It’s been a while, but I’m finally back to Smash for this week at least. This week was the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate North American Online Open November 2019 tournament; Nintendo’s latest official tournament. This time it was using much more competitive rulesets. (best2-3, no items, pretty Standard Stage list)
What have I been doing while away? Well, I did make some more progress in World of Light. But mostly I’ve been testing Mains.
Choosing a Main
So, I haven’t finished testing each fighter I want to test for a main. With the NA Online Open this week and potentially entering a tournament at the end of the month I’m probably going to stick with what I have for now.
And right now my main is…Joker. He has great recovery, is both a projectile and a close up character and I can kill with him. Though as I’ve been tested him out I noticed his two glaring weakness – sword characters and the tiny characters. So I decided I needed at least one secondary. In the past few weeks, I’ve been testing Joker and some other characters against CPUs to figure out what secondaries are needed for what characters. So my old main, Ness, happens to do well against the likes of Pikachu and Pichu. So for those Pokemon, Inkling, Kirby and Greninja I’m going to use Ness as my secondary. He doesn’t have trouble actually hitting the smaller light characters. But Ness is also bad against the swordies. So I needed another character to face the dreaded Fire Emblem characters.
I already tested Wario, Olimar, and Young Link against the likes of Lucina, Marth, Chrom, and Roy. Young Link was by far the easiest matchup. So I’m going to use him against Swordies.
I still need to put in some serious time to Palutena, Olimar, Mega Man, and Zero Suit Samus before I make my final decision. And I want to give Pokemon Trainer, Fox, Wolf, Inkling, Dr. Mario, and Kirby at least cursory tries. But these additional labs will have to wait until there’s no tournament in sight. For now, I’m happy with this lineup
Main – Joker
Secondary for Sword Characters – Young Link
Secondary for Light Characters – Ness
Character for Clowning – Wario
Night One
I practiced Joker in Training Mode for a bit. Then I went online and played Online Quickplay. I played about 3 Rounds, playing best 2 of 3. I did pretty well, won more than I lost. It started to feel like all this practice is paying off, especially with Joker specifically. Also, feel like I’ve gone on to another level. At one level you punish your opponent with a Smash attack when they miss. At the next level, you don’t throw out Smash attacks because you realize you can be punished when you miss. Then at the next level, you set up Smash attacks to hit your opponent right as they recover or land. I’m sure there are levels after this, but I feel like I took a step forward.
Night Two
Practiced with Joker in Training Mode first off. This week I”m concentrating on teching. I keep doing it too early and air-dodging instead. Then I went into Online Quickplay. I was so tired before I booted the game up I shouldn’t have even bothered. I lost like six games in a row. Then I tried to clown around with Bowser and Wario and still lost.
Then I messed around against local CPUs a bit.
Night Three
On Night Three Terry Bogard came out! I went into Training Mode and practiced his moves for a bit. Terry is probably the hardest character to learn, his moves have additional moves. His movelist is by far the longest.
Then I played against some Level 6 CPUs using my Ultimate North American Online Open ruleset with Terry. I lost three times in a row. Terry is hard to use. I can see how playing against somehow who really knows who to use Terry can be frustrating though.
Though, if you were playing against someone who really knew how to sue Terry I can see how that could be very frustrating. Is Terry the highest threshold character? Even more than Peach and Ryu/Ken? The character has amazing edge guarding and recovery options. The problem is if you don’t have everything down you could easily self-destruct instead of recover.
Night 4
I watched Sakurai Terry presentation. That gave me the bug to go back and play Classic Mode for each character. I don’t know if I’m actually going to do that, I haven’t even tried all the Extra Modes yet. But that really speaks to this game’s staying power.
I started the Night in Training Mode as always. Still working on teching. Still having trouble with the timing but was able to tech roll right and tech roll left a few times.
Then I went online and tried to play about six rounds. Something was off that night because nearly every match was laggy. I only played a full set once because there were no stable connections. I quit out of Ultimate, checked I was on Wired connection, and restarted. But I still had issues. The Smash Ball loading icon seem to be taking longer than normal on both offline and online. I hope this isn’t a 6.0 bug.
It was about half and half in terms of wins and losses. But none of them felt representative of my skill either way because of the lag.
