Ok, so this may have been the week that broke me in terms of Ultimate. But will get to that later on.
I’m not going to split this up into Nights instead I’m going to split it up by games. Let’s start with Melee.
Melee
So, playing Project+ and not really having a main inspired me to think about re-evaulating my mains for the majority of Smash games. Ness isn’t great in Melee, he’s actually F Tier. I mean he’s actually probably best in Smash 4 or Ultimate. But anyway I thought I’d test out some characters again. So, let’s lay out the testing.
Okay, so there are six tournament legal stages in Melee and there are six characters that are A tier or higher. So once again, I thought I’d assign each high tier to a stage and play against a Level 6 CPU on it. I couldn’t get it exactly perfect, but I think I got a pretty decent list of playing a top tier on a stage they would be good at. The pairings I went with were:
Fox – Final Destination
Falco – Battlefield
Marth – Yoshi’s Story
Sheik – Fountains of Dreams
Jigglypuff – Dreamland
Peach – Pokemon Stadium 2
Peach was the one where it was kind of the only character and stage left. When I was using one of the characters I didn’t do a ditto. Instead I just played Captain Falcon instead. He wasn’t actually next on the tier list (Ice Climbers was), but he’s so prevalent I thought it made sense.
So then I had to decide who to test. A couple of posts ago I had some crazy notion to find a main for 64, Melee, Project+, and Ultimate and had tested Fox, Captain Falcon and Pikachu. But Pikachu was the only one who really came out of that. I really disliked playing as Fox and Captain Falcon. I actually enjoy Roy more than Marth in every Smash game, but Roy is F Tier and Marth is S Tier so I thought I’d try him out as well. Since I needed a swordie. And of the remaining B Tiers or higher the only one I wanted to really try out was Jigglypuff. So, in the end I ended up testing Jigglypuff, Pikachu, Marth, and Ness in that order.
So starting with Jigglypuff was kind of rough. Didn’t beat Fox, Falco, or Sheik. But then I really got the hang of it and won the last three. I started getting the timing and spacing of Rest down. And I really digged how great Puff is offstage. Forward Airing or Back Airing the opponent twice in the top left or top right to take a stock is so satisfying.
Then I played Pikachu. I did about the same. Didn’t beat Fox, Falco, or Sheik again. I did really beat up on Peach though, that seems like a good match-up for Pikachu. And was able to beat Puff pretty easily too. I enjoyed being more familiar with the moveset since Pikachu is my main in 64 and I’ve always played a lot of him in every Smash game. But his moveset is better in both Ultimate and 64 in my opinion. And I like that he has some actual recovery with his Side-B and Up-B compared to other characters, but I really dislike the fast-falling speed in Melee. You really can’t pursue your opponent offstage the way you can in other Smash games. You too often SD.
Then I played as Marth. Once again didn’t beat Fox or Falco but was able to beat everyone else. I think I may have just been getting better as Melee at this point. I can see the appeal of Marth, I just dislike his recovery enough to not want to main him. Though maybe I should play him based on the results.
The results weren’t totally clear to me. So I played as Jigglypuff against Pikachu. I was able to win, but I think that matchup is in Pikachu’s favor. The floatiness of Puff really allows for some easy Thunder attacks.
And then I still wasn’t satsified so I ran through it again as Ness. And I actually did worse than with all other characters, but I was able to beat Fox and Falco. Because I gimped the Firefox recovery with PKThunder.
So honestly I’m still not sure. I think I may need some additional testing before I start getting serious into any one character and start learning their combos, match-ups, etc. Right now I’m thinking Puff overall, Pikachu as counter-pick against Puff, and Ness as counter-pick against Fox and Falco. I know that Level 6 CPUs aren’t anything compared to a even a semi serious Smasher, but I have to start somewhere and if a Level 6 CPU is destroying me that says something about me and the character I’m playing.
Ultimate
Ok so now on to Ultimate and how I finally got fed up with it. Just as a reminder I’ve playing it almost every week and nearly every day since Christmas of 2018.
You may recall that the end of the last post, I was excited about testing out Olimar for the week. After scraping by with the bottom tiers of Rosalina & Luma, Robin, Kirby, for a week each and then playing just a day of Simon, Richter, and Ganondorf each I was ready to have a character carry me for a bit. Olimar did not carry me at all. But anyway let’s get on with it.
So first off, I expanded my training a bit. I was already practicing “Expert Fundamentals” of Instant Dash Attacks, Dash Cancels, Turn Around Dash Cancels,Pivot Grab, and Pivot Cancels. Because I was getting so frustrated in Disadvantage I added pr acting Disadvantage state per How to Survive Disadvantage in Smash Ultimate per Pro Guides Smash Ultimate. Also, I added practicing follow ups to each throws, practiced landing five spikes in a row, practicing landing five kill confirms in a row per the practice portion of an episode of Smash Bros Cast A Smash Bros Podcast. They also recommended practicing your movesets for different opponent percentages, which I did a few days as well.
