Smash 101: Combat tactics masterclass
Gain the advantage and beat your friend﷽s with our pro-tips💎 guide
Sadly - or happily depending on your perspective - the techniques of wavedashing and l-cancelling (at least in its traditional form) have been excised from Smash's Wii edition,🅰 but there's still plenty of clever combat to be getting on with reg🅰ardless
Maneuverability
It's often💖 overlooked in favour of the violence, but skillfully moving your character around the screen is a vital aspect of playing Smash well. These tricks will put you ahead of the compe♎tition.
#1, The short-hop
What it is: A smaller, faster jump.
How you do it: Give the jump button a very short stab rather than the usual pres🦋s. The height and timing of the jump is different with every character, but with a bit of experimentation it’s not hard൲ to pull off consistently.
Why you should use it: It might seem a bit of a pointless variation on🥀 Smash’s normal jumping, but in practice the short-hop is a move made of solid gold and kitten smiles. Most importantly, it allows you to pull off all of your mid-air moves at floor level, doubling up the array of attacks available in your ground game.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales ꦉfrom the communiti🅘es you love, and more
That alone makes it an invaluable move to learn, but it also makes your character’s movement around the stage a lot quicker overall and lets you hopswiftly over incoming ground attacks to get in arapid downward strike. Combine it with this next trick for 🐭the complete coked-up Easter Bunny effect.
#2, The fast-fall
What it is: Exactly what it s🌌ays on the tin. The fast-fall vastly quickenꦏs your descent from a jump.
How you do it: Jump,ꩵ then pull down hard on the stick when you reach the apex of your ascent.
Why you should use it: Dropping from the air quickly makes you a lot harder to hit when an opponent leaps in for a bit of ariel combat. It’s a great evasive move, and can really throw your foe’s timing if you mix it up with normal falls. It’s also a brilliant move with which to drastically improve the maneuverability of your character. Some fighters in Smash fall through the air very slowly – Zelda is a perfect example – and end up losing the race to higher platforms as a result even if they can getup therefirst. Using a fast-fall aft🌠er jumping above a platform will bring you to your destination a lot quiꦆcker and have you ready to make your next move while your opponent is still on their way up. For an example of just how powerful a tool the fast-fall is, try playing Event Match 17 with and without it. We guarantee you’ll never look back.
Doing an ariel move during a fast-f🌞all is also the new replacement for Melee's l-c🦩ancelling (the technique which allowed faster recovery from landing animations).