Smash Ultimate Tips: Why Direction is Important
Tags: Gaming, Features, Nintendo Switch, Esports, Nintendo

Learning On Your Own

Self-taught is not the way to go if you’re looking to improve quickly or you're losing to rivals in the bracket. The reason guides exist is to help players optimize their play and learn new techniques from the pros. While you may get the combos and mechanics down pat, your playstyle might plateau as your game plan becomes predictable by better opponents.

As such, it’s ideal to seek guidance from a better player who can help optimize your fundamentals, techniques, and mindset. Otherwise, the psychological aspect of reads and pressure — combined with optimal, safe moves and powerful punishes — might escape you.

If you’re self-taught, you surely carry a great deal of pride in your play and don’t want to look weak in front of other players. You don’t want the lower-ranked players to think you’re vulnerable. Likewise, you want the top players to know you’re a threat. But the truth is, it’s never a bad idea to ask for advice. As long as you don’t come off as entitled about it, better players will likely be happy to help you improve.

Books like Playing to Win will help you learn how to adapt better.

However, it might be hard to reach out to some top players for advice. Many of them might be busy practicing or doing real-life things. Some of them might not be available to help you if you contact them via social media or Discord. Trying to get an answer to that question on your play might become your own burden to figure out. Unless you decide to book them for a session on Metafy, you might not be able to reach out to them until the next time you two meet at an event.

Self-Improvement

When watching your own replays, you might look for the wrong thing. You might think, “oh, I whiffed the end of that combo and lost” instead of, “I was air dodging and rolling the whole time” or “I didn’t capitalize on my pressure the entire match.”

Your habits and playstyle leading up to the end of the game meant more than the final exchange itself. Sometimes that comes with technique while other times it comes from your approach and mentality. When you’re looking to do more than reinforce your current skills, start looking for VODs and video guides. Media on YouTube, like Izaw’s guides, can help with your character technique.

You could also apply another player’s choices to your own when you analyze how they utilize their fundamentals. Among these include utilizing pressure, kill confirms, racking up damage, recovering, and escaping disadvantaged states. You could watch a top player’s match, one that uses your main, and compare their technique to your own.

If you use Roy or Byleth, watching this may give you some new ideas.

Outside of character technique, though, how would you know exactly what to look for without a proper sense of direction? If you’re sitting at a plateau and your competition pins you up against a wall, how would you know which habits to break?

You have to know what to look for while you play in order to break your bad habits, replace them with good ones, and optimize your play efficiently. And to do that, sometimes it’s important to have someone there, like a coach, to point you in the right direction.

Why Direction is Important

The point of direction is to help you improve faster than you would have to reinforce what you already know. Hence the term direction. They’re guiding you down the path to victory while you’re hacking away at obstacles. But while you realize what you’re doing isn’t enough, you might begin to struggle with what you need to do next in order to improve.

When you realize you’re not as good as you think you were, it opens a new door to you. That door leads to improvement and how to catch up to the competition. It becomes less about how your opponent is BSing you with their character and turn into learning how to dish punishment right back at them while exploiting flaws in their playstyle.

Final Thoughts

As a coach, I feel great to know that I’ve helped other players break their own mental plateaus. They’re picking up on their habits better through repeat sessions and making more waves in their tournament bracket. I feel proud when I see one of my students get a proper ledge trap setup and upset a player who was primed to beat them.

If you’re at a level where you feel you’re struggling with your competition, don’t be ashamed to book a session with a coach. Even some of the best Ike players I know, like Yez, have booked sessions with esteemed sages of the Smash community.

With that being said, everyone grows at their own rate. But if you know how to improve faster and use your tools more efficiently, go with what works. Go with what will help your improvement while you continue to train, reinforce, and build better habits.

If you found this story useful, please consider following my blog. If you seek coaching sessions in Smash Ultimate, consider booking a session with me on Metafy. I offer lessons, training plans, and replay reviews. Use the code RANGO-SUPERJUMP1 to get 20% off of a lesson today!