Competitive Melee 101

By blorppppp

Schedule

Lesson 1

Lesson 3

Lesson 2

Lesson 4

Controls & Techniques

Competitive rules & strategy

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Characters (pick your main)

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Tournament

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Lesson 1

Controls & Techniques

Table of contents

• Why Melee?
• Disclaimer
• Object of the game
• Basic Movement
• Controls
• Grounded movement
• Jumping
• Aerial Movement
• Shielding
• Shielding (continued)
• Out of shield (OOS) options
• Ledge mechanics
• Attacks
• Grounded attacks
• A note on up-tilts
• Aerials
• Grabs
• Specials

• Basic Techniques
• Wavedashing & wavelanding
• Dash dancing
• Directional Influence - DI
• Jump cancelling
• Run cancelling
• Teching
• Teching (continued)
• Teching (advanced)
• Meteor Canceling
• Crouch cancelling - CC
• Shield Dropping
• L-canceling and SHFFLing
• Practice Resources

Why Melee?

Gameplay

Competition

Community

• Blistering speed
• Precise movement
• High skill ceiling

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• Local scene
• Supermajors
• Slippi online

• Complex strategy
• Epic history
• Tons of resources

Disclaimer

• Melee is hard
• Requires intentional practice
• No buffer system

Object of the game

Knock past blastzones

More % = More Knockback

Vertical and horizontal blastzones vary by stage!

Combos are % dependent

02

Basic Movement

Controls

• Focused on gamecube controller
• Applies to most characters
• I’ll be covering a huge amount of information and terminology.
• Don’t expect to memorize everything right away, my goal is to introduce you to concepts and terminology

Grounded movement

Dashing

Running

Walking

• Fast burst of speed
• Can immediately dash back (dash dancing)
• Can’t tilt or crouch

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• Access to all grounded attack options
• Can instantly enter dash

• State entered after dash
• Can’t dash back quickly anymore
• Access to grounded options via crouch

Jumping

Full hop

Short hop

OR

OR

• Press input normally

• Press and release FAST (character dependent)

Preferred inputs

Aerial Movement

Air dodge

Fast fall

Double jump

• Input while falling

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• Jump while airborne
• Most characters only have 1 double jump

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• Avoids attacks

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OR

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Shielding

Light shield

Normal shield

• Lightly press L or R
• Depletes slower
• Covers larger area
• More pushback

• Hard press L or R (until it clicks)
• Can reflect projectiles if timed correctly (powershielding)

OR

Shielding (continued)

• Shield depletes when you use it or when you get hit
• Smaller shields allow you to get hit even while shielding
• If your shield breaks you’ll be stunned

• You can angle your shield to avoid getting shield poked

slowly

Out of shield (OOS) options

Grab

Spot dodge

Roll

Jump

*C-stick buffers rolls & spot dodges

shield

+

shield

+

jump

OR*

shield

+

OR*

shield

+

OR

Ledge mechanics

Ledge options

Roll

Attack

Jump

Regular getup

Drop

• Only one character can grab ledge at a time (ledgehogging).
• Grabbing ledge gives brief invincibility
• If over 100% you’ll do a slow ledge option (except for letting go)

Toward stage

Away from stage

OR

OR

OR

OR

OR

OR

03

Attacks

Grounded attacks

Tilt

Dash attack

Jab

Smash attack

up-tilt, down-tilt, forward-tilt

or u-tilt, d-tilt, f-tilt

up-smash, down-fsmash, forward-smash

or u-smash, d-smash, f-smash

While dashing or running

+

OR

+

A note on up-tilts

• You can’t disable tap jump so often you’ll accidentally jump instead of up-tilting
• There are 2 solutions to this problem:
• Hold slightly up (orange region on the right)
• Place the stick in the upright position during lag

Aerials

Neutral Air (nair)

Control stick in a neutral position

* Characters with a grapple (Link, Young Link, and Samus) will zair instead of nair with z.

