Most commonly used with ftilts, this allows you to perform sliding tilts and get more range and follow-up combos or tech chases. To pivot boost with up or down tilts, it’s best to have tilt stick on and use the upright or downright corner to perform the slide.

Ledge Slip

Ledge slips are a relatively simple technique that can be very useful for edgeguarding. It’s done by running towards the ledge until you can’t go further, holding down to buffer a crouch, then tilting the stick diagonally forwards, and finally, rolling the stick forwards to walk off the ledge. You can perform an aerial to attack or shield to tech a potential trade and increase your edgeguarding options.

Full Momentum Nairs

By jumping, letting go of jump, then inputting a neutral aerial and letting go, and then finally moving in the direction you want to go, you’ll perform a full momentum nair. As the name implies, you’ll be able to perform nairs at the maximum momentum you can reach, allowing you to retreat far away or approach with a nair from farther away.

Slingshot (and it’s variations)

Slingshot is a recent technique with 3 variations: Flickshot, Holdshot, and Fullshot. All 3 are inputted similarly and allow all characters (though with R.O.B, it’s slightly different) to maintain airspeed momentum which gives way to a variety of options and applications, such as shield pressure and aerial movement.

To perform the slingshot at it’s base level, dash into the opposite direction you want to face, quickly move the control stick into the opposite direction and flicking/holding diagonally up/down.

Flickshot

The flickshot allows you to be sent at maximum air speed facing forwards but moving backwards and is done by performing a slingshot and flicking diagonally up/down in the opposite direction and jumping after the stick has returned to neutral by letting go of the stick.

Holdshot

The holdshot is performed by performing a flickshot but holding the stick diagonally.

Fullshot

The fullshot is performed by performing a holdshot but rolling the stick from the opposite direction to the diagonal input.

Attack Cancelling

Attack canceling (AC) allows characters to cancel grounded attacks (jabs, tilts, smash attacks, and dash attacks) into short hop aerials. This technique is probably one of the hardest techniques to learn, but getting the timing down if you’re dedicated can allow for instant standing back aerials (tilt attack cancels) and retreating aerials (dash attack cancels).

The general technique goes like this: input a jab/tilt/smash attack/dash attack and then immediately perform a jump. Normally, attack cancels will perform a nair, but inputting a direction on either stick after performing the attack will allow for different aerials. Most jabs have a 1 frame cancel window, whereas most tilts, smash attacks, and dash attacks have a 2 frame window, so using a tilt or dash attack is preferable.

Performing a dash attack cancel will allow for retreating rising aerials and will halt your momentum. Performing a forward tilt attack cancel is done by performing an ftilt on the right stick, then performing an attack cancel while holding the directional stick in the opposite direction of the right stick. Forward tilt attack cancels done like this can allow for instant rising reverse back aerials without needing to perform a RAR, although, unlike IRARs, you cannot perform fullhop or falling back airs. Try experimenting with the different options and see what works best for you.

Instant Double Jump (IDJ)

Instant double jumps (IDJ) are a difficult technique execution-wise, but with practice, have several useful applications that can extend your combos by giving you some extra height. It’s done by inputting a jump, releasing the jump button, then inputting another jump all within 4 frames. If it helps with the timing, you need to jump, let go of jump, then jump again while your character is curling up on the ground in preparation to jump (jumpsquat). If you’ve got it, you’ll have the double jump indicator (a ring) show up underneath your character the moment you get off the ground. This will perform your double jump instead of your regular standing jump. A delayed IDJ is done by jumping then immediately performing another jump after, although without the strict timing.

By adding an aerial during those jumpsquat frames, we can have a lot of benefits. We can perform rising aerials that do full damage instead of .85x with the instant short hop aerials, extend our combos by giving ourselves extra vertical distance, better landing options, and more.  

2-Framing

2 framing is a technique done by hitting the opponent with a far-enough reaching move during the first 2 frames of their ledge grab animation where they aren’t invulnerable yet. This takes time and practice against several different moves as well as correct timing and spacing, but when done correctly, can allow for extremely beneficial edgeguards as they will not regain their jump.