Some of the matchups I encountered did bring up some interesting questions. I faced a Ness who beat me by outzoning me. I played a Cloud that almost dominated me with a combo of zone and sword moves. Which made me consider a few matchups I haven’t really tested with Joker – Ness, Cloud, Shulk, and Link.
After Online crapped out I did go into Classic Mode with Joker. Starting on Normal Difficulty I got through without many issues. Didn’t have to continue once. Then, after I checked which characters I still needed to play, and it looks like I had played every character except the DLC characters? Though I didn’t check all 74. That didn’t seem right but I guess that originally was the first place I looked for main.
Then I played some Level 7 CPUs with my North American Open Ruleset. I tested both Joker and Young Link against Link, Shulk, and Cloud. Results weren’t conclusive. I think I’m going to stick with Joker for the Link matchup. Young Link is just too similar to Link and I think Joker’s pretty even against Link anyway. For Shulk and Cloud I’m not sure, but I think I’m going to go Young Link. I think in a tournament if I lose with Joker I’ll change to the secondary, but if I win the first match I’ll let it play out.
Thinking about matchups brought up the final matchup questions, what about against other Jokers? Well if Joker is my Main I should be the best with him. But I will be running into a lot of other Jokers and some will be better than me. So if I’m getting destroyed by another Joker I’ll switch to Ness or Young Link. I’m not going to learn a fourth character just to counterpick my own main. I’m just not good enough with Pikachu or Lucina to justify that.
Night 5
Same as the nights before – training mode, then Online quickplay with Joker. Then I also played some more Classic Mode. I completed it with Wario and Young Link. However, this night I had to continue multiple times for both characters.
Night 6
I started off testing some additional matchups. Who’s my best character against Joker? Who’s my best character against Ness? I tested against Level 7 Joker with both Ness and Young Link. I was able to win both times, but with Ness, I think I had a more dominant performance.
Then I tested against a Level 7 Ness. Lost with both Joker and Young Link. But I got totally bodied with Joker. I think Ness is small enough that he’s a matchup problem for Joker. I really don’t have a good solution for that. If I run into a good Ness they can easily handle my JOker. But if there’s a good Ness they’re going t be better than my Ness. Looking at the matchups it looks like I need to turn to Young Link in this situation. So in the paper, rock, scissors of my current characters – against another Joker I need to turn to Ness, against another Ness I need to turn to Young Link, and against another Young Link I need to stay as Joker.
So later I labbed Joker in training- still working on my techs! I went Online with Joker and had some wins and losses. Though annoyingly I had some losses against sword characters I plan to counterpick out of Joker for.
Then, even later that night I did some training with Young Link and tried some Online Quickplay. I lost every single match with Young Link, but I needed to get some reps in.
Day 7
Finally, the Day of the North American Online Open! I set up my Switch and did some basic warmup in training. Then I hopped into the tourney.
For the tournament, you were supposed to play a minimum of eight games. I ended up playing 10. It was rough at the start though, Ilost the first six matches and only had picked up one game during the whole time. But then I 2-0’d my next two opponents. That reached the minimum amount of games and I probably should have stopped while I was ahead. I was dominated in the next two matches. But 2-8 isn’t a bad record. Certainly better than 0-1 in the first Online tournament and 0-2 at Super Smash Con.
I feel pretty happy with the results. I can tell I’ve gotten much better, particularly as Joker. I can also tell I still have a long way to go. I was still getting stuck in multi-hit attacks. Some opponents got some ridiculous combos chains off against me. A Mario ran the Mario ladder on me and a Bowser Side B’d from the edge to the blast screen.
I may join another In-Person local at the end of the month, so I want to shore up my Joker, Young Link, and Ness before that. In the online tournament, I never switched characters against sword characters, partially because I wasn’t losing too bad with Joker and partially because I”m not too confident in my Young Link yet. I did switch out against an Inkling to Ness. But that didn’t really matter, the player I was facing was so much better than me they were always going to win.
So what am I looking forward to next week? Learning more about Young Link for starters. I need to get his bread and butters and kill confirms down. I need to put some more practice in as Ness against the lighter characters and against Joker. And sigh, seeing if I can finish World of Light.