WiiGi (2013-04-09 06:00:32)

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Welcome to this topic, this would be all dedicated to Smash Bros. Brawl. This game has been released for 5 years, and it has been one of the most competitive games because mashing buttons are going to get you so far. The way this game is meant to be played involved the Unity ruleset.


1. Rulings

General Gameplay Rules
- 3 Stocks
- 8 Minute Time Limit
- Items set to "Off" and "None"
- Pause set to "Off" (If a player pauses a game during a match, they automatically have to SD a stock, if a player pauses it while a player gets hit where they are going to go off the screen to the death zone, they have to SD twice)
- All infinites and chain grabs are legal.
- There is a 50 Ledge Grab Limit for all characters. If a game goes to time and one player goes over the Ledge Grab Limit for their character, they will automatically lose the game. If both players exceed their Ledge Grab Limit, then this rule is ignored.
- The act of stalling is banned: stalling is intentionally making the game unplayable: Such as becoming invisible, continuing infinites, chain grabs, or uninterruptible moves past 300%, and reaching a position that your opponent can never reach you.
- Any action that can prevent the game from continuing (i.e., freezing, disappearing characters, game reset, etc.) will result in a forfeit of that match for the player that initiated the action. You are responsible for knowing your own character, and must be wary about accidentally triggering one of these effects.
- If the Ledge Grab Limit does not declare one player the winner, the winner will be declared by what the game says in all situations, except for when players are presented with sudden death:
- In the event of a match going to time, the winner will be determined by who has less percent (stock difference still takes priority but will be shown in the results screen).
- If the match ends with both players dying at the same time (either coincidentally or via suicide move) or if time ran out with both players at equal percent, a one stock three minute rematch will be played on the same stage. For a tie-breaker match, a Ledge Grab Limit of 18 is used for all characters.

Legal Stages:
Battlefield
Battleship Halberd
Castle Siege
Final Destination
Delfino Plaza
Lylat Cruise
Pokemon Stadium 1
Smashville
Frigate Orpheon
Yoshi's Island (Brawl)


2. Improving your combat skills

These tournament rulings aren't made by me, they're public and mandatory. You're probably wondering, I'm the best at brawl, no one can beat me. Well, that's where you're wrong, if you fight without any skill into it, such as going in and attacking and pray that you would kill, then you aren't going to get far. There are roles in brawl that you need to learn, and that would mean playing: Offensively (standard), Defensively, Unpredictable patience.

Offensively: This is where you just go in and attack, shield is use rarely, only when you know there's a move you can't counter-attack, this style is used to get you over your opponent, a series of attacks would give you the upper hand, which would increase your spacing (Spacing would be getting your opponent closer and closer to the end of the stage, because you're throwing attacks that prevents your opponent to push you away or get behind you). Offensive is a good strategy, but it's overall reckless, if someone defensive is playing against you, he would easily counter this, projectiles would hurt you, Shielding every attack then shielding would hurt you. There's lots of ways to play offensively, but most of the time, you trade blows, depending on the more experienced player.

Defensively: This is my style of play, and the reason why is because to actually cause damage, you have to hurt your opponent more, right? Little pieces of small % attacks adding onto larger quantities and then finishing it with a smash attack because the move isn't stale (A stale move would mean an attack getting weaker and weaker the more you use it, this affects the base damage the attack would take and the knockback. This recovers the less you use the move). Defensively has a lot of strange movements and attacking your opponent when they least expect it, that's taking advantage of it, your opponent can be attacking you, missing, making themselves more vulnerable. A good example of a defensive player would be characters like diddy, falco, snake, rob, and toon link. Though, defensive characters would even work on something like meta knight, where you analyze your opponents movements.

Unpredictable Patience: This one is one I made up. This involves you attacking without a direct approach, you would go in on a enemy in a strange manner, such as thunder jolting in the air with pikachu, and running alongside it to a grab, where your opponent is forced to jump or counter attack, this would involve the mind game portion. You have to guess what your opponent will do, this is what you call a punish (a punish is when you hurt your opponent for a mistake they do, this involves mentally preparing yourself for a attacking you know they'll throw and ready to attack them in return). People aren't really good at using this technique as to they are more better at walking up to an opponent and kicking them in their face, but this usually wrecks up free %.


Now, with all this in mind, I'm sorry to tell you but you have to use all these 3 frequently during every match if you expect to get good. You have to switch your match-ups, if you're fighting a defensive person against a defensive person, then it'll rely on who's quicker or more smart. A single tactic throughout the whole game will get you killed because you start to become more obvious and more predictable, or what I like to say "Read their mind like a bedtime story".