Competitive Stages

This will be a brief overview of all of the most commonly seen stages in competitive play. As this guide is mainly geared towards competitive players, it’s good to get used to playing on this and find out through charactercords, character-specific resources, and your own preference to see what stages are the best for your character. Some characters benefit little from stage choice and are more matchup-dependent, so keep matchups in mind as well.

Battlefield

A tri-platform stage, with a taller center platform, and two lower platforms that flank each other. This benefits characters that have strong aerial games, can control centerstage well, and strong upwards kill moves. Characters that are strong on BF in general are Mario, Captain Falcon, and Marth.

Final Destination

A flat stage with no platforms. This gives lots of room to run around, benefiting characters that have strong offstage presences, lots of approach options, and can control space well. Kirby, Dr. Mario, and Greninja are generally strong on FD.

Smashville

A generally flat stage with one center platform and close side blastzones. This benefits characters that like smaller stages, can get earlier kills, and can get good extensions off platforms. Luigi, Inkling, and Ganondorf are considered good fits for SV.

Hollow Bastion

Hollow Bastion, as another single platform stage, has a lot of the same benefits and downsides as SV. It has the exact same blastzones and size as FD, but with a singular platform in the middle. Characters like Little Mac tend to like this stage.

Pokemon Stadium 2

Pokemon Stadium 2 is a dual-plat, with spread-out platforms. With the widest side blastzones and shortest ceilings in the competitive stagelist, this allows for a lot of space to move around and benefits those that can get kills of the top very early. This includes characters like Young Link, Palutena, and King K. Rool, although as PS2 is the most popular competitive stage, most characters tend to like it.

Small Battlefield

Small Battlefield is yet another dual-platform stage with the same size and blastzones as Final Destination, but with slightly closer together platforms than Battlefield. Characters like Pichu and Aegis (Pyra/Mythra) get the most on SBF.

Kalos Pokemon League

Kalos Pokemon League, often referred to as just Kalos or KPL, is, you guessed it, another dual-platform stage, although this time, it has platforms that extend partially off of the stage. With the same stage width as FD, this stage benefits characters with strong edgeguarding and camping, such as Peach, Sheik, and Pikachu.

Northern Cave

Northern Cave is another two platform stage and similar to Kalos, having 2 platforms flanked above the ledges. This allows for further edgeguarding, strong recovery mixups, and stage control for characters like Chrom. As NC has some issues with accessibility due to its fast-moving bright background, it might not be super common.

Yoshi’s Story

Yoshi’s Story is another tri-plat, with the narrowest stage width and side blastzones of any competitive stage. This benefits characters that can get kills early, can juggle, use its platforms to good use, and use its walls to edgeguard or walljump/cling to recovery, such as Falco, Mr. Game and Watch, and Zero Suit Samus.

Town and City

Town and City is a large stage with 3 platforms that alternate between 3 layouts: 2 high up platforms that spill over the stage and a platform right above, a flat layout, and another layout with 2 platforms flanked next to ledges. Its long width and close blastzones usually benefit characters that can utilize its space with mobility or long-range tools such as Mewtwo, Roy, and Wario.

Lylat Cruise

Easily the most hated stage in competitive play. Lylat benefits characters that aren’t screwed over by its ledges, slanted platforms, and ground, but also have good recoveries, get early kills off the top, and make use of its space. Simon, Richter, and King Dedede are generally strong on this stage.

Tournaments

A good way to test your skill in Smash competitively is to, of course, enter tournaments! Tournaments are a great way to test your might, apply what you’ve been practicing in a competitive setting, and get lots of great feedback and experience from players of different skill levels.

Tournament Glossary

This is a list of common terms you’ll hear during tournaments from players and tournament staff alike that are important to understand to not be confused. If you forget these, however, someone’s likely willing to help you out so no big deal.

Match - a single game played.

Set - a group of matches in which the winner moves on to the next stage.

Best of - determines how many matches are needed to win a set, for example, a Bo3 would need a player to win 2 games out of 3 to win the set.

First to - determines how many matches are needed to win a set, for example, the first player to win 5 games would win.

Friendlies - a match played outside of the tournament for good practice or competition.