So anyway that’s a lot of practice. So this week I started in Training Mode just pr acting general moves, bread and butter and kill confirms, and disadvantage state with Olimar. Then I played 3 CPUs. 1st day started on Level 5 and increased until the last day I was playing Level 9. Then I went Online and played three “sets” of Best-of-3. Then I would go back to Training Mode and practice the remaining fundamentals I hadn’t worked on yet. So as you can tell it’s a lot of training, and actually more than playing Online matches. About 15 minutes warm-up before the matches and 20 minutes additional training after.
To be honest it’s just starting to be too much. I feel like I’m “practicing” more than I’m “playing” the game each day. I’m playing over an hour of Ultimate each night and only playing 9-12 online matches each time. And it’s just not translating into improving right now. I’m working on all this advanced tech, but I’m not implementing it in Online matches. I know that’s mostly my fault, I should be trying to work in the techniques when I’m playing against CPUs first and I’m not really doing it. But I’d also hope that working half and hour on something each day would make it more second nature to you.
But anyway before we close the book on Ultimate, how do I feel about Olimar? Honestly I’m pretty disappointed. At one time people were talking about him as a Top Five character, but I just don’t see it. Maybe it’s the nerfs, or maybe I’m just burnt out on Smash, but I don’t think he shows much stuff. The Pikmin are annoying, but they don’t do much damage and are easy to kill. He has a good recovery, but it’s worse with more Pikmin, and pretty easy to punish his landing. His smash attacks don’t cover enough ground or air to be effective most of the time. Some of his aerials are good, but not top in the game. He’s not slow, but he’s not fast either. When an opponent whiffed on a Smash attack I could never punish them. The best thing about him is his grab range with all three Pikmin. He’s definitely a Zoner character but all the other projectile characters can outzone him. Rushdown characters can get in his face before he can do anything. Heavy and Sword characters can just use the higher priority of their attacks to render his attacks useless. Once he gets hit its very hard to get out of disadvantage.
I really don’t get how he’s considered a top level character. He’s still high tier in the most recent Reddit tier list, but in a recent tier list based on polls of Smash Professionals he was down in the 20s. It could be that I just suck as him, but I think he loses most match-ups.
And on to how Olimar broke me. So, I every night I was playing and practicing Olimar. But I skipped one night so I split what would usually be two separate day sessions into Day 7 and Night 7. So Day 7 I fought three Level 8 CPUs for warm-up and lost each match. Then I went online and lost six matches in a row (three sets). Then on Night 7 I fought three Level 9 CPUs and won one match. Then I went to Online Quickplay and again lost six matches in a row. So I went 0-12 in one day Online and 1-17 total. It was completely demoralizing.
I’m not sure what exactly happened. It may have been a couple things – I was completely let down by Olimar for one. There were multiple matches were it just didn’t feel like I had any chance of winning just based on the matchup. I had won a few Quickplay matches with him during the week, but honestly each time I felt like the opponent lost more than I won. And I struggled just against CPUs the whole week, when I was able to beat them with “worse” characters with little issue.
Maybe I’m just burnt out. I was missing a lot of inputs the last night so the wrong special attacks were coming out. But I knew when Night 7 was over that 1) I was done with Smash Ultimate or 2) I needed an long extended break.
Maybe there are some other factors as well. I haven’t played local multiplayer with anyone for quite some time. Which is always the most fun way to play Smash. I’m tired of seeing the same 10-12 characters online over and over again. And its so frustrating when you can see what your opponents doing but your character is too bad to stop it. That might be a john, but F Olimar.
There are no actual Smash events going on right now, it’s just Online tourneys, so maybe I don’t have much inspiration. Or maybe my time with this hobby has run out and its time to move on. I usually go hard on something for about a year and then get caught up in something else. Nothing has grabbed my attention yet, but I feel like I’m stuck in a rut with Smash Ultimate.
And I know, this is the time when I should keep going an push through, if I ever want to “git gud”. But I’m never going to be as good as the next 13-year old to pick up the controller so forget that.
So, I’ll be taking a break from Ultimate and this blog series at least for the rest of this month, but more likely until the end of May. If I come back it’ll be in June, if I come back to this at all.
Random selection has already chosen Marth for me to play for one day. I did want to make this blog series a full 52 weeks. And I did want to try out every character in Ultimate, but that’s feeling more and more like a chore. So, I’m very on the fence.
So, until next time Let’s Go!