First things first, you want to improve a little bit? You may not know this, but you need to DI (Directional Influence)
Directional Influence: The moment you get hit off the screen, you're supposed to aim the Control Stick Up, so that it sends you to the corners of the stage, the moment you get hit, you have to do the fastest air attack, this will cause you to lose momentum, in other words, let you get knocked out slower, then you aim the control stick toward the stage so that you can move towards it slightly and possibility survive. Think of it like this, your television is a box, as you see, the corners of the stage are the spots where getting KO'd would be kind of hard, because the distance is a bit extended when knocked off.

Tap Directional Influence: Tapping the control stick and smash attack button (C-stick on gamecube controllers) in one directions to escape an attack. A good example of this is trying to escape pikachus D-smash by tapping your control stick up and c-stick up to leave with minimal damage, or escaping a smart bomb by tapping it really fast (non-competitive)



3. Exploiting skills

So you decided to start playing competitive, personally I would say that a good character to start off with is Marth. His attacks are quick, he can turn games around depending on your determination, and how much effort you put. I started up using Pikachu, as I improved, I moved to Luigi, then I got really used to very similar patterns, fighting different people that I would know exactly what the would do before it even happens. This is called predicting, looking forward a few seconds in the future and knowing what movements and attacks they'll do before initiated. To put it simply, you CAN'T beat meta knight (as a character), your goal is to beat the meta knight player. To beat the player, you have to be better than the player, of course... there are scenarios where a player is better but simply loses because he's the wrong character, this is what pros call MU (Match-Up).

Match-Up (MU): When a player knows how difficult it is to fight another character, and having an advantage or disadvantage, according to both their character and the stage they're fighting in.

Frames: The amount of animation movements while pressing a button.

Perfect Shield: If you tap your shield button while your opponent does an attack at the exact same time you press the shield, you will hear a sound effect different from the shield one, this is called a perfect shield. Perfect shield advantages lets you counter immediately after it's done. Perfect shielding is usually done on projectiles. The perfect shield's energy does not drop any frames, and takes 3 frames to get it out instantly.

Dodging > Spot dodges/Side Dodges: This is rarely seen in competitive play. Spot Dodges is only used when you know the exact moment your opponent is going to attack, usually people just use up their shield and the moment they attack, they go for a counter-attack. Side dodges would never be used greatly to get behind an opponent, the reaction timing gives them enough time to predict it. The worse Side dodge is Samus, who does an animation of turning into a ball and rolling and there aren't much invincibility frames. For most characters it's 35 frames, so you become invincible for 6/8 of the time, but then you can get hit. So I would personally only use Wave Dashes for something such as away from your opponent to give yourself some space. Spot Dodge for something such as Marth's B Charged (It can break shields if not perfect shielded).

You don't really expect Ike to win against Toon Link on Final Destination, but his chances are higher on Battle Field. Toon Link's fighting style would be throwing boomerangs, bombs, and arrows, and while you're shielding, he can go for a grab or try to break it, or punish you for dodging it. For close comeback characters, you go on small stages, if you even want to win. Think about it, what advantages does Ike have on Final Destination? Other than surviving longer, so will your opponent.

Projectile characters love big stages. To beat a projectile character, you need to perfect shield a lot of attacks
Close Combat characters love small stages. To beat a Close Combat character, you need to know how to counter-attack.




There's no secrets to getting better at this game, you can easily understand most of what I'm saying but unable to initiate it against pro players. To get better, you simply have to fight a bunch of people that are beyond your skill level, improving, know what stuff you're doing is right or wrong. This game is made up of 30% knowing how you play, 30% knowing how your opponent plays, 40% skill, experience, knowledge.

If you have any questions or want to brawl me to see the competitive difference between yourself and a pro, feel free to PM me. I'm the top brawler in 3DSplaza, and I'll be more than happy to teach anyone a thing or two.

This post has been edited one or more times, the last time was:
2013-05-04 18:09:07

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WiiGi (2013-04-09 08:35:34)

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Yea, for those who want to play it for around a week and then get bored of it. But there's more to it than just having items on, running around big blue. There's not banned characters... Meta knight used to be banned, because of his moves and usually his tornado (It has a lot of invulnerability). Sakurai said it himself that Smash Brothers was never meant to be competitive. He doesn't make it competitive, "WE" do, and that's why the lengths in entertainment comes from, that's where we get our thrill in a challenge, overcoming obstacles. That is how we play a real game.

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Screamer (2013-04-09 10:56:20)

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Rules are for pussies.