OR*

Aerials

Forward Air (fair)

When facing right

OR

+

OR

• Aerial in the direction you’re facing
• C-stick is generally preferred because you can aerial and drift in different directions
• Z or A are useful for instant aerials

+

Preferred

Aerials

Back Air (bair)

When facing right

OR

+

OR

• Aerial in the direction behind you
• C-stick is generally preferred because you can aerial and drift in different directions
• Z or A are useful for instant aerials

+

Preferred

Aerials

Up Air (uair)

OR

+

OR

• Aerial in the direction behind you
• C-stick is generally preferred because you can aerial and drift in different directions
• Z or A are useful for instant aerials

+

Preferred

Aerials

Down Air (dair)

OR

+

OR

• Aerial in the direction behind you
• C-stick is generally preferred because you can aerial and drift in different directions
• Z or A are useful for instant aerials

+

Preferred

Grabs

Grab

Pummel

Throw

• Opponent can mash out of grabs (by spamming inputs). It’s easier to mash out at lower percents.
• You can grab out of a dash but the animation is usually much slower (more on this later).

shield +

OR

Specials

1. Each character has a unique set of specials
2. Generally up-b is a recovery move
3. Some specials are much slower or laggier than regular moves so use them sparingly (major exceptions include shine and lasers).

+

OR

04

Basic Techniques

Wavedashing & wavelanding

Wavedash

Waveland

• Allows quick & precise repositioning
• Move backwards while facing forwards (useful for grabbing ledge)
• Access to all grounded options
• Timing varies by character

How to practice:

1. Start slow then speed up. Try different angles.
2. If you accidentally jump you’re pressing R/L too fast

• Airdodge onto a platform or the stage from the air

jump > airdodge toward ground

Dash dancing

Slow turnaround (bad)

• Dash back and forth within dash range to avoid slow turnaround
• Dash distance varies by character so the technique is more useful for some characters than others
• Useful for quick repositioning and baiting out moves from your opponent

Directional Influence - DI

Smash DI

(Advanced)

Trajectory DI

• Alter your trajectory by holding a direction on the control stick during hitstun
• Helps escape combos and live longer

• Nudge your character during hitstun
• Input is beyond the scope of today’s lesson

Jump cancelling

JC Grab

JC Upsmash

dash grab

* Although technically grab needs to be pressed after jump, in practice you can think about pressing them simultaneously.

jump > grab*

• Interrupt running animation with a jump to get the fast standing grab animation instead of the slow dash grab animation.

jc grab

• Upsmash out of a run using jump to cancel run animation
• Must upsmash FAST before jumpsquat ends

jump > upsmash

Run cancelling

While running

• Access all grounded options (jab, tilts, smash attacks, etc) by crouching out of a run

>

grounded action

Teching

Missed tech

Tech in place

Tech roll forward

Tech roll backward

• Some attacks will send your character into a knockdown state.
• You can input a tech 20 frames before landing to escape faster

OR

+

OR

+

OR

Teching (continued)

Teching (advanced)

Amsah tech

Wall tech

• Hug the floor and tech to avoid certain death

• You can also tech while airborne near a wall to survive some kill moves

Meteor Canceling

• Certain moves send the opponent down but are not true spikes. These are called Meteor smashes.
• If you input a jump or up-b after getting hit by a meteor smash you’ll cancel all downward momentum and recover
• If you input a jump too early there is a 40 frame lockout window which prevents you from Meteor canceling with jump

OR

jump

+

Crouch cancelling - CC

With CC

Without CC

• Crouching dramatically reduces hit stun of moves and prevents knockdown until higher %s allowing you to punish your opponent before their move is finished

Shield Dropping

The Axe Method

(on a platform)

• Drop through platforms from a shielded position
• Often used to counter-attack with quick aerials from a platform
• Also a good movement option, faster than dropping through a platform normally

1. dash > shield
2. Roll stick a quarter circle down to the next gate. From to
3. (optional) aerial/jump/fast fall

L-canceling and SHFFLing

L-cancel

SHort hop fast fall L-cancel (SHFFL)

OR

OR

• Significantly reduces landing lag from aerials
• Input after an aerial but before landing

• Probably the most difficult widely used technique. Requires lots of practice
• Fastest way to perform aerials from the ground

Short hop > aerial > Fast Fall > L-cancel

Short hop > Fast Fall > aerial > L-cancel

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Practice Resources

• SSBM Tutorials - detailed youtube videos on nearly every smash technique.
• UnclePunch Training Mode - extremely user friendly mod for practicing both basic and advanced techniques. Highly recommended for new players.
• Slippi Netplay - Play low latency netplay against random opponents matched near your skill. Takes 5-10 games for it to learn your skill level.
• Melee Newbie Netplay - Discord for matchmaking with new melee players
• Blippi.gg - Wide collection of resources
• Melee Library - Another collection of melee resources

THANKS!

CREDITS: This presentation template was created by Slidesgo, including icons by Flaticon, and infographics & images by Freepik.

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