Night 1
Night One I tried out R.O.B. Same drill as always, Training mode, Level 5 CPUs, and then Online Quickplay. Won two online matches out of five. Not a huge fan of R.O.B. to be honest. He has slow air speed, slow ground speed, and not very many fast moves. You really have to spam his Side-B. Once someone starts combo’ing you, there’s not much you can do to get out of it. Playing as him I learned you have to plan your attacks in advance because he’s too slow to react to your opponent. You can’t mix up you recovery as much as you’d think, even though he has good recovery. You can edgeguard with your Neutral-B, Down-B, and Down-Air. Playing against him – once you hit jim don’t let up, he can’t really get out of combos. His recovery is predictable even though it’s good. Be careful when returning from the ledge against him, he has a lot of ledge trapping tools.
I also played some more Smash Bros 3DS Smash mode. Just enough to unlock Ganondorf.
Night 2
Byleth came out! But it was kind of late. Once the update was installed, I labbed Byleth out a bit. I figured out a few combos. I played three level 5 CPUs. Then I went online and played 10 matches. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed in Byleth. Byleth’s moves are so slow. They’ve got a lot of endlag as well. Byleth moves like a heavy character. Luckily hits like a heavy as well, or the character would be totally unviable. Very good recovery, but my opponents were interrupting it very easily. Byleth seems to have some great edgeguarding tools, especially the neutral B, the Failnaught. But those tools don’t work great against other Byleths in dittos.
To be honest, I didn’t really like the character that much. Especially compared to my usual characters of Joker and Young Link. The speed is so slow it feels like slow motion. I didn’t think I did well with Byleth either, but apparently I won 4 out of the 10 online matches. Which also happens to be good enough to qualify as my best winning percentage character online.
Night 3
Prepping for the tournament, I decied I needed ot take Night 3 to polish up my secondaries. Played against all the swordies with my Young Link. In local play against CPUs. I beat them all, but that was against Level 7s. Then played against the “small” characters Pikachu, Pichu, Kirby, and Jigglypuff with Ness. Beat them all, again at Level 7, but honestly there were some close matches.
Night 4
Night 4, I decided I needed to have my gameplan down for when my opponent also plays one of my characters. So first I played against a Level 6, 7, and 8 Joker with Ness. Then played against a Level 6, 7, and 8 Ness with Young Link; and finished with against Level 6,7, and Young Link with Joker. Because I think Joker beats Young Link, Young Link beats Ness, and Ness beats Joker. At least with my play-style. I won almost every match. I lost one match against Ness with Young Link because I trying to interrupt Ness’s offstage recovery and got hit with a PKthunder 2.
I also looked at the patch notes for 7.0 a little tonight. It looks like Young Link got some decent buffs. I was finding it easier to kill with him which I think is because the launch distance of his Up Air and Up Smash were increased. It obviously makes him even more competitive. Joker actually got some minor nerfs. His downward guns don’t reach as far and Arsense doesn’t last as long after receiving damage. So this will make it slightly easier for opponents to recover and give them some less time to take major damage from Arsene. It’s not going to stop anyone from playing Joker though.
I’m also seriously considering pikcing up Roy as as fourth character. Not because he’s so amazing, I just have a lot of fun playing as him and he’s the only sword character I really enjoy.
Night 5
Night 5 was mostly Online Quickplay. I concentrated on shoring up my pocket characters for the tournament. I played two sets with Ness and two sets with Young Link Online. Then I switched to Joker until I was tired. I did some basic hand warming in Training mode before I played each character.
This was probably my best night Online up to this point. I claimed eight Smash tags, so would have won most of the sets. Things were starting to click with each character, and the buffs to Young Link were helping me get KOs more quickly.
Night 6
Night 6 was all about getting Joker ready for the tournament. Started with some hand warmers again and then went to Online. Actually started playing a few tournaments since the available tourney was 2 Stock, No Items, Omega stages only. And I got destroyed in the first round three times in a row. If you ever think you’re getting to high on yourself, just go into an online tourney. You’re going to lose at some point, and very, very badly.