Tournament organizer (TO) - the main tournament staff that ensures setups are being used, streams are going on, and the bracket is running smoothly.

Commentator/caster  - the staff commentating over the event, typically on stream.

Streamer - the staff managing the tournament stream if it has one.

Setup - typically a combination of the console, table, and chairs where people play tournament sets.

Bracket - another name for the tournament.

Bracket page - the website, either smash.gg or Challonge, that keeps track of players, what setups they’re on, and where they should be placed in the tournament.

Tournament Etiquette

These are some general tips on how to have good tournament etiquette.

• Thank the TOs and staff for running the event! It takes a lot of work running brackets speaking from experience.
• Please shower. (mainly applies to locals) Also, be sure to eat and drink water.
• Don’t be shy! Ask the TOs or other people there for help if you have a question about something, and they’ll be more than willing to help out.
• Play in friendlies to get more experience.
• Make friends! If you see someone in bracket or friendlies that you like to play against, hit them up and get their info to play sometime. Meeting friends at tournaments are some of the best parts of this community.
• Be prepared and on time! Whether it's online or offline, be ready a few minutes before bracket starts with your setup and controller to not have to make the bracket slow down. Be sure to check in on the bracket page as soon as possible so the bracket can go smoothly.

Major/Notable Tournaments

This is an overview of the most notable tournaments in the scene, as well as the biggest and most popular majors and supermajors, tournaments that feature a good amount of top-level players that typically run yearly as well.

VGBootCamp - https://twitter.com/VGBootCamp 

EvenMatchupGaming - https://twitter.com/EvenMatchup 

EVO - https://evo.gg 

Genesis - https://genesisgaming.gg

Super Smash Con (SSC) - https://supersmashcon.com 

Glitch - https://twitter.com/Glitch_Smash 

Get on my Level/Line (GOML) - https://twitter.com/GOMLsplan 

Frostbite - https://twitter.com/ComeToFrostbite 

CEO (Dreamland) - https://ceogaming.org 

Collision - https://twitter.com/collisionsmash 

Shine - https://twitter.com/Shine_Series 

Smash N’ Splash (SnS) - https://twitter.com/SmashNSplash 

Mainstage and Smash Summit - https://twitter.com/BTSsmash 

Riptide - https://twitter.com/RiptideSSB 

Low Tide City - https://twitter.com/LTCesports

The Big House - https://twitter.com/TheBigHouseSSB  

Let’s Make (Big) Moves - https://twitter.com/YoLetsMakeMoves 

Kagaribi - https://twitter.com/KAGARIBI_smash 

Online Tournament Calendar

If you’re looking for tournaments that you can enter from the comfort of your home, I recommend viewing the WiFi Event Calendar by Cagt. It shows a list of submitted online events running throughout the week, and you should check them out. Some of my events are on there too, but lots of other amazing community members are running online events monthly or even weekly, so it all depends on what best fits your schedule.

Community

This section isn’t directly related to improvement, but it’s always good to get into the community. Making friends, finding new people to play with, talking with other people passionate about the game, and supporting content creators, tournament organizers, and players is core to what makes Smash so beloved. As a tournament organizer, admin and moderator in lots of popular Smash Discord communities, and someone that’s been in the community for years now, I’d be remiss not to highlight some of the awesome things our community does and how you can get involved even in small ways.

Be respectful and mindful

The Smash community is known for a lot of things. Extremely passionate people that play their games and refine their skill for years, lots of different facets and roles that allow people to be creative in the medium they enjoy for the love of the game, and sometimes being incredibly short-signed and toxic towards other people in the scene. To tell the truth, you will probably have at least one bad experience in the community: someone being toxic to you purely for the character you play, unconstructive arguing on Twitter, unfortunately as of recent top players being involved in a lot of controversies, and the like. It can get tiring and lonely at times and that’s entirely understandable, and a lot of problems like inclusiveness are rooted deep in the scene and we’re still trying to rid ourselves of that reputation. However, I think it's important to note that that is a very vocal minority of the community and that 98% of the people you meet in the scene are caring and friendly people. Even so, be respectful to others even if they aren’t to you and be mindful of what you say. Answer questions if you’re able to, try to get to know people and make friends, keep your distance from people that are being toxic or weird, and if you see anything discriminatory or offensive, keep your distance or let the staff that run that community know. All we want to do in this community is to be in a safe and inclusive environment where we can play and enjoy Smash Bros., so why ruin that? We’re all here to have fun and so try to be in community environments that are positive.

