Fundamentals in Smash Ultimate 3/23/22 – 3/29/22

It’s hard to say what kind of week I had. On the one hand, I went 1-2 at a weekly in Greely, but my one win was on Acid, the top seed of the tournament and a top 5 player in our State. I also got top 8 at IPA which is my first top 8 in Denver ever. My losses weren’t horrible and I got some good wins, but I’m very disappointed with my play, specifically after I beat Acid. I learned to not pop off until after the tournament because afterward, I wasn’t able to focus on my matches.

I fought Chronos round 2 at IPA. Here’s the VOD. 

I lost but I feel like I was playing well. I need to figure out how to play around the Chronos craziness, but I had some great plays. I went on a 3 game winning streak in losers that ended once I ran into Robber. Robber and Chronos, my friends from my city that I drove all the way to Denver to fight… fun. Still, I got a top 8, made a couple of upsets, and played some of the most solid smash I feel like I’ve ever played. I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made, but I know I still have a lot to learn. I’m going to continue to try my hardest to make advancements and keep my drive alive. I want to win. I’m getting closer, but I’m not there yet. 

So this week I’ll be looking into fundamentals. Why? Well, a friend of mine offered to make me some stream graphics. I stream at Twitch.tv/ICYoyo by the way. Check me out. I told him I would pay him, but he said he wouldn’t take my money but would take some lessons from me in Smash. This friend is named Skastner. I met him on Valorant. I learned that he and his friends all played smash as well and we all started playing together. None of them are tournament-goers, so I was, as they put it, bulling them. Playing with them reminded me of when I used to play Smash with my friends online before going to tournaments. It made me super nostalgic. Now Skast isn’t starting completely from scratch, but I felt like getting down the fundamentals of the game would be a good start, and I’m glad I looked into the topic because I soon realized how important fundamentals are to getting better at every level of smash. 

I guess the first thing to do is to define fundamentals in Smash. I thought it would be easy to define, but it wasn’t. If we go by the definition of “fudementals”, it says “a central or primary rule or principle on which something is based.” So for Smash, I guess fundamentals mean how well you understand the rules of the game? 

If you’re completely new to Smash, which I doubt many readers are, you can watch this video by Izaw that explains all of the basic movement and mechanics of the game. If you don’t know what a short hop or a grab is, check it out. If you do, you don’t need to. I offer it only to make sure we’re all starting from the same knowledge point. 

You might hear that certain characters are “fundies characters”. These characters tend to be more basic than others because of their emphasis on fundamentals, rather than a specific move, combo, or trait. A good example of a fundies character would be Pit. He has very few hard-to-execute mechanics and is rewarded for good game sense. He thrives on fundamental knowledge of the game. Some characters have less of an emphasis on understanding the game and reward you for understanding their specific game plan more. A Steve player that doesn’t know the Pit match-up doesn’t need to worry as much as a Pit who doesn’t know the Steve match-up. Steve is a character that can hit you once and potentially kill you while Pit needs to get hit after hit. This doesn’t mean that Steve players don’t need to have solid fundamentals though. At a high level where their opponents knows about Steve’s insane combo game and can avoid his combo starters, Steve will require solid fundamentals to get his hits. 

Skast was using Falco. Falco has an insane combo game from a singular easy-to-hit move, uptilt. After our first game, I could see that Skast wasn’t going for these easy combo starters let alone the combos themselves. He was instead mashing on my shield with everything but uptilt it felt. 

A big habit lower-level and mid-level players fall into is constantly throwing out moves. I know because I did this forever. Hitting your opponent is the easiest way to release that dopamine we all crave. In Skast’s case, he was holding the stick towards me and hitting the A button, but for me a few months ago, it manifested in me constantly attacking my opponent with aerials. I’d try to space them to be safe, but it was always my plan. I wasn’t mixing up my timing or tomahawk grabbing, I was just spamming moves and sometimes it worked, but higher-level players could see right through my gameplan. You want your moves to be thought-out, and well-executed. Falco has some great moves when he’s right on top of his opponent, his best being uptilt. It’s huge, it’s his best combo starter, and decently hard to punish. Falco has a very simple game plan that if executed, leads to your high-damage combos and your kill set up and it’s all from one move. Uptilt.