Then went into Online Quickplay. Did even better than the night before, claiming nine Smash tags!
I can see the improvement compared to when I first started maining Joker. This week during my online matches I really concentrated on not moving without a purpose, watching my opponent, being safe as I attacked, and mixing up my approaches and recoveries. I think that really spurred the better online performance.
Also, I beat a Byleth with a Mr. E tag. I know the professional Smasher Mr. E has been playing Byleth lately, but it wasn’t him.
Also in Smash Bros for 3DS I finished unlocking all the characters! And then I played one round of the All-Star mode, didn’t complete it and gave up.
Night 7
Night 7, well actually Day 7, was the North American Online Tournament! Same rules as last time- No Items, 3 Stocks, Best 2-of-3, on the normal Tournament approved levels with Random Stage choice on. I did pretty well! I went 4-6, which is better than my 2-8 in the previous North American Online Tournament and much better than my 0-2 at SmashCon. But if I go to SmashCon this year, will I still go 0-2? Probably yes, actually, it really depends on the draw. But I feel like I’m continuously improving, so all the practice feels like it’s paying off, instead of being a huge waste of time.
It stared out kind of rough logistics wise. The first set I beat a Terry 2-1. It should have been 2-0 but I was distracted in the 2nd match by my kids.
The next set took over half an hour to complete. The other player was hosting the Arena and did not have their settings right at all. First we played on Battlefield with Items Off, except Final Smashes were On. They were playing as Byleth against my Joker. I pretty easily handled them, except they got their Final Smash to get one stock. So then I told them Final Smashes should be off and we should restart Game 1. So, they turned Final Smashes Off and they switched to Cloud. I stayed as Joker, we got a legal stage and I won. Though honestly, they did better as Cloud. But then the next few levels we played weren’t legal stages. I beat them as Byleth at the Garreg Mach Monastery stage. Then the next stage was Gerudo valley so I walked off three times. Then I told them their stages weren’t correct. Then we agreed to play on Smashville, but they went and actually fixed the Random Stage Selection. So we had an official 2nd match and I actually lost, but really because I kept trying to use the Joker’s Down-B on Byleth’s Neutral B. Then we played a game 3 and pretty easily won.
And their settings still weren’t completely correct, their time limit was wrong, but hopefully I helped them get them closer for the next time. And to be fair, the way the rules were presented was confusing. The Player Guide Link shows basic settings, but all the needed settings are buried in the Official Rules. I was trying to be nice and help them and not sour them to the tournament and the community.
Anyway, no more drama after that. I mostly lost, but did pick up two more sets to go 4-6. Though somewhat funnily I either got 0-2’d or won 0-2 for the last eight matches. I think I’m right in the area where I can easily defeat beginners that don’t change their strategies, but can’t beat mid-tier and upper-tier players. Against the beginners I’m just watching what their doing and punishing them, but against the better players I can’t do that. They’re constantly attacking me and I have trouble breaking out. The better players were constantly applying pressure, performing combos, executing kill confirms, adjusting to my tendencies, and making it hard for my character to come down or recover to stage. Conversely I was really only going offstage to edgeguard players that weren’t as skilled as me.
And after all that extra prep, I only used a secondary once. A really good Kirby was destroying my Joker so I switched to Ness. I still got destroyed and went 0-2. I beat a Ness with my Joker, but didn’t bother switching since the opponent was just throwing out PKFire and Smash Attacks non-stop. Pretty easy to avoid though I did eat more KOs than I should.
To get to the next skill level, I know I need to go back and really get down pat the bread and butter combos and kill confirms of my characters. I need to perfect the timing of my killing moves. Mostly I need to work on breaking out combos, recovering without taking more damage, and figure out how to get down from being launched in the air without getting more beat up. I need to get the timing of my kill moves down. Even though this was an internet tournament some of the opponents were killing me with what felt like split-second reactions. They just had hard-wired when to throw out the big move before I could react.
But I may be taking another break. Oscars are coming up, so going to be getting ready for them and prepping my Best Movies list. Looking forward to finishing off Smash 3DS, trying some more Byleth, and completing my list of mains to try out and other characters to play as.