Content creators

There are lots of popular content creators on YouTube and Twitch that create engaging and interesting content. Some of it is educational, while others make content about fun or weird things in the game, and still, others create content by streaming tournament runs or commentating over popular videos. Supporting the content creators in the scene encourages them to make more content and maybe encourage other people in the community to create content. If you find a content creator you like, follow them and share their content around with other people.

Supporting tournaments

Another way to engage in the scene is by supporting events! Entering tournaments is a great way to make new friends in the scene, they’re very social events. While that impact is lessened online, talking to people you face in bracket and playing friendlies with them sometimes is also a good step in making friends and getting to know people. Another way to support tournaments despite not entering them is watching them! I made a list of notable tournaments in the last section, but watching tournament streams or VODs or even being in the audience if it's an IRL event tells tournament organizers that creating brackets for people to enjoy is worth it. Watching live is a very unique experience, being able to interact with others while a good game is going on, react to upsets or cool combos, and more are just part of the spark the community has.

Talking on Discord

Finally, a more direct way to be involved in the community is talking in notable Discord communities like SSBUcord or charactercords. While certainly not for everyone, these are generally active places with lots of people to talk and have fun with, with channels for both Smash and off-topic channels. Every community is different: some of them host events and tournaments while others have ranked matchmaking or cool bots to play with. Feel free to hop in a conversation, get to know everyone, and have a good time!

Getting involved

Finally, some people might want to get involved directly themselves! Maybe you want to help run tournament events for people to enter, or have some great ideas for creating Smash content. Becoming notable in the scene takes time and popularity, mostly from being a top player or popular content creator, but that shouldn’t also be your goal. If you have a genuine passion for creating something in this scene or want to help people to make the community better, that’s all the motivation you need.

If you want to help out or create content, the best thing to do is to ask people that are already doing it! If you’re already in communities that you like, ask the existing staff there if you’d be willing to help with events there, or watch content creators you already like and try to get inspiration from them. It gets better with experience, so try to take as many opportunities as you can. There’ll most likely be at least one person experienced with running tournaments to help you out and get acquainted with smash.gg or Challonge and the general motions of running an event, so feel free to ask them or anyone you know that runs tournaments questions: we don’t bite! The more content creators, tournament organizers, commentators, streamers, and just creative people we have in this scene, the better. They are the ones that make this community alive and distinct! ;)

Where to next?

That’s it! The guide is finally finished and much longer than originally intended. This should give you a launchpad to essentially everything you need to go from someone entirely new to Smash and fighting games to becoming a competent player. Of course, the question remaining is where to go from here. And to that I say, keep playing and improving! At a base level, playing the game as often as you can is important to really have mechanics and techniques sit in, but at some level, you might look for other ways to improve once you have those down, and this section is meant to serve that.

Watching other players

Watching other players, specifically top-level players that play your character can bring an interesting perspective on how you play. Studying top-level players’ sets can be useful to see which options they choose and don’t choose, what playstyle they have, how they get past a difficult matchup, how they act in certain situations, and more. Using that match footage and comparing it against your own gameplay can be a good way to critique yourself outside of reviewing your own VODs and see what you need to work on.

That’s where a site called SmashArchives comes in. It’s a new site dedicated to curating Smash Ultimate tournament sets and other VODs. You can search by an individual player, character, or even specific matchups and dittos to find the matches you’re looking for. It catalogs over 25,000 VODs so you’re bound to find what you’re looking for. Another site useful for this is vods.co.