Take your MLG crap and shove it back up in between your buttocks.

This post has been edited one or more times, the last time was:
2013-04-09 17:57:15

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WiiGi (2013-04-09 11:18:18)

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If you don't like it, then what are you doing in this topic? It isn't for you, then you shouldn't comment, if you don't fully agree with this topic. This game can be looked at competitively, but for those people who just play this game for fun, then I'm happy for you? Go play with level 9 coms items on in pokemon stadium 2 and have fun, selling your brawl game a week after because you got bored of it because you're not creative enough to improve.

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Screamer (2013-04-09 12:06:14)

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Competitive gaming is for pussies.

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WiiGi (2013-04-10 06:42:12)

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There's 2 types for everyone, casual players and competitive players. The competitive players are more promising and enjoy the game playing their hardest, learning more about the game and using it as their experience. The casual players just enjoy the game as sakurai intended, but the thing is, if you enjoy the game casually, then that means you rarely play the game and you never improve. I say this because for a game being out for 5 whole entire years, having the want to play with items, stages that aren't exactly fair, playing with offset rules just for giggles... You start adapting into a competitive play-style for the love you have for the game. If you want to hold the control stick toward your opponent and press the A button to whenever you're close, feel free to. You can continue playing with little kids as your opponents "for fun" as you call it, this is usually what anyone under the age of 15 say when it comes to playing competitive. Again, this topic simply isn't for you, there's some people here don't even know there's worldwide tournaments every week because people enjoy this game that much. But if you want to put items on, bad stages to your advantage (Example: Sonic running away from ganondorf in temple while the final smash is on, just to win, yea, that's freaking fair), putting all these rules just for a chance to win and feel a bit of accomplishment? Does it "REALLY" feel like you won when someone who fights as zero suit uses her final smash compared to something like snake using his final smash? A Heart container flying in midair right in front of you while your opponent gets bombs dropped in front of them?

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Screamer (2013-04-10 12:35:43)

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You can't take the heat of a no holds barred SSBB match, bub.

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WiiGi (2013-04-10 16:53:51)

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Yea, we fought some people on 3dsplaza (Saint and Chadwick), we ended up spamming hard with arrows, bombs and boomerangs as a fort. Because apparently having team attack Off was a bad idea to them

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Nin10dude789 (2013-04-11 02:11:23)

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How about a stamina battle? It's fun to see the dead bodies on stage! /

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THaT1GuY9001 (2013-05-04 11:33:58)

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I like competitive gaming, especially with this and Marvel vs Capcom. I hav atleast 150$ in cash prizes from local tournaments.

This post has been edited one or more times, the last time was:
2013-05-05 06:13:28

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BlueBlur (2013-05-07 09:14:19)

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50 ledge grabs, what are we supposed to do, count how many times we grab ledges. I really hate tournament rules, no offense.

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SwaggyP (2013-05-07 09:20:05)

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Someone else counts.

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LilSaint (2013-05-08 11:24:16)

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I have over 5,000 hours played on melee.

And pay very close attention to what Wiigi says. He speaks the truth.

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WiiGi (2013-05-10 18:20:03)

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Well, the 50 ledge grab limit is nothing to be worried about unless you stall for 8 whole entire minutes. To be honest, I never grab over the ledge limit when required, it's usually over the ledge limit when you're doing it ON PURPOSE.

It's hard to say this but, when you fight against someone, you have to know exactly how their movements are. I always use my first stock to see how my opponents play, and rarely an entire game. The reason I do this, it gives you the upper hand, it gives you the feel to dominate if you know how to counter.

If your opponent does one thing repetitively, it's not because he's a pro, it just means he's good at doing that one thing, because he's done it a million of times. Example: Falco double laser while using phantasm (Forward B ) to get some space.

Brawl is a fun game, even when it's competitive, it doesn't really mean you can't mess around every now and then, unless it's a tournament. Some people are actually good when they mess around, they can be running away from someone while they're chasing you, and at that instant, you can surprise them by attacking them. Or if you're charging for a smash attack, your opponent can think they have a good opening for them to counter attack (while they're at a distance), only to fall into your trap by letting go of your smash attack and doing something completely new (basically a fake out).

Let's be honest, if Smash Bros. Brawl wasn't meant to play competitive, what game would consider competitive?

This post has been edited one or more times, the last time was:
2013-05-11 01:23:13

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BlueBlur (2013-05-11 04:33:11)

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^I get what you're saying. The only thing I really have a problem with is the small amount of stages you're allowed to play on.

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