Having a game plan with your character is key. If you don’t know what your character wants to do, watch a guide or some VODs of top-level players playing your character. Do note that the game plan most people use doesn’t have to be what you use, and that game plan changes drastically in different matchups. For Falco, he wants an uptilt to start his high damage combos. Now if your opponent is good enough, they know Falco wants an uptilt and they’ll stay away from him. Now Falco ain’t the faster bird on the block, so he’ll need a way for his opponent to approach him. That’s where his laser comes in. Falco’s laser is an amazing projectile that forces your opponent to do something, and if you build up some % with it, it forces them to approach you. Once you understand your character’s game plan, you can start to work around it to figure out what your opponent is going to do against it, making the rest of your character’s kit a lot more viable because your opponent should be playing around your default gameplan. For Falco, this will manifest into side b’ing your opponent in neutral, grabbing them, pressuring their shield, and calling out their movement with fairs and nairs. I’m no Falco expert, but that’s what all those birds do to me. 

My friend Shimire showed up during the session and gave Skast some tips as well, including against Palutena, the character I was using to fight him with. He told him to remain grounded as much as possible because Palutena wants to catch you in the air. This is another thing crucial to fundamentals. Knowing what your opponent is looking for. Every character has a game plan, some very simple and some more complicated. Palutena wants to land a nair so when playing against one, people will shield a lot to avoid the nair. Falco wants an up tilt and can pressure you with laser so you want to camp your burst range in front of him. Knowing your opponent’s game plan is important, and while you can know what their character wants or how they play from experience or watching VODs, you can also learn from the first stocks or game of a set. At IPA I fought a Lucina round 1 that smacked me up for the first two stocks of game 1, but I brought it back, and while I still lost the game, the knowledge I gained allowed me to take games 2 and 3. This is what players call “downloading” and it’s a part of fundamentals.

Skast made some improvements, but he needs to get those uptilt combos down. When you’re not comfortable with a combo, practice it in training mode, especially if it is key to your character’s game plan, but for now, knowing that he needs to get the uptilt in the first place is a good step in the right direction. 

I’d now like to look into something that I don’t hear many people talk about and never knew the name of until I found a video on it, the neutral triangle. Many Smash scenarios can be broken down into a triangle/rock, paper, scissor situation. The most basic triangle of Smash/fight games is Shield>Attack, Grab>Shield, Attack>Grab. This is pretty basic and everyone who knows even a bit about Smash will know this triangle situation. A less obvious triangle situation is neutral and I think this video expertly describes what they call, the neutral triangle. 

Sub to this channel and check out their other videos. It’s a shame they’re not putting out more stuff because what they have published is amazing. 

Anyhow, the neutral triangle will help you get your openings. As you get better with the neutral triangle, you will see improvement in your accuracy and defense. I think once you get the basics like the execution of your combos down, the neutral triangle is just as important as learning your character when it comes to improving. Again, some characters are much better at taking one neutral win and turning it into massive damage or a stock, but even they have to land that initial hit and that’s where the neutral triangle becomes integral. If your opponent understands this concept better than you, you may never get that initial hit. 

I feel like the training session with Skast went well. I was lucky to have a chat full of my Smash friends and Shimire in the call and the arena to help. Follow Shimire btw. I feel like Skast was playing much better towards the end of the session and hopefully, he learned some things. We mostly focused on the game plan with Falco and basic tips, but once he gets those down more I think I’ll start introducing the neutral triangle. 

This was a learning experience for me as well. I’m not a teacher but I learned a lot from this session as well. Once I feel like I’ve helped Skast as much as I can, maybe I’ll take on someone else who wants to learn from me. I feel like we learn when we teach others, and it’s fun to help people find success in Smash. Here’s the VOD of the stream if you’re interested. Sorry for the poor audio for the discord homies. I’ll fix it in the future. 

Hope this can help some people. I know fundamentals are seen as basic, but I really think they are something that grows right alongside us as players. Also, I’ve never seen anyone talk about the neutral triangle until I found that video and I think it’s an important part of fundamentals wanted to spread to word on the topic. 

Next week I plan to talk about VOD review. I’m not very experienced with VOD reviews, but I have some friends who are. I have that set on stream with Chronos and I want to review it because I feel like I was super close to taking the first game and I’d love to know what to keep doing and what to improve on. Follow me on Twitter and Twitch to know when that’s going to happen if you want to join in. Thanks for reading!