Enter tournaments

While locals are still up in the air right now (local tournaments near your area), tournaments are a great way to meet the members of your community, make friends as well, and of course, demonstrably show how far you’ve improved. Like I mentioned earlier, tournaments are a way to test your skill and likely the final step of an improving player to take by actually taking the step to be involved in competitive play. They can definitely be daunting, especially when taking a look at your tournament statistics on a site like SmashData, but worth it for the amount of feedback, demonstration of improvement, and the true test of skill they bring. You don’t wait to get buff at the gym, so why wait to enter tournaments if win or lose they can show you just how far you’ve gone since learning Smash and how far you still have to go to become even better? I can’t recommend entering tournaments enough and hope I see some of you all in brackets!

Resources

A short compilation of some of the most notable resources available. Definitely not a comprehensive list, but these are the ones I highly recommend and have used several times myself.

r/CrazyHand

r/CrazyHand is easily THE best subreddit for competitive Smash. Lots of informative posts, guides, questions to be answered, great resources and advice, critiquing of replays, positive and constructive discussion of competitive Smash, and more. In total transparency, a lot of the non-gameplay elements of this guide were done using CrazyHand as a stepping stone, and credits for posts are down below. They also have an active Discord where they host weekly tournaments, so definitely check them out.

Character Servers (Smashcords)

If you’re looking to discuss with other players that play your character, ask questions specifically related to how your character plays, and find resources for your character, I highly recommend checking out your character’s character-specific Discord server, sometimes referred to as a charactercord, on the Smashcords website.

The Fighting Game Glossary

The Fighting Game Glossary has hundreds of terms in an intuitive UI relating to all fighting games, including dozens of Smash-specific terms that are very beneficial. They’re all written very well, the vast majority of them have Japanese translations, and lots of them have images or videos to help emphasize the text. Terms are easily sharable and can easily be implemented into bots for easy pullup of information. Honorary mention is the massive Smash Dictionary on good old Smashboards written during Smash 4. Some of the terms may be a little outdated in the context of Ultimate, but it's still a good read if both the FGC glossary and SmashWiki don’t have what you’re looking for and has a lot of community-specific terms as well.

Ultimate Factory

Ultimate Factory is a server that features free coaching and is a great place to find resources and discuss the game with other players that are eager to learn. They have channels covering topics like basics, neutral, mentality, and matchups, coaches willing to help and answer questions, and occasional events.

Frame Data

I already mentioned this earlier, but Ultimate Frame Data is the best place to find your character’s frame data, properties, and complete with frame-by-frame GIF animations for every character's moves that show their hitboxes as well. Out of Shield lists characters best shield safety and out of shield options, Ultimate Stats or SSBToni are popular Discord bots that can show frame data within a server, and character-specific resources often list different uses for frame data.

Metafy

If you’re willing to spend money, however, Metafy is a notable website that features over 100 Smash coaches ready and willing to help you out that rank among some of the best players in the world. MKLeo, ESAM, FatalityFalcon, and more offer VOD review, extended play sessions, and calls, typically by paying per hour for as many hours as you believe you need. Metafy as a premium service isn’t something everyone needs or even something I would recommend to anyone that isn’t someone that is already confident in their results and wants to truly go the next step forward. It can be very expensive, however, you do get what you pay for in the cost of being able to get advice from the best of the best.

Noted Content Creators

This is just a list of what I would consider to be some of the best content creators that make educational or useful content for players of all skill levels. Some of them are top Smash players, others are channels made specifically for educational Smash content. Most of these are Smash-specific, but some of them also make general fighting game content, however, their lessons still apply and are highly recommended!

• BananaBoySSB
• Smash University
• Dabuz
• gsmVoiD
• Izaw (Art of Smash)
• Beefy Smash Doods
• Game5 Smash
• MySmashCorner (mainly from Smash 4, but a lot applies to Ultimate)
• GimR's Lab
• Sajam
• Core-A Gaming
• KizzieKay
• Meta Of Smash
• Vermanubis 
• Ramses Esports

Assorted List of Resources

Finally, an assorted list of resources that I believe could help players. These might also be resources that helped me make this guide, so they’re highly recommended.

