So, now that the tournament is over I can get back to finish my Smash marathon. And choosing a new main. And playtesting controllers.
Let’s split up this week entry by different subjects instead of just purely by nights.
On Night One, I played a lot of World of Light. Probably got through about two and a half areas, unlocked about five new fighters. I’m still playing the last fighter unlocked until I unlock the next character. Now, when I run into trouble I’m trying to default to the character I’m testing out as a Main. And then if that doesn’t work I go back to Kirby.
I gave up on trying no spirits for the first few tries. When unlocking a character I do that, or if there are no conditions on that space I’ll go no spirits. But about 99% of the spaces have some weird quirk. And more and more I’ve had to turn spirits on to unlock new Fighters.
On Night Two, I kept going on World of Light. Playing a lot of it at once shows what a slog it can be. And there are so many two or more Vs. you battles! They are so annoying.
No time for Smash on Night Three.
In only played World of Light on Night Four. I cleared the DK Jungle but not without some help. There was a Master difficulty space that had multiple characters attacking you with bullet bills. Just not fair in any way. So after trying over 10 times with over three different characters I put the difficulty on Super Easy and cleared it on the first try. Then I put it back to Normal difficulty. Then when I was trying to unlock Diddy Kong the percentages made no sense. I was hitting him with Final Smashes and he was taking only 16% damage and he hit me with two aerials and I was almost at 40%. Some shenanigans were clearly going on in the background so I added Spirits.
I didn’t play WOL on Night Five or Night Seven. I did for a bit on Night Six, really just long enough to unlock Ness and then play as him on a few spaces. I did pretty well with him; sometimes the old Main feels good.
My goal is to play Online daily but didn’t really reach that threshold this week. The new addition of tournaments is really nice, and I like how the switch up the rulesets. Occasionally they’re almost like a real tournament. I have yet to win one round in an online tournament. So, pretty much the same as real-life.
One thing that’s difficult about online is the lag. Even on faster connections, the moves don’t hit as precisely as playing locally. So, it’s hard to time. But the Beyond the Metagame podcast had some good advice – practice timing locally and the mental part of Smash online. I have to keep that in mind.
What’s also difficult is the opponent matching. My Roster GSP is over 5 million, though I have no characters with a GSP over 300,000. So, not one is near Elite Smash. I’ve played every character at least once in Online Quickplay and there’s a number of character I either have only one win or one loss with. Not sure how all of that factors into Roster GSP. Searching online, I can’t find a definitive answer. The best guesses are – total of the characters GSP (that you have played), your overall GSP as a player, or an average of all characters GSP (this one doesn’t seem to work.)
Your Roster GSP never seems to go down, no matter how bad you do. My opinion is that it’s a GSP of your actual player rating and that’s what Nintendo is using for matchmaking. But I wish both your overall skill and the GSP of the character you’re playing was taken into account. I have a not great win rate with Ness, it’s around 10%. But when I’m playing well I can probably get a win or two each night. But when I switch to any other characters, I can’t get any wins at all. It’s not all that I’m not used to those characters as much, the opponents I’m facing have the same level of skill as when I play as Ness. It makes picking up another character very frustrating.
And if you’re wondering how I got those single wins with the other characters – 1. it was before I put a lot of time in as Ness 2. Most wins were playing on levels with Stage effects or walk off areas.
On Night One I decided to start by practicing Hero in Training Mode and figure out what his best kill moves are. And my normal training as well, though not the whole set of drills I had been doing before Smash Con.
Then I went online and played some Hero. I lost a few matches but I did win a match. I didn’t feel great about it; it didn’t feel like I won through skill. Then I switched to Pikachu and didn’t win any matches.
On Night Two I watched ESAM Beginner’s Guide to Pikachu and then hit training mode with Pikachu. I tried to practice a few combos but had a lot of trouble stringing more than 4 or 5 hits together. By the time I went to the tournament I was hitting my combos with Ness, though I wasn’t timing the continuation of the combos after the first aerial attack well. Often I was forgetting to jump after hitting the first aerial attack.
Then I played Online Quickplay and a few Tournaments and didn’t win any matches. I’m having a lot of trouble getting the kills with Pikachu. And I was getting killed by obvious smash attacks when I was recovering from the edge. I need to vary my Up B recovers more. I’m not sure how I can take stocks sooner, when I’m pursuing my opponents off the edge they’re easily avoiding it, which I would think would be harder. I’m going way farther out there and attacking with aerials. Maybe I just ran into opponents with better recoveries this week.
On Night Four I watched ESAM’s Intermediate Guide to playing Pikachu but didn’t have time to practice or go online.
I played a little bit of online on Night Five, no wins again. I had a goal to play 10 matches on Night Six and Seven. I did reach that goal. I went 0-4 on Night Six and 1-5 on Night Seven. Though, on Night Seven the losses were starting to feel closer.
So, as I stated last week, I need a new main in Ultimate. I went 0-2 at the tournament and died four times because I missed the PKThunder recovery. So on average, I lost a stock each game. That’s awful. And it’s going to be better in the long run to choose a higher tier character than try to perfect my Ness play.
So each week, I”m going all out on one character until I find my main and maybe a good secondary. And Ness can be my tertiary? Here’s my list of characters to try
- Pikachu
- Lucina
- Joker
- Pokemon Trainer
- Zero Suit Samus
- Olimar
- Palutena
- Fox/Wolf
- Wario
- Inkling
- Dr. Mario
- Kirby
So the top of my list are Pikachu and Lucina. They are the two characters that came closest to dethroning Ness last time I had a crisis of faith in him. They’re also top-tier characters. I considered Pichu as well but she was nerfed in the recent patches and general opinion has moved to Pikachu being the stronger play. I did not consider Marth; Lucina has been considered the stronger character from day one.
For Joker through Wario, I just looked at the top ten players on Panda Global Rankings. I want to try out the characters that those players main since they’re the best players in the world.
For Inkling, Dr. Mario, and Kirby they were the remaining fighters that I’ve tried out in the past. I like playing them and I’ve had decent results with them. Inkling was the first character I won online matches with. Kirby is the character I always turn to when stuck in World of Light. and Dr. Mario is a character I keep returning to each time I’m trying to find my main.
So, Pikachu was this week and didn’t go so well. By the End of Night Six, I had NEVER won a match with him online, even though this isn’t the first time I considered maining him.
As I stated previously I’m having trouble finishing stocks with Pikachu. In World of Light, an Isabella got to over 230% and Donkey Kong got to over 200%. I had to hit DK with like 4 PK Thunders before he would die.
In one episode of Beyond the Metagame they talked about choosing a main and needing to know your strengths and weakness as a player when choosing one. So, clearly I have issues with finishing opponents, edge guarding, and recovery. So I should choose a character that can help cover those weaknesses. So Joker?
I’m pretty wiped on Smash Bros. now. I think I’m going to take a week off and during that week just practice and play CPUs. The grind of World of Light and the depression of losing in Online Quickplay and Tournaments are starting to wear on me.