• lloD's Guide to Improvement
• Galaxy Brain Analysis: Practicing Efficiently 
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Stage Comparison Tool
• Why The Average Player Shouldn't Have A "Secondary"
• IMPROVING IN SMASH: How to ask Questions!  
• How to Fight Every Character 2.0 (Part 1) - Smash Ultimate
• 20 Beginner Pro Tips - Smash Ultimate
• How to Play Doubles - Smash Ultimate
• 10 Baits You Can Use Today - Smash Ultimate
• 5 Beginner/Mid-Level Habits - Smash Ultimate
• How to Fight Every Character 2.0 (Part 1) - Smash Ultimate
• "Sorry, I'm New and Bad. I Don't Want to Waste Your Time" | Dealing with Competitive Anxiety
• Learning How To Learn | Responding to Feedback, Slow Learners, & the REAL Value of Experience
• The Void Program - How to Actually Read People 

Credits

The wonderful Smash community that continues to thrive through thick and thin. You guys suck sometimes, but I wouldn’t be here without you all. Keep inspiring others to love their game as you guys do, we need more passion like that in this world.

The SSBU server for continually asking “what character should I pick”, “how do I get good at the game”, “do I need a LAN adapter” every day, every time, in every single channel, and never checking pins no matter what. These 80 pages are all your fault. Seriously though, it's an honor to be able to help in that server and despite some faults, I love the community there. Being able to help in a server as large as that and interact with so many diverse members of the community is something I really appreciate and I hope this genuinely helps them improve at the game.

The coaches available in SSBUcord, thanks for answering all of my questions, making sure this guide didn’t sound stupid and dealing with all of my pings. >.>

The lovely people that have created the resources below that assisted greatly with creating this guide! I wouldn’t be able to make this guide as detailed or informative without these, so I highly recommend checking out the original works below: they simultaneously serve as good resources.

• The Famous (Infamous?) Archetype Triangle, Revamped – Smash Labs 
• The Fighting Game Glossary
• SmashWiki
• "Who Should I Main?" MEGATHREAD: ULTIMATE EDITION : r/CrazyHand
• The Ultimate Handbook - An FAQ for new Smash players! : r/CrazyHand 
• PSA: How to Ask Better Questions : r/CrazyHand 
• Having a Good Competition Mentality for Smash : r/CrazyHand 
• https://www.reddit.com/r/SSBPM/comments/37520d/mind_over_meta_20_staying_positive/ 
• Mentality by @RiotLettuce
• Four stages of competence - Wikipedia 
• IRAR, RAR, AC RAR, AC Bair and dash turnarounds : r/CrazyHand 
• Smash Buffer System Explained : r/smashbros 
• Reaction Speeds in Gaming 
• The Way of Patrick Miller — Developing a fighting game gameplan 

• Smash Ultimate Stage Guides - YouTube 
• Competitive STAGE GUIDE (Smash Ultimate ver 10.1.0)
• Every Character's Best Tournament Stage in Smash Ultimate
• Sticky Platforms 
• Analysis: Getting Better at Fighting Games
• Analysis: Why Fighting Games Are Hard 
• Keeping a Good Mentality - Smash Ultimate 
• I'm Bad 
• Advanced Learning Technique: Progress Recognition 
• The Best Smash Ultimate Training Tips - VoiD Smash Guides 
• Galaxy Brain Analysis: Practicing Efficiently 
• Smash 4 Wii U - A-Landing
• "Snasen tech" showcase #4: IDJ (Instant double jump) 
• "Snasen tech" showcase #1: Full momentum nair 
• Attack Cancel (Smash Ultimate)
• EDGEGUARD LOW RECOVERIES WITH THIS TECH - Crouch Ledge Slip
• Changes from Smash 4 to Ultimate 
• The Difference between Mid-Level and High-Level Players (SmashConceptions) 
• HOW TO PLAY SMASH - Understanding the 3 Phases of Gameplay 
• Gameplan 101: Scalable Fundamentals 
• Basics Of Smash: Having A Gameplan 
• Dealing With PROJECTILES in Smash Ultimate! 
• ULTIMATE'S META FINALLY CHANGES
• Everything you need to know about the Slingshot
• Mario FAQ + Mariocord 

• https://discord.com/channels/517814485398978560/633201719655923742/874607594067615794 (within Ultimate Factory server)